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Old February 28th, 2008, 04:31 PM
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Default Re: Battle of Britian

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I found this on Wiki but can't vouch for accuracy
They look about right, but bear in mind the British casualties are for all aircraft from the RAF in Britain, even if they had nothing to do with the battle, eg air raids on Turin.

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If this is true, then the Luftwaffe could have subdued the RAF. The downed aircraft are not the only figures here but also the pilots who are fatigued. They would not be able to continue on for much longer
The RAF fighter pilots were certainly getting tired. But then so were the Germans. Steinhilper writes in Spitfire on my Tail:

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What we were seeing, although we didn't realise it at the time, was our first case of Kanalkrankheit (Channel Sickness). A combination of chronic stress and acute fatigue. At first there were isolated cases but, as the battle dragged on, there were to be more and more cases of the evil disease. The symptoms were many and various but usually surfaced as stomach cramps and vomiting, loss of appetite and consequently weight and acute irritability. Typically the patient's consumption of alcohol and cigarettes would increase and he would show more and more signs of exhaustion. There was little leave and, unlike the RAF pilots, wc were not to be circulated to quiet zones for short periods of rest and refitting. There was nothing our doctors could do either. The principal of battle fatigue had not yet been established and it was felt that as soon as anyone was taken out of the line because he was showing signs of stress, there would be a flood. So the doctors resorted to diagnosing appendicitis. This minor operation ensured that at least a pilot would not be flying for about two or three weeks.
Part and parcel of Kanalkrankheit were the symptoms which affected the aircraft. Instruments would fail, motors would run hot or lose oil pressure, just to be remedied by returning to base. Ground crews would spend time chasing a fault through a machine only to find nothing amiss. Following a Werkstattflug the aircraft would be pronounced fully mechanically fit for service. A few hours later it would be back with guns that would not fire in the air, but which let loose a hail of bullets on the ground. The groundcrews were faithful to their pilots, and to their credit tried to cover for them, but when there was no chance of finding a fault the former had to speak up.
We all felt the strain but when, in the middle of August, the command reshuffle took place, there was damned near a mutiny in our Cruppe. Our Commander, Hauptmann von Eschwege was called up to Luftflotte 2
Headquarters and returned with the Iron Cross First Class. It was arranged for the pilots of the three squadrons to be paraded at their separate dispersals whilst von Eschwege made a short speech in which he explained that it was with great regret on his part that he'd been relieved of command of I/JG 52 because of a grumbling appendix. He wished us all "Good Hunting" and many victories and left for his appendix operation and thereafter on to a relatively safe seat at the fighter training centre at Merseburg.
There was almost uproar amongst the pilots, not only because of his Iron Cross, but also because he was effectively being rested whilst we were still having to remain at the sharp end of things. This wasn't the last time that the strings would be pulled for some of the more senior officers and it is significant, I think, that during the Battle of Britain our Gruppe never lost any personnel of the rank of Squadron Leader or higher. Hauptmann Wolfgang Ewald replaced von Eschwege as Gruppe Kommandeur and inherited quite a disconsolate brood of fighter pilots.
Steinhilper touches on a couple of the important differences between the RAF and Luftwaffe pilots. Firstly, the RAF pilots usually didn't face a long trip back across the channel, which all the pilots were frightened of ending up in. When the Germans flew over Britain, they knew they had 20 or 30 miles of water to cross on the way back, sometimes with a damaged aircraft.

More importantly, though, the RAF only devoted about half their fighter strength to the battle, with some units on the periphery taking part occasionally. About a third of RAF units were based in the North or West, well away from the fighting. Pilots, and sometimes whole squadrons, were rotated in and out of the battle area, meaning most pilots fought only part of the battle, whereas most German pilots fought from the start to the end.

Fatigue was certainly an issue in the BoB, but it affected the German pilots more than the British.

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I am surprised that it was Kesselring who wanted a strategy to bomb the cities vs Sperrle's strategy of hitting the airfields.
Kesselring believed the poor German intelligence reports that said the RAF was almost defeated, with only 100 or 200 fighters left. He felt that a big attack on London would draw in those last fighters where 5 - 600 German fighters could shoot them down en masse.
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