Compare And Contrast The Battle Of Britain

While both sides fought the Battle of Britain using airpower strategy, Britain fought defensively to protect its people and territory while Nazi’s of Germany fought offensively for territorial acquisition over Britain. During that time, it is the height of airpower and superiority that it made the Army and Navy a mere supporting forces or a secondary combatant to the Airforce. It is also that time that both country employed the theories of Douhet and Mitchell about the application of airpower.

The Battle of Britain fought during the second World War, was a turning point of War because of the Nazi’s failure in gaining air superiority over the Royal Air Force (RAF). Although Britain’s strategy was mostly defensive, they were able to gain decisive victory over the Luftwaffe of the

This was because after attacking Britain’s first line of which are the British ships guarding the English Channel, they moved inland launching a massive Blitzkrieg over the British Airfields and communication centers . The two agreed about Command of the Air and the destruction of enemy’s vital centers in order to lower the morale of the civilian populace and will to fight. But they have a different definition of Command of the Air and also differ in method of targeting. For Douhet, Command of the Air for him is the destruction of airfields to prevent the enemy from taking off and aircraft industries to prevent further manufacturing of aircraft, and that Command of the Air must be first achieved before further destruction of vital centers. But for Mitchell, it is all about the destruction of industries that creates war making capability, and it can be done simultaneously with the destruction of vital centers . But basing from the Blitzkrieg of the Nazi’s, they usually follow Douhet’s theory since they are always targeting airfields to destroy planes on the ground during their first month of war. But on the latter part of the war, Hitler the Nazi leader shifted