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

BATTLE OF BRITAIN
mand, deal with the matter of grand strategy or even of RAF strategy. The
result was that both he and the Air Staff focused, as have writers since, on
shortages of pilot replacements, anti-aircraft weapons and personnel,
repair parties for airfields, and ground troops to guard those aerodromes. A
few of these factors require some explanation before an attempt is made to
consider the even more important question of the relationship of grand
strategy to air superiority in the summer of 1940.34
Pilot and Aircraft Resources
With all the concentration on the operational side of the Battle of Britain,
little attention had been paid to the numerical factors which might have
led on the one hand to the defeat of Fighter Command and on the other to
an earlier stonewalling of the Germans.
Dowding’s tactics were limited by the fact that he started the battle
with squadrons that were not yet on a full footing in pilots, fitters and riggers,
machines, and supplies. More than this, Churchill and the Battle of
France had dangerously siphoned off his strength. Further, the RAF’s lack
of a grand strategy and of a Commander in Chief meant that resources were
never properly allocated to fight the battle at hand rather than some mythical
struggle in the future.
By the Air Staff’s own calculations in 1937-38, a 16-aircraft fighter
squadron should have had immediate reserves of 2 aircraft in the squadron
and another 10 in maintenance for a total of 28, while the stored reserve in
addition to that was to stand at 3 times that figure or 84 more.34 Ideally, each
of Dowding’s 50 fighter squadrons should have been composed of 112 aircraft
for a grand total of 5,600. When that calculation was made the Air
Ministry had not yet come to grips with the durabilty, repairability, cost,
and wartime salvage realities of modern aircraft, for in 1938 there was not
a single repair depot in the RAE
In 1934 the RAF began to address the pilot problem by forming the first
8 of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force squadrons and retaining the short-service
personnel* in the service. But the latter action only aggravated the
situation as it dried up the flow into the reserves. As a result, the RAF
Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) was started. However, as the Secretary of
State for Air pointed out after Munich in a memorandum of October 25,
1938, by early 1940 the RAF would no longer be able to expand the number
*Short-service personnel gave five years’ active service and then spent time in the
Reserves.
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