@calvinhobbesliker:
I heard that Dowding in fact didn’t want to defend the Channel convoys at all (and suggested that ships not use the Channel), but his government or the RN wanted to preserve prestige and so forced him to defend the convoys?
I hadn’t heard about that, but I can well believe that such pressures were applied on Dowding from those sources. Dowding was a tough character, so perhaps his “bare minimum fighter commitment” approach was a bare minimum in more ways than one: the smallest amount to which he was willing to compromise.
Incicentally, one problem with using Ju-87 Stukas to attack merchant ships is that, as far as I know, Stuka pilots were trained to attack fixed targets on land rather than moving targets at sea. The Kriegsmarine, which in principle would have been better suited for the job, didn’t have a naval aviation arm, and the Luftwaffe was primarily a land-attack force intended to provide tactical support to the Army. Admittedly, most merchant ships don’t move or maneuver very fast, and I think I’ve seen footage of Stukas attempting to bomb moving trains (allowing of course of the fact that they move on fixed railroad tracks, which helps with the aiming of bombs), so the Stuka wouldn’t have been totally unsuitable for the job (cannon-armed versions were even used later in the war to attack Soviet tanks), but it still would have been a case of improvising an unplanned new capability at the last minute – similarly to the whole concept of using river barges as amphibious landing craft for Sea Lion.
