Battle Of Britain Essay Research Paper The — страница 7

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with his pilots on their destruction of the RAF. When he arrived, he saw that the RAF was not only still in existence, but was causing major damage to his Luftwaffe. ?Angrily he accused his men of cowardice. ?You have the best aircraft in the world,? he cried. ?What more do you want?? ?A squadron of Spitfires,? replied Adolf Galland, one of Germany?s fighter aces.? (Mosley 115) The arrogance and pompousness of Goering greatly affected the outcome of the aerial war: Goering had been a poor choice by Hitler to run the air force. It was not that his self-indulgent lifestyle dismayed the pilots who were working hard at a great risk to win supremacy in the air ? or that he had accused his fighter pilots of lack of determination. Goering had little or no strategic or tactical

experience or acumen and his technical knowledge modern warfare also left much to be desired ? with the result that his expectations for the Luftwaffe were ludicrously over-optimistic. (Willis, John. Churchill?s Few. New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1985. 132). Great Britain held one advantage over Germany when it came to skilled aircrews: While downed German pilots were a total loss to the Luftwaffe, they were now facing a shortage of skilled aircrews: while on the other hand, the loss of RAF pilots was being made up by an over-increasing influx of volunteer aircrews from the Dominion, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia and the United States. (Walker). During phase one and phase two of the Battle of Britain, only one place was safe from German

attack: London. Goering and Hitler knew that a bombing on the civilians of the Britain would give more reason for the United States to join the British cause if it saw Britain?s cities laid waste and the faces of its innocent bystanders being wiped out. Hitler ordered Goering to stay away from London. On the night of August 24, 1940, a stream of bombers was making a bomb drop on a fuel dump along the Thameshaven River when they encountered heavy flak. The bombers were running out of fuel, so they dumped their cargo and turned home. Little did they know that their bombs had been dropped over London. This accidental bombing of London gave Churchill the excuse to change his tactics. He ordered a bomber command who had been commissioned to drop leaflets over Germany to load up with

bombs and head for Berlin. Goering said that if Berlin were ever bombed, people could call him Meier, which was used in a derogatory sense by the Germans as it referred to Jews. On August 26, Churchill?s bombers unloaded their reprisal bombs on Berlin in the early hours of the morning. The RAF continued to bomb Berlin for a week straight until Hitler finally caved in and ordered a change of tactics. The Luftwaffe was to concentrate on the bombing of London as a prelude to Operation Sealion (Mosley 117-119). With that, the effective strategies employed by the Luftwaffe in the beginning of phase two were abandoned to settle the score: the capital of Great Britain was to be destroyed. The Battle of Britain?s third phase consisted of concentrated bombings of the civilian population

and forcing British fighters to engage in the air. Along with daytime bombings, Germany coupled nighttime bombings on London and other major industrial centers and ports, such as Liverpool to compliment their daily raids (Bickers 108). On September 7 1940, Germany ordered the bomb attack that was expected by everyone except the RAF: 100 plus Nazi bombers and 300 Nazi fighters were on their way over. RAF fighters were sent to intercept as the Nazi squadrons split, as they always did. Different squadrons heading for different targets. Dowding suddenly thought, what if they didn?t split up and came en masse. There would be no fighters to stop them; the path to London would be wide open. ?That?s funny,? said Robert Wright. ?They don?t seem to be splitting up, do they?? (Mosley

130-131). The daylight bombing of London did a great amount of damage. This damage was coupled with a bombing that night. This brought the amount of civilians killed or seriously injured to about 2,000 total in the two bombings. Twenty-one British squadrons went to intercept the German bombing units but were often too late as the bombers had already unloaded their cargo. The German Air Force lost just forty-one aircraft while Britain lost seventeen pilots and forty-four fighters destroyed or badly-damaged. A young civilian remembered his experience in London at this time when he wrote; ?The first bombs fell on London proper on a night toward the end of August. The next bombs, as I remember fell on the night of September 5 and 6. This attack was heavier and smashed several small