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

by Richard North

  In the air war of the day, the casualty rate was well down, reflecting reduced air activity. Only two Fighter Command aircraft were lost, neither to combat, plus four RAF bombers. The Luftwaffe lost six aircraft, including two He 111s on the ground to a bombing raid on Eindhoven. Eight more were very badly damaged. However, much of RAF Bomber Command’s efforts were focused on destroying invasion barges.

  DAY 64 – WEDNESDAY 11 SEPTEMBER 1940

  Reported in the Daily Mirror, the Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations was demanding the opening of all Tube stations at night and the requisitioning for the public of all good private shelters, as a temporary measure to meet the problem arising from the wholesale bombing of London. Londoners themselves were “hopping mad”, but showing no signs of defeatism, the paper also said, citing a message sent by a United Press correspondent to New York.

  This was the day that Göbbels addressed a group of Czech “intellectual workers” and journalists who were visiting Berlin. “The greatest historical drama that history has ever known is being played out at this moment”, he told them, offering them the opportunity to reorganize Europe, “at the moment when British power is collapsing.”43 Churchill, on the other hand, had been very much in evidence in the bombed areas, but he might not have learned a great deal from the crowds who followed his progress. Certainly, he felt the need for more information, sending a minute to General Ismay asking for reports on “whether any serious effects were being produced by the air attack on food supplies and distribution, and on the number of homeless”.44

  On the latter, he might well have referred to that vital asset, the daily Home Intelligence report. It noted substantial “unplanned” evacuation from the East End. Families in the Deptford area were making for the hop fields of Kent, taking with them “such of their belongings as they can carry”. Others were simply making for the nearest mainline station, with no apparent destination and no objective other than to “get away from it all”. Many more, especially in South London, found shelter in the chalk caves of Chiselhurst.45

  Those who moved west became a serious problem. Towns such as Reading, Windsor and Oxford found themselves unwitting hosts to thousands of refugees who had spent their very last pennies on getting as far from the conflagrations as they could afford. Local authorities, churches and voluntary groups found them accommodation. In Oxford, the university colleges acted as clearing houses. Five hundred to a thousand people were sheltered for nearly two months in the Majestic cinema on the city’s outskirts.46

  In other areas, notably parts of Essex, residents displayed considerable hostility to the incomers. There were ugly scenes and even violence. Something had to be done. Taking the cue from J. B. Priestley, Home Intelligence advised that, as these people were being referred to as “soldiers in the front line”, this sentiment should be encouraged. “It would undoubtedly help,” it said, “if the public were made to feel that their friends and relations had died for their country, in the same sense as if they were sailors or airmen.” The dead from air raids were soon being buried in flag-draped coffins, reflecting their status as “killed in action”.

  The Wednesday report told of morale being “rather more strained than the newspapers suggest”. There had been an increase in the number of people listening to “Lord Haw-Haw”. Rumours, mostly “exaggerated accounts of raid damage and casualties” had increased considerably.47

  Just after midday, the War Cabinet met.48 In a crowded session, it considered the text of telegrams exchanged with His Majesty’s Minister in Stockholm, together with the note from Lord Halifax. The telegrams were to and from Victor Mallet, concerning the peace offer which had emanated from Ludwig Weissauer on 5 September. As instructed, Mallet had refused to see Weissauer. “I could see no useful purpose in the suggested meeting in view of the express views of His Majesty’s Government on continuing the war”, he wrote. Ekberg, the intermediary, had begged him not to refuse as it would “certainly be reported to Hitler”.

  Dictated on 9 September, received and deciphered in time to put in front of the Cabinet, was a further telegram from Mallet. This was the “last chance”, the Minister had been told by Ekberg, at the behest of Weissauer. The alternative to peace was the continuance of the war on an intensified scale; special mention was made of the loss to Great Britain of Egypt, the Middle East and ultimately India. So concerned had Halifax been about the exchange that he, with his Permanent Under-Secretary Alexander Cadogan, had twice visited Churchill on 9 September. There was no disagreement between the men. It was a question not of what to, but how to reply – whether there was anything to be gained by playing for time. As a measure of how much sentiment had changed and confidence grown, the mood was for a rejection without delay.

  Halifax informed his Cabinet colleagues this day that the offer was “essentially the same as that made to us recently through the King of Sweden” – to which Churchill himself had suggested a response. He proposed an immediate reply which followed the line adopted on the previous occasion: it “lies with the German Government to make proposals by which the wrongs that Germany has inflicted upon other nations may be redressed”. And not only did the Cabinet approve Halifax’s action, it authorized him to tell Roosevelt of the exchange, on the basis that it would score political points with the president.49

  The Cabinet also discussed measures being taken to counter the threat of invasion, when they were told of a telegram from Hoare in Madrid, who had picked up from a German source that the real enemy objective was Egypt. From Stockholm and Madrid, therefore, sources were pointing to the Middle East. Churchill thought it “by no means impossible” that the Germans would decide not to invade, “because they were unable to obtain the domination over our fighter force”.50

  That evening, Churchill broadcast to the nation in an attempt to boost morale. “These cruel, wanton indiscriminate bombings of London are of course a part of Hitler’s invasion plan,” he declared. “He hopes by killing large numbers of civilians and women and children that he will terrorize and cow the people of this mighty Imperial city and make them a burden and anxiety for the Government, and thus distract our attention unduly from the ferocious onslaught he is preparing”.

  1. The myth of rescue: an RAF 100 class High Speed Launch, built by the British Power Boat Co to an Air Ministry Order issued in 1936. Originally designed as a seaplane tender, and pressed into service as an air-sea rescue launch, the launches featured prominently in contemporary propaganda, but the reality was that there were too few available to provide a comprehensive rescue service in 1940.

  2. A Lysander on detachment from Army Co-operation Command, dropping a dingy and supplies during a propaganda photo shoot. This was the only official airborne component of the air-sea rescue provision during the Battle of Britain. The photograph is taken from a contemporary (1941) propaganda pamphlet.

  3. The Supermarine Walrus – from the same stable as the Spitfire (and built in the same factory), this was originally procured for the Royal Navy as a catapult-launched spotter aircraft. Used informally in limited numbers during the summer of 1940, it was not officially taken on charge by the RAF as a rescue aircraft until 1941.

  4. The Heinkel 59: used widely as a rescue craft throughout the summer of 1940, in Red Cross markings and later in Luftwaffe camouflage. This was part of the far superior German rescue system, which included inflatable rafts for fighter pilots and marker dye, neither of which was available to RAF aircrew.

  5. Supermarine Spitfire 1a: the glamorous half of the Spitfire/Hurricane duo which provided the bulk of Fighter Command›s day fighters. Although technically advanced, and a match for the modern Me 109 German day fighter, it was next to useless as a night fighter, allowing the Germans to circumvent the RAF with their night bombers. To that extent, Fighter Command became an airborne Maginot line.

  6. An implied rebuke to the Churchill›s 20 August «The Few» speech. «George» Strube in the Express political cartoon the following day depicts his trademark �
�little man» undecided as to whom he should award his «bouquet». The airman is only one of the many from which he has to choose. The wartime propaganda photograph depicting «The Few» showed RAF bomber aircrew.

  7. The fruits of victory: a Heinkel 111 from KG55 shot down on 16 August during an attack on Feltham, near London. After it had crash landed at Annington Farm in Bramber, Sussex, local resident Gordon James took this photo as the remains were transported to a scrapyard. It was against the law to take such photos, so Mr James kept his camera hidden until after the war, when he finally had the film developed

  8. Two-way traffic: the wreck of an RAF Blenheim bomber after the disastrous raid on Aalborg airfield on 13 August 1940, when all eleven of the attacking aircraft were shot down. When Bomber and Coastal Command losses were factored in, the RAF and Luftwaffe came though the official Battle of Britain roughly at parity.

  9. Propaganda: German air raid on Dover Harbour, 29 July 1940. This widely published photograph of a Stuka attack on shipping accompanied claims that no damage had been done

  10. The attack, in fact, had severely damaged and set on fire the depot ship HMS Sandhurst, laden with ammunition and fuel, threatening the town of Dover. Three firemen we to be awarded the George Medal from for their part in extinguishing the fire. Yet no details of their bravery was published. «The Few» took the accolades

  11. Despite fears of an airborne invasion, the German transport fleet had been severely depleted during the attack through the Low Country. On 10 May alone, 157 Ju 57 transports were lost, and it would be May 1941 – immediately prior to the invasion of Crete – before the fleet was back up to strength

  12. Specialist assault craft, meanwhile, were still being designed, developed and built. These Siebel ferries, for instance, were supposed to carry the anti-aircraft weapons to protect the invasion fleet. Yet they only started to come on-stream in any numbers in November 1940, after the invasion had been cancelled

  13. Spearhead German formations were being forced to rely converted assault boats (Sturmboots) designed for river crossings and barely, if at all, seaworthy.

  14. Assault boats, converted barges and shipping seen here in late 1940, believed to be in Belgium during a rehearsal for the invasion. Previously unpublished, this unofficial soldier›s snap shows the triumvirate, beached at low tide. Vulnerable and inflexible, this was not a credible assault force.

  15. Unable to prevail against the RAF›s day fighters and ill-equipped to launch an invasion, the Germans turned against the British people as their target, employing night bombing as their main tactic, the aim to force an overthrow of the government and regime change. Against them were the «many», which eventually included 300,00 men and women of the Anti-Aircraft Command.

  16. Passive defence relied on civilian fortitude and largely inadequate shelters – by design. Here, wrecked Anderson shelters in the gardens of 127-129 Mapledene Road, Hackney, following an attack on the night of 9-10 October 1940. Made of curved corrugated iron bolted to strong supports, the shelters were supposed to be buried three feet underground in back gardens with eighteen inches of earth piled on top. They were small and cramped, cold, not soundproofed, and tended to flood regularly. They offered no protection against a direct hit, as this photograph illustrates

  Churchill continued: “Little does he know the spirit of the British nation or the tough fibre of the Londoners”. It was their forebears who had played “a leading part in the establishment of Parliamentary institutions and who have been bred to value freedom far above their lives”. Hitler became, “This wicked man”, and then: “the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul destroying hatred, this monstrous product former wrongs and shames”. He had now “resolved to try to break our famous island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction”. In his finest rhetorical form, the Prime Minister then said:

  What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagrations he has caused in London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe, and until the Old World and the New can join hands to rebuild the temples of man’s freedom and man’s honour on foundations which will not soon or easily be overthrown.51

  In the reference to “the Old World and the New” there was a direct appeal to the USA to join the war. London’s agonies were sufficient reason for this to happen. His message was spread throughout the world but, in the USAas much by the network of hundreds of “local” papers, such as the Florida-based Sarasota Herald Tribune. Often relying on agency or syndicated copy, their collective audience measured in tens of millions. And the message they conveyed was stark. Hitler’s invasion fleet, poised on the other side of the Channel, was ready to strike.

  The daily air war, however, was taking on a direction of its own. All of a sudden, there were several different wars going on – seemingly unrelated. Fighter Command was still battling away against the daylight elements of the Luftwaffe which, in the morning comprised one Henschel 126 on a reconnaissance mission near Dover and one machine bombing the radar station at Poling. After lunch, the Germans put up a series of raids.

  The first was aimed largely at London, with bombs falling on the City, but also on the docks, Islington and Paddington. Others fell on Biggin Hill, Kenley, Brooklands and Hornchurch. A second raid, despite the best efforts of harrying fighters, managed to dump bombs on Southampton and Portsmouth. Then a force of Me 109s appeared over Dover on a barrage balloon shoot. Another force attacked a Channel convoy, disabling the escort Atherstone, in a throwback to an earlier phase of the fighting. While that was happening, there was a progression of single-aircraft raids heading off to bomb inland RAF aerodromes.

  On the day, Fighter Command lost thirty-two aircraft, while Bomber Command again concentrated on the invasion fleet, losing five aircraft on these and other operations, bringing the total to thirty-seven. The Germans only lost twenty-six. And, after his first escape on 25 August, Sgt Mervyn Sprague was shot down again – by another Me 110. South of Selsey Bill, his Spitfire crashed into the Channel. This time there was no “Digger” Aitkin to rescue him. His body was washed ashore at Brighton on 10 October.52

  Meanwhile, London’s defences were being beefed up. On the orders of General Pile and his officers of AA Command, guns were on the move. By late afternoon of 10 September, thirty-five additional 3.7in guns were in London. By this night, more were ready – their objective less to shoot down aircraft than to worry the enemy and hearten the civilian population. When the raiders came, they threw up a barrage of 13,221 shells, an average of 378 rounds per site, with the star performer firing 805.53

  DAY 65 – THURSDAY 12 SEPTEMBER 1940

  The press majored on the overnight anti-aircraft barrage. Also reported was an attack on Buckingham Palace, front-page material but lower down, as the bomb had been delayed action, exploding in the small hours of Tuesday morning.54 The King and Queen had been away for the night and staff were safely in shelters, well away from the spot. No one was injured.

  Thus, the Daily Express gave more space to the raids on barge concentrations, as indeed did the Guardian. This was a feature of British propaganda and a measure of its skill. Some bad news, or even the potentially frightening, was allowed – but it was “offset” with the counterpoint. Thus, Hitler assembling his invasion forces was balanced by “RAF attacking”. The effect was unremittingly upbeat.

  In the main, it seemed to work: “In London, morale is particularly high: people are much more cheerful today”, said Home Intelligence. The largely useless but noisy barrage had given Londoners great heart, an all-important sense that the nation was “fighting back”. The Metropolitan Commissioner of Police also believed morale was holding up, stating: “My latest reports are that there is no sign of panic anywhere in the East End”. Inhabitants were “shaken by continued lack of sleep” but there was no wish t
o evacuate and “no defeatist talk”.55

  George Orwell did not entirely agree. This morning he had met a youth of about twenty, in dirty overalls, perhaps a garage hand. He had been very “embittered and defeatist” about the war and horrified about the destruction he had seen in South London. He said Churchill had visited the bombed area near the Elephant [and Castle] and at a spot where twenty out of twenty-two houses had been destroyed remarked that it “was not too bad”. The youth had said, “I’d have wrung his bloody neck if he’d said it to me”.56

  On the back of Churchill’s speech, the Guardian ramped up the invasion threat. With its lead item was an analysis from Brigadier General John Charteris: “the stage is set” and “the actors are ready”, he wrote. However, Hitler had failed to secure mastery of the air. The tone was not at all alarmist. And bad weather over Europe held off air operations. The RAF ended up two fighters down, both lost through accidents, while the Luftwaffe lost six. None of these was attributed to combat operations.

  The daily Home Intelligence report did not convey wholly complimentary news. The Prime Minister’s speech was generally well received, it said, but not so enthusiastically as usual. Many people “having convinced themselves that the invasion is ‘off’ disliked being reminded of it again”.