[Adrian Roberts]

Unusually, I picked up a copy of BBC History magazine this month, as it includes some debates about the Battle of Britain.

Leo McKinstry points out how the Spitfire was barely ready for the Battle; Anthony Cumming reiterates his argument that Fighter Command was ineffectual and only a part of the reason that the Germans called off the Invasion; Christina Goulter refutes this and claims that Fighter Command was indeed crucial.

McKinstry's article is probably the least contentious of the three. I don't think there is much doubt that the Supermarine company were inefficient and out of their depth, and the Castle Bromwich factory was built to take over production. Even this was a disaster until Beaverbrook took over - what is it with the British and management? I remember reading elsewhere that little account of ease of production was built into the Spitfire's design; it took five times as many manhours to build as an ME109.

This article points out that in 1938 many of the RAF hierarchy saw the Spitfire as a stop-gap; the fighters they were really waiting for were the Whirlwind and the Beaufighter. The thinking was that the Second Great War would be a re-run of the first; France would not be overrun, and the only enemy aircraft over Britain would be bombers, as the ME109 would have to operate from bases in Germany.

He ends up by quoting Hugh Dowding: "the main trouble was that we had such a tiny output of fighters". Goulter, however, states that the lack of aircrew was the main constraint on operations in 1940.

Cumming is on fairly safe ground to say that the pilot training scheme was inefficient, and that too many pilots arrived at their squadrons with no combat training at all. There was an article in Aeroplane recently by BofB pilot W/C Hugh Neill that put the same argument. Cumming also hightlights the problem of poorly-trained radar operators. But he then talks of the fact that the RAF obtained a kill/loss ratio of barely two to one, and that many pilots were poor shots. Maybe so, but all this is to support his thesis that "a powerful Royal Navy was a the key factor in Hitler's decision postpone Operation Sealion". But a two-one ratio is surely not bad when up against the only other (in summer '40) powerful modern air-arm in the world. And if Sealion was postponed after 15th September, what had changed Navally in that time (since that fall of France)? But the air situation had certainly changed.

Goulter accepts that a holistice view of Britain's defences needs to be taken, that the RN and Coastal and Bomber commands made a huge contribtions. But she is far less inclined to play down Fighter Commands role: "There is a clear causal connection between the Lufwaffe's failure to gain air superiority and Hitler's decision to postpone ....Sealion".

Perhaps a balanced view is that the Royal Navy was the major barrier to the Germans, but that it could not be dealt until fighter command was eliminated. What do you think?

There was another article on the Stuka: I'll post that under War in the Air tomorrow.