The Grand Alliance (10 page)

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continue? First we must form the most trustworthy estimate of the German air strength, actual and relative, and of their programme for 1941.

Prime

Minister

to

2 Dec. 40

Secretary of State for

Air and C.A.S
.

One cannot doubt that the Germans will be making
tremendous efforts to increase their air force this winter,
and that a far more serious attempt must be expected
against us in the spring. It is most necessary to form
the best opinion possible about the potential scale of
the German increase (a) by March 31, (b) by June 30 –

these dates not being arbitrary if other dates are more
convenient and equally illustrative. It is important not to
exaggerate the German capacity, and therefore the
limiting factors – for example, engines, special raw
materials, pilot-training, effect of our bombing – are of
special interest. On the other hand, full weight should
be given to the German use of factories in the captive
countries.

I should be glad if your Intelligence Branch would let
me have a paper (not more than two or three sheets)
upon this vital matter, and it would be convenient if they
could keep in touch with Professor Lindemann while
they are preparing this, so that we do not have to argue
about the various bases of calculations adopted. While
I want the report to be short, I want to be cognisant of
the data and reasoning processes on which it has been
built up. I am not sure to what extent the Ministry of
Aircraft Production comes into this. It would be a
comfort if an agreed view could be presented by the
departments. Let me know how you will set about this.

One week is all that can be spared.

With the aid of Professor Lindemann and his Statistical Branch I began to explore this obscure domain. We probed The Grand Alliance

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the Air Ministry statements. We confronted them with the quite separate figures and widely differing judgments of the Ministry of Economic Warfare and of the Air Ministry Intelligence, and with the views of the Ministry of Aircraft Production. I let the argument rip healthily between the departments. This is a very good way of finding out the truth. There was a great deal of friendship and accord between the less senior officers of these three departments, and I was very glad to convene them all together one afternoon at Chequers. Both sides produced their facts and figures, and each was tormented by doubt.

The evidence was so conflicting, and all the witnesses so earnestly desirous of finding the truth, that I felt a judicial mind, a keen, clear, unhampered brain, should sift and weigh. Accordingly I persuaded all concerned to give their best to a factual inquiry by an eminent judge.

Prime

Minister

to

9 Dec. 40

Secretary of State for

Air and C.A.S.

I spent four hours on Saturday with the officers of
the Air Ministry Intelligence Branch and those of the
Ministry of Economic Warfare. I have not been able to
reach a conclusion as to which are right. Probably the
truth lies midway between them. The subject is of
capital importance to the whole future picture we make
to ourselves of the war. It would also influence the use
we make of our forces in the meanwhile. I am most
anxious that the two branches mentioned, whose
officers are in the most friendly relations, should sit
together in an inquiry to sift the evidence and ascertain
the facts. There should be an impartial chairman
accustomed to weigh evidence and to cross-examine,
and I wondered whether for this purpose Mr. Justice
Singleton, who had war experience as a gunner and
recently conducted an inquiry for me into bomb-sights,
would not be able to guide the discussions and throw a
valuable light on the obscurities of this all-important

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scene. He would, of course, have to be given all the
available information. Before taking any decision I
should like to have your views. Meanwhile I have set
out a statement of what I learned in our discussion on
Saturday, as something for the departments to bite on.

Every fact in it is open to question, modification, or
offset. I have sent a copy to each branch, and it would
form the staple of the investigations I contemplate.

I composed this statement myself, and it took a good many hours’ concentration. As it is somewhat technical, I print it in Appendix D where it should be read by those who wish to probe the question at issue.
1

Prime

Minister

to

13 Dec. 40

Secretary of State

for Air

Out of the estimated monthly German aircraft
production of 1800 machines, the Intelligence Branch of
the Air Ministry consider that only 400 are provided for
training. This seems very few, considering that the Air
Ministry’s view is that the Germans are maintaining
about two and a half times our strength in the front
lines. Alternatively, if the Air Ministry’s requirement of
trainers is warranted, and if our trainers are not profuse-ly and unthriftily used, and [if] large numbers [are not]

kept about the aerodromes in an unserviceable state,
the German front-line strength cannot well be maintained on such a small proportion of trainers.

Mr. Justice Singleton is coming to lunch with me on
Sunday, and I will set him to work on the inquiry on
which we are agreed.

Mr. Justice Singleton got on famously with the airmen and other experts. On January 21 he presented me with his final report. It was most difficult to compare British and German

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air strengths in actual figures. Each side divided its air force into authorised establishments, total aircraft, “operationally fit,” and “front line.” These categories were different, arbitrary, and variable. Moreover, the Royal Air Force was divided between home and overseas, while at this moment the Germans were all at home. I do not therefore baffle the reader with disputable statistics. The Judge concluded that the strength of the German Air Force, compared with the British, might be taken as roughly four to three. Although the Air Ministry (Intelligence) still thought the Germans had more and the Ministry of Economic Warfare that they had less, there was a considerable measure of agreement, and the Singleton estimate became our working basis. I was encouraged by his report, which showed that we were steadily overhauling the Germans in the air. At the beginning of the Battle of France they were at least more than double. Now they were reported as only four to three.

After the war we learnt that it was actually nearer three to two. This was a great improvement. We had not yet reached our full rate of expansion, nor had we received the great wave of American help which was on the way.

At the end of 1940, Hitler had realised that Britain could not be destroyed by direct air assault. The Battle of Britain had been his first defeat, and the malignant bombing of the cities had not cowed the nation or its Government. The preparations to invade Russia in the early summer of 1941

absorbed much of the German air power. The many very severe raids which we suffered till the end of May no longer represented the full strength of the enemy. To us they were most grievous, but they were no longer the prime thought either of the German High Command or of the Fuehrer. To Hitler the continuance of the air attack on Great Britain was

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a necessary and convenient cover to the concentration against Russia. His optimistic time-table assumed that the Soviets, like the French, would be overthrown in a six-weeks campaign and that all German forces would then be free for the final overthrow of Britain in the autumn of 1941.

Meanwhile the obstinate nation was to be worn down, first, by the combination of the U-boat blockade sustained by the long-range air, and secondly, by air attacks upon her cities and especially her ports. For the German Army “Sea Lion” (against Britain) was now replaced by

“Barbarossa” (against Russia). The German Navy was instructed to concentrate on our Atlantic traffic and the German Air Force on our harbours and their approaches.

This was a far more deadly plan than the indiscriminate bombing of London and the civil population, and it was fortunate for us that it was not pursued with all available forces and greater persistence.

Viewed in retrospect, the Blitz of 1941 falls into three phases. In the first, during January and February, the enemy were frustrated by bad weather, and, apart from attacks on Cardiff, Portsmouth, and Swansea, our Civil Defence Services gained a well-deserved breathing-space, by which they did not fail to profit. A system of Port Emergency Committees, representing all the main interests concerned in port organisation, had been set up long before the war by the Committee of Imperial Defence. Sharpened by the hard experience of the winter of 1940, and aided by the readiness of the Ministry of War Transport to decentralise, these bodies were now able to conduct the struggle very much more efficiently themselves, and could rely with confidence on outside assistance through the regional commissioners. Nor were more active methods of The Grand Alliance

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defence neglected. Smoke-screens, highly unpopular with the local inhabitants whose homes they contaminated, were prepared, and later proved their worth in protecting Midland industrial centres. Decoy fires, or “starfish,” were made ready for the distraction of enemy bombers, and the whole defensive plan was knit together into one coherent system.

When better weather came, the Blitz started in earnest over again. The second phase, sometimes called “the Luftwaffe’s tour of the ports,” began in early March. It consisted of single or double attacks, which, though serious, failed to cripple our harbours. On the eighth and for three succeeding nights Portsmouth was heavily attacked and the dockyards damaged. Manchester and Salford were attacked on the eleventh. On the ensuing nights it was the turn of Merseyside. On the thirteenth and fourteenth the Luftwaffe fell for the first time heavily on the Clyde, killing or injuring over two thousand people and putting the shipyards out of action, some till June and others till November. At John Brown’s Shipbuilding Works large fires caused stoppages, and normal production was only restored in April. This firm had been affected since March 6 by an extensive strike. Most of the strikers had been bombed out of their homes, but the raid sufferings and peril brought them back to eager duty. Merseyside, the Midlands, Essex, and London all had another dose before the month was out.