For all the roistering tales of ale and spirits and pills after long days of fighting 10,000 feet above the ground, however, most pilots would not have had the energy for more than a swift half of beer; instead, they were craving bed, and the merciful oblivion of deep sleep. This is an extraordinary aspect of the Battle of Britain difficult to envisage now; after so many successive days of killing, and seeing one’s friends killed, the pilots would wake again just before dawn (a cup of tea prepared for them by their batmen if they were officers) and, in that moment between dream and full awareness, the weight of what they would have to face yet again pressed down on them like a cold boulder. At the height of the Battle of Britain, any sort of rest for pilots in 11 Group was rare. Air Chief Marshal Dowding was intensely aware of the need for these men to have days on the ground simply to repair their stretched nerves, but there were not enough pilots to go around. There were so many young pilots still in training.
By this time, as he explained some years later, Air Chief Marshal Dowding’s thoughts on the defence of Britain had crystallised:
There was a distinct difference between the objectives of the opposing sides. The Germans were out to facilitate a transfer of ground troops across the Channel, to invade this country, and so to finish the war. Now, I wasn’t trying with Fighter Command to win the war. I was desperately trying to prevent the Germans from succeeding in their preparations for an invasion. Mine was the purely defensive role of trying to stop the possibility of an invasion, and thus give this country a breathing spell. We might win or we might lose the war, or we might agree on a draw – anything might happen in the future. But it was Germany’s objective to win the war by invasion, and it was my job to prevent an invasion from taking place. I had to do that by denying them control of the air.1
Despite Dowding’s rationale, however, it was becoming increasingly obvious by August that there were those in Fighter Command who vehemently opposed his defensive system. For figures such as 12 Group’s commander Trafford Leigh-Mallory, the limits on the numbers of planes that could be sent up was a source of immense frustration.
Leigh-Mallory had started flying in the First World War, after which he rose to wing commander and air commodore, all the while commanding a flying training school and also acting as air adviser to the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932. But his career, indeed much of his life, had been shaped in the open cockpits of biplanes flying high in the abstract skies above the fogs and filthy air of the trenches.
RAF Duxford (now the home of an excellent branch of Imperial War Museums) was the base of 12 Group; just a few miles south of Cambridge, and close to the Essex border, it was within seventy-two kilometres (forty-five miles) of Greater London and the Thames Estuary and indeed not far from RAF Debden, which was part of 11 Group. But Duxford’s responsibility and focus was on defending the manufacturing heartlands of the Midlands, as well as the east coast north of the capital, stretching up to Suffolk. This became a matter of some frustration for 12 Group’s most famous pilot, Douglas Bader, based a little further north in Coltishall.
He and Leigh-Mallory had been observing the flight formation of the attacking Germans; those formidable lineups of bombers, with their protective encircling fighters biting and diving like sharks at the more modest forces of 11 Group. Not unnaturally – for his belligerence was very clear and focused – Bader wanted the chance to hit back at the Germans. He wanted to be able to put together ‘big wing’ formations – that is, send up larger numbers of planes in each squadron to fight back the incursion. The great difficulty for Dowding was that even before that summer, Bader was held in awe not only by young trainees but by his superiors. Understandably so; to have returned to pre-eminence as a pilot after the long trauma of amputation and rehabilitation was a spectacular achievement. It took a particular kind of man to push on with that kind of willpower. Possibly Bader had an excess of it.
It has been pointed out that Bader’s view of aerial warfare was deeply coloured by the exploits of his heroes throughout the First World War. He very much believed in dogfights, with all the acrobatics that they would entail, even though there were those around him who tried to insist that in the new age of the Spitfire and the Hurricane, the nature of such fights was radically different. Now, in another echo of the First World War, where Royal Flying Corps fighters flew in formation during battle, Bader came to the firm belief that squadrons should be sent up in large disciplined numbers to meet the enemy head-on.
The argument against Bader went like this: the invaders themselves liked big formations because the bombers needed protection, and they were working against inflexible time limits; they could spend only so long over enemy territory without running out of fuel, and they had to stick to rigid flight plans in order to guarantee the success of hitting pre-ordained targets. The defenders, by contrast, had the element of flexibility.
The British could – in theory – either match the numbers, or harass and beat back the enemy from a variety of different angles and bases, and with less concern over time as they were performing this defence over home territory. The enemy might have had brute force, but the defenders could outwit and surprise them with unconventional attacks that would seemingly come out of nowhere. And thanks to the coastal chain of RDF stations, there would be warnings in time to get the individual fighters up into the air. Dowding’s view of the defenders going up in ‘big wing’ formations was that all nimbleness would be lost. Such forces would take very much longer to assemble than the individual pilots dashing for their cockpits. And if so many aeroplanes were focusing on one target, who would be left to defend the targets of other German bombers that might have managed to slip through?
But how much time can there ever be for theory when the nation is facing an expected invasion and when – as was the case by mid-August – the enemy is making determined efforts to destroy its air bases? Bellicose and stubborn Bader might have been; but in this moment of extraordinary crisis, wasn’t it natural to listen to the born warrior? Dowding later said: ‘When I look back on it now, it was asking a lot of any man to think of being able to curb Bader, particularly when he was doing so well in his own flying.’2
In the face of the events of 13 August 1940 (and the days that immediately followed), the sheer urge for retribution would have gathered many to Bader’s side. The true nature of the German plan, those huge yet exploratory attacks, became clear on what was later revealed to have been termed by the Germans Adlertag – ‘Eagle Day’. In other words, this was what German High Command regarded as being the real start of the Battle of Britain.
On those days in mid-August (after a badly stuttering start on 13 August for the Luftwaffe, which was hampered by low cloud), the Germans launched a spectacular aerial assault intended to smash Fighter Command into the dust. Those few days would see an estimated 1,000 enemy planes cross the sea in a series of pulses that stretched from Portsmouth to the Tyne. On 13 August, the pale wide skies above the Thames Estuary were filled with the ominous buzz as the bombers headed for Sheerness. At the same time, a fleet had set course for what it considered an important prize: the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough in Hampshire, together with the nearby Odiham station. Yet even though German bombers at one point made Southampton a target that afternoon, the fires that they started in several warehouses were quickly smothered.
The Germans made serious mistakes; one wave of attackers was absurdly lacking in synchronisation. A group of Messerschmitts had contrived to get so far ahead of the bombers they were supposed to be protecting that in fact they could do no such thing; then, it seemed, they could barely protect themselves against a counterattack from Spitfires of 11 and 10 Group over the Dorset coast. More waves of bombers came, the aim to strike at airfields from Essex down to the south coast; yet the airfields that sustained the most damage – Eastchurch in Kent, Detling just a few miles away – were the province of Coastal Command. The Royal Aircraft Establishment got away with barely a splinter; Farnborough’s airfield
was untouched, as was the Odiham base. The fighting was ferocious; from the point of view of the German pilots, it must have looked utterly unhinged.
Over the subsequent days, the ferocity and occasional chaos of the assault was sustained. There were other, less predictable, casualties of war. On 15 August, in Croydon, Surrey, near the aerodrome, a scent factory was hit. The resulting fire and smoke were suffocating. The attack on the aerodrome itself caused local damage. ‘Concrete and tarmac were thrown across a road, some pieces as large as footballs being thrown 20 yards or more,’ wrote a reporter for The Times. ‘Windows of many houses on a council estate were shattered and slates were blown from roofs. A double decker bus proceeding towards London was wrecked … There was a number of casualties, some of which were fatal.’ Some victims were trapped in debris and had to be given blood transfusions. The call went out for blood donors.
Foreshadowing the dark autumn to follow, sirens were sounded in the centre of London – and were ignored by many people. Indeed, some Londoners deliberately stayed out on the streets, apparently mad with curiosity to see a proper modern bombing raid. The Air Wardens became frantic in their efforts to make these people see sense. They would not have long to wait.
Elsewhere, in Rochester, Kent, near the Chatham dockyards, houses were hit, with several fatalities. There was damage of strategic importance too; two aircraft works, Pobjoys and Short’s, were repeatedly dive-bombed by some twenty German planes. At Short’s, pretty much the entire plant was destroyed, along with the planes under construction within. Attacks on the airfields produced mixed results: serious damage was done to Martlesham Heath in Suffolk – two hangars were obliterated, plus the officers’ mess, and a few aircraft too. Hawkinge aerodrome took a few bombs, but without any lasting effect; meanwhile, on the Thames Estuary in north Kent, the Eastchurch aerodrome was also targeted, though in that instance, it seemed that more damage had been done to the local railway line.
Over the course of those few mid-August days, it was the range of the attacks that was so breathtaking. In the northeast, houses near Seaham were hit. ‘Miners stood on top of a pit-heap cheering and waving their caps when a British fighter engaged a fleeing bomber out to sea and shot it down,’ said one reporter. Down in the southwest, meanwhile, 213 Squadron and 87 Squadron, based in Exeter, had the epic fight of their lives over the south coast; waves of some thirty bombers, ringed around with 100 or so fighters. The long days stretched out seemingly without end: the enemy seemingly inexhaustible, sending yet more and more planes across the sea; Fighter Command squadrons up and down the country, but most particularly in the southeast and southwest, equally in combat all day, pausing only to return to refuel; a quick turnaround and then back into what was simply described as ‘the melee’.
According to Air Ministry communiqués handed to the newspapers, on 15 August 144 enemy aeroplanes were destroyed or downed; 27 British planes were lost, but eight pilots were later found safe.
A young WAAF called Iris Cockle had just joined up and had started working at Kenley Airfield, just to the south of London. She was to see, close up, on 18 August, just how terrifying and traumatic German raids on aerodromes could be. She recalled: ‘During a quiet spell, a male sergeant asked me if I would take charge while he and a few colleagues took a break. Shortly after he left, I heard the ominous tones of the air-raid siren. The next thing I saw was planes of the Luftwaffe hedge-hopping across Kenley, dropping bombs and raking the area with gunfire. I threw myself into my section’s dugout to find that I was the only occupant.
‘For the next few minutes, I just sat there frozen with fear as the air-raid exploded above me. Then came the deafening silence after the planes had passed over, followed by the sound of a voice. “Hey, blondie,” it said, “you’d better get out of there, there’s an unexploded bomb on the roof of your dugout.” It was a young aircraftman who had stuck his head into the dugout to see if anyone was still alive. I vacated what I thought was my safety zone as quickly as I had entered it.
‘When I came up into the light,’ she continued, ‘all I could see was devastation everywhere. There were great scoops ripped into the ground that had been created by the bombs. Rubble from what were once buildings was scattered everywhere. Vehicles lay on their sides; some with smoke and flames billowing from them. A German plane had buried itself nose down in the ground. Worst of all was the sight of comrades lying either dead or injured.’3
Naturally, the coverage for public consumption was relentlessly upbeat. Yet there was also an authenticity about the kind of language that one unnamed fighter pilot used in an interview a few days after the events of 13 August. He was describing one particular skirmish he and his comrades had got into ‘far to the south of the Isle of Wight’, where ‘two separate squadrons of Messerschmitt 110s were flying about in an uncompleted circle at around 4,000ft [1,220 metres]’. ‘I was curious to know why they were circling around like that,’ said the pilot in the Manchester Guardian. ‘And we decided to have a crack … the lad on my left shot down one Messerschmitt 109 which, I think, was intended to be a decoy. It was supposed to lead us down to the circle but our pilot shot him down first when we started on our dive. We broke up the circle quite effectively. All three of us got at least one and I think we must have taken them by surprise … I flew over another circle of enemy fighters for about five minutes until they had all cleared off.’ He gathered some intelligence too. ‘Then I went down and saw one of their pilots in the water. He was easy to see for all around him was a big patch of green vapour – a method used by the Germans when they get into the water. It shows their friends where they are. You can see the green vapour from five miles away.’
The day wasn’t over. ‘While I was investigating this, I was attacked by a Messerschmitt 110 which … I had overlooked. I skidded round and climbed for him but he broke away to my left. I was still turning and at about 1,000ft [304 metres], I stalled. He was right in my gun sights. I just gave him a quick burst and he heeled over and went straight into the sea and broke up. Then we went home.’
These were also hailed successful days for the anti-aircraft gunners; German bombers were successfully brought down before they could inflict large-scale damage on Portsmouth dockyard and the surrounding areas, though of course some buildings and a railway station were hit. Similarly, on the Isle of Wight, it was not only the RDF station that was hit; several other buildings went with it.
And all of this while Douglas Bader and his pilots of 12 Group were compelled, by an accident of geography, to look on, as fighters to the far north and the far south of them stretched every nerve to bring the Germans down. In fact, some pilots from squadrons in his area were deployed on 13 August, but it is possible that there had been some kind of RDF mix-up; they chased a few German fighters but then turned around as the attack on Martlesham Heath aerodrome became apparent. They were too late; the bombers were already doing their work. Certainly they could be chased off, but the damage was already done. There were these and a hundred other prickling frustrations; the maddening psychological blow of an enemy seeming to act with apparent impunity. ‘It was intolerable to Bader that others should be plunging into the fire of battle (not to mention honour), while he was held impotently on the ground,’ wrote Paul Brickhill.4
‘There were not sufficient forces available for a reserve of fighters, a masse de manoeuvre, to be kept back and used only when the direction and strength of the enemy’s attack was known,’ states the official history. ‘Instead, the concentrated formations of German bombers and fighters were being met by squadrons containing no more than twelve, and frequently fewer aircraft. It was rarely, therefore, that the Germans failed to reach their targets, provided that the state of the weather was fair.’ The odds across those days, in other words, were quite terrifying: ‘The individual fighter squadrons, since they normally came into action independently of each other, were engaging up to ten times their number of the enemy.’
A further difficulty was that attacks made o
n Kent and the Thames Estuary carried little advance warning, simply because the journey across the Channel was so much briefer. The incoming bombers and fighters also had the inbuilt advantage of height – they were already high above as the Spitfires and Hurricanes climbed to reach them, vulnerable to their firepower. Would it not have been possible to have the Spitfires patrolling those skies? For reasons of fuel, but more pressingly of numbers, the answer was absolutely not. This is to say nothing of the effects of cloud cover, and the ways in which the enemy could use it to slip through and go on the attack.
What makes this period seem all the more remarkable is the apparent coolness of Hugh Dowding, and indeed of 11 Group’s Commander Keith Park. The system of delegation – allowing each squadron to react swiftly to a threat without orders having to go up and down the chain of command – must have been wearing on the nerves of not only all those at Bentley Priory, but everyone in the Air Ministry. It is one of the most fundamental impulses: the need to grab and take control. Douglas Bader was giving voice to an anxiety – verging on anguish – that was shared by many above him. Dowding, though, was implacable.
How many pilots and planes could the British afford to lose in the course of this onslaught? The losses had already been grievous and although plane production was now at full tilt, the training of new pilots was by necessity a process that could not be rushed. Were the German supplies as elastic and seemingly infinite as they seemed? Throughout the course of the Battle of Britain, Air Chief Marshal Dowding knew exactly how much responsibility he bore for the entire future of the nation. And even though his own comments seem to suggest otherwise, there must have been moments in the days that followed when he had pangs of doubt about the course he was taking.
The Secret Life of Fighter Command Page 18
