CHAPTER 26

Air Power: I

ON 30 MAY, Siegfried Bethke had carried out his fiftieth combat sortie, and it had been over Dunkirk and Ostend, escorting Stukas as they had ‘pelted’ British ships evacuating troops. ‘An eerie sight from the air,’ he noted. ‘Both places look like firebrands. Many small and large ships on the beach to pick up the English soldiers. Bombs, fires, anti-aircraft firing, Stukas, smoke and fumes.’

The following day, during an attack on some French LeO 45 bombers, he was hit by one of their machine-gunners and suffered the terrifying experience of flames licking into the cockpit and having to bale out. Already flying quite low, he knew he had to act quickly but initially struggled to get the canopy open. Desperately trying to work through the bail-out procedure in his head, he somehow managed to get the canopy open at last, flip over the plane and pull the ripcord on his parachute.

Looking down, he realized he was heading straight for a trench strewn with dead soldiers and a war memorial nearby from the last war. With the ground rushing up towards him, he then landed badly, knocking himself unconscious in the process. When he came to, he could see his 109, ‘No. 7’, burning on the ground and German infantry were pulling him to safety. Just 200 metres away, they told him, were black French colonial troops, who, fortunately for him, had made no effort to either shoot him or snatch him once he had landed.

When he was taken back to his airfield, the rest of the Staffel were gratifyingly pleased to see him alive, but despite only light burns to his hands and throbbing head, he was put aboard a Ju52 and packed off to hospital in Cologne. By 6 June, he had heard about the renewed offensive and was itching to get back to his squadron. ‘I’m extremely ambitious,’ he jotted in his journal. ‘I want to be successful. Who knows how long this war will last? If I don’t get the Knight’s Cross, then at least the Iron Cross First Class.’ He had, by that time, shot down four planes but felt certain he could have had more than double that if his marksmanship had been a bit better. ‘It was my own ineptness and nervousness,’ he scribbled. ‘It was all my own fault.’

Also shot down had been Hajo Herrmann, who had been flying daily since the opening of the offensive. Over Dunkirk, he had been dropping his bombs one at a time in the hope of gaining greater accuracy – he would fly over, drop one, adjust, then repeat the process until he struck – and this had worked, with one ship definitely sunk as a result. It was, however, a risky business and on 31 May, now flying in a new Junkers 88 from Schiphol in Amsterdam, he had just dived on a ship, missed and was climbing for a second attempt when he was hit by a Hurricane and forced to crash-land in the sea, albeit close enough to the shore to be able to get himself and his crew safely out and quickly back on to land. Unsure which side he’d landed on, he was relieved to see German infantrymen approaching. ‘I’d made it,’ he wrote. It had been his fortieth operational flight, and that did not include the sorties he’d flown in Spain.

Helmut Mahlke had been hit over Dunkirk too. The smoke and cloud over Dunkirk had been so bad, he had chosen to lead his Staffel low, underneath the cloudbase – it was the only way they could hit their targets, despite their being sitting ducks for any flak. Suddenly, they had come under intense anti-aircraft fire and moments later there was a bang from behind.

‘What’s happened back there? Are you wounded Fritzchen?’ he asked his rear gunner.

‘No, but the control cables in the rear fuselage have been cut by flak.’

With his elevators cut, it was extremely difficult to control the Stuka. They headed south, and back towards the airfield at Calais Guise. Flying was just about possible, but landing would be a different matter and so he told his gunner, Fritz Baudisch, to bale out. Baudisch opted to stay, however.

After circling the airfield, Mahlke came into land with everything perfectly lined up, only to be shaken by a strong thermal gust at the last moment. The nose dropped like a stone and the Stuka crash-landed – the undercarriage was ripped off, and so was a wing, but moments later they came to a halt and were amazed to discover they were in one piece. As they jumped out and ran clear, the Stuka erupted into a mass of flames. ‘We’d had the devil’s own luck in getting out of it alive,’ noted Mahlke.

They were flying again the next day and the days after that. On 1 June, Mahlke was harried by several Spitfires over Dunkirk and only just managed to evade them. On a second flight over Dunkirk that day, they managed to hit one ship only to be attacked by several Spitfires once more. Again, he got away by the skin of his teeth. Others were not so lucky.

In all, the Luftwaffe lost 1,814 aircraft during the Battle of France – around half the number with which it had begun the attack on 10 May – and the experiences of Bethke, Herrmann and Mahlke say much about the intensity of the fighting and how hard they and their fellow pilots were pushed. For those coming up against the Luftwaffe in May and June 1940, it seemed their mastery of the skies was complete, yet although the German Air Force was, without question, the finest in the world at that time, there can be no question that it was still fundamentally inefficient and complacent, and that its leadership had passed over opportunities that could have made it considerably better than it already was.

The problems were there at almost every level, but most obviously with the leadership. Feldmarschall Göring had been a fighter pilot and had even commanded the famed Richthofen squadron in 1918, but he had never been to staff college and had leapt up the Air Force ranks thanks to his position as Number 2 in the Nazi party. He knew little about military command, and not much about modern air warfare, and was, in fact, a far better businessman and politician than Air Force commander.

The trouble was, his junior commanders all knew this. The beating heart of the operational Luftwaffe was the young men, still in their twenties, who had joined the Luftwaffe in its early days in the mid-1930s, fought in Poland and France and had a mass of vital operational experience. These men were now squadron and group commanders and, of course, were able to pass on their knowledge to the younger pilots and aircrew. Hajo Herrmann was one such figure; another was Johannes ‘Macky’ Steinhoff, a Staffelkapitän in 4/JG2. Steinhoff was twenty-six, smart and a naturally gifted pilot. He had originally hoped to become a teacher, but coming from a working-class background had been forced to give up university for lack of funds and had joined the Kriegsmarine as a naval flier instead. From there he had transferred to the Luftwaffe in 1935 and had been at fighter school with many of the pilots already making a name for themselves, such as Adolf Galland, Werner Mölders and Johannes Trautloft. Much to his chagrin, Steinhoff had not gone to Spain, but he made a name for himself back in December 1939, when he and his comrades in 4/JG2 had intercepted a formation of Wellington bombers off Wilhelmshaven and shot down twelve of the twenty-two. Steinhoff had accounted for two of them.

Goebbels’s propaganda machine made much of this, and Steinhoff and a few others had been ordered to Berlin and had met Goebbels, von Ribbentrop and Göring. Steinhoff had not been much impressed with any of them. ‘I looked at these men,’ said Steinhoff, ‘and wondered how such weak-looking creatures could be running such a great country.’ The C-in-C peppered them with questions about air combat, like an over-enthusiastic kid wanting to hear of adventures in the skies; he showed no gravitas, no grasp of strategy. ‘I found him annoying, exhausting, and intrusive,’ said Steinhoff. ‘He loved to grab you, almost hug a man and slap your back. I found this uncomfortable.’ Steinhoff and his friends called him the ‘Fat One’. Steinhoff was not alone in his views; far from it – they were commonplace. That Göring attracted so little respect did not augur well.

Nor did Göring demonstrate much leadership of the Reichsluftfahrt­ministerium, or RLM, the Luftwaffe General Staff. Like Hitler, he pursued a policy of divide and rule, keeping rivals on parallel commands and ensuring there was discord among his subordinates. The one person who managed to successfully weave through this jungle, and also had a bucket-load of good sense, was General Walther Wever, the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff. It was Wever who had been planning an independent strategic bomber force. He had recognized, quite rightly, that the biggest threat to Germany lay in the East, and so creating a large heavy bomber force that would be the mainstay of the Reich’s air defence was not only a sensible idea but one Göring concurred with at the time. Sadly for the Luftwaffe, however, Wever was killed in an air crash before his bomber force went into production.

In his place came firstly Albert Kesselring, a former artillery officer, then General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff, and finally Oberst Hans Jeschonnek, still in his thirties when he took on the job. One of the problems was that Jeschonnek did not get on with General Erhard Milch, formerly running the Lufthansa civil airline but from the birth of the Luftwaffe Göring’s deputy. Milch had little military experience and was another who was promoted from almost nothing, but was an extremely able administrator and a man who was able to go straight to the nub of a problem and get things done. For Göring, however, Milch was just a little too competent, so he clipped his wings by bringing in Ernst Udet as Head of the Office of Air Armament in early 1939. Udet was a brilliant pilot and fighter ace, one of Göring’s best pals and hugely gregarious; it was Udet who had encouraged the young Scotsman Eric Brown to fly back in 1936. He was, however, no businessman, knew little about procurement, and lacked the Machiavellian ruthlessness and deviousness required. Furthermore, although technically his post should have fallen under Milch’s jurisdiction, he was made directly responsible to Göring. It was a terrible move, because Milch and Udet had actually always got on rather well, and under Milch’s watchful and pragmatic guidance he might have overcome his shortcomings. Instead, mistrust grew between them, and Udet became increasingly insecure about his position and his judgement.

By May 1940, Wever’s original four-engine bomber programme had long ago been kicked into touch. Instead, bombers would operate with fighters in an integrated Luftwaffe that would be made up with air fleets – Luftflotten – and air corps – Fliegerkorps – that were designed to directly support the land forces. There was no bomber force that could operate independently of the ground forces – no strategic bomber force.

The Luftwaffe had plenty of old mid-1930s bombers such as Heinkel 111s and Dornier 17s, but the focus of all new bombers had become dive-bombing. Udet had been seduced by dive-bombing when he had seen American Curtiss Helldivers during a visit to the USA a few years earlier. Out of this had come the Junkers 87, the Sturzkampfflugzeug, or ‘Stuka’. The principle behind dive-bombing was sound enough: by dive-bombing, it was possible to get closer to the target, which meant greater accuracy, particularly since Germany did not possess an effective bombsight. The greater the accuracy, the less ordnance and aircraft required, and it was this, above all, that made the dive-bomber so attractive; Germany had neither the infrastructure nor raw materials required to build up a substantial heavy-bomber force.

During the Polish campaign, in Norway and again in France, the Stuka had repeatedly proved itself as a highly effective weapon, made all the better for the addition of a siren that screamed as it dived and quite intentionally put the fear of God into those on the receiving end. For Goebbels, it had become the most potent symbol of Nazi Germany’s military might. Newsreels, complete with sound effects, were shown around the world with Stukas diving, screaming and devastating Germany’s enemies with their shock and awe.

In truth, one type of dive-bomber was probably enough for one air force. Udet and Jeschonnek, however, did not agree, and so decided to give dive-bombing capabilities to their latest bomber, the twin-engine Junkers 88. This had been conceived as a high-speed, long-range medium bomber, and one of the early prototypes achieved records for flying two tons of bombs over 600 miles at an average speed of 310 mph. No other bomber in the world could carry so much so far so quickly. In short, it was a triumph. Also in the pipeline was a four-engine heavy bomber, the Heinkel 177, but both these aircraft suggested a more strategic role for the Luftwaffe, which was at odds with Jeschonnek’s views on how best to use air power.

Both Udet and Jeschonnek decided that instead of developing the Ju88 and He177 as they had been originally conceived, it would be far better to give them dive-bombing capabilities. This prompted great teeth-sucking from Junkers and Heinkel and a staggering 25,000 changes to the original design of the Ju88. Production was delayed massively, which was why it was not until the spring of 1940 that Hajo Herrmann and the rest of KG4 were equipped with them. Most bombing units were still using the rather obsolete Heinkel 111s and Dornier 17s. And the Ju88 was no longer particularly fast or long-range. In fact, it now had a top speed of just 269 mph, which wasn’t much better than the Heinkel and Dornier. As for the Heinkel 177, it was so behind schedule, it was not even yet in production.

The problem was that dive-bombers necessarily needed to be small, because of the weight and problems of gravitational pull. Heinkel were trying to solve the problem by putting two engines on top of each other and powering a single propeller in each wing. It wasn’t working, and test pilots were dying unnecessarily as a result. There was a four-engine aircraft, the Focke-Wulf 200 ‘Condor’, which was being earmarked for long-range reconnaissance and anti-shipping work, but this had originally been designed as a transport plane and not a heavy bomber. In any case, there were structural issues with it that had not been resolved, the payload was only around four tons, and Focke-Wulf was never able to build it in numbers – only twenty-eight, for example, were built during all of 1940.

Then there were the fighter planes. The Luftwaffe had two, both of which were designed by Professor Willi Messerschmitt at Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG, which, in 1938, had been renamed Messerschmitt AG. The single-engine fighter, the Me109E, was the best fighter aircraft in the world in 1940, because it could climb faster than any other, packed a bigger punch than any other, with fifty-five seconds’ worth of machine-gun fire and eighty rounds of 20mm cannon shells, and could dive quicker than its rivals. It was a little difficult to master and, because of the tremendous torque produced by the Daimler-Benz 601 engine, was easy to topple over when taking off unless the pilot was highly experienced. The only other flaw was the very limited visibility in the cockpit. In all other respects, however, it was unrivalled. Furthermore, because its undercarriage was attached to the fuselage it was quicker to both build and repair – the wings, for example, could be manufactured quite separately.

The second was the Messerschmitt 110, which was a twin-engine fighter and originally conceived as a long-range bomber escort. It was a particular favourite of Göring, and so no one dared tell him it had numerous deficiencies, not least a slow rate of climb and dive, and a lack of manoeuvrability, which meant that in a dogfight with a half-decent single-engine fighter it was likely to come out second best. So taken was he with the Me110 that he named it the ‘Zerstörer’ (Destroyer) and created special Zerstörer fighter wings, plucking many of the best fighter pilots from single-engine units to pilot them. And again, over Poland and in Norway, where they faced no modern opposition, the myth surrounding their potency only grew.

There was, however, another single-engine fighter that could have offered a more effective support act to the Me109E. This was the Heinkel 112, which had been put forward as a fighter plane at the same time as the 109 and had initially performed even better. The Luftwaffe had ordered further prototypes of both and by the time Messerschmitt had developed the 109E, Heinkel’s 112E had speeds of more than 350 mph, was con­sidered highly manoeuvrable, had a solid, inward-folding undercarriage and elliptical wings, and had an astonishing range of more than 715 miles, which was significantly better than that of the Me110. Its rate of climb was not quite as good as the Me109E’s, but it could still reach 20,000 feet in ten minutes, which was as good as anything else out there. When Heinkel protested to Udet that his fighter should be given a contract, he was firmly told to drop the matter, which he did; after all, rumours of Jewish blood always dogged Heinkel, so it paid not to kick up too much of a fuss, and, in any case, Udet and Messerschmitt were particularly good friends as well as the professor being a good party man. None the less, that a plane as good and versatile as the Heinkel 112 was rejected, especially with its incredible range, was astonishing. Range would be critical in fighting over Britain. For the Luftwaffe, this was unfortunate because the failure to back the Heinkel meant a truly winning combin­ation had been passed over.

Another cause for concern was the shortage of training schools. Following Munich, Hitler had realized that Britain, especially, was increasing the rearmament of its Air Force and told Göring he wanted a fivefold increase in the size of the Luftwaffe. This was only passed on to the rest of the air staff several months later and was never enacted, largely because they lacked the means to do so, and partly because Jeschonnek was also wedded to the concept of the quick war, in which everything would be thrown into a rapid and decisive battle. By June 1940, the training schools had been largely stripped of all the Ju52s, which were used for training purposes, and many of the instructors. Nor were there enough schools in the first place – there was just one for the training of fighter pilots.

Stripping the flying schools in this manner supported the principles of a rapid war in which everything was flung at the initial assault, and so did not matter at all – as long as the Luftwaffe was not embroiled in a long drawn-out war.

The trouble was, cracks were already appearing. The loss of so many aircraft on 10 May had set off warning bells, but it was the air battle over Dunkirk that had really got alarms ringing. Göring had promised Hitler his Luftwaffe would destroy the BEF and prevent a mass evacuation. Listening to the telephone conversation was Göring’s personal Luftwaffe intelligence officer, Oberst ‘Beppo’ Schmid. ‘He described this mission as being a speciality of the Luftwaffe,’ said Schmid, ‘and pointed out that the advance elements of the German Army, already battle weary, could hardly expect to succeed in preventing the British withdrawal.’ This showed a spectacular lack of understanding of what was happening on the ground by both Göring and Hitler, who after the successes so far in the war had become seduced by the invincibility of the Luftwaffe.

Yet, over Dunkirk, Göring had been unable to keep his promise. Dive-bombing was all very well with almost complete command of the sky and on fixed targets, but was not so effective when attempting to hit a moving target from skies swarming with enemy fighter planes. Ships did not keep still and, in any case, even from a couple of thousand feet often looked like little more than pencils; it was one of the reasons why so many men escaped. What’s more, as the dive-bomber emerged out of its dive, it was flying so slowly it became a sitting target for any enemy fighter plane waiting, hawk-like, to strike from above. Not only had the Luftwaffe failed to stop the British escaping, but its bomber force, and particularly its Stukas and new Ju88s, had suffered grievously.

A technological disconnect was also evident. Back in December, when Macky Steinhoff and JG2 had intercepted RAF Wellingtons, they had been directed to the bombers by highly sophisticated Kriegsmarine radar. Despite this, radar was not used in such a way in any Luftwaffe oper­ations. And while against the French 1st Armoured Division it had been radio that had enabled the Germans to control the battle, once airborne, Luftwaffe aircraft were largely on their own; they could communicate with other planes in their Staffel, but that was as far as it went. There were no ground controllers guiding them to targets, there was no communi­cation with bomber units or other fighter units. It was curious that these technologies, in which Germany was so advanced and which had so clearly already proved their worth, had not been integrated into the air arm.

Now, however, with France out of the way, Göring’s Luftwaffe, so unstoppable thus far, would have to operate across the Channel, on its own and in a way in which it was neither trained nor prepared, and defeat the RAF.

If Göring and his commanders were worried, however, they did not show it. Rather, their intelligence picture suggested that the RAF had been badly weakened by recent fighting and that knocking them out of the sky should be a walk in the park. Göring assured Hitler it would take just four days to clear the British skies of the RAF.