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

by Richard North

  Then came the night bombers. From just past ten, the asynchronous drone was heard as far apart as east and south-east England and the Midlands. Liverpool was attacked. South Wales and the Bristol Channel areas were also targeted. In the London area, many places were hit, including the approach road to Vauxhall Bridge. The main targets were the railways again. A crater was made on the GWR line near Ruislip Garden Station. Bombs were dropped on the railway at Kensington. Lines were completely blocked by debris. The railway bridge over Thames Road, Chiswick, was hit by high explosive just after midnight.

  RAF Bomber Command continued its counter-offensive. Eleven Blenheims made a night attack on five enemy minesweepers off Dover – so-called R-boots. They claimed two direct hits and four near misses. Had not Sealion already been cancelled, the significance would have been enormous, the Germans unable to protect their vital minesweeping force. And that night, no less than twenty-seven Blenheims were abroad, attacking targets as far afield as Boulogne, Calais, Antwerp and Brussels. Fourteen Battles attacked shipping at Ostend and thirty-three Wellingtons joined in raids on Calais and Boulogne.

  The day’s fighting lost Fighter Command nine aircraft, the RAF thirteen in total. The Luftwaffe lost fifteen. Meanwhile, the RAF Whitehall warriors were focused on their more immediate enemy: Dowding. Sir John Salmond, fortified by his position on the Night Defence Committee, was writing to Trenchard, part of an organized – and ongoing – campaign to unseat the head of Fighter Command, complaining that Dowding lacked the qualifications as a commander in the field. He was without “humanity and imagination”.19

  Salmond also complained about the Chief of the Air Staff, Cyril Newall, who was:

  so impressed with the possibility of invasion that he will not even tell off a couple of day fighting squadrons to be trained for the night, even though they could be at once used for day work if invasion took place.20

  DAY 79 – THURSDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 1940

  The war looked very different in Berlin. “We had the longest air raid of the war last night”, wrote Shirer in the German capital. The damage was not great but the psychological effect was tremendous.21 Nevertheless, it was not good enough for the former Chief of the Air Staff, Lord Trenchard, who had written deploring that bombers should be taken off attacking military objectives in Germany in order to bomb the invasion ports. Churchill told the War Cabinet that “we should be assuming a great responsibility if we allowed invasion concentrations to accumulate in the Channel ports without taking action against them”. When the weather in the Channel was unfavourable for invasion, he told his ministers, it might be possible to divert more aircraft to targets in Germany.22

  The Cabinet was getting daily reports of bomb damage to the United Kingdom, and was also told of bombs being dropped at random over the country. Most had been directed against London, mainly in northern suburbs and the areas just south of the river. The casualties in the London area were around 50 killed (probably more than half of them in Hendon) and 370 injured. Thirteen parachute mines had been dropped, some of which had exploded in the air.23

  This evening Londoners would see their twentieth consecutive night of bombing. There was now an entrenched belief that the network of surface shelters provided by the government was unsafe. This was far from unjustified. In the summer of 1940, there had been major – if localized –shortages of cement and the government had permitted the use of lime mortar. With their reinforced concrete roofs, concrete floors and weak walls, in the dark humour of the time they would come to be known as “Morrison’s sandwiches”, named after the then minister for home security.24 That was unfair as Morrison was not to be appointed until early October, long after the surface shelter policy had been devised and implemented and the faulty shelters had been built. A rush remedial programme was put in hand, but public confidence was never really restored, as was evidenced in the Home Intelligence report of this day. It noted that the Tube stations were “as crowded as ever”.25

  Crucially, in just one sentence, the report also noted: “The work of voluntary organisations in stricken areas has done much to prevent the breaking down of morale”. Famous for its provision of canteens, mobile and static, very much in evidence was the Salvation Army. Historically, it had had a strong presence in the East End and had been a major supplier of social services in the area. Private enterprise also played a strong part. The first canteens in the shelters were set up by Marks and Spencers, and the Co-operative Societies took a pivotal role in keeping the capital, and the nation as a whole, supplied with food. “In the most deadly hours of Britain’s history, the Co-operative Movement was the unbroken ally and support of the people”, wrote Bill Richardson, editor of the Co-operative Party’s own newspaper, Reynold News.26

  Fighter Command was not doing that well. It was even unable to protect its own supplier, the Woolston Spitfire factory. In the late afternoon, a force of nearly sixty Heinkels, covered by a heavy screen of seventy Messerschmitt 110s, roared up the Solent to deliver another precision attack. Thirty-seven workers died this time, and hundreds were injured. It was nine weeks before production was back to par. Also lost was project B12/36, the Supermarine bomber prototype. This might have given the RAF a bomber equivalent to the B-29. It was abandoned.27

  Across the river, watchers had seen the works “burn up like a piece of brown paper”. Then it was their turn. A phalanx of thirty bombers broke away from the plant and targeted Phoenix Wharf, on which they stood. In ten seconds a hundred bombs burst on the wharf, on the gasworks alongside or in the river. Fifty-two more people were dead. The wharf, the gasworks and a grain warehouse had been destroyed. As the dust began to settle, a policeman emerged asking for a volunteer to send a message from the telephone exchange. A girl telephonist offered her services and the policeman led her to a wrecked office. She was asked to put a call through to ARP, telling them: “there is an unexploded bomb underneath the telephone exchange at Phoenix Wharf”. She calmly sent the message, and was later awarded an OBE.28

  That night, as well as London, Merseyside was hit – badly. In Birkenhead just before eight, incendiary bombs started falling between Central Station and Morpeth Docks. Fires were started at the GWR warehouse, the Customs Offices, a theatre and a shop. The tunnel between Birkenhead Park Station and Hamilton Square Station was damaged by a bomb. Liverpool got even worse. At nine, explosives and incendiaries were dropped causing very considerable damage to property and starting severe fires in the dock areas. The ships Peterton and Diplomat, and warehouses, were left burning. There was considerable loss of stocks of food, copra and palm kernels, and other goods. And this was the second night running. The previous night, among other premises, a large cotton warehouse had been hit, with major losses.

  While Liverpool burned, joined once again by London, with attacks also on the north-east and even Wales, fighter pilots were safely tucked up in their beds. The officers would have batmen to wake them with morning tea and polished shoes. It was not their fault. The technology and the equipment were not up to the job. Still, the day job had cost Fighter Command five aircraft. Bomber Command lost four, and another Dutch Fokker went down. That was ten aircraft lost against nine to the Luftwaffe.

  Back in London, Lord Halifax was reviewing recent events. He could not exclude the possibility, he confided to his diary, that Hitler was “deliberately scaring us with invasion in order to check reinforcements to Egypt where the main blow is to be delivered”.

  DAY 80 – FRIDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 1940

  It had even reached the War Cabinet that the local pride of the Liverpool people was suffering owing to their being described in communiqués as “a North-West coastal town”.

  But these high officials had more important business to deal with. Three days previously, Lord Beaverbrook had submitted to the Cabinet a memorandum deploring the diversion of resources abroad. “Everything should be centred on the defence of Britain,” he wrote. “All available supplies and material, all resources of every sort, including man-power, s
hould be retained here.” In his view, if the Germans failed to attack Great Britain, that was a victory. If the Germans attacked and were hurled back, that was a decisive victory. Thus, he had declared: “If we can prevail until the winter months, the Americans will come into the war and the issue will be settled in our favour”.29

  At Beaverbrook’s insistence, the Cabinet had agreed to discuss the issue and, after deferring it from the previous day, finally got round to considering the matters raised. But Beaverbrook found no allies. The Chief of the Air Staff said that he naturally wanted more aircraft for the Battle of Britain. But the limited number of aircraft being sent to the Middle East “would have an effect in that area out of all proportion to the loss occasioned by their withdrawal from this country”.

  The First Sea Lord also favoured the despatch of the aircraft to the Middle East. Lord Halifax thought likewise. “The consequences of a bad setback in the Middle East might be very serious”, he said. The Lord Privy Seal agreed, and Archie Sinclair gave figures for Hurricane availability in the country. There had been a “considerable improvement”, while there was a “great numerical inferiority in fighters in the Middle East”.

  Grudgingly, Beaverbrook conceded that the fighter situation had improved, but was still strongly opposed to further withdrawals of either aircraft or pilots. “The Battle of Britain was the only battle that counted”, he insisted. But, with otherwise unanimous support, Churchill over-ruled his Minister for Aircraft Production. The despatches to the Middle East would continue.

  Beaverbrook’s hopes of the Americans joining the war, however, looked closer than even he might have imagined. In the remarkably well-informed Cassandra column in the Daily Mirror, William Connor wrote of increasing reports that Japan was about to join the Axis, in what was to be called the “tripartite pact”. Japan actually signed this day, declaring that it recognized and respected “the leadership of Germany and Italy in the establishment of a new order in Europe”. Germany and Italy reciprocated with a declaration which recognized Japan’s interest in the “Greater East Asia”.

  Predictably, the USA saw this as a hostile move, leading to short-lived hopes that it would drive Roosevelt to join the war with Britain. Ultimately, though, it was to bring America into the war, but not until December 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Then it was the German membership of the pact which had Hitler declare war on the USA. Unrecognized at the time, this day was a significant turning point.

  Guy Liddell, meantime, had lunched with Stewart Menzies, the chief of MI6 and the man who was supervising the code-breaking efforts at Bletchley Park. Menzies told Liddell that the German invasion “had been worked out in every detail including practice in climbing cliffs”. He then revealed that it had previously been postponed for some reason unknown. Appearing to be remarkably well-informed, he also disclosed that the Navy and Army had both had misgivings and “the matter had been referred to Keitel”. Meanwhile, the situation as understood was that “people in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany were getting impatient and were unable to understand the delay”.30

  The day’s newspapers were dealing with a different fare. Their front pages were devoted to the “miraculous” discovery of a lifeboat from the City of Benares, with forty-six survivors, including six children. But that did not prevent the Mirror ripping into the government for its performance on Dakar. In a piece headed “Major blunder” and a cartoon that had Churchill in a highly unflattering pose, no punches were pulled. “Are we still in the stage of gross miscalculation, of muddled dash and hasty withdrawal, of wishful thinking and of half measures,” it stormed. “We have another setback to face, another disappointment, more evidence of shuffle and makeshift.”

  Meanwhile, both sides in the air war were branding each other’s bombing as “indiscriminate”. The British expended much effort on telling its own population how careful Bomber Command crews were to avoid civilian targets. At night though, claims of precision were pure cant. For the British, to get within five miles of a target was regarded as a “hit”. But in daytime, it was a different matter, and one of the reasons why the Luftwaffe was persisting with this form of attack, despite its obvious dangers. So it was that, after some early morning manoeuvring over the Channel, with small-scale attacks on Dover, three German formations totalling some fifty aircraft were seen crossing the coast at Dungeness at an altitude of approximately 20,000 ft.

  Apparently headed for London, they had failed to rendezvous with their fighter escorts. They were met by some 120 Hurricanes and harried all the way from the coast to the suburbs of the metropolis. After intervention by Me 109s, confused dog fighting took place but the bomber wave was turned back. Many bombs were jettisoned indiscriminately, causing widespread misery. Nineteen girls were killed in a Clapham works shelter, when it was struck by a bomb and the entrance caved in.31 A main sewer was breached in the area and the railway line between Brixton and Loughborough junction was damaged. In Battersea there was considerable damage to the weighbridge and the Albert yard.

  Late morning, another force carved its way into Bristol. But an additional squadron had been moved into the area and this raid was also turned back, with heavy losses. Two more raids were directed at London, but neither got through in force. Some found targets and the Houses of Parliament suffered their first recorded hits. The famous bronze statue of Richard the Lionheart was lifted from its pedestal by the blast, the tip of the king’s sword bent forward.

  The Mirror reported that the first London shelter had been fitted with bunks – a surface shelter in Stoke Newington, setting an example to the rest of the city. Unusually, page eleven of the newspaper also carried a report of a direct hit on an Anderson shelter in North London. The bomb had killed the five members of the Martin family – father, mother, and three children – and twelve-year-old Eileen Dickinson.

  Home Intelligence, in the last of its daily reports, wrote: “the spirit of London is extremely good, even where people have suffered seriously”. The fact that daily reports were no longer required itself told a story. The state of public morale was evidently no longer so volatile that daily reports were thought essential. The moment of greatest danger, it would appear, had passed. George Orwell seems to have thought so. “The News-Chronicle to-day is markedly defeatist,” he wrote in his diary:

  But I have a feeling that the News-Chronicle is bound to become defeatist anyway and will be promptly to the fore when plausible peace terms come forward. These people have no definable policy and no sense of responsibility, nothing except a traditional dislike of the British ruling class, based ultimately on the Nonconformist conscience. They are only noise-makers, like the New Statesman, etc. All these people can be counted on to collapse when the conditions of war become intolerable.32

  Orwell might also have been thinking of US Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, who was in a decidedly defeatist mood. In a much leaked and damning letter sent to President Roosevelt this day, he wrote of the “substantial damage” done by the raids, and of his own feeling that the British were “in a bad way”. He added:

  I cannot impress upon you strongly enough my complete lack of confidence in the entire [British] conduct of this war. I was delighted to see that the President said he was not going to enter the war because to enter this war, imagining for a minute that the English have anything to offer in the line of leadership or productive capacity in industry that could be of the slightest value to us, would be a complete misapprehension.33

  For the RAF though, it had been a successful day. Not one of the daylight raids had broken through, and a toll of fifty-one aircraft had been extracted. But Fighter Command’s losses had not been insignificant either, at thirty-one. Two British bombers were lost. And by night, the German bombers were back.

  DAY 81 – SATURDAY 28 SEPTEMBER 1940

  The Daily Express announced that the war was one year, three weeks and four days old, and the “Air Battle of Britain” began fifty-two days ago, which put the start on 8 August. The RAF, flu
shed with success from the previous day, could not resist over-egging it, claiming 130 kills. The “score” was given prominent coverage in the day’s newspapers. Churchill was so taken with this “victory” that he sent a telegram to Archie Sinclair at the Air Ministry. He instructed:

  Pray congratulate the Fighter Command on the results of yesterday. The scale and intensity of the fighting and the heavy losses of the enemy … make 27th September rank with 15th September and 15th August as the third great and victorious day during the course of the Battle of Britain.34

  One of Churchill’s main activities of the day, however, seems to have been addressing the disruption arising from workers stopping work when the sirens sounded. He had become obsessive about the amount of production lost. Now he personally introduced a scheme where the warning was to be regarded as an “alert”, with a system of “spotters” to give local warning if aircraft appeared. Only then were workers supposed to take cover. Another of his preoccupations was the number of UXBs. By the end of October, there were 3,000 in London alone. Their disruptive effect was huge. Churchill took a very keen interest in the minutia of deactivation techniques.