[Nick Beale]

I'm not actually sure that British children are taught about the Battle of Britain (someone with kids may well correct me!). Everyone seems to get taught about WW2 with a big emphasis on the Holocaust nowadays.

When I made that remark about numerical superiority, I simply meant "how many aircraft did each side possess altogether?" Fighter Command had 650–750 fighters to cover the whole country. IIRC the Luftwaffe had a lot more. The Germans only needed to put up fighters at the point of attack in numbers appropriate to the size of bomber formation they were escorting (plus any diversionary sweeps they chose to send over). Much of the RAF effort on any given day was against minor incursions — nuisance raids, reconnaissance aircraft etc. Therefore I'm not sure what sortie total or rates tell us, since each side was trying to do a different job and would necessarily employ its aircraft differently.

Certainly Britain was producing/repairing enough fighters to replace its losses and to strengthen Fighter Command over the period of the Battle while the Jagdwaffe was slowly getting weaker.