The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  It is hard to know whether whoever wrote this report for OKH was aware that it was a load of rubbish or whether the Luftwaffe truly did believe these wildly inaccurate figures. Certainly, Oberst Beppo Schmid claimed with confidence on the morning of 16 August in his daily situation report that Fighter Command now had just 430 aircraft left, of which only 300 could be considered serviceable. In fact, the RAF had 653 ready and waiting to fly that morning. Only three airfields were out of action. Of these, Martlesham, which Walter Rubensdörffer had reported as being little more than a smoking pile of rubble the day before, was already nearly operational again. By the end of the day, 99 per cent of its telephone system was working once more, and all water and electricity had been reconnected and bomb craters filled in. Elsewhere, such as Hawkinge, the station staff merely moved to a previously prepared house half a mile from the airfield. West Malling was unserviceable for five days, and it took forty-eight hours to get Lympne up and running once more. At the moment, however, there were still plenty of airfields that were fully operational. German bombing was certainly taking its toll, but not decisively so as yet.

  The British were just as bad at over-claiming. The previous day had certainly been a good one for Fighter Command, but to say it was one of the greatest in Britain’s history might have been overstating the case just a little, even if they had shot down 180 German aircraft as had been claimed; in fact, the figure was seventy-six. Many more, however, were damaged to varying degrees. German mechanics could repair minor damage at airfields, while more seriously damaged aircraft had to be taken away to workshops further afield. The Luftwaffe’s repair network was certainly nothing like as efficient as that of the RAF. As Siegfried Bethke points out, losses were regularly higher than those official figures for aircraft lost in action. ‘Sea rescue incidents were not counted as losses in our statistics,’ he says, ‘although the loss of the plane was total.’ One pilot from his squadron returned with eighty-eight bullet holes in his machine, but not one had hit a vital part of the aircraft. ‘But the plane had to be taken apart and transported back home to be repaired,’ he adds. ‘Very often the wool was pulled over the public’s eyes in the communiqués of the High Command. Almost always!’

  An important difference between British and German attitudes was that the Luftwaffe commanders believed the bilge Schmid produced, whereas Dowding remained more concerned with his own losses rather than those imposed on the enemy. When Sinclair asked him about the wild divergence between the claims of the two sides, Dowding replied that the truth would become apparent soon enough. If the Germans’ figures were accurate, he told him, the enemy would be in London in a week. ‘Otherwise they would not.’ From the point of view of the conduct of the battle, Dowding’s approach was definitely the more sensible one.

  The Luftwaffe would never again fly so many sorties over Britain in one day, but a pattern had already developed of persistent and heavy attacks by massed raiders primarily targeting airfields, and accompanied by large formations of fighters. For the pilots a hectic, utterly exhausting period of intense flying had begun. Any kind of flying required considerable concentration, which was in itself tiring, but combat flying required considerably more. Pilots had to remain alert at all times, watching all parts of the sky, listening to instructions, making sure they were in the right position. At the moment of contact, a surge of adrenalin would see even the most exhausted pilot through, but as soon as the tension was released, fatigue would sweep over them. Three, four, or even five sorties a day was a lot, especially as pilots were usually expected to be up before dawn.

  For the German pilots, flying over water was an added strain. ‘Our conversations now revolve almost solely on the Channel and all that water,’ scribbled Siegfried Bethke on 16 August. ‘It is so terribly disagreeable to us all.’ It was disorientating but no-one wanted to end up in the water and then not be found. The trouble was the shortage of fuel. Air fighting used up a great deal very quickly and it was all too easy to find oneself suddenly short but with a large stretch of the Channel still to cross to reach safety. Too many pilots had been pulled out by the air-sea rescue service, but that gave only a little solace. ‘Nobody liked flying over the dark water,’ agrees Julius Neumann, who with JG 27 was also operating from Normandy, ‘especially with the sky full of clouds and no horizon. But you just did your best and got on with your job.’

  One pilot with plenty of personal fuel still left was Tom Neil. Word had reached 249 Squadron of the rich pickings over the north-east coast the previous day. It was just his luck that the moment the squadron moved south, there should be a flurry of action up north. He was also annoyed to have been left off the ‘slate’ that morning as one of the pilots not required for duty. That meant another pilot using his plane, which he did not like.

  Tom’s own ‘B’ Flight was scrambled around half-past twelve. Hurrying back from the mess where he had been having an early lunch, he then hung around dispersal, pacing impatiently as he waited for their return. They had been sent to intercept a large raid heading for Portsmouth. In fact, the bombers were heading for the airfield at Gosport, which once again was not a fighter field, but belonged to the Fleet Air Arm. ‘B’ Flight missed the bombers but did run into some Me 110s and Me 109s. It was during this rather confused tangle that James Nicolson, one of the squadron’s flight lieutenants, was attacked from behind whilst over Southampton. Four cannon shells slammed into his cockpit, the first bursting on his canopy and the second on the reserve petrol tank in front of his instrument panel, while the third struck James’s foot.

  With incredible wherewithal, he pulled his feet up away from the flames and dived down hard to his right, only to see an Me 110 heading towards him, so opened fire, knocking the machine down, then prepared to bail out. The first time, he forgot to push back the remains of the canopy and hit his head, the second time he was pulled back by his straps, and only at the third attempt was he free. Burned and wounded in the leg, he then suffered further ignominy by being shot in the backside by an overzealous member of the newly renamed Home Guard. For this action, Nicolson was later awarded Fighter Command’s only Victoria Cross.

  But James Nicolson was not the only 249 pilot shot down that afternoon. So too was the nineteen-year-old Pilot Officer Martyn King – who was flying Tom’s Hurricane. And unlike Nicolson, King was dead.

  The relentless interruptions to daily life caused by air raid sirens were quickly becoming a feature of everyday life in Britain. On 16 August, Cecil Beaton, now taking photographs for the Ministry of Information, was leaving London early in the afternoon, and heading home to Ashcombe, his house in the south-west corner of Wiltshire. The train had barely reached the outskirts of the city, however, when the sirens went. Calmly, the guard wandered along calling for all blinds to be put down. Above, Cecil and the other passengers heard thumps, bangs and distant crumps as the Luftwaffe bombed Biggin and Kenley. Barely anyone looked up or even batted an eyelid. In silence, they continued reading or staring into space. ‘The English are an extraordinary people,’ he jotted later. ‘Their genius for understatement goes deep. They behave in an incredibly calm way in the face of disaster. Imagine a carriage as ours filled with Latins! The screams! The hysterics!’

  Near Malden, Cecil pulled the blind and had a quick peep outside. All seemed quiet but a huge plume of black smoke was curling into the sky. When they then inched their way into Malden, the station was an untidy mess, with glass all over the place and the roof blown in. Nearby, a house was on fire. Then the all-clear sounded and Cecil watched those who had been taking shelter now emerge, laughing, waving and giving the thumbs-up. He followed a number of people who now got off the train and trooped on to the line to inspect the damage. ‘The usual story of bricks, cement dust, broken glass,’ noted Cecil, ‘bomb craters amongst the runner beans and rambler roses.’

  Cecil had already seen more bomb damage than most. The week before, he had been sent to Newcastle by the Ministry of Information to photograph bomb damage. A par
ticularly powerful photograph had been of a three-year-old girl called Eileen Dunne, who had been hit by a bomb splinter. With a bandaged head and clutching her doll, her wide eyes showed a mixture of childish fragility and defiance. Now he had some more commissions, this time of troops on Salisbury Plain; it was a good assignment, since he could base himself at Ashcombe for a change.

  Eventually, they got going again, although the train had to be routed via Southampton because of bomb damage at Basingstoke, caused when the raiders had attempted to hit Odiham. It was some four hours later that Cecil finally reached Salisbury.

  It was the shock of the rapid defeat in the Low Countries and in France, and the seemingly invincible German armed forces, that had worried so many British people, but when the parachutists did not come and one, then two, then three potential invasion dates came and went, the phlegmatic attitude that Cecil Beaton discovered on his train from Waterloo seemed to take root once more. Even if people did still believe Hitler and his hordes would invade, they had now had time to get used to the idea. The vast majority of people were quite calm and able to carry on with their lives. People continued to go to work, play tennis and cricket, go dancing and to pubs. One of the country’s best-loved cartoonists, Graham Laidler, known as ‘Pont’, summed up the prevailing view in his Punch cartoon that week. It showed two men sitting by the bar of a pub, looking supremely untroubled, smoking pipes and staring into space, their half-drunk pints beside them: ‘… meanwhile, in Britain,’ ran the caption, ‘the entire population, faced by the threat of invasion, has been flung into a state of complete panic …’

  Yet Olivia Cockett found it hard now to avoid talk about air raids – the suburbs were being hit by stray bombs from the attacks meant for airfields around the city – and sirens were now going off several times a day. Rumours were once again rife, this time about where bombs had landed. They were usually nonsense. ‘Atmosphere cheerful,’ noted Olivia. ‘People pull faces and say, “Pretty bad,” and repeat rumours and facts and wonder when the next one’s coming.’ At her father’s work, they had started having sweepstakes on when the next raid would arrive.

  The press was having a field day now that plenty of German aircraft wrecks had begun to be scattered over the country. ‘Something for Britain’s scrap drive,’ ran a headline in the Daily Express, with a picture of a downed Zerstörer beneath. ‘BLITZKRIEG – BY THE RAF,’ ran another headline, ‘69 down in one day!’ ‘Calm? Of course! It’s just a nuisance,’ ran a column beneath by Hilde Marchant, an Express correspondent who had stationed herself in a town on the south coast. ‘People here,’ she reported, ‘the ordinary little householders and shopkeepers continue their ordinary little lives with a gesture of supreme indifference.’

  Many people were also fascinated and rather thrilled by the aerial battles. Despite the rumours and despite the slowly mounting civilian casualties, few people were being killed. There was danger in the air, but not too much; enough to bring a frisson of excitement, but not so much as to cause major concern – not for the majority, at any rate. Douglas Mann had now broken up from Marlborough College, so had put away his OTC uniform and headed home to Hartfield on the Kent–Sussex border. There, he discovered his family farm was directly under much of the aerial battle now going on. ‘It was extraordinary,’ he says. ‘There was machine-gun fire and empty shell cases cascading down, and aeroplanes, too, falling in flames.’

  He was out on the terrace at the front of the house, sitting in a deckchair with his father, when they saw fighting begin overhead.

  ‘What I need are my field glasses,’ Douglas’s father told him. He rang the bell and the butler appeared. ‘Get my field glasses, will you?’ Douglas’s father asked him.

  ‘Very good, sir,’ replied the butler. A minute later he reappeared, the field glasses laid out on a silver salver. Douglas’s father took them, put them to his eyes and leaned back. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s much better.’

  Not so far away, Harold Nicolson, at home with his family in Sissinghurst, was about to go in for lunch when they heard the sound of aircraft and looked up to see ‘twenty little silver fish in arrow formation’. These passed but whilst eating lunch they suddenly heard aircraft quite close and stopped to look. ‘There is a rattle of machine gun fire,’ noted Harold, ‘and we see two Spitfires attacking a Heinkel. The latter sways off, obviously wounded.’

  Jock Colville had headed to Stansted Park for the weekend to stay with his friends, the Bessboroughs, and had been hoping to see some aerial battles, most of which he had missed so far. But while Friday the 16th had been another day of heavy fighting, Saturday had been notably quiet. Jock and Moyra Bessborough had walked over to see a crashed Junkers 88, but had seen nothing above them.

  But on the Sunday, 18 August, he got his wish. With another day of fine weather, the Luftwaffe came over in droves. After lunch, they were sitting out on the terrace looking towards Portsmouth and Thorney Island, the barrage balloons just visible. Suddenly they saw puffs of smoke in the sky followed by the sound of ack-ack fire. Moments later came the roar of engines.

  ‘There they are!’ exclaimed Moyra. Shielding their eyes against the glare of the sun, they saw twenty or so aircraft fighting, and soon a bomber plunged towards the ground, smoke billowing behind, and then, following after, a parachute drifted down. Jock spotted a dive-bomber scream towards the airfield at Thorney Island. Vast explosions followed, and huge plumes of smoke began rising from the airfield. It was all over in a few minutes, although another attack seemed to be going on near Portsmouth. ‘When peace was restored,’ noted Jock, ‘Moyra, Jean Meade and I sat on the terrace in high spirits, elated by what we had seen.’

  Siegfried Bethke was due to have been taking part on that raid, but his Messerschmitt had developed ignition problems and so he had returned. Julius Neumann, however, had been flying that afternoon, providing escort for twenty-eight Ju 87s of I/Stuka 77. Leading the 6th Staffel of III/JG 27, Julius spotted a number of tiny specks just as they crossed the coast. Recognizing them as British fighters, he led his Staffel towards them.

  Julius always felt nervous before any sortie – it was a natural enough feeling – but once in the air such feelings soon disappeared; he had a job to do, and he found there was little time for feeling scared. Now, as he turned towards the British fighters, the adrenalin beginning to flow, he felt quite calm and in control of his machine. Yet it was not his aircraft at all. Back on the 15th, during the last of three sorties over southern England, his personal mount, Yellow 3, had been hit and on arriving back in France he had been forced to crash-land with his wheels up. Although he escaped unscathed, his Messerschmitt had not, and now he was flying a different plane, Yellow 6. Nor did he have his usual mascot with him. His girlfriend had given him a white silk scarf – which he was wearing – and a miniature teddy bear, which normally hung from the side of his cockpit. It had not, however, followed him into his borrowed machine.

  It did not occur to him that somehow this mission was jinxed, but now both 43 and 601 Hurricane Squadrons were tearing towards both his Staffel and the Stukas they were supposed to be protecting. As they tussled with the Hurricanes, Julius and his Staffel were unable to go and help the Stukas. All he could do was try to inch the dogfight down lower towards them, and thereby give them some protection, but his efforts did not seem to be working. Rather, his Staffel was now completely split up as planes wheeled and dived.

  Eventually emerging from the mêlée, but without his wingman, Julius climbed and then over the Solent saw another tussle going on between Me 109s and Spitfires. Chasing after one of the British fighters, he got on its tail and opened fire. The Spitfire immediately turned away, but Julius followed, the two weaving ever lower over the Isle of Wight. At last, after one more burst from Julius’s guns, the Spitfire began to smoke. With a sense of satisfaction, Julius now prepared to give the fighter the killer burst. Glancing behind to check there were no British fighters creeping up behind him, he was surprised to see two trails of
smoke, one black and one white. But turning back to the enemy in front of him, he could see only one, a black trail from the Spitfire. With a sinking heart, he glanced down at his temperature gauge and saw his worst fears realized: the needle was stuck at its hottest limit. Somehow during the fighting, a stray bullet must have punctured his radiator, because he now had a glycol leak. The white smoke was his.

  His mind raced as he pulled away from the Spitfire. There was no chance of getting home, and now the engine had begun to cough and splutter. His only chance was to try and gain as much height as he could and then bail out. As he pulled his Messerschmitt into a climb, the engine began to struggle more and more and then packed up entirely, flames suddenly spreading back from a joint in the cowling around the engine.

  Julius jettisoned the canopy but he was still horribly low – maybe only thirty or forty metres high. He had no chance of bailing out now. He called up his Gruppe leader on the R/T and told him he was on fire and going to attempt to crash-land.

  ‘Where are you?’ came the reply.

  ‘For a moment,’ says Julius, ‘I thought about saying something dramatic but I couldn’t think of anything, so I said nothing. I did think this might be it, though.’ Below him, the ground, rushing ever nearer, looked hopelessly unsuitable: all hills and woods and hedges. Opting for what he thought looked the least bad, he aimed for a sloping newly harvested cornfield. Suddenly the left wing touched the ground, but fortunately took the force of his landing rather than fatally cartwheeling him, and spinning around, Yellow 6 finally came to a halt with a jolt that made Julius knock his head hard against the metal frame of the windscreen. Dazed, he tried to gather his wits, unbuckled his harness, and clambered down.