The Battle of Britain – The RAF vs. the Luftwaffe

By Antonella Chichizola

It was July 1940 and Britain had been left alone against Germany.  Winston Churchill was impatiently waiting for their attack to defeat Hitler and bring stability and hope to the rest of the world. Hitler was of course very confident about his forces, specially the Luftwaffe. He planned to attack Britain by two operations: one by air and the other by sea (Operation Sealion). But he gave less importance to the second one because the Luftwaffe was supposed to be good enough to end with Britain. Indeed, the Luftwaffe counted with a numerical superiority –about 1200 bombers and 1000 fighters against some 900 British fighters. However, Hitler didn’t count on the advantages of the RAF (Royal Air Forces), which included planes with longer fuel-life, knowledge of the territory as the battle was fought in Britain, and specially the position of the latest warning system: the radar.

Something that played against Germany was the fact that the German bombers were vulnerable once their shorter-range fighter escorts had turned for home, and they had a limited range and a limited bomb load. They had an excellent fighter: the German Messerschmitt Bf-109. Too bad for the Germans it had only enough fuel to stay in the air about 10-20 minutes over Britain. By the other side, the British Spitfires and Hurricanes could spend much longer in the air, and were also excellent fighters.

German Messerschmitt Bf-109

British Spitfire 

British Hurricanes

Radars also played a fundamental role in the victory of the relatively small army of the RAF.

 The word radar comes from the acronym “radio detection and ranging”. It was used in the Second World War by the RAF to locate the incoming enemy. It showed up enemy aircraft when they were as farther as 120 km away. They are based on a system of electromagnetic waves which allowed British pilots to detect the position of the German aircrafts without having to patrol to look for them; as they didn’t, they were saving fuel.

Hitler focused on bombing British cities, such as London, in order to gain supremacy instead of concentrating on the RAF airfields. This was a lethal error for Germany. As they were not being constantly attacked, British aircrafts had more time to recover and to rebuild airbases.

The Battle of Britain ended up being the first time Hitler was stopped from achieving his aims and it turned to be vital for preparing the future launch pad for the allied invasion of Europe in 1944. It seems that finally Hitler was starting to have some neglects over his plans.