World War II Database

1. Ian Hathaway says:
9 Jun 2024 02:49:56 AM

Just looking at a few things relating to the data you have provided: -

1) British Royal Air Force Fighter Command Casualties, Jul-Sep 1940 - these figures are way off. Firstly the periods are off, sounds strange but the weekly returns don't match up with the dates in the table, it's only one day off but it does make you wonder how the figures were compiled. I've used 2 sources to compare the figures, Battle of Britain by TGC James which contains figures for the actual returns (though there are some caveats applied) and The Battle of Britain Then and Now which contains the most comprehensive list of casualties I have come across in my nearly 20 years of research into the BoB. My main focus is on the period up to and including the 7th September so the figures I've included cover the timeframes 28/7 - 8/9/1940 for the source you provided and 27/7 - 7/7/1940 so you'd expect the figures to be a little out possibly. From your sources the total number of lost/damaged single seat fighters comes to 520, from the Returns it comes to 1058 and and from Then and Now it is 962. So as you can see the difference between Then and Now and the Returns is 10% and the difference between Then and Now and your sources is a staggering 46%. I mentioned caveats attached to the Returns; it's not clear if the returns include aircraft outside of Fighter Command, a deeper dive into data for individual Spitfires shows that the Returns are only about 2-3 aircraft out if you include lost/damaged aircraft serving with the PRU, OTUs and as test beds etc., over the time period. In addition in the text prior to the Returns it mentions that aircraft losses may not be wholly accurate as there was occasional double counting, an aircraft initially thought to be damaged may be later struck off charge and therefore counted twice.

2) British Royal Air Force Fighter Command Strength, Jun-Dec 1940 - the No. of squadrons serving as of 1st July is also incorrect and seems to be an amalgamation of the July and August figures. Your source table does recognises that 10 Group was not formed until 10th July but does not show that 4 of the Hurricane squadrons were not operational at this time, but would be within the next couple of weeks. It also fails to recognise that when 10 Group was formed Debden Sector was moved from 12 Group to 11 Group and Catterick was transferred to 12 Group from 13 Group. There also seems to be one too many Blenheim squadrons, I might have to double check my notes on that one and make sure I haven't missed something.

As well as the above I have no idea where the Establishment figures have come from, I seriously don't recognise them... nor do the on-strength figures make much sense.

3) British Weekly Fighter Aircraft Production, Apr-Oct 1940 - In general this particular table seems reasonably accurate, the Spitfire production is spot on with some variations in the Hurricane production figures I have, though this only amounts to a difference of 4 aircraft over the 27th July to 7th September period. What might also have been nice to add would be to include repaired aircraft returned to service which amounts to an additional 238 aircraft (and over this period 80 aircraft were not issued to Fighter Command but went elsewhere).

I realise that the information provided here comes from limited sources and has been provided as a broad idea of what was going on. I would be willing to work on any amendments you might be interested in, I've got plenty of stats relating to the period and have a whole heap of my comprehensive sources available. Let me know if you would be interested. Thanks, Ian H