Battle of Britain Day - British Strategy

British Strategy

There was a debate which raged within Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain. It centred around what strategy to pursue against the Luftwaffe. AOC Hugh Dowding and AOC 11 Group Keith Park favoured a strategy of non-attrition. From their perspective, the RAF had to remain intact to win the battle, rather than decimate the Luftwaffe. Both felt that trying to fight a battle of attrition would give the numerically superior enemy the chance to destroy large parts of the Command in one go, thus playing into Göring's hands. Therefore Park and Dowding advocated the tactic of sending small numbers of fighters to intercept every raid; providing opposition to every raid offered the chance of inflicting continued attrition on German formations while avoiding decisive damage to Fighter Command.

Park's equivalent and another of Dowding's commanders, AOC 12 Group Trafford Leigh-Mallory, held the opposite view. For him, large forces would win the battle by destroying large numbers of the enemy. This attrition strategy would use the concept of the Big Wing as its basis.