History of the Second World War (19 page)

In the south, the British defence was less successful — under a heavier and more varied series of attacks, at shorter range. Early in the afternoon a raid by thirty bombers, heavily escorted, got through to Rochester and bombed the Short aircraft factory there, while about the same time a raid by twenty-four fighter-bombers did severe damage to the R.A.F. fighter airfield at Martlesham Heath in Suffolk. The multiplicity of raids confused the radar picture, and British fighter squadrons, sent out individually, were chasing to and fro. Fortunately for the defence, Luftflotten 2 and 3 did not effectively co-ordinate their attacks, and thus lost the advantage of keeping the R.A.F. on the run. It was not until 6 p.m. that a mass of about 200 aircraft from Luftflotte 3 streamed over the Channel to attack airfields in the south-centre of England. Helped by good radar warning, Fighter Groups No. 10 and 11 — the two covering the southern part of the country — put up no less than fourteen squadrons, a total of about 170 fighters, to meet this massive attack, and it achieved little. Soon afterward Luftflotte 2 attacked afresh in the south-east, with about 100 aircraft, but this likewise met prompt resistance and had little effect. Even when attacks reached their objective, they found the British fighters well dispersed and well camouflaged.

On this day, perhaps the most decisive of the battle, the actual German loss over the whole country was seventy-five aircraft, compared with thirty-four British fighters. Significantly, the Luftwaffe had employed less than half its bomber strength — a recognition, and indirect admission, of its dependence on the escort of its own fighters, almost all of which had been used. Moreover the day’s operations had clearly shown the unsuitability of the German dive-bombers, the hitherto alarming Stukas, for the tasks they were now attempting — as well as of the Me no fighters, on which such great hopes had been built.

It was this day which inspired Churchill to say: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’.

Next day however, the 16th, the Luftwaffe made another strong effort — under the delusion that the R.A.F. had lost over 100 aircraft on the 15th, and had only 300 fighters left. But although the attacks were damaging in several places, they were disappointing on the whole. On the 17th no major attacks were made despite quite good weather. On the 18th a fresh and stronger effort resulted in the German loss of seventy-one aircraft (half of them bombers) compared with an R.A.F. loss of twenty-seven fighters. From then on the attacks dwindled. In fact, hedge-hopping raids on Kenley and Biggin Hill had done considerable damage, and been difficult to counter, as they came in below the level of the radar screen. But the Germans did not realise this, and felt that their losses had been too great to continue. Bad weather then brought a lull in the battle.

Goring had called another conference of his chief executives on the 19th, and after discussion it was decided to pursue the air offensive — with a fresh effort to knock out the British fighter force.

During the two weeks following August 10 the Luftwaffe lost 167 bombers (including forty dive-bombers), and the bomber chiefs in consequence were calling for stronger and stronger fighter escorts. Tension, and friction, between the two arms was increased by Goring’s tendency to side with the bombers and blame the fighters.

But there was friction also on the British side, especially between Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, commanding No. 11 Fighter Group in the crucial south-east of England, and Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, commanding No. 12 Fighter Group in the Midlands. Park emphasised the importance of meeting the Germans forward of their objectives and shooting down their bombers, thus driving them to use more and more of their Me 109 fighters in a close escort role for which they were not fitted. Leigh-Mallory considered that this policy put too great a strain on the R.A.F. fighter pilots, who were apt to be caught on the ground, often when refuelling, or before they could gain sufficient height.

There were differences as well over the tactics to be used, the ‘Leigh-Mallory faction’ advocating the ‘big wing’ theory of massive, concentrated intercepting forces, while Park held to what he believed was the more flexible policy afforded the British by their radar, feeding in interceptors as the German forces arrived — the ‘diluted concentration’ policy.

It was also argued that Dowding, in accord with Park, was too intent to maintain the forward airfields in the south-east, for the sake of civilian morale, when it would have been wiser to withdraw behind London, out of range of the Me 109s and their escorted bombers.

Fighter Command had lost ninety-four pilots in the period August 8-18, and sixty wounded. But there was as yet no shortage of aircraft, despite the loss of 175 fighters during the period, a further sixty-five severely damaged, and thirty aircraft destroyed on the ground.

When the weather improved on the 24th Goring launched his second bid for command of the air. This time it was better planned. Luftflotte 2, under Kesselring, usually kept some planes in the air on the French side of the Channel, and that kept Park guessing, as radar could not differentiate between bombers and fighters, or tell when aircraft would suddenly dash across the Channel. In this new phase No. 11 Group’s forward airfields suffered more severely than before, and Manston had to be abandoned.

Another feature of the new plan was an intensive attack on R.A.F. stations and installations around London — and this led to the unintended dropping of bombs on London. On the night of the 24th some ten German bombers, which had lost their way
en route
to targets at Rochester and Thameshaven, dropped their loads in central London. That mistake led to an immediate reprisal raid on Berlin the next night by some eighty British bombers, and this raid was followed up by several more — leading Hitler, after threats that were ignored, to order reprisal raids on London.

Prior to the new offensive most of the Me 109 fighters with Luftflotte 3 were transferred to Luftflotte 2, so as to increase the strength of the escorts in the Pas de Calais area. That policy paid. The R.A.F’s fighters had more difficulty, and lost more heavily, in penetrating the German fighter screen, while the German bombers were better able to get through to their targets. Moreover the Germans developed a new tactic of splitting up into separate raids once the mass formations had passed through the radar screen.

On the opening day, August 24, the sector stations at North Weald and Hornchurch were only saved by their A.A. gun defence. That also saved Portsmouth Dockyard in a heavy attack by Luftflotte 3, although the city itself suffered badly from the resultant scatter of bombs. After this effort Luftflotte 3 turned to night bombing, and attacked Liverpool on four successive nights from the 28th on, but many of the bombers failed to find the Merseyside area owing to their inadequate training and to British interference with German navigational beams. These raids, however, also brought out the shortcomings of British defence against night attack.

The last two days of August proved particularly bad for Fighter Command. Significantly, small formations of bombers, fifteen to twenty, had fighter escorts three times as many as themselves. On the 31st the R.A.F suffered its heaviest loss of the whole battle, having thirty-nine fighters shot down against a German loss of forty-one aircraft. The rate of loss was more than the R.A.F. could afford on its limited strength, and it was failing to deter the attackers. Most of the airfields in the south-west were by now seriously damaged, and some were so wrecked as to be unusable.

Even Dowding was considering the withdrawal of his fighting line in the south-east and bringing it back out of range of the Me 109s. He was also becoming more strongly criticised for keeping twenty fighter squadrons to protect the north, which had only been attacked once in daylight — an attack which had not been repeated. Moreover those of No. 12 Group, in East Anglia and the Midlands, were clamouring to take a more direct part in the battle — while Park complained that they did not co-operate in the way he wanted. Strained relations between Park and Leigh-Mallory, and between Dowding and Newall, the Chief of the Air Staff, did not aid a smooth solution of the problem.

During the month of August, Fighter Command lost in combat 338 Hurricanes and Spitfires, as well as having 104 badly damaged, compared with a German loss of 177 Me 109s, with twenty-four badly damaged. That was a loss of 2 for 1 in fighters. Other causes accounted for forty-two R.A.F. fighters and fifty-four Me 109s.

Thus at the beginning of September there was all too much reason for Goring to feel that he was within reach of his goal — the destruction of Britain’s fighter strength and of its installations in the south-east. But he did not grasp the importance of following up the advantage he had gained.

On September 4, the Luftwaffe’s concentration on Fighter Command’s airfields was varied, and diluted, by a series of attacks on British aircraft factories — the Short factory at Rochester and the Vickers-Armstrong works at Brooklands. The variation was quite effective in itself, but carried with it a lowering of pressure on Fighter Command. That was the more valuable because the endurance and the nerves of pilots were strained to breaking point, and their performance had been showing a marked decline.

Dowding, with a sense of essentials, ordered maximum fighter cover for the fighter factories in the south; a fresh attack on Brooklands two days later was headed off — as well as attacks on five sector stations around London.

During the whole two weeks’ period August 24 to September 6, 295 British fighters had been destroyed and 171 badly damaged — compared with a total output of 269 new and repaired fighters. The Luftwaffe’s loss in Me 109s was barely half the number — although it had also lost more than a hundred bombers.

The Luftwaffe’s losses, along with the call for much stronger escort of the bombers, was now seriously affecting the effort it made, or could make. Whereas it had flown about 1,500 sorties a day, and momentarily rose again to a figure of 1,300-1,400 in the last two days of August, it never reached 1,000 sorties during the first week of September. During the first two months of the battle — which had become a battle of attrition — the Luftwaffe had lost more than 800 aircraft. Kesselring’s Luftflotte 2, carrying the main burden of the offensive, was now down to about 450 serviceable bombers and 530 Me 109 fighters. So at the end of this third phase of the battle the scales were at last beginning to tilt in Britain’s favour. They were to do so more definitely in the fourth phase, helped by the Luftwaffe’s switch of effort.

On September 3 Goring had held, at the Hague, another conference of his chief executives and this had confirmed the fateful decision to switch the daylight bombing offensive to London — as Kesselring had urged from the outset, and Hitler had now agreed. The starting date was fixed for September 7.

At the same time the 300 bombers available in Luftflotte 3 would be used for a night bombing offensive. That suited Sperrle, who had always favoured the bombing of shipping and ports, and had become increasingly sceptical about the prospect of crushing the British fighter force and knocking out its airfields.

On the afternoon of the 7th an air armada of about a thousand aircraft of Luftflotte 2 — over 300 bombers escorted by 648 fighters — set out for London, watched by Goring and Kesselring from the cliffs at Cap Blanc Nez, between Calais and Wissant. It was echeloned upwards in solid layers at between 13,500 and 19,500 feet, flying in close-knit formations and in two waves. The German fighter screen adopted new tactics, one escort flying well ahead at a height of 24,000-30,000 feet, while another escort gave the bombers close cover, and on all sides, at a distance of only about 300 yards.

This new technique proved difficult to counter, but on this first occasion it was hardly needed. For at No. 11 Group Headquarters, the Controller had been expecting another attack on the inner sector stations, and such of the fighter squadrons as were airborne, four in number, were mostly concentrated north of the Thames. So the path to London was clear. The first wave flew straight to the London docks; the second flew over central London and then back over the East End and the docks. The bombing was not so accurate as the Germans thought, many of the bombers aiming short, but in the densely crowded area of the East End, that resulted in all the more loss among the population. In this first mass daylight attack on London — which was also the last — over 300 civilians were killed, and over 1,300 seriously injured.

It had been a frustrating evening for Fighter Command. But although its squadrons were mostly late on the scene, and then baffled by the new German tactics, it managed to inflict a loss of forty-one aircraft for its own loss of twenty-eight. The biggest shock to the Germans came from a particularly fierce attack by No. 303 (Polish) Squadron from Northolt.

The fires raging in the East End served as a guiding beacon for the night attack that followed, and continued from 8 p.m. until nearly 5 a.m. Goring telephoned his wife, telling her triumphantly ‘London is in flames’. The lack of opposition led him, and many of his subordinates, to believe that the British fighter force was near to being exhausted. So next day he ordered an extension of the area of London that was to be bombed.

Meanwhile the assembly of invasion barges in the Channel had been growing larger day by day, and on the morning of the 7th the British Government had issued a precautionary invasion warning. After the air attack that followed so closely, the warning was inflated, with the result that a number of auxiliary units were called out and some church bells, which were to signal the invasion, were rung.

Because of the lack of suitable night fighters the defence of London, as of other cities, depended at this crucial time mainly on anti-aircraft guns and searchlights. On the night of the 7th there were only 264 guns on the spot to defend London, but thanks to Pile’s prompt measures the number was doubled in the next forty-eight hours. Moreover he laid on ‘the barrage’ from the night of the 10th onward, telling every gun to fire as much as it could, on whatever information it had. Although the number of hits was slight, the sound of the barrage had a great tonic effect on the morale of the population, while it also had an important material effect by driving the bombers higher.