Quote:
Originally Posted by Sloniksp
Heres my two cents worth...
We must not let ourselves forget that the Luftwaffe was on the brink of achieving its goal over the RAF, but switched tactics (without knowing how close they were) and started bombing cities instead.
Could the Luftwaffe have achieved victory in the skies over Great Britain, if Germany had all the fuel she wanted and was not planning an invasion of the Soviet Union? 
I think that Germany was capable. |
See my post No.4 - the BoB was hurting the Luftwaffe much more than the RAF. There was a period when 11 Group - which occupied the SE airfields - was coming under a lot of pressure, but there were three other fighter Groups in the UK so plenty of scope for rotating in replacement squadrons.
To win the BoB Germany would have had to emulate what the USAAF did over Germany in 1945. To do that, they would have had to start preparing specifically for that years before. A fighter with more legs than the Bf 109 would have been needed (using drop tanks also for maximum range) and several times as many of them as they had 109s. The entire Luftwaffe would have had to be designed around the strategy of engaging Fighter Command, on the ground and in the air. They just didn't have the right planes, nor anywhere enough of them, to achieve that.