MANY of the German operational instructions in the field for the first phase of the Battle of Britain issued, curiously enough, from an old omnibus situated on the cliffs at Cap Blanc Nez near the Bleriot statue commemorating the first cross-Channel flight in 1909. From this unusual and cramped little command post, Johannes Fink, the forty-five year old Kommodore of Kampfgeschwader 2, hoped to achieve air superiority over the English Channel and the Straits of Dover, using his own force of Dornier Do 17 bombers, two Stuka Gruppen and two Jagdgeschwader of Messerschmitt Bf 109s, one led by Werner Molders and the other by Adolf Galland. Fink therefore had at his disposal some seventy-five medium bombers, sixty or more dive-bombers and about 200 fighters, and as commander of this battle force he bore the imposing title of Kanalkampffuhrer, or Channel Battle Leader. Further down the coast near Le Havre, Wolfram von Richthofen’s Fliegerkorps VIII had been assigned the task of attacking British shipping in the Channel until everything that moved on the water had been dive-bombed out of existence, notwithstanding the fact that these same Junkers Ju 87s had already taken a severe beating in the skies over Dunkirk.
The Oberkommando der Luftwaffe orders for the campaign against Britain were issued on 2nd July, 1940, and during the following weeks the four telephones in Fink’s temporary headquarters jangled incessantly with activity as he directed his battle group into action. In the brilliant summer sunshine, the tiny dots high in the vast blue bowl of the heavens would tilt sharply over to port and resolve at once into ugly gull-winged Ju 87s, falling vertically out of the sky in screaming power dives towards the convoys that continued to steam placidly along in the shadow of the white cliffs of Dover. Anti-aircraft fire exploding angrily among the plunging dive-bombers; great fountains of water erupting in the midst of the ships as they took violent evasive action; then the sky over the Channel would become filled with twisting, turning fighters as the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the R.A.F. tangled with the Ju 87s and escorting Bf 109s. The attacks, initially small and spasmodic, increased in number until on 10th July Fighter Command flew no less than 609 sorties in protection of the Channel shipping and harbours and destroyed thirteen German aircraft for the loss of six British fighters. From that date, the R.A.F. and the Luftwaffe were engaged in a bitter life-or-death struggle for mastery of the air.
By 25th July the Luftwaffe had lost large numbers of Ju 87 dive-bombers and a surprising number of fighters, but Johannes Fink had achieved his purpose and gained a tactical victory by driving all British shipping out of the Channel. The attacks had shown that the British radar network found it impossible to give sufficient warning of the approach of German aircraft at such short range, and the vulnerable convoys had been forced to undergo heavy punishment before intercepting fighters could be hurled into the battles. Also, of course, both sides were still sparring warily around the ring; the Luftwaffe was using only small numbers of aircraft on each sortie, and the R.A.F. was very sensibly reluctant to commit its fighter force in strength without good reason.
The outcome of the Channel Battle should have brought little joy to Hermann Goering, for the actions during July had destroyed for ever the Stuka myth fostered within the higher ranks of the Luftwaffe for almost a decade. The Junkers Ju 87 attacks on British shipping and harbours illustrated for the first time that when opposed by a determined fighter defence the dive-bomber was seriously handicapped as a striking weapon. As Adolf Galland has commented: “… the slow speed of the Ju 87 turned out to be a great drawback. Owing to the speed-reducing effect of the externally-suspended bomb-load, she reached only 150 m.p.h. when diving, and as the required altitude for the dive was between 10,000 and 15,000 ft. the Stukas attracted Spitfires and Hurricanes as honey attracts flies… the Stukas, once they peeled out of formation to dive singly on to their targets, were practically defenceless …” The vulnerability of the Ju 87s to the British eight-gun fighters, apart from disconcerting the Luftwaffe high command, was a source of annoyance and frustration to the German fighter-pilots, whose Bf 109s were too fast to provide suitable close escort cover. Refusing for some time to admit that the dive-bombing policy was now a catastrophic failure, Goering openly blamed the fighter force for the high losses in Ju 87s, although by the middle of August the limitations of the Stuka type of aircraft were so obvious that all dive-bomber formations had to be withdrawn to the Pas de Calais in the hope that they would be of some use again after the R.A.F. had been destroyed.
Goering could also reflect that his vaunted Messerschmitt Bf 110 Zerstorer formations had not lived up to their reputation in this first phase of the Battle of Britain. When used as escort for dive-bombers, these twin-engined fighters could exist when attacked by Hurricanes only if they formed a tight defensive ring and devoted themselves entirely to their own protection. Admittedly the high speed of the Bf 110s was an advantage, for they were often able to escape if seriously engaged, but they lacked the armament and performance to battle with single-engined fighters, and had already proved to be hopelessly inadequate in the escort role. Yet the Heinkel He 111 and Dornier Do 17 medium bombers would undoubtedly have a hard time of it over England without strong fighter protection; and the overworked Bf 109 squadrons could not stand up indefinitely to the rigours of a long drawn out struggle for superiority.
Even to Goering it was becoming increasingly obvious that before an invasion could be attempted the British fighter force would have to be totally destroyed—and in the shortest possible time.
On 6th August Goering decided to hold an important conference at Karinhall to discuss with his senior officers the next phase of the Battle of Britain. Hitler’s Operational Directive No. 17, issued three days earlier, had metaphorically brought the Reichsmarschall rigidly to attention by stating firmly: “… The German Air Force must with all means in their power and as quickly as possible destroy the English air force. The attacks must in the first instance be directed against flying formations, their ground organisations, and their supply organisations, and in the second against the aircraft production industry and the industries engaged in production of anti-aircraft equipment….” Now, Milch, Sperrle, Stumpf and the other German air leaders were assembled to hear Goering outline the plans for Adlerangriff, or “The Attack of the Eagles”, as the offensive had been named, although in fact most of them already possessed detailed knowledge of the Luftwaffe dispositions. Only the important subject of co-operation between the army, navy and air force during the actual invasion, which had been code-named Seelowe, or Sealion, still remained something of a mystery; indeed, Hitler’s plans for the seaborne assault on England were so vague as yet that Kesselring, for one, doubted if he intended to invade at all.
The total German first-line strength deployed against Britain in August, 1940, was approximately 2,550 serviceable aircraft, including 900 bombers, 250 dive-bombers, 800 single-engined fighters and 200 twin-engined fighters. This apparently formidable force was absorbed into three air fleets; Luftflotte 2, under the command of Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring; Luftflotte 3, under Generalfeldmarschall Hugo von Sperrle; and Luftflotte 5, under Generaloberst Stumpf. Luftflotte 5 had been based in Norway and Denmark since the Norwegian campaign, and was mainly to be directed against northern England, while the two air fleets in the west had merely extended their boundaries across Occupied France, Belgium and Holland during the Channel Battle. The main H.Q. on Luftflotte 2 was established at Brussels, with an advanced H.Q. at Cap Gris Nez, and the main H.Q of Luftflotte 3 was at Paris, with an advanced HQ at Deauville. An unusual feature of the command structure for Adlerangriff was the grouping together of fighters in the air fleets into units known as Jagdfliegerfuhrer, or Jafu, which were supposed to have a measure of operational independence, but in fact seldom benefited from it because they lacked any radio close control.
As in Poland and France, the single-seater Messerschmitt Bf 109 E, the twin-engined Messerschmitt Bf 110C, the Heinkel He 111K and Dornier Do 17Z medium bombers and the Junkers Ju 87B and Ju 88C dive-bombers represented the nucleus of the attacking force. The Heinkel He 115, a twin-engined seaplane, was earmarked for use in small numbers to harass convoys in the English Channel, and a few Heinkel He 59 float biplanes had been adapted for air/sea rescue duties.
The German Intelligence system accurately assessed the British fighter forces available in July, 1940, at fifty-two squadrons of Hurricanes, Spitfires and Defiants, a total first-line strength of some 900 aircraft. Using the same armament of eight Browning machine-guns and the same Rolls-Royce Merlin liquid-cooled vee engine, the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane had been designed to fulfil the requirements of Air Ministry specification F5/34 of 1935, which called for a very fast eight-gun single-seater monoplane fighter to provide the hard core of British air defence. Nevertheless, these two types of aircraft were totally different in conception, the Spitfire’s lines bearing distinct traces of its Schneider Trophy seaplane ancestry, and the Hurricane being a direct development from the Hawker Fury biplane. The Boulton and Paul Defiant two-seater fighter superficially resembled the Hurricane, but carried no forward armament and concentrated all its fire power in the rear cockpit, which held a four-gun power-operated turret.
The Supermarine Spitfire was a slim and supremely beautiful monoplane with graceful semi-elliptical wings, and such smooth lines that it seemed too ethereal for the rough and tumble of air fighting, but R. J. Mitchell, the designer, had used his Schneider Trophy experience to produce a thoroughbred; excellent handling characteristics, outstanding high-altitude manoeuvrability and a speed of over 350 m.p.h. turned the Spitfire into the epitome of the single-seater fighter. In July, 1940, there were nineteen squadrons of Spitfires in Fighter Command in readiness for the Battle of Britain.
Designed by Sidney Camm, the Hawker Hurricane marked the transition from the twin-gun fighter biplane to the eight-gun monoplane in Great Britain, and was in fact the first aircraft of that type to enter service with the R.A.F. A sturdy, robust fighter capable of taking very heavy punishment, the Hurricane featured the famous Hawker tubular girder construction covered by fabric, a method of construction used on the Fury biplane fighter in 1930 and retained on the Hurricane in preference to the more complicated stressed-skin fuselage of the Spitfire in order to get some of the new eight-gun fighters into quantity production as quickly as possible. Rather larger and heavier than the Spitfire, the Hurricane had a maximum speed of 316 m.p.h. at 17,500 ft. and an overall performance not unlike that of the Messerschmitt Bf 109, although the German fighter was more manoeuvrable and delicate to handle.
The Boulton and Paul Defiant turret fighter was a contemporary of the Messerschmitt Bf 110, and suffered from the same disadvantages: too much weight and inadequate armament. The conception of both aircraft could be traced back to various outstanding two-seater fighters in service during the period 1916–1918, but the two-seater fighter as such had died a natural death some time between the wars, and the Defiant and the Bf no merely emphasised the fact that a two-seater must have exceptional qualities to beat a single-seater in a general dogfight. The Defiant had a brief but remarkable success over Dunkirk, mainly against bomber formations, although on at least one occasion the Defiants of 264 Squadron were mistaken for Hurricanes by a German fighter formation, which dived on to their tails and were immediately blasted out of existence by the devastating fire from the two-seaters’ four-gun turrets. If attacked from below, however, the Defiant was defenceless, and by August, 1940, losses were so high that it was obviously outmatched in every way by the German single-seater fighters. Consequently, it was about to be withdrawn from daylight operations and undergo modification as a night fighter.
At Bentley Priory, above the village of Stanmore, Middlesex, stood the headquarters of the man who faced the difficult task of breaking the German air offensive before all his fighters had been consumed in the furnace of battle. Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the brisk Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command, so unlike his fat and jovial German opponent that he had been nicknamed “Stuffy” because of his reserved, austere nature, had no doubts about the tremendous responsibility that rested on his shoulders; he knew that in this battle there would be only the narrowest of margins between victory and defeat. Thanks to his own untiring efforts since the inception of Fighter Command in 1936, often a grim uphill struggle against superiors who preferred to bury their heads in the sands of complacency and let the future take care of itself, Britain had in four years been provided with a first-class fighter defence organisation, yet within a month Dowding had seen many of his precious Hurricane squadrons drained away during the disastrous campaign in France. When he could bear the tragic wastage of machines and men no longer, Dowding warned the War Cabinet that his fighter strength was being seriously weakened, and when this had no effect composed a characteristically outspoken letter to the Air Ministry, clearly stating the position, and ending with the following words: “… if the Home Defence Force is drained away in desperate attempts to remedy the situation in France, defeat in France will involve the final, complete and irremediable defeat of this country.” Informed in the same letter that only thirty-six fighter squadrons remained in Britain, Winston Churchill decided that no more squadrons would be sent to France. It was a decision influenced by Dowding, and not easily made, but it was destined to affect the history of the whole world.
Now that all his fighters were back at their home bases, Dowding found that he could muster fifty-two squadrons, including twenty-five for the protection of the Southern and Western Counties; these, under 11 Group, commanded by Air Marshal Sir Keith Rodney Park, would have to bear the brunt of the battle. About a thousand trained pilots were in readiness to meet the German onslaught, the young men later to be described in the Official Short History as “the gayest company who ever fired their guns in anger” and yet who were in many cases inexperienced, over-confident or simply afraid. Come what may, Dowding felt certain that all would acquit themselves well when the storm broke; but he could not know that when it was all over many of his most irreplaceable pilots would have been killed in action.
During the conference at Karinhall, Goering had announced that the opening of the air offensive against Britain, named by him Adlertag, or “Eagle Day”, would take place on 10th August, but in fact the second phase of the Battle of Britain began on 8th August, when three heavy attacks by heavily escorted Junkers Ju 87s of Fliegerkorps VIII were intercepted and repulsed by seven Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons from the south-coast aerodromes. The escorting Bf 109s fought savagely to protect the slow ungainly Stukas, and in the dogfights that raged over the Channel thirty-one German aircraft were shot down for the loss of nineteen R.A.F. fighters.
The following day was quiet, with only scattered raids, mainly because low cloud obscured the Channel, and Goering and his staff were preoccupied with the Adlertag preparations. The meteorological reports were far from promising, and it was decided to postpone Adlertag pending the arrival of more favourable weather. Nevertheless, on 12th August a series of hammer blows were delivered against the three forward fighter airfields of Manston, Lympne and Hawkinge, the naval base at Portsmouth and six of the vital radar stations along the south coast.
Lympne airfield was heavily attacked by a formation of Ju 88s soon after nine o’clock in the morning, and an hour later the radar stations near Eastbourne and Hastings were bombed, while fifteen Ju 88s dive bombed the long-range radar station at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, putting it out of action. The raid on Manston airfield was carried out by a formation of Dornier Do 17s, which hurtled in very fast and low over the hangars while the escorting Bf 109s fought a running battle with the Spitfires of 54 Squadron. The bombs rained down as 65 Squadron’s Spitfires were taxi-ing out for take-off, and the fighters rose into the air miraculously unscathed through eruptions of smoke and flying debris. Heavily engaged, the Do 17s turned for home; in five minutes they had pitted the airfield with craters and knocked out the workshops and two hangars. When the tumult of roaring engines and hammering guns had died away, Manston was out of action, and accordingly deleted from the operations maps at Luftwaffe headquarters. In fact, it had been made serviceable again by the following morning.
The attack on Portsmouth was carried out by determined Ju 88s, which plunged straight down through a solid wall of antiaircraft fire to strike hard at the city and dock area, starting several fires which were still burning many hours later. By nightfall the German radio was rightly claiming that all the selected targets had been seriously damaged, but the British air defences had survived the onslaught, and all the attacked units except the radar station on the Isle of Wight were in operation again within a matter of hours. Also, thirty-six German aircraft had been shot down for the loss of twenty-two R.A.F. machines, a score that evened out in some measure the success on the German side.
On 13th August, despite early morning cloud and uncertain weather, Goering decided to officially launch his Adlerangriff offensive against Britain. The main force, seventy-four Dornier Do 17s of Kampfgeschwader 2, in two formations and personally led by Johannes Fink, headed for Eastchurch; the Junkers Ju 88s of Kampfgeschwader 54 were directed against Odiham aerodrome and the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough; and the Ju 87s of Stukageschwader 77 took off with orders to bomb Portland and selected airfields in Hampshire and Kent. Mass attacks were also to be made on Southampton and the Thames Estuary later in the afternoon.
Warned by his invaluable radar system, Dowding committed a large concentration of fighters, and the dogfights which developed during the day were furious cut-and-thrust battles with no quarter asked and none given, a foretaste of the struggles that lay ahead. Fink’s hard-pressed Do 17s managed to retain their superb formation—and concentrated fire-power—as far as Eastchurch, and seriously damaged the airfield there before the Spitfires harrying them were joined by two Hurricane squadrons, which broke up the mass of bombers. Dodging through the clouds, the Dorniers fought their way back to the coast, leaving behind them four which would never return and another four so badly damaged that they would be lucky to reach their home bases.
The Ju 87 and Ju 88 raids met with little success, the aircraft of Kampfgeschwader 54 being so hotly engaged by fighters that they missed their targets and scattered bombs indiscriminately everywhere, and a formation of Ju 87s being intercepted and shot to pieces so effectively that nine were lost without having achieved anything. The escort of Bf 110s for the dive-bombers directed against Portland missed the rendezvous and arrived over the target still seeking their bombers, to be met instead by two Fighter Command squadrons, which destroyed six of the vulnerable two-seaters in five minutes. The attack on Southampton was carried out with only moderate success, and seven British airfields were hit without suffering anything more than minor damage, although a raid that night by Heinkel He 111s of the élite Kampfgeschwader 100 did considerable harm, eleven bombs being dropped on the Spitfire shadow factory at Castle Bromwich.
The next day, 14th August, was cloudy, and apart from a few scattered raids by odd Ju 88s and He 111s and a few bomb-carrying Bf 110s there was a strange absence of German aircraft over England. In fact, the inauspicious opening to Adlerangriff had shown the Luftwaffe leaders that their first mass attacks had been badly organised and lacking in the perfect co-ordination of the British fighter defences. Also, the targets had been too scattered, giving negligible results for heavy casualties. With a clear weather forecast for the following day, it was therefore decided to make a concerted effort with all three Luftflotten on a wide front, concentrating against the forward airfields and radar stations, and above all encouraging the British fighters into the air all along the line, to be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. In short it would bring about a climax of this phase of the battle, although neither side were able to realise as much at the time. On this day, but never again, the Luftwaffe would be able to make nearly 2,000 sorties, and the R.A.F. have to use all four fighter groups to repel the aerial armada.
The first blow on 15th August fell at 11.30 a.m. in the bright morning sunshine, when about sixty Ju 87s with an escort of fifty Bf 109s from Galland’s Jagdgeschwader 26 attacked the airfields at Hawkinge and Lympne, and were intercepted by two Fighter Command squadrons. While the Spitfires were battling with the Bf 109s, the dive-bombers hit their targets, causing almost complete devastation at Lympne but only slight damage at Hawkinge. Galland attacked a Spitfire which vomited fragments and burst into flames, and then swung on to the tail of another, which escaped by turning inside the Bf 109.
At noon Luftflotte 5 from Norway and Denmark unexpectedly entered the arena by striking with about a hundred He 111s of Kampfgeschwader 26 and seventy Bf 110s of Zerstorergeschwader 76 at the north-east coast in the Newcastle and Sunderland area. Five squadrons of R.A.F. fighters met these formations and quickly broke them up; fifteen German aircraft were shot down without losing a single British machine. “The Squadron was flying at 22,000 ft. on course 020 deg, with the enemy well below,” ran a typical combat report, from 72 Squadron, “flying west in many Vic formations, line abreast and line astern … Circling the flank, I warned the rear guard of escort fighters and then ordered the Squadron to attack, leading my Blue Section in a No. 3 stem chase on (He) 111s which were flying behind and slightly above the enemy preceding Vics. I opened fire at 250 yards closing to about 30 yards, and saw smoke burst from the fuselage and port engine. Intense return fire was encountered but this was inaccurate. On diving away from He, I spotted a Me 110 circling above me, so dived straight for the clouds 900 ft. below. Before entering the cloud I could still see this Me 110 spiralling down, but this time I got the impression that it might have been out of control, though no smoke was issuing from it….”
While these dogfights were raging over Sunderland and the North Sea, the Ju 88s of Kampfgeschwader 30 raced in at high speed to attack the Bomber Command aerodrome at Driffield, inflicting fairly serious damage before they were engaged by the Spitfires of 616 Squadron, which destroyed six of the raiders. By the early afternoon, as the bullet-riddled survivors of Luftflotte 5 struggled back to their Scandinavian bases, it was obvious that the sorties against northern England had proved to be a costly failure. In the final reckoning, Luftflotte 5, numerically the weakest of the three air fleets, had lost twenty-three bombers and escort fighters; unable to risk such heavy casualties again, it would take no further part in the campaign, having literally been knocked once and for all out of the Battle of Britain.
Meanwhile, in the south-east the Fighter Command operations tables were becoming alive with renewed activity as radio and telephone messages poured in again. After a minor attack on Manston airfield by twelve Bf 109s, wave after wave of escorted bombers crossed the coast near Felixstowe, Harwich and Orford Ness, and soon afterwards a force of nearly a hundred German raiders was reported coming in over Deal. Four R.A.F. fighter squadrons endeavoured to turn away the enemy formations, but by sheer weight of numbers the hard-pressed bombers fought through to their targets, heavily damaging he aero components factories at Rochester and striking again at Eastchurch and the coastal radar stations. Twenty minutes later another formation of 150 bombers approached from the Folkestone area, followed by some 250 aircraft from Luftflotte 3, which spread out over Hampshire and Wiltshire. Eight fighter squadrons from 10 and 11 Groups rose to cross swords with the raiders, the largest force Dowding had yet committed at any one tame, and the vapour trails wove fantastic patterns in the skies over the southern counties as the Spitfires and Hurricanes harried the German bombers and fought desperately with the escorting Bf 109s. Guns chattered, men died and aircraft twisted and turned in a nightmare of smoke and flame high above the quiet English countryside, then suddenly the German forces were unravelling back across the coast and out to sea. The weary Fighter Command pilots returned to their bomb-cratered home bases hoping that the enemy would call it a day; but they were soon to find that Kesselring and Sperrle still had a few cards to place on the table.
At 6.15, when most of the forward fighter squadrons were refuelling and re-arming, about seventy German aircraft were detected heading for the coast between Dover and Dungeness. Four squadrons of 11 Group immediately took to the air, followed by six more as the bombers continued to battle their way inland, until at last the Luftwaffe formations were broken up and driven away from their main targets of Kenley and Biggin Hill. Instead, they succeeded in hitting West Mailing airfield, putting it out of action for several days and inflicting heavy damage on the Croydon base of 111 Fighter Squadron. Other raiders, disorganised and scattered by the persistent fighter attacks, dropped their bombs at random on Kent and Surrey before turning away, while their escorting Bf 109s engaged in dogfights with Spitfires and Hurricanes all over the sky south of London.
Despite the efforts of 111 and 32 Squadrons, it turned out to be a bad day for Croydon. At the height of the battle a tight group of Messerschmitt Bf 110s converted to the fighter role and escorted by Bf 109s, came in at low level to strike hard at the Rollason and Redwing aircraft component factories, almost completely destroying both works, together with over forty training aircraft under construction, and killing or seriously injuring about eighty people. The Hurricanes of 111 Squadron fell straight out of the sky from 10,000 ft. on to the raiders, and. a confused tangle of air battles took place at roof-top heights, the unfortunate Bf 110 no sooner leaving the Hurricanes behind than they were intercepted by the fighters of 32 Squadron, which hammered away at them as they raced for the coast. Four of the twin-engined fighters were shot down before the scattered formation receded into the distance over the Channel and brought to an end the last raid of a very eventful day, apart from a few scattered night attacks by some seventy medium bombers.
As darkness fell, Dowding and Park could relax and feel that Fighter Command had stood up courageously to the greatest onslaught that had yet tried to break it. Between dawn and dusk some eighteen hundred German aircraft had been sent against England, and seventy-six had been shot down, for the loss of thirty-four British fighters. One of the three German air fleets, Luftflotte 5, had been so badly mauled that it was now out of the daylight battle; a terrific strain had been imposed on the German fighter force, which had been compelled to put almost every available machine into the air; the appalling Ju 87 Stuka losses could not possibly be borne much longer; and, last but by no means least, the twin-engined Bf 110s would be useful in the future only in the fighter-bomber role, bringing Goering’s so-called elite Zerstorer formations to an ignominious end. Against these important setbacks, Kesselring and Sperrle could credit themselves with negligible material success against England and an appreciable strain on the British air defence system. It was now obviously developing into a battle of attrition; but how could the Luftwaffe withstand such a high rate of losses and yet bring the R.A.F, to a standstill?
While the 15th August air struggles were at a height, Hermann Goering was again in conference at Karinhall with his senior commanders. “The fighter escort defences of our Stuka formations must be readjusted, as the enemy is concentrating his fighters against our Stuka formations,” he stated. “It appears necessary to allocate three fighter Gruppen to each Stuka Gruppe. One of these fighter Gruppen remains with the Stukas and dives with them to attack; the second flies ahead of the target at medium altitude and engages fighter defences; the third protects the whole attack from above. It will also be necessary to escort Stukas returning from the attack over the Channel….” While the high officers of the Luftwaffe wondered where they were going to find the vast numbers of fighters that would be required for escort tactics of the kind Goering visualised, the Reichmarschall rambled on. “Until further orders,” he said, “operations are to be directed exclusively against the enemy air force, including the targets of the enemy aircraft industry…. We must concentrate our efforts on the destruction of the enemy air forces….”
The air staff leaders listened to their commander-in-chief in silence. Much of what Goering told them that afternoon he had already said before, although he seemed to have conveniently forgotten that not so long ago he had stated that the RA.F. would be beaten out of the skies and destroyed on the ground within three days. Then, in the closing words of his speech, he made a decisive blunder, an error of such importance that it would affect the whole course of the battle. “It is doubtful,” he said, “whether there is any point in continuing the attacks on radar sites, in view of the fact that not one of those attacked has so far been put out of action.” In that single sentence, the ex-fighter pilot of the First World War betrayed his total ignorance of the science and engineering of modem air defence; the forward radar stations were vital to Dowding, and without them Fighter Command would have no warning of enemy formations. Looking back, it only seems strange that not one of the men seated around the conference table tried to explain that concentrated bombing of the radar stations should be an essential part of the offensive. Air tactics, after all, merely interested Goering because they brought to light unusual little problems he believed could be solved at once by quick, unconsidered decisions. He was a typical amateur dabbling in the whirlpool of grand strategy; but most of his commanders were soldiers of the old school, with years of military experience behind them.
The conference ended, but the air battles went on. During 16th August the Luftwaffe again attacked in force, with the British fighter airfields and sector stations as the main targets, including West Malling, Manston and Tangmere. No less than twelve Fighter Command squadrons endeavoured to break up the enemy formations, but many of the bombers succeeded in getting through and the West Malling and Tangmere stations were temporarily knocked out of action. Meanwhile, heavily escorted Ju 87s and Ju 88s struck at Lee-on-Solent and Gosport, and a few raiders dropped bombs on the outskirts of London. In the evening Brize Norton aerodrome was heavily damaged, forty-six training aircraft being burned out in the hangars, and many other buildings totally destroyed. Then, suddenly, it was all over for another day, and the R.A.F. had shot down forty-five German aircraft for the loss of twenty-two fighters.
On 18th August massed formations of German bombers again crossed the Channel to hammer away at the weary fighter airfields, including Kenley, Croydon and Biggin Hill. With great courage, the Do 17s directed against Kenley came thundering in over the coast at an altitude of less than 50 ft., leaving their escorting Bf 109s to engage the intercepting R.A.F. fighters. Flying through a barrage of anti-aircraft fire from guns of all calibres, the raiders skimmed the airfield, dropping over a hundred bombs that destroyed a number of aircraft on the ground, wrecked ten hangars and turned the operations room into a shambles. The nine Do 17s of Kampfgeschwader 76 which attacked Biggin Hill also came in at low level, but here the anti-aircraft fire was so intense and accurate that only two bombers survived to reach their home base, and one of those with the flight engineer at the controls, the pilot dead at his side. The high losses later convinced Goering that low-level attacks were a failure, but in fact Dowding and Park dreaded such tactics, which gave little warning and seriously restricted their fighters in action.
In the afternoon Gosport was dive-bombed again, this time by twenty-one Ju 88s; a force from Stukageschwader 77 attacked Thorney Island in Hampshire and Ford in Sussex, losing twelve Ju 87s in damaging a few buildings; and, later, twelve Bf 109s rocketed over Manston with cannon and machine-guns blazing, destroying two Spitfires on the ground. When the now familiar night raiders began throbbing over England to seek out their scattered targets, Fighter Command had flown 766 sorties and seventy-one German aircraft had been shot down, against twenty-seven British fighters destroyed.
The following day brought an unexpected lull in the offensive. It was to last for nearly a week, a tacit admission from Goering that his all-out effort to destroy the Fighter Command airfields had proved unsuccessful and his aircrews were weary to the point of exhaustion. Calling another war conference at Karinhall, the disappointed Reichsmarschall told his fighter commanders that he had decided their forces were responsible for the bomber losses over England, because, in his opinion, the escort pilots lacked the aggressive spirit. Ignoring the crux of the problem—that the Bf 110 was utterly useless and the Bf 109 essentially a short-range fighter—Goering then outlined his scheme to improve morale in the fighter units by promoting younger men with exceptional qualities to senior rank, and thus gradually replacing the “old soldiers” he now distrusted. He began at once by placing Galland and Molders each in command of a fighter Gruppe. “The vital task is… the defeat of the enemy air force. Our first aim is to destroy the enemy fighters,” he stated. “Until further notice the main task of Luftflotten 2 and 3 will be to inflict the utmost damage possible on the enemy fighter forces….”
The direct result of this conference and the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe directive which followed was a drastic re-grouping and massing of the German fighter forces, in readiness for the third phase of the battle. All the Bf 109 squadrons of both air fleets were concentrated in the Pas de Calais area under the command of Luftflotte 2, leaving Luftflotte 3 with only Bf 110s for escort duties, reinforced by the Bf 110s of Luftflotte 5, which had been withdrawn for services in France. Not that anything startling was expected of the Bf 110 in the light of recent events; it simply remained in use because nothing better existed to replace it. Even Goering had been forced to admit at last, however, that his Ju 87 dive-bombers were too vulnerable to risk over England again in daylight, even if heavily escorted, and Richthofen’s Fliegerkorps VIII received orders to take no further part in the battle. So much for that typical German air striking weapon, the vulture-like Stuka; as a Blitzkrieg spearhead it had screamed and bombed its unopposed way through Poland, France and the Low Countries, only to meet fighter resistance for the first time in the Battle of Britain and reveal itself to be merely an awkward and practically defenceless machine.
While the Luftwaffe was making preparations for another onslaught against Great Britain, Air Marshal Dowding was anxiously facing an unanswerable problem. Some twenty-five per cent of his one thousand trained pilots had now been killed or wounded in action, and it was impossible to replace the crippling losses as the situation demanded. It was true that pilots were available from the other Commands—volunteers were already being hurriedly drafted into fighter squadrons after only ten or twenty hours on Spitfires or Hurricanes—but the fact remained that the hard core of men experienced in fighter tactics was steadily being dwindled away. The remarkable efforts of Lord Beaverbrook after he had been appointed Minister of Aircraft Production had kept Dowding supplied with the aircraft he needed, but even that human dynamo could not conjure trained pilots out of thin air. The greatest crisis of Dowding’s whole career was almost at hand, and during the next four weeks his determination would be tested as never before.
Ultimate victory for Fighter Command or Great Britain naked to the German sword. It was as simple as that; and Dowding bore the awful responsibilities, while the guns chattered angrily above the roar of the engines and the vapour trails twisted lazily in the bright summer sky.
During the third phase of the Battle of Britain, the German air staff leaders gradually stepped-up the pace of their main offensive in an attempt to draw Dowding’s fighter forces into the air in strength and then destroy them. From 19th to 23rd August the Luftwaffe had made only light, scattered raids, using the cloudy weather between those dates as an excuse for a respite, but on 24th August over a hundred fighters and bombers of Bruno Loerzer’s Fliegerkorps II crossed the coast near Dover and were intercepted by eleven R.A.F. fighter squadrons. Other German formations struck at Manston, causing such widespread damage that it had to be evacuated, except as an emergency airfield, and later in the afternoon North Weald was heavily hit by about fifty Do 17s and He 111s. The air fighting was again intense, the Spitfires and Hurricanes being so engaged in life-or-death struggles with masses of German fighters that they seldom got a chance at the bombers. Consequently, most of the raids were considered highly successful, although by the end of the day the Luftwaffe had lost thirty-eight aircraft. The British casualties were a bitter blow for Dowding, twenty-two of his fighters having been shot down.
On 25th August Warmwell aerodrome was attacked by bombers of Luftflotte 3, while the Fighter Command squadrons were fighting desperately to penetrate the escort screen of over 200 Bf 109s. A second mass raid was more successfully broken up over the Thames Estuary, but again it was not a good day for Dowding, who lost sixteen fighters against the German total of twenty aircraft destroyed. After dark, the Luftwaffe was again out in force over England, but the R.A.F. was also at work that night with a raid by eighty-one Hampden bombers on Berlin. This bombing of the German capital, to be repeated on a number of subsequent nights, would within a week have an important effect on the Battle of Britain, for it was to provide Hitler with an excellent reason for discontinuing Goering’s latest strategy in favour of a concentrated air assault against London.
Meanwhile, the devastating attacks on Fighter Command went on. The sector station at Debden was heavily damaged on 26th August, on the 27th Eastchurch was bombed again, and on the 30th Biggin Hill suffered so badly that the airfield was reduced to a shambles of gutted buildings and cratered runways, The following day, thirty Do 17s arrived over Horn-church just as 54 Squadron was taking off, and the first two sections of Spitfires became airborne with bombs falling all around them. The third section was not so lucky; all three fighters had reached a height of 20ft. when they were suddenly blasted like toys across the airfield. By a miracle the pilots escaped uninjured. To finish the job, a force of Ju 88s and bomb-carrying Bf 110s returned to Hornchurch in the late afternoon, increasing the vast number of craters that covered the airfield and destroying two more Spitfires on the ground.
August was the month of attrition, and Goering was reaching out for victory with open arms. The Fighter Command and Luftwaffe losses were now almost in proportion, but the Germans still had a fair number of trained pilots in reserve, while Dowding was desperately short of replacements. Circumstances had compelled him to use his two squadrons of Defiants and send the two-seater turret fighters of such uncertain ability into battle against the most élite German single-seater Gruppen; and, inevitably, they had been decimated. 141 Squadron had been shot to pieces by the Bf 109s of Jagdgeschwader 51 the first time it ventured into the tracer-streaked skies over the south coast, and 264 Squadron survived only a little longer, Adolf Galland and other experienced pilots of Jagdgeschwader 26 finally bringing to an end the brief career of the only British two-seater fighter to see action in the Battle of Britain. During those ill-fated dogfights of 28th August Galland himself shot down at least one Defiant, which came apart under his fire, great burning pieces falling away as it disintegrated. Three days later, all Defiants in service were officially relegated to a night-fighting role.
The storm continued unabated into September, resisted but seldom checked by the weary Hurricane and Spitfire squadrons, some of them by now so depreciated that they had virtually ceased to exist as fighting units. As an example, on the last day of August thirty-nine R.A.F. fighters were shot down, against German losses of forty-one miscellaneous aircraft; and, while the Luftwaffe could barely endure such heavy casualties, Fighter Command was being whittled away, with Dowding powerless to conserve his depleted forces.
Then Hitler and Goering stepped in to effect a reprieve. On 3rd September, the Reichsmarschall called a conference of his air commanders in The Hague, which brought forth the general opinion that Fighter Command was as good as finished, although von Sperrle unexpectedly disagreed, maintaining that Dowding still possessed about a thousand serviceable aircraft. Nevertheless, with many of the R.A.F. sector stations and forward airfields reduced to wreckage, Kesselring considered the time was ripe for a final assault on London, the concentration of a powerful force against a single objective that had proved so successful in Poland and Holland. Goering strongly supported this argument, and after some discussion it was decided that the attacks on the R.A.F. should cease in favour of massed bombing raids on London. When the German air staff leaders left the conference table they were confident that intensive bombing of the British capital would soon break the morale of the people, but in fact Goering had just saved Fighter Command when it was on the verge of disaster. And Fighter Command could save London.
Goering’s fatal decision was undoubtedly influenced not so much by Kesselring as Hitler, who was outraged that Britain not only refused to accept defeat, but actually dared to take the offensive by sending bombers over Berlin. Just as he had halted Guderian’s tanks outside Dunkirk, now he had interfered with Goering’s conduct of the air war against England, and the conference in The Hague did little more than confirm his decision and act upon it. On 4th September Hitler gave vent to his anger in public when he delivered an oddly nervous and uncharacteristic speech from the Sportpalast in Berlin. “In England they’re filled with curiosity,” he said, “and keep asking, ‘Why doesn’t he come?’ Be calm. Be calm. He’s coming!” This was a pledge he might not be able to honour for some time now that autumn was at hand, but it aroused his audience to thunderous applause; apparently a few bombs and sleepless nights were a small penalty to pay for the conquest of Britain.
“Just now… Mr. Churchill is demonstrating his new brainchild, the night air raid,” continued Hitler. “Mr. Churchill is carrying out these raids not because they promise to be highly effective, but because his Air Force cannot fly over Germany in daylight….” Now, he stated, the R.A.F. attacks would be answered a hundredfold “When they declare that they will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will rase their cities to the ground. We will stop the handiwork of these night air pirates, so help us God!” It was not one of his best speeches, but it made the German people feel strong and secure again, and the women in his audience became almost hysterical with joy as they visualised the retribution about to descend on England.
The wheels had thus been set in motion for the fourth phase of the Battle of Britain, which Goering considered to be of such vital importance that it required his presence in the front line. On 6th September his special armoured train, heavily defended by anti-aircraft guns and so laden with rich food and wines that it resembled a luxury hotel on wheels, arrived at the Pas de Calais. A second train, equipped with radio, teleprinter machines and batteries of telephones, provided the only outward and visible proof that the man who guided German air power had, in fact, come at last to direct his offensive in the field, drive his air fleet commanders to despair with his incompetence and listen wistfully to the exciting tales of battle his tired pilots brought back from England. Once, his stories would have matched any of those he now heard; but that was a long time ago, before he became an aging fighter-pilot trying to show the professional soldiers how to wage another war.
Two days later, with unconscious but ironic humour, the German radio announced that Reichsmarshall Goering had assumed command of operations “for the first time since the outbreak of war”. So much was said, and little more; the German people could decide for themselves whether the campaign would benefit or otherwise from such tardy intervention.