I’ve been reading about different historical viewpoints on the Battle of Britain. Two things stand out:
In terms of aircraft “kills” and casualties, it really depends how you score the battle as to who “won”.
In terms of objectives, it’s unclear whether the Germans could have won.
So my question is, what if the RAF had pulled all of their fighter squadrons back to airfields beyond bf109 range, and just fought off bomber raids that went beyond that? In other words, was it totally irrelevant how well the RAF fought the battle, so long as they didn’t do anything disasterously stupid?
My opinion:
The RAF would not have gained as much combat experience, but they wouldn’t have suffered the terrible attrition and dilution of flight skills.
The Supermarine and Rolls-Royce factories would have kept pumping out aircraft (there’s no reason to think that it was the RAF that kept those factories intact rather than German intelligence failure) doubling the size of the RAF by Christmas.
The Royal Navy, the RAF and the Western ports and factories would have finished the battle intact.
There would have been significant morale loss through the RAF being seen to desert their posts, but this wouldn’t have been incapacitating.
After Winter, Hitler would have turned his war on Russia, and the end game would have played out almost exactly the same (possible exceptions being the role of the RAF fighters and the strategic bombing in the latter stages of the war).
I don’t think you’re “getting” the Battle of Britain. Germany devastated the British Air force, which was the point. With no air bases, there is no air power. With no air power, britain could be isolated by U-Boats and air attacks. With isolation, Britain might hold out from invasion but could be forced to make peace on very unpleasant terms.
For one thing, the OP is vastly underating the importance of morale, both in military and civilian life. On the bright side, Churchill understood the importance of morale.
In particular, this question, “So my question is, what if the RAF had pulled all of their fighter squadrons back to airfields beyond bf109 range, and just fought off bomber raids that went beyond that? In other words, was it totally irrelevant how well the RAF fought the battle, so long as they didn’t do anything disasterously stupid?” demonstrates an almost indefensible ignorance of the effect on Britain of allowing Germany unlimited bombing of southern England and London.
While Germany was probably incapable of mounting a cross-channel invasion of the U.K. at the time, the U.K. had so far only shown as a positive in the war the ability to evacuate a large number of troops from a lost battle. Germany had, up to that point, kicked everybody’s ass.
The battle showed that the ability of Germany to kick everyone’s ass was not unlimited.
Under the OP’s scenario, and assuming a 200 mile round-trip range for the BF 109, most of southern and eastern England would have been a free-fly zone for the Luftwaffe. Damage to ground installations in this area would have been much higher, but Manduck has the right idea: Germany would have had air superiority over the Channel. The Royal Navy could not oppose a cross-Channel invasion without air cover (see Repulse, Prince of Wales in 1941). Whether or not an invasion would have worked is a separate question, the RAF could not have seceded air control over most of their nation.
Germany could not have invaded England even if the RAF and royal navy had not existed. It simply lacked the sealift and force projection power. It wasn’t even close.
Having been very interested in the Battle of Britain for some time now, I’ve become convinced that the threat of a German invasion of Great Britain was largely hypothetical.
An opposed crossing of the English Channel was not a simple matter, especially with the equipment Germany had at the time. Remember, the Allies later designed and built water craft specifically for the D-Day invasion, and that was never a sure thing either.
Although it’s sometimes not a popular opinion to express, I believe the Battle was for the most part a symbolic victory. But that’s not to say it was in any way meaningless. It was the first time Germany was really stopped, and that provided a huge morale victory for Great Britain. I believe it was one of the most pivotal events of WWII.
A cross-channel invasion would have been difficult but not, in my opinion, impossible. If the Germans had been able to attain air superiority that would have gone a long way to overcoming the British naval superiority. Sure the Royal Navy battleships would have been able to sink German transport ships. But the Luftwaffe would have been able to sink the battleships. A few losses like the Prince of Wales and the Repulse and the Royal Navy would have withdrawn from close combat in the channel.
What transport ships? The germans had a pathetic merchant marine force. The plans drawn up for Sealion (the invasion of Britain) involved moving the river barges on the Rhine river over to the channel and hoping they could cross it, because that’s the only way they could even hope to scrape up some semblance of sea transport capability.
The Germans would’ve had difficulty landing any substantial number of troops and equipment on England even if completely unopposed.
Think of D-day. The massive allied war machines spent years preparing for the day, with large amounts of equipment and much time spent on training and techniques. They had the element of surprise. They were up against half-ass reserve units of the German army spread alongside the entire coast of France while their war efforts were focused elsewhere. They had overwhelming air, naval, material, and personel advantages - and yet it was still tough and if the Germans had used better tactics they could’ve repulsed the invasion.
Compare this to England in 1939. Germany did not have even a tiny fraction of the sea lift capability of the allies in 1944. They did not have any specialized equipment for amphibious invasion. They would not have had the element of surprise, since England was braced for an invasion the entire time. They would not have had air superiority or naval superiority. Once landed, rather than facing reserves, broken down troops, and conscripts, they would be facing the best that England had to offer, fighting fanatically. It wasn’t even close. If you could run the scenario 100 times with slightly different parameters, the Germans would still fail 100 out of 100 times.
Don’t you think the Germans could have done the same though? Built themselves an invasion fleet?
I generally agree that at the time of the Battle of Britain, the threat of a full on invasion was minimal, and was more a function of British propoganda to its own people.
However, I wonder if the German’s had of easily gained clear aerial superiority (through a RAF refusal to fight), whether they would then have considered a large airborne invasion? I don’t know how many units of the Fallschirmjäger were available around that time, (I believe there were something like 12 divisions by wars end - but I don’t know how many were around in 1940).
This would have been before the Crete operation in 1941 so airborne attacks were still seen as viable by the German’s. Given the state of the British army at that time, with poor morale and having lost a considerable amount of heavy equipment, I wonder how much effective resistance would have been mounted against a division or two of elite german infantry landing in and around south east England? If they could seize a port around Dover or somewhere similar that suddenly makes reinforcement and resupply childs play.
Just an interesting thought experiment I suppose, that just because the German’s didn’t have an invasion fleet for a seaborne assault doesn’t compeletly rule out an invasion.
I’ll preface this by saying that I agree a seaborne invasion attempt would likely not have succeded.
However just to point out that the question from the OP though is what if the RAF withdrew, in which case any invasion attempt by the Germans would have had air superiority, and IMO by extension would quickly have achieved Naval superiority as well.
I wonder about the level of opposition the British Army could have mounted. I’ve always understood that the British Army immediately post Dunkirk had terrible morale and was seriously underequipped in many areas, including crucially heavy equipment.
An interesting note is that Sandhurst conducted extensive wargames in the 70’s to test Operation Sealion as presented, and they indicated that the German’s would have established a solid beachhead but that the Royal Navy would have been able to intervene to starve off resupply and reinforcement. The crucial thing though to those wargames is it was presumed that the German’s were unable to obtain aerial superiority. Although the idea that the RAF might ‘sit out’ the Battle of Britain, would probably change in the event of an invasion, so the OP’s suggestion becomes a bit of a moot point I guess.
I want to know where the OP gets the idea that military forces can “sit out” anything. If the PTB say you fight, you fight. End of story. To assume that the RAF was in any way an independent entity is absurd.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that the RAF would say -
“Hey old chap, a bit of a sticky wicket here, we’re not really up for this aerial battle just at the moment what”
“We’ll just sit back here and build some new planes and train up some pilots and we’ll be right back in to help in a little while pip pip”
More, a what if Churchill decided that husbanding their aerial resources for future action was more important than throwing them out and using them up in a futile effort save some civilians getting bombed? Unlikely to have happened, true - but any number of ‘What If’ scenario’s are based on airier stuff than that.
Not so sure about the Germans achieving naval superiority, even with a different outcome in the Battle of Britain. I haven’t pulled my John Keegan book down off the shelf yet, but I seem to recall that much of the German surface fleet had already been lost in the Norwegian campaign. Their strength was mostly in U-Boats by that time, and they wouldn’t have been much use in the English Channel.
Insofar as the Battle of Britain was a critical setback for Germany, it’s outcome being changed by a failure of the RAF could have had huge repercussions on the outcome of the war. But I doubt those repercussions would have led to Operation Sealion taking place.
Instead, I think it becomes less likely that the United States enters the war when it did. Less likely that Great Britain continues to put up a big fight. Perhaps Churchill becomes the victim of a vote of no confidence and is replaced.
Sure, Germany could have built up its navy and the necessary equipment to conduct an invasion over time. But there are so many variables that go into that happening, I’m not sure about saying it’s all possible just due to the Battle of Britain going differently. Remember, it was a “world war” after all.
The United States, at least, had fairly extensive experience in amphibious landings by summer 1944 also, even if most of the experience was in the Pacific. We still knew about UDTs, pre-landing barrages, etc… Even with the knowledge transfer being pretty imperfect, we were light years ahead of where the Germans would have been in 1940.
Why compare a cross-channel invasion of England in 1940 to the cross-channel invasion of France in 1944? Other than the channel, they were very different situations.
The United Kingdom did not have any strategic depth to fall back on. London is less than fifty miles from the coast. The allies in 1944 had to fight their way across over 300 miles just to get to Germany. If you cross 300 miles from southern coast of England you’re in Scotland.
And the United Kingdom did not have any military depth in 1940 either. After the Battle of France, the armed forces in the UK were a bunch of barely mobile light infantry units. There were hardly any tanks or artillery or anti-tank weapons. Or even trucks to bring them to the battlefield.
What about paratroops? I gather that after the invasion of Crete, Germany decided that even if successful they expended too many prime specially trained soldiers. But if the Luftwaffe could fly unopposed over southern Britain, couldn’t they have dropped a few thousand raiders into England, with potentially devasting consequences?
That’s what’s really interesting to me. Crete didn’t occur until 1941 (mid year? I think), so at the time of the Battle of Britain in 1940 an airborne assault would have been very much top of mind for the Germans I would have thought. Although the Germans did use significant numbers of their paratroops in the Norway campaign, so how quickly they could recover for a potential invasion of England?
The invasion of Crete was in May of 1941. The Germans managed to land about 30,000 troops on the island despite British naval superiority. The cross-sea distance between Crete and the mainland is about three times as far as the distance between Britain and the mainland.