Many Not the Few: The Stolen History of the Battle of Britain

by Richard North

  And now Churchill and the War Cabinet had to address the looming coal crisis. The problems, Anderson told his colleagues – speaking to the paper he had lodged earlier – was not a shortage of coal. Compared with the same time the previous year, nine million tons more coal had been stocked in the country, including 1½ million more in the London area. This latter figure represented London’s consumption for one month. The problem was distribution.

  Since the beginning of September the intensification of air attack had involved considerable congestion and delay in the delivery of coal into the London area and beyond London to the south. Damage to railways had prevented coal reaching its destinations in Central London and onwards, and damage to consignees’ premises had, in some cases, prevented coal from being delivered to them. This had caused congestion of coal wagons in marshalling yards, exchange sidings and stabling points. Traffic was now backed up to the pits. It was now even affecting production, as some pits had run out of storage space.

  Anderson had numerous administrative and practical suggestions to make, including establishing dumps on the periphery of London, and using road transport to ship the coal from there, and more extensive use of the canal network. But never had the “Coal Scuttle Brigade” been so necessary. Anderson was now proposing to step up sea transport. More coal would go by sea to South Thames and Medway Ports, additional small craft were being put into the coal trade and the Admiralty had agreed to increase to sixteen the number of vessels in convoys.69

  DAY 108 – FRIDAY 25 OCTOBER 1940

  The newspapers had little more to add to the Pétain affair than when they first reported the meeting with Hitler. The Yorkshire Post, however, rather stiffly informed its readers that Germany might be about to launch a monster propaganda campaign carrying falsification to lengths far exceeding those already attempted designed to show that Britain’s chances of withstanding German might were hopeless.

  The Mirror announced a “Better night fighter plane”. The paper, with others, was reporting on a BBC commentary the previous evening by Air Marshal Sir Philip Joubert. Amazingly, he was referring to the Defiant, saying that the aircraft, “originally designed as a night fighter and used experimentally for a while by day”, had now been restored to its proper role and “with certain developments that we are considering, should be very effective”. It wasn’t. The aircraft was not suited to radar interception. That Joubert felt the need to talk up the Defiant simply reflected the growing unease at the inability of the RAF to deal with the night bomber, and its desperation to come up with a solution.

  But even in the daytime, the RAF was finding it hard to keep the Luftwaffe at bay. Three people were killed when a German fighter-bomber scored a direct hit on trams in Blackfriars Road, London, during a daylight raid. The trams worst hit were in the middle of a group of five, drawn up near traffic lights. The dead included a driver, a conductor and a woman passenger. A number of women ripped up their clothing to provide temporary bandages for the injured, of which four had been taken to hospital. Many others were cut by flying glass. Adjoining buildings were badly damaged.

  For the first time, Italian aircraft were committed to an operation over British soil. Thirteen aircraft took part in a raid against Harwich. A Joint Intelligence Committee report stated that assemblies of shipping and barges were still to be observed in Channel ports. It was thought that the intention was either to complete arrangements in case the situation was favourable or to maintain the threat of invasion or to continue preparations so as to prevent a fall in morale.70

  DAY 109 – SATURDAY 26 OCTOBER 1940

  The official German News Agency, reporting on the meeting between Hitler and Marshal Pétain, said: “Hitler did not hesitate to treat the Marshal as a great and honourable opponent deserved to be treated”. Noting Pétain ‘s discomfort, evidenced by the protracted negotiations, the Daily Express could not resist the temptation to moralize. “Now you see what it is like to be beaten. Look at France. Look at Pétain creeping to the feet of the conqueror, asking what it is he wants,” the paper stormed. “As we watch each step of that dreadful and pitiful pilgrimage we sing anew the praises of our invincible Navy and our unbeatable Air Force”.

  Several newspapers focused on yet another gun duel across the Straits of Dover. The narrative was familiar. The German guns shelled a convoy. German aircraft joined in. The British guns responded and bombers roared into action, this time launching the biggest raid yet on German-occupied France. Honour was satisfied. The warriors stood down and had their teas, while the servants cleaned their guns. Alan Brooke and others fretted about the enormous waste of manpower on Winnie’s “pets”.

  For the rest, it was déjà vu all over again. Some jabos and their escorts flew across the Channel and headed towards London. Like the day before, and the day before that, some actually got to drop their bombs over the city. This time, the Royal Chelsea Hospital was hit. Fighter Command flew 732 sorties, losing nine fighters – three in accidents. Seven aircraft were lost by Bomber and Coastal Commands. The Fleet Air Arm lost a Swordfish. Seventeen British aircraft had been lost, against nine Germans.

  About 150 miles off the north-west coast of Ireland, the troopship and former liner Empress of Britain had been bombed and strafed by a Condor. The bombs started large fires which soon crippled the ship. Many crewmen were trapped below deck, some forced to escape through portholes into the sea. A Sunderland and three Blenheims answered calls for help. Under constant air cover from Hurricanes out of Aldergrove, the ship limped eastwards, latterly under tow, only to be torpedoed by U-32 on 28 October. Most of the 643 passengers and crew were saved. Only 45 were killed, all passengers in the initial attack. At 42,348 tons, she was the largest liner to be sunk through the entire war. U-32 was sunk by the destroyer Harvester, two days after she had despatched the Empress.

  Back in Britain, the creatures of the night were on the prowl again. They hit London and Birmingham heavily. New Street Station in Birmingham was closed by an unexploded bomb. But for some, the war had become a spectator sport once more – it had lost its power to shock. The Express reported thousands of people crowding Kent seafronts to watch and hear “terrific battles between convoys, planes and long range guns which shook the coast from early yesterday evening to long after dark”, as German long-range guns, with the aid of a terrific bombing by the RAF, lit up the whole French coast between Calais and Boulogne.

  And buried deep in the “book” was the short squib headed: “Why I left the BBC by J. B. Priestley”. Why, the question was posed, did J. B. Priestley leave the BBC? His popularity cannot have been in doubt. Far from it. His famous broadcasts have won for him a new reputation as the voice of Commonsense Britain. Why is it then that Priestley’s broadcasts have suddenly come to an end? The piece concluded: “He will tell you himself in a vigorous, outspoken article in tomorrow’s Sunday Express”.

  DAY 110 – SUNDAY 27 OCTOBER 1940

  The long-running Pétain saga was coming to a close. Sombre news of a daylight attack killing six shoppers in London when a bomb dropped among them was confined to the back page. The front page in the Sunday Express offered the details of the Pétain deal, with the word “collaboration” featuring prominently. France, under force majeure, was to integrate politically and economically with Germany, as part of the Nazi’s idea of a new world order. However, Pétain seemed to have avoided full military integration and a declaration of war against Great Britain. It was still a hostile power, but not a belligerent one. The USA threatened to seize French overseas possessions if military cooperation between Vichy and Germany became too close.

  The settlement, however, triggered another bout of speculation on peace moves, another back-page headline of the Express reading: “Hitler may be planning another ‘peace’ attack”. Vichy was “full of rumours” that tempting offers would be dangled in front of Britain once agreements had been reached with Italy and Spain – even to the extent that Germany would cease bombing British towns and regard herself at p
eace, leaving Britain the opprobrium of being responsible for further hostilities.

  With the Vatican also said to be involved, the paper explained that the object of “this great ballyhoo campaign” was to keep up the flagging morale of the Axis civilian populations, especially in Italy, and trying to lower British morale. “If the rest of the world can be duped at the same time, Hitler will be more than satisfied”, the paper said. But the real purpose of current German activity, it then said, “may be to ‘hold’ large British forces in this country against the threat of an invasion, when these troops might otherwise be used to operate against Nazis in other lands”. It was now the belief of most experts that the invasion was now “off”, except for cross-Channel artillery fire.

  In London, there was good confirmation of this. A coded German radio message had been picked up and deciphered by the top-secret facility at Bletchley. It instructed German forces gathered at the invasion ports “to continue their training according to plan”. Another intercept disclosed that the Luftwaffe had disbanded the administrative unit responsible for invasion planning and co-ordination. An invasion could hardly be imminent. Churchill was informed of the intercepts and the conclusion. The next day, photographic reconnaissance picked up substantial movement of shipping out of the invasion ports. It was moving eastwards, away from Great Britain.71

  By 2 November, Colville was writing in his diary that the Prime Minister “now thinks the invasion is off”. Even then a mixed picture emerged, as he added that this was “only because of our constant vigilance. If we relaxed that, the invasion would be an imminent danger”. This meant “our keeping great forces immobilised at home”.72 If that was truly a reflection of the strategic appreciation, then it explains why, despite the accumulating evidence, Churchill did not act. But, for want of escorts, the convoys were to bleed to death out in the Atlantic and the Western Approaches.

  Nor was the air war providing any great comfort. In the last week of the official battle, RAF Fighter Command flew a total of 1,007 sorties – more even than 974 flown on the memorable 15 August at the height of the day battle – mostly flown in the south-east, culling only a dozen German aircraft for the loss of ten British fighters. Bomber and Coastal Commands lost four aircraft, including a Hudson written off after an air-to-air battle with a FW Condor flying over the Atlantic. On the day, therefore, with fourteen losses against the Luftwaffe’s twelve, the Germans were ahead.

  As for Priestley in the Sunday Express, with his explanation of why he left the BBC, the flavour of his column came over in the headline: “The difficulties I had to fight”. His oft repeated “new kind of war” was a war in which morale and prestige counted for a very great deal. Information and propaganda were of immense importance and it was hard to overestimate their value – yet undervaluing the effort was “what officially we keep on doing”.

  Having experienced continuous obstruction from officials, Priestley had concluded that the fault lay in the peacetime attitude of mind towards the public, “which is still expected to pay its taxes and then mind its own damn business, leaving the pundits to carry on their great task of fighting all over again the second Matabele War”. He had been told his broadcasts were important, especially those to North America, in which context he had expected employees of the State to be eager to co-operate. “We are all, I take it, trying to fight the same war”, he wrote, then continuing:

  You begin to suspect that perhaps we are not all in the same war when, doing a job of this kind, you find yourself day after day being obstructed instead of encouraged. You want to describe something and are told shortly that you cannot describe it, and are not even vouchsafed a reason. It is as if you are a naughty child. Then your text is absurdly mutilated on censorship grounds, though many of the corrections are nonsensical. You almost suspect yourself of being an enemy agent.

  Although sometimes feeling like a man compelled to walk across a field of glue, his only complaint against the BBC was that it did not seem to be able to persuade government that “broadcasting is one of the most terrific weapons we possess”. Officialdom did not in their heart of hearts believe in propaganda. Nor could they understand the necessity for a well-informed public. They wished to be left alone to fight some secret little war of their own. Either they could not or would not understand the importance of what the Nazis have treated as possibly the third arm of their state, after the army and air force.

  Meanwhile, tensions were increasing along the Greek border, with the Italians camped in Albania, Late in the evening, the Italian ambassador in Athens, Emanuele Grazzi, relayed an ultimatum from Mussolini. It demanded that Italian troops were allowed to occupy strategic points in Greece. Ioannis Metaxas, the Greek dictator, remarked: “Alors, c’est la guerre”.73

  DAY 111 – MONDAY 28 OCTOBER 1940

  Germany announced a “European Front” against England. This was the propaganda campaign predicted by Duff Cooper, Smuts, Priestley and even Churchill, way back in July. It was aimed at the USA, to position Britain as the “aggressor” against a united Europe, the obstacle to peace. The Mirror splashed the Italian moves against Greece on its front page. More details were retailed by the New York Times. Italy had attacked Greece by land, sea and air, “hurling” at least ten divisions of 20,000 troops across the Albanian–Greek border. Britain promised to keep her pledge, made on 13 April 1939, to help Greece resist the invasion.

  The Express chose to feature RAF raids on Berlin, claiming that the heaviest bombs ever had been dropped on the city in a “fierce” ninety-minute raid that “showed Berlin what blitz-bombing is really like”. There was a small item about the Empress of Britain in the Mirror, the paper noting that the Nazis were saying that the ship was still on fire, having claimed two days ago on the Saturday that it had been sunk. Back in Britain, observers asserted that three-engined aeroplanes had been used for attacks on London, confirming a German report that the Regia Aeronautica had been in action. Soon, there was the physical evidence.

  DAY 112 – TUESDAY 29 OCTOBER 1940

  The first day of the Italian invasion of Greece, and the heavy raids by Bomber Command on the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia, drove news of domestic air fighting from the front pages. Yet significant operations were continuing. Overnight, Birmingham had been heavily bombed again, with New Street Station badly damaged.

  After early mist, raids had started mid-morning and carried on into the early evening. Four daylight raids on London and two on Portsmouth were recorded, the largest involving forty bombers escorted by Messerschmitt fighters. No. 602 City of Glasgow Sqn distinguished itself by shooting down eleven Me 109s in six minutes, for no loss. Fifteen Italian BR 20s, escorted by CR 42 biplanes, attacked Ramsgate. Five were damaged by anti-aircraft fire.

  The War Cabinet was told that a number of German vessels had been reported in the Channel making eastwards. It was, however, too early to draw the deduction that the risk of invasion had receded. Some sixty good German divisions were ready at short notice, close to the invasion ports. So long as that situation continued, it would be essential for us to keep a number of divisions in readiness at home. Thus, the Minister of Information was invited to “inculcate the need for continued vigilance in our preparations against invasion”.74

  At dusk, RAF airfields in East Anglia, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire were attacked by Ju 88s and Me 109s. Heavy night bombing of Birmingham and Coventry was recorded. London was again bombed. On the day, Fighter Command lost ten aircraft, including two Hurricanes caught while taking off from North Weald Airfield during an attack. One pilot was killed there. But Bomber and Coastal Commands lost eight aircraft, including two Sunderland flying boats. The Germans lost twenty-four aircraft, including fifteen Me 109s.

  DAY 113 – WEDNESDAY 30 OCTOBER 1940

  “People need coal”, said the Express in its editorial, but the front-page headlines were given entirely to Greece. The only reference to the domestic air war was a report on the appearance of the Italian Air Force. Memories of “the few
” were fading. Sullen October weather hampered day flying. Only small numbers of Luftwaffe braved the rain and the autumnal gloom. Fighter Command had disappeared from the script. Never again would it recapture the heady days of the summer.

  The people of Britain, bloodied and weary, were looking to their second winter of the conflict, dreading its onset. And well they might. Anderson’s remedies had yet to bite, and to make matters worse, trains had been ordered to slow to 10 mph through the innumerable air raids. The delays slowed coal deliveries even more. The Express complained: “Mr Smith has no pile in his back yard. Mr Jones cannot order a ton and be sure of getting it”.

  And despite the Battle of Britain supposedly being in its closing phase, British operational intensity in the air was as high as it had ever been – higher than at the beginning of the battle. Aircrew were still taking losses. On this one day, seven fighters were written off and three pilots killed. Eight Luftwaffe aircraft were lost. One RAF and one Me 109 pilot were shot down over the Channel. The Briton died but the German was plucked from the sea by his air-sea rescue service, unwounded. An RAF fighter pilot’s life was measured at 87 flying hours. To the very last, the Air Ministry seemed determined to make sure there were as few of the few as possible to survive the battle.

  As for the night battle, the War Cabinet was wearily told that the previous night 200 enemy machines had been over London, Birmingham, Coventry and Liverpool. Thirty-seven RAF aircraft had been sent up but had made no interceptions.75