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Greetings to fellow comrades, generals, brothers and sisters, and the citizens of the world!
I, Lilith, is back to bring more articles within this busy evening.

I apologize for lack of articles lately. I had to retake final exams of the semester which consumed more time than it should have . For today's article, i want to write an event which is markable, especially for Britain. Im bringing you the first and largest battle fought by only air forces throughout history, Battle of Britain.


German bombers during the Battle of Britain

Battle of Britain (or Operation Sea Lion) was an offensive plan by the Nazis to bomb and invade UK. It was entirely fought by air forces. The name itself came from the famous Winston Churchill speech after the Battle of France. It included the Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force up above the isles of Great Britain. UK, at the time, was the last allied power in Europe after the Fall of France in 1940.

Pre-battle

German actually did not want to invade UK. It hoped that the Fall of France would force UK to agree on some peace settlement since UK now did not have a foothold in mainland Europe. But still, UK had the power to fight back and German wasted a whole month waiting for UK to just surrender. Hitler was pissed and issued the preparation of the operation in mid July, not long after he decided to begin building a plan to invade USSR.


Iconic photo of Hitler after Paris fell

The Nazis knew that a land invasion by sea against UK was both militaristic and logistical nightmare, as UK had the mightiest navy fleet during the war. Also, the Germans only had TWO landing craft assault (both were prototypes) which means if a land invasion were to be launched, they had to mobilize their troops with literally rafts powered by rotors, and that would happen if we assume all the rafts would work perfectly, as it was worried by the Germans that the rafts had to be pulled by tugboats. Last thing, as i mentioned before, German's goal was only to force UK to surrender and not entirely annex UK. Because of those reasons, air invasion was chosen since it could bomb strategic targets without any meaningful navy intervention and, of course, because German was at their best with their aircrafts.

The Luftwaffe targeted to destroy RAF entirely, including their aviation production capability. They aimed to end air raid on German territory and collapsing UK's morale by attacking important places like ports, air bases, and industries. This started a blockade on Britain by the Luftwaffe. For the RAF, they overestimated the Luftwaffe and thought that RAF was at the brink of defeat. Thus, UK looked for any help it could possibly get. Later, foreign pilots from it's commonwealth and Nazi-occupied countries arrived to guard the isles.

The Luftwaffe was quickly regrouped and splitted into 3 fleets. Each fleet had their own targets. 2nd fleet would get Southeastern England and London. 3rd fleet would get West Country, Wales, Midlands, and Northwest England. And the 5th fleet would get North England and Scotland. Herman Goring wanted to gain air supremacy during the invansion, so he planned to attack the air bases and defences on the coast first, then continue inward to maintain air supremacy. But, to do this, Luftwaffe had to destroy all air and ground commands of RAF while supporting the invasion.

Battle of Britain


Britain and German sites during the battle

The battle started as the Luftwaffe launched small raids on shippings inside the Dover Strait. The raids was successful as about 20 or more ships and 4 destroyers were lost from the Luftwaffe, and forced the admiralty to postpone any shipments in fear of raids by the Stukas. This escalated to the intensifying raids on ports and RAF air bases and production on coast during both day and night. Luftwaffe too attacked radar sites to disturb RAF's radar chain or dowding system to detect enemy aircrafts, but the attacks weren't very effective.

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Herman Goring

The peak of the battle was reached at 13 August, when Herman Goring, the high commander of Luftwaffe, was told that RAF was close to be destroyed. Luftwaffe harassed RAF by attacking radar sites, cities, airfields, and any valuable economical interests. Wanted to accelerate the destruction of RAF, Goring ordered attacks on RAF industries and RAF headquarters, and focused mainly on attacking airfields. It was to destroy RAF fighting power. The attacks were intense at Biggin Hill and Hornchurch, as both were attacked for four times each. At this point, air squadrons from countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia began arriving to help UK. They were held by Fighter Command because of language issue, but later it was proven that they were a valuable asset to RAF.


Polish 303rd squadron

At the end of the operation Goring, though was forbidden by Hitler, directed the target from airfields to London, thinking the attacks on airfields before had capitulated the RAF. The plan was to bomb ports near civilian housing, in hope it would cause a military, economy, and morale effect. Later in the process, Hitler accepted and supported the bombings on London after a series of RAF raids on Berlin. At first Goring was planning to raid London daily after his intelligence reported that RAF has been colllapsed for they saw airfields being ruined which led to a conclusion that their defenses had been devastated and the RAF was outnumbered, which was true. The only thing that had held Luftwaffe from obliterating London and UK was the range. The bombers and fighters had had different fuel capacity, where bombers had higher fuel capacity than those of the fighters. Because of this, in some occassion the bombers had had to fly unescorted, which had placed them in danger. After a defeat on 15 September, German postponed the operation. Later, the invasion would be only night raids, since daylight raids had taken their toll. The bombings would continue until Hitler postponed the invasion again on October, and officially called it off at September, preparing for invading USSR.

Post Battle


Milkman Fred Morley delivering milk after German bombings in London

The estimated aircrafts that had participated on both sides are 4.513 aircrafts, with 1.963 were RAF's and 2.550 were Luftwaffe's. The casualties were 3.721 aircrafts destroyed, 2.585 aircrews killed, 1.157 aircrews wounded and 90.000 civilian casualties.

German failed to knock Britain out of the war. Luftwaffe failed to destroy RAF, and ironically, had higher casualties than the RAF's. Britain was still standing strong, being the last allied member force on Europe. RAF, despite of the high losses, was able to show their capabilities on defending the Queen. Also, those attacks on airfields were not effective as well. From 24 attacked airfields, only two that actually went down on service after the series of attacks, and heck, those two went back operational in only two hours. So the attacks didn't do much damage and only wasted German's resources.

German's failure on removing UK from the board and turning their aim on USSR instead would be one of the reasons for their defeat. So yeah, it's another useless, unneccessary operation, that costed lives of innocent people, but at this time, on a big scale and unique way.

That's it for today lads. Im sorry if i lack of writing but you know, RL is more important Let me know your thoughts and opinion. And as always, please do correct me if anything is wrong. Im still learning and i would appreciate it

Regards,
ShiaHauria

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