Indecision
THE ARMISTICE in France had come into effect at 1.35 a.m. on the morning of 25 June. France would be partitioned – the northern half, including Paris, occupied by Germany, the southern two-thirds run by Pétain’s new government. By 10 July, the new French Parliament, based at the small Auvergne spa town of Vichy, voted overwhelmingly to give full powers to the Maréchal. After decades of fractious democracy, of one government after another, France had become a totalitarian state under the control of one of its greatest war heroes. For most in France, that seemed like quite a good outcome, all things considered. It wasn’t so good for Reynaud and many in his government, however. Daladier and other senior ministers had decided to make a run for North Africa and sailed on 21 June, and in so doing defied Pétain’s orders for all Frenchmen to remain in France. On arriving at Casablanca they were promptly arrested. Meanwhile, Paul Reynaud and his mistress, Madame de Portes, were driving south when their car ran off the road and hit a tree. Madame de Portes was killed instantly and Reynaud taken to hospital unconscious. He recovered only to be arrested too.
For many Germans, the swift conquest of France signalled what they assumed was the end of the war. There was widespread relief accompanied by celebrations in Germany, and Hitler was certainly happy to take all of the credit. He took Speer and others on an early-morning tour of Paris and then happily told his acolyte and chief architect it was time to resurrect their plans to transform Berlin. ‘Berlin is to be given the style commensurate with the grandeur of our victory,’ he assured Speer. ‘I regard the accomplishment of these supremely vital constructive tasks for the Reich as the greatest step in the preservation of our victory.’
Hitler had almost skipped for joy at the signing of the armistice and yet, despite this astonishing victory, he was troubled. A new Führer headquarters was set up deep in the Black Forest near Kniebis, codenamed ‘Tannenberg’, and here, in the forest, Hitler spent much time in contemplation, wondering what to do about Britain. He returned to Berlin on 6 July and paraded through the capital awash with ecstatic crowds and thousands of swastikas fluttering gently in the summer sun. By this time, Hitler had told his inner circle that he intended to make a speech in which he would offer Britain a chance for peace, although he would not say when precisely he would make it. The following day, Count Ciano arrived in Berlin for talks. ‘He is rather inclined to continue the struggle,’ recorded Ciano, ‘and to unleash a storm of wrath and steel upon the English.’ From Berlin, Hitler went to Munich for meetings with the Hungarians, then withdrew once more, this time to the Berghof, his villa in the Bavarian Alps.
During the next ten days, Hitler remained at the Berghof, far from the centre of government, as a parade of his senior commanders trooped through, all giving their opinions on what to do about Britain. Preparing appreciations and plans for a variety of differing scenarios should have been the task of the OKW and, specifically, Warlimont’s operations team at Section L; after all, that was what they were supposed to do, but this was not the case. Warlimont had tried to discuss some ideas with Jodl, but had been given short shrift. Unbeknown to Warlimont, Jodl had already presented a memo to Hitler outlining his personal thoughts on what to do with Britain. In it, he began with the assumption that victory over Britain was only a matter of time, so a policy of minimizing risks and economizing forces was sensible. Jodl suggested the first task was for the Luftwaffe to destroy the RAF and its factories, then there should be co-ordinated sea and air attacks against British shipping, combined with occasional terror attacks against British cities. An invasion would be the coup de grâce when the British will to resist had been broken. Jodl expected this final phase to take place some time in August or September.
Hitler approved the basis of this plan initially on 2 July and then, two weeks later, issued more detailed instructions. In between, he saw Raeder and his naval staff, who gave him their views about an invasion of England, von Brauchitsch and Halder, who discussed with him their opinions on the Army’s requirements, then Göring and the Luftwaffe. There were also visits from Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, the Wehrmacht’s intelligence service, and others. It was very clear that each of the services had very different views and expectations. The Army, for example, were thinking that the invasion would involve landings from Lyme Regis in the south-west to Deal in Kent, and stretch over a hundred miles. The Kriegsmarine was thinking of something entirely different and wondering how it was going to get enough shipping for an invasion front of just a few miles in Kent alone. None of the various parties appeared to be talking to one another. ‘My impression is that the Führer is now more irresolute than ever,’ noted Major Gerhard Engel, Hitler’s Army Adjutant, in his diary, ‘and does not know what to do next.’ Engel also wondered whether Hitler was ever now going to make the much-vaunted speech.
He did, eventually, on 19 July, to a packed Reichstag in Berlin. Hitler never liked to say one word when a dozen would do, and he went on for some two and a half hours. Twelve new field marshals had been appointed and Göring elevated to Reichsmarschall, the world’s first and last six-star general. Eventually, he turned to Britain. ‘I only know clearly,’ he told his audience, ‘that the continuation of this struggle can end only with the entire destruction of one of the two opponents.’ In this, he was spot on; he meant it would be Britain, of course. He then made an ‘appeal of reason and common sense’ to Britain to come to the negotiation table. He could not, he said, see any reason why the war should go on.
Most felt the Führer’s speech lacked its usual fire. A lacklustre performance was, perhaps, not so surprising, coming from a man whose normal clarity of vision and purpose had deserted him. Hitler was spectacularly poorly travelled for a major national leader, and while it is true he had read lots about Frederick the Great and other Prussian military types, his choice of reading was selective to say the least. As a result, his geo-political understanding was poor, as was the case with most of the leading Nazis. He was a continentalist and thought as such. The army was everything and so was land warfare. He did not understand naval power and did not accept that Britain’s approach to war was very different. The attack in the West was a battle his forces had trained and were prepared for, but military action against Britain was not. The Channel changed everything. He had expected Britain to sue for peace; expectation had then turned to hope. But the stony silence from Britain in the wake of his Reichstag speech was followed by a broadcast by Halifax, known to Germany as the leading British dove, three days later. ‘Hitler may plant the Swastika where he will,’ Halifax announced, ‘but unless he can sap the strength of Britain, the foundations of his Empire are based on sand.’ With that, all hope had been dashed. Hitler finally accepted that he would have to fight Britain after all.
All the while, the Luftwaffe had been preparing landing grounds and anti-aircraft defences, and gradually moving units up towards the Channel coast. Bomber units, with their greater range, could be spread further – Hajo Herrmann and KG4, for example, could remain where they were at Schiphol in Amsterdam – but fighter units with their small fuel tanks needed to be clustered together as close to southern and south-east England as possible. The bulk were being prepared in the Pas-de-Calais. Fighter Command airfields, by contrast, were spread quite widely, which was another small advantage for the RAF. Bombing accuracy was not good, but the Pas-de-Calais was fast becoming such a target-rich environment, Bomber Command could hardly miss.
British bombers were still, almost daily and nightly, flying over and bombing the Reich, much to the consternation of Göring and the Luftwaffe command; RAF Bomber Command mounted no fewer than fifty-eight separate operations in July, of which forty-one were directed at Germany itself.
With this in mind, Oberst Josef Kammhuber was given the task of setting up a night-fighter group using both Me110s and Me109s. Among those drafted in were the fighter pilots of 4/JG2, commanded by Macky Steinhoff. Based at an airfield near Bonn, no one had really thought about how night-fighter operations might work. The use of radar would eventually be brought in, but, to begin with, the pilots were expected to use their wits, their instrument panels and not much more. Steinhoff hated it and thought it a waste of time – he could just about fly all right but could rarely see a thing. ‘All the German cities had their lights off,’ he said. ‘We weren’t very successful at it and it’s a miracle in itself that I survived at all.’
The rest of JG2, however, was operating from airfields in Normandy. Siegfried Bethke and his Staffel were based at Beaumont-le-Roger, and spent most of their time either off duty or at readiness waiting to intercept any marauding RAF bombers. ‘We do not notice that England is already constantly being attacked by bombers as the Wehrmacht news said yesterday,’ he scribbled at the end of June. He was not wrong. The Luftwaffe was sending bombers over but mostly to attack British coastal shipping and to lay mines in harbours and shipping channels; few bombs were actually landing on British soil. A fortnight later, on 12 July, he wrote, ‘Apparently negotiations are underway. The large-scale concentration of troops is apparently completed. Supplies and everything else are apparently in order. In Germany, apparently thousands of very simple ten-man boats are being built for the invasion. All rumours.’ Then he wrote, ‘What is really happening: bomb attacks from both sides every day and night.’ The Luftwaffe would up the ante in July, but even then there were only eight night raids on land targets of any note – the rest of the effort was again directed at shipping.
Because the Luftwaffe was not using radar, the only way to meet the frequent bombing raids by the RAF was to have several pilots strapped into their Messerschmitts and ready to take off the moment an intruder was spotted or reported. In fact, Bethke and his comrades were experiencing much the same as British and French pilots had back in May and early June, albeit at not quite such a frenetic rate. Bethke flew just five times in all July and, as the month wore on, became increasingly frustrated. ‘When will it finally start?’ he asked on 24 July. ‘According to rumours,’ he scribbled two days later, ‘it should start soon.’ But as July gave way to August, the ‘attack of the eagles’, as Göring had decided to call his air assault, had still not been launched.
Among those from Bomber Command attacking German targets was Tony Smyth, now recovered and back with 101 Squadron. The squadron had been attached to 2 Group but in reserve until 1 July, when it returned to operational flying once more. Based at West Raynham in Norfolk, it was joined by the battered remnants of 18 Squadron, which like 101 operated with Bristol Blenheims. 18 Squadron had returned from France with just three pilots still standing and tension quickly arose between the two, as the 18 Squadron survivors resented the reserve status 101 Squadron had enjoyed during the Battle of France. However, it was precisely because of the mauling of the Blenheim squadrons that Bomber Command had decreed that, in future, they would only operate over the Continent at night or with either a fighter escort or a decent amount of cloud cover for protection.
As a result, Smyth had a number of operations cancelled at the last moment, and it wasn’t until 1 August that he flew operationally once more. His primary target was in the Ruhr, while the secondary was Leeuwarden airfield in northern Holland. Discovering the cloud was too sparse over the Ruhr, Smyth made for Leeuwarden instead, which he soon found. Diving from just 2,000 feet to 1,000, he delivered his two 250lb bombs and a stick of 40lb bombs, photographing the drop as they roared over. With no ground fire at all, they had dropped their bombs and were on their way and back into the safety of the cloud. ‘Feeling highly elated,’ he noted, ‘we set course for home.’ That same day, another 101 Squadron crew hit Schiphol and one other attacked Waalhaven. All managed to hit something, although even at 1,000 feet it was difficult to be really accurate. In any case, a lone Blenheim was hardly going to cause mass destruction. These were really just nuisance raids – or ‘Rhubarbs’, as the bomber boys called them.
At the same time, the Luftwaffe fighter squadrons were being sent over from the Pas-de-Calais, but for the most part, the Luftwaffe command was happy to let bomber formations operate independently; there was a sense of preserving strength for the main event. Hajo Herrmann and his Staffel, for example, had operated several times laying mines at the mouths of British ports and attacking specific targets such as the Vickers factory in Newcastle, which they bombed on 2 July. Like those in Bomber Command, however, Herrmann did not find it easy to hit the target. His entire Staffel had attacked the Vickers works – some nine Junkers 88s – but none of them hit it. Accurate bombing with little by way of navigational aids and using primitive bomb sights was very, very difficult.
The Stukas were also discovering that operations on British shipping were becoming ever more fraught, with British fighters descending on them as soon as they neared their targets. On 25 July, Helmut Mahlke, now Gruppenkommandeur of the newly designated III/StG 1, had been attacking a convoy with his Gruppe when they were attacked in turn as they emerged from their dives. On this occasion, the arrival of their own fighter escort saved them, but although his entire Gruppe landed back down again at Théville, one gunner had been killed and another wounded and many of the Stukas were badly damaged. ‘One thing was already abundantly clear,’ noted Mahlke, ‘Britain’s fighters were beginning to make our job ever more difficult and dangerous.’
Meanwhile, the squadrons of Fighter Command were trying to resist the urge to follow the Luftwaffe out to sea and using the time not only to meet the threat but also to recover from the intense battles over Dunkirk and in France. One squadron licking its wounds from Dunkirk was 609. A pre-war auxiliary squadron, in ethos rather like a Territorial Yeomanry regiment, it had been filled with young landowners and professionals from the West Riding in Yorkshire. They had been a tight-knit bunch, many of whom had known each other most of their short lives. Over Dunkirk, they had lost three killed and one wounded, and two more were still missing. In a squadron of nearly two dozen pilots, these were grievous losses and especially so since most were all such good friends.
At the end of June, 609 Squadron had been posted from Northolt in west London to Middle Wallop, near Salisbury, as part of 10 Group. It was also given a new CO, Squadron Leader George Darley, who since his return in June had been posted as a supernumerary squadron leader to a Spitfire squadron operating from Hornchurch in Essex.
Darley had taken one look at 609 Squadron and, realizing they were low on morale and feeling sorry for themselves, had decided a kick up their backsides was what they needed. Calling the pilots together, he took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and said that if anyone disagreed with anything he was about to say, he would see them outside and sort it out man-to-man. He then told them they were a miserable and ignorant lot, but they were not going to stay that way. He promised to lick them into shape. Having then grilled them about their experiences thus far, he set to work. ‘To me it was apparent that the main causes,’ he said, ‘were too rigid a formation and no knowledge of deflection shooting.’
At the time, Fighter Command squadrons were trained to follow set-piece formation attacks, which looked impressive in practice but simply did not work in the cut-and-thrust of aerial combat. Gunnery was a problem for both sides since there was no effective way of practical training; however, the principles of deflection shooting – that is, aiming at a point where bullets and target would meet – could be taught, as could a variety of combat manoeuvres. Darley also dismissed the standard firing range of 400 yards and insisted on a maximum range of 250 yards.
Spitfires and Hurricanes were armed only with .303 Browning machine guns, which were little more than pea-shooters. The actual bullet that was fired was the size of a fingernail and, unless fired at close range, packed a very small punch indeed. Back in 1925, a report had pointed out that ‘a .303’ bullet has but little effect on any aeroplane’. This was at a time when aircraft were still made predominantly of wood and doped linen. By 1940, it was even less effective, and, furthermore, Spitfires and Hurricanes had just 14.7 seconds of ammunition compared with the 55 seconds of the Me109. Machine guns could be harmonized so that the bullets of all eight converged at a certain distance, and as those who had fought in France and over Dunkirk had learned, the only way Brownings could be effective was by getting as close as possible. The closer a pilot opened fire, the more effective he would be; the more effective, the less time spent hammering away at a target, which in turn made him vulnerable and quickly used up his meagre supplies of ammunition.
Setting up a programme of practice attacks, with himself as the elusive target, they soon began to dramatically improve. Darley had recognized that the older auxiliary pilots were depressed about the loss of their pals, and this atmosphere was doing nothing for the morale of the younger pilots. ‘The basic need,’ he said, ‘was to restore morale by improving the kill/loss ratio.’
However obvious this may sound, it was men with experience such as George Darley and others sprinkled through Fighter Command who were now licking many of the fighter squadrons into shape. The Luftwaffe had learned much from those who had experienced the Condor Legion in Spain, and then from Poland; Fighter Command was now benefiting from those who had seen combat in France.
Darley also had them both training and operating as a full squadron of twelve aircraft, divided into the standard ‘vics’ of three. But Darley would lead with one vic, and with one either side, spread out and above, and with a further vic some 500 feet above them. He taught them all to constantly look around, repeatedly shift their position and to keep up-sun as far as possible. Each pilot was rotated to fly every single position too. He also taught them to try and disperse any enemy formation – the key was to get the bombers to drop their loads away from their target, which was best achieved by flying head-on towards them, no matter how overwhelming the enemy numbers.
The squadron lost two more pilots during July and were frustrated by orders to fly standing patrols over Channel convoys, but by August were in good shape. The learning curve had been steep, but a month of comparatively light operational flying had allowed them the time to improve their fighter skills dramatically. Morale had risen too. Darley, widely loathed initially, had won his squadron over. They had accepted he was a man who knew what he was talking about and respected the fact that he was looking after them in the air and on the ground. On one occasion, they had been operating from the forward base at Warmwell on the Dorset coast. When the Mess staff had refused to make them breakfast at 3 a.m. in the morning, Darley had gone into the kitchens and made bacon and eggs for his pilots himself. It was a gesture that had gone down well.
On 8 August, when they were scrambled to intercept a formation of Stukas and their fighter escort heading to attack Warmwell, the squadron were able to put all the training into practice. They shot down three Me110s and two Stukas in that one engagement. Darley himself, weaving in and out of cloud after the initial contact, followed an Me110, then dived down and opened fire at 250 yards, then closed to just 75 yards. Breaking to starboard, he watched the aircraft plunge down into the sea. ‘We soon sorted them out,’ said Darley, ‘and only one or two managed to lob their bombs on to the sacred airfield.’
Watching the unfolding air battles with keen interest was Colonel Carl Spaatz, or ‘Toohey’ as he had been known ever since picking up the nickname at West Point. Officially, Spaatz was in Britain as an Assistant Air Attaché, but to General ‘Hap’ Arnold, the US Chief of the Army Air Corps, he had described himself as ‘a high-class spy’. His role was in part to observe and to study RAF training and tactics, and also to unofficially discuss British aircraft requirements.
Spaatz was nearly forty-nine when he reached Britain on the last day of May, having travelled via ship to Italy and then by train across France and finally boat again. With France collapsing and the Dunkirk evacuation at its zenith, he had arrived in London to find Britain in deep crisis. An experienced air man with combat experience from the last war, Spaatz had risen up the ranks of the Air Corps to become Chief of Plans at the Office of the Chief of the Air Corps, and as such had been intimately involved in trying to both modernize US air forces and increase their size. One of his frustrations had been that while the President had, back in November 1938, told Arnold that he wanted an Air Force of at least 20,000 aircraft with a production capacity of 2,000 planes a month, Spaatz had been unable to do much to realize those lofty aims – not least because British and French orders kept taking precedence. By the time he had left for Britain, combined British and French orders had been placed for 14,000 aircraft. Spaatz rather felt the US should build up its own air forces before handing them over to another country.
Spaatz was stockily built, with piercing blue eyes which revealed both a great sense of humour but also a toughness and a natural air of authority. By his own admission, he was no air power intellectual; rather, he depended on his own instinct and intuition and the persuasiveness of those he respected. Fiercely loyal, he was quick-witted, pragmatic and cool-headed. These attributes had served him well, and continued to do so now that he was in Britain. He immediately struck up an important rapport with his opposite number, Air Commodore John Slessor, and as he toured RAF facilities around the country their friendship grew.
During the second half of July, Spaatz spent time with RAF Bomber Command, including nine days on a Wellington bomber station. The British bomber crews were quite frank with him about how inaccurate their bombing was. Pre-war US air doctrine was firmly glued to daylight bombing, and his observations of British night-time bombing operations did nothing to change his mind.
On the other hand, by the beginning of August, he was fairly certain the Luftwaffe could not hope to destroy the RAF, even though Göring’s main assault had yet to start. ‘Unless the Germans have more up their sleeve than they have shown so far,’ he wrote to Arnold, ‘their chance of success in destroying the RAF is not particularly good. In air combat, German losses in daylight raids will be huge. In night attacks, the accuracy of their bombing is of very low order.’
Meanwhile, Britain’s Dominions and Empire were showing the mother country it was not alone. Britain was still aiming for an army of fifty-five divisions and expected twenty-one of those to be provided by its Dominions and the Empire. One Canadian division had already reached Britain and another was on its way. Australia and New Zealand as well were sending troops to help, earmarked for the Middle East. An Indian Army Division, the 4th, had also been formed in Egypt.
A plan had been undertaken, too, to dramatically increase the number of air-training schools. The problem facing Britain was that the country was geographically small, lay in the firing line, and had inconsistent weather. These constraints did not apply to Canada, where the Empire Air Training Scheme had been established. A large number of training schools were being built with the aim of producing some 24,000 pilots and aircrew a year from across Britain’s Dominions. The first courses had begun that April, and now new schools were being set up in Rhodesia and South Africa.
But there were also others reaching Britain: Poles, Czechs, Americans, South Africans, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, French and Belgians – some just to flee the Nazis, others to continue the fight. Général de Gaulle had returned to France on 17 June only to fly back to Britain along with Edward Spears. In fact, it had been Spears who had helped arrange the last-minute flight from Bordeaux, and it was Spears who had taken him to a small flat in Curzon Street that would be his temporary home and then on to see Churchill. On 18 June, de Gaulle had made a broadcast on the BBC, announcing that ‘the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.’ The following day, he made a second broadcast, announcing that he was speaking in the name of France and urging Frenchmen to rally to his call. Few heard it in France, while most of the 150,000 French troops evacuated to Britain would choose to return home. This was perhaps not so very surprising. To the majority of beleaguered French servicemen, it seemed better to get out of the war, and to head back to their families and what they thought would be peace, than to stay on and fight from a country that looked as likely to fall as France. At any rate, if de Gaulle’s broadcast was the first flame of resistance, it was a very small one.
Yet there were still large numbers of French desperately trying to escape, including Capitaine Barlone, who was stuck in Bayonne urgently trying to work out how to get to England.
Also escaping France was a nineteen-year-old Parisian, Jean-Mathieu Boris. On 10 May, he had been studying for entry to the École Polytechnique, but the arrival of the Germans put paid to that. With no news from his father, who was away fighting with Georges’s Northern Armies, on 13 June his mother decided they should all leave Paris and head south to her sisters-in-law. It was there, in Rennes, that Boris left his brothers and mother and continued south. ‘I decided,’ he said, ‘not to accept the defeat.’ Rather, he planned to travel on to Algeria to join the Army of Africa. On 23 June, he eventually reached Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a small port on the French–Spanish border, where he saw some Polish soldiers leaving. They had left their uniforms on the quayside, but because Pétain had already declared that no Frenchman could leave the country, he took a Polish uniform, put it on and managed to get through the French officials and on to a British ship, the Baron Nairn, that was leaving the port. ‘You don’t look very Polish,’ one of the officials said to him, but Boris pretended he did not understand and was eventually waved through.
Also on the Baron Nairn with Boris were three American pilots, one of whom was a lanky, ginger-haired 23-year-old, Eugene ‘Red’ Tobin. He had made the trip to Canada and then across the Atlantic after originally quitting his job flying MGM Studio’s stars around the States to go and fly for the Finns. When news reached him that Finland had ended the war with the Soviet Union, he was stuck with no job and wondering what to do next. A week later, he had been approached by a nameless French contact and asked if he would fly for the French Armée de l’Air instead. Tobin agreed, as did two fellow Americans who had made the trip with him: Andy Mamedoff, the debonair son of White Russian émigrés, and Vernon Keogh, who at just four feet ten was, unsurprisingly, always known as ‘Shorty’.
Giving up his glamorous Hollywood job and heading off to fight in another country’s war was, on many levels, a brave decision. Tobin’s job for MGM had given him the chance to fly pretty much every day in skies clear of enemy aircraft trying to shoot him down, while volunteering to fight for a foreign country’s armed forces was illegal in the USA. If caught, he faced a large fine, a jail sentence and having his passport torn up. But he was young, thirsting for adventure and desperate to fly fast, modern fighter aircraft like the Supermarine Spitfire, which, as far as he was concerned, was the ‘sweetest little ship in the world’. In any case, he reckoned America would get drawn into the war eventually, and he certainly didn’t want to get drafted into the Army as a soldier. A much better option, he reckoned, was to head over to Europe right away and get flying.
By the time he, Mamedoff and Keogh had finally reached Paris at the beginning of June, it seemed the huge gamble they had all taken had been for nothing. The agent they were supposed to contact had disappeared; at the French Air Ministry no one seemed able to help them; and France faced imminent defeat. On 11 June, they had decided to leave Paris, along with half the capital, and had caught a packed train to Tours. There, they had finally been cleared to fly, but then the airfield had been bombed and when they tried to hijack an aircraft with two Czech pilots, they had been shot at by French troops and had fled. They had reached Saint-Jean-de-Luz the same day the armistice had been signed. Unlike Jean-Mathieu, they simply pushed their way on to the Baron Nairn.
Jean-Mathieu Boris had thought the boat would take them to North Africa, but instead it sailed to Plymouth in England. From there the young Frenchman made his way to London and, after being screened by British intelligence, he and several others he had travelled with made their way to de Gaulle’s new headquarters, intending to join the Légion de volontaires français, as this embryo force was being called. He was given the number 850, then they were sent to a makeshift camp at the Exhibition Hall at Olympia in west London. On 11 July, some 500 of them left Olympia and were sent to the British Army camp at Aldershot. Here they would begin their training as soldiers.
Red Tobin and his two fellow Americans, meanwhile, had safely landed in Britain and made their way to London. There, they were told in no uncertain terms by the US Embassy that they should head back to America as soon as possible. However, on the ship to Plymouth, they had befriended an English lady who had promised to help if they ever needed it.
Now taking up that lifeline, strings were pulled and soon after they were being interviewed by an RAF recruiting officer and told that so long as they swore allegiance to King George VI, they would be accepted. In effect, they were being asked to give up their American citizenship, but all three made the pledge readily enough; they were young, had travelled a long way, and had crossed the Atlantic to fly. Now that the possibility of actually getting into a Spitfire was within touching distance, they were not going to forego the chance over some trifling matter of citizenship. On 9 July, the three of them were posted to No. 7 Operational Training Unit (OTU) at Hawarden. ‘Well,’ said Tobin, ‘we’d made it! We were in at last!’
A few days later, on 15 July, Jean Offenberg and his friend Alexis Jottard reached England too, arriving in Liverpool on board the freighter Har Sion. It had been a long journey from France that had meant defying orders and stealing a French plane, flying to Corsica, then Maison Blanche, Algiers and Casablanca, before finally catching the boat to England. Two days later, after being sent to London for medicals, they were posted to 6 OTU to carry out their conversion to British fighter planes. They were among fifteen Belgians who would be joining RAF Fighter Command, and a further fourteen that would be posted to Coastal Command.
Offenberg and Jottard trained on Hawker Hurricanes. They were not as fast as the Spitfires and were very much a progression of earlier Hawker biplanes, with their doped-linen-covered fuselages. Nor were they as quick to climb as either the Me109 or the Spitfire, but they were none the less robust, provided a solid gun platform, and were highly manoeuvrable. Perhaps more importantly, there were a lot more of them than Spitfires, and as a weapon to take on German bombers and Me110s they were more than adequate. At any rate, they were a vast improvement on the obsolescent Fiats the Belgians had been flying. Offenberg found flying the Hurricane ‘a piece of cake’. By the end of July, both men had been given commissions in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and been posted to 145 Squadron at Drem, near Edinburgh, in 13 Group.
Throughout July, the Luftwaffe had barely used 10 per cent of its strength. It had lost some 185 aircraft, while Fighter Command had lost 91. In the same time, Messerschmitt had produced 240 new Me109s, while the Ministry of Aircraft Production had built 496 Spitfires and Hurricanes. It was a ratio that would not improve for Germany any time soon.
The question for Air Chief Marshal Dowding and Britain’s war leaders, however, was whether the gains made since the fall of France would be enough when Göring unleashed his eagles.