Mr Churchill ought for once, perhaps, to believe me when I prophesy that a great empire will be destroyed – an empire that it was never my intention to destroy or even harm. I do however realise that this struggle, if it continues, can end only with the complete annihilation of one or the other of the two adversaries. Mr Churchill may believe that this will be Germany. I know it will be Britain. In this hour, I feel it to be my duty before my own conscience to appeal once more to reason and common sense to Great Britain as much as elsewhere … I am not the vanquished seeking favours but the victor speaking in the name of reason.
On the same day, the Air Ministry reported an epic battle in the skies above the south coast as the Luftwaffe made another determined attack on both shipping and harbours. ‘Spitfires, Hurricanes and anti-aircraft guns all helped to beat off the enemy …’ ran the report. ‘In the second action, which took place in the afternoon, more than 50 German bombers and fighters attempted to raid a south coast harbour. Six patrolling Hurricanes swept up to engage the enemy. Three, however, were immediately attacked by twelve Messerschmitts and the other three Hurricane pilots counter-attacked. Three Spitfires chased two other Messerschmitts.’ The report glowingly detailed the German planes that had been shot down; nor did it shy away from the obvious fact that the British pilots were at all points heavily outnumbered.
The Spitfires were also flying through atrocious Channel weather; on 24 July, they brought down twelve German bombers in very heavy rain. The relentlessness of the German attacks, it is suggested in the official history, was only partly to do with the harassment of shipping, and perhaps more to do with wearing Fighter Command down; day after day, awake in the pre-dawn darkness, all of this might have been expected to start sapping the mental strength of even the most committedly aggressive fighter pilot. There was a double futility about fighting in rain and cloud: the enemy’s aims blurred by horrendous conditions, the defenders knowing that palpable hits in thick billowing cloud would be reduced. And for the defending pilots, the added hazard of knowing when to call it off, and try to reach home.
It was not just the southeast corner of the country that seemed to be acutely vulnerable in those opening days of the battle. Dowding had fears for the southwest too: the industry and ports of south Wales, as well as the great bases at Plymouth and Falmouth. He arranged for heavy anti-aircraft guns to be moved to the region, and also ordered the deployment of more vast barrage balloons as a further line of precaution. And more balloons were ordered for Dover, and for the coastline around. Ever since the Dunkirk evacuation, Dover had been recognised as being of key strategic significance, both as a focus for the Navy and as a possible bridgehead for the enemy.
Towards the end of July came the first inkling of official disquiet with Dowding’s approach to the defence of Great Britain; the first sense in the corridors of the Air Ministry and of Whitehall that the thinking had to be altered. Some had begun to question the use of coastal airfields; 11 Group, whose pilots had been shouldering so much of the weight of responsibility, were still based at the inland stations of Croydon, Biggin Hill and Hornchurch, making only occasional use of coastal stations such as Rochford in Essex and Hawkinge in Kent. Dowding’s superiors were puzzled: why couldn’t the fighter squadrons be more permanently sited on the coast? That way, surely they would be faster to meet and intercept the enemy.
Perhaps this was so, although it has been pointed out that once the Germans were flying over the Channel, it wouldn’t have made a great deal of difference in terms of timing. There was another consideration: for the Germans, the coastal airstrips made exceedingly tempting and relatively accessible targets. The advantage of being stationed a little further inland was that the pilots’ bases were less vulnerable. It might take a few minutes’ more flying time to meet the enemy, but at least they knew that they would have a runway to return to.
There was another element to the whispering campaign against Dowding, and this was to do with the debate that dated back to the 1920s. Should Britain not have been taking the air fight to the enemy? A couple of weeks earlier in July 1940, Churchill had declared as much to War Cabinet colleagues: ‘There is one thing that will bring him [Hitler] back and bring him down and that is an absolutely devastating exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland. We must be able to overwhelm them by these means, without which I do not see a way through.’5
Many in the Air Ministry agreed, among them the 67-year-old Lord Trenchard, former Commander in Chief of the RAF. He had retired from the service some years back, and had been persuaded in the 1930s into taking control of the Metropolitan Police. With the outbreak of war, Lord Trenchard was eager to offer his expertise to the Air Ministry, and he, like others, watched Air Chief Marshal Dowding with dissatisfaction; this complex defensive network was getting Britain no further towards winning the war. Trenchard was among those who thought it would be better if Dowding was removed from his post. The fact that the two men had worked closely and with mutual regard some ten years before was neither here nor there. This was a philosophical and existential dispute: mere survival versus total victory. Trenchard’s belief in the bomber, and in much more aggressive tactics, chimed with that of Churchill.
The Luftwaffe was growing bolder; one sortie in late July saw bombers flying from more southerly points on the French coast, and crossing Britain. Birmingham received its first bombing raid. Liverpool attracted German attention. A bomb was dropped on a munitions factory in Hatfield in Hertfordshire. Another difficulty faced in those early days by the Filter Room was sometimes the sheer numbers of planes being tracked; if in sufficiently large numbers, with different targets, the tracks would end up in a labyrinthine state. With time would come the experience to unravel the larger picture through intensive analysis, but in a wholly new kind of conflict, never before experienced, skilled extemporisation was key. Dowding, for instance, arranged for squadrons from the north of Scotland and north of England to be drafted down south, and for less successful fighter planes like the Defiant to be moved to quieter regions.
So in one light, the cavalier treatment of Hugh Dowding in terms of job security is almost blackly comic. Just as Britain’s fight for its very existence was under way, the Air Chief Marshal of Fighter Command had no idea whether he was about to be forcibly retired. He also knew little about the extent of the talk against him in very senior circles. Back in March 1940, Dowding’s superiors had extended his contract of service to 14 July 1940. At the beginning of July, with all nerves taut for the coming conflict, Dowding not unreasonably tried to find out whether he was about to be given the push, or whether he was to be granted yet one more postponement. Quite apart from any feeling of personal slight – though he would have been hardly human not to have felt resentful – Dowding knew that any changeover might also mean a fundamental change in approach, one that would affect all of his pilots.
Dowding got hold of the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Cyril Newall. There was what is sometimes described as a full and frank exchange of views. Dowding had demanded of his superior on the telephone, ‘If you want to get rid of me, then get rid of me, but don’t do it in this way.’
Newall then wrote to Dowding; given the nature of the times, the climbdown was hardly wholehearted:
I am writing to ask if you will again defer your retirement beyond the date which I last gave you of July 14th. Under present conditions I should be more than loathe [sic] for you to leave Fighter Command on that date and I would be very glad if you would continue in your appointment as Air Officer Commanding-In-Chief until the end of October. If, as I sincerely hope you will be, you are willing to accept the extension, an official letter to this effect will be sent to you in due course, and I will also write to you regarding your successor.6
It was hardly a ringing endorsement; Dowding was swift to write back. Again, this was partly pride (the shabbiness of his treatment went beyond conventional rudeness into something bordering on contempt) but also, more pointed
ly, conviction that he knew how Britain’s air defence should be run:
Apart from the question of discourtesy, which I do not wish to stress, I must point out the lack of consideration involved in delaying a proposal of this nature until ten days before the date of my retirement. I have had four retiring dates given to me and now you are proposing a fifth. Before the war … I should have been glad enough to retire; now I am anxious to stay, because I feel that there is no-one else who will fight as I do when proposals are made which would reduce the Defence Forces of the Country below the extreme danger point.7
He was referring to those squadrons mooted for France, back in May. A smoother diplomat might have made an effort not to bring up old rows; Dowding on the other hand was direct in citing what he clearly considered a personal triumph – thwarting the will of the Air Ministry and the War Cabinet to ensure the safety of the country. It is not difficult to see how such an attitude would cause answering resentment. There were those in the Air Ministry younger and, as they would have seen it, more modern-minded. Dowding was a man of the last war. In Sir Cyril Newall, moreover, he was up against a gifted office politician. Word reached the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, who wrote to Dowding in treacly tones. In turn, Newall got to hear about this correspondence, and wrote to Dowding again: ‘I can understand that you feel that you have not been treated with the consideration you would wish, but I must ask you to put this down to the stress of events in recent years, of which we are both only too well aware. May I ask you to accept my sincere apologies.’ But there was a postscript which revealed that Newall had been seriously needled by the suggestion that Dowding, and Dowding alone, knew how best to defend the nation. Newall wrote that he was
unable to agree that there is no-one else who could resist as you do proposals to reduce the defence forces of this country below the extreme danger point … Only last month, I was glad to have your support at the Cabinet when the question of sending fighter squadrons to France was under consideration. I must point out that the policy of the Air Staff has consistently been directed towards conserving our Air Defence Forces in the face of the various conflicting aims that have right or wrongly been made upon them.8
This was the point at which Dowding levitated with rage; indeed, the resentment never really appeared to leave him. For of course, he had stood quite alone in that session of Cabinet, making his impassioned case for not sending any more fighter squadrons over to doomed France; there had been no loud cries of ‘hear hear’ as he had presented his checklist of reasons to the Prime Minister. Yet again, though, a more skilled diplomat might accept that, just occasionally, this is how one’s superiors behave.
By the end of July, the precise meaning of the German tactics was still a matter of debate. The attacks on shipping had been relentless and yet, according to the official history, simultaneously ineffective. But cunning Luftwaffe decoy tactics were effectively deployed to boost coastal bombing raids, drawing fighters into unnecessary action while elsewhere, larger numbers of the enemy were homing in on their targets; in early August, for instance, RAF fighters made contact over Dorset with huge numbers of Messerschmitts that had flown over from Cherbourg. There followed an epic and terrifying battle in the air – but the Luftwaffe’s aim that day was to exhaust its foe. That battle was actually intended to draw fire away from an even larger German bombing party that was making ineluctably for the Dorset harbour of Portland.
‘The railway line at Portland station was blocked, a submarine school was hit, two oil tanks were set on fire, two small destroyers were slightly damaged and there was a good deal of damage to private property,’ records the official history. Yet, even here, the bombing raid was not counted as being especially effective; the formation of bombers and escorting fighters was fought off by 213 Squadron. Later that day, there were German attacks on tankers off the coast of Norfolk, and a concerted effort to destroy the barrage balloons and defences of Dover. On that day, 11 August, British losses were heavy: twenty-five pilots killed or missing, twenty-eight aircraft destroyed. On a day-by-day basis, such losses would be impossible to sustain.
At about the time when he was wondering if he was about to be fired, Dowding had been invited to spend the weekend at the Prime Minister’s weekend house, Chequers, in the Chilterns. It was there that Winston Churchill gave him an assurance that he very much wanted him to remain on the active list. As the Luftwaffe assaults began, the Prime Minister naturally took an avid interest in the nerve centre of the RAF’s defensive operation. He visited Bentley Priory, and was there in the Filter Room as the news came through of the heavy losses suffered by a squadron of Defiants. According to Dowding’s biographer, Churchill was grave and also concerned about the heavy loss of aircraft, as well he might have been. To this, Dowding’s response was at once correct yet also an indicator of how perhaps he might have frayed the nerves of those close to him. He reportedly told Churchill, ‘That may be so, but what I am conscious of is that so many of my men have died.’9 The insult was unintentional. But it is also an illustration of a kind of leaden quality in Dowding; admirably straightforward, quite without side, but also slow to read the mood of others.
The rate at which fighter aircraft were being lost was also a matter of vehement concern for Daily Express proprietor Lord Beaverbrook, whom Churchill had appointed as Minister for Aircraft Production just a few weeks before. Although factories had been allocated for the work of producing fighter planes, the assembly lines, even after Dunkirk, were still sluggish; Beaverbrook, whatever anyone thought of him (and there were plenty who could not abide him) was renowned for an abundance of energy. He turned to Vickers Supermarine down on the south coast, and in doing so went to war with the Air Ministry. He wanted Supermarine to take over the slow production process at a Nuffield-owned factory in Castle Bromwich. The aim of the Air Ministry was to ensure that the Castle Bromwich production line was heavy on the new generation of bombers; the prevailing view was that defensive fighters were not enough, and that Britain had to have ample means of launching pre-emptive attacks. But sardonic Beaverbrook was at one with Dowding: for the moment, it was the fighters that were needed most. For if the Germans managed to get a sniff of air superiority, then there would scarcely be a chance to launch any kind of attack at all.
The desperate battle for the survival of Britain was properly under way. Now it was to sweep into a phase of greater intensity.
Chapter Twelve
Nerve Endings
There was always more to bombing than the immediate moment of destruction, or the horror and the stunned mourning that followed. Whether aimed at cities, towns or villages, the explosions reverberated beyond individual death and injury. They marked the annihilation of the familiar, the erasure of memories. A long-standing row of shops or a centuries-old pub might simply vanish with no warning. In once teeming neighbourhoods, there would be bewilderment and even disorientation as people struggled to steer past the fresh wounds in the earth, the cellars suddenly opened up to sunlight. Landmarks that had stood in the closely packed high street for as long as anyone who lived there could remember, vanished as though they had never existed. Bearings were lost, physically and emotionally.
On a broad social level, such destruction is accompanied by a communal hurt; it is an act of elemental aggression against which there can be no immediate, direct reprisal. The bombers swoop in, drop their load, and are already flying away across the moonlit sea as the fires they started reach their height below.
Before the Blitz began in the autumn of 1940, the Luftwaffe were already flexing their bombing muscles. Dowding and his pilots were doing everything possible to fight them off. But the defence of the nation could not mean the blanket protection of each and every community that found itself underneath the mighty battles in the air.
As summer reached its height, England’s extreme southeast, the county of Kent, was becoming better known among military personnel and civilians alike as ‘Hellfire Corner’. Towns and vi
llages in the high ribbon along the white cliffs were fast growing accustomed to bombs and bullets. There were, though, outbreaks of neurosis. Local street lighting, for instance, had been modified to what was called ‘starlighting’; the idea was that in the darkness of the night, the lights would be perfectly visible to a distance of about three metres (ten feet), but would then rapidly dim the further one moved away. But they attracted superstitious violence; there were accounts of anonymous locals waiting until the small hours and then going out to stone the illuminations, convinced that the German bombers would easily be able to see them. The authorities had to issue pleas for this nocturnal sabotage to cease.
In the midst of the German assault, an intriguing report was filed by Brigadier General John Charteris exclusively for newspaper readers. Citing American intelligence, he gave voice in the Manchester Guardian to the question that the entire population was asking: when would Germany make its expected pounce?
The reports now being received from the United States of German troop movements towards the Channel coast, of the closing of areas in France and of the collection of barges may betoken the concentration of an invading army and the completion of the last preliminaries before the long-advertised attack on Britain is launched. But there is also the possibility that all these reports originate from the fertile German Propaganda Office and are circulated mainly as another move in the battle of nerves. If they are meant to have jostled our nerves, they have not succeeded.
The Secret Life of Fighter Command Page 16
