Air Campaign 001 - Battle of Britain 1940. The Luftwaffe’s 'Eagle Attack' (2017) COMP.pdf

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A I R C A M PA I G N
BATTLE OF BRITAIN
1940
The Luftwaffe’s ‘Eagle
Attack’
DOUGLAS C. DILDY |
I L LU S T R AT E D B Y G R A H A M T U R N E R
Osprey Publishing
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OSPREY is a trademark of Osprey Publishing Ltd, a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
This electronic edition published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain in 2018
© 2018 Osprey Publishing Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any form without
prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or
reviews. Enquiries should be addressed to the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN:
PB: 9781472820570
ePub: 9781472820594
ePDF: 9781472820587
XML: 9781472826039
Index by Sharon Redmayne
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro, Futura Std, Sabon and Akzidenz-Grotesk Condensed
Cartography by bounford.com
3D BEVs by The Black Spot
Diagrams by Adam Tooby
Page layouts by PDQ Digital Media Solutions, Bungay, UK
Artist’s Note
Readers may care to note that the original paintings from which the colour plates in this book
were prepared are available for private sale. All reproduction copyright whatsoever is retained by
the Publishers. All enquiries should be addressed to:
Graham Turner, PO Box 568, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP17 8EX, UK, or
www.studio88.co.uk
The Publishers regret that they can enter into no correspondence upon this matter.
Imperial War Museums Collections
Many of the photos in this book come from the huge collections of IWM (Imperial War
Museums) which cover all aspects of conflict involving Britain and the Commonwealth since
the start of the twentieth century. These rich resources are available online to search, browse and
buy at
www.iwm.org.uk/collections.
In addition to Collections Online, you can visit the Visitor
Rooms where you can explore over 8 million photographs, thousands of hours of moving
images, the largest sound archive of its kind in the world, thousands of diaries and letters
written by people in wartime, and a huge reference library. To make an appointment, call
(020) 7416 5320, or e-mail
mail@iwm.org.uk
Imperial War Museums
www.iwm.org.uk
Front Cover: Art by Graham Turner, © Osprey Publishing
Osprey Publishing supports the Woodland Trust, the UK’s leading woodland conservation
charity. Between 2014 and 2018 our donations are being spent on their Centenary Woods
project in the UK.
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Author’s Acknowledgements
This, the first-ever English-language
account of the ‘Battle of Britain’ written
from the Luftwaffe’s operational perspective,
is the product of the synergistic efforts
of several individuals. First and foremost,
I must praise editor Tom Milner for his
vision of – and determination to see to
fruition – Osprey’s new Air Campaign series
and I thank him for the privilege of
allowing me to write the premier volume
of this new series, fittingly on history’s
prototypical independent air campaign.
I am also deeply indebted to Paul E. Eden,
the noted British aviation historian,
journalist and editor – who first
recommended an air campaign series
to Osprey years ago – for his unstinting
encouragement and steadfast support
of my efforts in this project. His excellent,
insightful critique and thought-provoking
questions made the final product far better
than it ever could have been otherwise. Also
to be thanked are fellow Osprey authors
Chris Goss, Paul Crickmore and Ryan
Noppen for their astute feedback and
generous suggestions. I thank, too,
Ms. Gina McNeely, whose tireless research
at the US National Archive and Records
Administration (NARA) provided
numerous World War II Luftwaffe
photographs from 1940, several of which
are published herein for the first time.
Finally, and most importantly, I thank
my dear wife, Ann, for her incredible
inspiration in her continuing – and thus far
victorious – battle with a life-threatening
disease and her constant wellspring of
strength, patience, and motivation in
completing this project. I have long wanted
to research, comprehend, evaluate, and
describe in detail the ‘Battle of Britain’
from the air campaign – in this case, the
Luftwaffe’s – perspective, and these are the
people who have enabled and encouraged
me to do so – to each one I say simply,
but profoundly, ‘Thank you.’
A I R
C A M P A I G N
Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHRONOLOGY
ATTACKER’S CAPABILITIES
DEFENDER’S CAPABILITIES
CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES
THE CAMPAIGN
AFTERMATH AND ANALYSIS
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER READING
INDEX
4
8
10
24
38
44
89
93
95
4
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Origins of the campaign
‘Was num?’
(‘What
now?’) In June 1940,
when the panzers reached
the Channel coast and the
conquest of France was
complete, the Wehrmacht
had no plans or
preparations for a cross-
Channel invasion of
Britain. (NARA)
The epic clash of air forces over southern England during the late summer and autumn
of 1940 – that fierce aerial struggle we know today as ‘The Battle of Britain’ – was, in fact,
both the goal and the culmination of Adolf Hitler’s
Westfeldzug
(‘Western Campaign’),
which began on 10 May 1940 as the invasion of France and the Low Countries. Following
a series of successful
Blumenkriege
(‘flower wars’) – five bloodless victories
1
that progressively
stunned the peaceful peoples and political leadership of Britain and France – Hitler started
World War II with a full-blown invasion of the 20-year-old nation of Poland. Having
allowed the previous episodes to pass with no more than hollow rhetoric and worthless
accords – due almost entirely to the Allies’ woeful unpreparedness for war, especially in
terms of their air forces – on 25 August the governments of Britain and France pledged that
if Hitler invaded Poland, they would declare war on Germany. Undeterred, Hitler launched
Fall Weiß
(‘Case White’) on 1 September, and three days later Germany, for the second time
in 25 years, was once again at war with the two western democracies.
The real aim of Hitler’s unrelenting succession of territorial acquisitions and conquests
– espoused in the second volume of his polemic manifesto
Mein Kampf
and his bellicose
rhetoric once in power – was the invasion of Soviet Russia and the elimination of Bolshevik
Communism as a threat to Nazi Germany. To avoid the Kaiser’s most egregious strategic
error of World War I – the ill-fated attempt to fight a ‘two-front war’ – Hitler had adroitly,
and at least temporarily, neutralized the threat from the East with the 23 August 1939
signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that divided Poland between Germany and the
Soviet Union (USSR). The pact’s pledges of non-aggression between the two not only gave
Hitler time to prepare for the pursuit of his ultimate geopolitical goal – the invasion of
1 These were: occupation of the Rhineland in March 1936, annexation of Austria in April 1938, occupation
of the Sudetenland in October 1938, the occupation of the rest of Bohemia-Moravia and the annexation of
Lithuania’s Memel district in March 1939.

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