The Fairey Battle: A Reassessment of its RAF Career

by Greg Baughen

  On 2 March, Ellington stepped up the pressure. He declared it was now official Air Staff policy that all Battles not delivered before March 1939 should be cancelled, so that the Avro Manchester could replace it on the production lines. This seemed dangerously premature to Swinton, as the Manchester scarcely existed on a drawing board. It seemed sensible to make sure the plane was a success before Fairey or Austin began preparing to mass produce it, nor would either company be happy about having its Battle order reduced so soon. The prototype was handsomely exceeding the requirements of the specification and could scarcely be declared a failure. Austin might be particularly unhappy if its contract was cancelled, as the car company had agreed to build Fairey Battles. There was nothing in the shadow factory agreement about building other planes instead.7

  In the months that followed, as Fairey dropped ever further behind scheduled deliveries, Ellington became even more insistent that the Battles should be cancelled, but was still reluctant to explain why. As late as 20 July, a puzzled Weir was asking Ellington why the Wellington was so superior. Only slowly did Ellington reveal the full extent of his misgivings: bombers had to have a range of 1,500 miles, they had to be able to defend themselves, and they had to have enough room for a navigator to do his job. On all these counts, the Battle was a failure.

  However, cancelling the contract was not so simple. In terms of performance there were no grounds for cancellation, and the legal advice was that late delivery did not constitute justification for cancelling even a part of the contract. There was a break clause, but this required three months’ notice and Fairey would then only be obliged to complete aircraft on which work had already started. It would also cost money; the Air Ministry would have to give Fairey the profit it would have made on the cancelled machines.8

  The problem for the Air Ministry was that they wanted to reduce the number on order and speed up the delivery of the remainder. The Air Staff might now regret ordering so many, but in 1937 the Battle was desperately needed. It was clearly vastly superior to the Harts and Hinds it was replacing and as many as possible were required. There were still hopes that the Stockport plant could produce eighteen Battles a month, possibly even twenty-three if they got some help from the nearby Avro plant, which would not be possible if the order was reduced. The idea of the break clause was to give the company time to run down production gradually—you could not implement it and then expect accelerated deliveries. If the Ministry reduced the order, they would get far fewer Battles, far slower, and there was no alternative plane to make up the numbers. Without Battles, the RAF would have to make do with Harts and Hinds for longer.9

  Cancellation had the potential to cause all sorts of other problems. Fairey was a difficult man to deal with and he would not take kindly to what he would undoubtedly see as an unjustified cancellation. There could also be consequences elsewhere in the industry. At best, other companies might be suspicious of any orders placed by the Air Ministry and might be reluctant to push ahead too quickly with their production plans if there was a chance the order might be cancelled. At worst, cancelling the Battle could provoke widespread protest; other firms might feel they might be next for similarly unfair treatment and might rally round Fairey. For all these reasons, the case for not cancelling Battles seemed overwhelming.

  None of this made any impression on Ellington. He could not see what the problem was: Fairey had promised to deliver 150 Battles by March 1937 but had not managed to deliver any. Even now, deliveries were only trickling through—four in June 1937, five in July, and six in August. Ellington now thought the plane was so useless, he wanted the maximum number cancelled, regardless of whether there was anything to replace it. He certainly did not want Fairey encouraged or given any help to speed up delivery of the remainder.10 Although Ellington’s reasons for not wanting the Battle were reasonable enough, his opposition to the plane was now bordering on the irrational.

  Weir, with his business background, was more sympathetic to the problems Fairey faced than Ellington. He attempted to act as an intermediary and organised crisis talks with the Fairey management team. These talks were not very successful. The Air Ministry wanted new people brought in to strengthen the Stockport management team, but the company refused to accept there was anything wrong with the way they were running the plant. As far as Ellington was concerned, the company’s uncooperative attitude was final proof that they deserved to have the contract cancelled. However, the Air Ministry feared that this was legally a ‘bad wicket’.11 Fairey was warned that 189 Battles (the new predicted deficit by March 1939) might be cancelled if the company did not sort out the problems and Fairey was told not to acquire any new materials. The company insisted—‘in the usual unfriendly Fairey atmosphere’ according to the Air Ministry team—that it was too late.12 They had already ordered materials ‘up to the hilt’.13

  In September 1937, Air Chief Marshal Newall took over from Ellington as Chief of Air Staff. He did not seem quite as desperate to see the back of the Battle as his predecessor, but still wondered if the Austin contract could be cut to 400, with Wellingtons replacing them. However, there was even more reluctance to cut the Austin order, as they had not had a chance to deliver their first machine, and had clearly done nothing wrong. If the Austin contract was not going to be cut, it was difficult to see how the Air Ministry could justify cutting the Fairey contract. Fairey was already putting the Air Ministry on the spot—when told that the Fairey order might be reduced, he had asked if the Austin order was going to be cut too. The Air Ministry response, that it was none of his business, did nothing to ease tensions.14

  By September, the latest estimates suggested that the deficit in deliveries would reach 330 by March 1939, and even Weir was losing patience. He could not see how Fairey could produce six Swordfish a month at their small Hayes plant but struggled to build two Battles a week at their ‘infinitely larger’ Stockport plant.15 The price of the plane was another contentious issue: Fairey were charging £18,000 for each plane in the first batch of ten, a ‘fantastic sum’ in Weir’s view.16 Weir felt it was time for some straight talking, and summoned Fairey for a dressing down, where Weir claimed he gave him a ‘real fright’.17 According to Weir, at one point in the meeting Fairey had ‘shown signs of considerable emotion’, but there was not much contrition in the explanatory letter that Fairey sent the Ministry following the meeting.18 On 15 October, the Air Ministry finally took the plunge, risked the legal comebacks, and formally cancelled 189 Battles.

  Almost immediately, news started coming through that Fairey were beginning to hit their production targets. The Air Ministry found itself half-hoping the sudden increase in production was a fluke, but it seemed the Stockport plant was finally delivering at the promised rate. It was possible that the company could deliver the remaining 466 on order before the end of 1939 which, as Fairey were quick to point out, made the cancellation look a bit premature. The company was reminded that, back in 1936, they had promised to deliver 655 by March 1939, and they were clearly not going to get anywhere near that.19 The problem for the Air Ministry was that, with each new forecast coming in, Fairey were getting closer to this target. In November, twenty-one were delivered and Fairey were claiming they would be building six a week by February 1938 and thirty a month by July. The cost of each plane in the second batch had been halved to £9,000, and Fairey now hoped to deliver 466 by June 1939.20 If the cancelled 189 were reinstated, he promised to deliver even more.21

  The Air Ministry was somewhat unsure what to do. By this time, it was clear that there were major problems with the Avro Manchester, the first of the new ‘heavies’. Its Rolls-Royce Vultures were in trouble, and there was no chance of the bomber entering production in March 1939. With the government examining plans for further expansion after March, the new squadrons would have to be equipped with something, and Ellington’s argument that the Battle was worse than useless scarcely seemed valid. Even if they were not needed at home, Swinton pointed out, the Battle would be far su
perior to anything squadrons in the Middle East were currently equipped with.

  There could be other ways of employing these planes once Bomber Command no longer needed them; Weir even wondered if the Battle could be used as a two-seater fighter. This would have been a bizarre suggestion, if the current equipment of the two-seater fighter squadrons had not been the 189-mph Hawker Demon with a gunner armed with just a single machine gun. The Boulton Paul Defiant was due to replace them, but it would be some time before this reached the squadrons. In the meantime, a plane that was 60 mph faster than the Demon did not seem like such a bad idea. It was a measure of how inadequate the Demon was that the Air Ministry struggled to come up with reasons why the Battle was not a better option. The pilot was rather a long way from the gunner for effective cooperation, Weir was told. It was also argued that the dorsal gun was only meant to be a defensive weapon, and the gunner did not have an adequate field of fire for more offensive use, although the same might be said of the Hawker Demon’s gun position.22

  While the Air Ministry speculated about what to do with the Battles now beginning to pour off the production lines, Fairey was coming up with ways of making the plane more attractive. Bristol had succeeded in making their Blenheim more acceptable by squeezing more fuel into it and extending the nose to give the navigator more room to work in. The result—the slower, less manoeuvrable Blenheim IV—was enough to give the Blenheim a stay of execution.

  Fairey tried doing the same. In December 1937, Fairey put forward four proposals for bombers that could comfortably reach Berlin from bases in Britain. All of them would be able to carry 1,000 lb of bombs and fly 2,000 miles at a cruising speed of 200 mph. Two of these were based on the existing Battle, while two were entirely new designs. The latter were twin-engined bombers that were powered by either Fairey’s experimental P.24 Monarch engine or the existing Merlin X, which was a version of the Merlin with a two-speed supercharger. Fairey also offered a twin-engined version of the Battle powered by the Merlin X. This version would be able to use many of the tools and jigs used by the existing Battle production line and its performance would only be slightly lower than the entirely new Merlin X proposal. Finally, Fairey suggested a Mark 2 version of the existing single-engined Battle powered by the Merlin X, which would have a revised fuselage and canopy that would allow the navigator to see outside the plane.23

  To hurry the Air Ministry along, Fairey warned them that, if he did not have something to replace the cancelled 189 Battles soon, his Stockport plant would have nothing to build. Fairey admitted that the proposal relying on the entirely new Monarch P.24 involved the biggest risk—even if there were no problems with the engine, they could still only deliver a handful by April 1940. Even with the existing Merlin X, only twenty of this version could be built by this date. The number would increase to sixty-five if the existing Battle was converted into a twin-engined machine. However, if the Air Ministry was willing to accept the upgraded single-engined Battle, he promised to deliver 168 by the same date. Fairey emphasised that the last of these could be by far the cheapest way of delivering a given quantity of bombs, a tempting offer for an Air Staff desperate to match the German bomber fleet at a price the country could afford.24 However, the only proposal the Air Ministry were even vaguely interested in was the twin Merlin X version of the Battle, and this still did not arouse much interest. When Fairey offered to push ahead with the design using his own funds, he was advised not to take the risk.

  Undeterred, Fairey came back with another set of proposals. These required less redesign but would still increase the range of the existing Battle to 1,400 miles. Two were two-seaters, which would be coming off the production lines in three to four months, while the third promised the same increased range and proper accommodation for a navigator, but would take six months to introduce. With minor adjustments to the radiator position and exhaust system, along with improved drag-reducing camouflage paint, Fairey made the rather astonishing claim that top speed with bomb load would be more than 300 mph, and that the plane would be able to make its escape at an even more impressive 324 mph once it had dropped its bombs. The Air Ministry was not convinced that it would be so easy to achieve such a dramatic increase in performance.25

  Fairey’s attempts to turn his Battle into a genuine long-range strategic bomber were not impressing the Air Staff. There seemed to be no long-term future for the plane. However, with both the Wellington and Hampden needing substantial redesign before they could go into production, in the short term the plane was still very much needed. The Battle was, along with the Blenheim, the only modern bomber currently available that was designed for daylight bombing. The Battle might not be what the Air Staff wanted, but it was already coming off the production lines and it was all there was. To squeeze a little more range out of the design, another 33-gallon tank was to be installed the port wing, which would make the plane capable of flying 1,170 miles at maximum cruising speed. Meanwhile, production was accelerating; by the end of 1937, eighty Battles had been delivered, and another forty arrived in the first two months of 1938.26 By this time, eight squadrons were fully equipped with two more converting, and by September, this had increased to thirteen with four more converting.27 Like it or not, the Battle was a crucial element of Bomber Command’s day bomber force.

  If it came to war with Germany, the plan was for Bomber Command to knock out electricity and coking plants in the Ruhr in a daylight strike, which the Air Staff believed would paralyse the German industry in weeks. The Ruhr was very close to the Dutch and Belgium frontier, but if these countries were neutral, it was a very difficult target to reach. With a direct approach ruled out, the mission would involve a 300-mile North Sea crossing, breaking through the German coastal air defences, and then flying 150 miles south to the heavily defended Ruhr. With more Bf 109Bs entering service every month, this was becoming an increasingly perilous operation. The Air Staff were quite right to be concerned about the vulnerability of the Battle, and Ludlow-Hewitt who was now Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, wondered if any of his bombers could perform such a hazardous mission.

  By early 1938, it seemed the time to put these plans into action might not be far off. In March, the Third Reich absorbed Austria, and the Czech Sudetenland was next on Hitler’s list. In response, the British government stepped up its plans for rearmament. This was not the time to leave factories idle through lack of orders. Austin was already falling behind with its Battle deliveries and the Air Ministry used this as a justification for reinstating the 189 Battles cancelled from the Fairey order. With the rate Fairey was now turning out Battles, even this was not going to keep the Stockport plant going for very long.

  In May, Fairey was pressing the Air Ministry for a decision on what they wanted his factory to build. All the Air Ministry could tell him was that there would be no more orders for Battles, or Battle derivatives. Building fighters instead was one option; at the time, the government was demanding that the Air Ministry switch production from bombers to fighters. Getting Fairey to build Spitfires instead of Battles was one possibility being considered.28 Indeed, this would have been a much better way of using the Battle’s Merlin engine. The decision to set up the Nuffield Shadow factory to build a thousand Spitfires seemed to make this idea unnecessary, but it was revived when it became clear that none of these could be delivered until March 1940. By this time there would be a deficit of 310 Spitfires, and Fairey assured the Ministry that he could make up the shortfall. With hindsight, an extra 300 Spitfires in 1940 would have been a priceless asset and, given their opinion of the Battle, choosing between the Fairey bomber and the Spitfire seemed like one of the easier decisions for the Air Ministry to make. For the Air Staff, however, the correct decision was not so obvious. Long-range bombers won wars, not short-range fighters. They feared Britain was already building too many fighters and could not bring themselves to order any more. For the time being, the decision was put on hold.29

  While the Air Staff pondered the relative merits
of building more Battles or more Spitfires, war was becoming more likely over German claims to the Sudetenland. As the plan to bomb the Ruhr became less hypothetical, Ludlow-Hewitt became increasingly nervous about using any of his bombers on such a risky daylight operation. He doubted the Blenheim could do it and was certain the Battle would suffer very heavy losses. At the very least, the mission required the better armed Wellington and Hampden, but even these might not be up to it, and ideally, the Manchester, Halifax, and Stirling were needed. What Ludlow-Hewitt and the Air Staff did not yet appreciate was that none of these were capable of crossing the German coast in broad daylight and heading south unescorted for the Ruhr, without suffering catastrophic losses—not even the mighty Lancaster would be capable of that. In 1938, only the Fairey Battle’s ability to survive was causing concern. As the crisis deepened and war seemed inevitable, Ludlow-Hewitt made it clear to the Air Ministry that he could not risk sending his Battles to the Ruhr. Instead, he suggested the best, and indeed the only, way of using these bombers was to send them off to France to support the French Army. Used tactically, they would not have to fly so far inside enemy airspace. Newall thought all of this was entirely reasonable.30 New possibilities were opening up for the Fairey Battle.

  For the Air Staff, this was very much a case of making the best of a bad job. Supporting the Army was not what RAF bombers were for and, if that was all the Battle could do, then it truly was obsolete. In fact, far from being the ultimate indignity, a new tactical role was a lifeline for the Fairey Battle project. Trying to use the plane as a long-range strategic bomber had always been a hopeless undertaking: the high fuel loads, the night flying, navigational and bomb aiming equipment, not to mention the third crewmember, were more than a single engine could carry. None of these were required for short-range operations. The Fairey Battle was, and often still is, criticised for being underpowered, but it could be argued that its problem was not a lack of power, it was just overloaded—in a tactical role, the plane would not need to carry so much. The Air Staff and Ludlow-Hewitt, might have seen switching the plane to tactical duties as a last-ditch act of desperation, but now the plane could stop attempting to do the impossible and start trying the possible. Tactical air support was not what it was designed to do, but it was what it was capable of doing—provided the plane was properly equipped and its crews trained for this new role, a trimmed down tactical Fairey Battle might be a very useful plane.