Richard Overy: The Battle of Britain

18 PRO 8/315, War Cabinet to CAS, 29 August 1940.

19 Maier, ‘Luftschlacht’, p. 391; PRO AIR 16/365, Fighter Command operational strength, 19 September 1940.

20 Library of Congress, Washington DC, Arnold Papers, Box 246: Chief of Intelligence memorandum, ‘Estimate of German Air Strength’, 21 January 1941, enclosing G2 report, ‘Germany, Domestic Production, Capacity and Sources of Aviation Equipment’, 16 January 1941, pp. 1–9. PRO AIR 8/463: CAS memorandum, ‘Strength of the GAF’, 8 July 1940; ‘Present and Future Strength of the German Air Force’, 1 December 1940, pp. 1–3.

21 Orwell, ‘War-time Diary: 1941’, p. 443, entry for 8 April 1941.

22 R. Churchill (ed.), Into Battle: Speeches by the Right Hon. Winston S. Churchill (London, 1941), p. 234, speech broadcast 18 June 1940; Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, p. 132, diary 31 December 1940; PRO AIR 16/635, HQ 11 Group to HQ Fighter Command, November 1940, p. 4.

23 See S. Ritchie, ‘A Political Intrigue against the Chief of the Air Staff: The Downfall of Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall’, War & Society, 16 (1998), pp. 83–104.

24 PRO AIR 19/258, letter from Air Ministry to Sinclair, 5 April 1941, for details on the pamphlet; on the Despatch see AIR 2/7771, circulation list for Dowding’s Despatch, 14 September 1941, CAB 120/311: Churchill to Sinclair, 15 June 1941; Churchill to Portal, 23 August 1942; Portal to Churchill, 27 August 1942.

25 PRO CAB 120/294, Churchill to Sinclair, 21 August 1940. See N. J. Cull, Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign against American ‘Neutrality’ in World War II (Oxford, 1995), ch. 3.

26 PRO INF 1/849, Ministry of Information Policy Committee, meeting of 21 June 1940, p. 1.

27 PRO INF 1/292, Home Intelligence weekly report, 18–24 December 1940, p. 1.

28 PRO AIR 22/100, ‘Fighter Command Daily Casualties’. According to the daily statistics reported to the Air Ministry, from 1 July until 1 November 1940 Fighter Command lost 284 pilots killed on operations and 159 killed in non-operational situations. The discrepancy between the two figures is difficult to explain. Post-war calculations of total pilot casualties give a slightly higher figure of 458, most of whom died in combat. The number of genuinely accidental deaths has been calculated at somewhere between 30 and 50. The Air Ministry figures suggest that combat was defined more narrowly at the time, which may explain the difference between wartime and post-war statistics. In addition to the pilot deaths, more than 200 suffered serious injury.

29 W. J. West, Orwell: The War Commentaries (London, 1985), pp. 168–9, broadcast 24 October 1942.

* includes 2 half-strength squadrons

** includes 1 part-strength squadron

Sources:

Table 1: PRO AIR 22/293, ‘Weekly Output of Fighters’.

Table 2: PRO AIR 16/365, ‘Fighter Command, Operational Strength of Squadrons and Order of Battle’.

Table 3: PRO AIR 22/262, ‘Daily Returns of Casualties to RAF Aircraft’, 25 June–29 September 1940.

Sources: