The Battle of Britain (8 page)

The problem both air forces faced was the impossibility of attacking single military targets with existing air technology without spreading destruction over a wide circle around them. This explains why both sides believed that the other was conducting a terror campaign against civilian morale. By mid-September Park was telling Dowding that the Germans had abandoned ‘all pretence of attacking military objectives’ in favour of ‘“browning” the huge London target’.
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Goebbels invited foreign newsmen on grisly tours of bombed schools, churches and hospitals. But even he could see that journalists would not be taken in entirely by counterclaims that German aeroplanes only attacked military targets, and was even prepared to admit that it was ‘impossible to avoid civilian damage’.
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In an age long
before smart weapons, accuracy to within a mile at night could be considered aerial sharp-shooting. Bombers were under constant threat of attack by fighters; they were shot at by anti-aircraft guns and trapped in cones of searchlight beams; they flew in poor daytime weather, they flew in the dark. What would now be described by the cynical euphemism ‘collateral damage’ was unavoidable, and German aircraft began to inflict civilian casualties from the moment they attacked the British mainland in June.

The claim that the attack on London was retaliation for starting an air war against civilians with the raid on Berlin on the night of 25/26 August is equally hollow. The Berlin raid was very small-scale, and the amount of damage inflicted on the capital itself negligible. The psychological impact was much greater on a population lulled into complacency by months of propaganda on the invulnerability of the city. ‘The Berliners are stunned,’ wrote William Shirer in his diary, ‘from all reports there was a pell-mell, frightened rush to the cellars…’
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On 29 August British bombers returned, this time killing ten Berliners (including four men and two women watching the pyrotechnic battle from a doorway). Goebbels made the most of a golden opportunity. ‘Berlin is now in the theatre of war,’ he confided to his diary. ‘It is good that this is so.’ The Berlin papers played up the air terror and the genocidal intention ‘ “to massacre the population of Berlin” ’.
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The raids on Berlin were in reality retaliation for the
persistent bombing of British conurbations and the high level of British civilian casualties that resulted. In July 258 civilians had been killed, in August 1,075; the figures included 136 children and 392 women.
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During the last half of August, as German bombers moved progressively further inland, bombs began to fall on the outskirts of London. On the night of 18/19 August bombs fell on Croydon, Wimbledon and the Maidens. On the night of 22/23 August the first bombs fell on central London in attacks described by observers as ‘extensive’ and for which no warning was given; on the night of 24/25 August bombs fell in Slough, Richmond Park and Dulwich. On the night the RAF first raided Berlin, bombs fell on Banstead, Croydon, Lewisham, Uxbridge, Harrow and Hayes. On the night of the next raid on Berlin, on 28/29 August, German aircraft bombed the following London areas: Finchley, St Pancras, Wembley, Wood Green, Southgate, Crayford, Old Kent Road, Mill Hill, Ilford, Hendon, Chigwell. London was under ‘red’ warning for seven hours and five minutes.
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The bombing of London began almost two weeks before Hitler’s speech on 4 September, and well before the first raid on Berlin.

The switch to attacks on London forced Fighter Command and the German Air Force to rethink the battle. The main weight of German bombing slowly gravitated towards night attack, which produced much lower bomber losses. Daylight operations against the capital, which began in force on 7 September, when 350 bombers raided the east
London dock area, required German fighters to fly to the very limit of their range. Bomber crews insisted that they be given an adequate defensive shield to try to reduce the heavy losses of the previous three weeks. Goering ordered fighters to fly not only in front and above the bombers, but now to weave in and out of the bomber stream itself. Because bombers were so much slower at the higher altitudes chosen for the London attacks, fighters were forced to fly a zig-zag course to keep in contact, which used up precious supplies of fuel and reduced their radius of action even more.

Fighter Command reacted to the changed battlefield almost at once. The bombers attacked London in three waves. Park ordered 11 Group to put up six squadrons held at ‘readiness’ for the first wave of bombers; a further eight squadrons were held back to meet the second wave; the remaining squadrons were detailed to attack the third wave, or to provide protection for airfields and factories in the bombers’ path. Aircraft from 10 and 12 Groups protected 11 Group’s own airfields. The higher altitude flown by the attacker added new difficulties. Radar had problems estimating the greater heights precisely; fighters had to climb further and could seldom get above the incoming aircraft, where attack was most advantageous. The problem was tackled by withdrawing from the coastal stations, to give fighters more time to assemble. When fighters were ascending, they gave false height references over the radio
to bring German fighters to altitudes below them. Finally, on 21 September Park instituted standing patrols, with Spitfires flying high to engage fighters and with Hurricanes at bomber altitude.
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The chief result of these changes was to reduce Fighter Command’s loss rate and to impose escalating destruction on an already overstretched bomber force. In the first week of attacks on London, the German bomber arm lost 199 aircraft.

Over the period from 7 September to 5 October, when daylight bombing raids petered out, there were 35 major attacks, 18 of them on London. It was during this phase of the battle that the so-called ‘Big Wing’ controversy emerged. ‘Big Wings’ or ‘Balbos’ (after the flamboyant Italian airman Italo Balbo) were inspired by one of the legends of the battle, Wing Commander Douglas Bader. Flying with 12 Group, he developed the idea that fighters should fly in large formations in order to hit the approaching air fleet with maximum striking power. His commander, Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory, supported the innovation, but Park was strongly opposed on the grounds that concentration of fighter forces would simply let the successive waves of bombers fly on unimpeded while fighters sat on the ground rearming. What separated the two Groups were facts of geography. Park had to fight incoming waves of bombers with strong fighter escort; Leigh-Mallory’s fighters met bomber forces further inland, with weaker fighter defences and their position clearly
known. Under these circumstances the concentration of fighter forces made greater operational sense. Nevertheless, as Park took pleasure in reminding Dowding, 12 Group aircraft could engage the enemy in ‘Big Wings’ only seldom. In September, Bader’s Duxford-based squadrons flew in large formations only five times; in the second half of October they managed only ten sorties and shot down just one enemy aeroplane. In Park’s judgement the use of ‘Big Wings’ would have ‘lost the Battle of London’.
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The air battles in the week between 7 September and 15 September were decisive in turning the tide of the battle. During that week the German Air Force lost 298 aircraft; Fighter Command lost 120, against 99 enemy fighters. The greatest damage was inflicted on the German attack on 15 September, which has been celebrated since the war as Battle of Britain Day. A force of more than 200 German bombers, heavily escorted by fighters, attacked by day in the conventional three waves. They were met by more than 300 Spitfires and Hurricanes. A total of 158 bombers reached London, but visibility was poor and the bombs were widely scattered. The returning bombers were harried by fighters as far as the Channel. It was officially announced that night that 185 of the enemy had been destroyed. In fact during the course of the day 34 German bombers had been destroyed, 20 more extensively damaged and 26 fighters shot down. Of the original force of 200 bombers the loss rate was 25 per cent.
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These were rates that no air force
could sustain for more than a few days; they were very much greater than the worst loss rates experienced by Allied bombers over Germany in the air battles of 1943 and 1944. This was the last great daylight raid. On 18 September some 70 bombers attacked London with heavy losses. After that the attacks switched to night-time.

The fifteenth of September was also the date agreed earlier in August for the start of Operation Sealion. Enthusiasm for invasion was waning fast at Hitler’s headquarters. On 30 August the date for possible invasion had been switched to 20 September to meet the navy’s revised schedule. On 6 September Hitler discussed the invasion plan with Admiral Raeder. The navy took the view that Sealion was possible only if the weather and air supremacy allowed it, but Raeder began to press again for an indirect strategy. Army and navy leaders recommended a Mediterranean campaign, in collaboration with Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain. Hitler now faced a number of options. Sealion was not yet ruled out, though it looked an unattractive prospect in deteriorating weather; there was the possibility of destroying Britain’s position throughout the Mediterranean basin and the eastern Atlantic, which would cut the Empire in two and leave Britain geographically isolated; there was a chance that the air assault on London might be ‘decisive’ by itself.
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On the afternoon of 14 September a conference assembled at Hitler’s headquarters. The service chiefs were
there; the issue under discussion was ‘the England problem’. Hitler reminded his audience that the quickest way to end the war was to invade and occupy southern Britain. He announced that naval preparations were now complete (‘Praise to the Navy,’ the army chief of staff wryly noted in his war diary); he suggested that the air force campaign was poised for decisive success (‘Praise above all’ this time).
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None the less, Hitler concluded that air superiority had not yet been achieved. He did not cancel Sealion, but promised to review the situation on 17 September for possible landings on 27 September or 8 October. Three days later, when the evidence was clear that the German Air Force had greatly exaggerated the extent of their successes against the RAF, Hitler postponed Sealion indefinitely. A directive on 19 September ordered preparations to be scaled down. On 12 October Hitler ordered his forces to maintain the appearance of an invasion threat in order to keep up ‘political and military pressure on England’. Invasion was to be reconsidered in the spring or early summer of 1941 only if Britain had not been brought to her knees by air attack.
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The end of Operation Sealion in September 1940 did not end the Battle of Britain. At the meeting on 14 September Hitler gave the air force the chance to show what it could do on its own to defeat Britain: ‘The decisive thing is the ceaseless continuation of air attacks.’ Shortly before the meeting, Raeder had presented Hitler with a memorandum urging that air attacks ‘should be intensified, without regard
to Sealion’. The air force chief of staff, General Hans Jeschonnek, grasped the opportunity with both hands. He asked Hitler to allow him to attack residential areas to create ‘mass panic’. Hitler refused, perhaps unaware of just how much damage had already been done to civilian targets. The air force was ordered to attack military and economic targets. ‘Mass panic’ was to be used only as a last resort. Hitler reserved for himself the right to unleash the terror weapon. The political will to resist was to be broken by the collapse of the material infrastructure, the weapons industry, and stocks of fuel and food. On 16 September Goering ordered the air fleets to begin the new phase of the battle. Like the campaign in Kosovo in the spring of 1999, air power was expected to deliver the political solution by undermining military capability and the conditions of daily existence.
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The popular fantasies of victory through air power, sustained in the 1930s by a stream of alarmist fiction (including L. E. O. Charlton’s
War over England
, published in 1936, in which Britain was forced to surrender in two days after a devastating German attack on the Hendon Air Show), became a horrible truth in the last months of 1940.
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The fear of invasion was replaced in September with a realization that Britain’s population was confronted with a test of endurance for which there was no precedent. The survival of the will to fight through the period of intense bombing is now taken for granted, but it was a will that ordinary
people had to find in circumstances for which no fiction can have prepared them. When the bombing began in June, Home Intelligence observers reported a general calmness, even indifference: ‘ “A bore rather than a terror.” ’
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On a London housing estate in Stockwell, tenants busied themselves setting up home-from-home in their air-raid shelters: carpets, beds, furniture, decoration (‘portraits of the King and Queen, artificial flowers, Union Jacks…’), and cleanly scrubbed floors. They planned an open night, ‘to show off their shelter to their neighbours’. (Not everyone was so fortunate. Home Intelligence noted early in September a great many complaints about what were delicately described as ‘ “insanitary messes” ‘ and ‘improper behaviour’, which caused distress ‘among the more respectable elements of the community’.)
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The raids in August produced a change in mood. With the intensification of bomb attack, Home Intelligence found that morale stiffened; the spirit of those in raided areas was regarded as ‘excellent’, the shock of war on the home front even produced a temporary exhilaration. London came through its first weekend of raids ‘with confidence and calmness’ (though the inhabitants of Croydon were reportedly ‘resentful’ when the all-clear sounded just ten minutes before German bombers appeared overhead to disgorge their loads).
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In August the author John Langdon-Davies rushed out a booklet which he titled
Nerves versus Nazis
. It was marketed as a manual for ‘successful mental
counter-attack’ against air raids, and Langdon-Davies wrote it after watching ‘400 typical Londoners’ descend to their shelters with ‘no fear, no panic’. He offered advice on coping with fear, which included his own practice of ‘counting slowly from the moment that I hear the first bomb. If I count up to 60 and am still counting, then I know that I have survived…’ He encouraged his readers to buy a large-scale local map, mark their own house with a blue dot, stand on a chair with 50 grains of salt and drop them on the plan. The reader would then be reassured by the discovery that ‘most of the salt grains have not hit any building at all… it will be a strange mischance if any grain of salt has actually hit the blue pencil point, which marks your own home’.
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