The Fairey Battle: A Reassessment of its RAF Career

by Greg Baughen

  With no strategic bombing allowed and no action on the ground to support, it seemed that there was little the Battles could do. Leaflet dropping was one alternative employment, but Ludlow-Hewitt was strongly against any attempt to operate the Battle by night. The crews had only ever practised taking off and landing in darkness. They had no training in night-flying and the plane lacked adequate navigational aids. Slessor agreed that this was a problem, but argued that dropping leaflets did not require accurate navigation. For the time being Ludlow-Hewitt got his way. No-one, not even Slessor it seemed, was confident about Battles finding their way around by night.14

  Both the French and British were anxious to use the Battles for something. French Army commanders wanted the entire German front line photographed and this seemed a task the Battles could help the French Air Force complete. The idea was to fly these missions at high altitude in formations of three to six planes and use their combined defensive firepower to beat off enemy attack. ‘High altitude’ was scarcely an accurate description: the Battle only had a service ceiling of around 25,000 feet and formation flying required the plane to fly well below this. The altitude these planes were flying was not going to pose any difficulties for German fighters. The first mission was flown on 10 September by three Battles from No. 150 Squadron.15

  Initially, the missions flew along the Allied side of the lines, with the Battles photographing German positions obliquely. From the 19th, they started flying on the German side of the lines, first 10 miles inside, then 20 miles.16 As the missions penetrated further into enemy airspace, so Playfair’s concerns grew. He tried to make sure the missions took place when French fighters were in the area, but did not seem particularly confident that this would be enough. Even before any losses occurred, he was already planning to ask the French to provide a close escort if German fighters started interfering.17

  It was not very long before the German fighters were interfering. On 20 September, three Battles from No. 88 Squadron were flying west of Saarbrücken when they were intercepted by three Bf 109Ds. The defensive fire of the three Battles proved totally inadequate and two were quickly shot down. One of these was flown by Flight Officer Graveley, who was able to crash-land his Battle before it burst into flames. Both the observer and gunner died and Graveley was severely burned. The second suffered a similar fate. The unprotected fuel tanks of Flight Sergeant Page’s plane were soon punctured and the Battle rapidly became a blazing inferno, visible for miles around, in which all three crewmembers perished. The sole surviving crew claimed one of the Messerschmitts and this success was confirmed by reports from the ground. For many years this was considered to be the RAF’s first victory of the war but in fact, no German fighters were lost. The plane seen falling in flames was FS Page’s Battle.18 For Playfair, the lesson was obvious. The Fairey Battle had to have an escort, even if it was only flying a few miles behind the German front line.

  It was a critical moment in the Fairey Battle’s operational career. The bomber’s future prospects depended on the Air Staff changing their mind about escorts. It did not require a revolutionary step into the unknown. British thinking was out of line with practice elsewhere, and the evidence for escorts was becoming overwhelming. Before the outbreak of war, reports that had reached the Air Ministry from the Spanish Civil War described how both sides were making extensive use of fighter escorts: even low-level bombers had tiers of fighters operating at low, medium, and high altitudes above them.19 Reports from Poland repeated the message: as long as the Polish fighter force represented a threat, German bombers had flown with escorts.20

  The Air Staff stubbornly refused to see the light. Some of the arguments used to support their stance were scarcely convincing. Both sides were using escorts in Spain because neither had many bombers so they could not afford to lose any, one argument went.21 The Air Staff insisted that using fighters as escorts was a diversion from their primary air superiority role. In the Air Staff mind, establishing air superiority and protecting bombers seemed to be two entirely unconnected issues. As the War Office pointed out, it was by protecting the bombers that fighters started to win the battle for air superiority. This was not so obvious to the Air Staff.

  The Air Staff would often fall back on the argument that there were simply not enough fighters. This argument might have attracted some sympathy if the Air Staff had not been constantly battling against more fighters being built. Bomber production always had priority; bombers, not fighters, won wars. Following the Munich Agreement, the government repeated its demands for fighter production to be stepped up, but Newall argued that there would be no way of using any more than the current number planned. If the RAF had any more fighters, they would get in each other’s way.22 When it was pointed out that the Germans seemed to be building a lot of fighters, the Air Staff insisted that one of the reasons for this was that the Luftwaffe was making the mistake of providing its bombers with escorts.23

  As far as the Air Staff were concerned, the French were making the same mistake. Fighter escorts were standard practice for French reconnaissance missions. It did not seem like a mistake to Playfair, and the losses No. 150 Squadron had suffered forced him to ask the French to provide escorts. Vuillemin did not have enough fighters to escort his own reconnaissance planes. He promised to do his best, but insisted that Britain made more of an effort to provide its own fighter cover. The French were grateful for the Battle bomber squadrons, but they repeatedly pointed out that, with only a couple of fighter squadrons, the AASF was an unbalanced force that was not capable of defending its own bombers.

  At a meeting with RAF staff on 28 September, Vuillemin again appealed for the British to send more fighters to France. The French Air Force did not have enough to escort both French and British reconnaissance planes. The British representative at the meeting, Air Vice-Marshal Evill, indignantly explained that RAF bombers and reconnaissance planes had no need of French escorts. By flying in formation, they could beat off any enemy fighter attack.24 A puzzled Vuillemin cancelled further French escorts. Two days later five unescorted Battles from No. 150 Squadron were carrying out a reconnaissance mission in the Saarbrücken–Merzig region when eight Bf 109Es intercepted them. The Battles stood their ground, closed formation, and prepared to slug it out, as they were trained to do. Within minutes, four Battles had been shot down, with most falling in flames, and the lone survivor was chased back to its base where it crashed, with the crew surviving to tell the tale.25 It was the second time that No. 150 Squadron had suffered heavily while flying unescorted missions. The squadron immediately set about trying to improve the Battle’s defensive firepower by adding a ventral gun. This might help, but it could never be the solution. The Battle was never going to fight its way through, however many guns it carried. The French were right. The AASF needed fighters to escort the bombers. They also needed self-sealing tanks to prevent them bursting into flames.

  For the Air Staff, the events unfolding in France did not prove that bombers needed escorts; it was just damning confirmation that the Fairey Battle was obsolete. The armour that the Battle was supposed to have as protection from fighter attack was now hurriedly rushed out to France and fitted, but no-one imagined this would be enough. There was no future for the Battle. They would have to be replaced with bombers that could protect themselves. The plan was to reequip the Battle squadrons with Blenheims two at a time. Nos. 15 and 40 Squadrons returned to the UK to reequip with Blenheims, and the Blenheim-equipped Nos. 114 and 139 Squadrons from No. 2 Group replaced them. This, however, was as far as the process got. Blenheims were in demand for fighter, reconnaissance, and bomber squadrons, but the Air Staff showed no interest in increasing output. Indeed, they wanted to phase the Blenheim out as quickly as possible and concentrate production on bigger, heavy bombers. There would not be enough Blenheims to convert any more Battle squadrons until the autumn of 1940 at the earliest. The remaining eight squadron of the AASF would have to persevere with their Battles.26

  This might be a s
etback for the Air Staff’s plans to extend the range of its bomber fleet, but it was not necessarily a setback for the War Office. If the Army needed a dive-bomber or low-level assault plane, the Battle was still the only immediately available option. The War Office was making it very clear the Army needed something along these lines and the generals were becoming increasingly frustrated at the speed with which the Air Ministry was moving to provide it. They were also far from pleased with the large twin-engined B.11/39 the Air Ministry was proposing. The effectiveness of the close support the Luftwaffe had provided in Poland stung the War Office into putting forward its own plans for a small, cheap, single-seater, low-performance, close-support plane. It would only need to fly at 160 mph, would only carry 400 lb of bombs, and would be flown by soldiers. The idea was to mass-produce the plane using unskilled labour from outside the aircraft industry.27 The Air Ministry ridiculed the idea and insisted their B.11/39 plane was far superior. Neither approach was ideal, but the Army approach was arguably a lot closer to what was required.

  The War Office deferred to Air Ministry wisdom and accepted the twin-engined B.11/39, but insisted that the plane had to be in service in time to deal with the expected German spring offensive. A horrified Air Ministry explained that this was quite impossible; a new plane could not be available in any numbers until 1942. The only way to get anything into service sooner was to adapt the existing Blenheim and Battle. That was fine by the War Office but they wanted it done quickly.

  If you can fix up Blenheims or Battles or any other aircraft to take the job on, can we not get on at once to some trials and training? The CIGS [Chief of the Imperial General Staff] has his teeth firmly into this problem and it is a fact that we are, at the moment, one down on the German in not possessing an aircraft trained to work in the closest cooperation with the Army for Direct support. If we can eliminate that deficiency with existing aircraft let us get on with it.28

  The Air Ministry promised to do what it could, and the AASF was told to give ground attack training top priority. The Army seemed to be getting what it wanted.

  The Battle was the closest approximation to what the Army required and there was no shortage of them. By the outbreak of war, 1,800 were on order and over 1,100 had been delivered. The next generation of heavy bombers were still not ready to replace it so, soon after the outbreak of war, another 450 were ordered to keep production lines running. The idea was for most of these to be completed as two-seater dual control trainers or target tugs. The idea of building an improved Battle had not been entirely abandoned. One suggestion circulating Air Ministry corridors was a Battle with a huge 1,750-hp 42.5-litre Rolls-Royce Vulture replacing the Merlin. Fairey had been toying with Vulture-powered Battle since 1935; with this engine, even weighed down for long-range missions, the Battle would not lack for power, and top speed was expected to be around 350 mph.29 The Vulture version was seen principally as a two-seater reconnaissance plane with a secondary bombing capability, but it would have made an excellent basis for a ground attack plane.30 Indeed, it would have been remarkably similar to one of the finest ground attack planes of all time. At around this time, 1,500 miles away, another two-seater of similar size, weight, and power was being tested near Moscow—the TsKB-55; the plane that would eventually become the legendary armoured Il-2 Sturmovik. A Vulture-powered Battle would have been an interesting proposition, although with the problems the Vulture engine would experience, it could never have been a successful one. With the equally powerful Sabre replacing the Vulture, the Battle might have matched the Sturmovik.

  The two-speed Merlin X offered a more immediate way of improving the Battle’s performance. Fairey had suggested this engine back in December 1937 as a way of powering a longer-range version of the Battle. The company now accepted that the plane had no future as a strategic bomber. However, by exchanging some of the fuel for considerably more armour protection, the company believed a useful tactical-reconnaissance and ground-attack plane might emerge. It seems that Fairey came to this conclusion independently, and were rather hesitant about even mentioning such a possibility to an Air Ministry that appeared only interested in strategic bombing. Early in October, they plucked up the courage and rather tentatively put the idea forward. 31

  The Air Ministry was indeed thinking along similar lines. Before Fairey sent in their proposal, the Air Ministry was also using the 1937 Merlin-X-powered Battle as the basis for a ground-attack version, with armour instead of some of its fuel and four guns in the wings for ground strafing. It would still have the 200-mph cruising speed of the Fairey 1937 proposal but a range of just 600 miles.32 There were certainly options for giving the Army the plane it wanted and doing it quickly.

  While these proposals were emerging, the AASF was acting on Air Ministry instructions to train the Battle crews for tactical air support. With no fighter escorts and unescorted Battles proving so vulnerable to enemy fighters, the only option seemed to be to try and avoid the enemy by flying very low, so Battle squadrons practised mock attacks on motor transports at altitudes as low as 50 feet.33 Interestingly, Hurricanes sometimes accompanied the Battles—the Air Ministry in London might be convinced close escorts were a bad idea, but it seems that the commanders in the field were learning on their feet.34 The Hurricane squadrons attached to the AASF were now officially given the escort role as well as air defence of the airfields. The problem was that there were still only two of them; RAF commanders in France deciding they needed escorts was not going to persuade the Air Staff or Dowding to send any more fighters across the Channel. With ten bomber and two fighter squadrons, the French were quite right. The AASF was an unbalanced force.

  If the Battles could not have fighter protection, they perhaps could at least have armour protection. The plane was now getting the 85 lb of armour that had been agreed before the war, but this was designed primarily to deal with fighter attack. More would be required if the plane was to survive the intensive ground fire which the Air Ministry so feared, and Air Marshal Sir Brooke-Popham saw no reason why the Battle could not have it.

  Henry Brooke-Popham was one of the Royal Flying Corps’ first squadron commanders, and had retired in 1937 after a long and distinguished career. On the outbreak of war, he came out of retirement and his first task was inspecting RAF units in France, where he was soon hearing from the Battle aircrews about the problems they faced. The plane was completely defenceless to attack from below and Brooke-Popham was impressed with the arrangement No. 150 Squadron had devised, with a machine gun pivoted at the rear of the bomb aiming position.35 Brooke-Popham was also very aware that if Battles were going to attack at low level, they had to have better protection from ground fire. A meeting was organised at the Fairey Stockport plant on 27 October with representatives from the Air Ministry and members of No. 150 Squadron to discuss the options.36

  Initially, Fairey did not believe anything could be done. The plane had already been pushed to the limit of its design capabilities and could not take self-sealing tanks or armour unless the Air Staff were willing to accept a reduction in bomb load or range. It seems that neither Fairey nor indeed the Air Ministry knew that Playfair had followed Ludlow-Hewitt’s advice and already removed the fuselage tanks—once this was established, Fairey had 300 lb to play with.37 They suggested this could be used to carry an extra ventral gun (40 lb), extra armour for the crew (100 lb) and protection for the fuel tanks (100 lb), and still have something to spare. The rear gunner would get an extra 25 lb of armour and another 80 lb would reinforce and extend the ventral armour. There was a gap below the rear gunner’s shield that required a new plate to be designed and manufactured, but plates that already existed would do for the rest, and instructions were issued to get the extra armour plates out to France as quickly as possible.38

  Installing self-sealing tanks would use up the 100 lb allocated to protecting the fuel tanks. These were still being tested so, in the meantime, small vertical pieces of armour would be used, weighing just 26 lb in total, but these would o
nly protect the tanks from the rear. It would not provide much—if any—protection to ground fire. As long as the promised self-sealing tanks arrived soon, this might not be too serious a problem.

  Unfortunately for the Battle, they did not arrive. It was not just the Battle that was having to do without this basic protection; the failure of the Air Ministry to give RAF planes self-sealing tanks was threatening to become a national scandal. French and German planes had self-sealing tanks as standard. Some feared that the sight of British planes falling in flames might provoke public outrage, if German, and indeed French, planes did not seem to have the same problem.39 It was not just a fire risk. Even if fuel escaping from punctured tanks did not catch fire, the loss of fuel meant the plane would probably not make it back to its base.

  However, the Air Staff were still reluctant to do anything that might reduce the range of any of their bombers. There were even suggestions that perhaps covering one tank would be enough, to ensure planes at least did not lose all their fuel. Some questioned whether it was worth bothering with a plane like the Battle, which was about to be phased out of service. It was only after much debate that it was agreed that all planes, including the Battle, should have all their tanks protected. The Battle was to get the French ‘Semape’ covering; in trials this had proven very effective at plugging holes caused by rifle-calibre bullets, and even provided some protection against 20-mm cannon shells. The system was being tried out on a Battle, but there was still no urgency about fitting the Battle, or any other British bombers, with self-sealing tanks.40 All that changed in December 1939.

  On 18 December, twenty-two Wellingtons headed for German warships in Heligoland Bight. German radar picked them up, fighters were scrambled and the formation was savaged, with many falling in flames. German pilots were quick to note how easily Wellingtons burned. Those that did not catch fire fled the battle with petrol pouring from holes in their fuel tanks. Only four made it back. Suddenly protecting fuel tanks had become a lot more urgent.