The Battle of Britain

[MKSheppard]

The following data is taken from "The Narrow Margin".

This one was rearranged into a more coherent form by HPCA's Rob Herrick.



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One of the big myths of the Battle is that the British were running out of pilots. This was caused by people looking at the number of pilots available in Fighter Command versus the number of pilot slots allocated in the official "establishment" TO&Es for Fighter Command.

What these people fail to notice is that Fighter Command was undergoing "bulking up" as new squadrons etc were established during the period of the Battle; which meant that while overall pilot strength increased; there were shortages because of all the new squadrons being formed.

[Dark Flame]

Is the top chart also showing British stats?

[frogcurry]

The top table gives fighter plane losses... the second table pilot numbers....But to understand what this data would actually mean, it'd be necessary to see equivalent formatted data on the pilot losses and aircraft numbers (partic. an "increase in flyable planes over 15 June 1940" column to compare with pilot numbers). I don't think there is enough here to tell if they were deficient in pilots. i.e. were all those new, pilotless slots in the new squadrons you mention equipped with empty aircraft, or were they paper-only positions with no planes nor pilots allocated?

[Stark]

Shep's poorly-formatted quote is correct to a point, however, as fighter command did engage in a crash expansion. However, this doesn't mean they weren't running out, it just means it's not what people think when they read 'running out'.

[An Ancient]

They weren't physically running out of bodies, but they were suffering a lot of casualties amongst combat experienced pilots, it's all well and good saying that if someone goes down you've got a replacement, but when the guy who went down has fought in the Battle of France and survived 3 months over the skies of Southern England, and you're replacements are three guys with a total of 40 hours in a Spitfire between them, you have problems. Especially since they'll be facing the guys who got the better of the original pilot.

[Stuart]

They weren't physically running out of bodies, but they were suffering a lot of casualties amongst combat experienced pilots, it's all well and good saying that if someone goes down you've got a replacement, but when the guy who went down has fought in the Battle of France and survived 3 months over the skies of Southern England, and you're replacements are three guys with a total of 40 hours in a Spitfire between them, you have problems. Especially since they'll be facing the guys who got the better of the original pilot.

The skill degradation problem was very real on both sides but the probability is that it was hitting the Germans harder than the British. The reason is that when the Battle of France/Britain started, Germany had a corps of experienced pilots who had gained their experience in Spain and then over Poland. In contrast, the British pilots lacked that experience. Now, the replacement pilots from both sides were coming out of training schools and, as a first approximation, they were equally inexperienced numptys. So, the Germans are replacing experienced pilots with numptys while the British are replacing less-experienced pilots with numptys. So, relatively speaking, the skill degradation on the British side is less.

However, note I said "as a first approximation". Two things work to change this equation. One is the different way the two air forces fielded their pilots. German pilots were tossed into the battle straight out of training school and kept there until they were either killed or scored 100 victories. British pilots were tossed into the battle for a tour of duty, then pulled out and "rested". Usually "rested" meant sent to a training school where they passed their experiences on to the trainees. So, by the middle/end of the battle, the numptys leaving British training schools were probably a touch less numptyish than their German equivalents. The other thing was, the British rotated their fighter squadrons; because the Germans could reach only the lower 10 percent of the UK, fighter squadrons in the other 90 percent could be rested and receive new pilots in relative tranquility. Again, this meant that newly-arriving replacements could get some expert tuition from veterans before being thrown back into the battle. So, it's justifiable to say that the standard drop with RAF pilots was significantly less marked than with the Germans.

[K. A. Pital]

So, the Germans are replacing experienced pilots with numptys while the British are replacing less-experienced pilots with numptys.

Somehow the German average flight-hour was still enormous in 1941 at the start of Barbarossa; they must have either not suffered a very serious degradation, or recuperated and flown their pilots to hell and back.

[Sea Skimmer]

Somehow the German average flight-hour was still enormous in 1941 at the start of Barbarossa; they must have either not suffered a very serious degradation, or recuperated and flown their pilots to hell and back.

No question they had some serious recuperation time to work with. After early September 1940 the Luftwaffe ceased daylight raids, so that was pretty much the end of large scale fighter losses. Night bombing went on until May 1941, but the loss rate was never more then 1%, and the number of bomber units committed steadily declined after November. Operations in the Mediterranean and against Greece and Yugoslavia did not involve anything like the full strength of the Luftwaffe, and faced only very light fighter opposition, mainly from second rate types. Meanwhile in early 1941 the RAF actually implanted a policy of offensive fighter sweeps over France, a policy which led to very heavy losses and probably provided the Luftwaffe with a lot of good pilot training on favorable terms.

Throughout this period point Luftwaffe training programs were also expended with no reduction in standards. As I recall they didn’t begin cutting back training until 1942 when fuel shortages started kicking in full scale (they were a serious issue in 1941, heavily restricting the training of truck drivers among other things). However until 1943, the bomber units were considered the top dogs, and got the best of the manpower.

[Stuart]

Somehow the German average flight-hour was still enormous in 1941 at the start of Barbarossa; they must have either not suffered a very serious degradation, or recuperated and flown their pilots to hell and back.

They recuperated, after all, they had almost nine months to do it in, and they replenished their losses. As a result, they almost got back to where they had been in early 1940. The fine edge was gone though, nothing could replace the veterans lost in May - September 1940. Those replacement pilots had plenty of hours but they hadn't seen the elephant. In that respect, they were more like the RAF pilots of may 1940 than the German pilots of that era.