Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

AIR SUPERIORITY
The RAF was directly affected by all these matters in several noteworthy
ways. It was extremely short of trained staff officers and intelligence
personnel. At the time of Munich in September 1938, the new Fighter Command,
which was formed in 1936 and sought a defensive force of fifty
squadrons, had in fact only five squadrons of modern all-metal Hurricanes
and one of Spitfires, the aircraft with which it would fight the Battle of
Britain in the summer of 1940. So desperate was the situation that several
squadrons of Blenheim light bombers, which really did not fit into anyone’s
strategic plan, were refitted as fighters. in the meantime, the view was
that Bomber Command would not be effective against Germany until mid-
1942 when it would have a sufficient force of the new heavy four-engine
bombers ordered in 1936. The RAF knew it was in no condition to fight the
Luft waffe.
All during the period 1934-39 the public emphasis was on the fact that
the RAF’s first-line strength was approaching parity with Germany’s, the
idea being that this would act as a deterrent. Consequently, the focus was
on producing aeroplanes regardless of type. Political and financial constraints
of the depression era dictated the government’s course. The British
Air Staff remained wedded to the doctrine of bombardment and rejected
alternatives that might waste money on projects yielding no immediate
benefits. Internal disputes over air defense measures and the multi-place
versus single-place fighter aircraft hampered development of a balanced
RAE with the promising Hurricane and Spitfire aircraft only emerging from
the drawing boards late in the period.
Britain’s situation was further complicated by the alliance with France,
which required the dispatch in September 1939 of the British Expeditionary
Force (BEF) to the Continent, and the need, therefore, to take its air component
from Fighter Command and an Advanced Air Striking Force from
Bomber Command. These planes were placed at hazard outside the new
RDF (radio direction-finding, as radar was at first called) screen provided
by the Chain Home stations, which were slowly being erected to shield the
eastern and southern coasts of Great Britain. Combined with Fighter Command’s
sector-control system of plotting and voice-radio direction of fighters,
the radar system gave protection against surprise and the advantage of
economy of force in positioning defense forces. In the spring of 1940, the
lightning German successes against neutral Norway, Denmark, Holland,
and Belgium suddenly presented the British with the likelihood of attacks
from far more points of the compass than they had ever suspected in any
prewar worst-possible-case analysis. Even more unfortunate for the British
was the disaster of May and June 1940 when French pleas for assistance
sucked Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding’s Fighter Command below the
safety level, while the upset at Dunkirk forced him to mount long-range
patrols over water and at times over hostile territ01-y.~ Then, the complete
collapse of France occurred, extending the string of enemy bases all the
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