But Civil Defence had vastly improved, especially the fire services. In London, the first twenty-two days and nights of the Blitz had been the most testing. The fire brigades had attended nearly 10,000 fires. The nightly total exceeded 1,000 on three nights and the totals on other nights fluctuated between 40 and 950. As the last aircraft had departed on the first night of the Blitz, there had been nine conflagrations, nineteen fires that would normally have called for thirty pumps or more, forty ten-pump fires, and nearly a thousand lesser blazes, a score of which would have made front-page headlines in peace time. In October, the total still reached 7,500 with nearly 2,000 over two nights. But there had been no conflagrations and only twelve fires of more than thirty pumps.24
The Combined Intelligence Committee also seemed to be coming to terms with the invasion threat. Its assessment for the day was that the venture was on hold, but with the administrative structures kept in place in the event that a favourable opportunity presented itself. But the main reasons for keeping them in place were to tie up British forces, and also to avoid the adverse effect on German morale if the operation was openly abandoned. Nevertheless, it held that the threat of an invasion would remain as long as the Germans had numerical superiority in the air, although its failure to win the air battle, the shortening days and the worsening weather combined to make an invasion a “hazardous undertaking”.25
Out at sea, but given little prominence by the media, the naval war went on, with its steady toll of casualties. HM Patrol Craft Girl Mary was the latest. She was sunk in the Firth of Forth by a mine. Two of the crew were lost, the skipper seriously wounded. The British steamer Till was also damaged by a mine.
DAY 94 – FRIDAY 11 OCTOBER 1940
The newspapers gave considerable space to Herbert Morrison’s maiden speech as Minister of Home Security. The Daily Express noted that he had praised the Anderson shelter, called deep shelters impossible, promised new not-so-deep shelters that would be noiseproof, and taken new powers to develop basement shelters. His predecessor, Sir John Anderson (affectionately described as “war-horse” by Churchill), heard the speech, the paper remarking that Morrison did not say a word to which Sir John would say, “Nay, nay”.
And after the calm came the storm. The Luftwaffe had stepped up its tempo. Göbbels remarked on the “ideal weather”, boasting of causing “wild devastation”. It had covered a wider area than any previous raid, one in which the roof of St Paul’s Cathedral had been breached and the high altar devastated. But, although many houses were wrecked, only one major fire was started.26
While the German bombers were circling over London, Bomber Command was again in action over Cherbourg – but with a difference. Aircraft were acting as spotters for the battleship HMS Revenge. Starting at half past three in the morning, for twenty minutes she fired 120 15in and 800 4.7in shells into the port complex. “Very large fires” were reported, visible from forty miles. This was operation Medium, which had the battleship escorted by seven destroyers and a similar number of anti-submarine boats, its flanks guarded by cruisers and more destroyers. As an assertion of sea power, it had been a huge success. All ships returned safely to their bases, without damage.27
Come the morning, there was less welcome news. Destroyer Zulu, fourth ship in a line, was damaged by an acoustic mine in the Firth of Forth. Then the patrol yacht Aisha was sunk, with two wounded, and HMS Jersey was damaged in the Thames Estuary. These too had succumbed to acoustic mines.
While this was happening, five German torpedo boats, Falke, Grief, Kondor, Seeadler and Wolf were headed for the convoys on the roads around the Isle of Wight. They were spotted by the anti-submarine trawler Warwick Deeping and the former French armed trawler Listrac. Although heavily outclassed, they still engaged the Nazi boats and were rapidly sunk, the Listrac skipper and eleven ratings dying with their ship. Past midnight, the German force sank two French submarine chasers, both captained by British officers. The encounter left twenty dead and twenty taken prisoner by the Grief. Their sacrifice, however, bought time. Five destroyers had raced out of Plymouth, with two more from Portsmouth. Just after three in the morning, HMS Jackal engaged two of the German ships. They turned and ran.
The same night, though, Royal Navy MTBs were in action off the Belgian coast, attacking a convoy. The German trawler Nordenham was sunk, and thirty-four prisoners were taken. As with the Isle of Wight action, no details were given to the press.28
Despite the high intensity of Luftwaffe air operations, aircraft losses overall were light, reflecting the general immunity from RAF interference that the night bombers enjoyed. Eleven losses to the RAF, including a torpedo-carrying Albacore, damaged on a mission over Boulogne, compared with a mere seven lost to the Luftwaffe.
DAY 95 – SATURDAY 12 OCTOBER 1940
The Daily Mirror was in high spirits this morning, with a leader noting that “Seldom does a minister confess that he could possibly have been wrong!” It went on to say: “We must salute the Minister of Health, Mr Malcolm MacDonald. He has astonished us all this week by bravely accepting responsibility for delays in the feeding and housing of the homeless. He admits mistakes!” And in a comment that resonates down the age, it added: “It is well to realize that one cannot be always right because, after that, one may learn by experience and humility not to be always wrong”.
Many newspapers covered the raid by HMS Revenge, the Daily Mirror announcing: “Navy guns Nazi port”. In the Glasgow Herald, however, the political correspondent had news of a very different kind. It is known in political circles, he wrote, that not many days ago “peace feelers” reached the Cabinet by a circuitous route. Their authenticity was not definitely established Mr Churchill and his colleagues did not reply directly to them. However, the whole tone of the Prime Minister’s speech in the Commons on Tuesday had been, in effect, an answer – conveying “an unswerving determination to carry on the war until complete victory was won”.
What made this current report different is that the “feelers” were said to come directly from the Germans, as opposed to the expected indirect route. Limited support for the idea that there had indeed been a peace offer was to come from the US media. At the beginning of November there was a news agency report which referred to sub rosa peace feelers being put out again and again for some time. Usually, said the report, they came from Swedish sources, sometimes conveyed by prominent Frenchmen, but always on a vague “on-an-if, but-and-when” basis. They were just persistent enough to indicate that Hitler would like to make peace if he could pretty much dictate the terms.
Then there was a syndicated report which did the rounds in mid-November. This had imminent European peace deals floating around London, Berlin and Washington just before the US presidential election, held on 5 November. The “inside fact” was that some very tentative ideas had been discussed by Sir Samuel Hoare and a leader of the British appeasement group.
These were said to have dated from the time “Hitler’s proposed invasion of England was frustrated last September”. According to this narrative, Nazi diplomats had sent out feelers “to the effect that Germany now had almost the entire continent of Europe and might be satisfied to drop the war, leaving England to stick to its own islands”. So powerful and persistent did these rumours become that, on 5 November an AP report via the Irish Times carried a German denial. Germany and Italy had no reason to make a peace offer, the statement said. Finally, the presidential election seems to have marked the end of peace offer speculation.
On top of this, the hostile press over the Dakar affair and the signals given off by the recent Cabinet reshuffle might have led the Germans genuinely to believe that Churchill was politically weak. On 8 October, the very day the Prime Minister addressed parliament with his monthly review of the war, the Glasgow Herald noted that:
if … Hitler really believes the reports given to him and sent all over the world that London is beaten to its knees, he may try the peace trick in the hope that … the Government will be compelled by publ
ic opinion to listen to his offer.
Seen in this light, the Churchill statement to the House on 8 October did fit quite neatly as a rejection of a peace offer – or a pre-emptive move. It set out an unequivocal case for continuing the war, embodying in it an analysis of why the German air offensive had to fail. Similarly, the Bevin’s bellicose speech to the TUC could have served the same purpose. In that context, the heavier than usual raids on London on 9 October and in the nights following could be taken as a response to Churchill’s response. The Germans were saying: “Very well, the war goes on”.
But this day marked the death of Sealion. Hitler issued a secret message to his operational services, formally cancelling any further invasion preparations, although the planning infrastructure was to remain in place, in order to exert “political and military pressure” on Britain. The barges, fishing boats and tugs were to be returned to their former duties, the soldiers to prepare for the invasion of the Soviet Union.29 As the British reconnaissance picked up the dispersal of the shipping, it was assumed that this was a response to the Royal Air Force and naval raids, and in particular the recent attack by the battleship Revenge.
But there is no evidence in German records that Hitler was in any way influenced by the materiel losses. Despite the intensity and frequency of the British counteraction, less than 10 per cent of the shipping had been sunk or damaged – a level which could be replaced from reserves. Equally compatible with events was a response to Churchill’s rejection of the recent peace feelers, leading Hitler to conclude that there was little chance of an immediate peace deal. He may at this point have been reconciled to a long war and thus his transport fleet was not needed for the time being.
Alongside this, though, there was quite clearly a conviction that the strategic bombing was having the desired effect. As the Luftwaffe once again headed over the Channel, Göbbels noted in his diary: “Horrific reports from London. A metropolis on the slide. An international drama without parallel”.30
DAY 96 – SUNDAY 13 OCTOBER 1940
A small but important part of the battlefield this night was Stoke Newington, an inner London suburb, then quite unfashionable and with a large Jewish (and Irish Catholic) population. It was one of those areas of North London poorly served by the Tube, relying on the surface railway. With a large number of flat dwellers, the effects of the government’s refusal to develop a deep shelter policy was at its most apparent. They had to rely on surface shelters and reinforced basements. One of the latter had been constructed from the shallow basements of three terraced shops on Coronation Avenue, Stoke Newington Road. Overnight it had afforded illusory shelter to the best part of 250 people.
It took only one large bomb to convert the illusion into terror and then, for many, oblivion. Late in the night, it hit the parade of shops, causing the five-storey terrace to collapse, blocking the exits from the basements, and trapping scores of people. In total, 173 were killed, many – it was thought – poisoned by town gas from a fractured main.31 The censors were quick to stifle comment, although a report made page five of the Daily Express, on the following Tuesday, with no location identified. Nevertheless, it was described as “[t]he greatest bombing tragedy in the whole of London”, from which fifty-seven had survived.
The weekly Hackney Gazette referred to the event but was not allowed to release details. It reported: “On Friday the King and Queen … paid an informal visit to an area where there had been casualties owing to a bomb demolishing a block of tenements underneath which was a shelter”. Until the end of the war, nothing further publicly emerged.32
Göbbels wrote once more in his diary: “Gloomy pictures of morale in London. The city is gradually experiencing the fate of Carthage. But Churchill will not have it any other way. And so on with the fight”.33 But that “fight” was not to include an invasion – as the British were becoming increasingly aware. The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) was circulating a report from one of its trusted agents – 9 October – stating that Sealion had been postponed until the spring.
In the public eye this day, though, was a “million to one chance” of the Liverpool to London express being derailed as it approached London, when a porter’s barrow had fallen off a platform into its path. The engine had struck it and pushed it forward until it became lodged in some points, causing the derailment. A number of people were killed and more than fifty were injured.34 As the news leaked out, the Germans claimed credit for the disaster.
Meanwhile, Priestley was again writing in the Sunday Express, his column this time headed: “Tattoo this message into your mind”. The theme was propaganda and civilian morale.
Being a new kind of war, “total war”, Priestley wrote, it depended, as previous wars did not, on civilian morale. “There could not be a better proof of the Nazi’s belief in this,” he wrote, “than the recent costly indiscriminate raids upon London, which have no conventional military value at all.” That the Nazis had been ready to discontinue attacks upon purely military objectives for the sake of this assault upon civilian morale, he argued, showed how much importance they attached to this aspect of their “total war”. Their assault had failed, but the fact that it had been made at all was “very significant”.
The core message, then, was that, if the state of the civilian mind was so important, it followed that anything that affected public morale had to be considered a real war factor, “no more to be despised than the condition of our planes and guns”.
As to the daylight air war, it was of little moment on this day. In fact, “friendly fire” was the greatest hazard for the British. Fighter Command lost four aircraft – a Hurricane shot down by anti-aircraft fire over Chatham, a Blenheim fighter shot down by Czech pilots, off Liverpool with all three crew killed, and another damaged, only to be written off on landing. Just one aircraft was lost to enemy action. The Germans lost two.
DAY 97 – MONDAY 14 OCTOBER 1940
At 8.02 p.m. a 1400kg semi armour piercing bomb penetrated 32 ft underground into Balham Tube Station in south London. It exploded just above the cross passage between the two platforms causing debris partially to fill the tunnels where about 500 people were sheltering. Water poured in from fractured water mains and sewers. Sixty-six people in the station are believed to have been killed.35 The roadway collapsed into the void, leaving a huge crater into which a No. 88 double-decker bus plunged. Substantial damage was caused to surrounding buildings, leaving some close to collapse.
As with the other major shelter disasters, news was suppressed, the government fearing adverse public reaction. The picture of the bus in the crater later became an iconic representation of the Blitz. But it was only one small part of the violence of which visited the citizens of London on the Saturday night, continuing through into Sunday night and even into the early hours of Monday morning. So intense and savage was the bombing that some saw it as a new phase of the Blitz.
It was somewhat ironic, therefore, that the War Cabinet resumed its discussions on how to prevent workers taking cover when air-raid warnings sounded. Ernest Bevin was now present, expressing the view that the air-raid warning system was only one of a variety of causes leading to the loss of working time. Other causes, he said, were faulty management, lack of consideration in handling men and bad lay-out of factories. Beaverbrook was having none of that, and insisted the problem lay with the warning system. Eventually, after a long discussion, it was agreed that a supplemental system of localized area warnings should be examined.36
However, the meeting had been preceded by the circulation of a revised system, which had been prepared jointly by Morrison and Sinclair. It proposed decentralizing the warnings and formalizing an “alarms within the alert” system, to give factories more precise details of the threats.37 This seems to have brought some improvement as, apart from a brief reference on 18 October, the matter was not brought before the Cabinet in the remainder of the year or the two following.38
DAY 98 – TUESDAY 15 OCTOBER 1940
The savag
ery of the previous day’s bombing provoked a classic “damage limitation” report from the Daily Express, which featured a front-page banner headline claiming, “Soon we may bomb Berlin by day, too”. The story was about the possible introduction of the American Boeing Flying Fortress into RAF service. It was a transparent attempt to divert attention from the carnage.
The diversion simply concealed the fact that London had had a truly dreadful night. Even the New York Times was moved to report: “London is rocked by heaviest raid”, while the Daily Mirror headlined “Great London raid”. A full moon had given Göring’s bombers maximum opportunity to spread havoc and mayhem, which is precisely what they had done. Over nine hundred fires had been caused, roads were blocked throughout the city, and the Underground rail network was severed in five places. A reservoir, three gasworks, two power stations and three docks were hit, causing extensive damage. Then there was the human cost. Over 400 people had been killed and more than 800 badly wounded. Some incidents particularly stood out. One was the destruction of Morley College, on the Westminster Bridge Road.
As an educational institute, the college had been abandoned. It was being used as a rest centre for people who had been bombed out of their homes. Nearly 300 people were taking refuge when a high-explosive bomb fell on the main building, ripping it apart. Of the 195 people known to have been in the building, 84 came out unhurt. Of the injured, 54 were sent to hospital and 57 were killed. Ten died in hospital. More may have been buried under the debris, their bodies never recovered.39
This was certainly the case in an even worse incident at just after eight in the evening – almost exactly twenty-four hours after Balham Tube Station had been bombed – when the public shelters in Kennington Park were hit. It had only been a 25kg bomb, but this was a trench shelter, shored with wood, roofed with corrugated iron and covered with earth. Fatally vulnerable to blast effect, the walls collapsed, killing at least 104. Only 48 bodies were recovered, the rest lying buried in the park. In November 1940, the damaged trench was filled in, but others in the complex continued in use.40 Prior to the war, critics of trench shelters had bitterly suggested that their provision would at least save the cost of burials. The prophesy had come tragically true.41
Many Not the Few: The Stolen History of the Battle of Britain Page 38
