WI: Battle of Britain Reversal

Ian Hathaway

Lets just suppose that AVM Leigh-Mallory comes up with a crazy idea some time near the end of August 1940. Bypassing Dowding he heads straight to the Air Ministry and lays down his proposal ... "Lets take the fight to the Luftwaffe, I've had enough of sitting around defending the skies above Britain".

By the end of the first week in September the green light is given for the RAF to conduct "German" style raids on Luftwaffe air bases in France. The first day of the campaign is scheduled for 9th September and a force of 250 bombers and 500 fighters are made available ... what do people think would be the results of this kind of raid?

OTL Bomber and Coastal Commands regularly carried out small scale raids on Airfields with occasional support from Fighter Command. Very little damage was done to the Luftwaffe. The Germans had very effective radar but no unified command structure so air defense was very localised and each airfield only had a couple of fighters on standby at any one time to intercept incoming raids.
 

Look More Closely Later

Pyrrhic Victory?

My initial thought is that any British 'victory' over France at this point could well end up being horribly Pyrrhic, since they won't be able to retrieve shot-down pilots - which they can when the fighting is over the UK.
 
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Deleted member 1487

Ian Hathaway said:
Lets just suppose that AVM Leigh-Mallory comes up with a crazy idea some time near the end of August 1940. Bypassing Dowding he heads straight to the Air Ministry and lays down his proposal ... "Lets take the fight to the Luftwaffe, I've had enough of sitting around defending the skies above Britain".

By the end of the first week in September the green light is given for the RAF to conduct "German" style raids on Luftwaffe air bases in France. The first day of the campaign is scheduled for 9th September and a force of 250 bombers and 500 fighters are made available ... what do people think would be the results of this kind of raid?

OTL Bomber and Coastal Commands regularly carried out small scale raids on Airfields with occasional support from Fighter Command. Very little damage was done to the Luftwaffe. The Germans had very effective radar but no unified command structure so air defense was very localised and each airfield only had a couple of fighters on standby at any one time to intercept incoming raids.
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You mean the RAF Rhubarbs and Circuses of 1941? They were a disaster:
http://spitfiresite.com/2010/04/1941-royal-air-force-offensive.html/3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdgeschwader_2#European_Service
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdgeschwader_26#Campaign_in_the_West
In 1941 most of the fighter units of the Luftwaffe were sent east to the Eastern Front, or south to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, thus leaving JG 26 and Jagdgeschwader 2 Richthofen as the sole single-engine fighter Geschwader in France. For the next two years these two Geschwader were the main adversaries to the Royal Air Force's (RAF) day offensives over Occupied Europe. The two Jagdgeschwader maintained around 120 serviceable Bf 109 E and F’s to face the increasing number of aggressive RAF Fighter Command sweeps conducted to wear down the Luftwaffe in a war of attrition and so relieve pressure on the Eastern Front.

Galland's careful husbanding of his resources and astute tactical awareness meant JG 26 kept their losses to a minimum while inflicting maximum damage on the RAF's Spitfires through 1941. This became even more evident with the arrival of the potent Focke-Wulf Fw 190A to units in late 1941 - early 1942, which, in most cases, outclassed the current Spitfire Mark Vb in service with the RAF. In late 1941 JG 26 started converting to the Fw 190A fighter. I. and II. Gruppe were soon fully equipped with this aircraft, and although the III Gruppe started converting, the process was stopped and it continued using various versions of the Bf 109 for the remainder of the war. By the end of 1941 JG 26 had claimed more than 900 victories since September 1939 (some 400 since May 1941), and had lost some 95 pilots killed (34 POW) in return. The highest scoring pilots at this time were Adolf Galland (97), Hptm Müncheberg (62) and Hptm Josef Priller (58).
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Saphroneth

Banned
About as effective as the Germans doing it to the Brits was - a bit better due to the lack of an IADS, a bit worse due to the lower training quality of the British fighters.

But then, Ian, your opinion of how effective airfield bombings were in the BoB is wildly different from, say, Michele. So it depends on what you think - point is, each would work about as well as the other, though I suspect the lack of German IADS would hurt them more than the lack of training hurts the Brits.
 

Cryhavoc101

Donor
Ian Hathaway said:
Lets just suppose that AVM Leigh-Mallory comes up with a crazy idea some time near the end of August 1940. Bypassing Dowding he heads straight to the Air Ministry and lays down his proposal ... "Lets take the fight to the Luftwaffe, I've had enough of sitting around defending the skies above Britain".

By the end of the first week in September the green light is given for the RAF to conduct "German" style raids on Luftwaffe air bases in France. The first day of the campaign is scheduled for 9th September and a force of 250 bombers and 500 fighters are made available ... what do people think would be the results of this kind of raid?

OTL Bomber and Coastal Commands regularly carried out small scale raids on Airfields with occasional support from Fighter Command. Very little damage was done to the Luftwaffe. The Germans had very effective radar but no unified command structure so air defense was very localised and each airfield only had a couple of fighters on standby at any one time to intercept incoming raids.
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If they concentrated on a relative handfull of bases then I would suspect that the attack would be a success with heavy damage done to those Aircraft units on the ground.

Maybe even resulting in the withdrawl of some of the Units stationed there

However subsequant attempts would be far more costly - probably prohibitively so and if subsequant attempts were made I am sure that they would soon be abandoned in the face of mounting losses.

A better tactic after the main attack that you describe would be nucance raids - small units of bombers attacking airfields in the Pas de Calais area at night - every night more for disruption effects than any damage to unit strengths and degredation of moral / effectiveness etc.

And maybe the odd 'tip and run' straffing atttack by pairs of fighters

None of this should detract from the fact that Dowdings managing of the BOB was as spot on as it was possible to get.
 
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matzeskatze

The British run smack into the same problem the Germans had. Insufficent range for the fighters. So we probaly se the earlier production of long range fighter planes. But would those be affordeble and competitive?

Also do not forget the FW190 that will appear in 41. Maybe because of preasure also slightly earlier. If the first one or two months play like OTL the British aggressor squadrons could see massive losses.

And then the question of pilots also rears its ugly head. While I think the British were on top after the BoB for replacements, in this situation it could lead to a kind of depletition that is hard to counter. Not so much the substance (trainers), but that young, inexperienced pilots are pitted against German Experten with litteraly dozens of kills...

Next point if losses in fighters and medium bombers rise, what will the heavies be like? Because I doubt the British could sustain a tactical and strategical air offensive at that point. So less preasure for the German heart land. Could be good for later, but the british crew losses will have to be factored in. And those will likely be even worse then OTL's strategic ones, as the tactical stuff would be in daylight.
 

Ian Hathaway

Saphroneth said:
About as effective as the Germans doing it to the Brits was - a bit better due to the lack of an IADS, a bit worse due to the lower training quality of the British fighters.

But then, Ian, your opinion of how effective airfield bombings were in the BoB is wildly different from, say, Michele. So it depends on what you think - point is, each would work about as well as the other, though I suspect the lack of German IADS would hurt them more than the lack of training hurts the Brits.
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It's true my opinion of the state of Fighter Commands ability to conduct business as usual by the end of August/start of September is different to that of Michele's due mainly to the damage being caused to their infrastructure. But does that mean that my opinions are wrong and Michele's right? My opinions however appear to be in line with those of AVM Park and AM Dowding who both expressed relief when the Luftwaffe stopped targeting the airfields.

We can all agree that making an airfield unusable was incredibly difficult and required a continuous effort on the part of the attacker. We can also say that given the right preparation knocking out an airforce on the ground is nigh on impossible; fighter commands biggest loss on the ground actually occured when Brize Norton was hit and 11 Hurricanes under repair/in storage were destroyed in a single raid. We can also agree that the Luftwaffe would never have won a war of attrition in the air. So the only partial victory the Germans can hope for in the BoB is disrupting the Fighter Commands ability to effectively utilise its command and control structure, either by damaging various parts of Fighter Commands infrastructure or by restricting the number of aircraft that could be put into the air at any one time. This is probably where my opinions differ from most people here, I believe the Germans were close to achieving this and could possibly have done so if they hadn't switched targets to London.

Anyway, as always I've strayed away from the OP slightly although not completely.

I believe that a reverse attack would have one aim, not to destroy the Luftwaffe on the ground or in the air ... not to force it to relocate etc. The aim would be to disrupt the Luftwaffe sufficiently that it can no longer carry out large raids on Britain, giving relief to the hard pressed squadrons in 11 Group. Throughout the majority of the BoB the main defence of Britain was conducted by 20 squadrons at any one time, fewer than half of the squadrons available. By conducting this kind of attack the RAF could bring more fighters into play. Imagine the look on the Luftwaffe pilots faces (and other peoples) when all of a sudden 750 aircraft appear over France including 500 of the 100-150 Hurricanes/Spitfires the Luftwaffe believed were still available to the RAF. Would it be a classic brown trouser moment for all involved?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
My point, Ian, was simply that the attacks would be of roughly equal effectiveness in both directions. If you think that the attacks heavily damaged Fighter Command, then the reverse attacks should heavily damage the Germans. Conversely, if you think the attacks would only mildly inconvenience the Germans, the same logic can be applied in reverse to the attacks on Fighter Command.
The most important difference between the two is that the Germans lack an IADS.
 

matzeskatze

Just to know, had the British the numbers, airfields and so on to get a strikeforce over the Chanel in one big punch or would they have to do it in multiple waves?
 

Ian Hathaway

Saphroneth said:
My point, Ian, was simply that the attacks would be of roughly equal effectiveness in both directions. If you think that the attacks heavily damaged Fighter Command, then the reverse attacks should heavily damage the Germans. Conversely, if you think the attacks would only mildly inconvenience the Germans, the same logic can be applied in reverse to the attacks on Fighter Command.
The most important difference between the two is that the Germans lack an IADS.
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Not really ... without the rigid command and control structure there are many differences ... there are even huge differences due to the permanent nature of the RAF airfields as opposed to the temporary nature of the German setup.
 

Ian Hathaway

matzeskatze said:
Just to know, had the British the numbers, airfields and so on to get a strikeforce over the Chanel in one big punch or would they have to do it in multiple waves?
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I believe they had the infrastructure to do it, South East England had many, many airfields. Squadrons would fly in from other areas of the country at first light, treat the airfields of SE England as refuelling stops and then fly on from there.
 

pattersonautobody

It butterflies away the Blitz and helps mitigate German losses over that time. The British would quickly end the fight I imagine, we can't presume they keep hitting their heads against the wall. However, if Sealion gets "postponed" then it is possible that the Germans respond in taking the fight to North Africa, or training for Barbarossa. If the RAF stops after a few crippling blows, then the Germans resume their attack on British airbases and things can unfold as OTL, just with the British in a worse spot.
 

Simon Oliver Lockwood

I think the RAF gets massacred over France. Neither Bomber Command nor Fighter Command have developed a doctrine for close escort or large formation flying. Leigh-Mallory's 'Big Wings' were in the order of 2-4 squadrons, not 100s of aircraft.
 

jahenders

Banned
Having the fight occur over Britain gave them many advantages (short flights and more fuel, recovering pilots, etc) and they'd give many of those to the Germans if they went to France. If they focused specifically on a few airfields it could potentially damage German operations enough that they'd have to pull back or send reinforcements, but British losses would be high.

As some have noted, the Germans didn't have an IADS, but the Brits only developed one because they were being attacked so regularly. If the Brits were being attacked in this manner, they'd soon implement something.
 

Crowbar Six

A successful attack might have forced the Luftwaffe to mount heavier patrols to cover their airfields, at least until they can bring up additional light and medium AAA. Doing it once might have been on a one off basis although, I can't see a mix of Blenheims, Hurricanes and Spitfires doing sufficient damage against the German fighter/bomber bases to make it worth while.

Plus the Germans had RADAR stations set up so they had a rudimentary warning system in place.
 

Deleted member 1487

Crowbar Six said:
A successful attack might have forced the Luftwaffe to mount heavier patrols to cover their airfields, at least until they can bring up additional light and medium AAA. Doing it once might have been on a one off basis although, I can't see a mix of Blenheims, Hurricanes and Spitfires doing sufficient damage against the German fighter/bomber bases to make it worth while.

Plus the Germans had RADAR stations set up so they had a rudimentary warning system in place.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Blenheim#Operational_history
Yeah, Blenheims and daylight bombing attempts during the BoB, before Germany got an early warning system in place, were basically slaughtered.
 

Ian Hathaway

lucaswillen05 said:
Is this an attempt at bringing about the Unmentionable Sea Mammal? :D
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To be honest this has nothing to do with Operation Sealion, by the 9th September the Luftwaffe had all but lost the BoB and therefore Sealion would not have even been an option. However, according to OTL there was still two months of the BoB left to fight.
 
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