The Battle Of Britain: The Dowding System

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Observer Corps, this is Biggin Hill, Controller.

Yes, it is a bit hectic.

Group, think they're making for us, so keep your tracks going, will you?

You're doing very well at the moment.

Now, Obs B, I want you to ring all dispersals and tell them to get everything into the air that's a serviceable.

I don't want any aircraft to be caught on the ground.

Right away, sir.

Group controller?

Biggin here.

Sir?

I've ordered all other serviceable aircraft into the air, as it looks pretty certain now that these rays are heading for us.

By the way, sir, I did tell you that our three squadrons are airborne.

Right.

Thank you, sir.

Sergeant Bryce, how about 72 squadron?

Have they had any joy yet?

Not yet, sir.

They're very close.

Any moment now, I think.

Hello, short jack, tennis leader calling.

Tally-ho, tally-ho!

A gaggle at Heinkels with 109 stand ahead.

Hell, tennis squadron.

B-flight, take the bombers.

A-flight, take the fighters with me.

A-flight, line astern.

Go!

Guns!

Tennis squadron are now engaging hostile 132, so warn the guns of friendly fighters, will you?

How about 32 Squadron?

Sergeant Norris, are they into the others yet?

Nearly there, sir.

Hello, Keita Leader.

Bandits 12 o'clock, 15 miles now heading north.

Watch out for top-flight fighter cover.

This is Keita Leader, understood.

Don't try yet.

Keep your eyes skinned, chaps, and don't straggle.

Hello, shortjack.

Keta leader calling.

Telly-ho!

Tele-ho!

Hell of a lot of Heinkels and Yugos 88s with fighter escort.

Wow.

That's why we were there, Jim.

I don't know about you.

I was transported, weren't you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland and our Battle of Britain series, Tennis Leader Out.

Anyway, that's a verbatim transcript of Biggin Hill Opsrum during one particular day in September 1945.

Exactly.

You hear a snapshot of how the system works and what's going on and what the RAF and the British have come up with, which is a way of directing people to the action, to intercept.

Because after all, the bomber will will always get through is the motto of the 1930s.

But the British fighter commander devised a way to make sure that that isn't the case.

Well, yes.

So in terms of preparation for this big Adler Angreff, the clash of the eagles that's going to come, there's two major areas of preparation for the RAF.

First is the air defense system, and the second is processing enough pilots and aircraft.

And in this episode, we're going to look at both those things for the RAF.

We're also going to see what the Luftwaffe is doing on the other side of the channel as well.

So the system, it's important because it's the world's first.

That's the bottom line.

I think the interesting thing is at the beginning of July, it's still kind of largely untested, isn't it?

But the point is, it's got lots and lots of different components.

And perhaps the first one to consider is RDF.

And you've told me off many times about this.

Don't

radar.

It's not radar.

Radar is an American acronym that comes in later in the war.

It's anachronistic to call it radar.

It is radio direction finding.

It has such an amazing genesis, this technology, doesn't it?

Because there's death rays involved.

That's what I'm going to say.

It's just amazing.

Well, exactly.

It's a direct product of science fiction because radio, after all, is brand new.

Radio is, at this point, is newer than the internet is to us, right?

You know, we've had the internet a couple of decades now.

Radio is literally...

just been created and discovered and its potential.

You know, the government doesn't want there to be a BBC because they want to use radio for themselves, for military purposes, all this sort of thing.

So there's this great sort of science fiction-y thing around radio and radio waves.

And

there's a guy at this time who's going around offering a death ray that can kill a sheep at 30 paces and explode machinery in order something.

So there is an occasion

where a civil servant has to stand in front of the death ray and it's fired at him because nothing happens to him.

It's so funny.

But what this results in is the director of the scientific research and scientific research department of the air ministry, a fellow called Harold Wimpris, has a committee.

This is also funny.

He's the sort of person you expect to be a

scientific civil servant.

Absolutely.

And he sets up a committee under the physicist Henry Tizard to investigate the possibilities offered by science for air defense.

And they do consider the possibility of the death ray.

I just think.

Now, look here, Watson Watt.

We've heard about

this chap here who's claiming he's created a death ray.

What do you think of that?

I think that's probably unlikely.

Exactly.

Is Robert Watson Watts' response.

But Robert Watson Watts says what?

He says, well, you know, I might not have got a death ray, but I do think there is a way of using radio wave reflections to detect rather than destroy aircraft.

And he puts forward these theories on detection and location of aircraft by radio methods to the Tizard Committee.

And he's already been involved in what becomes basically transponders in ships and stuff that's been invented already, where you can use radio waves to triangulate the position of, or radio receivers to triangulate the position of of ships and stuff, which is obviously got a military application to come.

This is right on the edge of what Technology is capable of, absolutely cutting edge.

And he says that you send out a shortwave radio pulse, bounces back, you catch that, you measure how long that takes, you measure that, you know, you triangulate with more than one station, you can figure out where something is, how fast it's moving, roughly how high it is, and all this stuff.

Because it's these

on a cathode ray tube.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

A television screen, in fact.

When they test it, they use a BBC shortwave radio transmission because the BBC is brand new.

It has an aerial, you know, because they need an aerial.

Once they've got the money, in February of 1935, a pilot from RAF Hayford flies along a railway line to a point 20 miles away, and then he comes back again.

They don't get him the first time, but the second time.

He does it a few more times.

Yeah, they catch him, they track him.

And the guy running this, in charge of all of this, overseeing this is Hugh Dowding, who is an RAF through and through fellow who's clearly is looking at the science.

And the thing about, we've got to remember, the RAF at this point is, what, 17 years old in 1935?

It's looking for a role in peacetime.

They've had success with dealing with colonial policing using aircraft.

There's all the talk of bombers, but this is the RAF beginning to get whiff of what, well, what can we do about the bombers?

What can we do to defend?

And dowding is absolutely central.

Yes, because if the bomber's always going to get through, which after all, Stanley Baldwin is the prime minister said in 1932.

But anyway, you know, he said it before this point.

So if the bomb is always going to get through, how do you make sure that it doesn't get through?

Which is why Dowding at the time is Air Marshal and is the man at the air ministry in charge of research and development and scientific research.

There's lots of people coming out with wacky ideas, whether it be death rays or whatever.

And you can't just sort of chuck, throw lots of money at all sorts of things.

So this pilot flying from RF Hayford near Daventry to do this first test is basically to see whether it is worth backing.

And when it works, that's when the money is forthcoming.

And so Watson Watt, Robert Watson Watt, who's invented it, is told to set himself up on the Suffolk Suffolk coast at a place called Bordsey.

And within six months, he can detect aircraft 40 miles out to sea.

Amazing, isn't it?

But the big thing is, is that one radio mast can't assess the bearing.

So more radio masks are needed.

And this allows the simple geometry to work out the bearing of an aircraft on which it's heading.

So then five RDF stations are ordered.

And by 1936, aircraft are being detected 62 miles away.

So this is getting better and better and better.

And there's lots of snags and it takes time and Downing's getting impatient.

And why can't we get this all sorted out quicker?

But an RDF training school is set up at Bordsey in early 1937.

And Bordsey opens operationally in May that year as well.

And so suddenly you've got the Dover Chain Home following in July 1937 and then Canudon in August.

So suddenly you've got three chains on what has become chain home and fighter command exercises can start that month, you know, in late August 1937.

Yeah.

Getting out there, testing it, seeing how it works reacting to things that the whole thing because this is all about directing the fighters to the bombers before the bombers get to wherever they're going it's the important thing is to strike them before the bombs land if you're defending england that's what you've got to do it's by no means perfect and if you're thinking of a of a radar and rather than an rdf then you're probably thinking of something or maybe a thing spinning round and round and round and round it's none of that It's sort of pylons with cables strung between them, sending out this short wave.

Oh, they're 360 foot high.

It's extraordinary.

These great big masts with antenna wires and then receiving masts that catch the reflected signal.

They don't work over land, which is a bit of a drawback, as we might see.

Well, they work in the direction in which they're pointing.

They work in an arc in front of them.

So you're pointing them out to zero.

So if you put them on the coast and you point and then you point them out to sea, then that's the arc.

There's a sort of concentric ring.

Yeah, exactly.

And you've got enough overlapping.

It means that when an aircraft is sending echoes to three or four of these stations, you can actually figure out exactly where it is.

Then the second one, which is a chain home low, which is to cover the possibility of aircraft flying in low under the main chain home transmission, it's more like a searchlight.

But basically, this means by the autumn of 1939, you've got chain home and chain home low in place, which is incredible given the radar testing, you know, or RDF testing is three years, four years previously.

It's extraordinary.

Well, and the interesting thing is that chain home low has a shorter range, but it's actually more detailed.

It's more accurate.

So actually together they work pretty well because chain home the big tall mass they can do their kind of you know 120 miles or whatever and then chain home low picks them up as they're closing to the uh towards the coast and offers a bit more detail really chain home low is only implemented in the autumn of 1939 which is why dowding is a bit kind of sort of apprehensive about everything because this is all running quite close to the wire yeah to put it mildly this is all part of chamberlain's fortress britain build-up is that you you make britain impregnable yeah yeah as a deterrent to the germ by the summer dowding's really pushed hard to make sure that this gets done and that the red tape gets cut.

He's really like a dog with a bone about this.

There is a system basically in place in the nick of time, right?

Yeah, but this is the point.

You know, the war has begun, and they're still honing this, they're still creating more radar stations.

RDF stations, sorry, it is not the finished article in September 1939.

This is like sort of putting on a play, and the set is still being painted on the morning of the first performance.

But the other point is that by the third week of June, when the strategic earthquake happens and france is surrendering it hasn't really been tested and radar rdf radar direction finding is only one part of the cog in this complex system so we should talk about the other parts that make the system the system because it's not just rdf detection alone yeah so key to this is the filter room which is i mean it's very interesting this that everything in the whole of Chain Home in the whole of Chain Hill goes to one place.

The entire chain goes to one single facility at Bentley Priory in West, northwest London near Stanmore.

Which is the headquarters of Fighter Command.

Yeah, which is actually the AHQ.

And they've got a great big map table, like in the movies, right?

And a dais, coloured rings spreading out from each of the radar.

The RDF chains.

Oh, you made me do it now, Jim.

You made me say radar.

Each of the RDF chains, and each station is given a different number.

And that way, as the...

enemy aircraft approach they can plot them with the rings they update the info continually they range cut as it's called where what they do is they triangulate on the the basis of the information as they're getting it, the height, the speed, the expected number of the size of the formation.

And all the different radar chains, RDF chains, have a different colour.

Yeah, exactly.

And they all cross over and interconnect like a big Venn diagram, don't they?

You can plot the bombers before it gets through.

But then there's the next stage, because as we said, this only looks out to sea.

So once the aircraft are in land, oh, well, once they're within the view of the coast, what happens next?

You've got the high-tech, the ultimate high-tech of the RDF, chain home, chain low and then you've got the mark one eyeball basically in the form of the observer core which is people looking at the planes taking with a sort of theodolite with a kind of a thing like a sextant a pantograph yes they call it a pantograph don't they which marks on a chart exactly where you're where these aircraft are and every single one of these observer core stations you know has been properly actually surveyed and marked so they know exactly where it is and they're roughly kind of every five miles it means that you can by sight track the aircraft as they come in it's an extraordinary system isn't it it really really is and by beginning of july 1940 there's a thousand observer corps posts and 30 000 observers they're all volunteers they trained in the evenings even though they've been mobilized obviously on the 24th of august 1939 and from then on they're expected to mount 24 hour manning of the posts but they do come under the direct control of the air ministry and pay has been introduced but apart from tin hats they don't have any uniform not until 1941 when actually that's when they finally become the royal observer corps 1940 they are just the Observer Corps.

And each are divided into groups.

So each group has a number of posts with concentric rings around the post, which then overlap with the neighbours.

So each part of the sky is covered by more than one post.

And each post is given a letter and a number, such as sort of, I don't know, R2, B7, J3, whatever it might be.

There's usually 30 to 34 posts in a group.

And each is manned by...

14 to 20 observers on rotation to ensure around the clock coverage.

And each post has its own little hut with a telephone, pair of binoculars, tea-making facilities, obviously, really important.

And this pantograph, this the odd light thing that you were talking about.

And so they're literally everywhere.

And everyone's seen the image of it.

Someone with a binose with a tin hat on in his civvies, surrounded by sandbags, in a dug-in position normally.

And then someone looking through the pantograph, taking the bearing on the aircraft.

And they get the elevation.

And then they get the eyes on and try and count the number of aircraft.

It's sort of as simple as that, but that information is also sent on to the filter room.

So that's added to the information that they're gathering, right?

Yeah, so each post sends its information to its group center, so the observer core group, which is then forwarded to the operations rooms both at Bentley Prairie, the command, you know, the headquarters of Fighter Command, the group headquarters, such as 11 Group, 12 Group, 10 Group, 13 Group, and the sector stations, of which we'll get onto in a minute.

The Observer Corps can manage over a million different reports in a 24-hour period and it's updated all the time.

Absolutely.

That's the point.

But obviously there has to be a place where this information is collated.

So you've got the information from the RDF chain going to the filter room.

The filter room then passes that out to the operations room.

And the key thing about the operations room is these are standardized and you would have operations rooms at fighter command headquarters at Bentley Priory.

You also have them at group level headquarters and at sector level.

So fighter command divides the landmass of Great Britain into groups.

So there's 11 group, which we've talked about before, which which is South East England and London.

There's 12 group, which is central England.

There's 10 group, which is southwest England.

And then 13 group is the Northern England and Scotland.

Then these groups are then divided into sectors.

So each sector would have a main sector station, which would be at a large airfield, such as Biggin Hill or Duxford.

These airfields then have satellite airfields.

So each sector station has an operations room, just as the group headquarters has an operations room, and just as Bentley Prarry has an operations room and they're all based on the absolute same design so there is a dais a sort of you know a raised platform on which the controller sits with his fellow controllers there's a large map table below and a tote board on the wall opposite and it's called a tote board because it looks like one of those betting boards that they have at the races and it's a visual map of the sky from which a huge amount of information can be seen at a glance that's the point so plots of enemy and friendly aircraft are moved onto the map table on the wall opposite on the tote board, is the squadron readiness with coloured lights for each section, blue, red, yellow, and green.

And then the plots are moved by plotters.

These are usually WAFs, so female members of the RAF, known rather misogynistically as the Beauty Corps.

This then means that the controllers, once they've decided what they're going to do with the aircraft they've got, they speak directly to the pilots and the pilots speak directly to each other using radio telegraphy.

The different squadrons can't speak to one another, so that means, but the controller can speak to everyone, essentially.

No, the

controller can speak to the to the squadrons in his in his sector yes that's right so what you have is this extraordinary system that is centralized and devolved at the same time there is extraordinary redundancy built into this and flexibility and of course for every control room there is a substitute control room for if anything goes wrong but the point is is that you have this redundancy centralized yet devolved information system for vectoring planes onto the bombers and that's how it works that's how it's designed to work and that's how it works well yes and and for those of you who were listening to the open opening bit of verbatim recording that we had, you had the controller talking to cater leader, antennas leader.

So he is talking to two different squadron leaders at the same time.

And that's what you can do.

And it's really, really clever because pilots have the radio, which enables them to listen to the ground controllers.

But there's also further networks of antennae radio receivers on the ground picking up transmissions from the pilot.

So cables run from these antennae to the operations rooms, where on yet another CAFO ray tube, we really need lots of those, the direction of the transmission can be picked up.

So with the receivers at the center of the screen, a line would then light up from the transmissions from the pilot, which would then indicate what bearing he was on.

And this is known as high-frequency direction finding or HFDF, better known as HuffDuff.

Huff Duff.

This is the military application of the thing Watson Watt had invented for ships in the interwar years.

This is exactly that.

What you're doing is you're keeping track of people's radio transmissions and triangulating them wherever they go, as well as the observer corps having its eyes on a squadron and relaying what it's seeing.

So as well as the HuffDuff telling you where people are, you've got Observer Corps eyes on.

So the idea is, and you've got Pipsqueak, which is the core sending out the automatic transmission.

So basically, the idea is, once you know where the bombers are, and if they change course, you can carry on vectoring your fighters because you know where your fighters are onto that bomber force or onto the enemy aircraft.

But it's amazing that you can do this through the combination of Pip Squeak, which is this transmission which gets pulsed out every 14 seconds.

But you can also do it from HuffDuff.

So it's like a, again, it's more redundancy.

You know,

there's extra means of finding these guys.

Everyone's trained in this system.

Everyone's trained in a way that everyone's got redundancy built into them, is the thing.

Everyone knows what they've got to do.

Everyone knows what they've got to do.

There's about eight people on a sector ops room, dire.

So you have the senior control at the center who's controlling the squadrons in the air in his sector.

So, you know, that might be three airborne at one time.

It might be two, as in the case case of the example that we had at the beginning of this episode, where it might be four.

And then he has an assistant controller next to him and two deputy controllers.

And either side of them is ops A and Ops B.

And you may remember again that we had Ops A and Ops B in that opening bit.

And they're ringing through to squadron dispersal.

You then...

On the weatherboard opposite underneath the squadron readiness, you have the weather, you have the height of cloud, you have lists of barrage balloon squadrons, and you also have lists of pilots and planes available at that moment to each squadron.

So it really is a sort of incredibly huge amount of information that you can just see at a glance.

And the great point about it is: it doesn't matter where you are, you know, you could be in Drem near Edinburgh, or you could be in Bigin Hill.

It's all the same.

That's the point.

That's the big idea.

It's standardized, but it's flexible.

Yeah.

And the language is standardized as well, which is really interesting.

Yeah.

Scramble, scramble.

It sounds exactly the same.

Scramble, orbit, vector 231, 230.

Angels, bandits, snappers.

These are all words and phrases devised to be

through not necessarily brilliant RT, isn't it, Jim?

Well, apart from three, you don't have a TH anywhere.

That's the point.

You know, you don't have words that could be mistaken for something else.

Yeah.

But that's not all.

Another transmitter in all REF aircraft that gives off a thing that the RDF, like a radar reflector, that basically, well, when they come on the RDF, it's obvious they're an REF aircraft.

That kind of comes online as the battle of Britain goes, doesn't it?

It's not all in place at the start, but it's a thing they've got yet another thing that they've got up their sleeve.

It's

absolutely extraordinary, the technological effort here.

And then the General Post Office, of course, the GPO, pull their weight in the Second World War.

Not only are they supplying all of this system with communications cable, but Tommy Flowers invents the the Colossus for Christ's sake.

So, you know, and he's a he works the GPO.

What the heck?

As soon as the RDF chain is starting to be in place, they're thinking, cracky, okay, well, we've got to get there's no point having this information coming if we can't then get it out beyond the RDF chain, so we're going to have to phone it through.

So that requires lots of telephone cable to these pretty remote places.

So huge amounts of telephone cable are laid.

Again, with plenty of redundancy as well.

Lines have to be connected to neighboring stations and to Bentley Priory.

Everything then goes through the Stanmore Exchange, which is at the bottom of the hill beneath Bentley Prary.

But they also have a backup exchange.

Take note of this, Heathrow Airport, at Bushby Exchange as well.

So, and that's not all either, is it, Al?

Because they also have the defense teleprinter network, the DTN, which is exactly what it says, is a teleprinter.

That links and serves all three RAF commands, but is also maintained by the GPOs.

And there's also anti-aircraft command with 1,204 heavy and 581 light anti-aircraft guns, which isn't the compliment they're meant to have.

And there's barrage balloons.

There's the Admiralty also has its eyes on all of this stuff.

But basically, what you have is this system, which has...

great of flexibility built into it.

The flexibility comes from the standardization.

I think what's brilliant about it, it may all look the same, but that's exactly the point because then anyone can work anywhere in the system.

So if a station's knocked out, you can bring in personnel from somewhere else, replace them instantly.

And anyway, there's a reserve ops room as well.

So the whole point, it's completely interchangeable, completely flexible, but it's untested is the truth at the start of July 1940.

So too, flexibility for the pilots as well, because you can move pilots again from Scotland to 12 group to 11 group to 10 group.

You can move them from Exeter to Hawking to Duxford to Acklington, you know, in a day.

And everything's standardized.

The way they're organized, the way these airfields are organized, they're all exactly the same.

And so that's key to the whole thing.

And it means you can rotate squadrons and operations staff at the same time or separately or in any way how you like.

But you're right.

You know, it is untested at the beginning of July.

This is brand spanking new technology.

No one's ever put this, no one has ever developed an air defense system.

It is the world's first fully functioning air defense system.

There was nothing like this over Poland, nothing like this over Scandinavia, the Low Countries or in France, which is why the Luftwaffe have got a bit cocky to be put it mildly.

And this is why when Gunther Roll from JG 52 was flying over Dover and was suddenly being attacked by 501 and 64 squadron, he couldn't understand where they came from.

That's because he's never come up against that air defense system before.

In the next part, we will look at other elements that go into the British air defense system.

The aircraft, aircraft repair, aircraft production, pilot training, because there are so many cogs in this incredible machine that we can't squeeze them all into one pot.

We'll see in a moment.

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Welcome back to We Have Ways to Make You Talk with me, me, Almarie and James on the and for the sharp-eared amongst you who aren't watching this in our new video format will notice that the sound has changed slightly for part two and those of you watching will have realized we've

done a rent ghost.

We've held on those and blinked.

Exactly.

We've operated elsewhere for the Harry Potter fan.

Right, so

we've looked at the downing system and the complexity of it, but also the sort of forethought that's gone into it.

But none of this will work without pilots, right?

All planes.

All planes.

Yeah, exactly.

So processing of pilots is quite a thing.

And you know, the bottom line is you can only train so many.

You can certainly only train so many in a northern European country.

Yeah.

Which is the same for both sides, but of course, the Lutheroff have started earlier.

So that's the problem.

It's weather dependent.

And yes, you can train 365, you know, 24-7 and all that kind of stuff.

But you can't really because when the weather comes in, which it does tend to, and as everyone knows, winters weren't great at that time of our history,

you know, that restricts what you can do.

And training takes about nine months.

Well, and if training is incredibly intense yeah it's lengthy and also quite failable yeah and that people are falling by the wayside the whole time so not only is this very very time consuming but it's people consuming because you have people coming in to the ref who then don't make the grade because so they don't make the grade and they also kill themselves well and people killing themselves

doubly don't make the grade but but but but this you know emphasizes the sort of the danger at the core of it, as well as also of the hundred people you may have on the first parade to fly,

you're whittling down to half that number probably

by the time they're getting into single-engine fighter planes on squadrons.

One of the most dangerous things of all is when you go to your OTU.

So how it works is you do your initial training wing, you do initial training, yeah, that's square mashing and all the rest of it and a bit of book, you know, learning, learning and stuff in the classroom.

And then you do your first flights and all the rest of it.

Then you do secondary training.

Then you find to get your wings if you're good enough.

And lots of people don't.

Yeah.

And this is your point.

And if you have survived that long, and that includes sort of unbelievably terrifying kind of night flights and things where you're blinded by the kind of exhaust fuse when you, you know, the exhaust stubs and flame coming out of it when you first power it up.

And then you go to your OTU, your operational training unit, which is where you convert from, say, Harvards, which you've been to the last bit of your training on, which, by the way, are also incredibly dangerous.

But then you go to your operational training unit, where you would then be converted onto Spitfires or Hurricanes.

And that moment, you know, they are single-engine, single-pilot aircraft, and it's a leap of faith.

You're going from a sort of 400-horsepower aircraft to, you know, 1100.

Yeah.

It's quite a big leap.

And you've got to take off in it, fly it around, stooge about for a bit and then land.

So shortage of pilots, this most precious of all commodities, is a problem.

And it's particularly a problem because they've lost about 300 of them in France.

And then having enough airframes is also obviously really, really important.

Yes.

Because,

I mean, we've touched on it really there.

The pilots are the thing that is truly irreplaceable.

Airframes, though, if you can keep the production numbers up, if you can keep the churn churn going, you're probably going to be all right if you can keep the attrition rate under control.

So, this is the balancing act that's really, really important.

And the Chamberlain government has already initiated a series of shadow factories.

Yes, it's boosting production.

I mean, it's buying the fighters in the first place,

stimulating industry by.

Well, yes, and it's also Vickers Aviation buying out Supermarine, and that's all happened beforehand.

So, you've got a bigger conglomeration, you know, bigger enterprise controlling it.

I mean, you know, the naysayers that say, oh, it wasn't anything to do with Lord Beaverbrook, It was all to do with Lord Swinton, who came before and all the rest of it.

That just isn't true.

I mean, it is true that Swinton plays a huge part in all this.

Yeah, yeah.

But the person who really kick-starts massive production is unquestionably Lord Beaverbrook, who is appointed to the head of the new Ministry of Aircraft Production, which is brand new, hasn't been created yet because aircraft production has been in the hands of the air ministry up until this point.

I mean, he's an astonishing appointment, though.

Yes.

I mean, people don't know who Beaverbrook is.

Beaverbrook is a Canadian press baron who's made his money in the world of finance in Canada before he comes to London because it's the imperial centre.

He was a real thorn in the side of the government during the First World War with his newspapers, really driving stuff and leaping onto causes and causing the Liberal government all sorts of problems during the First World War.

Yeah, it's fair to say that he's sort of right of centre.

Yeah.

Well, and he's an absolutely

die-hard imperialist.

The thing he cares about is the British Empire.

And he cares about the British Empire because he's Canadian.

It's the one thing that will keep the Americans down.

So he's very much of that stripe of imperialist, but he's a pal of Churchill.

He's a pal of Churchill.

He's a businessman.

And Churchill wants to have his, he wants the people running the war effort to be a bunch of technocrats and his cronies.

And, you know, he's very sensible in that approach.

I mean, you know, it's not entirely democratic, perhaps, but it's a very sensible approach.

I mean, the other thing I'd say about Lord Swinton is Lord Swinton and the administration before them have also built up huge supplies of aluminium and steel and perspex and all the rest of it.

So they've got a lot of the stuff in place.

The big thing that Max Bieberberg does is that he turbocharges the aircraft production.

So everything's in place, but what it needs is it needs rocket fuel to go in and just go, okay, we've got all the tools.

Now we just need to make it happen.

That's what he provides.

This incredible scale of energy.

He also immediately says, right, you forget any other type.

We're going to produce five types.

Everything else will just be mothballed for the time being, which has longer term consequences for, say, the Lancaster and four-engine heavy bombers and the Mosquito and all the rest of it.

But, but it's about what do we need to do now?

We need to streamline this.

But it's quite interesting, though, because there's a fundamental difference here between, say, Germany and Britain at this point.

Is he can say that, but what will actually happen in Britain is a load of people go, Well, we've been told to pause this type, but you know what?

We'll just keep trickling along.

So, the jet engine is one of the things, one of the things where he says, Stop on that.

But it trickles away, but it trickles away, and Rolls-Royce makes sure they carry on with that way.

Yeah, exactly.

Whereas in Germany, this sort of thing, say the sort of dive bomber, insistence on dive bombers, is an actual impediment to types and development.

It isn't quite in Britain because you've a free, basically,

one of those societies is freer than the other.

And so people are going to go, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don't worry, boss, we're on it.

And actually, to Havilland carry on developing the mosquitoes.

Well, because it's made it absolutely clear that this is a temporary measure.

This is right now.

It doesn't mean to say you're not going to need it in the future.

But it's really interesting.

You know, he doesn't like committees.

He doesn't like FAF at all.

So rather than sort of sending a letter, which was the traditional way, forget that, he just gets on the telephone.

If it can't be sorted out by the telephone, he sends one of the map people on the Ministry of Aircraft Production down to hand sort it out

and kick butt.

And he expects incredibly long hours.

You know, this is not a concession to workers' rights by any stretch of imagination.

You know, people are working literally 24-7.

He also sacks Lord Nuffield, who might have been very adept at running the Morris Motor Corporation, but is absolutely useless at running aircraft production.

Yeah.

So he sends Sir Richard Ferry of Ferry Aircraft Company to the new Spitfire factory at Castle Bromwich to see why, after two years of it being in operation, literally nothing is coming out at all.

And Ferry finds that mismanagement is rife, that people are slack, that they haven't got the right machine tools.

The whole thing is just a complete shower.

So Vickers immediately takes over the entire operation at Beaverbrook's insistence.

And things start to improve really quickly.

He also speaks to Beaverbrook and to Keith Park, who is the not to Lee Mallory incidentally, but he speaks to Keith Park every single night.

Really?

Brings him up and doubting and says, what do you need?

How's it all going?

But the big thing he does is he turns around the systems and the ways of operating to speed up production as much as possible.

So he makes what's in place work, basically.

He makes what's in place.

So what is in place has been set up by Lord Swinton and by others, you know, and that's why they deserve the credit they deserve.

But as I say, the man who puts kind of you know rocket fuel into this process is Beaverbrook.

And in the first week, you know, of him being in charge, there's 130 new types of all-aircraft.

By the third week of May, that's risen to 200.

And by the last week of May, that's 280.

Yeah.

That's more than double.

Weekly production is around 250,300 new types in June.

You know, so that's improving.

A week of the second to the 8th of June, for example, 80 hurricanes and 22 Spitfires are built.

But in June alone, 446 new fighters are built.

In July, that figure is 496.

I think the really interesting thing he does is the civilian repair organization.

Well, he takes it from the air ministry.

Yeah.

So everything gets taken.

So stores and supplies and all the rest of it, he goes around changing all the padlocks.

So, the air ministry can't do it.

He's just moved quicker.

So, he goes, right, I'm taking all of it out of this.

Knows that the air ministry is going to go splutter and go, you can't possibly do that.

So, he just goes around and just opens all the stores, changes all the padlocks.

So, when the air ministry gets there, you know, he's already changed that a week ago.

He changes the recategoriser, you know, recategorizes everything.

So, there used to be levels one, two, and three.

Now, there's levels four, five, and six.

Level four is now aircraft that can be repaired in 36 hours.

Yeah.

You know, on the spot.

Yeah.

Level five are aircraft which are safe to fly lightly so fly-in repairs so you could take them from you know big inhill and take them to some repair depot um and then level six is gonna are those that would take more than 36 hours yeah and might need to be moved by by road and responsibility for transporting these to depots and civilian repair units so the civilian repair organization which is cro to civilian repair units which is a cru yeah is left to number 50 maintenance units so these are the guys with the trucks and all the rest of it again indoctrinated with with, you know, speed, pace of action, long hours, all the rest of it.

And the transformation is incredible.

And again, the contrast with the Germans here is German damage types have to go back to Germany.

Well, because they've got brand new airfields.

They haven't got enough kits.

That's another example of the home advantage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, you know, by July 1940, production of new aircraft has risen by...

62%, new engines by 32%, but the repaired aircraft has risen by 186%.

That's amazing.

The repaired engines by 159%.

So that is just amazing.

But you know, you think that Fighter Command alone has 331 Spitfires and Hurricanes after the losses in France on the 1st of June 1940.

By the 30th of June, it's got 587 Spitfires and Hurricanes.

By the temperature rise, it's got around 640.

That's amazing.

That is truly incredible.

Well,

we should talk about the planes.

Although, I think it's fair to say that you know probably that the hurricane is clad in fabric.

We understand that you know it's essentially the end of the biplane technology.

It's a Hawker Fury without the top wing.

But let's still perv on these planes anyway because they're fantastic.

First flight, 2nd November 1935 of the hurricane.

Yep.

Thick wings.

Yep.

Stable gun platform.

But the weaknesses are...

It's slow.

Well, and also it's got a very easy stall, very quick stall.

You can't see it coming.

So normally when you're about to stall, you have pre-stall buffeting.

Well,

let's basically explain what a stall is because I think we're talking about a stall like we know.

That's the point where the plane stops flying.

Yes.

It no longer has enough thrust to keep it airborne.

Well, or enough lift.

Enough lift.

Yeah, enough lift and thrust in combination to keep it going.

Actually, keep it airborne.

It literally drops out the sky.

But the problem with that is that in the hurricane, you don't get much warning.

In a Spitfire, you get lots of pre-installed buffeting where it shakes.

You don't get much of that.

So hurricane pilots tend to underfly it because they don't want to suddenly be caught out.

Yes, yes, it has a great turning circle, but only if you absolutely cane it.

But no one's going to cane it because they don't want to dissolve the caught out.

When it does, it drops a wing and it starts going into spiral.

It's very, very hard to get out of it.

There's instability built into how they work.

Yes, into how they fly.

One of the other problems is that you've got one of the good things is you've got four machine guns side by side on one wing, four machine guns in the other, and you harmonize them so that they come to a point at a certain distance.

The flip side of that is you've got fuel tanks at the foot of the wings, the base of the wings.

And if you've already fired your guns and you get heat, the wind as you're flying goes into those gun ports and fans the flames up into the cockpit, which basically means you've got about three or four stars.

And you've also got an enormous fuel tank in front of you.

Right in front of you.

The other problem is it's got this sort of cage-like canopy, a bit like the one on the MeshSmit 109.

The visibility isn't great.

The other big problem that they said

they had a sort of habit of leaking oil from one of the seals around the propeller.

So you could be flying along suddenly, you're just spreak with oil on the front of the windscreen, you can't see anything.

So that wasn't great.

But we do love the Hurricane.

Love the Hurricane.

Make no mistakes.

Stable gun courage.

It's a very stable gun platform, and that's what's special about it.

And then it's more glamorous cousin.

I mean, actually, the thing that makes these two planes viable is the Merlin engine, anyway.

Yes.

It's the time and money spent on developing the Merlin engine, which means, although it's got its problems with the carburettor in particular, but the Spitfire is the sort of.

It's brand new.

It's brand spanking new.

It looks sexy.

It is sexy.

You know, all those sort of things.

Plus flies 5th of March 1956, of course.

But in the first part of the Battle Britain, you know, in June and July, it hasn't got variable pitch propeller, which changes automatically.

So the angle of the blades on the propeller change as you're, you know, it's a bit like changing gear, effectively.

Yeah.

You know, you want to be in fifth gear, and it affects how early how fast you can climb yes it does

and the the rear that is the this is all about climbing fast because the hurricane can climb relatively quickly for an aircraft of its time but the spitfire is once it's got the proper propeller on it really can climb quickly yes so that's the big thing but there's no fuel injection either on the on the spitfire mark one or the hurricane and what that means is when you if you haven't got fuel injection that means you can't control the the carburetor in the same way so that when you when you suddenly dive you you create negative gravity, and that forces a fuel to the top of the float chamber in the carburetor, which then becomes flooded, very briefly cuts out, and it regains itself, but that can lose you a couple of seconds worth of diving.

It's an extraordinary oversight in the design of the Verlin engine.

Yeah, they quickly rectify it.

I know, but you know, they rectify it because suddenly it's a problem, but that no one's foreseen that is kind of amazing.

But also, it has very low wing loading, which basically wing loading is the weight of the plane divided by the wing area.

So it's 25 pounds per square foot on the Spitfun.

I think it's 32 or something on the Mester Smith 109.

And that is comparatively low.

That's the big elliptical wing.

It has a tight turning circle of 696 feet.

But both of Spitfire and Hurricane only have 300 rounds of ammunition.

And it's rifle caliber ammunition.

This is one of the great vast mysteries of the Air Ministry's decision-making process is to equip its intercept fighter aircraft with such such poor weaponry.

It doesn't add up as a decision at all.

In the 1920s, they've decided it's a bad idea.

1926, there was a paper saying, saying, I would not recommend this under any circumstances.

It's like cheating of a P-sheet.

And yet, here we are with four 303s.

Maybe one of the reasons, certainly the reason the British Army retains 303 ammunition is they bought so much in the first World War I.

There's an awful lot of it, right?

There's tons of it.

I would suspect that's got a high factor in it.

Yeah, mate to a men.

But the net result of this is it means they've only got 14.7 seconds worth of collective firing.

It's not each machine gun firing in turn.

They're all firing together.

And it doesn't take long to get around through 300 rounds.

And famously, 74 Squadron in the Battle of Britain fires 7,000 rounds at a Dornier team and still don't shoot it down.

They're too far away.

You know, the prescribed distance of which you harmonize your guns is about 450 yards.

That changes 400.

And as the battle progresses, it changes 400.

And what we need we need to explain what that means.

So you're harmonizing your guns is basically you angle them so that they will converge in into a cone.

Into a cone of bullets.

So if you've, I mean, literally, you've got the four guns across the wing, pointing them so they converge.

And what happens is this great argument about the distance at which they converge.

And

by the time the battle bit's properly going and words got round, you get as close as you can.

So you converge your guns as close as you can make them.

Yeah, but it's on the end of July, it's prescribed at 250 yards from 400, 450 before that.

But Tom Neal, for example, who was in 249 squadron, you know, he sets his guns to 150 yards.

Yeah, that's kind of sort of more like it.

But we should talk about the Luftwaffe.

They have also developed their own version of RDF.

Designata Telegraphia, DT.

Yeah.

Or D T.

Telegraphie.

Designata Telegraphie.

The thing is, they figured out the same thing, but the conclusions they've arrived at are quite different.

So it is spinning radar like you'd like.

The Wurtzberg.

Yeah, exactly.

Because of that,

they can't recognise RDF.

Well, they think it's something similar, some kind of version.

They do call them DT masts.

So they recognise that it is a radio detection mast, but their kind of comparatively primitive nature of Watson-Watts masts actually lull the Luftwaffe into sort of being a bit complacent about them, which is a good thing.

Radar DT is developed by the Kriegsmarina rather than the Luftwaffe.

And as we all know, they don't really talk to each other very much.

So they have Würzburg and Freyer on the coasts of northern France and the Low Countries, but they're not there to help the Luftwaffe in any shape or form.

What we talked about a lot talking about the doubting system is the fact that

everything's joined up.

You've got lots of radio.

The idea is that everyone knows what's going on.

The information could be spread really easily.

The Germans are not keen on radio telegraphy at all at this stage of the world.

There's no ground control at all.

Yeah.

So you take off, you can communicate in your snaffle.

You might even be able to communicate in your groupen, your group of three shtaffel, but you certainly can't communicate with the bombers you're supposed to escort.

You know, you're told when to form up.

where to form up and off you go.

And so all those instructions are handed out before the mission takes place.

So the mission has to take place according to the instructions, or else you're on your own.

Yeah.

I mean, the thing is,

this then means a squadron, a staffer leader or a group of leader is trying to conduct the battle.

Yeah.

So if he gets lost, they all get lost.

Yes.

And if he attacks the wrong airfield,

it will attack the wrong airfield.

If he fails to meet up with the bombers he's meant to be escorting,

they all fail to meet up with the bombers there.

But it's not that there aren't people who don't understand the value of radios.

There are.

And it's really interesting.

So there's this amazing memoir by this guy called Urich Steinhilber, who's a young Leutenant in JG52, and his immediate boss is Adolf Galland in 1940.

And in 1939, Steinhilber was made Nachrichten Officia, which is a sort of communications officer, in what at the time is the first group of Jaggestwader 433, then becomes JG52.

And Steinhilber learns that he's supposed to be having 75 men under him, equipped and trained to operate radio stations and mounted on trucks with kind of sort of mobile radio telegraphy and all the rest of it.

But he discovers actually he's only got about 20 men.

They just haven't appeared.

There's no one there.

No one's organising.

No one's ever bothered with it.

Gallon's not in the slightest bit interested in this.

Doesn't encourage him whatsoever.

But he thinks, no, you know,

I can see this is going to be a benefit.

So he tries to encourage the group to use...

ground control but makes himself thoroughly unpopular in the process yeah largely because gallon's a kind of my whale the highway type doesn't really like it so eventually he organized this huge great exercise using ground observers and mobile radio teams to connect to the pilots.

And watching this is General Hugo Sperler, who's one of the Love Flotter commanders for the Battle of Britain.

And in the debrief afterwards, it's hardly mentioned.

And eventually, Steinhilper puts his hands up and says,

wait, General, you know, what did you think of the radio communications?

Galland immediately cuts him off and goes, Good, Steinhilper, you've reminded me.

You were talking far too much.

You were just bothering us all the time.

As I've always told you, it would be best to throw out all of these damn radios.

We don't need them.

And that's that.

Oh, dear.

Well, I mean, and good you know i'm speaking from a british perspective here the the crummier the luftwaffe's effort is the better yeah right um yep so we should just we should just very very briefly just explain how they're organized so so luftwaffe is organized into gestwada and and to groups it's like an raf group and a group is like an RAF wing yeah and within a group is three staffel which is kind of a squadron yeah so a gestwada has three groupen um each groupen has three staffel yeah and yes a staffel is is sort of like a squadron and they have air fleets they don't have commands.

So each fleet is like an army, you know, so it has its various component parts as fighters and bombers and stookers and reconnaissance and so on.

So it's a tactical air force.

That's the bottom line.

It's a tactical air force rather than a strategic air force.

Just to remind people, tactical air force was one which is designed to support ground operations.

A strategic air force is one which operates independently.

of any other unit.

Although, I mean, it's theoretically one, isn't it?

That's the idea.

Yes.

What the Germans have done with the Luftwaffe is they've had the conception of a tactical air force and they've delivered it in practice.

But that means they've not thought about anything else much.

And certainly not having practice with anything else much, which is what then is part of the confusion for them for the Battle of Britain.

And then, I mean, the Staffel is 12 aircraft and pilots.

So rather than the over-manning thing that the RAF has, which means you can rotate pilots, you can rest people.

Everyone has to go every time with an aircraft.

Well, yes, and there's a difference between establishment and serviceability on any given moment.

So establishment is 12, but in reality, they hardly ever have 12 available.

They usually, you know,

on a good day you might have nine or ten.

Yeah.

But you're almost certainly never going to have 12 because you know someone's got an instrument that's going to dissolve.

And then and then in terms of producing aircraft, because obviously we've emphasised how important that is for the British, the Germans are sort of it's tailing off.

And part well it started earlier.

Yeah.

Yeah, well they started earlier, but part of the issue in Germany, isn't it?

Is there was a wariness on the part of the German government to commit to the idea that this is a full bore war that's going to last a really really long time.

You know, the whole point is we'll get it done now.

We're not going to need to produce small aircraft.

And also, there's real limits on what they can actually produce.

Yeah, the German Web Wars do it really quickly.

Yeah.

So it's not for a long war.

But they have lost a third of their operational strength since the 10th of May.

And it is amazing.

I mean, it's just worth reminding people of the statistic of 354 aircraft lost on the 10th of May.

It's the single worst day for Luftwaffe in the entire war.

I mean, we talked about this before a hurricane, and we have to say that the ME-109 is a better plane than either of them, isn't it, Jim?

Well, it is at this point i mean no it

just is there's no there's no getting away from it as tom nil says it could do the three things required of a fighter aircraft in 1940 better than any other it could climb faster die faster and pack a greater punch in the combat zone the canopy is awful because it's like it's like a door so it opens up on hinges and opens up to the side you know rather than pushing back and forward yeah which is difficult to get out of at high speeds one of the interesting things about it though is the reason it exists or it's the reason it's the it's the type that the germans pick is because of news of the spitfire yeah that is really they've They've got a procurement competition going on, the Germans.

Yeah, and everyone's expecting it to be the Heinkel 112.

Yeah, which has elliptical wings, wind undercarriage,

and has incredible range.

Arguably a better plane, but they hear word of the Spitfire and

they opt for the 109.

Because

it's fractionally faster than the Heinkel 112 and it can climb faster than the Heinkel 112.

So it does, you know, by the time it has the Daimler Ben 601, it's got supercharger, it's got fuel injection, it's got electrical variable pitch propeller, you know, all of which become standard on any fighter plane by the end of 1940.

The plane they're flying in 1940 is the E, it's the fifth variant.

And they've been flying that a little bit more.

Mark I.

Yeah, exactly.

The Mark I Spitfire and the one A's and one B's that come on.

What you've actually got here is the fruits of the Spanish Civil War and Poland and their experience with what they need to tune fine-tune on the fighter.

So that's why they're that's why they're into their fifth type at this point in the war.

And it has very high wing loading, as I said earlier on.

It's got 32 pounds per square foot.

So that means the wings are much much smaller.

That means less drag, so greater speed, you know.

But it also means a higher stalling speed.

But the ME109 gets around that by having slats at the front of the wings as well as...

at the back, which will come out automatically at a certain speed, which means in theory, it can actually out-turn the Spitfire.

I think the really important thing is, because, you know, these fighters are neck and neck in this regard, essentially.

What we're really looking at here, though, is the armament, because we've said how both British fighters, Spitfran Hurricane, have been equipped with pea shooters, with rifle ammunition.

The Meshersmit has a cannon that fires an exploding.

There's different varieties of the ME109E and some have kind of you know one cannon and four machine guns.

One has

the cannon is the point because the round explodes on contact with its target.

That's a completely different deal to firing bullets at something.

Yeah, and also the interesting thing is that the Merlin, Boswell's Merlin, is made of magnesium alloy.

So if it gets hit by a cannon, that's good night Charlie to that engine.

Whereas the DB601 is made out of steel.

And if a 0.303 hits that, it sort of squashes it like a PM.

Whereas

a cannon round would have a greater effect.

But you have also,

the machine guns have drums of a thousand rounds rather than 300.

So they have 55 seconds worth of firing rather than 14.7 seconds of firing.

That's a huge, huge difference.

And obviously, you've only got 60, you've got very few cannons because it's chunky and big, and there's, you know, it's got small wings, so it hasn't got much room.

So it has 60 rounds, but your machine guns have tracer, which is sort of you know fluorescence on every fifth bullet or whatever.

So the really skilled marksman, what it can do is he can get his aim with his thousand rounds of machine gun bullets, and then you only press one, a cannon, and you've hit it.

And then there's this, it's Chunkier Brother, the 110, the Zastora,

which is a twin-engine plane.

This is a plane with flying across the North Sea and attacking Britain in mind, isn't it?

Yeah.

As a fighter escort.

It's got tremendous range, very long legs, does 300 miles per hour.

But the problem is

very, very powerful armament.

But its problem is because it's a twin-engine player, it's not as maneuverable, it's not as quick.

And because it's big, you can't die quicker though.

It's a great USP of the 109.

You can dive quicker than anything else.

So actually, turning circles are irrelevant because if you're suddenly being attacked by someone, you've got someone on your own.

chuck the stick forward and down you go you're you're going to outrun them so you don't need lardy d'Ar fancy aerobatics yeah but in a one a 110 you don't have that luxury yeah and then the bombers that the germans have you know there's the the the Stuka, the JU-87, which is which shows it's a tactical air force.

That is a tactical battlefield weapon, isn't it?

It's for attacking armies, attacking bunkers, that sort of thing, which is used to incredible effect in France and the Netherlands and in Poland as well, with its Lemgreit on the wing that's a siren that makes a noise to scare

the Jesus out of you.

It's sort of synonymous with Blitzkrieg, that plane.

But the battle that's coming isn't Blitzkrieg.

So for all its strengths and advantages...

You'd start a dive dive at around sort of 8,000 feet typically, and you do about 85% gradient.

So, it's virtually kind of vertical.

And at some point, you pull out, there's air brakes, you drop your bomb, there's a little bit of perspex, and the bomb aiming at, you know, the pilot can see through the target through the bottom.

Yeah, there's a window in the floor of the bomb.

So you can see where the bomb's going and all the rest of it.

I mean, it's got, you know, it's all quite clever, quite well thought out.

So the problem with this is that as you're coming out of your dive, you're virtually stationary.

You're very slow.

It's got a fixed undercarriage, so it's not fast, it's not very maneuverable.

And anyone hovering above you, you know, you're easy meet.

It's very, very difficult to be accurate.

It's fine lengthways, but it's not, you know, I mean, so for example, you know, if you're attacking a 250 yard long ship, and let's face it, most destroyers, for example, are only about 120 yards, you know, a Stuka would have 1.5 second window in which to release a bomb.

But if you're doing a cross attack, it's a quarter of a second.

So, you know, it's literally nothing.

And it makes it very difficult to attack accurately if your target is moving.

Yeah.

And B, if you have the enemy above you.

And then they're medium bombers, although they they haven't got a heavy one.

So their medium bombers are their heavy bombers, as it were.

The Heike 111 and the Dornier DO-17 are flying.

Yeah, and they're both developed in the early 1930s.

I mean, this is the point.

And, you know, both of them have only got, they can only carry about a ton each.

And the JU-88 is the third type that the Germans have got, which is a newer, supposedly a faster bomber that's all, but has been diverted in its development with the dive bombing replacement.

Well, yeah, they keep sort of insisting it has dive bombing potentials.

You know, and the good folk at Juncker's kind of sort of teeth suckle on.

So, well, yeah, we can do that, but it's going to cost you.

It's going to cost you in terms of financial costs.

It's going to cost you in terms of time.

And it's going to cost you in terms of performance.

So what's a super fast kind of 300-mile an hour twin-engine bomber with huge range becomes a bomber that can basically fly the same speed as a Dornier and a Highfield, but maybe a little bit faster.

But it's interesting, you know, I mean, you know, the Luftwaffe's arsenal is therefore a very mixed bag of the flawed, the aging, and of course the brilliant.

But also it's a mixed bag of aircraft suited to a completely different task.

This is, in the end, the encounter in the Battle of Britain.

It's a tactical air force tries to take on a fighter defence system.

Were the Luftwaffe a strategic air force with that fighter system in mind, maybe it would have a better chance.

But the fact is, it isn't, and it doesn't even know that this system exists.

No, exactly.

So

it's starting its battle seriously.

Disadvantaged.

Disadvantaged.

It's worth looking at.

So on the 3rd of August, 1940, this is the arsenal that the Luftwaffe has.

And there's authorized strength.

Yep.

which is what it's supposed to have.

There's actual strength.

Yep.

Then there's combat ready.

And then there's combat ready with air crew.

So authorized strength of single-engine fighters is 1171.

Actual strength, 1,065.

Yeah.

Combat ready, 878.

Combat ready with pilots ready to fight England, 760.

Yes.

Okay.

Twin-engine fighters, authorized strength, 332.

Actual strength, 310.

Combat ready, 240.

Combat ready with crew, 230.

Bombers!

Okay, so this is really interesting.

Yeah, come on.

Bombers, authorized strength, 1,638.

Actual strength, 1,458.

Combat ready, 818.

That's 50%.

Yeah.

Combat ready with air crew, somewhere between 700 and 800, can't quite sure.

45%.

And the problem is, if you're going to Hitler, you go, we have 1,171 fighters on our establishment, Manfuhrer, and he goes, wonderful, carry on.

Then you go back to your headquarters and go, yeah, but we can only get, you know, two-thirds of those in the air.

You don't tell him that, do you?

And this is

their other problem.

Because as the battle proceeds, there is a question of claiming and over-claiming, and everyone lying about the numbers of planes shot down.

The thing to compare those numbers with with is then, as the battle proceeds, between the 3rd of August and the

28th of September, the Germans lose 719 bombers.

And you've just said that they're basically their combat ready with pilot strength is 700 to 800 bombers.

They lose the lot.

And, you know, they lose 400 crew.

That's a serious bite out of their capability.

And they lose 97 dive bombers to the point where the dive bombers are where the stookers are stood down.

So the point is, is as the battle begins, the balance sheet, if you take it at a glance, favours the Luftwaffe.

But the circumstances are tactical air force being asked to do a strategic task against a fighter defense system that's untested, yes, but that the Germans don't even appreciate exists.

Yeah, so we've looked at Canal Camp, we've looked at phase one of the Back of Britain, we've looked at the system,

the two sides, what they've got, assets and pluses and minuses, and all the rest of it.

Now we are getting ready for Adler Angriff.

Exactly.

The attack of the eagles.

Luftschlacht und England.

Yes, exactly.

This is the second phase, people, of the Battle of Britain.

And that's what we're going to be looking at in episode three.

So join us in our next episode of We Have Ways of Making You Talk for episode three.

Should we call it Luftschlacht und England?

Yes.

Or we can just call it more easily Attack of the Eagles.

Okay, we'll call it Attack of the Eagles then.

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