Battle of Britain Day is the name given to the day of the large-scale aerial battle that took place on 15 September 1940, during the Battle of Britain.
On this day the Luftwaffe embarked on an all-out attack against
In the aftermath of the raid, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion [the German plan to invade the
Battle of Britain Day is now an annual commemoration of the battle in the
Evaluation of the Day’s
Events
In the two main engagements, the fighter losses had been about equal. The big difference was the bombers losses. Fighter Command had had greater success against the afternoon attack rather than the morning assault, which it out numbered 2:1. The ratio of German fighters to bombers had been 3:1 in the morning but 5:1 in the afternoon, so there were more targets. The more bombers Kesselring sent, the more were lost.
Kesselring was back where he started. Park's handling of the actions was a masterpiece of aggressive defence, yet he was not under the same pressure as he had been in the battles during August when air battles were so confusing they were hard to control. A big set-piece offensive played into his hands.
Leigh-Mallory claimed the Big Wings had destroyed entire formations of enemy aircraft upon seeing them. He even claimed the RAF outnumbered their opponents in several engagements. In the afternoon battle, he claimed that the Wing could not get into position to break up the bombers in time and was intercepted by German fighters. Still, while that was true he also claimed his units had shot down 105 enemy aircraft and probably destroyed a further 40. He claimed another 18 damaged for the loss of 14 and six pilots.
The claims were a massive exaggeration. But while the Big Wing had proven physically ineffective for the most part, its biggest contribution to the day had been its use as a psychological weapon. German aircrews had been told the RAF was a defeated force and the German bomber units that had seen the Big Wing form up were quite shocked, and those crews in the badly hit units, including KG 2 and KG 3, that had witnessed head-on collisions with German aircraft were badly shaken.
A German victory on the Battle of Britain Day was unlikely. It could only have been possible if Park had made crass errors and had been caught on the ground. Stephen Bungay postulates that had the loss rates been reversed, Dowding could have replaced those with reinforcements from his C units and carried on. Moreover, during both major engagements Fighter Command had used less than ½ of its strength. It would have been able to meet the Luftwaffe again on the morrow.
Hermann Göring met his staff at Karinhall the following day for a conference. Their assessments of the air battle verged on pure fantasy. They concluded the RAF had withdrawn all available fighter units from all over the country to concentrate on
The OKL believed that the British were down to their last 300 fighters, with only 250 being produced. To stop fighter production, factories in
Theo Osterkamp pointed to the massed formations used by the British (Big Wing), and put their use down to the ineffectiveness of the 15 September raids. Göring was delighted with the news that the British were committing mass formations to battle. The Big Wing's use would allow the German fighters to engage and destroy RAF fighters in large numbers. However, the Germans had not realised this stratagem was by no means the uniform strategy in Fighter Command. Nevertheless, the OKL were still confident of victory. It blamed the bad weather and RAF's last-minute change of strategy for prolonging summer operations. Still, the Luftwaffe bomber crews were ordered to prepare winter quarters. The campaign turned to
Aftermath: Overclaiming and
Propaganda
Overclaiming in aerial warfare is not uncommon. During the Second World War, pilots often claimed more aircraft shot down than was actually the case. The Air Ministry released a press statement on 15 September that 175–185 German aircraft had been shot down. The actual number of aircraft destroyed was ⅔ lower and significantly less than the number of German losses on 15 and 18 August (The Hardest Day), in which the Luftwaffe lost 75 and 69 respectively.
At 20:00, Churchill, who had returned to
On 16 September, a British flying boat arrived in
AOC 11 Group Keith Park was livid with the claim returns. As far as he was concerned, claiming 200 on one day was nonsense. He placed particular blame on Leigh-Mallory's Big Wing which had claimed one third, around 60, of the 185 'victories' (total claims were 81 in the morning and 104 in the afternoon). More damage should have been done to German bombers inbound to the target rather than destroying stragglers that were no military threat as they made their way to the coast. He complained that there were too many inexperienced leaders and interceptions were being missed. Things needed "tightening up", that was Park's lesson for 15 September. Park was aware the ratio of losses was 2:1 in the British favour. It had been a decent performance, but not Fighter Command's best.
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