Originally Posted by
MrWooby
My understanding of Leigh Mallorys “big wing” came from the movie “The Battle of Britain” although I haven’t seen it in a while, the big wing was portrayed as the saviour of the day. Whereas the more you read about it, it had a very questionable effect. Very slow to form up such a big formation, slow to react etc.
It was somewhat successful at scoring reasonably big numbers of Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed.
Point was, at that point, the number of Germans shot down was largely irrelevant- Goring's brief was to cripple the RAF so it could not impede an invasion force in particular the ability of the Stukas to support an invasion by disabling the RN. Dowding was simply trying to survive- to keep aircraft, pilots and airfields in operation until the weather turned and made an invasion impossible.To this end 12 Groups main task was to protect 11 Groups airfields- a task they largely neglected.
In any case, even were the "big wing" considered a reasonable strategy, it was only possible because of the geographical location of 12 groups squadrons further North, where they had time and space to form up. 11 group squadrons only just had time to launch in small formations when the RD chains detected raids- it was an entirely appropriate tactic.
Interesting that Bader was mentioned- one of the most shameful episodes was the Air Ministry calling Bader- then a wing-commander- to testify into an enquiry ostensibly bout the battle, but in fact as an excuse to criticize Dowding and by association Park. His testimony was unsurprisingly simply a positive view of the tactics that he took part in and that made him famous, but was used as evidence he the Battle tactics of Dowding and Park were flawed.