10 JULY 1940
The official dates for the start and completion of the Battle of Britain, 10 July and 31 October, can only make any sense with the supporting argument that it had to begin and end formally at some time for the sake of the history books and battle honours for the aircrew who participated. But for all the efforts of historians, history remains an untidy business. It was just bad luck that, say, a Spitfire pilot who claimed a successful encounter on 9 July and was too badly wounded to return to his squadron before 1 November did not qualify for the Battle of Britain clasp or membership of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association. And good fortune for a newly qualified Blenheim air gunner who flew his first operational sortie on the night of 30/31 October.
In the event, there was some particularly tough fighting in November and even December 1940, and some of the days leading up to 10 July were quite as busy as the official first day. On 4 July, for example, the Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber confirmed its deadly accuracy, and the vulnerability of coastal convoys to its 500 kg bomb. Events on that same day proved how dangerous ‘free chase’ Me 109s could be, ranging at medium altitude behind the coasts of Kent and Sussex in search of sections of Hurricanes (preferably) and Spitfires. For instance, a Staffel of 109s bounced a section of 65 Squadron Spitfires from Hornchurch on 7 July and killed all three pilots.
During these early days of July the weakness and inflexibility of Fighter Command’s peacetime set-piece ‘Fighting Area Attacks’, which attempted to apply formality to what was essentially a dogfight mêlée, already revealed over France, became apparent to more of the British squadrons. But the tenacity with which some COs and flight commanders stuck to these numbered Attacks, and the close formation flying they called for, was to cost many lives.
The bombing of Manston airfield on 3 July was an omen of events to come. During these days, too, the undue pressure on the 11 Group sectors by contrast with 12 Group was first exposed. This was due to the main thrust of the Luftwaffe attack originating from captured French and Belgian airfields, rather than from bases in Germany as anticipated, when 11 and 12 Groups would have shared the responsibility more or less equally. Dowding, therefore, took steps to reinforce 11 Group, and as it became evident that Sperrle was now able to operate from the Cherbourg Peninsula, transferred 609 Squadron’s Spitfires from Northolt to Middle Wallop in Brand’s 10 Group, but still at this time operated by 11 Group.
First light on 10 July revealed a typical dirty English summer’s day, with intermittent driving rain from the south-west: ‘Harry clampers’ to the fighter pilots of 11 Group, many of whom drank their early morning cup of tea and turned over in bed for a lie-in.
Reports were coming in to Fleet Street about the May bombing of Rotterdam by the Luftwaffe. Later in the morning The Times headline writer prepared the front-page story: ‘Rotterdam a City of Ruins: 30,000 killed by German Bombs.’ It was clearly only a matter of time before the Germans turned their attention to London. Already several provincial towns and cities had suffered bombing. There were many public air-raid shelters for the common citizens of the capital: the Savoy Hotel hoped to attract the elite to its own, and let it be known through the press that theirs was ‘an exceedingly good shelter, below ground, the ceiling reinforced with a regular spider’s-web of steel struts,’ the whole patrolled by forty ex-servicemen.
Early in the day, in spite of the weather, RAF Blenheim light bomber squadrons were briefed for attacks on Luftwaffe airfields at Amiens and St Omer. The crews of 107 Squadron were confident that the ops would be scratched. They were not, and that afternoon only one out of six aircraft that took off returned.
Contemplating the events of the last weeks from Kelvedon Hall, the millionaire American-born Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon MP noted: ‘The Third French Republic has ceased to exist and I don’t care: it was graft-ridden, ugly, incompetent, Communistic and corrupt.’1
Churchill would have agreed with this judgment, but had no time to keep a diary. With the invasion of Britain becoming more likely day by day, among his priority preoccupations was, of all subjects, the design and production of landing-craft for the liberation of Europe from the Nazi yoke.
HRH Group Captain The Duke of Kent also had his eyes on the future. He was off to an Elementary Flying Training School for the day and night to check on the progress of some sixty Polish flying cadets.
The first enemy air attacks of 10 July developed not over England but far to the south in the Mediterranean. Here Italian bombers were sighted approaching Malta, and more were seen near Sidi Barrani on the coast just inside the Egyptian frontier. In both places the skies were clear blue, by contrast with northern Europe. Would the weather here improve? It was a question of critical importance to Kesselring and Sperrle – and for that matter to the whole of the Luftwaffe, which was anxious to get on with things.
At first light, almost every day, the Germans had been sending out weather and recce planes to photograph the previous day’s targets, future targets and report on the weather. Do 17s or 215s (they were almost identical) or Ju 88s were usually used for this task, which included attacks on convoys if conditions were favourable, and they probed far out into the Atlantic as well as patrolling the Irish Sea and North Sea. They took advantage of cloud cover whenever possible and were often difficult to pick up on the radar sets. But in the past few days casualties among these lone recce planes had been high. No. 603 Squadron, with sections at three Scottish airfields, had acquitted itself particularly well on 3 July, catching and shooting down in turn three 88s from KG30 based in Denmark, while far to the south a Hurricane pilot of 56 Squadron had surprised a prowling 17 off Burnham and shot it down.
Up at Coltishall, in mid Norfolk, a flight of 66 Squadron (Spitfires) was on dawn readiness on this 10 July, the pilots still confident that there would be no trouble. In spite of ‘Harry clampers’, the phone rang soon after 7.30 a.m. ordering a section to scramble after a ‘bandit’ spotted off the coast by the CH station at West Beckham. No. 66, commanded by Squadron Leader Rupert Leigh, had been only the second squadron to convert to Spitfires and had scored their first success back in January.
Pilot Officer Charles Cooke led the section, climbing up through thick cloud in tight formation, breaking into summer sunshine as they were given a final vector on to the bandit. Cooke caught sight of the enemy at 8.15 a.m., the distant slim fuselage confirming its identity as a Do 17. Resorting to emergency boost, the three Spitfires caught up with their target, which was already jinking and sliding in an attempt to evade the fighters’ gunfire.
Oberleutnant Bott, who had taken off from Antwerp on this recce flight at dawn, fought hard to survive, manoeuvring his big machine to give his three gunners repeated opportunities to knock out the two attacking Spitfires. A burst head-on at one of them caused the pilot to break off. But the eight guns of the second fighter during a number of deflection attacks soon overwhelmed the Dornier, killing Bott and his second-in-command, Leutnant Schroeder, and sent the other two crew members to their deaths, too, as the machine splashed into the sea off Yarmouth.
Charlie Cooke’s windscreen had been damaged and was letting in a lot of cold air, so he rapidly lost altitude but continued to lead his section, keeping his eyes open for fields to land on if his engine failed. But the Merlin had survived the burst of 7.9 mm fire without damage, and before 9 a.m. the three pilots were on the ground celebrating their success.
The weather began to improve soon after the 66 Squadron pilots had landed, the scudding clouds thinning to reveal rapidly growing patches of blue. Farther south, off the Kent coast, Oberleutnant Sombern was completing his recce in another Dornier, and was off the North Foreland when his observer spotted a large convoy heading south-west for the Dover Straits. The wireless operator, on Sombern’s instructions, immediately transmitted its position, course and size en clair in case he should meet trouble later. In fact, this seemed unlikely for, to meet the contingency of interference by the RAF, this privileged Dornier had been given an escort of a Staffel of Me 109s from Wissant.
This force had been picked up by both Foreness CHL and Dover CH stations at around 10 a.m., and 74 Squadron at Manston had been ordered to scramble a flight of their Spitfires. The heavily outnumbered Spitfires went straight for the Dornier and were immediately pounced on by the 109 ‘snappers’, which scored hits on two of the attackers. But, weaving through the maelstrom of 1/JG51 Messerschmitts, two of 74’s machines scored more damaging hits on the slim fuselage of the recce plane, killing Sombern and wounding other members of the crew. The Dornier was seen lumbering south across the water towards Boulogne, where it subsequently crash-landed behind the town.
But the news of the big British convoy set in train the midday events over the English Channel, which led to 10 July becoming the first official day of the Battle of Britain. Considering the privations for Britain to come, the code-name ‘Bread’ for this convoy has a certain ironical ring, but in fact the ships were in ballast en route to south-coast ports. The massive early afternoon fight over ‘Bread’ had a dramatic overture. In anticipation of a violent British reaction to the planned raid, Kesselring sent over a Staffel of 109s on a ‘free chase’, trailing its coat to get the RAF off the ground so that its pursuers might be out of fuel when the raid took place, and, secondly, as a bonus, might suffer casualties themselves.
This Staffel of 109s took off just before 10.30 a.m. and swept at low level across the Channel, over the white cliffs and, at very high speed, inland behind Dover. Nine Spitfires were scrambled from Biggin Hill, took up the pursuit and, by cutting corners, succeeded in getting among the Messerschmitts briefly although they failed to do any damage, while their leader, Squadron Leader Andrew ‘Big Bill’ Smith, was hit badly enough to make a forced landing at Hawkinge. First round to the Luftwaffe.
The main action began soon after 1.30 p.m. after radar plots at Dover CH were passed to Uxbridge, indicating an exceptionally heavy build-up behind Cap Gris Nez. No. 11 Group immediately scrambled five squadrons to deal with the threat, among them 111 Squadron (Hurricanes) from Croydon under Squadron Leader John Thompson, an enterprising and particularly daring leader. Thompson, in conjunction with his flight commanders, had devised the squadron’s own individual method of attack: head-on with the entire squadron flying line abreast.
First on the scene was a flight of Hurricanes from 32 Squadron at Biggin Hill, which were soon reporting a force of twenty-four Dorniers flying in V formations (vies), closely escorted from the rear and above by about twenty Me 110s with the same number of 109s as top cover at 12,000 feet. The 110s were, in fact, from the ‘Horst Wessel’ ZG26 led by their famous one-legged commander, Oberstleutnant Joachim-Friedrich Huth. At this stage before the disillusionment with the 110 had set in, the morale of this Geschwader was second to none and there was every expectation, with their heavily armed, twin-engined machines, of bloodying the noses of the RAF.
The Hurricanes of 32 Squadron found difficulty in getting to the Dorniers, which were intermittently concealed by scattered cloud and defended more than one-for-one by the fighters. No. 74 Squadron’s Spitfires, next on the scene, had better luck. Johnny Mungo-Park, who had already had some success over Dunkirk, got in a long burst on a Dornier which fell out of formation, and his number two damaged a 109 right over the centre of Dover.
The Dover guns, among the first to be radar assisted, now joined in, spotting the sky with black bursts and lines of tracer directed towards the lower flying Germans. Through this lethal barrage nine of John Thompson’s Hurricanes came roaring in as if this were no more than a Hendon airshow display, their line abreast attack proving as fearful to the bomber crews as the British CO had predicted. The Dornier formation broke up before the Hurricanes had cut through the bombers, and then Thompson and his pilots turned, climbed sharply and began snapping like terriers at the rearmost sections of the demoralised Dorniers. A number of the Hurricanes latched on to one of them, giving it short deflection bursts until it broke up and fell away. Tom Higgs, an experienced peacetime regular, dealt with another Dornier on his own, becoming so enthused that he closed in too tightly and cut into it. The bomber immediately fell away out of control, taking its captain, Hauptmann Kreiger, and the rest of the crew with it. Higgs’s Hurricane, lacking a wing, was photographed by another Dornier crew member spinning down after its victim. A launch sped to the area and found Kreiger and Willy Thalman still alive, but there was no sign of Higgs or the Dornier’s other two crew members.
The fight over the convoy and Dover harbour deteriorated into a visual and aural mêlée, the cries of warning over the R/T mixed with unnecessary shouts of triumph. The only identifiable shapes were the circles into which the unwieldy 110s formed themselves defensively, making use of their rear guns. But these circles, too, were rapidly broken up, and the whole massive Luftwaffe force, to everyone’s relief, re-crossed the Channel singly or in small sections. Except for one small ship, convoy ‘Bread’ was unscathed, and Higgs was the only RAF fatality, though three more of John Thompson’s Hurricanes were damaged, one by an over-eager Spitfire pilot of 54 Squadron.
Sperrle’s Luftflotte 3 bombers had better fortune over the West Country. He had wisely ordered a force of sixty-three Ju 88s to approach the Cornish coast from the west, which confused the radar controllers at Dry Tree, on Lizard Point. Too many minutes passed for 92 Squadron, scrambled hurriedly from Pembrey, to get among these fast bombers. The only pilot who got near the enemy was the much decorated, middle-aged Welshman, Ira Jones, Wing Commander (Flying) at a training station. ‘Grandpa Tiger’ Jones had shot down forty enemy planes in eight months in World War I and was hell-bent on adding to his score. He took off in an unarmed Henley target-tug and intercepted one of the 88s which had just bombed his native land.
‘When I got near enough to see the black crosses on the Hun’s wings and rudder [wrote Jones], I felt the old joy of action coursing through my body, though my only armament was a Very pistol which fired a cartridge of varicoloured lights.
‘A bare 100 yards in front of the bomber, I pressed the trigger of the pistol. Then I turned gently to the left. The lights went floating down prettily in front of the Junker, and the pilot made a sharp flick towards the open sea…. I screamed along the top of the cloud, just to have the fun of seeing him run away.’2
This 88, and all the others, returned unscathed to France, leaving dead and injured, and a good deal of damage, at Swansea and Falmouth.
The day was marked by other incidents, some tragic, some ridiculous. The New Zealand All-Blacks star, Donald Cobden, of 74 Squadron, felt as if he had been heavily tackled on the rugby field when he landed his crippled Spitfire, wheels up, at Manston; while, late in the afternoon, Pilot Officer Basil Fisher found himself the target for another over-zealous Spitfire pilot. His fuel tank and tailplane were riddled with .303 bullets, but he, too, made it back slowly.
Far up north, intelligence picked up a German voice reporting another convoy – there were at least eight coastal convoys at sea this day. But, due to continuing bad weather here, the convoy was undiscovered by the Luftwaffe and the recce plane escaped from its searchers.
It had been a very high-scoring day. In fact, the claimed figures in The Times for Italian losses over Malta and Sidi Barrani were actually as great as the confirmed number of Luftwaffe aircraft lost around Britain: about a dozen in each case, though a further ten Germans were more or less damaged by fighters and anti-aircraft fire. Only one British fighter pilot was lost, indicating graphically the advantage enjoyed by the RAF in fighting over its own territory and coastal waters.
But the German raids were the lead story in the newspapers the next day, and the Americans especially were made aware that a new scale of ferocity in the attacks had been reached by the Luftwaffe. Frank Kelley of the New York Herald Tribune reported under the headline ‘England Fights Off Biggest Air Attack’:
Day-long sallies by waves of German bombers against coastal objectives in England, Wales and Scotland reached a grand climax yesterday in the greatest and fiercest air battle in ten and a half months of war when seventy-five Nazi bombers, escorted by forty-five or more fighters, roared across the English Channel in two formations and showered bombs on a strongly defended convoy bringing vital food and other supplies to these besieged islands.