by Norman Gelb
Dowding was not alone among British war leaders in recognizing the need to keep home air defences strong. He was not alone in realizing the implications for Britain of the ferocity of the German air and airborne attacks on France, Belgium and The Netherlands. But the War Cabinet was mesmerized by the sudden irrepressible cascade of German forces across Europe and by the terrifying prospect of catastrophe — of actually losing the entire British Expeditionary Force! British leaders responded with almost reflexive acquiescence to plans for each desperate ‘supreme effort’ to save the BEF and keep France from collapse — and that meant more air power at the front, more fighters sent forward across the Channel, and more anguished warnings from Dowding that doom was around the corner. The situation in France had become so desperate so quickly that pleas from the front for help to relieve pressure on the bulk of the British Army there would, in any case, not have been easy to resist by the Chiefs of Staff. So much was at stake and so much was happening that a decision to cut and run barely got a hearing.
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General Sir Frederick Pile, Commanding General, Anti-Aircraft
The rest of us were so engrossed in the drama of the retreating British army, of the heroic defence of Calais, and of the slender hope there seemed to be of getting anyone back, that the future in which an invasion of this country was likely hardly worried us ... [But] Dowding had only one thought — how he could retain sufficient fighter squadrons and anti-aircraft guns to fight the battle which he so clearly foresaw was inevitable.
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Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard, Deputy Director of Air Intelligence during the Battle of Britain
Dowding’s concern was not to win battles in France but to be able to ensure, at all costs elsewhere, the integrity and efficiency of the air defence of Great Britain. It was to provide that deterrent and safeguard that his Fighter Command had been created, and for which he had long trained it, equipped it and was still perfecting it.
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Churchill was particularly receptive to the frantic insistence of the disintegrating French government that one big Allied push could be organized to stop the Germans, throw them back and save the BEF. Churchill’s personality had never been geared to sanctioning despair or retreat, certainly not within a few days of taking office. Though the push the French feverishly conjured up in their plans required the dispatch of still more British fighter squadrons to France, he was prepared to go along. Foreseeing the loss of those squadrons as well, and with them the chance to save Britain from disaster, Dowding composed a letter to the Air Ministry in London, putting on record in unmistakeable detail the perils of the situation and the possible consequences. By that act, he may have determined the outcome of the Battle of Britain:
Sir,
I have the honour to refer to the very serious calls which have recently been made upon the Home Defence Fighter Units in an attempt to stem the German invasion of the Continent.
2. I hope and believe that our Armies may yet be victorious in France and Belgium, but we have to face the possibility that they may be defeated.
3. In this case I presume there is no one who will deny that England should fight on, even though the remainder of the Continent of Europe is dominated by the Germans.
4. For this purpose it is necessary to retain some minimum fighter strength in this country and I must request that the Air Council will inform me what they consider this minimum strength to be, in order that I may take my dispositions accordingly.
5. I would remind the Air Council that the last estimate which they made as to the force necessary to defend this country was 52 Squadrons, and my strength has now been reduced to the equivalent of 36 Squadrons.
6. Once a decision has been reached as to the limit on which the Air Council and the Cabinet are prepared to stake the existence of the country, it should be made clear to the Allied Commanders on the Continent that not a single aeroplane from Fighter Command beyond the limit will be sent across the Channel, no matter how desperate the situation may become.
7. It will, of course, be remembered that the estimate of 52 Squadrons was based on the assumption that the attack would come from the eastwards except in so far as the defences might be outflanked in flight. We have now to face the possibility that attacks may come from Spain or even from the north coast of France. The result is that our line is very much extended at the same time as our resources are reduced.
8 .I must point out that within the last few days the equivalent of 10 Squadrons have been sent to France, that Hurricane Squadrons remaining in this country are seriously depleted, and that the more squadrons which are sent to France the higher will be the wastage and the more insistent the demand for reinforcements.
9. I must therefore request that as a matter of paramount urgency, the Air Ministry will consider and decide what level of strength is to be left to Fighter Command for the defence of this country, and will assure me that when this level has been reached, not one fighter will be sent across the Channel however urgent and insistent the appeals for help may be.
10. I believe that, if an adequate fighter force is kept in the country, if the fleet remains in being, and if Home Forces are suitably organised to resist invasion, we should be able to carry on the war single-handed for some time, if not indefinitely. But, if the Home Defence Force is drained away in desperate attempts to remedy the situation in France, defeat in France will involve the final, complete and irremediable defeat of this country.
H.C.T. Dowding
Air Chief Marshal
Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief
Fighter Command, Royal Air Force
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Despite the mesmerizing impact of the catastrophe closing in across the Channel, the danger to Britain if fighter planes continued to be consigned to the bottomless pit over there was finally grasped. After Dowding’s letter was circulated in the Air Ministry, among the Chiefs of Staff and in the War Cabinet, Churchill regretfully ruled that ‘no more squadrons of fighters will leave the country whatever the need of France’, though they would be employed to cover an evacuation of the BEF from France if such an evacuation became necessary — and possible. At the same time, serious thought was being given by the British Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff to the even greater peril facing the country.
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Cabinet Paper — Secret
1. In view of the imminent danger of invasion of this country, the Chiefs of Staff Committee have suggested that steps should be taken at once to warn and to rouse the public.
2. Although the mass of the people are not wholly aware of the danger, the idea is beginning to take shape to the public mind. People now want to be told how to prepare themselves for the emergency. The time for exhortation is passing. There is no longer need to persuade people to volunteer for service; they want to be told what to do and where they should offer themselves for service in the national cause.
3. At the moment, however, public feeling about a possible invasion cannot be dissociated from the news of the withdrawal of the BEF from Northern France. Up to the time that this news comes out, we can only prepare the ground, but as soon as the news is announced, the nation should be immediately roused to the danger of invasion and to the need of resistance.
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General Sir Hastings Ismay, Secretary to the War Cabinet
Prime Minister,
It has hitherto been thought that a seaborne invasion of this country was an enterprise which the Germans could not hope to launch with any prospect of success for some considerable time. Moreover it has been assumed that the sequence of events would be first a sustained attack to destroy our air force, then an airborne invasion to seize a port, after which the seaborne invasion would take place. Hence our Home Defence preparations at the present time are mainly directed towards dealing with the problems of parachute troops and with the protection of the ports from the landward side. I think the events of the last few days and the grim possibilities of the next must cause us to modify our views.
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br /> In view of past experience in Norway, Holland and France, it can be taken for granted that the Germans have the plan for the invasion of this country worked out to the last detail, and have provided all necessary special equipment, such as motor landing craft, &c ... We can be sure that Hitler would be prepared to sacrifice ninety percent of the whole expedition if he could gain a firm bridgehead on British soil with the remaining ten percent. The German numerical superiority in the air is still very formidable. By using a mass of bombers escorted by strong forces of fighters, the Germans might calculate on maintaining a local air superiority sufficient for the launching of a seaborne expedition very early in their campaign against us. Besides landing troops from the air to seize a port, they might make their landings on the open beach with forces which included tanks and artillery.
Recent events have shown the terrible results which can be achieved by armoured forces operating through a country which has not been prepared to oppose them ... No real progress can be made [to build defences] unless the powers over persons and property which it is intended that the Government should assume in a grave emergency are taken at once. Otherwise, the military authorities will be hampered in the preparation of defences, the making of obstacles, &c, by having to go through the normal procedure of acquisition and compensation ... I feel very strongly that the grave emergency is already upon us. I suggest ... that full powers should be given forthwith to the military authorities to enable them to carry out defensive measures of all kinds without reference to any other authority and without hampering forms of procedure ...
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Edward R. Murrow, CBS Radio News
London, 21 May — During most of the winter and spring, this seemed an almost casual war as viewed from London. The British exhausted their vocabulary of condemnation, asserted that right was on their side, and seemed to feel that Germany could be strangled at long range without too much trouble. All that has changed. The change doesn’t show itself in hysteria or patriotic outbursts. In fact, it would be hard to put into words this change that has taken place. To me it seems that this country is younger than it was ten days ago. There is more bitterness not only against the Germans, but against the men in this country who failed to realize the nature of the German threat, who failed to prepare to meet it, those who failed to drive the aircraft production at top speed in the days following Munich, those who starved the British Secret Service for funds. There is no more talk of peace aims, only talk of holding on, avoiding defeat, and then trying for victory.
As plans to prepare for the expected invasion attempt by the Germans began to unfold, steps were taken to call back what remained of the RAF squadrons in France, to save them from further destruction and to bolster the country’s home defences. Some flew back from base to base through France, until they hopped over the Channel and were finally home. Others scrambled homeward just in time as advancing German ground forces neared.
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Flying Officer Peter Matthews
The Germans were just ten miles north of us when we got airborne to fly home. We took back all the planes we could. We put our French interpreter in a plane and he flew it back. One or two Czechs and Poles who were there said they could fly so we stuck them in planes too and pushed them off towards England. They mostly got there. We destroyed the planes we couldn’t take along.
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Pilot Officer Roland Beamont
When we were out of France, I found myself in a DC2 of KLM being evacuated. We had eight pilots left but only four planes. The squadron commander spun a coin and I was among the losers and was told to get into the DC2 for the flight home. I didn’t think much of that because I wondered if that airliner would be able to get out of France without being shot down. Most of the chaps with me in the plane had been wounded, some badly. I was in dirty flying overalls. I’d left all my kit behind. I sat there looking out of the window for enemy fighters as we flew home. We knew the Germans would be coming after us to England and that it would be our job to stop them.
The cold, cruel facts of their losses in combat and their undignified scramble homeward were bad enough. But the British experienced situations and circumstances in their retreat through France which compounded their anguish. The seemingly indiscriminate terror tactics which were part of the German blitzkrieg strategy gave war, and the threat to Britain, a far more terrifying aspect than any of the young pilots had ever imagined it would contain.
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Pilot Officer Dennis David
I saw refugees walking down streets with prams full of their belongings. And I saw the Germans strafing them. It was hideous. The Germans would strafe the roads full of refugees on purpose to cause congestion. Their tanks would then scoot around it. It stopped our troops from coming forward to meet them. It was a carefully organized plan, brilliant in concept. It was something we weren’t used to. It put a new dimension into war. They bombed helpless people and used the shambles to move their forces forward. We knew it could happen in Britain.
Once, six of us ran into forty Ju 87s dive-bombing a stream of refugees. We shot down fourteen of them and broke up that raid. As we were going back to our base, another 150 German aircraft came in, but we were out of ammunition. It was hopeless.
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Flight Lieutenant Gerry Edge
People were pushing wheelbarrows. Horses were pulling carts. There were trucks loaded with stuff and carrying children. And there was a Stuka above them with its rear gunner machine-gunning those refugees. Just hosing them down. That was the only time I remember deliberately firing at somebody rather than at an object.
I thought it might be a trap for me. I looked around carefully and closed in quickly, ready to break if someone got on my tail. I was not far behind that Stuka when he saw me and started to swing his guns around. I pressed the trigger and he went straight down in flames. I felt a savage delight in killing the two bastards in that plane who’d been murdering the refugees.
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P.J. Philip, New York Times
About the effects of these bombing raids on the nerves, no soldier or civilian who has ever suffered one has any doubt. They are hellish. Every soldier agrees that shelling and machine-gunning, as they were done in [the First World War], had nothing of the terror of these 300- mile-an-hour dives to a height of about 200 feet and the scream and pound, pound, pound of the bombs that are neatly released by a little automatic switch.
The British were also often outraged, and profoundly disappointed, by the performance of their Allies. Despite the pre-war swagger of the French, and though French troops fought heroically in some places, France was woefully unprepared for modern combat and their military forces were led with breathtaking incompetence. The rapid pace of the collapse of the French on their home ground was astounding and even obscene to young Englishmen who had no doubt that they and their countrymen would fight like demons for every inch of British soil. As they fell back in retreat across northern France, many were also appalled by the treatment they received at the hands of many French people.
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Squadron Leader Jack Satchell
People have said the French peasants were very good to the British when we were being forced out of France. My experience was: like hell they were! After getting out of Merville as the Germans were coming in, I had to walk to Boulogne, about forty miles — hiding during the day. We were about one field in from the road along which the German armoured divisions were travelling. Ask the French peasants for food and they’d send a boy on a pushbike to fetch the nearest Hun. I pinched things out of the field to eat. Once I knocked off a chicken from somebody’s farmyard. We had to eat it raw. We found it was better eaten warm than when it got cold. Pretty revolting either way.
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Pilot Officer Roland Beamont
We thought if we’re going to rely on the French, God help us. We didn’t see any French fighter planes once the battle began. They may have been fighting their arses off further down the line, but we didn’t see t
hem.
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Pilot Officer Pat Hancock
I was scared because of the way the Germans had crashed through the ‘invulnerable’ French army. When we pulled out of France, we finally ended up in Nantes, near St Nazaire. Four of our squadrons ended up there. The local French colonel, in charge of ground defences of the field, seriously suggested that we should surrender to him, to be handed over to the Germans when Paris fell. It was appalling. We had gone off the French to such a degree at that stage that our main feeling on leaving France was total gratitude that we’d left the damned place and the perfidious French. We were fighting the Germans, but they were the enemy. The French were a different matter.
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When the air cleared sufficiently for a reckoning to be made and calculations to register, it was finally realized how serious British air losses in Europe had been. The Royal Air Force had lost 320 of its most experienced pilots, killed in combat. More than one hundred others were prisoners of the Germans. Many of the aircrew of British bombers were also killed or captured. The RAF had lost almost one thousand aircraft, including 386 Hurricanes, many of which had been destroyed on the ground either in German air attacks or to keep them from falling into German hands. That was one-quarter the number of Fighter Command’s modern aircraft, the planes Dowding had been counting on to fight off the expected German bid for mastery of the English skies. They had been lost with nothing to show for it. Nor could Fighter Command yet begin the process of recuperating, regrouping and recovering.
On 20 May, German forces reached the English Channel near the town of Abbeville in Picardy in northern France to lock virtually the entire British Expeditionary Force and the remains of three French armies against a small stretch of Channel coast. Spirited rearguard action kept them from immediately springing their trap, but they relentlessly forced the battered Allied troops back on the city of Dunkirk. By nightfall four days later, the Germans were fifteen miles from the city and within sight of their most spectacular victory so far. In London, Churchill warned Parliament to brace itself for ‘hard and heavy tidings’. But before the German forces could move in to extract an ignominious surrender from the Allied armies, Hitler, who had been growing nervous and superstitious because of the remarkable success of his forces, ordered his generals, to their astonishment and fury, to halt their advance.
