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

AIR SUPERIORITY
Conclusions
Although the Battle of Britain has been billed as the first great air battle
in history, the leaders who fought it, the bases they used, and patterns they
followed were closely tied to the experiences of the First World War, which
had ended twenty-two years earlier. The legacy was the need for continuous
planning and preparation, and especially of staff training. One important
reason why the RAF did not know what it, let alone the Germans,
really possessed in the way of people and equipment was that it had too
few trained people to keep track of vital plans and programs as the rapid
expansion took place. Even as good a mind as Dowding’s, lost track of
actual pilot and other resources available by September of 1940.
Winning air superiority is a complex business, which includes the
recruitment and training of all personnel, from pilots to bomb-crater fillers;
the design, development, and production of aircraft, as well as their issue,
maintenance, repair, and replacement; and the provision of necessary manpower
during a desperate battle. The RAF in mid-1940 was still on the
rearmament slope of the production wave and would not be fully ready for
war until 1942.74 Squadrons were undermanned, with too few pilots and not
enough ground crew, and the stations from which they operated had inadequate
troops for manning the antiaircraft defenses or repairing damage.
Just as important was the failure of those at the top of the chain of
command, and of their deputies, to understand the new fighter-control system
and to recognize the shortcomings of the people using it, as well as its
technical weaknesses. For example, Keith Park, aware from his experience
in 1918 that headquarters would demand information promptly, had
installed teletypes. Impatient aides, using the telephones instead of the
teletypes, interfered with his command, control, and communications system
just as much as did the enemy. The vulnerability of sector stations and
communication lines, sited on airfields and above ground, were partly the
side effects of peacetime parsimony, but partly the result of inaccurate foresight.
Planners do have to consider that worst possible cases may be still
more severe than they have envisaged.
Since a commander’s success depends upon the quality of both his
armed forces and his intelligence, he should be concerned that both elements
are well trained. One of the major British weaknesses was that intelligence
officers were recruited straight from civilian life and sent untrained
to squadrons, where they were tolerated rather than welcomed. Not unexpectedly,
as form-fillers instead of informed interviewers, many did not
glean as much information as they should have. The Battle of Britain took
place at a time of technological transition, and itself demanded the adoption
of new procedures. As is usual, the older commanders took to the changes
less easily than those who had to run the new systems. Part of the difficulty
came, no doubt, from the fact that the RAF had senior officers who did not
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