A Summer Bright and Terrible (2 page)

Professor Lindemann

Douglas Bader, lifting his leg to clamber into his
Spitfire

Keith Park

Billy Fiske, on a British cigarette card from the 1930s

The Bristol Beaufighter

Dowding’s office at Bentley Priory. The uncluttered
desk is just as he kept it day by day.

The plotting table at Fighter Command headquarters,
showing the incoming plots as they were on September 15, 1940. On the wall is the
listing of fighter squadrons in No. 11 Group, indicating whether they are at
readiness, in the air, or available.

Dowding’s statue in front of the Church of St. Clement
Dane in the Strand, the “official” RAF church.

One

It is Wednesday, September 6, 1939, three
days after the declaration of war. On the crest of a hill overlooking the
London suburb of Stanmore, amid a forest of cedar trees and blossoming
vegetable gardens, stands one of the lesser stately homes of England, Bentley
Priory. The site goes back in history to the year A.D. 63, when Queen Boadicea,
defeated after a furious struggle against the invading Romans, took poison and
was buried there. In the twelfth century the priory was established, but today
the prayers of Air Marshal Dowding, aka “Stuffy,” head of the Royal Air Force’s
Fighter Command, are to a different God as he stands above a different kind of
altar. He is in an underground bunker, seated on a balcony next to King George
VI, looking down at the main room and at the altar: a twenty-foot square table
on which is etched a map of the southeast corner of England.

Just after ten o’clock that morning, a black
marker was placed on the table, indicating a radar warning of incoming
aircraft, and a flight of Hurricanes was scrambled. A red marker, indicating
the British fighters, was placed in position. Dowding nodded to His Majesty;
this was how the system worked.

He explained that a chain of radar stations had
been set up along the southern and eastern coasts of England. (He actually used
the
words “radio direction
finding stations” since the acronym
radar
—for radio detecting and
ranging—was a later American invention.) These could spot incoming airplanes
while they were still out of sight over the Channel, or even still over France.
The information was passed by a newly constructed series of telephone lines
directly here to Bentley Priory, and simultaneously to the pertinent Group
Sector commands.

The entire air defence of Great Britain had
been organized into four Fighter Groups. No. 11 Group covered the south
-
eastern corner, with No. 12 Group to its
immediate north. Bombers coming from Germany would enter No. 12 Group’s
jurisdiction, which was expected to be the primary battleground. But now with
France fallen to the enemy, the French aerodromes were available to the
Luftwaffe. These were closer to England and so would be the primary bases for
the German attacks. Because a direct line from the French airfields to London
would bring them into No. 11 Group, No. 12 Group would now be expected to
provide mostly backup. To the west, No. 10 Group would provide more
reinforcements, while No. 13 Group in the far north would guard against
surprise attacks and provide training for replacements.

The system had received its first test just
moments after the declaration of war. On Sunday, September 3, 1939, Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain addressed the nation by radio: “I am speaking to
you from the Cabinet Room at Number 10, Downing Street. This morning the
British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final Note stating
that, unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once
to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I
have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that
consequently this country is at war with Germany.”

He spoke at 11:15 a.m. Ten minutes later, the
air-raid sirens sounded over London.

The nation was dumbfounded. For the past six or
seven years,
they had been
warned that the next war would be decided in the space of a few hours as
bombers would blast cities into smithereens, but they hadn’t believed it. Now
they streamed into the basements of the largest buildings, which displayed
hastily printed signs, air raid shelter, as uniformed bobbies on bicycles raced
down the streets with large placards hanging from their necks: air raid! take
shelter!

In the Operations Room at Bentley Priory, a
single black marker was placed on the table, and at Biggin Hill aerodrome, a
telephone rang. The airman on duty yanked it from its cradle, listened for a
moment, and then yelled out the window, “Scramble! Blue section, scramble!”

Three pilots raced across the grass to their
planes as the mechanics started the engines. In less than a minute, the
Hurricanes were tearing across the aerodrome and screeching into the air.

Fifteen minutes later, they came floating back
to earth without having fired their guns. The blip on the radar screens turned
out to be a small civilian airplane in which an assistant French military
attache, Captain de Brantes, was flying back to London from a weekend of
partying in Paris. Well, some things are more important than a declaration of
war, and he hadn’t been paying attention. Nor had he bothered to file a flight
plan. The radar beams saw him coming, the Controllers listed him as “unidentified,”
and the air-raid sirens went off.

Dowding hadn’t been annoyed. In fact, he was
rather pleased. The incident had provided an excellent surprise test of the
system. And the system had worked. Earlier that year, someone had asked him if
he was prepared for war. What would he do when it came, was the question, “Pray
to God, and trust in radar?” Dowding had answered, in his stuffy manner, “I
would rather pray for radar, and trust in God.” Now it seemed that his prayers
had been answered.

At least it seemed that way until that night,
when, as the
Times
of London reported, “Air raid warnings were sounded
in the early
hours of the
morning over a wide area embracing London and the Midlands.”

And yet, again, no bombs were dropped. The
Times
went on to say that “the air-raid warnings were due to the passage of
unidentified aircraft. Fighter aircraft went up and satisfactory identification
was established.”

But this account was not only wrong; it was
total nonsense. In 1939, it was impossible even to locate aircraft at night,
let alone identify them. The daytime “raid” had pleased Dowding; the night-time
raid worried him. Well, actually, it scared the hell out of him. Because
nothing had happened.

There were no German aircraft flying over
England that night. There were no aircraft of any kind up there. Yet just
before 2:30 a.m., the radar station at Ventnor picked up a plot coming in over
the waters toward the coast. At Tangmere aerodrome, No. 1 Squadron was at
readiness when the telephone rang. Three Hurricane fighters were sent off to
intercept. They searched until their fuel ran low, and then other sections were
sent off. None of them found anything.

It wasn’t that Dowding wanted the Germans to
bomb England, but when his system said there were bombers there, he desperately
wanted the bombers to be there! Nothing was worse than nothing. Nothing in the
air when radar said something was there—that was frightening. If he couldn’t
trust radar, there wasn’t much use in praying to God for anything else.

There wasn’t anything else.

Now, three days later, a new blip on the
radar screen is observed: More enemy aircraft, and another black marker is
added to the table. The Bentley Priory Controller scrambles a whole squadron to
deal with it. But no sooner are they airborne when another blip appears on the
screen. More squadrons are scrambled.

And still more. Each squadron of Spitfires or
Hurricanes seems to be followed by another formation of German bombers. One by
one, more and more squadrons are sent up. Dowding begins to look distinctly
worried. On the wall are lists of the RAF squadrons headed by green or red
lights: On Reserve, or Committed. As another red marker is placed on the table,
the last green light changes to red.

By this time, every single squadron east of
London has been scrambled, and the system is overloaded: The Controllers have
too many aircraft aloft, and neither the Controllers nor the radio
telecommunications link to the aircraft nor the telephone lines from the radar
stations can handle the traffic. The king of England is accustomed to
embarrassing situations; he says nothing, merely watches as the system Dowding
had carefully explained to him slips into chaos. The monarch glances at the
wall, sees that all the lights are now red, and understands that every British
fighter is now in the air. He remembers the warnings of Armageddon from the
air, the prophecies that the coming war will be won or lost on the first day.

He wonders if this will be the last day for
poor England.

The battle rages for an hour as blips fill the
radar screens, from mid
-
channel
up to London and down again throughout Kent. Fighter contrails fill the sky,
punctuated by the black puffs of antiaircraft bursts. A squadron of Spitfires
dives on a formation of Messerschmitts (Me’s) and shoots down two as the
British planes zoom past and climb back up into the sun. When the Brits look
back, the Me’s are gone.

There is no letup on the radar screens, but
after an hour of fighting on emergency boost, the British planes are running
low on fuel and, despite pleas from the Controllers, who are trying to direct
them onto new plots, the pilots are forced to return to their aerodromes. At
Bentley Priory the Controllers turn one by one to Dowding, but there is nothing
he can say, nothing he can do. Any further raids will sweep in un-attacked to
catch all his forces on the ground.
When war was first declared, Dowding had gone on the radio to
promise the people he would protect England from aerial attack.

It looks like he was wrong.

But no further raids materialize. As the
fighters return to base, the enemy plots fade away too, and soon the skies are
clear and the radar scopes empty. The WAAFs (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
members), emotionally and physically exhausted, take off their headphone sets
and lean wearily against the map tables. The Controllers sit quietly by their silent
telephones, the king scratches his ear, and Dowding begins to breathe again.

Army units quickly disperse throughout the
battle area, searching for bomb damage and for airplane wrecks, trying to
assess the damage done by and to the Luftwaffe. Meanwhile, back at the
aerodromes, the Squadron Intelligence Officers interview the returning pilots.

At first there is jubilation. The fighters of
the Royal Air Force seem to have won a decisive victory. No factories or
airfields have been bombed. No houses have been destroyed. In fact, no bomb
craters are found.

The jubilation turns to wonder. No bomb craters
at all? Strange . . .

Stranger still, no German airplane wrecks are
found. Although the antiaircraft batteries are sending in report after report
of sightings on which they had fired, in all of England only two planes seem to
have been shot down, and both of these are British Hurricanes. Of the RAF
fighters, only one Spitfire formation reports attacking anyone, and only one
squadron of Hurricanes was attacked. The Spitfires report shooting down two of
the enemy.

The Intelligence Officers begin to feel a bit
uneasy. One of the downed Hurricane pilots reports that the German
Messerschmitts that attacked him were painted, not with swastikas or crosses,
but with roundels similar to those the RAF uses. The crews in the field call in
that the two wrecks are riddled with machine-gun bullets. Air Vice-Marshal C.
H. N. Bilney asks them to look again. While the British fighters have only
machine guns, the Messerschmitts have
cannon as well. The report comes back quickly: Small holes only, no
large cannon holes are seen. Bilney drives out to take a look at one of the
wreckages. It is true: The downed Hurricane shows only small holes. “Knowing
that German bullets had steel cores as opposed to the lead cores of ours,” he
reports to Dowding, “I got a piece of wood, put some glue on one end and fished
around in the wing for bullet fragments. I soon found quite a lot of lead.”

And the jubilation turns to consternation. What
the bloody hell happened up there in the sky?

What happened was confusion amid the
catastrophic collapse of the entire defence system, due to a fault that had
been previously recognized but not totally assimilated. The radar transmitting
antennae radiated their radio signals both forward and backward simultaneously,
and couldn’t tell from which signal—forward or backward—any received echoes
were obtained. That is, an aircraft directly east or directly west of a radar
station would give exactly the same blip. The only solution was to try to
electronically black out the backward emissions. The radar wizards thought they
had done that.

They hadn’t. Somewhere to the west, behind the
coastal radar towers, a British airplane had taken off. The radar operators
thought the towers were looking eastward, over the Channel, but somehow the
towers picked up the airplane behind them. Naturally it was reported as an
unidentified aircraft coming in toward England, and a section of Hurricanes was
sent off to intercept it. But as they rose into the air from their aerodrome
behind
the coastal radar towers, they were picked up on the scopes and plotted as more
incoming aircraft
in front of
the towers—as enemy aircraft coming in
across the sea.

A whole squadron of Hurricanes was scrambled to
meet this new “threat.” And this squadron was also picked up on radar as an
enemy formation, a bigger one this time. Two squadrons of Spitfires were
scrambled, which were in turn identified as more Germans . . .