While this last attack was still in progress, the destroyers received a signal that fighter cover was now overhead; but, in fact, it was nowhere near, the fighters having flown far out to the French coast. When the damage was examined in harbour it was found that the two bombs which had struck the quarter deck of the Brilliant had both of them missed the propeller shaft by about a foot, but the only real damage they had done was to flood the Tiller Flat. On the other hand, there was a lot of damage by the near-misses, which had punched the water against the side of the ship; the cast-iron supports of the Boiler Room fans were cracked, purely by concussion. The heavy casualties in the Boreas had been caused by the bombs passing through the bridge and exploding below in the Galley Flat.
Only eleven ships of the convoy passed Dungeness; next day, three more of them were sunk. Convoy C.W.8 had endured, as Captain Sclanders of the Tamworth put it, ‘a heavy dusting off Dover’. The town itself was full of ‘bombed-out’ seamen. In soaked clothes, or in borrowed ones, they sat about. At the moment of landing, and for several hours afterwards, many were in bad shape — trembling and taking cover at any air raid warning. But when the effects of shock and excitement wore off, most returned to normal; many, that night, were in the pubs, singing in chorus and showing no outward trace of their ordeal.
But they were civilians — they signed on for the voyage only; there was no power to make them sign on again; they could leave the sea altogether if they liked. How many would volunteer for a repeat dose? A good many did — and virtually all the officers.
Two days later, on 27th July, a destroyer was sunk off Dover. The German attacks were coming in mounting rhythm and the pace was becoming hot, even though only a small proportion of the Luftwaffe was as yet engaged. Dover, as an advanced base for the anti-invasion flotilla of destroyers, was abandoned. Apart from a few small minesweepers and tugs, nothing British moved in the Straits by day. The Germans had virtual control of the Channel at its narrowest point
2 - Action this Day
‘Could you let me know on one sheet of paper what arrangements you are making about the Channel convoys now that the Germans are all along the French coast? The attacks on the convoys yesterday, both from the air and by E-boats, were very serious, and I should like to be assured this morning that the situation is in hand and that the Air is contributing effectively.’ (Memo from Prime Minister, d/d 5th July, 1940.)
‘THE COAL-SCUTTLE BRIGADE’ came into being, if not with a bang, then at least with a rocket — in the shape of the above memorandum, marked for ‘Action This Day’, from Winston Churchill to the Vice-Chief of Naval Staff, it referred to the mauling of a Channel convoy on the previous day — 4th July.
The mauling of the convoy produced the ‘rocket’. The ‘rocket’ produced action that very day. The Admiralty decided to stop all normal Channel traffic — which included large ocean-going ships — and to allow through the Channel only convoys of small coasting vessels, mainly colliers. That is, the seaborne coal trade continued — but London and Southampton, as major ports for convoys from the west, were voluntarily put out of action. London still took a proportion of its former traffic, for the East Coast route was less closely threatened at that time. Down that route, in the first place, sailed the colliers from the coal ports of the North. But the ports of the south coast, great and small, were deserted. Only the colliers and a few warships moved on that route.
After twenty days of air attack, even the colliers stopped. But the halt was short-lived. Within a few weeks of ‘Black Thursday’, the collier convoys had been re-started, with rapidly improvised protection. They never stopped after that. But they had the Channel to themselves. And, broadly speaking, that continued until well into 1943, when the tide began to turn. Then, very curious shipping movements began to take place in the Channel, culminating in a very different sort of Channel convoy. And in the end, before the war ended, the ‘Coal-Scuttle Brigade’ went to France
Along the coast-line of Occupied Europe, the Germans, too, ran their coastal convoys. At first, as we did, in daylight; later, as we did, at night. And as they attacked our convoys, we attacked theirs. The end of 1942 marks approximately the turning point: before that time, they had done our convoys serious damage and we had done little damage to theirs; after that time, they did us little hurt, and we started to hurt them. In other words, the battle of the coastal shipping routes followed the general pattern of the war. And this was because all the vital decisions affecting the events of 1940 had been taken by 1936. Men who died in 1940 did so as a result of something done — or not done — four years before. By no possible chance whatever could a major decision made in 1940 take effect until 1943. Bombers don’t grow on trees. Tanks are not picked up, wild, in the hedgerows. And destroyers can’t be forced, under glass, in two weeks. In 1940, many merchant sailors must have wished to God they could.
*
On 25th June there was a rush for the evening papers. The headlines read: ‘Bugles Sounded “Cease Fire” in France This Morning.’ In smaller type: ‘At 12.35 this morning the Battle of France ended and the Battle of Britain began.’
Across the Dover Straits, the Germans had been three weeks in occupation. Gun emplacements were being built, and the guns lifted into position, particularly on the great headland of Cap Gris-Nez, 22 miles from Dover. Daily, German radio sets shook as the stations boomed out the swelling, confident march — Wir fahren gegen England. It thundered across the Channel to British listeners — about a third of them listened to Haw Haw and the German radio.
The guns were intended to cover with fire the flanks of the German invasion flotillas heading for the Dover area; and to keep their flanks guarded for the endless lines of supply ships that must sustain them. They were heavy guns, and there were many of them; even so, almost certainly not enough for the job they were supposed to do. In the event, they did not have to do it. The only targets that passed their muzzles were small warships and the slowly-lumbering colliers of the Channel convoys. In six weeks they would be ready to open fire.
The Luftwaffe had just completed an exhausting campaign. It had now to launch another — against England. The British fighter and bomber bases were long-prepared. The Germans’ were not. They moved, where they could, into French aerodromes. There were not enough of them: more had to be built. Stores, workshops, transport, equipment of all kinds had to be moved from Germany to the Channel coast. The Luftwaffe was not ready yet, and the Battle of Britain had not begun. The whole force of the Luftwaffe was to be gathered together and flung in one overwhelming mass against the British Isles — the defence was to be steam-rollered. That great operation was given the code-name of Adlerangriff — Eagle Attack — and the day was planned for the first week of August. In fact, ‘Eagle Day’ did not come until 12th August — when it went off at half-cock — and on that day the actual Battle of Britain begins. What went before was the preliminary sparring match — and that was the Battle of the Channel Convoys.
The first aircraft to be flown into the French aerodromes on the Channel coast were fighters and light dive-bombers. They could operate from small airfields, and they did not need runways. They were designed for just such conditions as these. It was this force — a comparatively small one — which opened the batting.
*
The first phase lasted little more than a week — from 1st to 9th July. In those nine days the naval ports of Dover, Weymouth, Portland, Plymouth and Falmouth were bombed in daylight and there were seven attacks on convoys in the Channel. Among them, on 4th July, the ill-fated OA 178.
OA 178 passed Dover, westbound, on 3rd July. The German guns were not ready to fire, though field-grey working parties were struggling feverishly to get them into position. The convoy moved on slowly to the west. There were ships of all types and sizes in it — not just small coastal colliers. At lunch-time on the 4th it was off Portland. And there the Germans caught it. Handfuls of bombers — six at a time — protected by equally small groups of fighters, ripped down
at it, almost without opposition from the R.A.F. They sent four ships to the bottom, and left nine damaged — stopped, burning, out of control. The remaining ships, as they steamed slowly to the west, left behind them a trail of wounded merchantmen and all the pitiful wreckage of war at sea — riddled lifeboats and men swimming in the oil-soaked sea.
Darkness had barely hidden their wounds before the next wave of attackers came in — E-boats this time. Only a handful of them — once again — but they sank one ship and damaged two more. This could hardly be blamed on the lack of fighters, but there was a howl of rage from the Navy. There were bitter accusations: ‘No fighters and no escort worth talking about … nobody to appeal to if the Air don’t turn up … a criminally inefficient system.’[2]
OA 178 had sailed straight into inter-Service controversy of long-standing and great bitterness. It threatened to wreck Dowding’s plans for the Battle of Britain, still to come. In some form or other, all countries possessing air forces as well as armies and navies, experienced it. It was inevitable, for their functions interlocked.
The Channel convoys were a catspaw in the deadly game just beginning. For the High Command of the Luftwaffe they were gambit No. 2 — in the game that was to end with the invasion of England, if the English reacted. Gambit No. 1 had been ‘free chase’ over England for the German fighters. But the English wouldn’t fight. They would attack their coastal shipping — cut their trade routes — and force Fighter Command to battle in defence of them.
As long as only fighters came over, Fighter Command wouldn’t play. Dowding had not the least intention of obliging the Luftwaffe. The Germans then played their second card — the 250 stukas available on the forward aerodromes in France. From the first week of July onwards they threw them at Channel convoys. They forced the R.A.F. to put up a token defence and notwithstanding that defence, drove all merchant ships out of the Channel. All except the colliers.
The south coast was dependent on sea-borne coal. 40,000 tons was needed per week. The colliers had to go through. And the Germans had to attack them, in order to bring the R.A.F. to battle. The Coal-Scuttle Brigade were launched upon their odyssey.
I make no apology for now dealing with the air situation. The colliers were bombed, not because they were colliers; not because the German thought them particularly valuable or important; they were attacked and sunk as a tactical move in the air battle between Fighter Command and the Luftwaffe. And that air battle was a preliminary to the Battle of Britain, which was in turn a preliminary to Operation SEALION — the invasion of England. The coastal convoys lost, during this opening phase, one ship sunk or damaged beyond repair out of every three that sailed.
Three great Air Fleets were moving into position in a great arc round the British Isles. Luftflotte 5 (Stumpff) was to operate against the East Coast from bases in Norway — tills was the weakest of the three. Luftflotte 2 (Kesselring) was based in the Low Countries and Northern France — and it was this air fleet which had the duty of closing the Straits of Dover. Luftflotte 3 (Sperrle) was on its left — to the westward.
The Germans, too, had their inter-Service squabbles. An indication of how they had solved it lay in the fact that Kesselring — the man most concerned with attacks on Channel convoys — was not an airman at all. He was a soldier — and a soldier’s soldier. It was Kesselring who afterwards declared that he couldn’t get the R.A.F. to fight. Nor could he. His opponent, ‘Stuffy’ Dowding, had not the least intention of falling in with his enemy’s moves — of letting the Luftwaffe dictate where, when, and under what conditions the battle should be fought.
In the quality of his aircraft, he had no advantage. Generally speaking, the Luftwaffe had better aircraft than the R.A.F. Dowding’s actions, and the course of the battle, cannot be understood unless this fact is grasped. It is difficult to grasp, because of the weight of propaganda poured out then, and since. The official histories have corrected this — but they are not widely read. The only clue at the time was the consistently false note which was struck by the aeronautical press. They praised one German aircraft only — the Me 110. The Germans considered it a wretched flop. Two German aircraft they consistently and viciously denigrated — the Me 109 and the Ju 88. These two were better than anything we had.
They were better in performance, and they were better in detail design. The Germans had direct-injection engines, self-sealing fuel tanks, and rubber dinghies in their fighters — all of which the R.A.F. lacked. And the Me 109 was the fastest fighter in the world. Contemporary claims, officially made for the Spitfire at the time, are false. It was slower than the Me 109; and the Hurricane was slower still; and the two-seater Defiant, much-boosted, was a flying coffin. But the Spitfire was superior to the Me 109 in one respect — it was more manoeuvrable.
As far as battles over the Channel were concerned, the Luftwaffe had the advantage in quality of aircraft. The quality of the air crews is more difficult to compare; there was probably not much in it, but Fighter Command, for reasons mentioned later, may have had some ascendancy of morale.[3] As far as quantity was concerned, the Germans had a considerable overall advantage — though not as great as was believed at the time; but it is vital to remember that the gap closed steadily during the period of attacks on convoys, owing to Dowding’s policy. The result of their sufferings was not only to keep industry going in the south, but to double the number of fighters available for the Battle of Britain.
The force being built up for that battle was to be in a ‘state of readiness’ by 20th July. On that date the three air fleets facing England had, serviceable, some 800 bombers, 250 short-range dive-bombers, and 820 fighters.
On 6th September, with the Battle of Britain more than half over, the leading aeronautical journal in England (by then, virtually an official publication) announced that Germany possessed 7,000 bombers and 4,000 fighters, two-thirds of which were available for use against this country. The Luftwaffe records for the following day, 7th September, have been preserved. They are counter-signed by Albert Speer, and show that the number of German fighters serviceable and available for operations against England on that day was — 762. That is, about the same as Fighter Command.
Three months before, Fighter Command had had only about half that number of fighters. It was a surprising and quite decisive change. Dowding had known his advantage, and held it. The real, battle-winning superiority which the R.A.F. had over the Luftwaffe lay in the unique system of ground control — of warning and direction of fighters onto the enemy. Warned by radar and directed by R/T, the British fighters were under the thumb of their commander second by second. Whereas the Germans received orders in the briefing room before they left; and no more after that. They were fighting blind, against a foe who had most unexpectedly grown eyes where no eyes should be. It was the only system of its kind in the world, and when the German pilots realized what they were up against, they were dismayed.
But the system did not work very well over the Channel — the period between the radar warning and the arrival of the raiders was too short. It had never been designed to deal with this proposition. When planned, many years before the war, the assumption was that the bombers would be coming from Germany — not from the French coast. Literally, minutes counted now. A raid on targets inland, perhaps only five or ten minutes’ flying time inland, made all the difference. And there, too, the raiders could be counted by the Observer Corps. For the early radar, though it gave accurately the bearing of the attackers, was often at fault in registering their numbers.
What happened over the Channel, only too often, was that a single German aircraft was reported flying in; and perhaps two fighters directed on to it. When they made their interception, they might find — not one lonely German — but a squadron. They were often outnumbered, and their casualties were high.
So, when the convoy-attack phase opened on 1st July, the defence was gravely handicapped. Warning would be received late, often too late to mass an equal number of British aircraft; the number o
f raiders might be larger than was indicated, sometimes very much larger; the British fighters were technically inferior to the German fighters, and especially so over the Channel and Channel coast; and the Germans, at that time, had a great overall superiority in numbers of fighters.
Fighter Command’s lowest point was Dunkirk. On 4th June it had been reduced to 446 serviceable fighters — of which only 331 were Spitfires and Hurricanes. The others, though they might perhaps be of use, far inland, against unescorted bombers, had no chance against the Me 109s. For all practical purposes Fighter Command was outnumbered by nearly three to one in fighters; six to one in all.
It was vital that the new production coming from the factories, and the new pilots from the schools, should not be thrown in piece-meal; that the force should be conserved, and built up. By 11th August, the day before the Battle of Britain began, Dowding had nearly doubled his strength — he now had 704 fighters serviceable, of which no less than 620 were Spitfires and Hurricanes. It was just enough.
*
All this time, from the first serious attacks on Channel convoys in early July, Dowding was under intense pressure. He calculated that, for the full protection of shipping between Land’s End and the Humber, he would need to employ 40 squadrons. If he did so, he would uncover the aircraft factories on which his Command depended for their reserves during the impending battle. All the fighters in the United Kingdom couldn’t have protected both. Somebody had to get hurt. It was to be the convoys, and the men who sailed in them.
3 - The Battle of the Channel
SUCH was the background to that decisive battle, during which the coasters were to be sent on their death run. From 1st July, the German ‘decoy ducks’ — as the Messerschmitt pilots called the handful of Ju 87s they had to protect — were thrown at the Channel convoys as bait to bring the battered R.A.F. prematurely to battle.
The Coal-Scuttle Brigade Page 2