Air Power: II
IN HIS ASSUMPTION that the RAF had been weakened by the recent fighting, Göring had been quite correct. The RAF had lost 1,067 aircraft and 1,127 pilots and aircrew since 10 May. Throughout much of this time, it had learned some extremely hard lessons. Bomber crews had been killed in large numbers, either singly or in groups, picked off by marauding enemy fighters. One aircraft, the Fairey Battle, a single-engine light bomber, had been particularly shown up. On 11 May, six out of nine Belgian Battles had been shot down, while the same day only one of eight RAF Battles had survived a bombing operation. The following day, five Battles had been sent to attack a bridge. Four were shot down and the fifth crash-landed on its return. It had proved so completely ill-suited to the task that it had been, to all intents and purposes, withdrawn from further operations.
RAF Bomber and Coastal Commands unquestionably had a vital role to play in the forthcoming air battle against Germany, hitting targets within the Reich and also pummelling German airfields in northern France. In fact, between 15 May and 4 June, when France had lifted its objections about bombing targets within Germany, Bomber Command had flown 1,700 operational sorties over the Reich.
Among those regularly flying over Germany were the Hampdens of 83 Squadron. On the night of 17 May, for example, they were among forty-eight bombers to attack Hamburg, Germany’s biggest port. The target had been the oil refinery near the docks. Guy Gibson and his crew had decided to take off later than most – partly because there had been a film they’d wanted to see in Lincoln, but mainly because he aimed to arrive just as the first hint of dawn was creeping over the city to take advantage of improved visibility. They had reached Hamburg without incident, and saw the great city sprawling for miles. Gibson spotted one oil tank on fire and decided to try and dive low, through the clumsy sweep of searchlights and intense flak. He saw one of their fellow crews falling out of the sky on fire, then headed for the target, flying in at 6,000 feet before diving. The first bombs were dropped but did not appear to detonate. Round they went again and this time the bombs looked like they hit their mark, but now they were flying over the centre of Hamburg, flak was hurtling towards them, and they hit the cable of a barrage balloon, which damaged the starboard wing. ‘At last we were out of it all,’ noted Gibson, ‘and save for the usual exchange of fire between ourselves and the flak ships we reached the coast safely.’ The raid caused thirty-six separate fires, the Merck’sche fertilizer factory was gutted, 160 buildings were damaged and thirty-four people were killed. It was hardly mass destruction, yet that didn’t really matter at this point in time. All Britain had to do right now was keep in the fight. That these attacks were getting up the noses of the Nazi war leaders was important, because it was an affront to their aura of invincibility. Moreover, it prompted an increase in both home defences and those on airfields, all of which took both time and resources away from the all-out effort being planned for the attack against Britain.
There was no denying, however, that in safeguarding Britain’s air space, it was Fighter Command that had the key role. Both Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall, the Chief of the Air Staff, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the C-in-C of Fighter Command, had been repeatedly urging Churchill not to send more fighters to France, especially once it seemed clear France was doomed. As far as they were concerned, it was throwing good money after bad. In all, 396 Hurricanes had been shot down over France and sixty-seven Spitfires. The latter had come directly from Fighter Command and had only been used from south-east England during the air battle over Dunkirk, but the result of this contribution was that by the beginning of June Fighter Command had just 331 fighters left. Dowding had reckoned he needed fifty-eight squadrons to adequately defend Britain, and that had been based on an assumption that the Luftwaffe would be attacking from Germany, not France.
As it had stood, then, at the beginning of June, Dowding’s forces would have been facing an uphill struggle, yet of course Germany had then spent three weeks seeing off France and then had to prepare for the all-out air attack on Britain. Even Hitler recognized that no invasion would be possible unless the Luftwaffe ruled the skies over the invasion front, so clearly the first task was to destroy the RAF. That could not happen at the snap of a finger, however. Unlike the Heinkel 112, the Me109 had a very small range, which meant the mass of German fighters needed to be as near to England as possible. That necessitated creating a mass of fighter airfields in Normandy and the Pas-de-Calais, which would take time: airstrips had to be prepared, anti-aircraft defences brought up and dug in, workshops established, protective pens against bomb blast for the aircraft built. In other words, Dowding’s Fighter Command had a bit of time on its side, although it scarcely seemed like that at the time after such a rapid and astonishingly complete defeat on the Continent.
And every day, every week, made a massive difference. On becoming Prime Minister, Churchill had looked to an old friend of his to shake up aircraft production. Unlike Ernst Udet, Lord Beaverbrook was a hugely rich and successful Canadian newspaper baron and about as Machiavellian and ruthless as it was possible to be. He might not have known much about aircraft but he knew a lot about business.
The Ministry of Aircraft Production had been created on 17 May, and Beaverbrook wasted no time in getting down to business. He had been given something of a head start, because a number of so-called ‘shadow’ factories had already been set up, including, for example, the one at Castle Bromwich, built by Lord Nuffield, owner of Morris vehicles, and designed to mirror the work of parent plants and cope with mass production – rather like the branch factories Bill Knudsen had set up for Ford. And it was also the case that the Air Ministry had earlier established a Supply Committee that had been building up stocks of iron and steel, Perspex sheeting and other key materials. The Government had also authorized, back in April 1938, the building of 12,000 aircraft regardless of cost.
Even so, the impact of Beaverbrook was considerable. He brought in a team of experts and highly able and competent people he knew and trusted. Lord Nuffield was sacked and Morris booted out of the shadow factory at Castle Bromwich, for example, and Vickers Aviation brought in instead. Castle Bromwich would make Spitfires, originally designed and built by the tiny Supermarine company in Southampton, for the rest of the war. Other shadow factories producing Spitfires would soon appear – at Salisbury, at Trowbridge and elsewhere; there were others producing different models. He also immediately limited all future production to just five aircraft: two fighters – the Spitfire and Hurricane – the Blenheim medium bomber, and the Whitley and Hampden heavy bombers. Red tape was cut, workers were expected to work seven days a week, normal labour regulations were cast aside, and orders and instructions were issued by telephone not snail mail. If there were bottlenecks, he sent one of his staff to go directly to the cause and sort it out.
When Beaverbrook had taken over, some 130 new aircraft were being produced every week. By the end of June, this had risen to 300 per week and, in all, some 446 new fighter planes were built in the month. It was considerably more than double what the Luftwaffe was producing. By the beginning of July, fighter command had over 600 fighter aircraft and Dowding was beginning – just – to breathe a little more easily.
Beaverbrook also transformed the repair and salvage of aircraft. This was handled by the Civilian Repair Organization (CRO). New more efficient damage categorizations and indoctrination in the need for long hours paid dividends, as did his taking over of all aircraft storage units, previously handled by the Air Ministry; in fact, the Air Ministry was bypassed entirely. In addition to nearly 300 new aircraft a week, his CRO was adding a further 250 repaired aircraft. In just a few weeks, aircraft production had risen by 62 per cent, new engines by 33 per cent and repaired aircraft by an astonishing 186 per cent. Not everyone at the Air Ministry approved of his somewhat bullying methods or the way he ran roughshod over any potentially conflicting organization, but Dowding was delighted.
Furthermore, Fighter Command had prepared for a defensive air battle over Britain. Dowding had taken over as the first Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command in 1938 having been at the Air Ministry as Air Member for Research and Development. The latter had exposed him to much new technology, while as C-in-C of Fighter Command he had carefully overseen the development of the world’s first fully co-ordinated air defence system.
Key to this was radar, or RDF, as the British called it. Unlike the German Würzburg radar, British radar, developed quite independently, was static and comparatively unsophisticated. Chain Home had a range of around 120 miles and consisted of three 360-feet masts sending out radio pulses and three 240-feet masts for receiving the echo-like reflections. Then there was Chain Home Low, which did not have the same range but could detect possible aircraft at lower heights and with greater detail. Britain now had a continuous chain of these radar stations covering all the southern and eastern coasts of Britain. If any German aircraft came over, they would be detected.
Supplementing this was the Observer Corps, who were volunteer civilians and some 30,000 strong. They were better able to gauge height than radar and also to provide a more accurate visual description. All information from the radar chains and the numerous Observer Corps posts was fed into a central hub at RAF Bentley Priory, the HQ of Fighter Command. This was done by telephone, and huge numbers of new lines were laid, with further back-up lines, so that this information could seamlessly reach the Filter Room at Bentley Priory. In the Filter Room, it was collated and assessed, and a picture of activity created that was fed out to the groups and sectors in Fighter Command. The Command was divided into four groups: 11 Group covered the south-east, 10 Group central south and south-west England, 12 Group the centre of the country and 13 Group the north. Each group was then divided into sectors. Both group headquarters and each sector had not only an Operations Room but also a spare some miles away should the principal one be bombed out. All looked exactly the same and were based on a large map table, a ‘tote’ board listing the state of play of the squadrons, and a raised dais on which the controllers could see this mass of information at a glance. Everyone in the process knew exactly what they had to do and all specific jobs were interchangeable, so that someone working at the sector station of Biggin Hill, for example, could move to Fighter Command HQ and do the same job.
The squadrons were scrambled to meet incoming enemy formations and then directed, or ‘vectored’, to their targets by ground controllers operating from the sector Operations Rooms, who communicated by radio. Language was partially coded, but for clarity rather than security. Each aircraft was also equipped with High Frequency Direction Finding, or HF/DF, better known as ‘Huff Duff’. This sent out transmissions which would be picked up in the Operations Rooms and enabled ground controllers to see what bearing aircraft were on and so to better direct them to their target. Finally, there was a further piece of equipment in each aircraft called ‘IFF’ or ‘Identification Friend or Foe’, which transmitted a distinctive blip if it flew near the coast and was picked up by British radar.
The genius of the system was its simplicity. Lots of clever technology and human efficiency had been brought together to create a defence network that added up to considerably more than the sum of its individual parts. In France, the Luftwaffe had always maintained the initiative because its enemy could only guess where the German planes would be. This would no longer be the case over Britain. Dowding’s system could be used both to meet the enemy and to avoid it. The Luftwaffe’s prime task was to destroy the RAF. Fighter Command’s main requirement was to ensure this did not happen.
The fate of the democracies rested on the outcome of the aerial battle about to be unleashed.