rised by the German Air Force. (Hough 17-24) Germanys underestimation of the RAF would allow the British to exploit and wiled this confidence to their advantage:(Germany) They were justifiably scornful of the risk to Germany from the RAFs bombers, but recklessly confident that their own would do better: In contrast, the Luftwaffe is in a position to go over to decisive daylight operations owing to the inadequate air defense of the island. The Luftwaffe is clearly superior to the RAF as regards strength, equipment, training, command and location of bases. These were the beliefs with which the Luftwaffe went to battle and which would lead to so many blunders in the months to come. If the British knew little about German plans to defeat them, the Germans knew still less about their enemy.(Deighton 80).While being overly confident, they were not without the right to be a little optimistic. According to one report, at the start of the Battle of Britain the Luftwaffe had just over 1500 bombers with over 1000 fighters with which to protect them as compared to Britains 591 fighters with 100 more ineffectual in daylight battle (Hough 30). While the strength in numbers definitely belonged to the Germans, the British had a secret defense to Germanys massive arsenal of planes. Radar.The English Channel separated Germanys targets and their bases. They expected to encounter light resistance in the air, but instead saw squadrons waiting for them as they passed over the channel. For a long time, German intelligence tried to figure out what these groups of tall towers that lined Britains coast were. They had thought that it was a location detection device, but they had little idea of how effective and important the radar was to the British defense. In, 1935 a scientist named Robert Watson-Watt sent a report to the British Air Ministry outlining the way in which radio could be used to identify and detect enemy planes. By that fall, towers were erected al...
