A Summer Bright and Terrible (28 page)

Josef Knobel was the operations officer with
one of the bomber groups that night. He recalled a teleprinter signal from
Goring that every unit received early the following morning. As clearly as he
recalls, it said: “It is to be reported immediately which crews dropped bombs
on London, which is prohibited. The Fuhrer has ordered that the commanders who
did this are to be reassigned to the infantry.” (There is, however, no official
record of any such reassignment.)

The third theory is Dowding’s, who starts with
the second theory—a navigational mistake—but wonders how the bombers came to
make such a mistake. Instead of clouds and panic, he sees in these events the
hand of God: “I could hardly believe that the Germans would have made such a
mistake. From then on it was gradually borne in upon me that it was a
supernatural intervention at that particular time.”

Consider what was happening at this particular
time. Dowding realized that
Adlerangriff
was succeeding. He was rotating
squadrons in and out of the battle, but by now the rate of casualties was so
serious that a new squadron brought into the fight would become depleted and
exhausted before any of the resting squadrons were ready to come back in to
take its place. The training units weren’t able to produce enough trained
pilots to replace those lost. Every day, Fighter Command was falling behind in
pilots and in supporting facilities, as the airfields were knocked out of the
fight.

The pilots who were in the fighting recognized
this as well. Johnny Johnson, one of the top aces, remembered that “if the
airfields had got another heavy thumping, I’m not sure they would have stood
it.” Added another of the Few, Pilot Officer Pat Hancock, “Had they gone on
bombing the airfields, I might have been speaking German today, except I wouldn’t
still be here.”

But they didn’t go on bombing the airfields,
for as Dowding saw it, God intervened. The bombers got lost, they dropped their
bombs on London, and a different set of dominos began to fall.

Whatever caused the bombs to drop on
London, they changed the course of the war. Churchill’s heart, hardened either
by God or by his own natural fury, railed against this savage attack on
civilian populations. The attack was nothing new in that sense; the night
bombers had been hitting other cities all summer. But attacking London drew
forth Churchill’s anger and fear, for to be the head of a British government
that couldn’t defend London was to be the head of nothing. He ordered his own
bombers to hit Berlin.

Arthur “Bomber” Harris, the head of Bomber
Command, respectfully demurred. His force wasn’t ready for such a strike.
Berlin was too far away, and his long-range bombers were just beginning to come
off the production lines. He had available only a few smaller bombers, which
would have to carry so much fuel they wouldn’t have much room for bombs. He
wanted to continue to use them to strike at specific targets, as he had been
doing all summer—a plan that would eventually be proven to be little more than
a superstition. The navigation capabilities at this time just weren’t good
enough for most of his bombers to find even large cities at night, let alone
factories or railroad yards. Although he was sending out bombers to hit these
targets, most of his bombs didn’t even land in the cities in which the targets
were located. (The only effective bombing the British were doing was against
the invasion barges along the French coast.)

Harris didn’t realize this yet, but he argued
that to begin a war of reprisals against each other’s capital cities would favour
the Germans, who had more bombers at their command. Even more important, London
was just a few miles inside England, close to the French airfields that housed
the German bombers, whereas Berlin was hidden deep in the heart of Germany, far
from the British aerodromes, too far for fighter escorts. Bombing Berlin would
serve no purpose except to bring even worse retaliation against the English
population. London was, Harris reminded Churchill in his own words of twenty
years ago, “a fat white cow” tethered to the stake in plain view, while Berlin
was hidden far away in the forests of the night.

All this was true—but irrelevant. Hitler had
bombed London, and he had to be answered. Actually, when the first bombs fell
on the London suburbs of Croydon and Wimbledon a few nights earlier, Churchill
had urged retaliation. Now that the city itself had been bombed, there was no
holding him back.

He thundered, “Go!” and Bomber Command went.
Without fighter escort they couldn’t possibly fly over Germany in daylight, but
the very next night some eighty twin-engine bombers were sent to Berlin. Most
of them didn’t make it; it was beyond their powers to navigate such a long
distance over a dark continent with no visible landmarks. They dropped their
bombs here and there, hither and yon, most of them falling on empty fields and
woods. But twenty-nine of the bombers did bomb Berlin, where the havoc they
caused was out of all proportion to the actual blast of the bombs. Not a single
Berliner was killed, no factory was hit, and there was no military damage at
all. But the inviolate skies over Berlin had been violated, and that was
insufferable.

“Sie konn’ mich Meier heissen,”
Goring had boasted. “You can call me Meier”—a Jewish name, the
worst of all Aryan insults—”if bombs ever fall on the sacred soil of Germany.”
And here were bombs falling not just on Germany, but on Berlin. Hitler was
furious, but no more so than Churchill, who sent his bombers back again a few
nights later, and then again and again. Harris complained that his bombers were
being wasted, that no real damage was being done, but Churchill was adamant.
The bloody Boche had to be shown!

Again and again, night after night, the British
bombers circled over Berlin, dropping toilet bowls and wrenches along with a
few bombs, until finally Hitler exploded with more vehemence than the British
explosives. He ordered the Luftwaffe to attack London in full strength. Not a
hundred lost bombers dropping their load at random, but every bomber in the Luftwaffe,
hundreds and hundreds of them. And not sneaking in at night like the British
cowards, but roaring up the Thames in full daylight. On September 4, he spoke
on radio to the whole German nation, furiously raging, promising to “wipe
London from the face of the earth.”

“If they attack our cities, we will raze
their
cities to the ground! We will stop the murderous activities of these air
pirates, so help us God! If the British air force drops three thousand or four
thousand kilos of bombs, then we will drop three
hundred
thousand or
four
hundred
thousand kilos!”

No more Mr. Nice Guy. Invoking the help of God
—”Gott
mit uns
!”—he ordered Goring to destroy London.

And Dowding, in his turn, thanked God.

Twenty-eight

He thanked God, because the attacks on
London would give his airfields a desperately needed respite. He knew his
chicks could fight the Luftwaffe to a standstill in the skies, but if their
bases were destroyed they’d be helpless. A fighter pilot, no matter how brave
or how skilled, and no matter what a wonderful machine his Spitfire is, still
has to land it when the day’s action is done. Coming in at a hundred miles an
hour, he needs an aerodrome with long and un-cratered runways; he needs repair
shops to service his engine after every few flights and to patch the jagged
holes blasted by the Messerschmitts’ cannon; and he needs food to eat and a bed
to sleep in.

By the first week of September, the men of
Fighter Command had none of those luxuries. They were at the end of their rope,
and Dowding didn’t yet know of God’s goodness. And then, on September 7, it all
changed.

Harold Macmillan (post-war Prime Minister):
“Sept 7 is a great day in my memory, for then we were told that the invasion
was imminent. The signal
Cromwell
was given, and with this password
flying from mouth to mouth and the church bells ringing, the Army came to
instant readiness and the Home Guard stood to arms. We waited for the great
moment.”

The day began quietly, after the horror of the
past week. The previous day had been the worst yet, beginning at 8:40 in the
morning with a squadron of Hurricanes from Northolt rising to cut off a fleet
of bombers and then being bounced themselves by a mass of Me 109s. The squadron
lost five planes in fewer minutes.

The attacks continued throughout the long day.
By the end, although they had shot down nearly fifty Germans, Fighter Command
had lost twenty-five fighters. Dowding was again being forced to send untrained
chicks up to fight. In desperation he ordered that squadrons that had lost most
of their pilots in the past few weeks should be taken out of action, but not as
a unit: They were to give up their remaining experienced pilots to form the
nucleus of the newer squadrons that he was forced to bring into the fight. It
was a move that had to hurt morale, he understood, since fighter pilots are
trained to fight as a team, but he had no choice; bringing in a new squadron
without experience would be throwing them to the wolves. Hopefully, the
veterans would be able to impart some knowledge.

Hopefully? He had little hope as the next day,
September 7, dawned with a bright yellow sun and clear blue sides and, most
puzzling, with quiet radar screens. At Bentley Priory, Dowding strode silently
back and forth, pausing each time to look out the French windows on the
glorious summer day. But what he saw was something quite different from the
flowers and trees. He saw his aerodromes and radar stations battered and
broken. In another few days of this clear summer weather the Spits would be
driven out of the air, the Wehrmacht would cross the Channel, and Hermann
Goring would be laughing in this very room.

The past week, Hitler had broadcast his scorn: “In
England they are filled with fright and wonder. They keep asking, ‘Why doesn’t
he come?’ Be calm. Be calm.
Er kommt! Er kommt!”

Dowding didn’t doubt him. His boys had done
their best, but the end was clear and was coming fast. That morning, the Air
Ministry had issued to all commands its Invasion Alert No. 1:
Invasion is
imminent and may be expected within 24 hours.

After the war, Goring testified at his
Nuremberg trial that although Hitler ordered reprisal raids on London, he
(Goring) “as a soldier” objected to such terror bombing. But this was
self-serving nonsense. He hadn’t objected to the terror bombing of Guernica or
Rotterdam, and this testimony was clearly nothing but a last-ditch attempt to
save his own life. When the argument was rejected, he committed suicide.

The opinions of his two top Luftwaffe group
commanders were split. Hugo Sperrle disagreed with the order, understanding
that the attacks on British airfields were slowly but surely destroying Dowding’s
power to resist. Albert Kesselring, on the other hand, thought that attacking
London would be quicker: It was a target Dowding would have to defend, and it
would force the RAF to commit its last fighters.

None of these arguments mattered in the least.
Hitler had made an emotional and irrevocable decision, just as Churchill had,
and on September 7 the war entered a new phase.

That afternoon Goring stood with Kesselring on
the French coast, at Cape Blanc Nez. Looking through a telescope, the
Reichsmarschall could see the distant cliffs of Dover, and above him he could
see hundreds upon hundreds of German warplanes thundering over the waters,
fliegen
gegen England.
He announced that he “had taken over personal command of the
Luftwaffe in its war against England.”

Laughing, chortling, he urged them on. It was
rather peculiar that he was in such a good mood, considering what it must have
been like explaining to Hitler how he had let bombs fall on Berlin. But he was
an irrepressible egomaniac, and the sight of all those planes did make an
impressive sight: 625 bombers escorted by even more fighters, filling the sky,
blocking the sun, flying against England.

Against London.

Now, finally, the radar screens began to
light up. In the Operations Room at Bentley Priory, it was just a few minutes
before four o’clock when the first headphoned WAAF moved. Getting up from her
stool, she picked up a black counter and placed it on the map table. It was labelled
“20+.” On the balcony, the senior Controller picked up his telephone and
notified Dowding.

That black marker was the first of many; as the
German fleets built up over France and headed across the Channel, the map table
began to be covered with them. By the time Dowding reached the room, there were
more than ever before, and minute by minute, the WAAFs moved around the table,
placing new counters beside the old. From every airfield along the French coast
the Luftwaffe bombers and fighters came lumbering into the air, and on the
squadron readiness boards lining the operations wall, lights began to come on
as every squadron in 11 Group was ordered to varying states of readiness.

But where should they be vectored? As usual,
the Germans were coming straight across the Channel for London, but always the
large formations finally would break apart and scatter for the surrounding
airfields, keeping their targets secret until the last moment. Today, the
Controllers thought, it didn’t matter; they had no alternative but to protect
all their airfields as best they could. They sent the Spits and Hurris away
from London, patrolling the approaches to the aerodromes.