The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

T H E A R M Y A I R F O R C E S I N W O R L D W A R I 1
that German air power was invincible; indeed, the very name in-
spired dread and fear, as the Germans had intended it should. But the
triumphs of 1939 and early 1940 had all been scored against weak
opposition, and there were limitations to German strength which
time would increasingly reveal. Satisfied with the performance of
their aircraft for the purposes in mind, leaders of the Luftwaffe had
put various models into early mass production; the emphasis tended
to be placed on numerical strength rather than on technical superi-
ority. At points, perhaps too much faith had been placed in speed at
the cost of armament. The Luftwaffe, moreover, seems to have been
lulled into a false sense of security by its early successes. Though its
commanders explained the British escape at Dunkirk by pointing to
the unfavorable weather and a failure of supply resulting from the
speed of the German advance, the success of the RAF at Dunkirk
indicated that British aircraft possessed technical advantages that in
all-out combat might prove decisive. That test soon came in the
Battle of Britain.
T h e RAF and the Battle of Britain
The German bombing of Britain in World War I1 was not unex-
pected by the British, nor was it without precedent. During the con-
flict of 1914-18,the Germans had made 5 2 air raids against the British
Isles, dropping 7 3 tons of bombs which killed 857 persons and injured
2,058. These raids helped to bring the Royal Air Force into existence
as an autonomous force, for the enemy's action had pointed up the
weakness of British air defenses and the desirability of carrying the
air war to the German homeland. At the same time, British leaders
in search of a strategy that would break the long and exhausting stale-
mate on the western front had by 1918 assigned to the air force an
independent mission of strategic bombing. Accordingly, in March
1918 the air forces, theretofore divided between the army and navy,
were unified in the Royal Air Force as a third and co-ordinate branch
of the armed services, under the administrative control of the Air
Ministry. Termination of hostilities that autumn did not permit the
full development and execution of plans for a strategic offensive
against Germany," but, unlike the American Air Service, the RAF
emerged from World War I with its independent mission and sepa-
rate organization officially re~ognized.~'
* See above, pp. 1 5 , 37.
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