With Wings Like Eagles (29 page)

Adding to Fighter Command’s difficulties that day, the arrival of large numbers of barges in the Belgian ports had led many to conclude that the German invasion might be imminent and that the big German raid building up was the opening move, thus further deflecting attention from what was actually happening. The German tactics were also designed to confuse the British. The huge bomber force crossed the coast to the southeast of London at a much higher altitude than usual, and at many different points, to confuse the radar operators about the direction of the attack. Then it reassembled at an altitude of about 16,000 feet and followed the Thames estuary directly toward RAF Kenley, Biggin Hill, and Croydon, which were in any case what Dowding and Park assumed were the targets; but having flown beyond Croydon it suddenly turned back toward London’s East End. The approach to No. 11 Group’s crucial Sector airfields was well protected, but the approach to London was not, and it was too late to change that—at first, Park could put in only four squadrons of fighters against the great mass of German bombers and fighters. Even veteran fighter pilots were amazed when they came into view of these aircraft. “It was a breathtaking sight,” one of them commented later. “You couldn’t help feeling you’d never again see anything as remarkable as that.” Another said, “I’d never seen so many aircraft,” and this was a common reaction among the pilots, the radar plotters, and the observers on the ground. Nobody had ever before seen so many aircraft gathered into one carefully organized formation, so numerous that they seemed unstoppable. As five o’clock in the afternoon approached, they were obviously headed for the East End of London, with its docks, warehouses, factories, endless rows of small homes, and sprawling tenements—perhaps the most densely populated urban target in the world.

The initial fighter attacks were pressed home with vigor, but there was no way that four squadrons of British fighters could deter or break up so big and well-defended a mass of aircraft, let alone prevent them from bombing. The best Fighter Command could do was to attack the Germans as they withdrew to the north over London, then turned east over the sea to fly back to their bases. Between four-twenty and five o’clock, Dowding managed to get twenty-one squadrons into the air, including Douglas Bader’s controversial “Duxford Wing” of three squadrons, but the hard fighting did not begin until the bombs were already falling on the East End.

They fell on the London docks, Limehouse, Tower Bridge, Woolwich, Bermondsey, Tottenham, Barking, Hackney, Rotherhithe, and Stepney, they destroyed the Harland and Wolff factory, oil refineries, and warehouses; they damaged a gasworks, the Battersea Power Station, and the oil storage tanks at Thameshaven, which had been hit the day before; they forced “the entire population of Silvertown, surrounded by raging infernos…to be evacuated by water.” By the end of the day 306 civilian Londoners were dead and 1,337 were seriously wounded; whole neighborhoods were turned into “raging infernos”; train lines, tram lines, gas and water mains, sewer lines, and electricity and telephone cables were cut all over east London; three main railway stations were seriously damaged and put out of operation; whole streets were reduced to rubble; buses and trams were crumpled sheet metal; and a dense pall of smoke, grit, and burned oil spread over all London, mixed with an occasionally more pungent smell as vast quantities of tobacco and liquor in the burning bonded warehouses by the docks went up in flames. Contrary to the predictions of von Ribbentrop, there was no sign of panic. Even so professional a judge of class warfare as Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom, noted not only the scale of destruction but the calm behavior of those who were bombed. Stoically and patiently, East Enders, Jewish and gentile, abandoned their ruined homes and burning possessions, and threaded their way through the bomb craters and rubble to be looked after by organized volunteers.

During the night of September 7–8 the
Luftwaffe
came back, almost 300 bombers strong, and dropped more than 300 tons of high-explosive bombs and nearly 500 incendiary bombs on the already gutted neighborhoods of the East End, guided to their target by the flames still rising from the oil storage tanks, refineries, and broken gas mains. In the streets below, no fewer than nine “major conflagrations” were being battled by about 600 fire engines, and most of the firemen (and volunteer firemen)
*
and emergency workers of greater London.

That evening Göring called his wife, Emmy, in Berlin to tell her triumphantly, “London is in flames.” A more perceptive comment came from the distinguished American journalist James Reston, then the correspondent of the
New York Times
in London, who cabled to his paper that night: “One simply cannot praise the average man here too highly. Out of history and environment of these past 1,000 years he has inherited a quality of courage which is a true inspiration…. One simply cannot convey the spirit of these people. Adversity only angers and strengthens them. They are tough in a way we Americans seldom understand. That curious gentility among their menfolk confuses us. We underestimate them…. The British people can hold out to the end.”
⁹
Hitler had made the great mistake of choosing London as the target, instead of Fighter Command, and the result would be not only a propaganda victory for the British, who were suddenly proving to the world that they “could take it,” but a real victory for Fighter Command.

That same night, while fires still blazed in London from the raid during the day, the Chiefs of Staff, after studying the photographs taken of the German barges and naval vessels and reviewing the latest intercepts of German radio and cable traffic, finally issued the dreaded code word “Cromwell”—the warning that an invasion was expected imminently. All over southern England, members of the Home Guard mustered and were issued live ammunition; the army was placed on full alert; church bells were rung; and in some places, with, to echo the words of Talleyrand,
trop de zèle
, roads were blocked, and a few strategic bridges were blown up by overenthusiastic sappers of the Royal Engineers.

But when morning came, the seas remained empty, the beaches were untouched by the boots of German infantry, and no swarms of parachute troops had landed at strategic points. Fighter Command had lost twenty-eight aircraft, with nineteen pilots killed or missing. The Germans had lost forty-one aircraft—thirty less than the RAF claimed, but still a substantial number, and a considerable improvement over the days earlier in the month when losses on both sides were about equal.

Seen from Bentley Priory, September 7 had been a victory, but seen from elsewhere, including the Air Ministry and 10 Downing Street, it was something short of Air Chief Marshal Dowding’s “finest hour.” Despite the availability of twenty-one squadrons of fighters, Dowding had been unable to prevent the indiscriminate heavy bombing of London; his night fighters (hampered in part by the smoke over London) had brought down only one German bomber; and, at any rate to those in the know, he and Park had been caught napping, looking in the wrong direction for the target of the German attack. The fact that Bader’s “Duxford Wing” had done well against the Germans (though only after the Germans had dropped their bombs and were on their way home) gave at least some credence to Leigh-Mallory’s campaign for the “big wing” and his complaints that Dowding and No. 11 Group were stubbornly refusing to apply more up-to-date and effective tactics. Certainly, to those who did not understand the intricacies of radar and fighter control, or did not have the patience to delve into them, it did not seem too much to ask that Fighter Command should attack the enemy with its full strength
before
the Germans arrived over London to drop bombs, rather than afterward.

Those few who were in on the secret of airborne interceptor (AI) radar sets, which were being installed in twin-engine Blenheims, also felt that more might have been expected from the night fighters; but that reaction underrated the problems of new, untested equipment and neophyte airborne radar operators. At this time the airborne radar operators had not yet been made aircrew acting-sergeants or given flying badges, because of the secrecy of airborne radar. Eventually, the radar operator and the pilot would form a team, but for the moment the radar operator was merely an ordinary aircraftman, kneeling in front of a screen no larger than a saucer while being bounced around in pitch darkness at 15,000 feet with “friendly” antiaircraft fire going off all around him and the pilot in front of him asking impatiently for a “fix” on an enemy bomber, so as to make a kill and go home to bed. Communication between the radar operators and controllers on the ground and the night fighters in the sky was uncertain, and the chance that the pilot would actually see the glow of an enemy aircraft’s exhausts was slim. The AI set itself was unreliable and tended to drain the aircraft’s batteries, so it limited the amount of time a night fighter could stay aloft. The entire idea of radar-equipped interceptors was in its infancy, and not until a year later would it mature into an effective weapon.

Thus the two major complaints that would form the basis for doubt (and a well-orchestrated whispering campaign) about the wisdom of Dowding and Park in conducting the battle were already in place on September 7, when it was becoming apparent that Dowding’s strategy was succeeding. A more supple, more subtle man than Dowding might have tried to explain or justify his confidence in Park and his doubts about Leigh-Mallory’s “big wing” or might have explained his larger strategy of using small numbers of squadrons to inflict a constant, and in the end unsupportable, rate of loss on the Germans, rather than risk losing a big, uncontrollable air battle. He might also have pointed out that just as ground radar had presented initial difficulties, which were eventually overcome, the successful use of airborne radar would take some time. He could also have made it clear that the air battle itself was secondary—as long as it continued and prevented the Germans from launching their invasion, it was saving Britain.

Being who he was, of course, Dowding did none of these things.

On the other side of the Channel the day had ended on a nastier and more public tone of anger and recrimination. Despite the vainglorious broadcasts of Radio Berlin, and his own triumphant telephone call to his wife, Göring was infuriated by the losses of the bomber force, for which he blamed his fighter pilots, and dismayed that Fighter Command, whose demise he had repeatedly predicted, was apparently still able to put up significant numbers of squadrons. He ordered the fighter commanders to meet him at Kesselring’s forward headquarters in the Pas-de-Calais, and there, standing on a windy field overlooking the Channel, he berated them for failing to protect the bombers, and even for cowardice. It was perhaps not the best way to greet commanders who had just returned from a furious battle in which they had lost many of their men, and their reaction, while respectful, was frosty. No doubt noticing this—he had after all been a fighter ace himself—Göring changed his tone to one of gruff paternalism, and made his way down the line of the commanders, as they stood rigidly to attention, asking each of them whether there was anything he needed. When Göring got to Adolf Galland, perhaps the most competent and respected fighter pilot in the
Luftwaffe
(and certainly the most outspoken), Galland blurted out, “I should like an outfit of Spitfires for my
Gruppe, Herr Reichsmarchall
!”
¹⁰

With that, Göring, livid with rage, cut short the event, stamped back to his waiting Mercedes-Benz staff car, and departed for his private train, apparently relinquishing the personal command he had assumed over the attack on London only a few hours earlier, though once he had simmered down he would resume it. In the aftermath, Galland felt obliged to explain, many times over, what he had said to his commander in chief, though he never apologized for it, and he was soon forgiven by Göring. It has become one of the most famous remarks about the Battle of Britain—perhaps the most famous remark—particularly in Britain, where it is thought to be confirmation from an expert that the Spitfire was superior to the Messerschmitt; but the truth is that Galland thought then and always maintained after the war that the Messerschmitt Bf 109 was in fact a far better “fighting machine” than the Spitfire. What he had meant was that the Bf 109 was wasted if it had to stick close to the slower bombers, an argument he had had with Göring before. The Bf 109 had been designed to attack, not to fly close escort; and for that purpose, he thought, though he had never flown one, that the more maneuverable Spitfire might be a better choice. (The RAF, though, never used it in such a role. Given its short range, it would have been even more at a disadvantage than the Bf 109.)

What Galland had in mind, or at any rate later decided he had had in mind, was that the
Luftwaffe
should have built big, heavily armed four-engine bombers, like the American B-17 and B-24, and the kind of long-range interceptor that could accompany them, like the later models of the North American P-51; but Göring had allowed Milch to quash the former because he didn’t think they’d be needed, and the Bf 110 was intended to have been the latter. In short, Galland was saying to Göring, “If that’s what you wanted, you should have given us a different kind of airplane, and very likely a different kind of fighter pilot,” but this was to be wise after the event—nobody in Germany had ever given much thought to the strategic bombing of Britain, since it was always assumed that Britain wouldn’t fight.
*
The failure, if the air war against Britain was going to prove a failure, could more reasonably be blamed on Hitler and von Ribbentrop than on Göring, despite his many character flaws and mistakes. Galland was not wrong—the
Luftwaffe
was poorly equipped for the task of battering the British into submission. Its bombers were too small and too lightly armed, and its fighter had a very limited range. But when the larger British and American bomber forces tried to batter the Germans into submission, they too failed, although they had the right aircraft for the job. In the Pacific, even the B-29 raids, which burned most of Tokyo and other major Japanese cities to the ground, did not bring about the Japanese surrender in 1945—that would take the use of an entirely new and more terrifying weapon over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.