It is believed that the transition of German strategy from air resource denial of the British to bombing te cities led to the British victory in the Battle ogf Britain.
I heard a story that it started because 3 German bombers couldn’t find their target, so - before returning to base - just dropped their bomb loads. At the time - they didn’t know where they were - over a blacked out London.
British responded by bombing a population center - in retailiation - thinking the Germans bombed London on purpose.
The Germans/Hitler - became enraged - and changed bombing focus from British arifields and aircraft to London.
At the time - the British Field Air Marshall thought that he had 2 weeks left with the RAF before they would be beat. The change saved his aircraft.
I dig these posts.
That's about right. The excerpt at reply #4 on the 8/25 thread fills in the details.
An interesting point to all this lays within the way you described the escalation. On the surface it seems straight forward. A few bombs on London, a retaliatory air raid on Berlin, Hitler gets angry and shifts focus to London.
But one thing we see over the last week is that there was not just a single strike on Berlin that raised Hitler’s ire. Over the last several days we have seen reports on the British hitting targets all around Berlin proper and Berlin as well. At the same time we have seen the same hits around the London area. Though there will be a dramatic shift in policy here soon, it was not a singular reaction like most accounts would leave you to believe. This has been building up and Hitler will finally decided to strike back in a major fashion.
I also have to admit that I’m a bit skeptical of the status of the R.A.F. at this point as well. Having posted the daily BoB post over the last month and a half it seems like there is always around 600 first rate fighters available. There has not been any major shift or trend in those numbers in all honesty. There are always 400+ Hurricanes and right at 200 Spitfires at the ready. The only intangible in that is the quality of the pilots.