Bombers British

The Mosquito was made almost entirely of wood and for that reason was nearly canceled by the British before it was even built wood aircraft were viewed as fragile and slow based on the previous 40 years of aerospace history. Fortunately the designers of the Mosquito were able to overcome this bias and the Mosquito went on to become one of the best-performing fighter/bombers of the war. 

See Uri Bialer, The Shadow of the Bomber The Fear of Air Attack and British Politics 1932-1939 (London Royal Historical Society, 1980). 

For a comparison of the development of doctrine on bombing in Britain and the United States, see Tami Davis Biddle, British and American approaches to strategic bombing their origins and implementation in the World War II combined bomber offensive , Journal of Strategie Studies, 18 (1995), no. 1, 91-144. 

Pre-war fighting instructions for the FAA required it to locate the enemy fleet at sea and to slow it down with a torpedo attack so as to enable British surface forces to bring it to battle. The Fairey biplanes may have been obsolescent but they achieved all that they were intended to do, and more. Carrier-borne torpedo-bombers sank three Italian battleships at their moorings at their base at Taranto in November 1940 ... 

Barnett, Audit of War, p. 147. For the problems with the British aircraft mentioned, see Postan, Hay and Scott, Design and Development pp. 126-32, who point out that the Welkin was not a complete failure (it did not go into service because the threat it was intended to meet, sub-stratosphere bomber attacks, did not materialise), and the Buckingham was similar in performance to its American contemporary, the Douglas Invader, and suffered in comparison with its British contemporary, the Mosquito. Green, Warplanes of the Third Reich, pp. 241—5. 

A number of factors contributed to the Allied defeat. German dive bombers acted as mobile artillery, and the concentrated mass of panzer divisions overwhelmed the widely dispersed French tanks and advanced to the Channel, cutting the Allied armies in two. The British Tank... 

The commitment of a large part of the British army to the Mediterranean and elsewhere meant that of the thirty-five divisions required for the cross-Channel invasion of France, only sixteen would be British, and that subsequent reinforcements would have to come from the United States. The overriding importance of the cross-Channel operation was such that from April to September 1944 the direction of Bomber Command was transferred to the American Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in North-West Europe, General Dwight Eisenhower. The appointment of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder as deputy supreme commander, with his experience of air co-operation in North Africa, ensured that optimal use was made of Allied air power. 

Britain was by no means as backward in her capacity to wage war as critics such as Barnett have made out. While one can point to shortcomings, the overall impression is one of a formidable military-scientific-industrial complex. Nor were servicemen conservative either in their requirements for new weapons systems or in the doctrines for their use. The quality of British arms varied but most matched the best that Germany could produce, and some, for example strategic bombers, were better. There were failures, notably unreliable tanks, but failures tended to be the result of trying to do too much too quickly, and the improvement of British tanks by 1945 deserves as much attention as earlier defects. 

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