A Summer Bright and Terrible (24 page)

This would be the first day of action in the
north of England, and the last. The “undefended” north, to Goring’s complete
surprise, was bristling with fighters.

On the bombers flew, across the North Sea
waters and into the waiting arms of Fighter Command.

In Newcastle, the 13 Group Controller couldn’t
believe his eyes when the blips appeared on the radar screens. Dowding had kept
the Group intact, had not sent them down south to join the fighting, waiting
for just this to happen. The Group Controller almost laughed out loud. Old
Stuffy knew what he was doing. The Controller gave the orders, scrambling No.
72 Squadron from Addington, with No. 79 Squadron placed on readiness in reserve.
He scrambled 605 Squadron from Drem. Then No. 49 Squadron roared into the air
from Catterick, and as the blips grew in number, No. 79 Squadron was sent after
them.

No. 72 Squadron caught them first. Eleven
Spitfires came around a cloud and ran head-on into more than one hundred
bombers and Me 110s. A few minutes later, five Hurricanes from 605 Squadron
found them, and then Nos. 41 and 79 Squadrons joined in. The Messerschmitt 110s
were no match for the Spits and Hurris; the bombers they were supposed to protect
began to fall flaming from the skies, while not a single British fighter was
lost. The Scandinavian bomber squadrons were wiped out; aside from small
sorties, they would never again attack.

Churchill sent Dowding a telegram of
congratulations, acknowledging that those critics were wrong—and they were
many, in the Air Staff and Ministry, who had railed against the fighters’ being
kept in the north while the fighting was concentrated in the south. In his
later writings, the Prime Minister was effusive in his praise of Dowding: “We
must regard the generalship here shown as an example of genius in the face of
war.”

To the Scandinavian Luftwaffe bomber groups,
August 15 became known not as
Adlerangriff,
but as Black Thursday.

But in the south, where the Messerschmitt
109s were shepherding the bombers, things were not quite as easy. The morning
raids were beaten back with heavy losses to both sides and with great
destruction rained on Fighter Command’s airfields. A quiet spell followed as
the bombers went home, and then, just after two o’clock, the Kent and Essex
radars reported new build-ups along a wide front. With the fighters still
rearming and refuelling, the Controllers waited, thinking they’d still have
time to scramble before the slow bombers could attack. But then suddenly a
fast, low-flying squadron of 110s burst over Martlesham. They were no good as
fighters, but these were carrying bombs. Three Hurricanes got off the ground,
but the 110s escaped without loss after destroying the airfield.

Upward of two hundred bombers and fighters came
in headed for Deal, and radar picked up another group coming in over Kent.
Forty fighters were scrambled from Biggin Hill and split up, headed for the two
groups. The radar couldn’t differentiate between bombers and fighters, and the
second group turned out to consist only of fighters, more than sixty of them.
They drew half the defenders, and the bombers got through. Eastchurch and
Rochester were wiped out.

Another raid of more than a hundred bombers hit
the fighter airfields at Middle Wallop, Worthy Down, and Andover. Portland was
bombed by another hundred-plus raid, and two final raids headed for the heart
of the defence: the Sector Control airfields at Kenley and Biggin Hill. In both
cases, the sheer number of the attackers swamped the defence and the bombers
lumbered in and dropped their bombs—luckily (or, as Dowding thought, by the
intervention of God) on the wrong targets. The Kenley bombers hit the smaller
airfield at Croydon, and the Biggin Hill bombers hit the unused field at West
Mailing.

Finally the sun began to set, the day drew to
an end. Goring had mounted the largest aerial attack in history, with more than
two thousand German sorties blackening the skies. They had been hard hit, they
had met more resistance than he had expected, but he reported to Hitler that
they had done their job, they had finished off the RAF. The twelve most
important airfields of Fighter Command had been destroyed, together with
ninety-nine fighters in the air and uncounted numbers on the ground.

In London the mood was just as ecstatic. The
newspaper headlines showed a gigantic victory for England. Hitler had done his
worst, and the result was that 182 German planes had been knocked down.

At Bentley Priory, Dowding knew better. He was
well aware, as Goring should have been, that with the skies full of airplanes
the counting was not likely to be accurate. Fighter pilots were an ebullient
bunch, prone to believe that anything they shot at was doomed. And with all
those planes shooting at each other there were bound to be cases in which two
or even three shot at the same target without seeing their comrades, so that
one downed plane would be claimed by all of them. Dowding had more sense than
Goring, more patience, and one important advantage: The planes all fell on
English soil, so he would get an accurate assessment when the wrecks were
counted.

The Home Guard spread out over the land and
found 75 German wrecks, not 182, and 34 British fighters, not 99. It was an
impressive victory for Dowding in the air, but the damage to his airfields was
worrying. So too were the losses of his pilots. The factories were replacing
his fighters as quickly as they were shot down, but it took time to train a
pilot, and more time to give him the experience to fight. He prayed that God
would grant him the time.

Twenty-four

August 15 may have been Black Thursday to
the German bomber groups based in Scandinavia, but it was Bewildering Thursday
in Nottingham, where Leigh-Mallory’s No. 12 Group sat out the action. He and
his staff sat there in their control room listening to the radio chatter as
plane after plane from both 11 Group to the south of them and 13 Group to the
north were scrambled. They saw the markers placed on the map table; they saw
the table growing black with the markers, with so many markers signalling so
many raids that it seemed the table must collapse under their weight just as
England must collapse under the weight of the bombs being dropped—and still
they were not called.

For the past month and more, Leigh-Mallory had
grumbled and cursed as 11 Group’s fighters were scrambled and his were held in
reserve, but now to his amazement even 13 Group was brought into the fighting!
Bombers to the right of him, bombers to the left of him, and here he sat
twiddling his thumbs, biting his lips, cursing Park and Dowding. His Spitfires
waited silently on the grass, the only sound the occasional roar as the erks
kept the engines warmed, waiting for the call that never came.

At Coltishall aerodrome Douglas Bader waited
with 242 Squadron. He had built them up again into a military weapon; he had
brought them from a group of despondent whiners into a fighting unit, and now
they wanted to fight. Bader stood looking out the window of the readiness hut,
seeing nothing but a hot sun in an empty sky. Where were the Germans?

They were hitting the southern aerodromes, and
Bader s planes and all those of No. 12 Group were being held in readiness,
waiting to see if 11 Group needed help. And they were being cleared out of the
sky to the north by 13 Group. One raid of more than forty Ju 88s flew from
Denmark toward 12 Group’s territory, but their path as plotted by radar led to
two possible targets: the industrial north or a convoy off the eastern coast.
No. 12 Group was ordered to scramble one squadron to guard the convoy, but the
bombers swerved north, bringing them closer to 13 Group, which intercepted and
wiped them out.

The convoy was not attacked, and that was the
closest 12 Group came to action that day.

In a more perfect world, things would be,
well, more perfect. No. 13 Group had beaten off the attacks by the Scandinavian
bombers, had decimated them, but hadn’t shot
all
of them down. They
should have brought in more fighters to complete the massacre by calling on 12
Group. But this was 13 Group’s first action, the radar system wasn’t perfect,
and the Controllers hadn’t analyzed the data perfectly. Following their
standing orders, they scrambled 13 Group’s fighters and held 12 Group in
reserve, in case more raids followed. By the time the first fighters made
contact and radioed back how many there were, it was too late to call in 12
Group.

To the south the story was the same, but
different. The 11 Group Controllers there had lots of experience dealing with
incoming raids, but today they were swamped by the thousands of enemy sorties.
In effect, they lost control. Afterward, analyzing the day’s actions, they
realized they should have scrambled some of the 12 Group squadrons to guard 11
Group’s aerodromes that had been left undefended, but there were so many planes
in the air that the Controllers simply couldn’t keep track of them all, and
they failed to do so.

If there is one criticism that can be made of
Dowding’s handling of the battle, it would be this: He should have realized the
frustration of an ambitious commander and fresh, eager troops surrounded on
both sides by combat, ignored as the battle raged on. But his style of command
was to pick the best people he could, and then trust them to behave as they
should. The style worked perfectly for Park in 11 Group, Saul in 13 Group, and
Brand in 10 Group. It did not work for Leigh-Mallory and 12 Group. Trouble was
brewing.

The trouble took two directions. The first
was the irritation of Leigh-Mallory and his pilots about being left out of the
action. This was partly due to Dowding’s strategy of not committing all his
forces, so that Goring should never know what strength Fighter Command had.
This was a brilliant strategy, requiring almost superhuman restraint, but it
had one flaw: 12 Group was to be held in readiness unless called in by 11
Group, but the 11 Group Controllers either faced small raids, in which case
they didn’t need backup, or faced large raids, in which case they usually
became overwhelmed and were too busy trying to take charge of their own Group
to bring in anyone else. Either way, 12 Group was left out of the action.

The second direction the trouble led to
followed from the first. Frustrated by Dowding’s policy and the dilatoriness of
11 Group, it was probably natural for Leigh-Mallory’s pilots to begin to
question the overall strategy. Douglas Bader, in particular, disagreed strongly
with Dowding’s decision to face large raids with small numbers of fighters. It
was clear to him that this was no way to fight a war, indicating nothing but a
pusillanimous commander in chief. The way to win the war, he argued loudly both
to his pilots and to Leigh-Mallory, was to attack the bastards in force. This
not only would have the advantage of hitting them with superior numbers, but
would also mean that 12 Group would be involved in the fighting right from the
start instead of waiting till 11 Group needed them.

His message was received loud and clear by his
pilots, who were straining at the leash. This was understandable, even
laudable, for you want your troops to want to get into the fight. But as
commander of the Group, superior in chain of command to Bader and inferior to
Dowding, Leigh-Mallory should have restrained Bader while commending him for
his fighting spirit. Instead, he set him loose, and this was unforgivable. He
told him that whenever he was asked for help by 11 Group he should respond in
any way he wished.

The opportunity came on August 10, when a fleet
of bombers attacked the Boulton Paul factory in Norwich. Since the closest
aerodrome was Coltishall, where Bader was based, he was called on to defend the
factory. Instead of quickly dispatching a three-plane flight to break up the
attack, he had his airplanes circle the airfield to form up in a full squadron.
Unfortunately, the radar didn’t work perfectly, possibly due to several
scattered thunderstorms that reflected the radar beams, and several false
directions were given. By the time Bader’s squadron arrived over the factory,
they found it cratered and burning and the bombers long gone.

Ignoring the slow takeoff and formation time of
the squadron, Bader reported to Leigh-Mallory that all the Group needed was
quicker and better radar information. Give him that, and he would destroy the
enemy. He had the man-of-action’s lofty disdain for mere technical details and
didn’t bother to consider that the state of the radar art was what it was, not
what he would like it to be. He also had the man-of-action’s imperial disdain
for obfuscating qualifications: To his mind, simple problems demanded simple
solutions. He had a squadron of highly trained fighter pilots, and if he could
hit the enemy with his entire squadron at one go, he could destroy them.

But the problem was not simple, and there were
no simple solutions. The problem was complex, involving not so much destroying the
enemy as keeping the enemy from destroying them. And even if you ignored that
part of the problem, the simple premise of hitting the enemy with an entire
squadron depended on much better radar warning, which was just not possible.

But it fit in well with Leigh-Mallory’s anger
at how he was being subordinated to Park. The simplicity of Bader’s plan seemed
all too plain to Leigh-Mallory’s eyes. He loved it. He told Bader to ignore any
orders emanating from 11 Group or even from Fighter Command headquarters. Just
damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!