I’ve just been reading Wesley Wark’s The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933-1939, as it happens, and the short answer is: sorta. By the time of Munich they had pretty accurate figures as to numbers of first-line aircraft, but not things like serviceability rates, doctrine, basing and so on. Technical data on aircraft and bombsights and so on was patchy too: e.g. they underestimated the He 111’s range slightly but overestimated its bombload by a factor of 2! Production capacity was overestimated too. All in all the Luftwaffe was thought to be much stronger than it actually was. In 1939 a re-evaulation began to downgrade the Luftwaffe … but that’s another story.

Did the Air Staff have a good take on the Luftwaffe order of battle? And if so, how secret did they keep that knowledge?

Well, they were right … it was just that he was Napoleon III, not I.

I don’t recall having seen any analysis of the Luftwaffe’s capabilities like that. Sometimes there are estimates of numbers and more rarely breaking down into bombers vs fighters. The actual aircraft used by the Luftwaffe are very rarely discussed in any detail. The predictions made about German strategy in the next war usually reflected the author’s own ideas more than any actual evidence coming out of Germany.

As for gas, haven’t seen much like that either, but if anyone did it would probably be Desmond Morton’s Industrial Intelligence Centre. The problem with gas, I guess, is that the factories are dual-use — if you took all the factories that could make poison gas and assumed that they were in fact doing so, or might do so in preparation for war, you’d end up with ludicrous amounts. Which I suppose would mean that they could make however much they wanted …

One fascinating thing that’s interesting in this exercise is gathering a sense of the increase and decrease of tension, and the changing tempo of activities, such as mobilisation or ARP activities.

Not to mention Hitler’s ‘grab an opportunity-beyond’ tactics. One is tempted to try, Panto-like shout ‘Look out behind you! He’s a megalomaniac you know’.

I wonder if there was any attempt to analyse the capability of the Luftwaffe against Britain (in public)? The posters and books available to the man on the Clapham Omnibus on the enemy came out in wartime I think, and it seems clear that there was little reliable assessment of real Luftwaffe capabilities in more official or secret circles. It does seem that Goebbels and Goering (good Punk band name that) managed to pull of a very good window dressing job with the Luftwaffe on everyone - while the Luftwaffe was an effective tactical air force, they were certainly reported as to be exponentially more potent as a strategic force than they really were in late 1938 - I’m thinking of numbers, range and bomb load before debatable issues such as defensive capability from fighter and anti-aircraft attack.

For instance, did anyone know if or how much gas the Germans had? If I was in authority in the UK, it would be something I’d be trying very hard to find out - and unlike (say) Japan, there wasn’t such a cultural gulf to stop such critical espionage.