men of cowardice. You have the best aircraft in the world, he cried. What more do you want? A squadron of Spitfires, replied Adolf Galland, one of Germanys fighter aces. (Mosley 115) The arrogance and pompousness of Goering greatly affected the outcome of the aerial war:Goering had been a poor choice by Hitler to run the air force. It was not that his self-indulgent lifestyle dismayed the pilots who were working hard at a great risk to win supremacy in the air or that he had accused his fighter pilots of lack of determination. Goering had little or no strategic or tactical experience or acumen and his technical knowledge modern warfare also left much to be desired with the result that his expectations for the Luftwaffe were ludicrously over-optimistic. (Willis, John. Churchills Few. New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1985. 132).Great Britain held one advantage over Germany when it came to skilled aircrews:While downed German pilots were a total loss to the Luftwaffe, they were now facing a shortage of skilled aircrews: while on the other hand, the loss of RAF pilots was being made up by an over-increasing influx of volunteer aircrews from the Dominion, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia and the United States. (Walker).During phase one and phase two of the Battle of Britain, only one place was safe from German attack: London. Goering and Hitler knew that a bombing on the civilians of the Britain would give more reason for the United States to join the British cause if it saw Britains cities laid waste and the faces of its innocent bystanders being wiped out. Hitler ordered Goering to stay away from London. On the night of August 24, 1940, a stream of bombers was making a bomb drop on a fuel dump along the Thameshaven River when they encountered heavy flak. The bombers were running out of fuel, so they dumped their cargo and turned home. Little did they know that their bombs had been dropped over London. T...
