Many Not the Few: The Stolen History of the Battle of Britain

by Richard North

  That day, by the Chiefs of Staff, Churchill was told that intelligence pointed to the continuance of preparations for invasion. But it was thought “probable” that Germany would not finally decide upon an invasion until the results of the present air attacks upon the United Kingdom had been appreciated.20

  For the day, Fighter Command had good enough reason to be pleased. It had lost twenty-nine aircraft, some destroyed on the ground. But only twenty-three had actually been shot down. The Luftwaffe had lost forty-seven. In total, although the RAF had only written off thirty-eight combat aircraft, putting it ahead, the destroyed Oxfords brought the total to eighty-four, almost twice the Luftwaffe losses.

  The pilot situation was not so good either. Since 10 July, Fighter Command had lost well over 200 front-line pilots, enough to fly most of the serviceable Spitfire inventory on any one day. The Luftwaffe had lost about a third the number of Me 109 pilots, with 46 lost in that most recent eight-day period. The exchange ratio was improving.

  DAY 39 – SATURDAY 17 AUGUST 1940

  General Halder, still in northern France, had been joined by Army chief von Brauchitsch for a staff conference, then to watch the first demonstration of beach assault craft, with a landing at Le Touquet carried out at regimental strength. Halder thought it went well, even though barge unloading had been “painfully slow”, the beaches had been too soft, the barges had grounded too far out and there had been problems with the ramps.21

  The morning fare for the British public was the previous day’s aerial victories. The Guardian announced: “71 more raiders” knocked out. The Express claimed sixty-nine, with a loss of eighteen RAF fighters. Tellingly, the newspaper called the fighting round two of the “Air Battle of Britain”, an acknowledgement that the air effort was only part of the show.

  The Daily Mirror highlighted the raids on the London suburbs, as did Harold Nicolson in his diary, noting that eighteen had been killed in Wimbledon. To the RAF, he awarded a “bag” of 75, and confided that:

  for the moment everything is overshadowed by what seems to be the failure of the German air offensive against this island. They have done some damage here and there: they have killed and wounded many people, but they have not dealt us a really serious blow and our confidence rises.

  However, Hitler was focusing on another aspect of the war. He pronounced a total blockade of the British Isles. “Today the fortress besieged is no longer Germany, but the British Isles”, he wrote. “The failed British hunger blockade against German women and children is now opposed by Germany’s total blockade of the British Isles which is herewith announced.” This, Hitler added, represented “a further decisive step towards ending the war and eliminating the British rulers responsible for it”. In the waters off England, the war at sea had “now begun in full violence”.22

  For all that, in the shooting war department, after the drama of the previous day, it was relatively quiet. One RAF Blenheim fighter was lost on a night landing accident and a Hurricane crashed after a fire in the air. Two Blenheims and a photo-reconnaissance Spitfire were lost. The Germans had a single-engined Arado 196 floatplane shot down by a British merchantman.

  For small bands of men down on the ground, it was not going to be quiet for some time. They were the bomb disposal teams, who became a vital part of the battle. Their task was clearing up the ordnance that had failed to explode or where delayed action fuses had been fitted, sometimes in a deliberate attempt to kill those dealing with them. On this day, a team led by Lieutenant (Lt) Edward Reynolds had been called to deal with a 250kg unexploded bomb 17 ft down in the garden of a council house in the south of Bristol. The bomb had a new type of fuse and there were no details on how to neutralize it. Traffic was stopped and local residents evacuated. Reynolds got into the pit and removed the fuse. His actions “were risky and the merit of his actions was all the greater for the lack of exact knowledge of this type of fuse”, said the citation for his George Cross.23

  Completely invigorated by the upsurge in fighting, Duff Cooper addressed the nation after the BBC nine o’clock news. “This was to have been the week of the German victory”, he crowed. “It has been the week of British victory instead.” He also challenged Hitler to “keep his promise” on the invasion. “We should not have liked him to [come] before we were ready to receive him,” Cooper said, “but we are quite ready to receive him now and we really shall be very disappointed if he does not turn up”.

  He was at pains to build on the myth of the “few”, even though this group had yet to be defined by Churchill. “There is no terror in Great Britain today”, he said. “Rather there is a longing that they [Luftwaffe bombers] shall come again in greater numbers in order that we may continue to take the fearful toll of them that we have already taken. If these air raids increasing in frequency and numbers are the prelude to invasion, then we can only say that the prelude has been a melancholy failure.” Cooper went on to say:

  The day may come – and it may not be too far distant – when we as spectators shall again applaud the victory march through our streets of those who saved the world. The British people will have cheers for all as they march by – soldiers, sailors and civilians. But it may be that, when the survivors of the Royal Air Force come along, the cheers will be choked in the throats of the most enthusiastic; and remembering those who have not survived, and all we owe them, we shall fall in thankfulness upon our knees.24

  With access to a comfortable and safe air-raid shelter, Cooper was in a good position to be so defiant. Others were less so. And as for the “survivors of the Royal Air Force”, the High Command seemed bent on ensuring that they were kept to a minimum. This day saw the end of a drama which marked the first use of a Dornier 24 by the German air-sea rescue services. Produced under licence in Holland, the production line had been captured during the occupation and the aircraft had been requisitioned. On the previous day, an He 59 had gone to the aid of the crew of an He 111 downed in the North Sea, only itself to be shot down by an RAF Blenheim. In a Force 6 sea, the Do 24 was the only type that could attempt a landing to effect a rescue, which it did. Badly damaged and unable to take off again, it still managed to recover the other crews. It finally sank under tow as it approached its base – but not before all personnel had scrambled to safety.25

  These events highlighted that strange lacuna in British planning. RAF pilots were not going to see dedicated rescue amphibians for at least a year. Many were to drown for the lack of them.

  DAY 40 – SUNDAY 18 AUGUST 1940

  The Sunday Express was celebrating “twelve hours without a single air raider”, its front page recording an Air Ministry communiqué which had announced the previous night, “no enemy attacks were made in the country in the twelve hours from sunrise today (5.50 am)”. It was the calm before the storm. On this day, 2,200 Luftwaffe aircrew were to fly 850 sorties. The RAF was to respond by having 600 airmen fly 927 sorties.

  But, before even a shot had been fired on this day, the paper had decided that 11–18 August was the “First week of Blitzkrieg”. We have had just a week of it. It is not new to us – in theory. We saw it on the screen in The Shape of Things to Come, heard it from the stage in Dark Horizon, newspapers told us what it was like in Shanghai, the newsreels showed us it in Barcelona. Now it is here (remember though) eleven months later than we expected it. Sunday, 11 August 1940 is the date historians will mark down as the beginning of the Blitzkrieg over Britain. And Britain had a triple defence to meet it: “a superb Air Force, a powerful artillery to clear the skies, a people ready to suffer everything”.

  With considerable prescience, the paper then explored the date options for the invasion. The attempt, the paper argued, would most likely be made with barges and lighters towed by suitable craft, so it was “imperative” that the sea should be calm. The best combination of tides and moon fell between 18 and 23 September, when it thought the invasion should fall.

  The air action of Britain this day started with a morning reconnaissance flight.
Spitfires shot it down. From then on, it was a day of massed formations. At one time every serviceable Spitfire and Hurricane in No. 11 Group area was either flying or at readiness. It was subsequently to be called “the hardest day” and gave some credence to the assertions that the RAF was being specifically targeted.26

  The first wave of attacks was directed at Biggin Hill and Kenley airfields. German tactics comprised simultaneous high and low-level attacks, escorted by Me 109s to draw away the RAF fighters. Among those sent aloft to meet this threat were Hurricanes from No. 501 Sqn but before they had a chance to intercept the raiders, they were bounced by Me 109s led by ace Gerhard Schopfel. Five were disposed of. Famously, Schopfel shot down four of them.

  In order to raid Biggin Hill, nine low-level Do 17s should have met up with thirty Ju 88s bombing from high level, but the formations missed a rendezvous over France. Thus, the Dorniers had forged on alone, to be met by Hurricanes from No 32 Sqn and Spitfires from No. 610 Sqn. For the Germans, it was not a happy meeting. Two went down immediately, two crashed into the Channel (although their crews were rescued) and three had to force land in France. Of the two that actually got back to base, one carried its dead pilot and was flown by the flight engineer. The damage done to Biggin Hill was slight.

  The raid on Kenley was more successful as the high-low combination came together. Fighters were up to intercept both, although No. 111 Sqn was unable to engage until the low-flying Dorniers had cleared the airfield. Bombs destroyed hangars, the equipment stores, ten Hurricanes and two Blenheims. Communications and services were cut. Twelve personnel were killed and another twenty injured. Several raiders made for Croydon, only minutes away as the Dornier flies, bombing a hangar, destroying one Hurricane and damaging another. Other aircraft bombed West Malling, hitting two hangars and destroying three Lysanders.

  Disrupted communications created serious problems for No. 11 Group controllers, who lost track of their own aircraft for about two hours. Fortunately, the focus of the action was moving westwards. Eighty-five Stukas, plus a separate raid of twenty-five Ju 88s, approached the Isle of Wight, escorted by 157 Me 109s. Fearing that their fighters might be caught on the ground, controllers ordered all southern sector aircraft to take off and orbit their airfields. The effect was to allow the bombers free access to their targets, the naval air stations at Ford and Gosport, the Coastal Command airfield at Thorney Island and the radar site at Poling, near Littlehampton.

  The Ju 88s caused considerable damage at Ford and Gosport. But Stukas forming up for an attack on the Poling radar were picked off by Hurricanes which caught them at their most vulnerable point, as they entered their dives. Survivors formed up with the Stukas that had attacked Ford and Thorney Island. They were savaged by Hurricanes and Spitfires from three squadrons, while other Spitfires held escorting Me 109s at bay. Some sixteen Stukas were shot down. Two crashed on their way home and two more were damaged. Elsewhere, a further seventeen had been lost and five more damaged, mostly to the guns of fighters. This was a decisive defeat for the Stuka.

  Some mystery attended the reasons for the Luftwaffe attacking the airfields they did. None were operational fighter stations and it was assumed that they were the targets. However, there is evidence that bomber and other stations were deliberately targeted, the former in an attempt to reduce RAF “nuisance” raids on Luftwaffe airfields. Unwittingly at Ford, though, the Germans had knocked out part of the “Digger” Aitken unofficial air-sea rescue service. The station was home to the Walrus amphibians of No. 751 Naval Air Sqn. Already in the process of “dispersal”, the squadron was moved to Scotland to protect it from the bombing, making the aircraft unavailable for Channel rescues.27

  Still the action was not over. At three-thirty, a dozen Me 109s strafed Manston destroying two Spitfires, killing one man and injuring fifteen Then, near five o’clock in the evening, eight raids comprising about two hundred and fifty aircraft crossed the Essex coast via the Blackwater and Thames Estuaries, headed for the airfields at North Weald and Hornchurch. With No. 12 Group providing four squadrons to patrol their bases, Park alerted thirteen of his own squadrons and sent up four to meet the enemy. Spirited fighting failed to stop the bombers. Soon, over sixty Hurricanes were engaged, backed by more to the south. Fate then intervened. Dense, low cloud forced the Germans to retire. The daylight battle was over.

  That same weather system kept most of Bomber Command home that night. But it did not stop the Luftwaffe mounting raids in South Wales, RAF Sealand (Chester), Birmingham and Wolverhampton. An unexploded bomb at Hook, Hampshire, blew up, killing five members of a bomb disposal squad.

  For the Germans in particular, it had been a long and dangerous day. Fighters had not been their only hazard. This was no longer the beginning of June, when the Anti-Aircraft Command’s only contribution had been to shoot down a lone Battle, killing two of its crew. Anti-Aircraft Command was now a major player. The Command was acquiring new equipment and capabilities. Defending Kenley had been experimental rocket launchers, known as Parachute and Cable (PAC) launchers.28 Together with the guns, these were said to have accounted for two Dorniers, although one had probably been brought down by an ancient Lewis gun. Nevertheless, countrywide, the day had proved the best so far for the Command.

  Nor was this a static situation. Kenley would by October have acquired four three-inch guns to add to its four modern Bofors guns. Nationally, the stock of Bofors would increase by 70 per cent through the course of the battle, to 466 by the first week in September. A quarter of all those guns would stretch in a belt from Sussex to Surrey. Improvements in detection, prediction and fire control – and ammunition – were making anti-aircraft artillery a formidable daylight weapon.29

  As for Fighter Command, it had lost forty-three aircraft, including those destroyed on the ground and one tragically shot down by anti-aircraft fire at Kenley. A further twenty-nine, none of them fighters, had been destroyed on the ground during attacks on Gosport, Ford and Thorney Island, bringing the total British losses to seventy-nine. With those lost at Croydon and West Malling, the number reached seventy-six. The Luftwaffe had lost sixty. It would be difficult to argue that this had been a victory for the RAF.

  DAY 41 – MONDAY 19 AUGUST 1940

  Doubtless unaware of the real situation, the media had a field day. “At least 115 more!” the Daily Express crowed, the headline spread across its front page. It claimed a mere sixteen RAF fighters lost, with eight of the pilots safe. The Daily Mirror was claiming 140 enemy aircraft down, also to sixteen lost. The exaggeration was so extreme as to demonstrate vividly that the propaganda had become a central part of the battle.

  Inside Lord Beaverbrook’s Express, however, the editorial was complaining about Duff Cooper again, and more censorship. “How long is this gagging to go on?” it asked. The grief this time was US correspondents having their cables held up, supposedly to prevent the news getting back to Germany via New York that “the sirens were sounding in London”. As a result, American editors were being forced to use German propaganda. Said the Express: “It is vitally important to the future of our cause that the Americans hear how we fare now. The reporters should be given full liberty to send descriptive material without delay”.

  Cooper seemed undisturbed by this latest attack, and more interested in his ideas for a future world. His paper had been reviewed by the War Cabinet on 26 July. He had discussed it further with colleagues and now he was suggesting a Committee of Ministers to take his ideas further. With himself in the chair, it would look at the possibility of setting up a post-war “international system in Europe”, based upon the principle of federation. It would also look at social reform in the UK.30

  As to the shooting war, a frontal system was moving in from the Atlantic, across the British Isles and into Europe. The bad weather that had closed down operations in the early evening of the previous day was going to dominate for some days. There was going to be no serious flying for a while. Fighter Command still lost six aircraft, though, and
Bomber Command nine. With RAF losses totalling fifteen, the Luftwaffe suffered eight.

  Stocktaking and retrenchment were the order of the day. But the style and mood of the opposing sides was very different. Göring summoned his commanders to Karin Hall. Adolf Galland, a fighter ace heavily involved in the battle, was ordered to attend. To him, the estate presented “a picture of peaceful serenity”. He also noticed that the war had hardly made any difference to daily life at home. Having come straight out of a battle for life and death, he was not best pleased with the, “could-not-care-less” attitude at home and the general lack of interest in the war. He “guessed fairly accurately” that the battle on the Channel was of decisive importance to the continuance and the final outcome of the struggle, although he conceded: “Naturally we had no insight into the ramifications of this war”.

  Galland and another “ace”, Werner Mölders, were given their own Gruppen (equivalent to an RAF wing) to command. But there was no praise. The Reichsmarschall was convinced that his fighter pilots’ lack of commitment was robbing him of success. Nevertheless, he accepted a reduced role for Stukas and the Me 110s. And he had news of a new strategy. The costly daylight attacks were to be replaced by night raids. In daylight, bombers were to be used as “bait”, sent up in just sufficient numbers to draw fighters into battle. Restrictions on bombing civilian targets – except London and Liverpool, which required Göring’s personal permission – were to be lifted. The absolute priority was to damage Fighter Command.