The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945

by Richard Overy

During the Battle of Britain the peak loss rate for Fighter Command reached 25 percent in September 1940. German Air Force monthly fighter losses were already 30 percent of the force in January 1944 and more than 50 percent by May (see table 3.1). Numerical inferiority was then compounded with the demand that German fighters seek out the Allied bombers rather than fighters, which made them more vulnerable at the moment of attack, and by the decision to assemble large numbers of fighters together (like Douglas Bader’s “Big Wings” in the Battle of Britain); this meant time lost in flight to assembly points and, for pilots who had flown on the Eastern Front in pairs or loose groups of four, a difficult adjustment to flying in larger formations.67 The RAF in 1940 avoided both of these operational handicaps by using Spitfires against enemy fighters, Hurricanes against the bombers, while Dowding judiciously resisted the switch to “Big Wings.” The difference between the two sides was not simply a product of economic resources, as is usually argued, but stemmed from operational and tactical choices that rested in the end with those in command.