For Our UK Friends....Interactive Map Showing Where Bombs Fell In London....

[Hardrock69]

http://bombsight.org/#14/51.4937/-0.1844

[Nitro Express]

I'm amazed they could keep track of all the bomb hits. London took a beating but by bombing London it took the pressure off the airfields and bought some time for the Royal Air Force. The Brits were lucky they had radar to know where the Luftwaffe was coming in and good airplanes. Both the Hurricane and Spitfire were excellent aircraft and actually fairly easy to fly. The BF 109 on the other hand with it's narrow landing gear and high torque engine was an accident waiting to happen. The Germans lost more planes to landing and take-off accidents than they did in actual combat. It was like someone designed a fast sleek airplane and then had an afterthought gee, we need to land this thing somehow.

[Nickdfresh]

....The BF 109 on the other hand with it's narrow landing gear and high torque engine was an accident waiting to happen. The Germans lost more planes to landing and take-off accidents than they did in actual combat. It was like someone designed a fast sleek airplane and then had an afterthought gee, we need to land this thing somehow.

No. No they didn't lose more aircraft to accidents, it's a myth. And many of the accidents the Luftwaffe did have were operationally related such as planes coming back low on fuel from extended missions the Me109 was never designed for...

[Nitro Express]

Apparently they lost 10% to accidents resulting from the landing gear design. It wasn't a problem with experienced pilots so much as it was with rookie pilots. But during the Battle of Britain the British were outnumbered and had to get rookie pilots up to speed quick. Having easier planes to fly was a huge advantage. A BF 109 with an experienced capable pilot was a force to be reckoned with but it wasn't the best plane to have to get a bunch of new airmen in the fight quick.

Because of the large ground angle caused by the long legs, forward visibility while on the ground was very poor, a problem exacerbated by the sideways-opening canopy. This meant that pilots had to taxi in a sinuous fashion which also imposed stresses on the splayed undercarriage legs. Ground accidents were a problem with rookie pilots, especially during the later stages of the war when pilots received less training before being sent to operational units.[20] At least 10% of all Bf 109s were lost in takeoff and landing accidents, 1,500 of which occurred between 1939 and 1941.[21] The installation of a fixed "tall" tailwheel on some of the late G-10s and 14s and the K-series helped alleviate the problem to a large extent.[22]

[LoungeMachine]

No. No they didn't lose more aircraft to accidents, it's a myth. And many of the accidents the Luftwaffe did have were operationally related such as planes coming back low on fuel from extended missions the Me109 was never designed for...

Don't argue with a guy who flew for the Germans in WWII, dude...

[Nickdfresh]

Apparently they lost 10% to accidents resulting from the landing gear design. It wasn't a problem with experienced pilots so much as it was with rookie pilots. But during the Battle of Britain the British were outnumbered and had to get rookie pilots up to speed quick. Having easier planes to fly was a huge advantage. A BF 109 with an experienced capable pilot was a force to be reckoned with but it wasn't the best plane to have to get a bunch of new airmen in the fight quick.

The British RAF was outnumbered, and they were under stress when the Luftwaffe was hitting the airfields. But what is often ignored is that the Luftwaffe suffered serious losses in both Poland and France despite seemingly walk-over victories there. The Luftwaffe had been limited to a tactical support force due to the limitations of German industry and was now waging a strategic air campaign for it was never designed or trained to wage at the limits of its aircrafts' ranges and payloads, aircraft flown by exhausted pilots who had been in near continuous combat for months. The Me-109 could only stay over Britain for like 15 minutes, and many were lost simply crashing low on fuel...

And 1,500 accidents is still a drop in the bucket compared to operationally related losses. The RAF, USAAF, and Red Air Forces probably had similar rates with various aircraft....

[Seshmeister]

It's also forgotten that a bunch of Polish aircrew escaped and fought in the Battle of Britain shooting down 200 German planes.

[vandeleur]

I read up a bit on the battle of britain as an alternative to using Iron maiden songs about it as my frame of reference :D

It was a surprise how many different nations were involved in the raf defence of britain.
Another factor in "keeping score " was that both sides exagerated how many they shot down and how many planes they actually had . Both sides overestimating and underestimating each other at the same time .
Enough to say both sides suffered horrendous losses of brave people on both sides.

One thing that may surprise some people is how brave the ordinary (or extra ordinary ) man in the street was when these raids/battles were happening.
I was born in the street next to the enterance to swan hunters ship yard which the germans tried to bomb in to sumbmission.
When we were little we used to play in all the Anderson air raid shelters that had been turned into garden sheds. People just got on with their lives under terrible dangerous conditions .
I asked my grand parents about it and they were totally non plussed , it was like " what else were you meant to do"

[BigBadBrian]

The Luftwaffe had been limited to a tactical support force due to the limitations of German industry and was now waging a strategic air campaign for it was never designed or trained to wage at the limits of its aircrafts' ranges and payloads, aircraft flown by exhausted pilots who had been in near continuous combat for months.

Let's just say also that Great Britain was fortunate that the Luftwaffe was in the hands of that idiot Goring and never produced any 4 engine heavy bombers for use en masse. They had several prototypes, but none came off the production line in any significant quantity.

[Nickdfresh]

It's also forgotten that a bunch of Polish aircrew escaped and fought in the Battle of Britain shooting down 200 German planes.

Here's my Nitro Express moment: my coworker's father was one of the commanders in the squadron...

[Nickdfresh]

Let's just say also that Great Britain was fortunate that the Luftwaffe was in the hands of that idiot Goring and never produced any 4 engine heavy bombers for use en masse. They had several prototypes, but none came off the production line in any significant quantity.

Göring was stupid old cunt, but he had some able underlings. The real problem was German economy simply could not produce enough four engine bombers with everything else as rearming had been prohibitively expensive. This was also compounded by the fact that the Luftwaffe was created almost from scratch only five or six years earlier, making it very modern in comparison to the French Armée de l'Air and the RAF. Four engined bombers were horrendously expensive compared even to twin engined ones and twin engined bombers were good enough to deal with countries bordering Germany in 1940. But more realistic senior commanders like Ernst Udet realized early on that the Luftwaffe could never sustain a strategic air war without vastly more production becoming available. It's one of the reasons he ended up committing suicide because he realized that after a while, Göring was a blusterous liar who favored other blustery liars.

It's also the reason Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union, because the Germans believed their only hope against the industrial juggernaut that was the United States and the inevitable Anglo-American Alliance was seizing the USSR's 'means of production.' This was not only completely unrealistic, it was also ironic as the Soviets were able to move their factories to places like Tank'ograd in Western Russia and Siberia beyond the range of most German bombers - the industry Germany hoped to use to make four and even six engined bombers. Adam Tooze has a great book on all this called The Wages of Destruction....

[Kristy]

Wow. What useful modern information that was, LardRock

[Kristy]

Let's just say also that Great Britain was fortunate that the Luftwaffe was in the hands of that idiot Goring and never produced any 4 engine heavy bombers for use en masse. They had several prototypes, but none came off the production line in any significant quantity.

You sure about that?



Try learning your history before speaking it, fucknuts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_200

And it was Hitler who was too stupid to use it as a bomber.

[Kristy]

The British RAF was outnumbered, and they were under stress when the Luftwaffe was hitting the airfields...

What are you? Charles Dickens of the History Channel?

[BigBadBrian]

You sure about that?

Try learning your history before speaking it, fucknuts.


And it was Hitler who was too stupid to use it as a bomber.

You Dingbat, read my statement again, particularly the part where I said "never produced any 4 engine heavy bombers for use en masse. They had several prototypes, but none came off the production line in any significant quantity."

A production of 276 units is NOTHING. And as Nick said, the decision not to equip the Luftwaffe was both a philosophical one and one based on production capacities. Stay out of a thread you know nothing about, which is most of them.