9.
Countdown to the Blitz
When they declare they will attack our cities in great measure, we will erase their cities. The hour will come when one of us will break – and it will not be National Socialist Germany!
Adolph Hitler, 4 September 1940, Berlin.
The conventional narrative has this as the critical period of the battle, when Hitler turned the full might of Luftwaffe against Fighter Command airfields, seeking to crush the only force standing in the way of his invasion fleet, which was poised to conquer the British Isles in another lighting war.
DAY 52 – FRIDAY 30 AUGUST 1940
The Kriegsmarine had things to do, essential tasks to complete before the invasion could go ahead – if it was going ahead. Not least, the shipping routes had to be swept of mines, and new minefields had to be laid to protect the flanks of the invasion route. For that, air cover was needed, and the Navy was not getting it. As a result, the Naval Staff informed Supreme Command that it could not meet the 15 September deadline for the completion of preparations. It complained:
The elimination by the Luftwaffe of activity by enemy sea and air forces in the Channel and along the embarkation coasts has not yet materialised, and there is no early prospect of improvement while the Luftwaffe pursues its present operational objectives.
One can imagine the pursed lips and the frowns of disapproval.
Within the optimal period of 19–26 September, a provisional date for Sealion of 20 September had been decided upon, but the Naval Staff said even that could not be guaranteed. It depended on the Luftwaffe’s ability to eliminate enemy air and sea forces.
Von Brauchitsch, showing far more enthusiasm than the Navy, circulated his Instruction for the Preparation of Operation Sea Lion, stating that the task of the Army was to effect a “landing in force”. The aim of the attack was “to eliminate the Mother Country as a base for continuing the war against Germany”. Only if necessary was there to be a complete occupation. Significantly, the issue of the executive order depended on “the political situation”.1 Halder’s view of the operation had firmed up. A military operation on the front now ordered could not be undertaken on the scale originally intended. Its only purpose could be to finish off (den Fangstoß zu geben) an enemy already defeated by the air war.2
In London, the British Chiefs of Staff had sent their usual weekly résumé to the War Cabinet. Enemy tactics, they said, had undergone a considerable change. No short-range dive-bombers had been seen. Even the Ju 88 had not been used for dive-bombing. The Chiefs also confirmed that which had become only too evident. The long-range bomber force was being increasingly employed and night attacks had intensified. The raids, they said, had mainly been directed against aerodromes and ports, but industrial plants and the aircraft industry had also received considerable attention.3
Other raids had been carried out against aerodromes and oil storage, and a considerable amount of indiscriminate bombing had been included in the operations. The heaviest daylight attacks of the week had been made on Portsmouth and Ramsgate – neither of these RAF airfields. At night industrial areas in the Midlands had been the principal objectives, although aircraft had flown over London on several nights and bombs had been dropped in the City and suburbs.
Enemy aircraft engaged in daylight operations had varied between 200 and 500 in number each day, except on 23 and 27 August, when activity had been limited to reconnaissance flights and to a few individual attacks involving not more than 75 aircraft. The heaviest attacks had developed from the south-east, and large formations of bombers escorted by fighters had been intercepted and dispersed by RAF fighters. Fighter aerodromes seemed to have been the principal objectives, but damage had been “relatively small” in view of the threatened weight of the attacks.
Focusing on the air war, the War Cabinet was this day considering a memorandum from Churchill. “The air battle now proceeding over Great Britain may be a decisive event in the war and must dominate all other considerations”, he had written. But this dramatic statement, written four days earlier, was merely to open a discussion on pilot training. The item under consideration was no more urgent than the relocation of a large part of the training establishments to Canada and South Africa.4
The RAF was particularly keen on the idea, but the Prime Minister was against it. “Until the issue of this battle becomes clear it would not be right to separate any large portion of our reserve of pilots or of potentially operational machines from the fighting strength of the RAF in this country”, he said, recommending a three-month postponement. But there was no specific mention of fighter pilot training. Churchill’s idea of “reserves” extended to anti-invasion measures which included 350 Tiger Moth elementary trainers. Each had been equipped with bomb racks for eight 20lb anti-personnel bombs. Once the Germans had landed, an operation code-named “Banquet Lights” would come into force, with the aircraft flying to an advanced landing ground near the coast, where the bombs would be loaded and they would then fly on to the beaches and bomb the invading troops.5
The War Cabinet, having agreed with Churchill to hold off moving the training facilities, also looked at shipping losses highlighted by the Naval Staff memorandum deposited the previous day. But they did not have much to offer. And in response to the plea for the urgent provision of more patrol aircraft, the Chief of the Air Staff could only say that the Air Ministry would “do their best”, but he could not promise anything “in the near future”.6
On the home front, there was little appreciation of the gravity of this building crisis. More prosaically, there was “some slight resentment” in the provinces at the way London air-raid news was being highlighted. This was due in part, said the day’s Home Intelligence report, to the fact that many provincial towns, unlike London, had not been named. This caused a good deal of uncertainty over which targets had been hit. Londoners, on the other hand, were “more cheerful”. They were getting used to the idea of night raids, and were sleeping in their shelters instead of going to them when the sirens sounded. Once again, there was a distinction between those who had experienced bombing and those who were new to it. In the provinces, where warnings and raids had been suffered for some time, morale was higher than in London, where people had been showing “considerable apprehension”.
Not so George Orwell. He recorded in his diary that air-raid warnings, “of which there are now half a dozen or thereabouts every 24 hours”, are “becoming a great bore”. Opinion was spreading rapidly, he said, that “one ought simply to disregard the raids except when they are known to be big-scale ones and in one’s own area. Of the people strolling in Regent’s Park, I should say at least half pay no attention to a raid-warning”. He recalled the previous night “a pretty heavy explosion” just as he was going to bed. Later in the night he had been woken up by “a tremendous crash”, said to be caused by a bomb in Maida Vale. His only comment was on the loudness, before falling asleep again.7
The pilots of Kesselring’s Second Air Fleet did not have the luxury of a great deal of sleep. They started flying just after dawn, their first target a north-bound convoy in the Thames Estuary. Then three waves all heading for Kent, targeted Park’s sector stations at Kenley and Biggin Hill. Successive waves of bombers and fighters, roughly at twenty-minute intervals came over until about four in the afternoon. Then, over the following two hours, the enemy poured in over Kent and the Thames Estuary. They targeted North Weald, Kenley and especially Biggin Hill where serious damage was done.
But airfields were by no means the only targets. Luton, Radlet, Oxford and Slough were also on the list. The raid on Luton targeted the Vauxhall plant, where there were 113 casualties, including fifty-three killed. Areas of the town were also bombed – the bus depot was one of the buildings hit and badly damaged. The larger part of the formation continued on to bomb Radlet, targeting the new Halifax bomber factory. No substantial damage was done, and production was not interrupted.
The day proved the most intensive of th
e battle for Fighter Command. It had flown 1,054 sorties and lost twenty-three aircraft with eight pilots killed. Seven bombers had also been lost, bringing the RAF total to thirty, against thirty-nine Luftwaffe losses. Only fourteen were Me 109s. Nevertheless, twelve valuable single-engined fighter pilots had been lost, either killed or taken prisoner.
DAY 53 – SATURDAY 31 AUGUST 1940
The Daily Express – along with most of the other London-based national media – was proclaiming great victories in the air over southern England and London: “Four raids in nine hours – but Goering’s latest Blitzkrieg is smashed!” The cross-page banner headline read: “59 DOWN – TEN IN LONDON”.
Then, with the legend “mass attacks – mass defeats”, readers were told of the “great news” from the Air Ministry that the number of German aircraft destroyed over Britain this month “now exceeds 1,000”. The actual number for the whole month was 657, with the total number destroyed since the start of battle standing at 826. For that, Fighter Command had traded 418 fighters during the month, and 519 since the start of the battle. Overall on the month, the RAF (and Royal Navy) had lost 641 aircraft. Since the beginning of the battle, against 826 Luftwaffe losses, British losses came to 813. To all intents and purposes, the two sides were at parity.
An RAF photograph taken over Pembroke showed that the oil tanks were still burning, twelve days after the raid. Residents from a hundred miles around already knew this, as did the Germans. A very similar photograph had been published in Der Adler, the official magazine of the Luftwaffe. But newspapers could only refer to “a dock in South Wales”. Spitfires went up and anti-aircraft batteries had gone into action, readers were told. But there had been no guns. There were only three anti-aircraft batteries in the whole of South Wales. The lack of fighter cover had also been fiercely criticized. Echoing the words of the troops at Dunkirk, locals and firemen alike were asking, “Where was the RAF?”8
Home Intelligence was finding that the fear of invasion was on the wane. Reports from Cardiff and Leeds particularly stressed this. There was resentment at the “excessive” publicity given to the London air raids and “jealousy” was reported from Southampton, Portsmouth and other places. However, air raids were being “borne patiently” and in some regions the public were “agreeably surprised” that so little damage was being done.
In the claustrophobic world of Fighter Command, there was very little agreeable about the day. Göring’s reorganization on 19 August was yielding dividends. More than 80 per cent of the Me 109s in northern Europe were concentrated in the Pas de Calais, and Kesselring was making good use of them. Just before eight in the morning, the operations room at Bentley Priory plotted four waves of enemy aircraft, one heading for Dover and the others flying up the Thames Estuary. Again it was left to the Observer Corps to identify the intruders. The Dover post reported Me 109s. To avoid wasteful combat between fighters, controllers attempted to pull their people out. They were not quite fast enough. The Messerschmitts shot down three aircraft and entertained themselves shooting down all the barrage balloons in Dover Harbour.
This was the start of a series of raids which culminated in attacks on North Weald, Duxford and Debden, among others which included Detling, and then Croydon. Biggin Hill once more was heavily damaged, undoing repairs of the previous day and destroying its land communications again. There were some attacks on radar stations, and then a strong attack on Hornchurch which cratered runways and perimeter tracks, and destroyed two Spitfires.
These raids, ostensibly aimed at the military, also damaged civilian targets. One saw bombs fall on Colchester and, during a raid on Duxford, bombs were dropped on eight villages to the south of Cambridge. For all that, the greater effort was expended through the night. The Luftwaffe was completing its transition to a night bombing force, where it could range freely with very little opposition – in some cases with strategic effect. The battleship Prince of Wales, being built at Birkenhead, was damaged by a near miss from a heavy bomb.
For a time during the day, No. 11 Group had the Prime Minister as guest. He had found it “very instructive” to watch officers deploying their forces and building up a front at the threatened points.9 On the day, Fighter Command as a whole lost thirty-eight aircraft, with eight pilots killed and as many badly injured. Bomber Command lost three aircraft and a Navy Swordfish brought British losses to forty-two. The Luftwaffe was close, again at thirty-nine. Twenty-two had been Me 109s, reflecting the huge numbers of these fighters in play. Sixteen Me 109 pilots were dead, missing or prisoner. In aircraft numbers, the Luftwaffe had come out on top.
After dinner that evening, the First Sea Lord placed an urgent telephone call with No. 10. Enemy vessels, a large number of them, had been spotted by a patrol aircraft, steering westwards from Terschelling – they could be on the Norfolk coast by morning. An invasion could be in the offing. All naval ships on the east and south-east coasts were ordered to raise steam and others ordered to special patrol positions. Five destroyers on minelaying duties were told to jettison their loads and to locate and attack the enemy. By cruel fate, they had happened upon a German minelaying operation – and the Kriegsmarine had got there first. Three of five of these destroyers detonated mines. The Esk was sunk and the Ivanhoe so seriously damaged that she had to be abandoned and sunk. HMS Express, with her bows blown off, was towed to Harwich. Ninety casualties were landed by the destroyer Vortigen.10
The North Sea was a dangerous place for British ships. But the Kriegsmarine, with significantly fewer ships, would face exactly the same perils in supporting an invasion. With belts of mines on both sides of the Channel, weeks of preparatory work were needed before this stretch of water could be cleared for an invasion fleet – given no intervention by British forces.
Back in Britain, Beaverbrook was convinced that the heavy air attacks must mean that the Germans were trying to reach a conclusion. There were more signs of concentrations of German shipping. Jock Colville was not convinced these presented a significant threat. A serious invasion depended on the ability of the German Air Force to obtain mastery of the air, he mused. And that seemed more than doubtful.11
DAY 54 – SUNDAY 1 SEPTEMBER 1940
In what were clear signs of the tempo speeding up, the Sunday Express featured the raids on its front page, with another banner headline, this one reading: “Hitler throws fiercest air attack against us”. Stung apparently by the most terrific air raid Berlin has ever experienced, the narrative ran, Hitler yesterday “disregarding all losses, started a series of heavy raids from the coast towards London”.
But the bombing was not being confined to the south-east. And, with the invasion supposedly about three weeks away weather permitting, the Germans had to achieve the crucially important tasks of neutralizing enemy air power and infrastructure, degrading the land defences and knocking out road and rail links to isolate the battlefield and prevent reinforcement.
Given the short timescale and barely sufficient resources to mount a successful invasion, it did not then seem logical for the Luftwaffe to send 160 bombers to hit random targets in the north of England and elsewhere. Certainly, sending in the early hours of this Sunday morning a number of aircraft to Bradford, in the centre of the West Riding, to destroy the one of the largest department stores, to make a big hole in the local cinema and to knock out the local fruit market, did not seem calculated to facilitate the invasion of southern England.12 Nor, as Leeds suffered its second raid, did the Luftwaffe appear to have invasion in mind. Marsh Lane goods station and yet more residential properties were damaged. A bomb was dropped on the York to Leeds arterial road.
Nor could it be said that the considerable aerial activity all over the north-east had any great relevance to the invasion. Little could be gained from the raids on Durham, Wallsend and Sunderland, especially as only slight damage was caused and there were few casualties. Other places bombed included Rotherhithe, Portsmouth, Manchester and Stockport, together with the rural havens of Gloucester, Hereford and
Worcester. The only relevant target was Portsmouth.
Similarly, attacks on Liverpool – the fourth night in succession – with some bombers dropping their loads on Bristol as an alternative – did not seem to be geared specifically to furthering the success of an invasion. In Liverpool, a shelter was destroyed killing twenty people and there were many other casualties. Bombs fell in the Nelson and Clarence Docks, a trawler being hit while in the latter. Birkenhead was hit, these two communities on opposite sides of the Mersey now locked into a nightmare of several years’ duration.
By the time the nightmare had finished, Liverpudlians were mourning the deaths of 2,000 of their own. Many more had been badly injured and the city centre was left looking like a moonscape. This was yet to come. Crucially, the port city was the gateway to the USA and Canada. Had it ceased to function, the war machine would have faltered. Britain might have starved. It kept going. Never in the field of human conflict had so much been owed by so many to so few – the dockers of Liverpool.
The Sunday Express chose this day to address its editorial to precisely the people who were to suffer so much. Under a heading “Up to you!” it asked, “Can we lose this war?” And the answer was stark: “We cannot lose the war unless our civilian population lose their nerve. That is the only way in which Hitler can gain the say and darken the earth for a generation”. It went on, emphasizing the message in italics and then capitals:
”This is a People’s War” – that is no longer merely a phrase. The words have taken on the shape of reality. Hitler is sending his bombers to terrify YOU. By numbing YOUR activities, wearing YOUR nerves and slowing up YOUR contribution to the national effort he hopes to beat civilisation into submission.
Many Not the Few: The Stolen History of the Battle of Britain Page 23
