Enter – and Exit – Luftflotte 5
15 AUGUST
All during the Battle, the lulls, usually caused by bad weather, provided blessed relief for the ground crews – not for purposes of rest and relief but to allow them the time to catch up on repairs and modifications.
An instrument repairer on 257 Squadron (Hurricanes), J. T. Ryder, recalled: ‘It was quite hair-raising trying to keep twelve Hurricanes fully operational – robbing Peter to pay Paul was rife in those days. As supplies were short one looked after the aircraft like a mother. Riggers and fitters kept the aircraft spotless, and woe betide any airman who Chiefy found neglecting his pride in his aircraft. Fortunately, very few ever let the side down. Seven days a week it was up at dawn for engine runs and daily inspections for readiness operations. This went on until dusk, and it was a case of trying to get as much sleep as possible during the night ready for a repeat of this tiring round the following day.’
When aircraft returned shot up they were at once assessed for damage and those that could rapidly be made airworthy were worked on then and there. Engine-damaged fighters were taken down to the hangars (assuming these had not been levelled by bombing) to be dealt with by civilian Rolls-Royce staff. In most cases, this entailed an engine change, which, with practice, could be carried out with amazing speed.
As for mainplane damage, this was dealt with by civilian fitters from Hawker’s (for Hurricanes) and Supermarine. Modifications, especially to the Spitfire, were numerous throughout the Battle and added another burden to the ground crews’ responsibilities. The original Mark 1 Spitfire, lacking self-sealing tanks, rear-view mirror, armour-plate behind the pilot, and with fixed-pitch, two-blade, wooden propeller, was a very different aircraft from the Mark 2. The Rotol constant speed, three-blade airscrew greatly improved climb and allowed the Spitfire to operate effectively some 7,000 feet higher, thus narrowing the gap in performance with the Me 109 above 25,000 feet.
No. 19 Squadron, the first to take delivery of the Spitfire, for a time had planes that were similar in some respects to the prototype. To offset the tail-heaviness of these early machines it was at one time proposed to fit a once-only device in the event of a spin, a tail parachute secured beneath a hatch just forward of the fin and operated by the pilot by means of a bowden cable from the cockpit. These parachutes were never resorted to as Jeffrey Quill found testing the prototype perfectly straightforward, if a bit rough and with longitudinal pitching in spins. But these very first production Spitfires still retained the hatch.
‘As engine and propeller development took place so the forward weight of the Spitfire increased,’ wrote Leading Aircraftman William Eslick of 19 Squadron. ‘It eventually became necessary to take off the slabs of lead mounted to the front of the forward engine feet and replace with lead ballast weights in the tail. These were circular and mounted on a threaded bar for accurate positioning.’
The fitting of armour-plate to these Spitfires was a more hectic business altogether. Eslick recalled an eventful evening at Hornchurch early in the Battle: ‘Officially no one was allowed off-camp but the pub “Good Intent” just down the road from the main gate was conveniently considered to be in bounds. Maintenance Flight made it their headquarters off duty. One evening by 10 p.m. there was little prospect of further flying. Suddenly the sergeant poked his head round the door. “All Maintenance Flight report back.” “What’s cooking, Sarge?” All aircraft were to be armour-plated by morning. There was no technical difficulty in fitting the slabs of boiler-plate to the frame immediately behind the pilot’s seat. The difficulty was in seeing which of the double-image rivet heads had to be drilled out when slightly pissed, and the innumerable visits to relieve us of several pints of best bitter as the night cooled.’
Most ground crew did not even have Eslick’s luck in being able to put down a few pints at the local every now and again. Aircraftman Jack Oldham, an electrician on 253 Squadron at Kenley, after one of its heavy raids, wrote: ‘I remember vividly sleeping in the dispersal dugout pens and rigging up emergency lighting which was supplied by a trolley-ac. [mobile engine-starting accumulators]. We seemed to live in our uniforms for days at a time with gumboots on continuously. My tunic during the Battle of Britain was an old Royal Flying Corps one from 1918 which I had been issued with when I joined up at Padgate in September 1939, and it was very handy as I didn’t need to wear a collar and tie, the tunic being called a “dog collar”.
‘The feeling of camaraderie between all flight mechanics, flight riggers, instrument repairers, armourers and electricians was terrific.’
It is sometimes forgotten that the same pressure was applied as relentlessly to the ground crews, and especially to those who serviced the front-line squadrons, as to the aircrews. When the Luftwaffe assault on the airfields was at its height these men, and the WAAFs who worked with them, on maintenance, as drivers, in the cook-houses and messes and in other trades, were heavily at risk, too, and many were killed.
Exhausted armourers, engine fitters and riggers were often to be found lying on the grass sound asleep as their squadron took off again. Many of them never saw the outside of their base for the duration of the Battle; many more went for days without seeing their bunks or the inside of their mess. C. R. Blachford wrote of ‘being at readiness from about three-thirty in the morning to eleven-thirty at night day after day. Meals were taken “as and when”, and the rare days when we made it to the airmen’s mess for a meal were usually interrupted by an air-raid. On one occasion I remember about six of us were on our way to a meal when bombs started to fall on the’ drome. We all dived into what we thought was an air-raid shelter, but it turned out to be the station’s bomb dump.’
Very few of those who fought the Battle on the ground received any recognition for courage and endurance, and unlike the aircrew were not entitled to wear a Battle of Britain star on their service ribbon. A number of those who later referred to this injustice did so philosophically: the ‘erks’ gave much; expected, and received, little. Certainly the corporal in this anecdote of Blachford’s received nothing: ‘A Spitfire came back from a dogfight and, having fired its guns, needed rearming. Having removed the gun panels, they found that one of the .303 machine-guns had jammed with one round, unfortunately an incendiary, split. It was alight and could have caused serious damage to the wing of the plane if a corporal armourer had not had the presence of mind to urinate on it, thus putting out the fire. Someone, it was said, wanted to report him for indecent exposure as WAAFs were in the area.’
No one admired the courage of the ground crews more than the pilots who depended so completely upon them. A retired squadron leader, then Sergeant Pilot Iain Hutchinson of 222 Squadron, recalled a hectic landing at Hornchurch to refuel and rearm: ‘The airfield was under attack and chunks of shrapnel from the nearby 4.5-inch AA [anti-aircraft] guns were raining down on the airfield. When I taxied towards dispersal no one was to be seen; all were in the air-raid shelters taking cover. Before I rolled to a halt and cut the engine, B Flight ground crew under their flight sergeant were swarming around my Spitfire, the bowser racing out to refuel the aircraft while the armament men, laden with ammunition, were reloading the guns. The noise from the explosions going on around us was terrifying but not one of these magnificent men faltered for a moment in their tasks. I was frankly relieved to be taking off again, leaving behind the inferno.’
Many original and ingenious devices were extemporised in order to maintain serviceability at a time when the aircraft might be called on to scramble three times in a day. No. 19 Squadron devised a mobile service wagon in the shape of an old car chassis. In Eslick’s words: ‘It carried glycol, ammo. tanks, starter cartridges, oil bottle with hand-pump, oxygen bottles and anything useful for a quick turn-round. This cabless chassis would career around the perimeter track and home in on the latest arrivals.’
Aircraft replacements were sometimes cheered on arrival such was the desperate need for them. ‘A brand spanking new aeroplane was ferry delivered to us one day,’ Eslick also recalled. ‘It did not even have squadron markings. But it landed on a dead engine, a conn. rod had “put a leg out of bed”. This was almost like winning the pools and finding the ticket had not been posted.’
Many different and widely spaced sources of supply were utilised to manufacture, complete and fly in that Spitfire for 19 Squadron. One of those responsible for engine accessories, for example, was Frank ‘Rod’ Banks, an experienced engineer officer who was called in by Beaverbrook. Banks wrote:
He asked me to form a department to develop and produce engine accessories. These were in very critical supply, and aero engine production and delivery was being delayed…. We proceeded to organise the companies on a twenty-four-hour a day basis and also expand them as quickly as possible. In addition we searched all the RAF stores for equipment that was urgently needed…. It was like pulling teeth from an unwilling child, but the stores people finally accepted with good grace – they had to! Everyone at the Ministry of Aircraft Production worked through the days and the nights, and hardly had time to read the daily reports of the progress of the Battle or even appreciate the excitement attending the hostilities overhead, only realising them by the urgency of the demands fromthe squadrons….1
On 15 August, lunch was well under way at 12.40 p.m. It had been a relaxed morning up north, typical duff Yorkshire weather outside. Like others in 616 Squadron (Spitfires), Hugh ‘Cocky’ Dundas had read the newspapers, finding the wide coverage of the air battles of the previous day faintly irritating. They all felt that their squadron had sufficiently recovered from the rigours and excesses of the French campaign, and it was time they were back in business. So, too, did Denys Gillam, Dundas’s flight commander – ‘Denys really held the squadron together.’
Dessert was being offered when, without any preliminary warning, the Tannoy called out, ‘616 Squadron, scramble, scramble, scramble!’ ‘We couldn’t believe our ears,’ Dundas recalled. ‘We raced for the dispersal, where the ground crews had everything ready, engines started. We just jumped in and went off, there was no organisation, we never joined up with anyone, and were told to fly out to sea.’
They were at 12,000 feet above Flamborough Head, where the American John Paul Jones had severely trounced the British just over 160 years earlier, when they saw the sky ahead marked by a mass of dots. These rapidly grew larger and developed into the configuration of some sixty Ju 88 bombers, in loose formation and without escort. The Spitfires, supported by half-a-dozen Hurricanes of 73 Squadron, went in head-on to break up the formation and then turned to pick their target for deflection attacks.
‘I hit and shot down one of the 88s,’ Dundas reported, ‘and saw another one damaged.’ Seven of this force were shot down there and then by the Hurricanes and Spitfires, with three more crash-landing from combat damage when they had recrossed the North Sea. But the survivors of KG30, which had taken off from Aalborg, Denmark, pressed on to their target, the important ‘fighter’ station, Driffield. Here they met heavy, early-warned, anti-aircraft fire, which accounted for another of their number, although the bombers did manage to hit four of the bomber station’s hangars, destroying ten aircraft.
Driffield was the only credit mark Luftflotte 5 could claim in its widespread first operation on north-east England, which was as great a surprise to the attackers as the defenders. To support the fierce, predictable raids in the south with surprise raids on airfields and industrial targets in the north-east appears to have been a sudden inspiration emanating from Goering’s Chief of Intelligence, Oberst Josef ‘Beppo’ Schmidt. He was confident that all Fighter Command’s resources had been concentrated in the southern Groups and that the north-east was wide open to attack. He knew nothing of Dowding’s inflexibility, which had earlier combated the notion of sending more fighter squadrons into the bottomless pit of the French campaign. Now, in spite of the extreme pressure bearing on 11 and 10 Groups especially, he had insisted that the rotation of tired squadrons to the quiet north should continue.
In fact, besides 616 and 73 Squadrons, which were to maul so severely the Denmark-based Ju 88s, there were at least four more single-seat fighter squadrons available in 13 Group. Many of the pilots were highly experienced and all were yearning for action.
The commandant of Luftflotte 5, General Hans-Juergen Stumpff, had received his orders only the previous evening. We can be certain that they were as welcome to him and his staff as they were to his aircrews, who were as frustrated as the pilots of RAF Fighter Command, 13 Group.
For the Luftwaffe, this northern operation was stricken with grievous misfortunes. The plan was, in addition to the Danish force, for some seventy Norway-based He 111 bombers, escorted by a Gruppe of twenty-one Me 110s, led by the Gruppekommandeur Hauptmann Werner Restemeyer, to attack airfields in the Tyne–Tees area. Because of the range, the bomb-load was reduced to 3,000 pounds per aircraft, the range of the 110s was augmented by a belly-drop fuel tank, and, according to some RAF pilots who experienced no rearward fire, the gunners had been left behind to save weight. As a feint, a force of Heinkel seaplanes was to precede the operation by flying towards the Scottish coast north of Edinburgh to draw any unlikely fighters north and away from the main attack:
But the German bombers made a serious navigational error: they made landfall seventy-five miles too far north, thus almost coinciding with the point of the mock attack.
‘Thanks to this error,’ reported Captain Arno Kleyenstueber, ‘the mock attack achieved the opposite of what we intended. The British fighter defence force was not only alerted in good time, but made contact with the genuine attacking force.’2
A ferocious running battle now developed between the Heinkels and their escort and the Spitfires and Hurricanes of 72, 605, 41 and 79 Squadrons. One of the first of the 110s to go down was that of Restemeyer himself. The enormous explosion which tore his Messerschmitt to shreds was thought by some of his fellow pilots to have originated in his empty drop tank which, perhaps, he had been unable to jettison. In all, one in three of the twin-engined fighters fell to the 13 Group fighters’ guns, the survivors seeking cloud and escape.
The unprotected bombers began to pay their toll at the same time over the sea and over Sunderland and Newcastle, where they scattered their bombs haphazardly. Bob Deacon-Elliott reported: ‘We’d never seen anything like it before. During our training, we’d learned to do “Number One Attack”, “Number Two Attack”…. You knew exactly what each of those meant. So someone called to our acting squadron commander, Ted Graham, “Have you seen them?” Ted, who stuttered, replied, “Of course I’ve seen the b-b-bastards. I’m trying to w-w-work out wh-wh-what to do.” But we were already about to reach them. Graham hurtled in through the gap between the bombers and their escort and each of us picked a target. I saw two Huns literally disintegrate. The bombers quickly began jettisoning their loads…. We hacked them about so badly, the formation split apart and they made for home.’3
Stumpff’s Luftflotte tried to cheer themselves up by claiming eleven Spitfires shot down in these northern raids, but the truth was that not one was damaged in the prolonged attacks. One Hurricane was obliged to return to base early, that was all.
By the time Dundas and the other 616 Squadron pilots returned to Leconfield lunch was over. But no one seemed to mind. Most of the afternoon was taken up with compiling reports for the intelligence officer, who had not been so busy for weeks.
Dowding in his Despatch made this comment on Stumpff’s surprise assault on the north-east:
The sustained resistance which [the Luftwaffe] was meeting in south-east England probably led them to believe that fighter squadrons had been withdrawn, wholly or in part, from the north in order to meet the attack. The contrary was soon apparent, and the bombers received such a drubbing that the experiment was not repeated.4
The assault in the south to coincide with that in the north-east was once again delayed by the weather, and also by the uncertainties occasioned by the absence of so many senior officers of Luftflotten 2 and 3, including Kesselring and Sperrle. They had all been called urgently to Karinhall by Goering, who wished his subordinates to account for the poor start made to Adlerangriff.
By noon, however, the skies over northern France were clearing and, like termites in warm weather, the Junkers, Messerschmitts and Heinkels emerged from their cover of trees or draped branches, engines turning over and whipping up dirt and leaves in their slipstream.
First away were two powerful forces of Ju 87s, one led by von Brauchitsch, the other by Hauptmann Anton Keil, based at Angers. The top cover of Me 109s was never accurately counted by the British but it was more than generous. This made good sense. What remained inexplicable was that the targets were two of the airfields which had already been marked twice (at least) as written off – Hawkinge and Lympne.
Park, well warned of the imminent arrival of these two powerful enemy forces, had three squadrons of Hurricanes on patrol and ten more squadrons more or less immediately available at Martlesham, North Weald, Hornchurch, Croydon, Kenley, Manston and Hawkinge. Nos 54 and 501 Squadrons were also scrambled by the Biggin Hill controller, Group Captain Richard Grice.
These Spitfires and Hurricanes were neatly placed to intercept von Brauchitsch’s dive-bombers as they prepared to descend on Hawkinge, breaking them up, shooting down two and damaging others before the German ‘snappers’ descended and shot down four of the British fighters – all pilots safe.
Meanwhile, Lympne again suffered the ritual death rites, Keil’s dive-bombers having a free run. Almost as ritualistic was the arrival, as the last dust settled, of Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, who inspected the fresh craters and ordered them to be filled in.
More serious in the long term was a surprise low-level raid by 110s on Manston, where the ground personnel were becoming very quick at getting to the shelters. Sixteen more were made casualties by cannon and machine-gun fire. Rubensdoerffer’s low-level specialists followed this up with a superbly navigated and timed raid on Martlesham Heath, far north of the Thames Estuary. His sixteen Me 110s and nine Me 109s all carried 250 or 500 kg bombs, and not one of them missed the numerous targets available to them, and all returned safely. Two hangars were knocked out, stores were wrecked, water mains cut and a Fairey Battle bomber with 1,000 pounds of bombs (intended for the German invasion barge concentrations) was blown up, destroying the watch office and much else. But by some freak of chance there were only two serious injuries among the ground staff.
This raid took place at 3.00 p.m., and it could be said by then that the Luftwaffe’s misfortunes up north had been redressed farther south. But the fighting day in 11 and 10 Groups had scarcely begun, as Park and Brand became increasingly aware. The first truly gigantic plots – bigger than ever recorded before – were building up over Normandy, the Cherbourg Peninsula and farther west in the early afternoon, and the hard-pressed pilots of 10 Group realised that they had more heavy fighting ahead.
These plots rapidly developed into individual raids, mainly of Ju 87s and 88s, heavily escorted by Messerschmitt fighters, both single- and twin-engined. Their targets appeared, as before, to be the Portsmouth–Southampton urban complex, Portland, Weymouth and inland airfields. It was thought that the Luftwaffe at one time had at least 300 aircraft involved, and to meet this threat 11 and 10 Groups scrambled the greatest ever number of fighters to meet a single enemy operation, some 150 Hurricanes and Spitfires from fourteen squadrons, ranging from Croydon to Exeter.
It was from Exeter that Ian Gleed led four more Hurricanes of 87 Squadron towards the likely scene of action soon after 4 p.m. His pilots were the Australian Johnnie Cock, the flight commander Derek Ward, Roland ‘Bee’ Beamont and Tom Mitchell. The controller told them to expect 90+ twenty miles south of Portland at 18–20,000 feet and heading north. A few minutes later this was corrected to 120+. It did not seem to matter. Gleed ordered them into search formation as they approached the coast. Soon they picked out a mass of dots dead ahead, mostly Ju 87s, heavily supported by fighters. The dive-bombers were in tight formation at 14–17,000 feet. Mitchell reported them first, and Gleed responded characteristically, ‘OK I’ve got them – come on chaps, let’s surround them.’ According to Beamont, the CO ‘made no attempt to climb above the oncoming formation or go round on a flank, but bored straight in to the thickest part with the rest of us ramming throttles open and pitch levers to fine pitch, checking gun sights and turning gun safety catches to FIRE…. Apart from the disparity in the numbers of the opposing forces this situation did not look too bad, and then there was no more time for meditation.
‘Streams of smoke came back from the CO’s Hurricane as he opened fire and I moved below and to port of him to obtain a clear line of fire on the next section of Stukas crossing my front from left to right. While actually firing on them … trails of tracer flickered over and round my cockpit and a 110 appeared standing on his tail firing up at me from directly ahead and below. Using full port rudder and aileron and a lot of forward stick and still firing, I aimed directly at him and saw my own tracers entering the underside of his wing and fuselage before slicing past his nose at what seemed altogether too few feet. Rolling to the left and looking over my shoulder I saw this aircraft break into a number of pieces with much fire….’5
In his turn, Beamont was almost immediately nearly shot down by another 110. It was typical of dozens of engagements all over the south of England that day, often at these ridiculous odds of twenty to one. On this occasion, Johnnie Cock was shot down and was seen by Beamont to splash into the sea, from which he was later rescued.
Inevitably in this fine weather, with the determination of the Luftwaffe crews to break through to their target equal to the RAF’s solid resolve to resist them, the air battles fought mostly near Portsmouth and Portland were the fiercest so far that summer. There was abundant heroism and tragedy on both sides, with German rear gunners continuing to fire from doomed aircraft, and British and Allied pilots bringing back fighters so crippled it was a wonder that they could stay in the air.
Only two of the defending squadrons failed to intercept the enemy, and the losses on both sides were heavy, again the clumsy Me 110 and Ju 87 being the most numerous victims. Richard Hardy, severely hit and wounded by machine-gun fire in mid-Channel, disorientated and losing blood, managed to land his Spitfire, wheels-down, in a field. Unfortunately, the men who helped him from his cockpit wore the olive-drab uniform of the Wehrmacht.
On the other side of the Channel, and far to the north-east, the New Zealander Alan Deere was enjoying his busiest day. He had already shot down one enemy aircraft and probably two, had escaped the bombing of Manston by aborting his landing between unexploded bombs at the last second, and escaped a pursuing 110 as well as the airfield’s defence fire. Finally, on his last mission of the day, he was shot down over Deal and baled out.
‘I spent five agonising hours in the back of an RAF ambulance,’ he recalled, ‘which bounced and bumped its way through … the highways and byways of Kent in search of Kenley airfield, only to finish up at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead.’6 He did not allow himself to be delayed there for long.
In conclusion, of the Luftwaffe’s unprecedentedly powerful assault on the central south of England:
It will be seen that most of the interceptions were successful in that they occurred before the coast was crossed, in the Portland and Portsmouth areas. Nevertheless it is apparent that if the enemy forces were indeed so large, very great numbers of aircraft must still have been able to shake off our fighters’ attentions, and proceed on their mission. The bombing attacks which resulted were, however, as usual, insignificant. One [enemy] report speaks of Portsmouth being ‘heavily bombed’, but the Home Security Summary fails to mention a single bomb having fallen there. Indeed, once again the only significant damage was to an aerodrome, for Middle Wallop received about twenty-eight bombs….7
But this long and exhausting day was not yet over, and once again the scene of most violent action shifted back to the south-east.
In the middle of that clear, warm afternoon, while the hop pickers were dealing with a fine harvest for the breweries, and the early hard fruit was also being gathered in Kent, some ninety Dorniers of KG3, led by the extravagantly titled Oberst Wolfgang von Chamier-Glisczinski and escorted by 130 Me 109s, headed across the Channel. The blips revealed by Dover radar were as big as anything seen by Poling or Worth Matravers a little earlier, swollen as they were by the presence of sixty more 109s from the crack JG26, which trailed their coat over Kent to distract any defending fighters.
For 11 Group the odds were stupefying. Nos 64, 111 and 151 Squadrons attempted to break through to the stately, massed Dorniers but only managed to get two of them, while 151 alone lost six Hurricanes, shot down or badly damaged. Over northern Kent, Chamier-Glisczinski split his force, sending off forty-five of his Dorniers to blast Eastchurch again, while he led his own Gruppe to Rochester. Intelligence had pinpointed the Short Brothers and Pobjoys aircraft works here, and the Dorniers devastated them. Production was indeed badly set back, but Short Brothers’ aircraft were four-engined bombers, not fighters, which had been Schmidt’s first concern.
It was still only just after 6 p.m., with hours of daylight ahead, when Luftflotte 2 carried out a final airfield assault. The targets were Biggin Hill and Kenley. A strong force of Dorniers was to attack the first, with ‘free chase’ 109s of JG26 sweeping ahead, behind and on both sides of the line of attack. Kenley was reserved for Rubensdoerffer’s Erpro 210, bombed up, rearmed and still flushed from their successful raid on Martlesham Heath earlier in the afternoon. Rubensdoerffer himself was again to lead his crack fighter-bombers, fifteen 110s and eight 109s.
Was even the tough, seasoned Hauptmann below his best by this relatively late hour after the earlier long double flight with all its inherent stresses and anxieties? Had a tiny margin of concentration, needed so acutely in these wave-brushing, daisy-cutting, ultra-low-level flights, been sacrificed? If anyone had so much as hinted that this might be the case, he would certainly have got short shrift from this authoritarian and utterly ruthless leader.
The first hint that Rubensdoerffer’s luck might be slipping was his failure to rendezvous with his 109 escort. If he turned back – and this would have been quite out of character – he would have left the Dorniers alone to face the full might of the defences. He decided to go on, streaking across the Channel from the white cliffs of Calais to the flat beaches of Dungeness, boring inland over Walland Marsh, Rolvenden, Benenden, Cranbrook and other pretty villages, pulling back the stick to lift over the Downs and Sevenoaks.
Rubensdoerffer had glimpses of scuttling figures in the streets, of panic-stricken cattle, a farmer trying to steady his horses. It was a long flight at ultra-low level, only the railway lines providing sure confirmation of their position. He had decided to overshoot his target and come back on it from the north, in order to fool the defences and give his planes the advantage of leaving the target area on course for home. It was just one minute before 7 p.m. when he sighted hangars, watch office, numerous buildings and the broad splash of grass which confirmed that this was an airfield.
Having climbed at the last minute, Rubensdoerffer now led his fighter-bombers down on to the target, confident that this would be the second airfield Erpro 210 would write off on this day. No anti-aircraft fire. How could they miss?
Then suddenly, at the most critical moment as they were selecting targets, left thumb on bomb release, right thumb on gun button, they found unfamiliar aircraft, behind, at their side and above….
John Thompson’s 111 Squadron Hurricanes – just nine of them – had been scrambled from Croydon before Erpro 210 had crossed in at Dungeness, climbing to 10,000 feet and orbiting in the slightly hazy late afternoon sun. To the north lay the great urban sprawl of London, the dome of St Paul’s, the tower of the Roman Catholic cathedral beyond the Palace of Westminster and the white splash of the Savoy Hotel between them, all identifiable beneath the silver-grey floating sea of barrage balloons.
The controller was feeding out the latest news of the two plots advancing swiftly across Kent and then Surrey: ‘Wagon Leader, coming in from the north-east, losing height from angels six …’
The controller thought the likely target was Kenley, correctly anticipating Rubensdoerffer’s instructions, Croydon being too close to the balloons. But the German planes overdid the turn and the Hurricanes caught the fighter-bombers in the very act of release over Croydon. Many of the bombs fell on the airfield’s buildings, including a Hurricane repair plant, the armoury, hangars and the terminal building which, a year earlier, had been graced by the rich off to Paris or Cairo in the comfort of four-engined Hannibals.
One of 111 Squadron’s armourers, Charles Cooper, was in the armoury with others when the alarm was sounded: ‘I went to a gun position, with our Flight Sergeant Clements, which consisted of one Browning .303 machine-gun which we had mounted on a home-made steel tripod. On hearing the sound of the bombs coming down, we dived into a nearby shelter, fortunately in time to miss the bomb which hit the armoury. I think we lost four of our armourers off the squadron, including two friends of mine, Bernard Mills and Alf Couland. The same bomb killed Gangster, Flight Lieutenant Connors’s* dog.’
Because of the Hurricanes’ intervention, many of the bombs fell wide, outside the airfield’s perimeter and on to the surrounding private houses which abounded in this area. Some seventy people were killed and many more injured.
Thompson himself gained his squadron’s first success of the day, a 110 losing an engine and much of one wing before the pilot dextrously skidded down on to a field, wheels up, pilot and gunner unhurt. By this time several 32 Squadron Hurricanes from Biggin Hill had arrived to reinforce 111, and Erpro 210 was forced into defensive circles, from which, as opportunity and cloud cover allowed, individual aircraft would break free.
With the advantage of superior speed and the handicap of limited fuel, it was the 109s that were first to flee, throttles wide open and climbing for cloud or the more dangerous concealment of trees, valleys and railway cuttings. All but one got away. For the slower 110s, the price was higher, six of the fifteen failing to return.
John Thompson pursued one of these fleeing 110s across the undulating farmland of Surrey and Sussex, the pilot showing remarkable skill at taking advantage of the least cover. At one moment in this hectic one-against-one chase, the Squadron Leader saw his tracers removing tiles from a farmhouse roof. He then knew he was very low indeed. But the outcome was inevitable. Flames began to pour from one of the Messerschmitt’s engines; then, close to the little village of Rothersfield, Thompson must have hit the pilot, for the no suddenly reared up vertically, turned over and was pulverised on impact. The pilot was Rubensdoerffer, and with him died his rear gunner Obergefreiter Kretzer.
As the last of the Erpro 210 fighter-bombers sped off back home over Dungeness, it was possible to reflect on the cost and relative futility of over 1,750 Luftwaffe sorties against England, from first light in the south to the catastrophic midday raids in the north-east, and finally the evening snap airfield raids, when that supreme low-level navigator and fighter-bomber pilot, Rubensdoerffer, had mistaken Croydon for Kenley. The Dorniers, too, had missed Biggin Hill and dropped their bombs from high altitude on the incomplete grass airfield of West Mailing, damaging some wooden huts and killing one or two airmen.
When Sperrle and Kesselring returned from Karinhall late that evening, first reports of the activities during their absence were not encouraging, and Kesselring was especially anxious about the bombing of Croydon, which was well inside the Greater London area from which for the present Luftwaffe pilots were prohibited. Hitler, it must be added, was furious, but the perpetrator lay dead in the wreckage of his plane far away across the Channel. All the same the loss of Rubensdoerffer was a cruel blow for Luftflotte 2, and KG26 alone had lost three senior officers among eight He 111s which had failed to return. In all seventy-five fighters and bombers of the three Luftflotten involved had succumbed to the guns of the RAF and Anti-Aircraft Command, the biggest haul of the Battle.
Against this figure, Dowding had lost over thirty fighters and thirteen pilots, excluding the unfortunate Richard Hardy recovering in a French hospital, and two more made prisoner.
On this day, while the fighting raged far to the north, and to the south, the Cabinet met at 10 Downing Street. After the business had been dealt with, all left except Churchill himself and the Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, ‘while reports came in of the air battle which was developing’. Eden continued:
Squadron after squadron of the RAF went up to engage the enemy and still the Luftwaffe kept coming. The news was scrappy at first and still more squadrons were called for, until it seemed that they had all been committed. As we listened and conjectured, things looked very stern, with the odds heavily against us. At last Churchill announced that he would drive to Fighter Command HQ and I went back to the War Office, neither of us yet knowing that this was to be one of the critical days of the war.8
Dowding greeted the Prime Minister solemnly without for one moment taking his mind off the events unfolding on the great plotting table below his balcony. Yes, the figure of German losses was well over 100. The first raids on the north-east had been repulsed by fighter pilots starved (or so they thought) of action.
Later, Churchill commented:
The foresight of Air Marshal Dowding in his direction of Fighter Command deserves high praise, and even more remarkable had been the restraint and the exact measurement of formidable stresses which had reserved a fighter force in the North through all these long weeks of mortal conflict in the South. We must regard the generalship here shown as an example of genius in the art of war.9
When Churchill returned to Downing Street he ordered his private secretary to telephone his predecessor as prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who had recently suffered a serious cancer operation. The man of Munich was in the middle of his dinner and was not best pleased at the interruption.
However he was overcome with joy when he heard the news and very touched at Winston thinking of him. It is typical of W. to do a small thing like this which could give such great pleasure. ‘The Lord President was very grateful to you,’ I said to Winston. ‘So he ought to be,’ replied W., ‘this is one of the greatest days in history.’10
Readers of the New York Times were not encouraged to share Churchill’s claim. It was the gravity of the situation that commanded the attention over there. Full eight-column headlines spread starkly across the front page as this newspaper told how ‘1,000 Nazi Planes Raid Britain’, and the report on the Croydon raid recounted how the ‘black-nosed Nazi bombers … sowed death and reaped ruin, barely skimming their targets, then roaring back to the clouds’.
On the same day, the American aviation authority, Major Alexander Seversky, published an article in the New York Times, which brought a new perspective to bear on the Battle and further intensified American interest, which was already being stirred in the city (and elsewhere throughout the United States) by black headlines:
The action now being reported is generally regarded as the ‘prelude’ to an invasion…. But it is nothing of the sort. What we are now watching is the authentic big push. If Great Britain loses the present battle, she will in effect have lost the war, at least as far as the mother country is concerned. Whether the victors then decide to ‘invade’ the island or prefer to lay it waste systematically from the air without anything more than a token occupation of a few spots will be a matter of detail, without essential military significance…. Air power makes possible the defeat of an enemy without occupation. But the sooner we in America learn this lesson from the tragic events of these crowded days and apply them in our own planning for national security the better.
The New York Times failed to pick up the story from its counterpart in London about the eighteen-year-old German airman who produced a photograph when he was captured. ‘I was told if I showed a photograph of my mother I wouldn’t be shot,’ he claimed. Perhaps the New York Times editor no more believed this story than the British figures of German losses. It was true all the same, even if the losses were exaggerated.
Meanwhile, the American Ambassador in London, Joseph P. Kennedy, ensured that a more or less continuous flow of pessimism about Britain’s hopes of survival still reached Washington. ‘England will go down fighting,’ ran one of his messages to the President. ‘Unfortunately, I am one who does not believe that it is going to do the slightest bit of good.’
To Roosevelt’s disgust, Kennedy ordered the Embassy and all its staff to flee London, the first to do so. Other Americans in London took a more robust view of the times. Besides the pilots helping to defend Britain, they formed their own Local Defence Volunteers unit. Kennedy did not approve, and told them they ought to go home before the inevitable invasion and defeat of Britain.
* Stanley Connors DFC and Bar shot down one of the raiders and was also credited with a Ju 88 on this day. He was shot down and killed three days later.
