The Battle of Britain

This battle began when the first German aircraft crossed the English Channel. Blitzkrieg tactics could not work across the Channel so, Hitler was determined to carry out a sea and air invasion to conquer Britain. Besides, this invasion could not be possible if the Germans were attacked by the RAF and the British navy. Therefore, Hitler needed to wipe out the RAF in order to leave the British ships vulnerable to air attack. This plan of bombing air bases to weaken the RAF was put into practice on 1 July 1940, which led to the start of the air war.

The head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering was totally confident as he had more well trained and experienced pilots and more high-quality aircraft than the British, for example, the Messerschmitt 109 fighter, the Heinkel III fighter, the Junkers Ju 88 bomber and the Dornier D.17 bomber.

Still, they had some weaknesses: Goering was not good at tactics and did not understand quite well modern air warfare apart from habitually changing the focus of attacks, creating confusion among pilots. In addition, the German fighting aircraft was not the right type since it was not geared towards gaining air superiority. As regards the fighters, they had very little fuel so they could only fly over England for 30 minutes. Germans bombers were too small so they could not cause enough damage to put the enemies out of action. Plans to build big long-range heavy bombers were cancelled and they would have been capable of devastating airfields and aircraft factories, which would have helped Germany to defeat Britain.

On the other hand, the RAF had its strengths. It was led by Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding who had been planning Britain's air defence system since 1936 and had instead introduced important technical developments as the bullet-proof windscreens for fighter planes, and command and communication systems which allowed fighters to meet quickly and deal effectively with enemy attacks. He was also a supporter of radar which helped RAF planes to avoid being caught on the ground while the Luftwaffe approached. Moreover, the fighter planes -Spitfires and Hurricanes- were better than the Germans'. RAF fighters were able to meet attacks quickly since they were organised into regions.

The British outshoot the Luftwaffe but it still needed more planes so aircraft production was focused on producing only fighter planes.

In September 1940 the Luftwaffe changed tactics and it began to bomb London. This tactic was called 'The Blitz' and it lasted eight months. It is said that by then this Battle had come to an end since Hitler had abandoned his aim to destroy the RAF and had therefore abandoned his plans for invasion too.