Tony, thanks for the info, I'll research this aspect more closely. I did indeed quote from a reported source (Walter Boyne, Clash of Wings) and took it at face value. Every other point mentioned throughout the documentary series held excellent voracity, so whilst I trust you implicidly it is honourable that I remain undecided upon this point just for the moment. I trust Mr Boyne's research implicidly too.
edit: actually going back over the figures and having a flick through my own books I realised the original statement still holds true. You're considering the Battle of Britain to continue into December, when it was over during September, when the Luftwaffe switched bombing attacks to cities. There was no chance from then and the RAF was able to recover but it was in serious trouble earlier, when indeed had the airfield and aircraft facility attacks continued, the Luftwaffe was in a position to win by attrition. Your point is simply, but they didn't. The fact remains, they almost did.

When it entered service in 1937 obviously. At that time the star of Europe was the Soviet SB "fast bomber" which was noted for its ability to outrun interceptors of the time, like the Gloster Gauntlet, Bristol Bulldog, Avia 534 and PZL-11, even the contemporary variants of the I-16. These were the major European fighter types in 1937-8 (newer models were still in the development stage and available only in tiny numbers for service evaluation). The Heinkel was the performance equivalent of the SB, but had radio navigation and a very high quality, comprehensive array of instruments. It was also designed very well and noted by pilots for its excellent handling and the ability to travel long distances on one engine. Its only drawback was lacking automatic fire extinguishers in the engine compartments, which was not a common feature until later anyway.

It was not however suited to a strategic campaign like that against Britain, it even performed somewhat poorly over Poland but this was due to erroneous air force assumptions worldwide on the effectiveness per capita of aerial bombing and the scale required for successful strategic operations. It had nothing to do with the performance of the Heinkel which was a very advanced bomber in 1938 and a comparatively good one in 1940.

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The 'Zerstorer' was not only unsuccesfull because of radar, but because the Me110 was not capable of enagaging the Hurricane or the Spitfire in aerial combat, and this was proved over and over again.

You're talking about a situation wholly derived from the British use of an early warning radar system. German radar was nowhere near as advanced at the time and the Luftwaffe simply lacked an understanding of just what this could mean to a strategic assault.

Firstly, it doesn't matter if you're flying a Bristol Bulldog: if it's equipped with a bank of cannon and you're diving on a Spitfire who's just taken off and is trying to climb at 180mph whilst you're diving on him at 300mph guns blazing...you have overwhelming combat advantages and he has no second chances.

This was the entire Zerstörer tactic, it's what the term meant. It was never designed to engage enemy fighters at combat altitude, they were never supposed to get that far, which is why the Zerstörer squadrons were sent in ahead of bomber streams. This worked beautifully in France who, contrary to common belief actually had a very respectable air force with no small number of modern fighters by June 1940. Enough to give a standing fight to the Luftwaffe at any rate. But all told most Dewotines, Morane-Saulniers and P-36 Hawks were destroyed on the ground, by the Me-110. Then the Heinkels and Dorniers bombed French rally points and utterly disrupted any coherent counterattacks (whilst stukas and Me-109's took care of the foward positions and frontal airfield response).

Göring's concept worked beautifully here, and these were his plans for GB. The RAF would respond to a bomber intercept only to be struck by heavy fighters whilst still on the runway. But as you outlined this didn't happen historically and why is radar.

It is crucial to understand the Me-110 was not designed to be a fighter like the Me-109 is a fighter, their roles on the battlefield (range and escort duties aside) are completely different. When the destroyer concept failed in the BoB, the Me-110 was reassigned to the independent ground attack role, where it worked very well among contemporaries until technologically obsolete. It also began to substitute into Stuka command squadrons and helped form the basis of the later schlachtgeschwader (along with the stuka and Fw-190).

English, Italian, French, Czech, Soviet, Japanese and even the Polish air forces were markedly involved in a determined arms race from 1919 to 1938 (I can list the various marques year by year but this post is getting real long). There was however a poor post war world economic state, a Great Depression and public concerns over defence spending, particularly in England and France. English officials in fact fostered the illusion that Nazi Germany had an advanced and dangerous air force in order to secure hard frought defence expenditure. In truth the Luftwaffe was incapable of taking on any of the major air forces before 1939. There was simply no economy or manufacturing and industrial resources for it. All models of the Messerschmitt produced before 1939 were made only in the hundreds and not very many at that. Some stuka geschwader during the invasion of Poland still used Henschel biplanes, whilst none of the Zerstörer squadrons had the Me-110, they used obsolete Me-109C/D models whilst waiting for them. Most Heinkels were the old F models of the Spanish war. But in 1938 it was worse, the majority of Luftwaffe fighters were still He-51 biplanes outperformed by other air forces back in 1935, and the bomber force was a ragtag group of just about everything including a good number of Ju-52's, i.e. not much of one. There weren't even any significant number of aerial bombs in the Luftwaffe arsenal and nearly all of the ones made since 1938 were used up in Poland in 1939.

The only country which was not gearing up for war since 1935 was the US, who saw it as a money making opportunity. Companies like Curtiss, Douglas and even Grumman forged their empires putting together designs specifically for the European market (though they sought through this, success in the far more lucrative US market and of course in turn, the post-war international airline industry).

As for Russia, Stalin was racing to re-equip the Soviet military in the late-thirties and in fact began a general armament with his five-year industrial plans of the twenties. This is why the Soviet air force had the highest performing fighters and bombers in the world in 1935. People like Tupolev were not coming out with radical new designs quickly enough however and were sent to prison (where he continued to design warplanes). This inadvertently led to the new design bureaus MiG, Yakovlev, Ilyushin, Petlyakov and Lavochkin which developed the warplanes that finally appeared in 1941. They were about four years behind England and Germany in development, but rushed the effort to get them into service lagging only two years behind actual service entry (but most of these models suffered poor early performance as a result). Stalin definitely knew what was coming, this is well documented yet he went as far as signing the non-aggression pact as a mutual recognition with Germany that they both needed to stall any direct conflict, and would take care of this ideological diametric later (Stalin hoped not before 1942, and Hitler thought not before 1943 until he realised the best time to strike was as quickly as possible, but these figures are speculative).