The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  Churchill was certainly in an upbeat frame of mind, as General Brooke discovered on 17 July when the PM visited Hampshire and Dorset to see the troops and inspect coastal defences. ‘He was in wonderful spirits,’ noted Brooke, now back in his old post as GOC Southern Command, ‘and full of offensive plans.’ Large areas of the coast had now been designated ‘Defence Areas’. Straggling coils of barbed wire and mines were a feature of most beaches, while piers and harbours were now lined with machine guns, sandbags and even some of the precious anti-aircraft guns. The same day, the US military attaché, Colonel Raymond Lee, had also been on a tour to the coast. The defences, he thought, looked impressive. He was struck by the apparent coordination: above, fighter aircraft roared over, while out at sea were patrol boats and other naval vessels. On the land were the LDV and the army. It looked good to him, so long as it could all work smoothly together. He wondered whether Hitler had some wonder weapon up his sleeve. ‘Every day that he puts it off is immensely valuable,’ he noted, ‘and I should say that in another three weeks the coastline will be nearly impregnable to ordinary attack.’

  There was something in what he said, although the calamity of leaving the vast majority of Britain’s guns and army equipment stranded in France had in no way been resolved. There were now 1.3 million troops in Britain, including the LDV, 22,000 Canadians, and 16,000 Australians and New Zealanders. Monthly intake was around 50,000 from conscription and a further 27,000 volunteers. There was no shortage of manpower, just a shortage of equipment. Out of twenty-seven infantry divisions now in Britain, only four had their full establishment of rifles and mortars, and one of those was the 1st Canadian, which was also the only division to have the prescribed amount of field and anti-tank guns. The gun shortage was horrendous. By June, for example, just thirty-five twenty-five-pounder field guns were being produced a month, yet one infantry division required seventy such pieces, and many of the twenty-seven divisions had none whatsoever. In other words, not only were there dire shortages, but there was no immediate means of resolving the problem either. It was not just the aircraft industry that had needed a massive kick up the backside, but the British arms industry as a whole. How the old generals must have despaired. Just over twenty years before, the British army had been the best in the world – and the best-equipped too. Now it could not even arm its men with rifles.

  One of those discovering how bad the British army’s supplies were was Sid Nuttall. After his return from Dunkirk, Sid had eventually rejoined the Border Regiment at Crook in County Durham, and then was given a brief forty-eight-hour stint of leave back home to Halifax. Having made the most of this brief break by getting engaged to his girlfriend, he returned to Crook. ‘We had no weapons, no transport,’ he says. ‘Nothing.’ After a while, some Canadian rifles arrived, all Great War relics which fired clips of five .300 rounds rather than two clips of five .303 like the Lee Enfields. Some civilian vehicles were requisitioned, vans and trucks with names like ‘John Smith Butchers’ painted on the sides. It was a bit humiliating. New uniforms arrived as well as they worked themselves back up to full strength. A number of men and officers were still missing, presumed to be POWs in Germany. Towards the end of June a further 232 men and six officers arrived, all new recruits with between six and nine months’ training. Then, on the last day of June, they had moved to Prudhoe near Newcastle. Their new role was to defend the coast, repelling any invaders, and to help them move around they were given a number of civilian Midland Red buses complete with Midland Red civilian drivers. As a mechanic, Sid had little to do so he asked to be trained as an infantryman instead. The new RSM, who had been the HQ Sergeant-Major in France, agreed.

  Stan Fraser had also been busy, having been drafted in to help reorganize the 4th HAA Regiment. Based at Aberporth Camp in southwest Wales, Regimental HQ was based in marquees from where Stan drafted in new men and investigated rumours and reports of those still missing from France. He found the work rather interesting, but, as with the Borderers, the regiment was ready by the beginning of July. The men had been without any guns since ditching theirs in France, but having been posted to Whatton near Nottingham, they arrived to find enough 3.7-inch heavy AA guns for all three batteries. The reason for this apparent high prioritization of gun allocation soon became apparent when two of the batteries, 5 and 6, were sent to Derby to help protect the Rolls-Royce factory. The third battery, 18, remained with HQ, and together they were to form a mobile column for any place in the East Midlands which might be blitzed, as air attacks were now being called.

  Five days later, however, they were posted, not anywhere in the Midlands, but to a tiny village in Norfolk near the airfield of Bircham Newton. The men were billeted in the granary. ‘Using the sacks of grain as a mattress,’ recalls Stan, ‘I slept very well during the week which we spent at this lonely spot.’ They usually moved after five days or so, fulfilling their new name, ‘MacDuff Mobile Column’. Stan’s job was to accompany the two 18th Battery surveyors, working out the known ranges at each gun site so that the range-finding instruments could be checked. He was enjoying himself well enough; after France and Dunkirk, a slightly less frenetic pace of life was not unwelcome.

  Clearly, the army was in far better fettle than it had been six weeks earlier after the shock of Dunkirk. The shortage of weapons was certainly still critical, but American rifles, ammunition, machine guns and field guns had been enough to make a difference, and war production was speeding up too, thanks to an all-out effort from the war factories. What now concerned Churchill, however, was the army’s defensive outlook. It had been trained to be defensive, which was one of the reasons there were so few tanks, for example. Yet the Prime Minister firmly believed that a defensive mindset was not the way forward. He had been much impressed by the Germans’ offensive approach and wanted the British army to take a leaf out of their book. He suggested, for example, the creation of ‘Storm Troops’ or ‘Leopards’ as he fancifully termed them, who were trained to pounce within four hours on any place that should need them.

  When General Ironside, GOC Home Forces, had first been given the thorny task of how best to prepare for invasion with large numbers of badly equipped men, his solution was to combine what few mobile units he had with static defences over a wide area. Inland, from Bristol, south around London then all the way to Richmond in North Yorkshire was what he called the GHQ Line. Making the most of natural obstacles such as rivers and escarpments, this would be lined with pillboxes and other defences. The idea was that troops around the coast would be able to hold off the enemy long enough until mobile troops could fall in behind the GHQ Line. It was unquestionably a defensive plan that was designed to make the best of a bad job. After all, infantry without guns or transport could not be expected to achieve much.

  The Vice-Chiefs of Staff had criticized Ironside’s strategy because to them it seemed crazy to make no real effort to halt the enemy until half the country had already been overrun. Churchill was equally critical because he felt that the army now had enough equipment to be able to put up a decent show, particularly if those involved were imbibed with enough offensive spirit. Rapid, resolute engagement was what he wanted; the defence of a stretch of the coast, he believed, should be measured not by the number of troops immediately available, but by the speed in which a counter-attack could be mounted.

  On 20 July, Ironside was sacked for the second time since Churchill had taken over. This was hard on Ironside, but the right decision; he was out of date, a relic from a different age. Brooke took his place, with a firm remit for a more offensive outlook to Britain’s land defences. But as he had noted during the PM’s visit on 17 July, Churchill had other plans as to how to take the attack to the enemy. Prime amongst these was what Churchill called ‘ungentlemanly warfare’. The seeds of Churchill’s thinking may have been sown with the idea of an Allied redoubt in Brittany, but at the same time Hugh Dalton, the Minister for Economic Warfare, had also been thinking about ‘black’ propaganda and ‘special’, clande
stine operations that could involve sabotage in enemy-occupied territory. After lengthy discussions with members of the Foreign Office, the War Cabinet and other officials, it was agreed that such an organization should be set up with a controller armed with almost unlimited authority. Late on the evening of 16 July, at around 11.30 p.m., Churchill told Dalton, who had been lobbying hard for the post, that he would become chairman of what would be called the Special Operations Executive. Lord Swinton was also recalled to head MI6, the secret intelligence operation within Britain and Ireland. As Chamberlain wrote to the War Cabinet once the decision had been ratified by them, SOE would conduct ‘operations of sabotage, secret subversive propaganda, the encouragement of civil resistance in occupied areas, the stirring up of insurrection, strikes, etc.’. Churchill put it more succinctly. ‘And now,’ he told Dalton, ‘go and set Europe ablaze.’

  The Prime Minister had come to the conclusion that an imminent German invasion was unlikely. The increased coastal defences, the appointment of Brooke, in whom he had high hopes, the establishment of SOE, the performance so far of Fighter Command – all these factors had strengthened his belief that a corner had been turned. He found it hard to visualize an invasion all along the coast by troops in hundreds of small craft. There was, he pointed out to the War Cabinet, no evidence of large numbers of small craft being assembled. Furthermore, surprise seemed out of the question. The Admiralty had now amassed some thousand patrol craft, of which two or three hundred were always now at sea, and there were the destroyer flotillas all the way from Portsmouth to the Humber.

  A more concrete strategy for the war was also beginning to evolve in his mind. In essence, this had always been to ride out the current storm and then gradually strike back, but as the days passed and still Germany did not launch her all-out attack, the way forward seemed clearer, more possible. Britain could impose its own economic blockade on Germany, helped by Bomber Command. Penning Germany in, combined with sustained bombing, could eventually starve Nazi Europe into submission. Allied to this was the firm belief, shared by his ministers, that the German economy had already peaked and would not be able to sustain a long, drawn-out war. By the winter of 1940–1, it was confidently expected, Germany would be on the point of collapse. That was still a very long way off, but it represented an important psychological chink of light.

  Germany’s premature economic collapse was a line even Ambassador Joe Kennedy believed. As he pointed out in a letter to his youngest son, Bobby, there were millions of people in Nazi-occupied Europe who might well find it difficult to get enough food during the next winter. ‘And when people are starving,’ he wrote, ‘there is no limit to what they will do.’

  Kennedy remained sceptical about Britain’s chances, however. With little access to Churchill, Beaverbrook had become his closest source, and told the Ambassador that Churchill believed that if they could get over the summer months, then the crisis would have passed. Beaverbrook confided to Kennedy that he now felt even more optimistic than that. More than just resisting invasion, he was beginning to feel that the RAF might be able to ‘overcome’ the Luftwaffe. ‘I thought this optimism,’ noted Kennedy, ‘was a clever attempt to enlist more active United States support, and Beaverbrook admitted that they were doing an about-face to make their situation look as bright as possible.’

  Kennedy might have been suspicious about this upbeat new line, but Raymond Lee believed Britain now had a real chance of holding out. Thanks to his earlier time as attaché, Raymond was already a well-known and popular figure amongst Britain’s military hierarchy, and consequently found many doors open to him. In fact, he was often given greater access than Kennedy, and furthermore had a greater understanding of military matters. Like everyone, he was sure Hitler’s all-out attack would begin any moment. ‘I also believe,’ he added sagaciously, ‘that if he is not successful by the fifteenth of September, he will never be.’

  Raymond’s more positive reports were certainly a marked contrast with those of the Ambassador. ‘I send plenty of cables home,’ he jotted in his diary, ‘in which I call ’em as I see ’em.’ This had not gone unnoticed and coincided with Roosevelt’s suspicions about Kennedy’s judgement. Deciding he needed an independent opinion, the President sent to Britain one of his trusted old friends, Colonel William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, and the journalist Edgar Ansel Mowrer, to assess Britain’s chances. Kennedy was incensed. Not only had he not been consulted, but his protests when he learned what was afoot had been ignored. Then, when Donovan and Mowrer did finally arrive on 20 July, Donovan persisted with the charade that he was there to try and understand how Britain’s conscription law worked. ‘They can do nothing,’ grumbled Kennedy, ‘but complicate the situation here.’

  Raymond Lee spent a great deal of time with Donovan and Mowrer, taking them around the south coast defences, introducing them to Churchill, General Brooke and others. Lee had also organized a morale poll of his own and discovered that, with the exception of the City of London, morale was pretty high in Britain, and, to his surprise, highest among the workers in the industrial areas. On 2 August, he had a farewell breakfast with Donovan in which they had a ‘free and frank’ discussion. Lee was pleased that they seemed to be of much the same opinion as him: that Britain had better than even odds of surviving. Donovan also gave Kennedy a stinging rebuke. ‘Well,’ Donovan told Lee as he boarded his plane, ‘I told him before I left that the American policy was to help in every way we can and it doesn’t help these people any to keep telling them that they haven’t got a chance.’

  Churchill, of course, was delighted by Donovan’s visit. By the time Wild Bill headed back to Washington, there were other small signs of encouragement too. On 19 July, Roosevelt had been nominated to stand for an unprecedented third term. Should he win, the chances of American entry into the war would receive a huge boost. Arms and munitions were also continuing to make their way across the Atlantic. Churchill had deliberately left Roosevelt alone since his last appeal for help before the fall of France, but with six weeks gone, with the arrival of Donovan and with the news of Roosevelt’s nomination, the Prime Minister decided to once again ask for fifty or sixty old destroyers. Large construction work was underway building new ships but the fruits of these labours would not be ready until 1941. He needed the President’s help to stop the gap now.

  Kennedy remained deeply sceptical. ‘Don’t let anybody make any mistake,’ he wired Roosevelt along with the Prime Minister’s cable, ‘this war, from Great Britain’s point of view, is being conducted from now on with their eyes only on one place, and that is the United States. Unless there is a miracle, they realize that they haven’t a chance in the long run.’

  Kennedy was right to add a sober word of caution. Britain was in a better position than she had been at the end of June, but this was no time for becoming over-confident. The Luftwaffe, for all its shortcomings, was still a mighty foe, whilst, with the material benefits gained as a result of Hitler’s lightning victories, Germany had far stronger economic legs than Churchill and his ministers realized. Britain’s survival was not now a foregone conclusion. Not by any means.

  34

  Hotting Up

  JUST AFTER 5 A.M., on Wednesday 24 July, the pilots of 87 Squadron were settling down at their dispersal hut for a nap before breakfast. They had recently moved to Exeter, in the south-west, and had been up since before first light on readiness. Suddenly, and much to their annoyance, the operations phone rang. A plot had been picked up and a section was needed to patrol Lundy Island off the north Devon coast at 8,000 feet.

  Bee Beamont, along with Rob Voase Jeff and Harry Mitchell, took off, climbing through the grey morning cloud. Soon they were climbing through thick cumulus, the cloud’s peaks gleaming with orange. Bee thought it was almost better than sleeping, flying amongst these wondrous sunlit shapes. Just as they cleared the Devon coast, with Lundy in the distance, the ground controller told them that the target should be right in front of them. Sure enough, moments later the
y spotted the dark silhouette of a Junkers 88 below them in a gap in the cloud.

  Voase Jeff and Harry Mitchell peeled off towards the gap but Bee decided to dive down to the left of the cloud in order to cut the bomber off. Emerging through cloud, he came in directly behind the Junkers just as two Spitfires were hurtling down from the right. His two fellow Hurricane pilots, he now saw, were well behind. The lead Spitfire attacked with a burst then broke away, leaving Bee 200 yards behind exchanging fire with the German rear-gunner. A few moments later, the rear-gunner stopped firing, a trail of smoke began streaming from the fuselage, and the Junkers arced slowly downwards in a gentle dive. Bee followed it down, crossing back over the coast at just a few hundred feet.

  Just as he thought none of the crew would escape, a white parachute opened, Bee nearly flying straight into it. Seconds later, the Junkers hit the ground, sliding across a field, through a hedge, over a road and into another field; then it slewed around, broke its back and finally caught fire. Bee hurtled over the top, throttled back and then circled around it, hoping to see some sign of life. He spotted the man with the parachute prostrate two fields away, but then, circling again, Bee now saw the rest of the crew, one standing up, another sitting, and the third either dead or unconscious. Fascinated by the scene, Bee continued buzzing around overhead, and watched an old Morris trundle towards the burning wreck and several members of the LDV clamber out and round up the crew, all of whom, in fact, had survived. ‘We returned to breakfast,’ noted Bee, ‘with a considerably stimulated appetite.’