The Battle of Britain

by Richard Overy

  The claim that the attack on London was retaliation for starting an air war against civilians with the raid on Berlin on the night of 25/26 August is equally hollow. The Berlin raid was very small-scale, and the amount of damage inflicted on the capital itself negligible. The psychological impact was much greater on a population lulled into complacency by months of propaganda on the invulnerability of the city. ‘The Berliners are stunned,’ wrote William Shirer in his diary, ‘from all reports there was a pell-mell, frightened rush to the cellars…’38 On 29 August British bombers returned, this time killing ten Berliners (including four men and two women watching the pyrotechnic battle from a doorway). Goebbels made the most of a golden opportunity. ‘Berlin is now in the theatre of war,’ he confided to his diary. ‘It is good that this is so.’ The Berlin papers played up the air terror and the genocidal intention ‘ “to massacre the population of Berlin” ’. 39

  The raids on Berlin were in reality retaliation for the persistent bombing of British conurbations and the high level of British civilian casualties that resulted. In July 258 civilians had been killed, in August 1,075; the figures included 136 children and 392 women.40 During the last half of August, as German bombers moved progressively further inland, bombs began to fall on the outskirts of London. On the night of 18/19 August bombs fell on Croydon, Wimbledon and the Maidens. On the night of 22/23 August the first bombs fell on central London in attacks described by observers as ‘extensive’ and for which no warning was given; on the night of 24/25 August bombs fell in Slough, Richmond Park and Dulwich. On the night the RAF first raided Berlin, bombs fell on Banstead, Croydon, Lewisham, Uxbridge, Harrow and Hayes. On the night of the next raid on Berlin, on 28/29 August, German aircraft bombed the following London areas: Finchley, St Pancras, Wembley, Wood Green, Southgate, Crayford, Old Kent Road, Mill Hill, Ilford, Hendon, Chigwell. London was under ‘red’ warning for seven hours and five minutes.41 The bombing of London began almost two weeks before Hitler’s speech on 4 September, and well before the first raid on Berlin.

  The switch to attacks on London forced Fighter Command and the German Air Force to rethink the battle. The main weight of German bombing slowly gravitated towards night attack, which produced much lower bomber losses. Daylight operations against the capital, which began in force on 7 September, when 350 bombers raided the east London dock area, required German fighters to fly to the very limit of their range. Bomber crews insisted that they be given an adequate defensive shield to try to reduce the heavy losses of the previous three weeks. Goering ordered fighters to fly not only in front and above the bombers, but now to weave in and out of the bomber stream itself. Because bombers were so much slower at the higher altitudes chosen for the London attacks, fighters were forced to fly a zig-zag course to keep in contact, which used up precious supplies of fuel and reduced their radius of action even more.

  Fighter Command reacted to the changed battlefield almost at once. The bombers attacked London in three waves. Park ordered 11 Group to put up six squadrons held at ‘readiness’ for the first wave of bombers; a further eight squadrons were held back to meet the second wave; the remaining squadrons were detailed to attack the third wave, or to provide protection for airfields and factories in the bombers’ path. Aircraft from 10 and 12 Groups protected 11 Group’s own airfields. The higher altitude flown by the attacker added new difficulties. Radar had problems estimating the greater heights precisely; fighters had to climb further and could seldom get above the incoming aircraft, where attack was most advantageous. The problem was tackled by withdrawing from the coastal stations, to give fighters more time to assemble. When fighters were ascending, they gave false height references over the radio to bring German fighters to altitudes below them. Finally, on 21 September Park instituted standing patrols, with Spitfires flying high to engage fighters and with Hurricanes at bomber altitude.42 The chief result of these changes was to reduce Fighter Command’s loss rate and to impose escalating destruction on an already overstretched bomber force. In the first week of attacks on London, the German bomber arm lost 199 aircraft.

  Over the period from 7 September to 5 October, when daylight bombing raids petered out, there were 35 major attacks, 18 of them on London. It was during this phase of the battle that the so-called ‘Big Wing’ controversy emerged. ‘Big Wings’ or ‘Balbos’ (after the flamboyant Italian airman Italo Balbo) were inspired by one of the legends of the battle, Wing Commander Douglas Bader. Flying with 12 Group, he developed the idea that fighters should fly in large formations in order to hit the approaching air fleet with maximum striking power. His commander, Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory, supported the innovation, but Park was strongly opposed on the grounds that concentration of fighter forces would simply let the successive waves of bombers fly on unimpeded while fighters sat on the ground rearming. What separated the two Groups were facts of geography. Park had to fight incoming waves of bombers with strong fighter escort; Leigh-Mallory’s fighters met bomber forces further inland, with weaker fighter defences and their position clearly known. Under these circumstances the concentration of fighter forces made greater operational sense. Nevertheless, as Park took pleasure in reminding Dowding, 12 Group aircraft could engage the enemy in ‘Big Wings’ only seldom. In September, Bader’s Duxford-based squadrons flew in large formations only five times; in the second half of October they managed only ten sorties and shot down just one enemy aeroplane. In Park’s judgement the use of ‘Big Wings’ would have ‘lost the Battle of London’.43

  The air battles in the week between 7 September and 15 September were decisive in turning the tide of the battle. During that week the German Air Force lost 298 aircraft; Fighter Command lost 120, against 99 enemy fighters. The greatest damage was inflicted on the German attack on 15 September, which has been celebrated since the war as Battle of Britain Day. A force of more than 200 German bombers, heavily escorted by fighters, attacked by day in the conventional three waves. They were met by more than 300 Spitfires and Hurricanes. A total of 158 bombers reached London, but visibility was poor and the bombs were widely scattered. The returning bombers were harried by fighters as far as the Channel. It was officially announced that night that 185 of the enemy had been destroyed. In fact during the course of the day 34 German bombers had been destroyed, 20 more extensively damaged and 26 fighters shot down. Of the original force of 200 bombers the loss rate was 25 per cent.44 These were rates that no air force could sustain for more than a few days; they were very much greater than the worst loss rates experienced by Allied bombers over Germany in the air battles of 1943 and 1944. This was the last great daylight raid. On 18 September some 70 bombers attacked London with heavy losses. After that the attacks switched to night-time.

  The fifteenth of September was also the date agreed earlier in August for the start of Operation Sealion. Enthusiasm for invasion was waning fast at Hitler’s headquarters. On 30 August the date for possible invasion had been switched to 20 September to meet the navy’s revised schedule. On 6 September Hitler discussed the invasion plan with Admiral Raeder. The navy took the view that Sealion was possible only if the weather and air supremacy allowed it, but Raeder began to press again for an indirect strategy. Army and navy leaders recommended a Mediterranean campaign, in collaboration with Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain. Hitler now faced a number of options. Sealion was not yet ruled out, though it looked an unattractive prospect in deteriorating weather; there was the possibility of destroying Britain’s position throughout the Mediterranean basin and the eastern Atlantic, which would cut the Empire in two and leave Britain geographically isolated; there was a chance that the air assault on London might be ‘decisive’ by itself.45

  On the afternoon of 14 September a conference assembled at Hitler’s headquarters. The service chiefs were there; the issue under discussion was ‘the England problem’. Hitler reminded his audience that the quickest way to end the war was to invade and occupy southern Britain. He announced that naval preparations were now
complete (‘Praise to the Navy,’ the army chief of staff wryly noted in his war diary); he suggested that the air force campaign was poised for decisive success (‘Praise above all’ this time).46 None the less, Hitler concluded that air superiority had not yet been achieved. He did not cancel Sealion, but promised to review the situation on 17 September for possible landings on 27 September or 8 October. Three days later, when the evidence was clear that the German Air Force had greatly exaggerated the extent of their successes against the RAF, Hitler postponed Sealion indefinitely. A directive on 19 September ordered preparations to be scaled down. On 12 October Hitler ordered his forces to maintain the appearance of an invasion threat in order to keep up ‘political and military pressure on England’. Invasion was to be reconsidered in the spring or early summer of 1941 only if Britain had not been brought to her knees by air attack.47

  The end of Operation Sealion in September 1940 did not end the Battle of Britain. At the meeting on 14 September Hitler gave the air force the chance to show what it could do on its own to defeat Britain: ‘The decisive thing is the ceaseless continuation of air attacks.’ Shortly before the meeting, Raeder had presented Hitler with a memorandum urging that air attacks ‘should be intensified, without regard to Sealion’. The air force chief of staff, General Hans Jeschonnek, grasped the opportunity with both hands. He asked Hitler to allow him to attack residential areas to create ‘mass panic’. Hitler refused, perhaps unaware of just how much damage had already been done to civilian targets. The air force was ordered to attack military and economic targets. ‘Mass panic’ was to be used only as a last resort. Hitler reserved for himself the right to unleash the terror weapon. The political will to resist was to be broken by the collapse of the material infrastructure, the weapons industry, and stocks of fuel and food. On 16 September Goering ordered the air fleets to begin the new phase of the battle. Like the campaign in Kosovo in the spring of 1999, air power was expected to deliver the political solution by undermining military capability and the conditions of daily existence.48

  The popular fantasies of victory through air power, sustained in the 1930s by a stream of alarmist fiction (including L. E. O. Charlton’s War over England, published in 1936, in which Britain was forced to surrender in two days after a devastating German attack on the Hendon Air Show), became a horrible truth in the last months of 1940.49 The fear of invasion was replaced in September with a realization that Britain’s population was confronted with a test of endurance for which there was no precedent. The survival of the will to fight through the period of intense bombing is now taken for granted, but it was a will that ordinary people had to find in circumstances for which no fiction can have prepared them. When the bombing began in June, Home Intelligence observers reported a general calmness, even indifference: ‘ “A bore rather than a terror.” ’ 50 On a London housing estate in Stockwell, tenants busied themselves setting up home-from-home in their air-raid shelters: carpets, beds, furniture, decoration (‘portraits of the King and Queen, artificial flowers, Union Jacks…’), and cleanly scrubbed floors. They planned an open night, ‘to show off their shelter to their neighbours’. (Not everyone was so fortunate. Home Intelligence noted early in September a great many complaints about what were delicately described as ‘ “insanitary messes” ‘ and ‘improper behaviour’, which caused distress ‘among the more respectable elements of the community’.)51

  The raids in August produced a change in mood. With the intensification of bomb attack, Home Intelligence found that morale stiffened; the spirit of those in raided areas was regarded as ‘excellent’, the shock of war on the home front even produced a temporary exhilaration. London came through its first weekend of raids ‘with confidence and calmness’ (though the inhabitants of Croydon were reportedly ‘resentful’ when the all-clear sounded just ten minutes before German bombers appeared overhead to disgorge their loads).52 In August the author John Langdon-Davies rushed out a booklet which he titled Nerves versus Nazis. It was marketed as a manual for ‘successful mental counter-attack’ against air raids, and Langdon-Davies wrote it after watching ‘400 typical Londoners’ descend to their shelters with ‘no fear, no panic’. He offered advice on coping with fear, which included his own practice of ‘counting slowly from the moment that I hear the first bomb. If I count up to 60 and am still counting, then I know that I have survived…’ He encouraged his readers to buy a large-scale local map, mark their own house with a blue dot, stand on a chair with 50 grains of salt and drop them on the plan. The reader would then be reassured by the discovery that ‘most of the salt grains have not hit any building at all… it will be a strange mischance if any grain of salt has actually hit the blue pencil point, which marks your own home’.53

  When the bombing began on a large scale in early September, the strain of constant attack began to tell. Home Intelligence found that in the aftermath of the raids on London’s docks there was more evidence of panic and mass evacuation, of ‘nerve cracking from constant ordeals’.54 It is no reflection on the courage or powers of endurance of the bombed populations that they sought a way out of the turmoil. In a great many cities refugees from bombing spread out into the surrounding countryside. At the end of September it was reported that it was ‘practically impossible to get a room anywhere within seventy miles of London’. The heavy raids on Plymouth and Southampton left thousands of people living in tents and rough camps on the outskirts. Thousands of Londoners left for destinations they believed safer. In the East End there were widespread anti-semitic rumours about Jews who fled first and fastest, or sat in air-raid shelters all day.55 Even the West End was not immune from such prejudices. When the author George Orwell heard the rumours, he went to investigate a sample of underground stations converted to bomb shelters by night: ‘Not all Jews,’ he noted in his diary, ‘but, I think, a higher proportion of Jews than one would normally see in a crowd of this size. What is bad about Jews is that they are not only conspicuous, but go out of their way to make themselves so.’56

  By late September the initial panics had died down; small thanks, perhaps, to Langdon-Davies. ‘Morale in general continues good,’ ran the Home Intelligence weekly report. This was attributed in official circles either to the fact that ‘the more depressed have evacuated themselves’, or to the discovery that air raids ‘are not so terrible once you have got used to them’.57 It owed something to the fact that the threat of German invasion was now palpably receding. Rumours of invasion had surfaced throughout the summer and autumn, most of them in areas very remote from the south coast. The military authorities were themselves exposed to regular invasion scares from a variety of intelligence sources. The Joint Intelligence Committee reported early in July that full-scale invasion could be expected at any time from the middle of the month, but the chiefs of staff took the view that invasion would only come after the air battle, and no further alert was issued until early September when photographic reconnaissance and isolated items of Enigma information suggested the concentration of German forces opposite the south coast. On 7 September the codeword CROMWELL was issued to prepare all home-based forces for immediate action.58

  The Air Ministry had provided a key numbered 1–3 for different states of readiness (1 = attack improbable, 2 = attack probable, 3 = attack imminent); on 27 August the key was suddenly reversed to make 1 the more dangerous option. On 7 September code 1 was activated for an invasion ‘likely to occur in the next twelve hours’. Some stations failed to get the alert at all; others still used the old 1 – 3 code.59 Even if the alert had been properly managed, Fighter Command was entirely absorbed by the air defence battle, and would have been severely pressed to fight off invasion at the same time. The weekend of 14 – 15 September was popularly regarded as ‘Invasion Weekend’ because of the conjunction of favourable tides and a full moon. On the south coast the fields and farmyards filled with troops ordered to sleep with their boots on. When nothing happened, alert no. 2 was issued, only for ‘invasion imminent’ to be reinstated on
22 September. Only on 25 October was no. 3 introduced permanently, by which time fragments of intelligence from Europe indicated that invasion was no longer likely.

  During October and November, bombing replaced invasion as the chief public concern. ‘There is neither fear nor expectation of invasion,’ ran the Home Intelligence report for the third week of October. After two months of bombing there was evidence of a strong desire to restore some sense of normality in cities where bombing occurred only seldom, and where damage was less than at first feared. Even in London, where there were 24 attacks in September, and an attack every night during October, the maintenance of daily life was a key to survival and a weapon against demoralization. The familiar images of workers and shoppers picking their way through bomb debris each morning is mute testimony to the efforts made to reassert the rhythms of ordinary life. The Daily Express ran a campaign under the caption ‘Don’t be a Bomb Bore’. When the Ministry of Information began to compile lists of ‘Questions the Public Are Asking’ in October, the newsletters were full of mundane inquiries: ‘Are animals allowed in shelters?’; ‘Are people liable to pay rent and rates if their houses are made uninhabitable?’; was there compensation for the loss of ‘false teeth, spectacles, gas masks…?’60