Why didn't the RN and FAA contribute more to the Battle of Britain?

The Fulmar could have come in very handy if the LW had concentrated on knocking out Chain Home radar. Without CH the RAF would need to fly standing patrols to give advanced warning of an attack. Spitfires and Hurricanes have about an hours endurance which is not good enough, plus if your flying your fighters on patrols your using up engine and airframe life and they are not available for the fight.

A Fulmar had an endurance of 4 hours, it had 2 pairs of Mk1 eyeballs, it could defend itself if jumped out of the clouds, it had a long range wireless and it was not taking fighters away from there main duty. Whether the FAA had enough pilots is another matter maybe they would have been taken over by the RAF.
 

MatthewB

Banned
We must also remember that the RN and its surviving carriers and FAA were active in the Mediterranean. The Taranto Raid, for example was in the autumn of 1940.
 
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Regards,
 
The Fulmar could have come in very handy if the LW had concentrated on knocking out Chain Home radar. Without CH the RAF would need to fly standing patrols to give advanced warning of an attack. Spitfires and Hurricanes have about an hours endurance which is not good enough, plus if your flying your fighters on patrols your using up engine and airframe life and they are not available for the fight.

Well yes, but apart from the fact that the radars could not be put out of service for good, Fighter Command would use Blenheims for this unenviable task.
 
Well yes, but apart from the fact that the radars could not be put out of service for good, Fighter Command would use Blenheims for this unenviable task.

Bomber Command wouldnt have lent Fighter Command a 3rd hand tea bag in 1940. I can imagine the screaming in the Air Ministry if several squadrons of Blenheims were used for stooging around in the Channel and thats apart from the fact a Blenheim would be a Luftwaffe pilots victory mark waiting to happen.
 
On 11 October 1940, the battleship Revenge, with cruisers, destroyers and MTBs, crossed the Channel and bombarded Cherbourg. She destroyed landing barges, among other targets, but more importantly, she sent a signal to the Germans. If you try to cross to invade England, the Royal Navy WILL be in the Channel, including battleships.

Some images here:

http://ww2today.com/11th-october-1940-hms-revenge-bombards-cherbourg

Note too that for some reason, Roskill didn't see this incident worthy of the Official History, and from what I understand did not include it therein.

Regards,
 
One major restriction on the FAA in 1940 was the number of both crew and aircraft available for active service. As the fleet at the time only had four large and three smaller aircraft cariers, all of these with a limmited capacity of aircraft and non of these carrying a full complement. shore based aircraft were even lesser in numbers still and what types of aircraft they had were seriously inferrior to whatever land based aircraft the Luftwaffe could muster.
 
Bomber Command wouldnt have lent Fighter Command a 3rd hand tea bag in 1940. I can imagine the screaming in the Air Ministry if several squadrons of Blenheims were used for stooging around in the Channel and thats apart from the fact a Blenheim would be a Luftwaffe pilots victory mark waiting to happen.

I'm not talking about Blenheim bombers. I'm talking about Blenheim MkIF fighters. They were the British long-range fighters, and yes, they weren't up to daylight dogfighting against a Bf 109, and that's why they were being trained as night fighters. But in a pinch, they'd be used for this. #600, #25, #236, #604, #23, #29, #219 Squadrons were thus equipped on July 1, 1940, plus the experimental FIU.

And, by the way, Bomber Command allowed 21 pilots, coming from the re-equipping former Battle Squadrons, to volunteer for Fighter Command.
 
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In WWII, in general, naval aircraft especially fighters, were somewhat inferior in performance to land based fighters because of the design parameters needed for carrier service. This was especially true for the RN at the start of the war where aircraft development had been neutered by the naval air arm being under RAF control for so long, and only relatively recently been given back. This meant that in terms of fighters, RN fighters going up against the Me-109 escorts would be at a significant disadvantage with the expected results. Had the Germans attempted an invasion, however, the RN attack aircraft with crews trained to attack naval targets, would have been very important indeed. Another issue is that training pilots for carrier duty is longer and more difficult than land based, which is an issue in keeping slots filled. Also the skills required for navigation are much more intensive, no landmarks to orient by in a pinch. All of this combines to make RN air contributions in 1940 limited. The RN also had a problem recruiting for naval air - competing against the RAF which had better airplanes (Spitfire vs Stringbag), as well as the RAF being much more limelight than naval air.
 
Worth remembering that "naval aircraft", in the unnecessarily complicated British case, doesn't equate with the FAA only. There's Coastal Command, too. And it did contribute in the summer of 1940, carrying out small but reasonably useful raids against the assembled barge flotillas.
 
The RN also had a problem recruiting for naval air - competing against the RAF which had better airplanes (Spitfire vs Stringbag)
Although I agree that the Swordfish was not a modern plane, it was suited for its role. I can't really see Spitfires sinking ships or laying mines.
 
The Stringbag was the WWII equivalent of the shipborne antisubmarine helicopter and exceptionally good in that role but a death trap if used in the face of fighter cover or heavy anti aircraft fire.
 
The Stringbag was the WWII equivalent of the shipborne antisubmarine helicopter and exceptionally good in that role but a death trap if used in the face of fighter cover or heavy anti aircraft fire.
Which is the case for all torpedobombers. Flying low to attack ships means you're the perfect target for a fighter. The nature of a torpedorun means that you're the perfect target for AA-fire.
 
Yes, but rather than individual pilots going to a range of different squadrons, why not a complete FAA squadron equipped (by the RAF) with Hurricanes, be plugged into the RAF Defence system. They would fight together, and have hands-on experience with the aircraft before rejoining a carrier to fly Sea-Hurricanes! Seems a no-brainer to me, why didn't the FAA insist on it?


Because they wanted actual planes available for the defense of Britain in case France fell? The better question is why did the RAF fly more frequently than the French Air Force?
 
From what i've read the RN and FAA mainly contributed pilots. Why did they not send any aircraft to help bolster and alleviate the pressure off of the RAF?
From some notes that I made from Find, Fix and Strike - The FAA at War 1939-45 by John Watson

No. 804 Squadron (Sea Gladiators) at Wick and No. 808 Squadron (Fulmar) at Castletown (near Caithness) under No. 13 (Fighter) Group took part in the battle.

On 06.06.40 45 naval pilots under training were transferred to the RAF and 30 more were transferred by the end of June for a total of 68. 10 pilots were recalled in July for the Mediterranean so 58 actually took part in the battle. The 40 surviving pilots returned to the FAA in December 1940.

I have made a mistake there because 45+30 = 75, not 68.
 
This is the best I can do for the deployment of the FAA's 800-Series squadrons in the third quarter of 1940.

The series 800-809 was reserved for fighter squadrons. Strictly speaking the Skua wasn't a Fleet Fighter, it was a Fighter Dive Bomber (FDB) and neither was the Fulmar, which IIRC the Fulmar was a Fighter-Reconnaissance (F/R) aircraft. However, for convenience I have listed all the fighter squadrons as Fleet Fighters.

Similarly the Albacore was, IIRC, a Torpedo Dive Bomber (TDB), not a Torpedo Spotter Reconnaissance (TSR) aircraft like the Swordfish, but it's easier to list them all as TSRs.

FAA Squadrons July to October 1940.png

So two out of six Fleet Fighter squadrons were with Fighter Command at 1st July 1940.

The seventh squadron, No. 807 was formed on Fulmars and embarked on the seaplane carrier HMS Pegasus, which was employed as a Catapult Fighter Ship. Pegasus was the 1914 Ark Royal, which had been renamed Pegasus in 1934 to allow her old name to be used by the Ark Royal completed in 1938. The Royal Navy's other seaplane carrier HMS Albatross was at Freetown with the Walruses of No. 710 squadron.

Only 10 of the 16 TSR squadrons that existed on 1st July 1940 were embarked on aircraft carriers. One of the six squadrons ashore was at Malta and the other five were in the UK, probably operating with RAF Coastal Command. The two squadrons formed in August 1940 were also assigned to Coastal Command.

So it looks as if seven out of the 22 FAA squadrons that existed on 1st January 1940 took part in the Battle of Britain in one way or another. And nine out of the 25 squadrons that existed on 1st September were involved in the battle in one way or another.
 
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Which is the case for all torpedobombers. Flying low to attack ships means you're the perfect target for a fighter. The nature of a torpedorun means that you're the perfect target for AA-fire.
Most torpedo bombers in 1940 couldn't be caught by basic trainers. When loaded down a Stringbag could.
 
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