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

AIR SUPERIORITY
level daylight strikes. That the RAF did not undertake such attacks was
related to its doctrine, which concentrated on attacks on industrial targets,
and on the fact that there was no proper doctrine for the light bombers in
No. 2 Group, the Blenheims.Iz
On the other side, the Germans were careless because once the offensive
proper started on August 12, they assumed at first that they could
destroy the RAF in four days-after all, they had just walked over Poland,
Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France. Beyond that there was a fundamental
argument between Albert Kesselring, who was basically an Army
officer, and Hugo Sperrle, who was a long-time flyer, as to whether or not
London was the proper target. Hitler ruled out London until September,
and it was finally agreed upon to go for RAF airfields and aircraft factories
in order to make the RAF rise and fight, so they could be shot down. (A
year later in Russia the Germans got it correct: they attacked at dawn and
destroyed 1,200 Soviet aircraft on the ground and eliminated an enemy air
force the easy way; however, the Russians did not have either the radar
network, or the savvy of a Keith Park, with his World War I-style dawn
patrols to guard against just such a surprise.)l3
All in all, July was a boon to the British. It allowed Dowding to return
to the line most of the 12 squadrons that had flown back unfit from France,
to make good most of the 296 Hurricanes and 67 Spitfires lost there, and to
replace most of the 340 pilots lost or wounded. On June 24 his squadrons
had been 20 percent below their normal pilot establishment. In July 432
new Hurricanes and Spitfires and 121 repaired aircraft were added to the
inventory. Newly joined pilots arrived at squadrons with 150 hours plus 10
at the new group pools, which were gradually becoming operational training
units (OTU). At the OTUs new pilots mastered the Hurricane, the Spitfire,
or a high-powered, dual-control trainer, the Miles Master, before
joining their squadron~.’~
The trouble was that, on the one hand, the RAF really needed the new
loose tactics that the Germans had learned in the Spanish Civil War of
1936-39 instead of the unwieldy “vic,” while on the other hand, the new
pilots needed more gunnery practice. And, as Park and Dowding noted in
their reports, the RAF also needed heavier guns than the First World War
vintage .303s, even though 8 of them were now mounted in the wings of its
new aircraft.15 One other legacy of the 1918 war faced the new pilot. He
was still expected largely to be trained ir! the squadron. However, when his
unit got embroiled in the battle, leaders did not have the time to provide
proper training, and so the new men were wasted.
As the battle began to unfold in the summer of 1940, the man upon
whom the brunt of command fell on the British side was Keith Park, the
former New Zealand artillery officer who had been at Gallipoli. As a member
of the Royal Flying Corps, Park became a successful fighter pilot on the
Western Front during World War I, ending as a 26-year-old squadron leader
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