Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain

by Norman Gelb

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  New York Herald Tribune

  London, 31 August — In twelve months of war, the face of London has changed ... In their homes and at work, in shops, restaurants and theatres, by radio and by newspaper and by the sound of pulsing engines overhead, the men and women of London are continually reminded that Europe is at war, that the empire is in danger and that their country requires of them hard work and sacrifice until the Battle of Britain and the war of which it is part are brought to a successful end.

  Looking at the sky during the day, the Londoner sees countless silver-grey balloons tugging at the cables which hold them at sentry duty over the city. At night, he gropes his way along darkened streets, in danger of stumbling over sandbags piled in front of every second house, or of running head-on into a camouflaged pillbox at some strategic corner. During this moment of crisis for Britain, a simmering clash of views and personalities within the upper echelons of Fighter Command came to the boil, and though it had no bearing on the outcome of the battle, it generated bitterness still felt by men who experienced the sometimes dramatic consequences.

  11 Group Commander Keith Park, whose squadrons were most heavily engaged in the defence of Britain at the time, was in full accord with Fighter Command Commander-in-Chief Sir Hugh Dowding on strategy and tactics. Dowding and Park were given access to reports from ULTRA, the very hush-hush operation in which a special, top secret British intelligence unit monitored and decoded streams of German secret military communications. They, therefore, had some prior knowledge of Luftwaffe plans and operations. This knowledge reinforced Dowding’s determination to disrupt and repel the German onslaught by intercepting raiders whenever and wherever they appeared over Britain. With British forces outnumbered and the raids growing in frequency and coming in at short notice, that meant regularly sending up small numbers of defenders to clash with and try to disperse large enemy formations.

  10 Group Commander Quintin Brand agreed there was no acceptable alternative to this approach. But 12 Group Commander Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who, like Brand, knew nothing of the ULTRA secrets, thought Dowding’s tactics were fundamentally mistaken. Leigh-Mallory was convinced the German assault could be more quickly and more decisively thrown back if the attackers were challenged by big wings of British fighters, consisting of several squadrons fighting as a unit. He also bridled at the relative inactivity imposed on the squadrons under his command by Dowding’s insistence on keeping his reserves intact in case the Germans, with their vastly superior numbers, suddenly exerted even greater pressure than they had already.

  One of Leigh-Mallory’s squadron leaders was the remarkable, thirty-year-old Douglas Bader. Bader had lost both his legs in a flying display accident nine years earlier but, with the aid of artificial legs and an indomitable will, he had returned to active flying duty with the RAF when the war began. A forceful personality and, like Leigh-Mallory, frustrated at having to perform only a secondary role in the battle, Bader insisted ‘Big Wing’ tactics, which would finally bring him into the centre of the battle, were right and energetically promoted them. He was able to persuade Leigh-Mallory to authorize the formation and dispatch of the 12 Group ‘Duxford Wing’, which Bader led, though it was contrary to Dowding’s ideas and orders and infuriated many people in 11 Group, where the battle was being fought. Park later charged that the 12 Group Big Wing ‘on several occasions allowed my fighting aerodromes to be heavily bombed’ because, in effect, forming it up delayed the dispatch of requested back-up.

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  Flight Lieutenant Sir Archibald Hope

  The theory of the Big Wing was: if you had a raid of say fifty 109s coming in with a lot of bombers below it, one of our squadrons of twelve aircraft couldn’t do very much against them. You might shoot down four or five 109s. You might shoot down a couple of the bombers. But you couldn’t really stop the raid. However — so the theory went — if you had twenty-four or more aircraft up there, you’d stand a better chance of stopping it. But Leigh-Mallory and Douglas Bader were absolutely wrong about the Big Wing. Keith Park had no option. The way the Germans were coming in, he hadn’t got time to form up Big Wings. He hadn’t got enough squadrons. He had to get his aircraft airborne as quickly as he damn well could, in such numbers as he could.

  Aside from that, Leigh-Mallory and Keith Park hated each other’s guts. They couldn’t stand each other. If one said it was the right way to do something, the other would be quite certain to say it was the wrong way.

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  Squadron Leader George Barley

  The Big Wing was a damned silly idea. It was an offensive rather than a defensive formation — and we were on the defensive. It was far too unwieldy. Everybody would be in the air at the same time and then everybody would be landing at the same time. We’d all be down rearming and refuelling when the next wave of Germans came in and we’d be caught on the ground.

  The success of the Big Wing came later, when we went on the offensive over France. Then we held all the cards in our hands, and not only in greater numbers of fighters. We had all the tactical advantages then, as well. We were able to select our own weather, time, routes, targets, concentration of forces and, above all, surprise. We had none of those during the Battle of Britain and, therefore, the Big Wing was a mistake at that time.

  Not only that. We in 10 Group were often called on to help 11 Group, guarding their airfields when most of their squadrons were away or re-arming and refuelling on the ground. Keith Park would call our AOC, Quintin Brand, and say, ‘Please can I have a couple of your squadrons.’ Of course, Brand sent them along. Park also called Leigh-Mallory for help, but Leigh-Mallory wanted to have his aircraft in the air at the same time as the 11 Group squadrons. He didn’t like being out of the limelight. It would have meant all 11 and 12 Group aircraft re-arming and refuelling on the ground at the same time, an easy target for the German bombers. Dowding should have told Leigh-Mallory to pipe down. Unfortunately, instead he told Park and Leigh-Mallory to sort it out among themselves. Dowding was a tough nut, but wasn’t up to dealing with Leigh-Mallory.

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  Air Vice Marshal Keith Park

  On a few dozen occasions when I had sent every available squadron of 11 Group to engage the main enemy attack as far forward as possible, I called on 12 Group to send a couple of squadrons to defend a fighter airfield or other vital targets which were threatened by outflanking and smaller bomber raids. Instead of sending two squadrons quickly to protect the vital target, 12 Group delayed while they dispatched a large wing of four or five squadrons, which wasted valuable time ... Consequently, they invariably arrived too late to prevent the enemy bombing the target. On scores of days I called on 10 Group on my right for a few squadrons to protect some vital target. Never on any occasion can I remember this Group failing to send its squadrons promptly to the place requested, thus saving thousands of civilian lives and also the naval dockyards of Portsmouth, the port of Southampton and aircraft factories.

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  Flight Lieutenant Brian Kingcome

  In those days, you didn’t want one vast flying circus to meet the Germans. You wanted to cover as much of the big sky as possible. You didn’t need thirty-six or forty-eight aircraft to break up a bomber formation. You needed six or eight or twelve aircraft flying straight through the middle of it.

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  Squadron Leader Tom Gleave

  Apart from the fact that we didn’t have enough aircraft to keep putting a Big Wing aloft, there was a question of the time it took. If you wanted to send one squadron, it took fourteen minutes for it to get to 20,000 feet. Two squadrons took eighteen minutes. Three squadrons — about twenty-six minutes. Four squadrons — thirty-four to thirty-six minutes. And five squadrons, which is what Leigh-Mallory was aiming at, took forty-five to forty-eight minutes to form up and get to 20,000 feet. By then, the raid it would have been sent to meet would have been over and by using so many squadrons, subsequent raids coming in would arrive unchallenged. The result would have
been catastrophe.

  12 Group was supposed to cover Biggin Hill, Kenley, Northolt and the other 11 Group airfields while 11 Group squadrons were off the ground meeting the Hun coming in. It failed to do this. I know of at least one occasion when Keith Park rang up 12 Group and said, ‘You’re supposed to look after my airfields.’ He got no change out of that. Of thirty-two Big Wings sent off by 12 Group, only seven met the enemy and only once did the Big Wing get there first, before the bombs were dropped.

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  Pilot Officer Wally Wallens

  The Wing always arrived too late. Had those planes in the Wing come to our help in sections or flights or even squadrons, they would have got where they should have been much more quickly and we would have got the support we should have got.

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  Pilot Officer John Ellacombe

  We knew the 12 Group Big Wing got airborne on a few occasions. But it never got down to where we were in time. On a day that the North Weald aerodrome was bombed — and I, incidentally, lost all my kit in the raid — we were off over the Thames Estuary, trying to fight off a German raid. The rear of our sector, including North Weald, should have been guarded by the Duxford Wing but it was still forming up at the time and missed the bombers.

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  Marshal of the RAF Sir John Slessor, Chief of the Air Staff 1950-1952

  One cannot help admiring old Stuffy. He had his faults and was never an easy man to deal with. My only criticism of his handling of Fighter Command in the Battle is that the first essential of a C-in-C is to see that his subordinate commanders (a) understand and (b) fall in completely with his strategic instructions — and sack them if they do not ... L-M was an old friend of mine ... and I liked him. But he never should have been allowed to take the line he did ... I like to think that if I’d have been in Stuffy’s place I would ... much earlier have told L-M to shut up and get on with commanding his group in accordance with what he knew quite well was my policy.

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  Flying Officer Hugh Dundas

  I don’t think either the critics or the proponents of the Big Wing had it quite right. The Wing was too big and was probably operated from the wrong place and by the wrong headquarters. It should have been operated by 11 Group, not 12 Group. Some sort of wing tactics could have been made to work and to work effectively.

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  Flight Lieutenant Gordon Sinclair

  We felt the Big Wing was the correct way of operating because you were able to give yourself cover; for example, up sun. If you were flying blind as a single squadron or flight or section and had no cover up sun, you were terribly vulnerable. Flying as a wing, you could move people out to protect your tail, which is what we did.

  We were generally late when called into 11 Group, but we were operating from eighty miles north of London while the bombs were being dropped mostly around the Thames Estuary and on the airfields. There was no hope of our getting there if we were alerted late, had delays on the airfield and then had to get to 20,000 feet, which took a very long time. Even if the squadrons had gone off in flights, there still would have been those ridiculous delays when we were waiting for clearance to get off the ground. We’d be all ready to take off, pointing into the wind, ready for the word to go. But we had to wait. Our engines would get overheated and our tempers would get frayed. I think it was because of hesitation between the two Group headquarters, saying do we want them off or don’t we want them off. There were terrible differences of opinion about who should be called in and when.

  And when we did get off and got down to North Weald, we’d circle there for ages, knowing there was a bloody great battle going on further south. We certainly had the impression that, for reasons we couldn’t understand, we weren’t called in quickly enough.

  But I was only a pilot, commanding a flight. I wasn’t particularly involved in major thought about it all. One didn’t feel called upon to think ahead. One of the few people who did think ahead was Douglas Bader, who looked at things totally differently. He wanted to get mixed into the battle and realized that unless he fought like hell to get mixed in, he’d be left out.

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  F. W. Winterbotham, Chief of the Air Department of the British Secret Intelligence Service during the Second World War

  If, as Goring and Leigh-Mallory had wanted, Dowding had sent up mass formations of our own fighters, not only would they have been far less manoeuverable in attack on the German formations, but the balance of losses, which was in our favour when small formations of RAF fighters got in amongst the massed German aircraft, would have been lost.

  From where I sat, there was no adverse doubt at all about the way in which Dowding was fighting the battle, and his understanding and interpreting of ULTRA was obviously an important contribution to our success in this part of the war. Security dictated that only a very few people should get Goring’s signals (which ULTRA intercepted), and no doubt some of the young pilots in the Midlands felt the other fellows in the south were getting the glory. I watched Dowding and Park handle the ULTRA with supreme care, never hinting that the top secret alerts, which were given to the key sector aerodrome commanders, had come from intercepted signals.

  Dowding’s strategy of always having some fighters available to go up and meet every raid not only foxed the Germans as to our actual fighter strength, but also gradually wore down the morale of the Luftwaffe.

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  Sergeant David Cox

  There was a feeling among us in 12 Group that 11 Group was trying to keep the battle to itself. We wanted to see more of the action. It was ridiculous if you knew the enemy was a few miles south and you weren’t supposed to intercept or pursue them. We often didn’t take any notice. We went south of the Thames anyway and it caused a row.

  As for talk that 12 Group didn’t provide cover for 11 Group when it was asked to, it wasn’t as simple as that. Sometimes there was faulty information. Sometimes, when we were asked to cover an airfield and we spotted the enemy not far away, we went after them. It may have been a diversion to get us away. There were mistakes.

  Once Debden airfield was bombed from 1,000 feet, below cloud, while we were sitting up at 15,000 feet. That was a mistake, but not ours. The Observer Corps reported the Germans were coming at

  1,000 feet. But the 11 Group Controllers just didn’t believe it because it had never happened before and they thought a nought had accidentally been left off the report coming in. So the report they passed to us was German bombers at 10,000 feet instead of 1,000. We were waiting up there, above the cloud. The Germans came in below and we didn’t see them. We got the blame. That was unfair.

  You had to admire Douglas Bader. You couldn’t like him — there was this element of snobbishness about him. I don’t think he thought much of sergeant pilots. But he was an inspiration. His voice over the radio, when we were outnumbered in the air, gave us all confidence. He knew how to say the right thing at the right time up there.

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  Squadron Leader Jack Satchell

  Douglas Bader was a great man. I knew him before he lost his legs. He was an impossibly cocky young man because everything he tried to do, he did brilliantly. There were five squadrons at Duxford. Woody Woodhall, the station commander, said each of the squadron commanders would lead the Big Wing in turn when it was operational. But the four others of us agreed that Douglas was such a damned good leader that he should be regular wing leader.

  When we arrived at Northolt towards the end of the Battle of Britain, Keith Park came to welcome us to 11 Group, which was a very good show. But he spoilt it on learning that we had been operating in the Duxford Big Wing, of which he most strongly disapproved. He treated me to a long dissertation on the uselessness of the Duxford Wing and how any little success it had was due entirely to the kindness of heart of 11 Group in inviting us to come and join in after most of the job had already been done by 11 Group squadrons. He said every time the Big Wing had seen any action, the 11 Group squadrons had already broken up the Hun formations an
d we had merely been cleaning up Hun stragglers.

  That was different to my view on the subject. I remember those huge formations of Germans we ran into. Maybe they were stragglers, but I doubt it. There was a shocking amount of petty jealousy going on between 11 and 12 Group. I think it was chiefly due to Park, which was a great pity because he was a very fine AOC and the man who really saved Britain. Leigh-Mallory was almost as fine an AOC, but he had little opportunity to do much except push out those balbos.

  ‘Balbos’ were named after Italo Balbo, the Italian aviator and military tactician who pioneered the deployment of large formations of attack aircraft.

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  Pilot Officer Dennis David

  Pilots were killed in 11 Group who would not have been killed had 12 Group taken a greater part in the battle. We were screaming for them. But they weren’t there. They had a lot of good chaps in 12 Group. Many of them wanted badly to be down with us.

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  Pilot Officer Peter Brown

  We were doing patrols at the end of August, but we weren’t getting much action up in 12 Group. We wanted to get into the battle. We knew what was happening in 11 Group. There was a sense of frustration. I went to the CO and asked, ‘Why can’t we get transferred down?’ He said, ‘We’d all like to go.’