Eagle Days: Life and Death for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain

[John Vasco]

Originally Posted by richdlc

I can’t add much to this except to say that Victoria is lovely, I’ve met her. She did a piece for Axis Wings, and she’s passionate. Like every historian though she’s always learning new information all the time, so might her opinions change over time? I don’t know.
And this might be a sweeping statement but I think men are much more anal about the minutiae than women. Don’t shoot me down in flames for saying that!

It's got nothing to do with the sexes. It's about finding out facts, and presenting them. She doesn't need any kind of apologia re minutiae. It's the lack of minutiae that has led people to believe that Dowding was sacked, and the Bf 110 pure fighter units needing Bf 109 escort in the BoB (yes, one of my pet peeves!).
And I would venture to suggest that every writer on the Battle of Britain is passionate about the subject. Show me one who isn't...

[Nick Beale]

John: Yes, sorry about the Stukas. Probably truer to say that they were withdrawn to conserve the force for close support during an invasion (ULTRA tells us that 1 September orders were issued to move seven Stuka Gruppen to airfields in the Pas de Calais region, none of them more than 60 km inland).
I'd differ with you a little over the Flak and RAF bombing of continental targets in that it was in reality a two-way war, not an absolutely clear-cut issue of Germans attacking, British defending. Again it's clear from ULTRA that the Germans were very jittery about the security of their airfields in the face of the bombing. Bombing of Germany itself diverted Zerstörer assets into the Nachtjagd Division.
As for the Nazism, the NSDAP's "national revolution" sought to transform (or in my terms morally corrupt) an entire people. One of "my" veterans, as decent, thoughtful and liberal-minded a man as you could ask for told me that in the 30s he and others had been enthused/carried away (»begeistert«) by the pace of developments in Germany. Party membership in 1939 was 5.3 million and kept on rising so it would be remarkable if there weren't a lot of card-carriers in the Luftwaffe. Plus, it's hard to fight for one's country without also fighting for the people in charge. There's more about Dr. Taylor's thesis here but it's not downloadable (although you can get her one on the Dams raids).

Chris: "New" or at least less-explored BoB sources might include the 3,000+ pages of ULTRA for 1940 (but I'm working on that); the 424 Air Ministry Daily W/T Intelligence Summaries up to the end of October 1940; the 899 CSDIC(UK) SRA reports up to 12 November; the 421 daily Western Front Sitreps to 31 October at TSAMO (complimenting BAMA's Luftflotte 3 daily reports); and (if you're so inclined) TSAMo's 2,226 files on »Seelöwe« + more on that subject in their OKW collection.

Rich: If you think women are less into minutiae you probably haven't lived with a patchwork quilter (let alone one whose professional specialism was blood cell morphology) but seriously, accuracy and historical enquiry go hand in hand, don't they?