The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  But recover he did, although there was little he could do about the serious damage to the cornea of his left eye. At his medical, he was declared unfit for flying, but fortunately for him his commanding officer at JG 2 decided to give him a chance to prove himself. This he did, demonstrating that, despite the glass splinters still in his eye, he could see – and fly – perfectly well. He also proved his marksmanship by being selected for the Luftwaffe clay pigeon shooting competition team which beat the best civilian team in the country.

  Surviving another crash – and a second medical – he was eventually sent to Spain, where he flew over 300 missions. Opinionated, cocksure and undeniably fearless, Dolfo soon developed a considerable reputation, not only for his flying skill – which was considerable – but also for his individual style and strong personality. Good-looking with a neat film star moustache, he smoked cigars even when he was flying, and liked to decorate his aircraft with a picture of Mickey Mouse. It made him stand out.

  Most of all, however, Dolfo Galland wanted to be a great fighter pilot. Now the war in the west had begun, it was to his frustration that he found himself largely desk-bound as adjutant of JG 27. Two days into the campaign, however, he decided to take matters into his own hands. On 12 May, as JG 27 was covering the Sixth Army’s efforts to cross the Maas and Albert Canal, Dolfo attached himself to a patrol over Maastricht. Five miles west of Liège, and at a height of some 12,000 feet, he spotted eight Belgian Hurricanes a few thousand feet below. Diving down on them, he got behind one with ease; the enemy planes had not spotted him or his wingman. Much to his disappointment, he barely felt the adrenalin begin to flow; it was all too easy. ‘Come on, defend yourself!’ he thought, as soon as he had one of them directly in his sights. Closing further and still without being noticed, he opened fire. It was, he knew, at slightly too great a distance, but he still hit the Hurricane. A second burst saw bits of rudder and wings come away and, realizing he had got his man, Dolfo went after the other seven, who had now woken up to the presence of two Me 109s behind them. Closing in at a hundred yards, Dolfo followed a second through some cloud and opened fire again. The Hurricane stalled and fell out of the sky. So that was two.

  Flying again later that afternoon, Dolfo shot down a third, but at the end of the day he felt no great sense of satisfaction, but rather a twinge of conscience. ‘The congratulations of my superiors and my comrades left an odd taste in my mouth,’ he noted. ‘An excellent weapon and luck had been on my side. To be successful, the best fighter pilot needs both.’

  In 1940, the best pilots also needed experience, and the Spaniards like Dolfo Galland and Hajo Herrmann had bucketloads of that. Inexperienced Belgian pilots did not have a chance against someone like Dolfo. Yet although these few could offer advice to those of lesser experience in the Luftwaffe, the fact was that the vast majority of German pilots flying over the western front had little if any combat flying time at all. Siegfried Bethke was very aware of the lack of gunnery practice he had had during his training and since joining JG 2. ‘Young pilots have not had practice with air targets during training,’ he noted, ‘only with targets on the ground.’ He keenly felt that he should have been shooting down more enemy aircraft in the encounters he had had during the first days of the campaign. Yet no matter how much training an individual might have done, real combat was a very different kettle of fish. Experience – hard combat experience – was unquestionably the best training of all.

  One of those discovering this for himself was Leutnant Günther Rall, a pilot in the 8th Staffel of III/JG 52. The first week of the campaign had been quiet. III/JG 52 was part of Luftflotte 3 supporting Army Group A, but since the army had now broken through along the Meuse, the air force had begun going forward too. First, the group had moved closer to the German border, but now, on Saturday, 18 May, the 8th Staffel’s ten serviceable 109s had been ordered to fly to a new airfield at Trier-Euren and then to rendezvous with a reconnaissance aircraft in the Nancy area and escort it home.

  Günther, a 22-year-old from Stuttgart, had first joined the army four years earlier, but while at military college in Dresden had moved across to the Luftwaffe instead. ‘I had a friend who was at the Air Force officers’ school,’ says Günther. ‘We met every Saturday and he told me about his flying. That was more my thing, so I made an application for a change and I was accepted.’ That had been in July 1938, and from the outset, he had been determined to be a fighter, rather than a bomber, pilot. Fortunately for him, he proved so good at aerobatics during his A/B training that having been awarded his military pilot’s certificate and badge, and with 190 hours’ flying on thirteen different types of aircraft, he was posted to the Werneuchen Fighter Pilots’ School in Brandenburg a year later.

  Taught by Spanish Civil War veterans, Günther completed his fighter training flying the new Messerschmitt 109D, or ‘Dora’ as it was known. Although he had flown a number of different types, he was unprepared – as David Crook had been during his first flight in a Spitfire – for the sudden surge of power and performance the 109 offered. ‘The demands of this powerful machine are quite unlike anything I have flown before,’ he noted, then added, ‘the Messerschmitt is no docile carthorse, but a highly-strung thoroughbred.’ In breeding it shared much with the Spitfire; but, for all its power, it was also a far less forgiving machine. For those who tamed it, the rewards were many; those who did not were soon thrown from the saddle.

  When Günther joined JG 52 in September 1939, he had still not had any gunnery training and was yet to fire a shot from a 109. During the Sitzkrieg, JG 52 had remained at Böblingen, just ten minutes’ flying time from the Rhine. Although Günther flew on a number of operational missions and continued training and familiarizing himself with the new 109E1s and E3s, by the time the offensive in the west began, he had become an experienced pilot but remained an inexperienced fighter pilot.

  Now, at 18,000 feet over Nancy some time after 6 p.m. on 18 May, Günther was about to have his first combat action. Blessed with extremely sharp eyesight, he was the envy of his comrades, who believed he would be able to spot a target while it was still flying around the other side of the world. Needless to say, he was the first to spot the Heinkel 111 reconnaissance aircraft they were supposed to be liaising with. ‘Twelve o’clock, five kilometres, same height,’ he told the others over the R/T.

  The Heinkel droned towards them like a lazy insect. The sun was low in the sky, spreading a soft, golden yellow light. Then suddenly Günther spotted some small black dots in the distance.

  ‘Indianer!’ he warned the rest of the Staffel. ‘Indianer at twelve o’clock, Hanni six thousand five hundred! Ten or more!’ They were 500 metres above the Heinkel.

  ‘Viktor! Viktor! I have them!’ replied Oberleutnant Lothar Ehrlich, the Staffel commander, a moment later. He gave them some orders and Günther and the rest of his Schwarm pushed forward the throttle and began climbing above the Heinkel, which continued on its same level course. Günther clicked the weapons safety catch, so that it moved forward to form a trigger: now, at the press of his finger, two MG17 machine guns above the engine, plus a 20 mm cannon firing through the propeller hub and a further two cannons in the wings, would pack a lethal punch.

  In moments, the enemy aircraft were hurtling down towards the Heinkel. With their grey-green fuselages and red and blue roundels, Günther recognized them immediately as French Curtiss fighters. Seeing Ehrlich dive down on the French leader, Günther pulled his own aircraft into a steep dive and within seconds was sitting on the tail of one of the French leader’s two wingmen. The French pilot immediately wrenched his Curtiss into a sharp turn, but not before Günther, having made a split-second judgement of distance and aim-off, opened fire and felt his Messerschmitt judder as bullets and cannon shells spat from his guns. The Curtiss was burning, but no sooner had Günther seen this than a loud clatter raked across his own plane. Gripped by a feeling of pure terror, he realized he had almost been shot down in turn by the French top cover. Hurling
his plane around the sky in a desperate attempt to throw off his attacker, he made one turn so violent and steep that the automatic leading edge slots popped out of the wing and the Messerschmitt violently dropped as if it had been whiplashed. Günther cursed, but in truth, it had probably saved his life.

  Suddenly, the sky was empty. As soon as he was able to pull his plane out of its involuntary dive he cast his head around, desperately looking for the rest of the Staffel. Sweat poured down his face from under his leather flying helmet; his heart pounded madly. He wondered whether his machine was still airworthy. A glance at the instruments in front of him calmed him: oil okay, coolant okay; fuel not obviously leaking. Temperature and pressure gauges normal, but the response to the control column was sluggish. He knew he needed to get her down soon – he had been flying for nearly an hour and after the intensity of the brief combat, the fuel tanks would soon be dry, even without being punctured.

  With the rush of adrenalin seeping away, he managed to calm down and gather his bearings. Behind him on his port side was the setting sun. Below, he could now make out a small river and several large areas of water. They were familiar: he had to be somewhere near Sarrebourg in western Lorraine. Soon he would be over German territory. Breathing a sigh of relief, he headed to Mannheim.

  It was at 7.15 p.m., and over an hour and a half after first taking off, that he finally touched down. After quickly refuelling, he took off again and eventually landed at their airfield at Ippesheim at around half-past eight, just as the light was fading for the day. There he reported to Ehrlich, who had been back some time, and learned that another of the pilots had seen Günther’s Curtiss go down in a spin. He had his first confirmed aerial victory. He also discovered that the Heinkel had made it back safely too.

  The pilots sat up late that night, talking about and discussing the action in fine detail. Only one of their number had not returned – Adolf Walter, who had been seen limping away from the fray having shot down a Curtiss himself. Some time after midnight, the phone rang and to the relief of the rest of the Staffel it was Walter on the line. He had belly-landed with engine trouble, but would make his way back the following day.

  That first scrap above the skies of France had taught Günther three things. First, he could do it; he could recognize the enemy with plenty of time. He was cool-headed and shrewd enough to move himself and the Schwarm into the best position to give them the tactical advantage without being caught by surprise by the enemy. He could enter into an attack without crumbling with fear. And he had the ability to shoot the enemy down – not just a direct hit, but a deflection shot. That had given him confidence. He felt as though he were an athlete after winning a major sporting event.

  Second, he realized that he was not invincible. He had dropped his guard and had nearly paid the price. ‘Neglecting one’s own safety in an attack will inevitably have fatal consequences sooner or later,’ he noted. ‘One of the most dangerous moments in aerial combat is that second immediately prior to opening fire.’

  Finally, he recognized that he needed to master the Messerschmitt 109E yet further, to get a better feel and understanding of her idiosyncrasies. The savage turn had probably saved his life, yet he felt sure that the real art of flying was keeping one’s head, even in a critical situation, and handling the controls smoothly at all times.

  Few pilots had the kind of natural advantages of excellent sight and good marksmanship that Günther was blessed with. And few analysed their flying performance in such a pragmatic and rational manner. Yet consciously or subconsciously, the learning curve of the pilot rose exponentially the moment he found himself in combat. The key was to make the most of those lessons and absorb them as quickly as possible. As Günther had learned during that thrilling, frightening, sobering, exhilarating, first combat sortie, it was very easy for a fighter pilot to get himself killed.

  Feldmarschall Hermann Göring had left Berlin for the front on 15 May, setting off in Asia with some extra carriages that housed his own personal general staff. These were mostly over-promoted young adjutants working personally for Göring and quite separate from the Luftwaffe General Staff headed by General Hans Jeschonnek. Supervising Göring’s staff was Major Bernd von Brauchitsch, the son of the Commander-in-Chief of the army. It was von Brauchitsch’s job to brief Göring on the daily operations.

  Asia arrived nearby to Hitler’s HQ and remained on a siding near a tunnel. A special wooden platform had been erected for Göring’s personal use, but he rarely clambered down from the train, preferring instead to remain aboard his luxury carriages, where he ate sumptuously, drank even better, and commandeered the only properly functioning toilet for his own private use.

  It is doubtful that Göring knew about the huge losses on the first day of the campaign, or that by 16 May the Luftwaffe had already suffered 621 aircraft wiped from the slate and 1,450 pilots and aircrew dead or captured – just over a sixth of its strength on 10 May. As far as Göring was concerned, the Luftwaffe had done everything that had been expected of it, sweeping all before it, destroying the Dutch and Belgian air forces and achieving almost total mastery of the sky, whilst at the same time providing crucial support to the ground forces. Hitler was delighted and, much to Göring’s delight, lavished him with praise. Göring’s assessment was correct; but it ignored the price that was being paid. It was a large one.

  Working considerably harder than his outsized boss was the man who really ran the Luftwaffe, Generaloberst Erhard Milch. Officially, Milch was State Secretary for Aviation and Inspector General. In real terms, this meant he had operational control over almost every aspect of the Luftwaffe from training to air defence to the General Staff. With Göring kept busy with his plethora of other state positions and business interests, much was left to Milch. In effect, Göring was Chairman to Milch’s CEO.

  For several days, Milch had been at the front, beetling about in his personal Dornier 17 or the small, highly manoeuvrable reconnaissance aircraft, the Feisler Storch, flying over the front and visiting forward units to see for himself first-hand what was going on along the front and how his men were faring. He had insisted that the Luftwaffe maintain high levels of mobility, so that units could efficiently leapfrog over one another as the army began cutting swathes through the Low Countries and France. Siegfried Bethke, for example, and the rest of I/JG 2 had moved twice already by 16 May and would move forward again on 21 May. This ensured there were always plenty of aircraft operating over the front in support of the troops.

  On 16 May, with Göring in his train now next to the Polch Tunnel, there was an 11 a.m. conference with the C-in-C, and then he was off again, visiting no fewer than six front-line units. Dynamic, untiring and deeply efficient, Milch liked to see what was going on for himself.

  Milch was born in Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea coast in 1892. His father, Anton Milch, was a Chief Staff Pharmacist in the German navy. He was also a Jew. His mother, however, was a Protestant and that was what went on young Erhard’s birth certificate. Göring was supposedly aware of Milch’s Jewish blood and, although not much bothered, recognized that it could prove awkward, so a solution had been found. Milch’s mother made a solemn declaration that her son was a product of an illegitimate affair with a minor German aristocrat, and the original birth certificate was withdrawn and a new one issued. Milch’s origins were never to trouble him further.

  He had joined the army, being commissioned in 1911 and serving on the Eastern Front until transferring to the Imperial Flying Service as an aerial observer and photographer, where he saw action over the Western Front. He ended the war a Hauptmann, left the army in 1920, and after a brief career with a police air unit in East Prussia joined the civil aviation company, Lloyd Eastern Flying Company. Two years later, he joined Junkers Airways Ltd, which took him all around the world, including to the United States, where the size of the Ford automobile works at Detroit left a lasting impression upon him of American industrial might.

  He was a director of Junkers when, in
January 1926, Junkers and Aero-Lloyd merged to become a single national airline, Deutsche Lufthansa. Milch, at just thirty-four, became one of its three directors, and was to become the driving force in ensuring that Lufthansa spread its wings throughout not only Germany but the rest of Europe too. By 1930, Lufthansa had established an air link to China and by the time of Hitler’s ascent to power, had flights throughout the Baltic States and even into the Soviet Union – and Milch was its most senior figure, now one of only two directors.

  These talents did not go unnoticed, and on 22 February 1933 he was invited by Göring to become the new State Secretary of Aviation. The two had known each other for some time; Milch had even helped Göring secure employment during the 1920s. Furthermore, Lufthansa had supported Hitler during his election campaign, providing him with flights all over Germany. Yet Göring also recognized that in Milch he had found a man who not only had a deep and expert knowledge of aviation and business, but who also had a rare talent for organization.

  Milch did not waste any time. Although Göring had cleared the path for financing the Luftwaffe, it was Milch, together with Dr Hjalmar Schacht, then President of the Reichsbank, who hatched the plan to make it happen. Together, they found an old skeleton company, called the Metal Research Company, of which Schacht and Milch became directors. This cover company was then guaranteed by the Reichsbank and used to finance the growth of the Luftwaffe with its own bills of exchange. These were effectively a form of banknotes, a kind of IOU, but which, because they were guaranteed by the Reichsbank, were of effective value. The bills were given a validity of three months, but as soon as that time was up the Reichsbank extended them another three months, and another three months again and so on. They could also be cashed in early at the Reichsbank or they could be used as a form of payment to selected industrial concerns. It was hardly legal, but it worked, and it enabled Milch to plan a rapid and vast rearmament programme.