Placing the Fairey Battle.

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

The message I got from Hastings was that Bomber Command was relatively well-funded (with much of that had gone on high-quality ground facilities) but ill-prepared and largely ill-equipped. It's aircraft weren't exactly an all-star line-up although I'd guess the Wellington and Hampden more or less on a par with contemporaries such as the Do 17 and He 111 (he said without checking the figures). But as Hasting points out, no realistic practice for their planned strategic role and no "plan B" (no serious practice in night flying and navigation, no radio navaids, target markers, thought given to blind bombing etc.).

But Hastings is one who would say the Battle was obsolescent. So we have gone full circle, and are back at the beginning. The Battle was a newer design than the Bf109 for example.
BC was not 'ill-prepared' except in the sense that its tactics and philosophy of war were wrong. BC believed in a strategic air force when what was needed was all-arms.
BC was not 'largely ill-equipped' unless you think the Battle was obsolescent.
BC was ill-equipped only in the sense that it lacked the weapons to do what it wanted, which was to knock Germany out of the war through bombing. And that was pure and unadulterated crap.