Early in May, after the German attack on Norway, the British Chiefs of Staff had addressed themselves to the problem of Hitler’s next move. He would aim, they thought, to finish off the war that year. Would he move against France, or would his assault, at first from the air, fall on Britain? Deciding that the likelihood favoured attack on Britain, they made recommendations which the Cabinet largely accepted on 9 May.1 The following day Hitler struck at Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.
This spectacularly wrong guess had at least one merit. Approval of the Chiefs of Staff recommendations – to speed up the supply of fighters, bombers and Bofors guns, heighten the efficiency of civil defence, prepare for the diversion of shipping to west-coast ports and overhaul the plans against invasion – was obtained before it emerged that France, not Britain, was the next on Hitler’s list. But in any case a new German offensive on the continent was still a signal for maximum vigilance at home. On 10 May orders went out to bring civil defence, home forces and coastal defences to the highest pitch of readiness.2
Four days later, following the surprises sprung by German airborne troops in Holland and Belgium, came the call for Local Defence Volunteers. Broadcasting an appeal for recruits up to the age of sixty-five, the new Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, struck a note to which the public eagerly responded. Patriots old and young, delighted with the thought of potting at parachutists, began arriving at the police stations to enrol even before Eden had finished speaking, and within six days the recruitment figure stood at over a quarter of a million.3
Among the immediate measures taken by Churchill was the creation in mid-May of the Ministry of Aircraft Production. This was done by severing Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfrid Freeman’s Department of Development and Production from the Air Ministry, recalling it from its wartime home at Harrogate, and installing it as the nucleus of the new Ministry in London under the direction of the dynamic owner of the Daily Express, Lord Beaverbrook. Within twenty-four hours the Minister and the Air Staff took an important decision – to give top priority (1A) until September to the production of five types of aircraft. Three of these were bomber types, to maintain offensive capability, not least against any attempted invasion. The other two were the Hurricanes and Spitfires which waged and won the Battle of Britain.4
Simplistic notions have sometimes been entertained about this decision. Plants making one type of aircraft could not, of course, suddenly switch to making another. And the restriction of priority 1A to five aircraft types was so narrow as to be impossible to sustain for anything like the proposed time: after only a fortnight other bombers and fighters had also to be included, and after a month training aircraft as well – or the training organisation would have broken down. But the aircraft industry as a whole now had undisputed first call on the raw materials it needed, and the favoured types would suffer far less delay from lack of components manufactured elsewhere and common to other aircraft. Merlin engines, R/T sets, Browning guns, oxygen tubes – the Hurricane and Spitfire output became much more assured of these and other essentials.
The fighter production figures for the summer of 1940 tell their own story and are one reason why it was possible for Dowding to win the Battle of Britain. When Beaverbrook became Minister of Aircraft Production on 14 May, the planned production of fighters for that month was 261 machines. The actual output for the month was 325. For June the planned programme was 292; the actual output was 446. In July and August the improvement still continued: total planned production 611, total output 972.5 Already by early July the supply of fighters had become so satisfactory that it was decided to allocate an additional four aircraft to each of thirty Hurricane and six Spitfire squadrons – though, unfortunately, there were not the pilots to go with them.6
It has been customary, particularly in Lord Beaverbrook’s newspapers, to ascribe all or most of this to the Minister’s genius, energy and powers of inspiration. The long extended working week, the telephone calls at all hours, the slashing of red tape, the consignment of closely planned programmes to the waste-paper basket (behind the Minister’s desk was the notice: ‘Organisation is the Enemy of Improvisation’) – these well-known features of the Beaverbrook technique have been extolled on many a page. Dowding himself in his Despatch endorsed this heroic view of the Minister by describing the effect of the appointment as ‘magical’ – an adjective which, in conjunction of course with his great achievements, earned the Fighter Chief permanent front-row status in the Beaverbrook Press hall of fame.
It is certainly a fact of history that Beaverbrook seized all possible priorities, turned on the heat, and by personal interventions and appointments helped at a critical time to galvanise the aircraft industry into efforts far beyond previous norms. But justice must also acknowledge that in this he was immensely aided by a sudden realisation on the part of the British workforce that the moment indeed cried out for supreme efforts. The end of the dismal Chamberlain regime, the débâcle in France, the escape from Dunkirk, Churchill’s eloquence and honesty – offering only ‘blood, sweat, toil and tears’ – created a mood in which, for a time at least, cherished trade restrictions could be swept aside and willing labour work its heart out in long hours of overtime. Nor should another factor in the great surge of production escape recognition. Sir Wilfrid Freeman, his Director of Production (Sir) Ernest Lemon (who had inspired the development of subcontracting), Lemon’s successor Sir Charles Craven of Vickers Armstrong, and many others in the Air Ministry who had now become the core of the Ministry of Aircraft Production, had in fact done their work well. Indeed, the highest percentage increase in the production of fighters – about forty-five per cent – came in April 1940, before Beaverbrook took over. Long-standing difficulties in production were at last easing: there was already a growing momentum. The Minister and the general sense of crisis added the decisive extra push.
In harmony with the new mood in the country Churchill’s Government on 22 May sought and received from Parliament emergency powers beyond those granted at the outbreak of war. These gave it, in deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s words, ‘complete control over persons and property … not just some persons … but of all persons, rich and poor, employer and workman, man and woman, and all property’.7 In virtue of these powers the new Minister of Labour and National Service, Ernest Bevin, became responsible for controlling the supply of labour to all industries. He could theoretically direct anyone to any task, and set for it whatever conditions of work and pay he thought fit. The old liberal easy-going British ways, so many of which had persisted through the first eight months of hostilities, were at last giving way to the rigorous state direction regrettably necessary for the efficient waging of large-scale war.*
Five days later, on 27 May, with the escape from Dunkirk only just beginning, the Cabinet substantially approved a Chiefs of Staff paper on ‘British Strategy Relating to a Certain Eventuality’. The eventuality so coyly referred to was, of course, that France might soon collapse. The Chiefs of Staff paper accordingly reviewed the prospects for a war in which the British Commonwealth and Empire would be fighting alone. It emphasised that with Britain exposed to air attack from bases anywhere on a semi-circle from Brest to Trondheim, the first essential was ‘to prevent the Germans achieving such air superiority as would enable them to invade this country’. If the Germans once got ashore with their armoured vehicles, the British ground forces were unlikely to be able to drive them out. British fighter defences, and to a lesser extent the bomber force, must therefore be built up with all possible speed, and every step taken to improve civil defence. If this were done, the Navy and the RAF between them would be able to prevent any actual invasion.
On the assumption that British civilian morale did not crack under the night bombing which would inevitably follow if daylight attacks failed – and against which there was as yet little effective defence – the Chiefs of Staff then proceeded to examine how such a war could actually be won. They concluded that, though Italy was bound to join with Germany and make trouble in the Mediterranean, the prospects were not discouraging. As long as the United States (whose influence would cancel out Japan’s) was willing to give full economic support, the British Commonwealth and Empire might ultimately expect to win the war by a combination of economic blockade, air attack and resistance in the German-occupied countries.9
This remarkably sanguine appraisal, in which it was merely said of Russia that she was unlikely to look favourably on German successes, had its counterpart in the optimism of the British public as a whole. Once the troops were safely back from Dunkirk, any thought of defeat seemed to disappear from the general consciousness. Being ‘alone’ brought exhilaration to many, and was certainly welcomed by Dowding and King George VI. The latter wrote to his mother, Queen Mary: ‘Personally, I feel happier now that we have no allies to be polite to and pamper.’10
On the highest plane, the tone was set by Churchill. On 4 June, as the Dunkirk evacuation ended, came his classic expression of defiance: ‘We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills: we shall never surrender….’ Then, on 18 June, after the French had sought an armistice, came a call equally famous and stirring:
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation…. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and the Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say ‘This was their finest hour.’
Such words may have become dulled nowadays by familiarity, or may by some be dismissed as rhetoric, but to the embattled British nation of 1940 they were a true inspiration, a potent factor in helping to bring about the victory that was to come.
At a lower level, the popular joke of the time proclaimed: ‘We’re in the final now, and we’re playing on the home ground.’ But this light-heartedness only concealed a new and stronger sense of purpose. By June, war expenditure had risen two-thirds above the figure for April. With the new purchase tax, and the top rate of tax for big incomes at eighteen shillings in the pound, the spectre of the war profiteer of 1914–18 was firmly laid. Rationing, already introduced for some articles, became more stringent and now affected even that bulwark of British morale, the cup of tea. Wherever there were arrangements for collective bargaining, strikes and lock-outs became illegal. With the Whitsun and August Bank Holidays cancelled, the aircraft factories, on Beaverbrook’s insistence, working twenty-four hours a day, including Sundays, and only the female sex limited to a sixty-hour week, the phenomenon emerged of a Britain at last utterly and wholly committed to the war effort.
On 3 July Britain’s new fierceness of resolve was shown to the world in ‘Operation Catapult’ – in Churchill’s words, ‘the simultaneous seizure, control, or effective disablement or destruction of all the available French Fleet’. At Plymouth and Portsmouth, at Alexandria and Dakar and – very bloodily – at Mers-el-Kebir, the deed was done. The Royal Navy’s superiority remained intact, and the USA took the incidental message: Britain meant to win.
Meanwhile, as the splendid summer days wore on, the authorities in Britain took every conceivable step against the invasion which now seemed inevitable. The Navy laid minefields, and in the ports from Harwich to Plymouth held ready its destroyers and lighter warships. RAF Coastal Command scoured the seas and flew high-level photographic reconnaissance of the possible invasion ports. RAF Bomber Command, besides planning a massive assault with other Commands against any invading forces, strove to disrupt the Luftwaffe’s preparations by attacking airfields. And the Army, with the help of 150,000 civilians full-time and thousands more part-time (including school-boys, among them one of the authors of this book), festooned the beaches and cliffs with barbed wire, dug tank traps, set up concrete ‘dragon’s teeth’ and pill boxes, and arranged for fire to engulf suitable stretches of shore and roadway as the enemy appeared. And behind the Army stood the unpaid Local Defence Volunteers, their number swollen by the end of June to one-and-a-half million. ‘A People’s Army officered by Blimps’, in the eyes of George Orwell, they were still largely without rifles or uniform (other than a brassard bearing the letters LDV), but their enthusiasm and ingenuity would doubtless, at great cost to themselves, have created difficulties for any invader.*
From the coastal districts most vulnerable (and in June proclaimed ‘protected areas’ forbidden to ordinary visitors), a new wave of evacuation now began. Any civilians who remained were under orders to ‘stay put’: they must not become refugees cluttering the roads, as had happened in France. Among those required to stay were members of local authorities, lifeboat crews, employees of banks, water, sewage, gas and electricity undertakings and workers on the land. These last had the heavy responsibility of obstructing their larger fields with barbed wire, disused farm machinery, tractors, commandeered old cars – anything that would make landing of airborne troops hazardous.
There was also intense preoccupation with the danger of the Fifth Column,* who, as in France, were held to lurk everywhere. Rumour-mongering was strenuously discouraged and the citizen was everywhere reminded that ‘careless talk costs lives’. In one of the most vexatious orders since the imposition of the blackout, road signposts were removed and place names obliterated, or reduced to minuscule size, on railway stations, buildings and even war memorials. In London the district references on street names were removed or obscured – all to confuse and delay the invader.
The list of precautions and restrictions was almost endless. Church bells were to be rung only on the news of landings: one unfortunate cleric was sent to prison for failing to maintain the silence. During July, BBC newscasters for the first time identified themselves by name, lest enemy agents surreptitiously usurp their place. Motor vehicles, when left unattended, had to be immobilised: for open cars, removal of the rotor arm was enjoined, but in emergency a large nail could be hammered into the petrol tank. Newspapers grew strangely thin, and juries were reduced from twelve to seven (except in murder cases) to save manpower. Iron railings, splendid or otherwise – even the presentation gates outside Baldwin’s Worcestershire home – were torn down for scrap.* Lord Beaverbrook called on housewives, needlessly, to surrender their aluminium saucepans. Grouse-shooting was advanced from the Glorious Twelfth to 5 August, causing great mystification and – in more limited circles – indignation.
As part of the new ruthlessness, from May onwards several hundreds of pre-war Fascist sympathisers, including Sir Oswald Mosley, were imprisoned without trial under Defence Regulation 18B, and some 27,000 inhabitants of alien stock, mostly German and Austrian refugees from Hitler, were rounded up and interned. Britain, as never before, was making ready for all-out war in defence of the homeland. And whether any of these restrictions and preparations would prove to be necessary would depend now, above all, on the skill and strength of the Luftwaffe, and of Fighter Command.
The view has often been put forward, even by military men of the standing of Kesselring and Milch, that ‘if only’ the Germans had mounted an assault on Britain after Dunkirk, instead of deciding to finish off the French, they could have followed their air attacks with an almost unopposed landing. This ignores the, need of the Luftwaffe to recuperate and regroup, and the fact that invasions across a stretch of water like the English Channel cannot be ‘improvised’ within a few days when the defenders have an enormous superiority in naval strength: especially not, too, when the very idea of invading Britain was a novelty to most of the German staffs, whose wildest dreams had been exceeded by the swiftness of their triumph in France.
The first planning for an invasion of Britain was undertaken in the autumn of 1939 by Grand-Admiral Raeder and the German naval staff. Raeder seems to have initiated this not from any enthusiasm for such a project, but because he was anxious for the German Navy to be prepared if Hitler’s mind moved that way. Some desultory naval and military study followed, to be discontinued as the German plans matured for the attacks on Norway and France. No further mention of invasion was recorded until 21 May 1940, when Guderian’s panzers reached the Channel coast and Raeder, more anxious than ever not to be caught napping, raised the subject directly with Hitler. No fresh decision was taken, but as a result the naval staff resumed planning, this time more intensively.11
Meanwhile, Hitler’s views for, at minimum, an air attack on Britain were taking shape. He had already, on 29 November 1939, issued a directive which looked forward to the occupation of the Belgian and north French coasts in order to pursue the ‘blockade’ of Britain by sea and air. The main targets under this directive were to be British ports and aircraft factories.12 Now, on 24 May, a new directive stated that as soon as sufficient forces were available – i.e. after the defeat of France – the Luftwaffe should start independent operations against the British homeland. These should begin with ‘a crushing attack in retaliation for the British raids in the Ruhr area’.13 Two days later Hitler specified the aircraft industry in Britain as the prime object of attack.
Apart from exploratory night raids on Britain on 4 and 5 June, no further important step occurred until the complete defeat of France, when regular small-scale night raiding of Britain was resumed. Though hoping that Britain would come to terms, Hitler at the end of June then decided that he must at least initiate contingency planning for an invasion. On 2 July Feldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the OKW,* noted: ‘The Fuehrer has decided that a landing in England is possible, providing that air superiority can be attained…. All preparations to be begun immediately.14 This proviso about air superiority was to remain constant, from first to last, throughout all the German invasion preparations of the following two months.
While the German Navy and Army got down to serious if far from harmonious planning, the Luftwaffe was busy occupying aerodromes in northern France and the Low Countries, bringing up stores, and establishing communications and anti-aircraft defences. Goering himself seems to have taken little interest in the inter-Service deliberations. The Luftwaffe was in any case regarded as the key to the whole invasion project, which must obviously begin with intensive air attack. In Goering’s view, this was almost certain to be sufficient in itself. Any subsequent military action would be in the nature of a virtually unopposed occupation.15
Though the British officially date the beginning of the Battle of Britain from 10 July, with the heavy air fighting over one of the Channel convoys, Hitler at that time was, in fact, still partly hoping for a bloodless culmination to his victories in the West. With his eyes always on the Soviet Union, which in June reacted to his successes by taking over Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia and northern Bucovina, he would have been glad to reach agreement with Britain – naturally on his own terms. He was not so set on peacemaking, however, that he neglected to follow up the invasion alternative. Another meeting with Raeder elicited the Admiral’s view that invasion should be a ‘last resort’, undertaken only under conditions of complete air supremacy, and that the immediate strategy should be the blockade of Britain by U-boats and aircraft: but when Hitler conferred with the Army chiefs Walter von Brauchitsch and Franz Halder, during the second week of July, he found them far more optimistic. If the German Navy could get the troops across and the Luftwaffe protect the beachheads, they were confident that the Army could readily overcome any opposition from the British ground forces.16
The outcome was the issue on 16 July of Hitler’s Directive No. 16, the keynote of which was struck in the opening sentence: ‘As England, in spite of the hopelessness of her situation, has shown herself unwilling to come to a compromise, I have therefore decided to begin to prepare for, and if necessary carry out, an invasion of England.17 To this provisional operation OKW gave the code-name ‘Sealion’.
Three days later Hitler made a clumsy and half-hearted attempt to determine whether ‘Sealion’ would be really needed. On 19 July at a special meeting of the Reichstag with senior commanders and officials, at which promotions were liberally handed out for the good work recently done in France, he made what he called ‘a final appeal to reason and commonsense’. Characteristically he accompanied it with threats. Referring to Bomber Command’s attacks on west Germany – which however ineffective had evidently angered and embarrassed him – he promised a reply which would bring the British people (but ‘of course, not Mr Churchill, for he no doubt will already be in Canada’) ‘unending suffering and misery’.18 The British Government saw nothing in this to alter the situation, and on 22 July the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, in a broadcast dismissed the so-called ‘peace offer’ as ‘a mere summons to capitulate’. Churchill himself declined to make any reply on the grounds that he was ‘not on speaking terms’ with ‘Herr Hitler’.
Meanwhile, and until the plans for ‘Sealion’ could be agreed, Luftwaffe units now established in northern France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway concentrated much of their attention on British shipping. Their attacks were designed both to restrict British trade and to wear down RAF Fighter Command, which would be drawn into battle in difficult circumstances well away from home.
So the operations began which the RAF would later see as the opening of the Battle of Britain and the Luftwaffe as the Kanalkampf. On the German side about four-fifths of the entire operational strength of the Luftwaffe was by 20 July arrayed for action. Under Goering as a largely absentee Commander-in-Chief – he was also, among other things, Hitler’s official deputy, Air Minister, President of the Reichstag and the Prussian Council, and Reich Master of Hunting – the German forces were organised in three Luftflotten, or air fleets. The smallest of these, Luftflotte 5, under General Hans-Juergen Stumpff, a former soldier and Chief of the Air Staff, was in Norway and Denmark. It deployed about 130 bombers (He 111 and Ju 88), about thirty-five long-range fighters (Me 110), nearly fifty reconnaissance aircraft and a force of Me 109s for local defence. Any daylight attacks against Britain would have to be escorted – a job for the 110s, which had the range but had already proved vulnerable to Hurricanes and Spitfires. Nevertheless, Luftflotte 5, in addition to mining British waters, could pose a constant threat to convoys in the North Sea, the naval bases in the Orkneys and the Forth, and the whole relatively lightly defended north-east of England and Scotland.
The main forces assigned to the struggle were the two Luftflotten facing Britain across the English Channel. Luftflotte 3, in western France, was led by Feldmarschall Hugo von Sperrle, a World War I airman who had directed this Luftflotte in the French campaign and had earlier commanded the Legion Kondor in Spain. With his square head, jowls, weighty figure, monocle and lavish display of decorations, Sperrle resembled a British caricature of a Prussian officer, but his appearance belied his abilities, which were considerable. His Command’s zone of operations would normally be west and north-west of a line from Le Havre through Selsey Bill to the Midlands. Operating for the most part east of that line would be Luftflotte 2 based in France north of the Seine and in Belgium, Holland and north Germany. Its commander, Albert Kesselring, now a feldmarschall, was a tough, ebullient and efficient professional soldier who had been transferred to the Luftwaffe in 1933. He had already with great success directed Luftflotte 1 in Poland and Luftflotte 2 in France and the Low Countries.
Together Luftflotten 2 and 3 on 20 July officially controlled, in addition to about 150 reconnaissance aircraft, forces amounting to 1,131 long-range bombers (Ju 88, He 111 and Do 17), 316 dive-bombers (Ju 87), 809 single-engined fighters (Me 109) and 246 twin-engined fighters (Me no). All told the three Luftflotten, leaving aside reconnaissance planes, disposed for operations against Britain a strength of about 1,260 bombers, 316 dive-bombers and 1,089 single- and twin-engined fighters. The general level of serviceability at that date was around three-quarters of strength.19
On the British side, all three of the RAF’s home operational Commands – Bomber, Fighter and Coastal – would be involved in contesting any German invasion. So too would be no fewer than 660 operational-type aircraft brought in from the training units and manned largely by instructors. All would attack invading forces, but Coastal Command would also fly repeated reconnaissance and Bomber Command would also strike farther back along the line – especially at ports of assembly, communications and aircraft plants. But in the preliminary struggle for air superiority – the essence of the Battle of Britain – the contribution of these two Commands would be much more restricted. During June and July Bomber Command could, and did, raid German-held airfields in France and the Low Countries and aircraft plants in Germany to reduce the striking power of the Luftwaffe; but as the main force of the Command was still inaccurate by night and the small daylight force of 2 Group needed heavy fighter escort, which took fighters away from home defence, its effectiveness in this role was very limited. In practice the RAF’s battle for air superiority against the Luftwaffe would depend overwhelmingly on Fighter Command, backed up by the ground defences.
In reckoning the force opposed to the 1,576 bombers and dive-bombers and 1,089 fighters of the three Luftflotten in the preliminary air battle before an invasion could be launched, the 1,200-odd aircraft of Bomber and Coastal Commands can thus scarcely be included. What mattered above all in this particular context was the strength of Fighter Command, where Dowding by early July at last had fifty-two of the fifty-three squadrons planned for the previous spring – with three more forming during the month. By mid-July his force stood at around 800 aircraft, with a high rate of serviceability. Nearly 100 of these, however, were Blenheims, unable to hold their own with single-engined fighters and increasingly being relegated to night fighting. In practice, the 700-odd Hurricanes and Spitfires would be the force withstanding the 1,576 long-range bombers and Ju 87s and the 1,089 Me 109s and Me 11 os. These odds sound, and were, extremely formidable; but the German bombers, and still more the dive-bombers, were vulnerable to modern fighters and would need escort. The air fighting was thus likely to turn on how well the 700 Hurricanes and Spitfires performed against the nearly 1,100 Me 109s and 110s – a different way of computing the odds and one less daunting for the British side.
At the head of Fighter Command Dowding, the most senior serving officer in the RAF, had recently reached the age of fifty-eight. Scheduled for retirement a year beforehand, he had three times received short extensions owing to the outbreak of war and the developing crisis, and was now due to retire at the end of October. As the Air Member for Research and Development who had fostered the eight-gun fighter and radar, and as the head of Fighter Command since its inception in 1936, he was supremely experienced in his post and had a firm grasp of technical matters – though apparently not, as it turned out, of the most recent developments in the tactics of air combat. In his complete and dedicated professionalism, as in his quiet tastes and demeanour, he was the very antithesis of Goering.
Upon Dowding at Stanmore also rested responsibility for the static defences and the issuing of public air-raid warnings. The anti-aircraft guns defending the cities, dockyards, airfields and special targets (such as the Rolls-Royce works at Derby and the Supermarine plant outside Southampton) were, like the searchlights, under the direct command of Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick (‘Tim’) Pile, a tank enthusiast who had been sidetracked into anti-aircraft artillery. An Anglo-Irish baronet, able and popular, he was to be the only officer to hold the same major Command throughout the whole war. His task was no easy one. In July 1940 radar for gun-laying or searchlight direction was a promising development for the near future, as yet available only for a few guns at Dover; in general, reliance still had to be placed on sound locators to pick up unseen targets. Moreover aiming, as Pile himself wrote, was ‘based on the assumption that the enemy would fly at a constant height and a constant speed’. ‘It may be said’, continued the General, ‘that that assumption was purely a false one, but with the equipment in existence, it was not possible to engage targets on any other assumption.’20
Anti-Aircraft Command being operationally under Dowding’s control, Dowding and Pile had adjacent headquarters at Stanmore. In practice, discussion sufficed, and Dowding gave no orders; the two were mutual admirers and friends, who worked together in perfect harmony. In mid-July 1940 Pile deployed about 1,700 heavy guns – including old 3 inch to supplement the modern 3.7s and 4.5s. This was out of an approved schedule (in 1938) of over 2,200 and was vastly better than at the outbreak of war. In addition, for the protection of special targets and airfields he could muster about 600 light guns, mainly 40 mm, out of a recommended total of nearly 1,900. Old 3 inch guns swelled this total for the time being; and for defence, mainly of airfields, against very low fliers there were some 3,000 machine-guns. He also deployed, more nearly up to establishment, some 4,000 searchlights.
Also at Stanmore was the headquarters of the Observer Corps,* the body responsible for tracking aircraft once they had crossed the coast. By mid-1940 there were thirty-one Observer Corps Groups in Britain, each containing thirty to fifty observer posts. Manned entirely by volunteers, the Corps had acquired a morale and enthusiasm unsurpassed by that of any other civilian service. In July 1940 the standard of competence, in many places not yet enhanced by much experience of the enemy, was varied but fast improving. Not surprisingly, aircraft flying at great heights or in cloudy conditions often made accurate reporting difficult, if not impossible.
At Stanmore, too, was the headquarters of Balloon Command, under the direction of Air Vice-Marshal O. T. Boyd. By July 1940 the total of ‘gas bags’ under his control had risen to some 1,400, of which about 450 were disposed for the protection of London. Like the guns – until these became more scientifically controlled – their main function was to keep the raiders at heights from which their bombing would be less accurate. Flown up to a maximum of 5,000 feet, the balloons discouraged low-level attacks and presented a special hazard to the dive-bomber.
Though Dowding had complete responsibility for Fighter Command, unlike the more limited jurisdiction he possessed over the other elements in the air defence system, in practice this did not extend to any day-to-day, still less hour-to-hour, control of operations. During the Battle he would exercise higher control by, for instance, moving squadrons to meet the needs of rest or reinforcement, but – since swiftness of local reaction was vital – all detailed operational decisions remained devolved to the Fighter Groups and the sectors within them, as planned from the inception of the Command.
By mid-July 1940 these Groups had become four in number.** Each worked in close co-operation with one or more of the seven Anti-Aircraft Divisions. Pride of place went to II Group (HQ Uxbridge), which guarded the south-east up to Suffolk and extended over half of southern England. Its commander was Air Vice-Marshal Keith Rodney Park, a tall, lean, energetic New Zealander who had fought courageously at Gallipoli and on the Western Front and distinguished himself later as a pilot with the RFC. Before being appointed to 11 Group he had served as Dowding’s Senior Air Staff Officer at Fighter Command, and he had an excellent rapport with his Chief. He had kept up his flying by regularly piloting his Hurricane round the stations in his Group, and he had flown over Dunkirk to see things for himself. He was to prove himself in Malta later, as in Britain, one of the supreme fighter commanders of the war.
Being in the hottest spot and with the strongest Luftflotte (2) confronting it, 11 Group in early July held more squadrons than any other Group – twenty-two, or approximately 350 aircraft. Thirteen of these squadrons had Hurricanes, six Spitfires and three Blenheims. The Group’s sector stations, which would control the squadrons by R/T once forces were airborne on orders from Group headquarters, were mostly disposed in a protective ring round London – from Northolt in Middlesex to North Weald and Hornchurch in Essex, Biggin Hill in Kent, and Kenley in Surrey. North of this ring was Debden in Essex, and to the south Tangmere, near the Sussex coast close to Chichester. Until the end of the first week in August, when 10 Group took them over, 11 Group also controlled the new stations at Middle Wallop in Hampshire and Warmwell in Dorset.
Flanking 11 Group on the west, and covering the south-west and half of southern England, was the newly formed 10 Group, with headquarters near Box, in Wiltshire. It became operational on 13 July. It was commanded by a popular South African, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Quintin Brand, who had earned a cluster of decorations in World War I – among other feats he shot down a Gotha in the last raid on London – and who had been knighted in 1920 after a pioneer long-distance flight to Cape Town. The installation of Luftflotte 3 in western France promised plenty of work for 10 Group, which was hastily built up to meet the situation: at the beginning of June the area held only one fighter squadron, but a month later there were seven – mostly disposed on Coastal Command airfields. For most of July the Group held four squadrons – about sixty aircraft – of Hurricanes and Spitfires, with Filton as its fully developed sector station, and sector outposts at St Eval and Pembrey. By early August it was much stronger with the addition of Middle Wallop, henceforth one of its sector stations.
North of 10 and 11 Groups, and covering the Midlands and beyond to some fifty miles north of York, was 12 Group (HQ Watnall, in Nottinghamshire). Its five sector stations ran from Duxford in Cambridgeshire to Church Fenton in Yorkshire, the intervening stations being Wittering, Digby and Kirton-in-Lindsey. Its 210-odd aircraft – six squadrons of Hurricanes, five of Spitfires, one of Blenheims and one of Defiants – were under the command of Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who had been in charge since the Group’s inception in 1937. His experience in World War I and afterwards had been mainly in army co-operation. Energetic and strongly imbued with the spirit of the offensive, he exuded self-confidence and was popular with his pilots, whose views and experiences he regularly sought.
Finally, with headquarters at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, there was 13 Group, covering everything north of 12 Group, but running only up to the Forth as a continuous system. (Beyond that it had responsibility for the isolated defences guarding Scapa.) Its sector stations were at Catterick, Usworth, Acklington and Turnhouse (Edinburgh). Its 220-odd aircraft – six squadrons of Hurricanes, six of Spitfires, one of Blenheims and one of Defiants – were under the command of Air Vice-Marshal Richard Saul. A great sportsman who had represented the RAF at rugby and hockey and won its tennis championship, he had been an air observer in World War I. More to the immediate point, he had been Park’s predecessor as Senior Air Staff Officer at Fighter Command Headquarters.
At the heart of this whole system were the ops room and the more recently instituted filter room at Bentley Priory. This acted as the filter for information before passing it to Groups, which took the initiative in passing orders to sectors, which in turn alerted the airfields. The underground filter room at Fighter Command, the first to receive reports from the radar stations, established firm tracks from the maze of plots and ‘told’ these tracks and their ensuing plots to the adjacent Command ops room, the beating heart of air defence.
This ops room was like a theatre, the stage a table depicting a vast map covering the territory of all the Groups. With the first reporting of enemy aircraft this stage reflected the reality of the outside world as a drama in miniature, the actors being the young men and women in headsets who stood about the stage manipulating the plots with magnetic wands – like so many Prosperos recording the tempest raging above.
The plots received from the radar stations and (by instant relay from the Groups) the observer posts were each given a numbered counter showing the approximate size of the attacking raid or defending fighters, and its approximate height. As these plots became old – or ‘stale’ – their colour was changed until they could be replaced by more recent – or ‘fresh’ – plots.
Above, in the royal box of this theatre, sitting in rows, were the officers with their telephones to conduct their urgent business, the duty controller, and for much of the time Dowding himself or his deputy. So this was no passive audience. There were to be days when the fate of the nation, and of the free world, seemed to rest on the shoulders of these senior officers of the junior Service.
Meanwhile, the filtered ‘gen’ at Bentley Priory was passed simultaneously down the line so that Groups and sectors, all with their own ops rooms, were as up-to-date with their picture as Dowding’s headquarters. In this way, Groups took the executive decisions on which of their sectors should deal with raids as they developed and what forces they should ‘scramble’, while the sector stations communicated directly with the wings, squadrons or flights in the air, deploying them to the most favourable positions to intercept and destroy the enemy.
According to the system, but not always according to practice, only when the enemy was sighted – ‘Tally Ho!’ – did the pilots take over fighting responsibility.
Besides civil defence headquarters responsible for sounding air-raid alarms, the anti-aircraft guns and (when appropriate) the search-lights were tied in with the information system originating in Bentley Priory. Group ops rooms informed gun ops rooms, which in turn informed the gun sites.
The organisation was as complex as it was remarkable but seemed both simple and efficient in action. The whole machine was much more like the product of a Teutonic than an Anglo-Saxon people, and perhaps for this reason the Germans vastly underestimated its efficiency. They also knew about radar and had it themselves, but they also underestimated the refinement and efficiency of those towers which they were busily photographing from the air before the outbreak of war.
As the British and German forces confronted each other, confidence ran high on both sides – indeed, dangerously so on the German. The Luftwaffe had much the larger forces and more battle experience: Spain, Poland, Norway, the Low Countries and France had convinced its leaders and pilots alike that they could brush aside all opposition. It also had the enormous advantage of the offensive, the ability to choose when and where it would strike. Leaving aside the quality of the aeroplanes and the aircrew, which was not too dissimilar, the RAF for its part possessed two advantages denied to the Germans. Its skilful and devoted pilots were mainly fighting over their own land; and in its early-warning radar and its fighter control system it had priceless assets whose value was initially far from fully understood by the enemy.
Such were the strengths and dispositions of the opposing forces at the outset of the Battle of Britain: the Battle which would halt Hitler’s triumphs in the West, leave the British base unsubdued, and so make it possible, in the fullness of time, for Britain and her Allies to reduce his hideous Third Reich to the dust of history.
* Bevin was not among those dazzled by Beaverbrook’s reputation. Churchill once said to him, referring to Beaverbrook’s achievement at the Ministry of Aircraft Production: ‘Max is a magician – positively a magician.’ Bevin replied: ‘You’re quite right, Prime Minister -1 was always taught when I was young that magic is nine-tenths illusion.’8
* They acquired a new name – Home Guard – during July and, more importantly, rifles and uniforms during the succeeding months.
* An expression derived from the boast of General Mola in the Spanish Civil War, that he had four columns outside to besiege Madrid and a fifth column (of secret helpers) within.
* One MP, with the slow pace of rearmament in 1934–6 in mind, cruelly enquired in the Commons whether these gates were not needed to save Baldwin from the wrath of a justly incensed populace.
* Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – i.e. High Command of the Armed Forces.
* Royal from 1941.
** After the Battle they would become six, with the formation of further Groups (9 and 14) to cover lightly defended areas in the north-west and north.
