Me110: Ill-used in BoB

[DavidIsby]

Low level high speed attacks on airfields are a potentially powerful tactic. Such attacks on German airfields, largely by the Eighth Air Force, were important in the defeat of the German day fighter force in the period between October 1943 (when it defeated the US daylight bomber offensive) and June 1944 (when it proved ineffective against the invasions). Nor was it limited to the Second World War. In the last decade of the Cold War the RAF stressed using Tornados low-level attacks on main operating bases in East Germany as its primary counter-air approach.

A few caveats. The counter to such attacks includes lots of ground-based point air defenses. The British did not have these in 1940. The Germans did in 1944, even more in 1945. Also remember that such attacks are not going to be accurate. So, to be effective, you either need to keep attacking, day after day, or do something else (like arrange for your army to park a tank on the enemy's runway, as the Germans were able to do in France 1940). Remember also that blowing up Hurricanes and Spitfires on the ground may have looked good in summer 1940, but that was not what the British were running out of. Such attacks would have been most effective targeting things such as operations rooms and support facilities, but even if they had had the accuracy, the limits of German intelligence precluded effective targeting.