RAF vs LW in 1940

[Juha]

Hello
Some thoughts on the quality of RAF vs Luftwaffe in spring – summer 1940.

Bombers more or less equal. Hampden and Wellington IC vs Do 17Z and He 111P and H.
Ju 88 was better than Blenheim as fast bomber but both were too slow and too weakly armed to survive interception without proper fighter escort. Blenheim also had too light bombload to be truly effective. Battle was hopelessly vulnerable but Whitley was passable night bomber with a good bomb load.

I cannot say much on day bombing tactics but LW had clearly better navigation aids and so had clearly more potential in night bombing.

Twin-engines fighters, LW had clear edge.
Bf 110 C and D were clearly better than Blenheim IF and IVF

Single engine fighters, LW had an edge.
Spitfire I was equal to Bf 109E but only under 2/5 of FC sqns were equipped with it. Hurricane was moderately inferior to 109 and Defiant was effective only against unescorted bombers.

German fighter tactics were clearly superior to those of FC but British had clearly better Command and Control.

Army co-operation, LW had clear edge.
It had better command and control system and better planes for the job. Ju 87s ability to destroy pin-point targets was also useful in maritime operations and also in attacks against key targets. LW also had ErprGr 210’s fighter bombers for attacks on key targets. Lysander was more or less equal to Hs 126 but both were vulnerable and on other sectors RAF was behind LW. British had of course FAA which have a dive-bomber (Skua) and whose torpedo bombers were also capable of dive bombing but IMHO all FAA’s plane were inferior to Stuka in this kind of missions.

Maritime operations
Probably CC + FAA combination was more capable than LW’s maritime units.

Intelligence, British had clear edge same goes to radio security, which was LW’s Achilles’ heel from 1940 onwards. LW’s radio security was almost unbelievable bad and that cost both LW and other branches of German armed forces dearly during the war.

Air sea rescue, Germany had clear edge. It had put much more effort to this than GB, even if the latter is an island nation.

Anti-aircraft, Germany had an edge, mostly because it had more guns and searchlights.

All in all
if we think BoB, even with some 50% superiority in first-line combat aircraft (one can get many figures of German numerical superiority depending on which planes are included and one must remember that British had greater a/c reserves so this 50% is only one of possible figures), but lower a/c production and with an edge on a/c quality and with clear edge on fighter tactics LW was incapable to knock GB out of war. One major cause was the short time available before weather closed in and an additional advance to British was the width of English Channel which heightened the problem of short range of the single engine fighters in use in 1940. But it still seems to me that the good radar based command and control system aided by good intelligence / bad LW radio security helped to neutralize most of the advances that the attacker usually has but better ASR was not anywhere near to neutralize the advantages that the defender usually has. This and the fact that the Royal Navy was so much stronger than Kriegsmarine made the survival of GB possible.

[CJE]

You forget another important point. The LW was very weak as far as weather reconnaissance and strategic reconnaissance were concerned. The Germans were moft often caught by surprise by bad weather that the British could easily predict, since the weather goes from West to East in Western Europe. Also they have never been able to assess the accuracy and efficiency of their bombings.
Their weakness in intelligence lead them to bomb haphazardly any airdrome in Southern England at the begining of the BoB, wasting time, aircraft and crews to attack non-essential bases.

[Juha]

Hello CJE and thanks for the comment!
When I gave the clear edge in intelligence to RAF one main reason was the weak strategic reconnaissance of LW but I had not thought the weather forecasts. Thanks for that insight! Germans flew numerous weather reconnaissance flights and had weather ships on northern waters, so they tried to solve that but could not overcome the British advantage in the geographical location. After all through their history British have had that advance which had made attack on them difficult and had helped them greatly for example during their wars against Dutch in 17th century.
Yes, English weather is full of surprises. On the Germans' difficulties to assess the damage they had done, it was partly because almost everyone, also British, had greatly overestimated the effects of bombing before the war. British learned much by studying the effects of LW's bombing in GB and used this info in their efforts to increase the effects of BC's attacks.

[CJE]

Remember also that in non-democratic states, top brass only listen to what they want to hear. This was the case of Italy, Germany and Japan (and to a lesser extent SSSR), that grossly over-estimated their successes, giving a false assessment of the global situation. How many times was the RAF Fighter Command utterly wiped out of the sky during Summer/Fall 40? How many US aircraft-carriers were allegedly sunk in 1942 - more than the San Diego shipyards had ever built!
Well... it may not be San Diego but it makes no difference.