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The Battle of Britain (1940) is the focus of much historical controversy. We show here how the statistical technique of weighted bootstrapping can be used to create a new quantitative basis to help address such controversies. Bootstrapping facilitates the exploration of alternative campaign possibilities with different tactics. This results in comparative probabilities of "victory" for the actual and various counterfactual campaigns, providing a quantified assessment of the likelihood of German achievement of air superiority, thereby facilitating invasion. We And this more likely had the Luftwaffe targeted airfields more heavily, and greatly more likely had Germany brought forward its air campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We fit deterministic generalized Lanchester models to daily sortie and loss data from the Battle of Britain. The best fit for the period 14th August to 30th October 1940 is δ B ∼ G, δ G ∼ G, where B and G are RAF Fighter Command and Luftwaffe sortie numbers, and δ B and δ G are daily loss numbers, respectively. The data naturally divide into two phases, with losses (as a proportion of overall sortie numbers) much reduced after 15th September. Fits were generally better for the first phase than for the second, and for British losses than for German; in every case the dependence on G is stronger than that on B. Days with higher sortie numbers on average favored the Luftwaffe, whereas the loss-ratio was not significantly dependent on the force ratio. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 58: 210-222, 2011 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Big Wing controversy in the Battle of Britain according to the RAF’s understanding of the principle of concentration. RAF doctrine was developed from Fuller’s 1916 codification of the principles of war, which in terms of concentration rested on the work of engineer and air-power theorist F. W. Lanchester. We argue that fighter doctrine diverged from its Lanchestrian core between the wars and allowed conflicting interpretations of concentration in British air defence. We conclude that Park’s conduct of the Battle of Britain in 11 Group conformed closely to the Lanchester model in concentrating British resources and denying targets to the enemy. Conversely, the Big Wing failed to provide operational concentration and presented the enemy with a massed target it was his mission to destroy. Data suggest greater British losses relative to the enemy when more aircraft were engaged, though damagingly for future policy the mathematics of over-claiming indicated the opposite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]