Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: The Battle of Britain
Message-ID: <7440@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 14 Jun 89 03:26:36 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
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Approved: military@att.att.com



From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>Can someone recommend a good book on the Battle of Britain?

Despite his reputation being primarily that of a fiction writer, Len
Deighton's "Fighter" is the best I've seen, including quite a bit
of debunking of standard myths.  (Also recommended:  his "Blitzkrieg",
on the Battle of France in 1940.  Beware, "Bomber" is fiction.)

>Specifically, what I'm interested in are the opportunities the Germans
>had to win (i.e. attacking British fighter bases - which was stopped to
>bomb cities)...

Deighton makes one intriguing suggestion, which of course (as he states)
can never be proved or disproved.  The shift to city attacks, widely
(although not unanimously) considered a crucial blunder, came about
because the RAF bombed Berlin, infuriating Hitler.  The RAF did this
because Churchill ordered retaliation for a minor incident in which
a couple of off-course bombers did minor damage to London.  Churchill
knew that yielding control of the air to the Germans, even temporarily,
would make an invasion much more likely, so the fighter bases were
vital.  He knew that bombing attacks on cities weren't likely to do
militarily-important damage.  He was a very smart man, and understood
Hitler better than any of his comtemporaries.  Did he order that raid
deliberately, with full understanding of the probable results?