From the moment on 14 May when the War Cabinet and the reluctant French gave permission, Bomber Command had been doing its best to wage a strategic air offensive against Germany. By August it had not, in fact, made much progress – for which there were many reasons. Among them were its involvement in other tasks, such as attacking the German Army’s communications and the Luftwaffe’s newly occupied airfields in France and the Low Countries; its very limited size; and the fact that, if its aircraft were not to be shot down over Germany in droves, they had to operate solely by night.
There was also another difficulty, of which the Command and the Air Staff were ignorant. They held the firm belief that the Command’s navigational methods of the time – mainly dead reckoning and astro-navigation, with D/F fixes nearer home, without benefit of later radio and radar aids – were good enough to enable well-trained crews to find and bomb, particularly on clear or moonlit nights, precise targets such as oil plants, factories and rail centres. Not until after the Battle of Britain was it discovered, mainly from photographs, that though the British bombers had their occasional successes they were commonly missing their targets by as much as five miles.1
In these circumstances it was not surprising that attacks by forces of twenty or thirty Wellingtons, Whitleys or Hampdens against industrial targets in the Ruhr and elsewhere in West Germany, which had been going on intermittently since 15/16 May, did little damage to factories. They did, however, have an intentional nuisance value by putting areas under air-raid warning, which was bad for both production and morale. They also had another effect, which was at that time not intended. They destroyed, though not in large numbers, German homes and killed German civilians.
On the night of 25/26 August Bomber Command struck at objectives far beyond its normal reach. The previous night, as already noted, German bombs had fallen on the City of London – to be exact in Fore Street, near the Barbican – for the first time since 1918. There had been a scatter a little farther out, too – all through navigational error or by jettisoning, for which the German pilots were promptly reproved. The accidental nature of this episode was not manifest to Churchill, nor would he have troubled about it had he known. Bombs had fallen on the British capital, and to his mind there was only one appropriate response. He had already ascertained from the Air Staff, who deprecated attacking distant targets when there were good ones nearer at hand, that, if required, Bomber Command could put on a raid against Berlin within twenty-four hours. Almost precisely twenty-four hours after the German bombs fell on Finsbury, Islington and the East End, some eighty Wellingtons and Hampdens sought to attack the German capital.
They were directed mainly against industrial targets on the outskirts and failed to hit them. But on three of the four following nights British bombers were over Berlin again, in one incident killing ten civilians. Negligible though the damage was, the moral effect was considerable. W. L. Shirer, an American newspaper correspondent, recorded his impressions: ‘The Berliners are stunned. They did not think it could ever happen. Goering assured them that it couldn’t. Their disillusionment today is all the greater. You have to see their faces to measure it.’2
On few Germans did these raids produce a greater effect than on Adolf Hitler. Though he understandably dismissed with scorn their material effect, his pride was bitterly hurt and he was eager for revenge. His plans had for some time included bombing the British capital at the right moment in his invasion strategy. He could now do so whole-heartedly under the guise of reprisals.
So it came about that on 4 September Hitler took the occasion of a meeting in the Berlin Sportpalast, at which the Nazis were to open their Winter Relief campaign, to reveal something of his intentions. He did so in a way which evoked storms of clapping and cheering. ‘He had to stop’, wrote Shirer, ‘because of the hysterical applause of the audience, which consisted mostly of German women nurses and social workers.’3
The words which evoked such enthusiasm were delivered in the speaker’s characteristic tones of menace and heavy sarcasm: ‘When people are very anxious in Britain and ask yes, but why doesn’t he come? we reply, Calm yourselves! Calm yourselves! He is coming! He is coming!’ This promise followed another which had gone down almost equally well:
The British drop their bombs indiscriminately and without plan on civilian residential quarters and on farms and villages. For three months I did not reply because I believed they would stop, but in this Mr Churchill saw only a sign of our weakness. The British will know mat we are now giving our answer night after night. Since they attack our cities, we shall extirpate theirs.4
This public intimation of fresh work for the Luftwaffe followed a meeting between Hitler and Goering on 30 August. There the Fuehrer had withdrawn his ban on bombing London and expressed an ardent desire for attacks on the British capital in retaliation for Bomber Command’s raids on Berlin. An appropriate directive from Goering followed.
On 3 September the Luftwaffe chief then met Kesselring and Sperrle at The Hague. It emerged that though Kesselring strongly supported switching the main attack from Fighter Command’s airfields on to London, Sperrle did not.5 He felt that the RAF fighter defences were not yet sufficiently worn down. Kesselring, on the other hand, still misled by his pilots’ high claims of enemy aircraft destroyed and some reports that resistance was weakening, was all in favour of the new policy. He felt that even if the Luftwaffe destroyed all the fighter stations south of London, the squadrons there could move to airfields north of the capital from which they could still challenge the German raids. By contrast his Me 109s, with their short endurance, would be powerless to escort German bombers sent to attack such distant bases. What was needed, in his opinion, was to crush the last remnants of fighter opposition – Luftwaffe Intelligence estimated that it was now down to somewhere between 150 and 300 Hurricanes and Spitfires – and to do this by attacking an objective which the British fighters were bound to defend in force. Later, he was to write in his memoirs: ‘Our difficulty was not to bring down enemy fighters, but to get the enemy to fight.’6 The obvious answer was to attack London.
In this, Kesselring was echoing the feelings, at least in part, of his brilliant subordinate Adolf Galland. Galland’s constant complaint was that the Hurricanes and Spitfires would not come up in sufficient numbers to be destroyed in quantity.7 If London was attacked, they would have no option. Galland, however, was far more conscious than Kesselring of one weakness in the new plan. Over London, the 109s would be operating with a flying and fighting time of perhaps only ten minutes. Would they ever get back across the Channel?
Sperrle’s views were disregarded. On 5 September a further directive, this time from Hitler’s Supreme Headquarters, enjoined ‘harassing attacks by day and night on the inhabitants and air defences of large British cities’, especially London.
This switch in the main objective of attack– of which the British had no advance knowledge – thus came about for several reasons. There was the vengeance motive: the determination of Hitler to exact revenge for the RAF’s bombing of targets in Berlin and other German towns. There was the tactical motive: the belief of Goering and Kesselring that attacking London would induce great air battles in which the remnants of Fighter Command would be destroyed. And there was the overall strategical motive: to bring about the conditions for invasion or British capitulation. A grand assault on London, it was hoped, would create administrative chaos and terrorise the British into submission.
In this context, Feldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, the Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht, had issued from Supreme Headquarters on 3 September a schedule to govern the preparations already in train for the launching of ‘Operation Sealion’. The earliest date for the landings (D Day) was now fixed for 21 September instead of 15 September – a deferment at least partly caused by Bomber Command’s raid on the Dortmund-Ems Canal on 12/13 August, which had temporarily blocked the movement of invasion barges from the Rhineland to the coast.* The definite order for the launching of the invasion was now to be given ten days, and final commands three days, before 21 September.
In all this, Hitler still fully understood, and indeed emphasised, that an invasion would not be possible until the Luftwaffe had established air superiority over the Channel and southern England. Moreover, he already had in mind, as indicated by remarks to Army leaders during July, that it might soon be desirable to ‘take the initiative’ against Soviet Russia.8 This provisional element in Hitler’s invasion thinking was reinforced by the continued lack of appetite with which Raeder and the German Naval Staff regarded ‘Sealion’. Though Raeder had won his battle against the Army for landings on a narrow front, he remained throughout extremely unhappy at the thought of facing the Royal Navy and an unsubdued RAF. He obediently speeded up preparations, and even requisitioned enough craft to attempt an invasion, but never ceased to explain that the success of the operation would depend entirely on favourable weather and on winning supremacy in the air.
How accurate were Goering and Kesselring in their view that by now, in the opening days of September, Fighter Command was worn down and ripe for the knock-out? The Luftwaffe knew that since the beginning of its major attacks in mid-August it had lost 467 bombers, dive-bombers and fighters – just over one-sixth of its original operational strength. The British losses for the same period were reckoned by the Germans to be 1,115, nearly all fighters. They thus imagined that they had destroyed at least the equivalent of Dowding’s entire front line, leaving him to make good the losses from his reserves and from replacements. The full extent of this task they considered to be well beyond Britain’s productive capacity, either of aircraft or pilots. Moreover, they knew that the Luftwaffe had hit several aircraft factories and had done serious damage to many Fighter Command stations – some of which Kesselring had even ‘crossed off his list. As he and Goering saw it, a final massive blow or two could finish off their enemy.
Front page of the Daily Telegraph, 7 September, showing the daily tally of the number of enemy aircraft shot down.
The truth of the matter was somewhat different. Fighter Command was certainly heavily stricken, but not so heavily as the Germans imagined. From 24 August, when the Luftwaffe shifted its main weight of attack to objectives well inland, the damage to Fighter Command’s ground organisation had steadily increased. Twenty-four of the Luftwaffe’s thirty-three heavy attacks between then and 6 September had fallen on airfields – all but one in 11 Group. The key targets had been 11 Group’s sector stations. Of these, Kenley had already been badly hit on 18 August and could thenceforth operate only two squadrons instead of its normal three. Between 24 August and 6 September only one of these seven master stations – Northolt – had escaped attack. But only at Biggin Hill, bombed seven times within a week, had the damage been severe enough to restrict operations for more than a few hours and to reduce operating capacity to a single squadron. On the other sector stations craters, ruined buildings and severed communications had been handicaps quickly overcome: the controllers had continued to direct their normal forces.
In so far as Kesselring was crossing off airfields and overestimating Fighter Command’s casualties, he was certainly deluding himself. Nevertheless, the damage to several airfields had been severe and the casualties grievous enough. Between 24 August and 6 September Fighter Command had lost 295 Hurricanes and Spitfires destroyed – including eighteen in flying accidents – and another 171 badly damaged. During this time the gross output of these fighters, including repairs of the badly damaged, had totalled 269. Reserves had enabled the front line to be fully replenished; but with production not fully counterbalancing losses, those reserves were sharply declining. Another three weeks at the same rate of attrition, and they would be exhausted – even sooner if there was serious damage to the aircraft factories (or, worst of all, to the Vickers works in Sheffield, where the only drop-hammer in Britain capable of forging crankshaft castings for the Merlin engine was working round the clock, producing eighty-four stampings per shift).
Thanks to the titanic efforts in the aircraft factories and the repair depots, the front line on 6 September was still numerically intact. There were still enough machines to fight the enemy and dismay German pilots who each day expected to find diminishing opposition. All the same, the crisis was real enough: not so much because of the declining reserves but because of the loss of pilots – above all, of skilled pilots. This was Dowding’s nightmare, which haunted him more and more as the Battle progressed. Between 24 August and 6 September 103 of his pilots had been killed or reported missing, and 128 wounded. This nearly equalled an entire month’s output of new fighter pilots from the OTUs. By early September Dowding’s squadrons were down to an average of nineteen pilots each in 11 Group, as opposed to the official complement of twenty-six, while in the quieter Groups they were down to an average of fewer than sixteen. And all the newcomers from the OTUs, except pilots from other Commands or Allied air forces, lacked any experience of battle.
Such experience was, indeed, a vital factor. When fresh squadrons were posted into the hot spot, 11 Group, they usually suffered more casualties than the tired squadrons still there. Battle-hardened 501 Squadron, at Biggin Hill for the whole period of inland attack preceding 7 September, lost nine aircraft and four pilots during that fortnight; but 616 and 253 Squadrons, posted in from other Groups, lost respectively twelve aircraft and five pilots, and thirteen aircraft and nine pilots, within a week.
To the initial vulnerability of newcomers was added the inevitable loss, as the fighting went on, of fully experienced leaders. By 7 September roughly one in five of all Dowding’s squadron commanders, and one in three of his flight commanders, had been killed or wounded. Many of those who survived were flying two, three, or even four combat sorties a day. Sooner or later, such intolerable nervous strain must lead to disaster.
Dowding’s successive steps to maintain the battle strength of 11 Group were a clear indication of his troubles. In the early phases he had simply withdrawn squadrons which suffered heavy losses or became exhausted and replaced them with others from outside the Group. This, however, meant a cumbrous movement by road to shift all the squadron ground staff and equipment. So in the interests of speed he had soon begun to move in only the squadron’s aircraft and pilots, together with sixty or seventy – later, as few as thirty or forty – of its key ground staff.* With many of the normal services being supplied by ground staff of the departed squadron, this tended to weaken squadron organisation and esprit de corps. Park’s own preferred solution was simply to bring in experienced pilots as individuals from other Groups, but at first Dowding had rejected this. Squadrons, with their strong corporate loyalty and keenness to excel, resented being ‘milked’ of their best pilots – who, in any case, were needed to ‘bring on’ their less experienced colleagues.
By 6 September every Hurricane or Spitfire squadron that could reasonably be used in 11 Group or the two ‘hot’ adjoining sectors (Duxford in 12, Middle Wallop in 10) was either serving there, or had been serving there in the previous month. There were no further fresh squadrons fit to take the place of the battered ones. As Dowding later wrote: ‘By the beginning of September the incidence of casualties became so serious that a fresh squadron would become depleted and exhausted before any resting or reformed squadron was ready to take its place.’9 On 6 September, Fighter Command, though still very much in being, was a wasting asset.
So, as the losses mounted, Dowding was forced to introduce what he called his ‘Stabilisation Scheme’, promulgated on 8 September. By this, the squadrons were divided into three classes. Category A, the operationally fit, were all packed into 11 Group and the Duxford and Middle Wallop sectors. Category B, partially fit, with a number of experienced pilots in each squadron, were all located in 10 and 12 Groups and were to be brought up to strength so that they could relieve A squadrons. Category C, as yet deemed unfit to tackle enemy fighters, and with only half-a-dozen experienced pilots each, could serve in any Group except 11, but were to be placed in the areas most remote from the German bases – mainly in 13 Group. Cross-posting of experienced pilots from squadron to squadron, to maintain the strength of the As, was now to be the norm. Such a scheme, with its depressing effect on the traditional belief of each squadron that it was better than the next, would never have been contemplated by Dowding had he not been virtually at his wits’ end how to sustain 11 Group in face of the intense attacks on its sector stations.
Fortunately, relief was soon to be forthcoming: not from Dowding’s new arrangements, but from the enemy’s change of objective.
* For his outstanding part in the attack, carried out by five Hampdens of 49 and 83 Squadrons, Flight Lieutenant R. A. B. Learoyd was awarded the VC.
* There were twenty-one squadron movements between 24 August and 6 September. A transport flight and motor transport units were formed to help deal with this traffic, which could range from Kent to Scotland.
