Originally Posted by ratpackgreenslug
The question is: Exactly what HAVE the RAF done since the BoB (66 years ago)?
In all fairness credit should be given for the V bomber deterrent of the 60s and it's also true that several sheep were reportedly 'quite startled' by the RAF's contribution to operation Corporate. Indeed, if the runway hadn't cunningly (on more than one occasion) moved at the last minute who knows how many bombs would have actually hit the target?
It comes down to bang for the buck and Collins is correct to point out the woefully under performing return on our RAF investment. Time for changes. Big ones.
Apart from effective inderdiction campaigns that prevented the Army from any serious fighting. When was the last time that the British Army fought a Combat Effective (ie more than 50% combat effectiveness) opponent (oh it was the Falklands and then a fair proportion of the Land forces were Royal Marines!).
Contributed signiificantly to the Battle of the Atlantic (losses of German submarines increased significantly when, inter alia RAF MPA were capable of patrolling post of the Atlantic.
Conducted a Bomber Campaign that caused significant attrition of Germany's ability to resupply its armed forces.
Read yourself into the Western Desert campaign - a key example of land/air intergration.
Prepared (with others) the battlespace for the D-Day landings contributing to the fixing of German reserves (which would have pushed the allied landing forces back into the sea).
Delivered the airborne forces to D-Day, Market Garden, the Rhine Crossing, and Suez (to be fair I suppose they could have walked/swam).
In GW1 the Iraqi forces had been devastated by air before the Land Forces arrived - notwithstanding, this there were pockets of resistance but nowhere near an equal fight.
An effective Coercive Campaign (not just Air) led to a situation when ground troops did not have opposition entering Kosovo.
Where were the Army when the RAF (alongside allied air arms, including USN) maintained the air occupation of Northern and Southern Iraq during the 1990s - effectively 10 years + of preparation of the battlespace for TELIC 1
One of the prime aims of air power during a campaign is to attrit the opponents forces before they are in contact with our own. Just because this doesn't happen within the relatively narrow geographic bounds of a land formation (ie CAS), doesn't mean that it isn't happening. When your wonderful Armoured Formations rock up to the predicted sight of an enemy formation and find that it no longer exists - its demise didn't happen by magic.
I am not saying that Air Forces win wars - they don't. What I am saying is that it is a combination of all elements of military power (indeed all elements of national power (military, diplomatic, and economic (and information for any US readers)) that win wars.