Editing Battle of Britain (section)

==Aftermath==
The Battle of Britain marked the first major defeat of Germany's military forces, with air superiority seen as the key to victory.<ref>{{harvnb|Bungay|2000|pp=370–373}}</ref> Pre-war theories had led to exaggerated fears of [[strategic bombing]], and UK public opinion was buoyed by coming through the ordeal.<ref>{{harvnb|Bungay|2000|pp=398–399}}</ref> For the RAF, Fighter Command had achieved a great victory in successfully carrying out [[Thomas Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote|Sir Thomas Inskip's]] 1937 air policy of preventing the Germans from knocking Britain out of the war.

The battle also significantly shifted American opinion. During the battle, many Americans accepted the view promoted by [[Joseph Kennedy]], the American ambassador in London, who believed that the United Kingdom could not survive. Roosevelt wanted a second opinion, and sent [[William J. Donovan|William "Wild Bill" Donovan]] on a brief visit to the UK; he became convinced the UK would survive and should be supported in every possible way.<ref>{{harvnb|Deighton|1996|loc=introduction by A.J.P. Taylor, pp. 12–17}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Deighton|1996|pp=172, 285}}</ref> Before the end of the year, American journalist [[Ralph Ingersoll (PM publisher)|Ralph Ingersoll]], after returning from Britain, published a book concluding that "Adolf Hitler met his first defeat in eight years" in what might "go down in history as a battle as important as [[Battle of Waterloo|Waterloo]] or [[Battle of Gettysburg|Gettysburg]]". The turning point was when the Germans reduced the intensity of daylight attacks after 15 September. According to Ingersoll, "[a] majority of responsible British officers who fought through this battle believe that if Hitler and Göring had had the courage and the resources to lose 200 planes a day for the next five days, nothing could have saved London"; instead, "[the Luftwaffe's] morale in combat is definitely broken, and the RAF has been gaining in strength each week."<ref name="ingersoll1940">{{harvnb|Ingersoll|1940|pp=4–5}}</ref>

Both sides in the battle made exaggerated claims of numbers of enemy aircraft shot down. In general, claims were two to three times the actual numbers. Postwar analysis of records has shown that between July and September, the RAF claimed 2,698 kills, while the Luftwaffe fighters claimed 3,198 RAF aircraft shot down.{{citation needed|date=May 2016}} Total losses, and start and end dates for recorded losses, vary for both sides. Luftwaffe losses from 10 July to 30 October 1940 total 1,977 aircraft, including 243 twin- and 569 single-engined fighters, 822 bombers and 343 non-combat types.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> In the same period, RAF Fighter Command aircraft losses number 1,087, including 53 twin-engined fighters.{{citation needed|date=May 2016}} To the RAF figure should be added 376 Bomber Command and 148 Coastal Command aircraft lost conducting bombing, mining, and reconnaissance operations in defence of the country.<ref name="Bungay p. 368">{{harvnb|Bungay|2000|p=368}}</ref>
<!--Most of these two paragraphs are mostly hypothetical arguments and do not really belong in an encyclopaedic article – comment out speculation about outcomes which belong, if anywhere, in a separate section about outcomes...... Dr. Andrew Gordon, who lectures at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, and a former lecturer [[Gary Sheffield (historian)|Professor Gary Sheffield]], have suggested the existence of the Royal Navy was enough to prevent the Germans from invading;<ref>Evans 2006</ref> even had the Luftwaffe won the air battle, the Germans had limited means with which to combat the Royal Navy, which would have intervened to prevent a landing. Some veterans of the battle point out the Royal Navy would have been vulnerable to air attack by the Luftwaffe if Germany had achieved air superiority,<ref name="Harding-25-08-2006">Harding, 25 August 2006.</ref> citing the [[Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse|sinking of ''Prince of Wales'' and ''Repulse'']] in December 1941 by an attack by Japanese aircraft.<ref name="Harding-25-08-2006"/> In late May 1941 during the successful German [[airborne assault]] which seized Crete, the Royal Navy was able to prevent attempted [[Battle of Crete#Second landing attempt|German seaborne landings]] on the coast of Crete, despite [[:Category:Ships sunk by aircraft during the Battle of Crete|losing six ships in three days]] due to undisputed Luftwaffe air supremacy. Churchill later wrote that the Royal Navy's defeat of "these practically defenceless convoys of troops across waters of which they did not possess naval command as well as that of the air is a sample of what might have happened on a gigantic scale in the North Sea and English Channel in September 1940."<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=38296 |supp=y |startpage=3103 |endpage=3119 |date=21 May 1948 |accessdate=16 June 2010}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Churchill|1962|pp=244, 268–269}}</ref> Crete was lost to German airborne troops which neither the RN nor the absent RAF could stop.

A considered view of the battle also has to take into account the vital role of the Royal Navy. It was widely acknowledged by both sides that the only way of achieving a successful invasion of the British Isles was through the establishment of naval supremacy. Given the inability of the Luftwaffe to effect real damage on the RN throughout the battle and during the Dunkirk and Norwegian campaigns, as well as the lack of surface assets in the [[Kriegsmarine]]'s inventory, sea control of the Channel by Germany was impossible. As one of 'the Few', Wg Cdr H R Allen said, "It was sea power that ruled the day in 1940, and fortunately Britain had a sufficiency. The air situation was, of course, important, but by no means fundamental. Without doubt, the five hundred or so section, flight and squadron commanders in Fighter Command earned their laurels. But the real victor was the Royal Navy, the Silent Service."<ref>Cumming 2010 {{Page needed|date=March 2015}}</ref>
The Luftwaffe had 1,380 bombers on 29 June 1940. By 2 November 1940, this had increased to 1,423,<ref>{{harvnb|Murray|2002|pp=53–55}}</ref> and to 1,511 by 21 June 1941, prior to [[Operation Barbarossa]], but showing a drop of 200 from 1,711 reported on 11 May 1940.<ref name="Murray p. 80">{{harvnb|Murray|2002|p=80}}</ref><ref name="de Zeng p. 10">de Zeng et al. Vol. 1, 2007, p. 10.</ref>{{refn|De Zeng gives a different figure of 247 fewer bombers|group=nb}} 1,107 single- and 357 twin-engined daylight fighters were reported on strength prior to the battle on 29 June 1940, compared to 1,440 single- and 188 twin-engined fighters, plus 263 [[night fighter]]s, on 21 June 1941.<ref name="Murray 1983, p. 53"/><ref name="Murray p. 80"/> -->

[[Stephen Bungay]] describes Dowding and Park's strategy of choosing when to engage the enemy whilst maintaining a coherent force as vindicated; their leadership, and the subsequent debates about strategy and tactics, had created enmity among RAF senior commanders and both were sacked from their posts in the immediate aftermath of the battle.<ref>{{harvnb|Deighton|1996|pp=266–268}}</ref> All things considered, the RAF proved to be a robust and capable organisation that was to use all the modern resources available to it to the maximum advantage.<ref>{{harvnb|Bungay|2000|pp=394–396}}</ref> Richard Evans writes:

{{blockquote|Irrespective of whether Hitler was really set on this course, he simply lacked the resources to establish the air superiority that was the sine qua non [prerequisite] of a successful crossing of the English Channel. A third of the initial strength of the German air force, the Luftwaffe, had been lost in the western campaign in the spring. The Germans lacked the trained pilots, the effective fighter aircraft, and the heavy bombers that would have been needed.<ref>Evans, Richard J. "Immoral Rearmament". ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', No. 20, 20 December 2007.</ref>{{refn|The exact percentage was 28. The Luftwaffe deployed 5,638 aircraft for the campaign. 1,428 were destroyed and a further 488 were damaged, but were repairable.<ref>{{harvnb|Hooton|2007|pp=48–49}}</ref>|group=nb}}}}

The Germans launched some spectacular attacks against important British industries, but they could not destroy the British industrial potential, and made little systematic effort to do so. Hindsight does not disguise that the threat to Fighter Command was very real, and for the participants it seemed as if there was a narrow margin between victory and defeat. Nevertheless, even if the German attacks on the 11 Group airfields which guarded southeast England and the approaches to London had continued, the RAF could have withdrawn to the Midlands out of German fighter range and continued the battle from there.<ref>{{harvnb|Wood|Dempster|2003|p=80}}</ref> The victory was as much psychological as physical. Writes Alfred Price:
<blockquote>The truth of the matter, borne out by the events of 18 August, is more prosaic: neither by attacking the airfields nor by attacking London, was the Luftwaffe likely to destroy Fighter Command. Given the size of the British fighter force and the general high quality of its equipment, training and morale, the Luftwaffe could have achieved no more than a Pyrrhic victory. During the action on 18 August, it had cost the Luftwaffe five trained aircrew killed, wounded or taken prisoner, for each British fighter pilot killed or wounded; the ratio was similar on other days in the battle. And this ratio of 5:1 was very close to that between the number of German aircrew involved in the battle and those in Fighter Command. In other words, the two sides were suffering almost the same losses in trained aircrew, in proportion to their overall strengths. In the Battle of Britain, for the first time during the Second World War, the German war machine had set itself a major task which it patently failed to achieve, and so demonstrated that it was not invincible. In stiffening the resolve of those determined to resist Hitler the battle was an important turning point in the conflict.<ref>{{harvnb|Price|1980|pp=182–183}}</ref></blockquote>

Some historians are more cautious in assessing the significance of Germany's failure to knock Britain out of the war. Bungay writes, "Victory in the air achieved a modest strategic goal, for it did not bring Britain any closer to victory in the war, but merely avoided her defeat."<ref>Bungay 2000, p. 386</ref> Overy says, "The Battle of Britain did not seriously weaken Germany and her allies, nor did it much reduce the scale of the threat facing Britain (and the Commonwealth) in 1940/41 until German and Japanese aggression brought the Soviet Union and the United States into the conflict."<ref>Overy 2001, p. 113</ref>

The British victory in the Battle of Britain was achieved at a heavy cost. Total British civilian losses from July to December 1940 were 23,002 dead and 32,138 wounded, with one of the largest single raids on 19 December 1940, in which almost 3,000 civilians died. With the culmination of the concentrated daylight raids, Britain was able to rebuild its military forces and establish itself as an Allied stronghold, later serving as a base from which [[Operation Overlord|the liberation of Western Europe]] was launched.<ref name="Bungay 2000, p. 388">{{harvnb|Bungay|2000|p=388}}</ref>