Britain, Battle of (July 10–September 17, 1940) Channel during July and early August, the battle began officially for the Luftwaffe on Adlertag (“Eagle Day”), or August 13, 1940, which commenced the protracted Operation ADLERANGRIFF (“Eagle Attack”) Although the fight in the sky was extremely dramatic at the time and in later recollection, at no point was the RAF on the verge of defeat It lost many aircraft and good men in fighting over the south, but it was able to replace both without drawing down its main reserves by depleting the defense of the north of Britain The fundamental problem for the Germans was a basic failure to understand that air warfare by its nature was attritional and therefore, that the RAF could not be eliminated in a single “decisive battle.” The Luftwaffe was also ill-equipped for the mission, with slow medium bombers with inadequate bomb loads and fighters escorts of still more limited range That was true even though it had tried to develop a strategic bombing capacity before the war and had a significant lead in long-distance navigation and other blind-bombing aids There were several keys to the outcome The RAF fighter force was larger than the Luftwaffe realized when the fight began, despite heavy losses over France and the Low Countries in May and June Also, Britain was able to significantly outproduce Germany in fighter aircraft throughout the campaign: Luftwaffe intelligence calculated a fighter replacement rate of 180–300 per month, whereas the RAF actually achieved a rate of nearly 500 per month The Wehrmacht held back resources from German fighter production, which underachieved its goal by 40 percent in the summer of 1940 The RAF thus readily replaced its aircraft losses where the Luftwaffe did not Similar erroneous estimates of RAF losses marked incompetent Luftwaffe intelligence reports throughout the battle Also, the fight took place over Britain That meant the RAF recovered many downed pilots but the Luftwaffe lost aircraft and crews: nearly 1,400 aircraft all told and many crews killed, taken prisoner, or lost in the Channel British training schemes were already operating at full tilt, whereas the Luftwaffe’s were not The RAF therefore did not have to draw down main reserves from the center and north of the country without also replacing those more idle squadrons with fresh aircraft and pilots Fighter Command was further aided by a series of bad decisions born of sheer Nazi arrogance and the erratic decision-making system in Germany The most fateful of these was Hitler’s choice—provoked by rage over two small British raids against Berlin—to switch bomber targeting from RAF airfields to attacks on British cities That caused many civilian deaths but allowed the RAF to continue to attrit German bombers and fighters alike The fundamental reason for the German defeat was the fact that the Luftwaffe was asked to improvise a strategic air campaign for which it did not have the right planes or doctrine, against sophisticated British air and ground defenses in preparation over several years Finally, the Luftwaffe had no precedent, let alone direct experience, in attacking an enemy that waited behind a comprehensive early warning radar system and had an excellent command-and-control radio net with which to direct fighter air defenses When Luftwaffe losses became intolerable Hitler called off the air battle and invasion and turned instead to planning BARBAROSSA, the great attack on the Soviet Union by which he intended to deny Britain its last available continental 189