…The British had been aware of the German Lorenz bombing gear since fairly early in the war, when a damaged German bomber on a mining mission made a relatively soft crashlanding in Kent. The Lorenz Gear, typically used for bad weather landing, was far more powerful than needed for that purpose and the British determined that it was a bomb aiming system fairly quickly. However they made one mistake, in that they determined that it was purely a short ranged tactical bombing system, meant for use in close proximity to the frontlines in coordination with ground troops. This was due to an oversight, knowing that the frequencies used were suitable only for near line of sight use, and not realizing that with elevated transmitters aircraft at 20,000 feet were effectively line of site even at a distance of over 400 miles. By using two beams, one projected from the Ruhr and one from the Danish border, bombers could follow one and then release when encountering the other beam, which intersected in an area approximately a hundred yards across right over their target.
The first raid with the device occurred on October 30th with 50 bombers attacking an aircraft factory in the Midlands in concert with a larger raid on London and several smaller raids on other targets. The attack was a success, with the factory in question knocked out for 8 months, but poor intelligence meant that the factory they targeted was only producing trainers and not fighters or bombers. Furthermore the choice of a factory for a target at all clashed with the goal of the Luftwaffe’s campaign as it stood at the end of October. Von Richthofen wanted to combine nighttime bomber attacks with daytime fighter attacks to cripple the British transportation net, and thus the British economy. However by the end of October he was busy planning the air portions of Otto and organizing the defense of the Reich, leaving the Battle of Britain to subordinates. This meant he did not notice that the Lorenz bombing team continued to target factories in accordance with early directives that it was meant for use against point targets, with area targets to be handled with conventional bombing and not shifting to the revised definition that included railway marshalling yards as point targets for night bombers.
Four additional Lorenz guided attacks occurred in the first week of November, impacting bomber production and knocking out a plant for tank engines, before the British noticed that the German night attacks were too accurate for conventional navigation. A modified bomber was set up and noticed the presence of powerful Lorenz beams, converging over an aircraft factory making transports, thanks to the German practice of turning on the beams twelve hours before the mission.
Three more factories were knocked out before the British successfully managed a method of interfering with the German system by using local transmitters to mimic the crossbeams on the 15th, effectively providing many possible target points and no way to differentiate save by minute timing differences in the signals. Accuracy plummeted and became worse than even conventional night bombing, which was lucky to hit London. Despite this the Germans kept attempting to use the system, even as the British improved their jamming within a weak to be precisely synchronized to the German signal and thus totally indistinguishable.
In the daylight the Germans continued with coastal and Channel attacks by dive bombers, nuisance raids with heavy fighters and massed attacks by single engine fighters on the British transport system. The Germans did not attempt to press harder in order to begin conserving aircraft for Otto, but continued at a low enough pace to be sustainable.
On November 26th the British received a lucky break in the form of forewarning about a raid on Portsmouth thanks to an agent in occupied France. Fighter Command was massed and able to intercept the Germans over the channel and inflict dreadful losses, shooting down 38 fighters for the loss of 8. The loss of multiple squadrons in a single day came at the same time as high command began reducing replacements to prepare for Otto. Already needing to reduce operations to match the reduced pace of replacement aircraft the severe losses led to a temporary halt to operations over Britian and a reduction in operations over the channel. The British quickly filled the gap and increased patrols of their own.
By December 5th the Luftwaffe was unable to conduct daylight operations with dive bombers over the British coast and was forced to curtail operations over the Channel, while their nuisance raids were cut in half. Luftwaffe planners considered taking the offensive again once they recovered but an audacious British raid that destroyed 21 fighters on the ground on the 7th made that impractical for the moment.
At night things continued to get worse as the British began to be able to do more than jam but effectively manipulate the German Lorenz beams, allowing them to cause them to drop their bombs in open wasteland and to interfere with their navigation so that they could not find their way home properly. Bomber losses climbed precipitously and it became clear that the twin beam Lorenz Bombing System was useless. On the 10th Von Richthofen temporarily called off all bombing of Britian outside of retaliation missions on London while he attempted to crate a strategy to defeat Britain with the resources available in the west.
Very quickly he found that his only option was to wait for the more advanced and difficult to jam Multi Beam Lorenz system, which would not be available until January. Between the cessation of directed night bombing and the pulling back of German fighters the British were thus given a reprieve of a month, during which they were able to vastly improve their position. December 9th is thus considered the end of the Battle of Britian…
…The Primary German failure in the Battle of Britian was Hitler’s retaliation against London, wasting resources on a symbolic target that could have been used to degrade British air defenses and production. The second failure was the division between attacking British industry and attacking transport targets, had the latter been focused exclusively on, as the former could not be, the results would have been significantly greater. The third was the failure of Luftwaffe intelligence to properly identify and prioritize targeting amongst the categories so that what they did have could be applied to maximum effect.
As it was the Battle of Britian can only be considered a partial failure, as it did keep Britian’s air assets pinned to the British isles for all of 1941 and had a significant impact on British production at a time when it was most significant…
…The British lost about 2400 aircraft, 1700 fighters, 500 bombers and 200 other types, while the Germans lost 2500, 1200 fighters, 1200 bombers and 100 other types. In aircrew losses were 2150 British dead and 50 POW and 3200 German dead with 1300 POW. As British aircraft production overtook German the loss ratio broadly favored the British, while in aircrew the losses were even more favorable to the British with their superior aircrew training system. British aircrew quality increased over the course of the battle while German quality fell somewhat…
…With the end of the Battle of Britian initiative in the air shifted from the Luftwaffe to the RAF, with Bomber Command eager to avenge Britain’s suffering on Germany, once they had the resources to do a proper job of it…
-Excerpt from Airpower!, Dewitt Publishing, Los Angeles, 2010
…On November 3rd the water pipe to the Egyptian frontier was complete and Sanna was ready to take the offensive in North Africa once again. He had reinforced his troops in the theater to 4 infantry, 2 motorized and 2 armored divisions, though only two of the infantry divisions were combat capable, with heavy air support. Against this the British had one armored and one Indian infantry division present in the field, with an additional British infantry division split between the Suez canal zone and Cairo and an Australian infantry division in the process of unloading at Port Suez.
Sanna’s goal was to destroy the two British divisions at the front, which would force the British to divert troops from Kenya and protect Italian East Africa by proxy. He planned to use his foot infantry divisions backed by one motorized and one armored division to occupy the British while sweeping around behind them with his other divisions in a shallow flanking maneuver.
The operation began on November 15th with a sharp hurricane bombardment, followed by a massed air attack. The British lacked the ability to contest the skies and Italian air supremacy meant that their artillery could not respond effectively. Despite that the British were well dug in with properly sited defenses, and the generally inadequate nature of the Italian artillery park was felt here, with the Italian assault made only tentative progress on the first day. During the night the British artillery responded with a vengeance, inflicting moderate casualties on the exposed Italians, but not risking the assault.
On the 16th the diversionary assault continued while the Italians launched the flanking maneuver. They were constrained by the escarpment to their south, which made it easy for the British to spot the maneuver. Many small skirmishes were fought between the Italian vanguard and the British scouts on their flank, with the more aggressive and motivated British performing better despite their numerical disadvantage.
On the 17th fighting on the front began to reduce as the British infantry began a phased fall back while the British armor attempted to counter attack the Italian flanking attack. The British tanks were better handled but most of them were machine gun armed lights, with relatively few 2pdr armed units. The Italians had proportionally more of their 47mm armed tanks in their force and more tanks in total. Losses were mostly equal, which favored the more numerous Italians, who were also able to hold the field and recover their disabled tanks while the British could not.
Seeing the writing on the wall the British began a withdrawal to Sidi Barrani on the 18th. The Italians harassed them every step of the way with armored cars and air power. On the 20th after several skirmishes went badly the British decided to withdraw to El Tarfaya about 10 miles further east, completing the withdrawal on the 23rd. The Italians captured Sidi Barrani on the 24th and made no further attempt to pursue, preferring to let their logistics catch up before resuming with a planned offensive…
…Following the battle for Sidi Barrani the British received a large amount of equipment sent from the British isles after the invasion scare ended that served to replace their losses.
In terms of tanks and armored cars they were back to full strength while in terms of artillery and anti-aircraft weapons they were actually stronger, with the only deficiency being in towed AT guns.
Additional aircraft would take slightly longer, with Headsman squadrons being stood up at the beginning of January and finally reducing Italian Air Supremacy to mere superiority…
…Despite the success of Operation Palimpsest the Italians managed to once more neutralize Malta’s airpower by the 6th of August and were from then on able to once more bomb the island with impunity. The British, whose carrier wings had been depleted in the course of Palimpsest were unable to repeat the performance and the Italians were able to steadily degrade the island’s defenses.
After 4 months of preparatory bombing and naval bombardments they were finally ready to eliminate the potential threat to their supply line in January…
…By the end of the year the British had been able to mass enough forces in Kenya from their African colonies and Dominion to launch an invasion of Italian Somalia…
-Excerpt from The Desert War, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2001
A/N Okay I won't say I've really recovered from my father's untimely passing, but I am ready to start writing again, as a return to some semblance of normalcy
