Fighter pilots' guts

[Ruy Horta]

So now I am being unfair to the British, now that's irony for you!!

I wonder if some Brits here on this forum wonder if they should believe their eyes.

Sorry, I am not attacking the effort of British pilots or other military men, I am not talking of treason and abandonment (or worse), I am only questioning the grand strategic picture of RAF High Command, especially Dowding. Whereas the British Army gave it their best shot, the RAF kept large reserves, both in terms of fighters and bombers in adherence to rigid doctrine (strategic bombing and a strong deterant against strategic bombing).

Later events don't necessarily proof the correctness of this doctrine, although supporters of Dowding like to stress this point. But the whole argument becomes hypothetical.

Still I like the irony in the sudden role reversal here, won't be long or its me that will be accused of being anti-British with you as their champion.

I'll throw in a nice quote from someone who wrote without the benefit of hindsight:

But we hadn't wanted this bloody awful war that the Huns seemed to think so glorious. We had been forced to fight. 'And now that were are fighting,' we thought, 'we'll teach you rotten Huns how to fight! We'll shoot your pissy little fighters out of the sky, we'll rip your dirty great bombers to shreds, we'll make you wish to Christ you'd never heard of the aeroplane! We'll teach you the facts of war!' And we knew we could - if we were reinforced.

We were sure we had the measure of the Germans. Already our victories far exceeded our losses, and the Squadron score for a week's fighting stood at around the hundred mark for the deficit of two pilots missing and one wounded. We knew the Huns couldn't keep going at that rate, but we also knew we couldn't keep it up much longer without help. We were confident that help would soon come. We reckoned without Dowding.

Paul Richey, Fighter Pilot

Apart from the optimistic claim this annecdote illustrates I am not completely bonkers for even suggesting that there might have been a bigger RAF effort (again, do not read this as more effort from the men already on the Front!)