Battle of Britain fighter production

I found the following passage interesting and thought that I’d share it with you. It comes from the Roy Jenkins biography on Churchill and provides some interesting figures on the number of fighter aircraft produced during the year in which the Battle of Britain took place.

The battles of that summer never reduced the strength of Fighter Command or of the RAF generally. This was partly due to the success of Beaverbrook in his first months as Minister of Aircraft Production. He inherited a favourable upward swing, but his ruthless improvisation considerably fortified this. The so-called Harrogate Programme of January 1940 provided for a year’s output of 3,602 fighters (very precise). The total achieved was 4,283, which meant that nearly 352 fighters a month were forthcoming over the crucial summer and autumn months. The German output was barely half that. - Roy Jenkins, Churchill, p633.

I was frankly surprised at the numbers and expected them to have been much lower. Never did I imagine them to be so much greater than the German output. Of course the whole picture cannot be gleamed from just the number of aircraft produced as there is much more that needs to be done to get them into the air as part of an active squadron.

Indeed, this is borne out by two more paragraphs from the same chapter.

On the 15th (another Sunday), the most intense day in the Battle of Britain, he [Churchill] drove over from Chequers to visit Air Vice-Marshal Park at his Uxbridge headquarters of II Group of Fighter Command. The Group controlled the fighter squadrons covering the whole of Essex, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire. As they watched the lights on the key indicator boards it became apparent that there were no longer any reserve squadrons left on the board, and Churchill asked Park, ‘What other reserves have we?’ ‘There are none,’ Park answered. Fortunately the German planes almost immediately began to go home. – Roy Jenkins, Churchill, p643.

And:

He [Churchill] was immensely busy. Most of his work was self-generated. It was not that he had to deal with a vast mass of paper which came up to him from subordinates. It was rather that he was constantly initiating, asking why programmes were not fulfilled, why there were so many on headquarter staffs, why so many more aircraft were manufactured than found their way into front-line service, ….. – Roy Jenkins, Churchill, p644.

More on fighter numbers and the Battle of Britain in this posting.

Posted by John at March 7, 2004 09:58 AM | TrackBack