I have just got back from a weekend away and have been asked by a number of people to take a look at this thread.

My first instinct is to lock it for the night and sort it out tomorrow when I’m not quite so tired.

But with the programme almost upon us I think this might not be appropriate.

I am therefore going to place an open invitation to Truthseeker, Tangmere and 1940buff, from which others here can reach their own conclusions.

“Do any of you three have an explanation as to why your postings all originate from a shared IP address?”

You can respond by PM or on the open forum. I’m sure many of the contributors will be interested in the answer.

Moggy
Moderator

Opps 😮

Love it :diablo: :diablo: :diablo:

The question is BIGVERN did you automatically know they were 43 Sqn markings or did you look it up afterwoods? :diablo:

Oh you of little faith, what do you think? :p I seen plenty of Phantoms and Tornados in my life with Black and White Checker bars on them. :rolleyes:

Well if you don’t believe the pilots who do you believe, you’ve got a nerve

Well if you belive the pilots we shot down 180+ germans on 15th September. Actual figure was less than 60.

coming out with such a dismissive statment about the people who flew both the Spit& hurri and have said on both tv interviews and other publications that the BB would have been lost with an all hurricane force, how many times are you and others going to keep on about “But the Hurricane shot down more aircraft than the Spit”, we blo&dy well know, but at the end of the day the Battle of Britain will be remembered as a battle won by Michell’s finestnot by the hurricane, not by radar, not by command an control, but by pilots from all over the world and Empire flying Spitfire’s over the fields of Kent, 😀

Had that been the case, why did Park and Dowding not load 11 Group with every Spitfire Sqn that they could. Reason, The Hurricane was good enough to do the job (they could have got away with having just Hurricane Squadrons up north as there was no BF-109 threat there) . Does anybody know what the loss ratio percentage to type strength was for both types during the battle.

As for the Radar and Integrated Command and Control systems, Why are they now the number one targets in any modern air power doctrine?

Are you quoting from fact ????

Yes each part of the infrastructure had it’s to play, however to say that if one wasn’t in place or lost, the Battle would have been lost, is ludicrous. With hindsight it’s easy to make claims like that, because the history books have always put a lot of emphasis on the role that RDF played. Without RDF it may/would have meant a rethinking of tactics, possibly pulling Squadrons further in land to give them, that extra bit of time to form up, possibly running standing patrols along the south coast. In any case the Luftwaffe still had to cross 20 miles of water, and if the Squadrons had been pulled back, then to reach their targets they would have had to cross that 50 – 100 miles of extra land, remember in the initial stages the RAF bases were the intended targets.

I wonder if this had happened if the High Command would have done exactly as they did with the V1 threat, create a belt of antiaircraft along the south coast ???? Mind you V1’s were travelling a lot lower than your average JU88 or HE111.

Well just look at what happened to the Air Forces in Poland, France, Belgium, Holland and Russia without RDF, massive losses on the ground. Standing patrols, fine, just one problem. The RAF didn’t have resources to do it effectively, one of the reasons that the development of RDF and the integrated command system had a high priority in the late 1930’s. Pull the Squadron’s back. Well in the case of Manston, that’s just what Park had to do as the place was being hit by low level raiders with no warning at all and they couldn’t keep the field operational. For the rest of the Squadron’s, had the RDF chain been attacked as it should have been, they would have had to have been pulled back and rely on the ROC. However you would have no idea of raid size with cloud (At least RDF gave a rough idea of raid size) The other thing about Chain Home was it didn’t just give warning of the bombers crossing the coast, but of them forming up and the fact that there was not a second raid right behind to catch your fighters on the ground refuelling and rearming after trying to stop first attack. You also have to remember that the aircrews were exhausted with RDF warning. What do you think would have happened with the standing patrols thrown in. RDF in 1940 was by no means perfect, however I would say that it was vital.

As for the Guns in 1944, there were two reasons that they were so effective against the V1’s and they are: reason 1 . RADAR in the form of the American SCR gun laying radar and reason 2. RADAR in the form of the Radio Proximity Fuze that turned a near miss into a kill. Both did not exist in 1940.

What would we think about the Hurricane, if the Spitfire out numbered the Hurricane by the same numbers?, if the majority of the squadrons were equiped with Spits , my guess is that the Hurricane would be mentioned in the same way as the P40 ,a good aeroplane but outclassed by later designs. People delight in “pulling the spitfire down” , by saying that the Hurricane shot down more A/C, but rarely mention that, there were more of them to start with, and that their role was (in the main) targetting the bombers, larger slower moving targets,apparently the Hurricane was a “stable gun platform” ,what happens to the Spitfire when its guns are fired? I’ve never heard it said that the Spitfire fell out of the sky everytime the gun button was pressed! so one can only presume, it too was a stable gun platform.

If so, why did the Hurricanes shot down as many BF-109s as the Spitfires did (as well as twice as many bombers).

You forgot the Lockheed U2

Think in Russian

Firefly anyone?

I’ll take your fly and rasie it by a fox :diablo: :diablo: