How come the Luftwaffe is sustaining so many casualties against the RAF?

Recently with the Battle over Malta or the last few attacks on British Homeland (that I remember from the regular episodes), it seems that the RAF always imparted heavy casualties on the Luftwaffe. Though during the RAF raid on Köln Britain lost only very few bombers.

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Welcome. The answer is different for fighters and bombers.

  1. For fighters, the RAF had a very well developed ground-control system with radars that directed pilots to the fight. Pilots were required to follow these intercept orders and not go hunting on their whims. This proved to be very efficient and resilient.

  2. Germany is just starting its air defence system. Watch this space, but British casualties will mount, quickly.

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If they ever do a special episode on the Lancaster (fingers crossed though I did see the recent one they did about general aircraft used by the RAF and Luftwaffe. I meant specifically,) there was the blind spot on the bottom due to a lack of an underside turret. (There kind of was one but it was rarely used and later supplanted by a radar dish). The Germans recognized this and created what was called Schräge Musik or Strange Music, which were aircraft that were fitted with cannons that fired straight up. They caused horrendous casualties during the later phase of the war and sadly weren’t really identified as even existing until post war. As far as the British Commonwealth air forces saw bombers were just randomly blowing up at night during raids, to the point that Command thought the Germans were using “Scarecrow Shells” to simulate bomber explosions. It’s just an interesting and unique bit of technological ideas that made up the air war.

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There are only two flyable Lancasters left. One is in the UK with the RAF’s Battle of Britain Flight and the other is at the Canadian Warplane Museum in Hamilton, ON Canada. I have seen and heard the latter in-flight, it’s extremely impressive.

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I think it was mostly a resource problem, in the battle of britain both the british and the germans threw most of their airforces against each other, which obviously cost the germans a whole lot more as they couldnt recover their fighters.
When the bombing raids on german cities took place, most fighters of the germans were deployed at the eastern front, not defending home cities, and the bomber fleets of the british were absolutely massive which wouldve made it even harder to approach them through machine gun barrages from dozens of bombers. And AA guns simply were far less efficient then fighters when it came to shooting down enemy planes than fighters.
Short version: germans had a lot of fighter vs fighter action while british mainly encountered less efficient AA at very high altitudes against their bombers, where it would only be effective in absolutely ridiculous masses like the FLAK towers in berlin…

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Great points Johannes and you are very welcome to the forum, I am looking forward to seeing more post from you :slight_smile: Let me and others know if any queries may arise.

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I read the flak Towers had such concentration of firepower that it could be seen from the sky so it was possible for the british to use it for navigation and easily avoid.

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