History of the Second World War (17 page)

The second wave of the invasion would be an exploiting mobile force composed of six armoured and three motorised divisions in three corps, and this would be followed by a third wave of nine infantry divisions and a fourth wave of eight infantry divisions. Although there were no armoured divisions in the first wave, it was allotted approximately 650 tanks, all to be carried in the first of its two echelons (the leading echelon amounted to just over a third of its total strength of 250,000 troops). The cross-Channel conveyance of this two-piece first wave called for 155 transports, totalling some 700,000 tons, besides over 3,000 smaller craft — 1,720 barges, 470 tugs, and 1,160 motorboats.

Preparations were only set going late in July, and the German Naval Staff declared that such a large quantity of shipping could not be assembled ready to launch ‘Sealion’ before the middle of September at the earliest — whereas Hitler had ordered preparations to be completed by mid-August. (Indeed, at the end of July the Naval Staff recommended that the operation should be postponed until the spring of 1941.)

But that was not the only check. The German generals were very apprehensive of the risks that their forces would run in crossing the sea. They had little confidence in the capacity of either their own navy or their air force to keep the passage clear, and urged that the invasion should be on a wide enough front (from Ramsgate to Lyme Bay) to stretch and distract the defending forces. The German admirals were even more apprehensive of what would happen when the British fleet arrived on the scene. They had little or no confidence in their own power to prevent its interference, while at the outset insisting that the Army plan for a wide front of invasion would be impossible to protect, and that the crossing must be confined to a relatively narrow mine-covered corridor, with army forces of smaller size — limitations that deepened the generals’ doubts. Above all, Admiral Raeder emphasised, air superiority over the crossing area was essential.

After a discussion with Raeder on July 31, Hitler accepted the naval view that ‘Sealion’ could not be launched before the middle of September. But the operation was not yet definitely postponed until 1941, as Goring assured him that the Luftwaffe could check the British Navy’s interference as well as drive the British out of the sky. The Navy and Army chiefs were quite willing to let him try his preliminary air offensive, which did not commit them to anything definite unless and until it proved successful.

In the event, it did not succeed, and so the straggle in the air became the principal feature — indeed, the only feature — of the decisive Battle of Britain.

The superiority of the Luftwaffe over the Royal Air Force was not so great as was generally imagined at the time. It was unable to maintain a continuous attack by wave after wave of massed bombers as the British public had feared, and the number of its fighters was not much more than that of the British.

The offensive was mainly conducted by Air Fleets (Luftflotten) 2 and 3, under Field-Marshals Albert Kesselring and Hugo Sperrle — the former based on north-east France and the Low Countries, and the latter on north and north-west France. Each air fleet was a self-contained force, of all components — an integration which had been advantageous when co-operating with the Army’s advances in Poland and the West, but was less so in an all-air campaign. Each air fleet produced its own plans and submitted them separately; there was no overall plan.

On August 10, when the offensive was about to start in earnest, Air Fleets 2 and 3 had a total of 875 normal (high-level) bombers, and 316 dive-bombers. (The dive-bombers proved so vulnerable to the British fighters that they were withdrawn from the battle after August 18, and reserved for the invasion.)

In addition, Luftflotte 5 in Norway and Denmark, under General Stumpff, had 123 high-level bombers, but it took part in the battle on one day only, August 15, and its losses then proved too heavy for the distant excursion to be repeated. By its presence off stage, however, it did have a distracting effect in keeping part of the British Fighter Command’s forces in the north-east of England. It also provided about a hundred bombers in the later part of August to replace losses in Luftflotten 2 and 3.

These had started the battle on August 10 with 929 fighters available. They were mostly single-engined Messerschmitt 109s, but had 227 twin-engined and relatively long-range Me 110s. The Me 109, of which the prototype had appeared in 1936, had a top-speed of over 350 m.p.h., and its high rate of climb gave it a further advantage over the British fighters. But in turning and manoeuvring it was at a disadvantage in combat with them. Moreover, unlike them, most had at the outset of the battle no armour protection for the pilot, although they did have bullet-proof fuel tanks, which the British lacked.

Limited range was a decisive factor for the German single-engined fighters in this battle. The Me 109’s official cruising range of 412 miles was very misleading. Its real radius of action, out and back, was little more than 100 miles, and from the Pas de Calais or the Cotentin Peninsula that could take it only just to London, allowing it scant time for fighting there. Put in another way, it had a total flight duration of barely 95 minutes, which gave it only 75-80 minutes tactical flying time. When the heavy loss in bomber’s, and their very palpable vulnerability, made it necessary to provide them with fighter escorts, no more than 300-400 bombers could be used on any one day even against objectives in the south of England — allowing two fighters to escort a bomber.

The Me 109, too, was difficult to handle at take-off and landing, while its undercarriage was weak, and this trouble was accentuated by the hastily improvised airfields on the French coast.

The twin-engined Me 110, despite its nominal top-speed of 340 m.p.h., proved considerably slower — often barely 300 m.p.h. or even less — and was thus easily outpaced by the Spitfire, while it was sluggish in acceleration and difficult to manoeuvre. It had been intended as ‘the operational flower of the Luftwaffe’s fighters’ but it proved the worst technical disappointment of all — and eventually had to be escorted by Me 109s for its own protection.

But the German fighters’ greatest handicap was the primitiveness of their radio equipment. Although they had radio-telephony for intercommunication during flight, theirs was poor compared with the British — and they could not be controlled from the ground.

The R.A.F. fighter strength had been rebuilt, after its loss of more than 400 in France, to a figure of some 650 by mid-July — its strength when the German offensive was launched in May. They were mostly Hurricanes and Spitfires, although still including nearly a hundred of other and older types.

That remarkable recovery owed much to the efforts of Lord Beaverbrook, who had been appointed to the new office of Minister of Aircraft Production in May on the formation of Mr Churchill’s Government. His critics complained that his energetic interference had an upsetting effect on long-term progress. But Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command, went on record in declaring that ‘the effect of the appointment can only be described as magical’, By mid-summer even, the production of fighters had increased two and a half times, and during the whole year Britain produced 4,283 fighters compared with just over 3,000 single- and twin-engined fighters produced by Germany.

The relative situation in armament is more difficult to determine. The Hurricanes and Spitfires were armed solely with machine-guns; they had eight apiece, fixed forward in the wings. These were American Browning machine-guns — a weapon which had been chosen because it was reliable enough to be remotely controlled, while its rate of fire was high, 1,260 rounds a minute. The Me 109 fighters in general were armed with two fixed machine-guns in the cowlings and two 20-mm. cannon in the wings — a weapon developed as a result of experience in the Spanish Civil War, which had been utilised as a testing ground for the Luftwaffe — the Me 109 had been tried out there, as well as earlier types of fighters now replaced.

Adolf Galland, the German ace, had no doubt, in retrospect, that the Me 109’s armament was the better. British opinion was divided, as it was considered that the high firing rate of the Brownings carried the advantage in short bursts of fire. But it was recognised that half a dozen camion shells could do far more damage than the equivalent length of Browning bursts — and some of the British fighter pilots complained bitterly that even when sure that they were hitting an opponent ‘nothing happened’. Significantly, some thirty Spitfires were equipped with two 20-mm, Hispano (Oerlikon) cannon during the course of the battle, and Hurricanes fitted with four cannon came into use from October on.

What is quite clear, and became evident at the start, was that the German bombers were too poorly armed — with a few free-traversing machine-guns — to be able to beat off the British fighters without a fighter escort of their own.

The respective situation in regard to fighter pilots was more complex, and in the earlier phases of the battle far from favourable to the British. While trained to a high standard, their shortage in number was serious. The R.A.F. flying training schools were slow in expanding, and their shortcomings largely determined the conduct of the battle. Wastage had to be kept to a minimum even if it meant some raids getting through. Men, not planes, were Dowding’s main worry.

By husbanding his resources in July, Dowding managed to increase his pilot strength to 1,434 at the beginning of August — helped by a contribution, on ‘loan’, of sixty-eight from the Fleet Air Arm. But a month later the number was down to 840, and losses were averaging 120 a week. By contrast, no more than 260 fighter pilots were turned out by the R.A.F’s Operational Training Units during the whole month. In September the scarcity became worse, as the number of highly skilled pilots shrank, while the hurriedly trained new arrivals were more vulnerable through inexperience. Fresh squadrons brought in to relieve tired ones often lost more than those they replaced. Tiredness was in numerous cases accompanied by declining morale and increasing ‘nerviness’.

The Germans had no such heavy initial handicap in numbers. Despite their heavy losses on the Continent in May and June, the flying schools were turning out more pilots than could be absorbed into front-line squadrons. But morale was affected insidiously by the way Goring and others at the head of the Luftwaffe looked on, and treated, the fighter arm as merely ‘defensive’ and of secondary importance. Moreover it was drained of many of its best pilots to make up losses in the bomber and dive-bomber arms, while Goring kept on criticising it for lack of aggressiveness, and blamed it for the Luftwaffe’s failures — largely due to his own lack of foresight and mistakes in planning. By contrast, the morale of the British fighter pilots was fortified by knowing that they were regarded and acclaimed during these critical months as Churchill’s ‘Few’, the flower of the Royal Air Force and the heroes of the nation.

The strain on the German fighters, both pilots and planes, was multiplied by the way they were increasingly used for, and tied to, escort duties — two or three sorties a day, and sometimes as many as five. Goring would not allow rest days, or the rotation of front-line units. Thus sheer tiredness was added to the sense, and strain, of their heavy losses. Morale was becoming low by the time September came. It was deepened by a sense of doubt whether invasion was really intended, in view of the slightness, and amateurishness, of the preparations the pilots saw, so that they began more and more to wonder whether they were merely being sacrificed to maintain a facade, for an operation that was being abandoned.

The bomber crews were suffering from heavy losses, and from a sense of their vulnerability to R.A.F. fighter attack. Thus their decline in morale tended to become even more marked, gallantly as they continued to carry out orders.

In sum, while both sides were closely matched in skill and courage during the early phases of the battle, the British were helped in gaining the upper hand as it wore on by the fact, and still more the feeling, that the enemy were suffering a worse loss, and strain, than they themselves were — heavy though their own was on both counts.

A constant German handicap throughout the battle was poor Intelligence. The Luftwaffe’s basic guide in conducting the offensive was a pre-war handbook, known as the ‘Blue Study’, which set out the available data about the situation and lay-out of industrial plant in Britain and the results of comprehensive photographic reconnaissance carried out on ‘civil route proving flights’. This was inadequately supplemented by the Luftwaffe’s own Intelligence department — which was headed only by a major. In a survey of the R.A.F. which this Major Schmid made in July 1940, he greatly underestimated British fighter production, allowing for only 180-300 a month — whereas it actually rose to 460-500 Hurricanes and Spitfires alone in August and September, the period of the battle, following Beaverbrook’s efforts to speed up the programme. (The false impression caused by that big error was increased by reports from General Udet’s production department which dwelt on the drawbacks of the Hurricane and Spitfire without pointing out their advantages.)

In Major Schmid’s survey report there was no mention of the R.A.F’s well-knit defence system, with its radar stations, operations rooms, and high-frequency radio network. Yet the British radar research station at Bawdsey on the Suffolk coast and the lofty lattice masts going up round the coast had been wide open to intelligent observation well before the war, and by 1939 it seemed hardly possible that the Germans could lack information of the key features in the British warning system. Although the Germans knew in 1938 that the British were experimenting with radar, and even captured a mobile radar station on the beach at Boulogne in May 1940, their scientists considered the set crude. Much fuller information about the British radar was freely available in France, owing to French carelessness over security, when the Germans overran the major part of that country, but the Germans do not seem to have profited by it. Goring himself took little account of its potential effect on the battle.