The Battle of Britain (13 page)

Authors: Richard Overy

BOOK: The Battle of Britain

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21
Orwell, ‘War-time Diary: 1941’, p. 443, entry for 8 April 1941.

22
R. Churchill (ed.),
Into Battle: Speeches by the Right Hon. Winston S. Churchill
(London, 1941), p. 234, speech broadcast 18 June 1940; Nicolson,
Diaries and Letters,
p. 132, diary 31 December 1940; PRO AIR 16/635, HQ 11 Group to HQ Fighter Command, November 1940, p. 4.

23
See S. Ritchie, ‘A Political Intrigue against the Chief of the Air Staff: The Downfall of Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall’,
War & Society,
16 (1998), pp. 83–104.

24
PRO AIR 19/258, letter from Air Ministry to Sinclair, 5 April 1941, for details on the pamphlet; on the Despatch see AIR 2/7771, circulation list for Dowding’s Despatch, 14 September 1941, CAB 120/311: Churchill to Sinclair, 15 June 1941; Churchill to Portal, 23 August 1942; Portal to Churchill, 27 August 1942.

25
PRO CAB 120/294, Churchill to Sinclair, 21 August 1940. See N. J. Cull,
Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign against American ‘Neutrality’ in World War II
(Oxford, 1995), ch. 3.

26
PRO INF 1/849, Ministry of Information Policy Committee, meeting of 21 June 1940, p. 1.

27
PRO INF 1/292, Home Intelligence weekly report, 18–24 December 1940, p. 1.

28
PRO AIR 22/100, ‘Fighter Command Daily Casualties’. According to the daily statistics reported to the Air Ministry, from 1 July until 1 November 1940 Fighter Command lost 284 pilots killed on operations and 159 killed in non-operational
situations. The discrepancy between the two figures is difficult to explain. Post-war calculations of total pilot casualties give a slightly higher figure of 458, most of whom died in combat. The number of genuinely accidental deaths has been calculated at somewhere between 30 and 50. The Air Ministry figures suggest that combat was defined more narrowly at the time, which may explain the difference between wartime and post-war statistics. In addition to the pilot deaths, more than 200 suffered serious injury.

29
W. J. West,
Orwell: The War Commentaries
(London, 1985), pp. 168–9, broadcast 24 October 1942.

TABLES AND MAPS

THE HURRICANE AND THE SPITFIRE:
PRODUCTION, OPERATIONAL STRENGTH AND LOSSES

Table 1:
Production per week, June–November 1940

Date	Hurricanes	Spitfires
1–7 June	87	22
8–14 June	79	22
15–21 June	67	25
22–28 June	75	21
29 June–5 July	68	26
6–12 July	65	32
13–19 July	57	30
20–26 July	67	41
27 July–2 August	65	37
3–9 August	58	41
10–16 August	54	37
17–23 August	43	31
24–30 August	64	44
31 August–6 September	54	37
7–13 September	54	36
14–20 September	56	38
21–27 September	57	40
28 September–4 October	58	34
5–11 October	60	32
12–18 October	55	31
19–25 October	55	25
26 October–1 November	69	42
Total	1,367	724

Table 2:
Operational strength: number of squadrons, July–October 1940

Date	Hurricane squadrons	Spitfire squadrons
14 July 1940
10 Group	2	2
11 Group	12	7
12 Group	6	5
13 Group	5	5
Total	25	19
1 September 1940
10 Group	4	4
11 Group	14	6
12 Group	6	6
13 Group	9	2
Total	33	18
30 September 1940
10 Group	6	3
11 Group	13	7
12 Group	6	6
13 Group	9 ^*	3
Total	34	19
28 October 1940
10 Group	6	3
11 Group	13	8
12 Group	7	6
13 Group	7 ^**	3
Total	33	20

Table 3:
Operational losses per week, July–November 1940 (aircraft totally destroyed)

Date	Hurricanes	Spitfires
10 May–29 July	173	110
30 July–5 August	2	9
6–12 August	47	25
13–19 August	84	38
20–26 August	39	33
27 August–2 September	96	48
3–9 September	86	53
10–16 September	50	24
17–23 September	21	19
24–30 September	60	29
1–7 October	17	19
8–14 October	21	19
15–21 October	18	14
22–28 October	22	16
29 October–4 November	17	11
Total	753	467
(as percentage)	61.7	38.3

Sources:

Table 1: PRO AIR 22/293, ‘Weekly Output of Fighters’.

Table 2: PRO AIR 16/365, ‘Fighter Command, Operational Strength of Squadrons and Order of Battle’.

Table 3: PRO AIR 22/262, ‘Daily Returns of Casualties to RAF Aircraft’, 25 June–29 September 1940.

SINGLE-ENGINED FIGHTER PILOT STRENGTH,
RAF AND GERMAN AIR FORCE

Table 1:
Fighter Command pilot strength

Week ending	Establishment	Operational strength
30 June 1940	1,482	1,200
27 July 1940	1,456	1,377
17 August 1940	1,558	1,379
31 August 1940	1,558	1,422
14 September 1940	1,662	1,492
28 September 1940	1,662	1,581
19 October 1940	1,714	1,752
2 November 1940	1,727	1,796

Table 2:
German Air Force, single-engined fighter pilot strength

Date	Fully operational pilots
1 June 1940	906
1 August 1940	869
1 September 1940	735
1 November 1940	673

Sources:

Table 1: PRO AIR 22/296, ‘Personnel: Casualties, Strength and Establishment of the RAF’.

Table 2: C. Webster and N. Frankland,
The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany
(4 vols, London, 1961), vol. 4, p. 501; W. Murray,
Luftwaffe: Strategy for Defeat
1933–1945 (London, 1985), p. 54. For September, Webster and Frankland give a figure of 688 operational pilots.