Who thinks the RAF actually helped at Dunkirk?

Question

I know the answer to this question, but I want everyone else's view. Obviously they will be different, but at WHAT LEVEL do you believe the RAF helped us English and some French get off Dunkirk in 1940?

Answer 1

Massively, to the point where the losses were impinging on the ability of the RAF to defend the UK.

Few planes were visible over the beaches during the evacuation which led to the myth that the RAF "wasn't there"
They were generally operating further inland.

"The effectiveness of the RAF can be seen in that, during Operation Dynamo, the Luftwaffe was only able to seriously threaten the evacuation on two and a half days – May 27, the afternoon of May 29 and June 1. Luftwaffe II Air Corps’ war diary described May 27 as a “bad day”, and reported the loss of 23 aircraft to RAF fighters protecting the beachhead."

"For the RAF, Dunkirk had a high cost. The British had lost some 100 aircraft and eighty pilots in ten days of fighting."

" By the time of the German invasion of France in May 1940 19 RAF squadrons were operating the Spitfire. Almost a third of the strength of these squadrons was lost covering the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. "

And of course the Bolton Paul Defiants had their brief moment of fighter success over Dunkirk.

Answer 2

Did RAF's involvement help? Yes... but not to the extent the role French army and Hermann Goerring had..

While most people ignore this point, one of more important reason as to why wehrmacht did not attempt to crush the encircled BEF was that French army had not been beaten yet. German field generals were well aware of french formations that were being formed up and moved toward to the fronts and wanted to protect the left flank. Thus, Army Group A was moved away from Dunkirk and toward the south. There is some truth to the boast Hermann Goerring made about needing only Luftwaffe to smash the BEF in Dunkirk, however. The fact is most german infantry formations were some distance away and only available formations were armoured divisions which were never really appropriate for attacking a fixed location, especially a city.

Answer 3

Yes the RAF did actually help read here:
The evacuation of Dunkirk, codenamed Operation Dynamo, took place between 26 May and 4 June 1940.
A flotilla of 900 naval and civilian craft was sent across the Channel under RAF protection and managed to rescue 338,226 people.

During the evacuation, the Luftwaffe attacked whenever the weather allowed, reducing the town of Dunkirk to rubble and destroying 235 vessels and 106 aircraft. At least 5,000 soldiers lost their lives.

A further 220,000 Allied troops were rescued by British ships from other French ports - Cherbourg, Saint-Malo, Brest, and Saint-Nazaire - bringing the total of Allied troops evacuated to 558,000.

This afternoon Mr Churchill admitted to the House that when Operation Dynamo was launched on 26 May to rescue allied forces cornered by the advancing Germany Army, he expected about 20,000 or 30,000 would be saved.

But thanks to the valour of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, no less than 338,000 British and French troops were rescued and brought back across the Channel to fight another day.

Mr Churchill tempered his admiration for the success of Operation Dynamo with these words: "Wars are not won by evacuations".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/4/newsid_3500000/3500865.stm

As you can see the RAF did help but what level?

Answer 4

A "stab in the dark". Since the troops were cornered on the beach and the Germans were close I'd have to guess the RAF didn't do that much. That and they were pretty much in a defensive mode at that time so they were staying close to home.

Answer 5

THE French had collapsed. The Dutch had been
overwhelmed. The Belgians had surrendered. The British army, trapped, fought free and fell back toward the Channel
ports, converging on a fishing town whose name was then spelled Dunkerque.


Behind them lay the sea.

It was England’s greatest crisis since the Norman conquest, vaster than those precipitated by Philip II’s Spanish Armada, Louis XIV’s triumphant armies, or Napoleon’s invasion barges massed at Boulogne. This time Britain stood alone. If the Germans crossed the Channel and established uncontested beachheads, all would be lost, for it is a peculiarity of England’s island that its southern weald is indefensible against disciplined troops.

Now the 220,000 Tommies at Dunkirk, Britain’s only hope, seemed doomed. On the Flanders beaches they stood around in angular, existential attitudes, like dim purgatorial souls awaiting disposition. There appeared to be no way to bring more than a handful of them home. The Royal Navy’s vessels were inadequate. King George VI has been told that they would be lucky to save 17,000. The House of Commons was warned to prepare for “hard and heavy tidings.”

Then, from the streams and estuaries of Kent and Dover, a strange fleet appeared: trawlers and tugs, scows and fishing sloops, lifeboats and pleasure craft, smacks and coasters; the island ferry Grade Fields; Tom Sopwith’s America’s Cup challenger Endeavour; even the London fire brigade’s fire-float Massey Shaw — all of them manned by civilian volunteers:

English fathers, sailing to rescue England’s exhausted, bleeding sons.

Even today what followed seems miraculous. Not only were Britain’s soldiers delivered; so were French support troops: a total of 338,682 men. But wars are not won by fleeing from the enemy. And British morale was still unequal to the imminent challenge. These were the same people who, less than a year earlier, had rejoiced in the fake peace bought by the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich. Most of their leaders and most of the press remained craven. It had been over a thousand years since Alfred the Great had made himself and his countrymen one and sent them into battle transformed.
Now in this new exigency, confronted by the mightiest conqueror Europe had ever known, England looked for another Alfred, a figure cast in a mold which, by the time of the Dunkirk deliverance, seemed to have been forever lost.

England’s new leader, were he to prevail, would have to stand for everything England’s decent, civilized Establishment had rejected. They viewed Adolf Hitler as the product of complex social and historical forces. Their successor would have to be a passionate Manichaean who saw the world as a medieval struggle to the death between the powers of good and the powers of evil, who held that individuals are responsible for their actions and that the German dictator was therefore wicked. A believer in martial glory was required, one who saw splendor in the ancient parades of victorious legions through Persepolis and could rally the nation to brave the coming German fury.

An embodiment of fading Victorian standards was wanted: a tribune for honor, loyalty, duty, and the supreme virtue of action; one who would never compromise with iniquity, who could create a sublime mood and thus give men heroic visions of what they were and might become.

Like Adolf Hitler he would have to be a leader of intuitive genius, a born demagogue in the original sense of the word, a believer in the supremacy of his race and his national destiny, an artist who knew how to gather the blazing light of history into his prism and then distort it to his ends, an embodiment of inflexible resolution who could impose his will and his imagination on his people — a great tragedian who understood the appeal of martyrdom and could tell his followers the worst, hurling it to them like great hunks of bleeding meat, persuading them that the year of Dunkirk would be one in which it was “equally good to live or to die” — who could if necessary be Just as cruel, just as cunning, and just as ruthless as Hitler but who could win victories without enslaving populations, or preaching supernaturalism, or foisting off myths of his infallibility, or destroying, or even warping, the libertarian institutions he had sworn to preserve. Such a man, if he existed, would be England’s last chance.

In London there was such a man.

Answer 6

The RAF put in as much air cover as they could.

Answer 7

They really didn't. The Luftwaffe was strafing the stranded troops and the boats that were attempting to evacuate them.