The British forces that opposed the German bomber offensive were organized in functional commands, under commanders-in-chief responsible to the air staff based at the Air Ministry in London. The one command that mattered during the German offensive was Fighter Command, which operated both day- and night-fighters. In early August 1940 there were 60 operational squadrons in Fighter Command, with 715 serviceable aircraft out of an establishment strength of 1,112, not far short of the German figure. There were 19 squadrons of the Supermarine Spitfire Mark IA and Mark II, which had begun to appear in numbers earlier in the year, and 29 of the Hawker Hurricane Mark I and Mark IIA.69 Almost all Fighter Command’s resources were devoted to defending southern and central England from air attack by day. There were only seven full night-fighter squadrons available by 7 September 1940, equipped with the Bristol Blenheim light bomber converted to a fighter role, and one squadron of Boulton-Paul Defiants. Both types had failed to prove their worth in daytime fighting, and were not much better as night-fighters. The fixed defences were organized by the Anti-Aircraft and Balloon Commands, both of which had been put under the control of Fighter Command headquarters at Stanmore in 1939. They presented a very porous front line against the bomber. By the start of the German campaign there were 52 balloon squadrons with a total of 1,865 balloons, giant gas-filled obstructions floating in rows above the cities, attached to long hawsers to damage low-flying aircraft. The Anti-Aircraft Command had been starved of resources in the late 1930s and was forced to expand rapidly during the course of 1940, but it failed to meet its plan. By the end of 1940 there were only 1,442 heavy anti-aircraft guns out of the 3,744 planned; as for the more effective Bofors light anti-aircraft gun, the deficit was even greater, 776 out of 4,410. The Inner Artillery Zone around London, first planned in 1923, had 92 heavy guns, only one-third of the number projected before the war.70 The commander-in-chief of Fighter Command, Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, admitted in his later despatch on the Battle of Britain that anti-aircraft artillery had been ‘inadequate for the defence of all the vulnerable targets in the country’, though without advanced gun-laying equipment and radar there was a limit to what anti-aircraft guns could do apart from induce prudence in the enemy and some sense of security among the threatened population.71
The one outstanding advantage enjoyed by Fighter Command was the system of integrated communication and intelligence-gathering on which the entire system rested. Its success was due in large part to Dowding, whose understanding of technical issues, organizational skills and fierce defence of his force made him a model commander. He was socially awkward, alternately garrulous and aloof (the quality that earned him the sobriquet ‘Stuffy’); he was near the end of his career in 1940 and fought the contest against the German Air Force with compulsory retirement constantly threatened. Unlike in the German Air Force, Dowding enjoyed a good deal of independence from the air staff and from the Air Minister, Sir Archibald Sinclair, a career Liberal politician, appointed in June 1940, whose chief role was to act as the link between Parliament, Churchill and the RAF. Dowding operated a strongly centralized force. Only during the late 1930s did it become possible for the first time, thanks to the development of a chain of radar stations around the British coast, to gain effective advance intelligence of approaching aircraft. Many stations were still not complete early in 1940, but by the autumn the Chain Home network had 30 stations from Cornwall to the far north of Scotland, almost half of them on the south and east coasts, facing the German enemy. To avoid the danger that they might be destroyed by air attack, eleven of the most important had shadow stations set up a few miles distant. In addition there were 31 Chain Home Low stations, to detect aircraft flying under 1,000 feet.72 The radar chain was far from perfect (estimating height proved difficult, particularly with crew trained too briefly), but it was supplemented by a nationwide Observer Corps which took over observation once aircraft had crossed the coast. The whole system was held together by telephone. Radar plots of incoming raids were fed into the central operations room at Fighter Command headquarters and then relayed to Fighter Command Groups and sector stations; Observer Corps sightings were sent straight to Groups from Observer Corps Centres. The whole process could take as little as four minutes, which gave just enough time for most intercepting fighter aircraft to be airborne. Once aloft, fighters communicated with each other by radio.
The centrally controlled fighter defences and the special role played by radar were among the many factors misunderstood by the German Air Force when their air attacks were finally launched. It was assumed on the German side that British radar was relatively unsophisticated, and it got less bombing attention than had been expected. It was also believed that RAF fighters were tied closely to the area around their station and lacked precisely the flexibility and intelligence that the system in practice gave them. These misapprehensions were compounded with a persistent underestimation of the size of Fighter Command and the capacity to reinforce it continuously with men and aircraft. It was assumed throughout the German campaign, well into 1941, that the RAF could not replace losses fully and was a constantly declining threat, even when the reality of high German losses in August and September 1940 suggested a quite different conclusion.73
The British had the opposite problem, persistently overestimating the size and range of the German front-line air force, pilot numbers and production levels. Air intelligence suggested a German aircraft output of 24,400 in 1940 – the true figure was 10,247 – and a front-line force in early August of 5,800 planes, including 2,550 bombers, when the actual figure of serviceable bombers was 37 per cent of this figure. Against Britain the three air fleets employed a total of only 2,445 serviceable aircraft of all types on the eve of Eagle Day. Early evaluations wrongly assumed that German bombers and long-range fighters had sufficient range to cover the whole of the British Isles from French bases, while it was believed short-range fighters could reach as far as Hull (when they could barely contest the airspace over London). The RAF also assumed that the German enemy had generous numbers of pilots and could make good losses of men and aircraft sufficiently to expand the size of the air force even under combat conditions, which was also never the case.74 These contrasts in perception were important in shaping the attitude both sides took to the conflict. German forces assumed that what they did by day and by night seriously eroded the capability of an already meagre RAF; British air forces, on the other hand, were spurred to urgent expansion and heroic defiance against an enemy thought to be powerfully and dangerously endowed.
The German determination to start the full air assault with a flourish on Eagle Day was frustrated by grey skies and further rain. Substantial attacks had already been made since 8 August, and the first raids on radar installations and RAF fighter stations followed four days later, seriously damaging the Ventnor radar station on the Isle of Wight, and the airfields at Manston and Hawkinge in Kent. But this was not a real battle. German air units were finally told to prepare for Eagle Day on 13 August, but poor weather persisted and the attack was half-hearted. Units had been ordered not to fly, but the message had not been received by all of them and sorties began early in the morning and went on until evening. Some bombers arrived without their escorts, some escorts without their bombers. The German losses totalled 45 aircraft at the cost of 13 British fighters. Not a single Fighter Command airfield had been attacked. This is a well-known failure, but it nevertheless masks the fuller picture of German operational strategy during August, of which direct attacks on the RAF formed only a part. The fighter-to-fighter contest watched daily in the skies over southern England dramatically symbolized the struggle for the British public then and now, but it was only part of what the German Air Force actually did.
Throughout August and September, and on into the winter months, the German Air Force flew numerous, daily Störangriffe, small raids by day and night intended to lure the RAF into battle, to destroy individual military-economic targets, to trigger the air-raid alarm system, and to ind
uce tiredness and despondency in the population. In August 1940 there were four major raids, employing hundreds of bomber aircraft, but 1,062 smaller raids spread out over the country, the largest number of the whole campaign.75 The city of Hull, for example, was subjected to six small night raids between 20 June and 6 September, which between them destroyed only 17 houses and badly damaged a further 47, but kept the population in a state of perpetual alert.76 Some of these raids were scarcely opposed by Fighter Command, at night almost none. In addition the German Air Force mounted Zerstörerangriffe (destroyer attacks) against key armaments and port installations, using larger numbers of heavy fighters or dive-bombers, as well as armed reconnaissance flights. For the war at sea, a number of specialized units dropped mines in coastal waters and estuaries. In August 1940 only 328 were dropped, but over the following three months 2,766.77 There were also plans to attack RAF bomber bases north of London once air superiority was achieved – Operation ‘Luftparade’ – but the failure to dominate Fighter Command postponed the attempt. Only Driffield airfield in Yorkshire was severely hit by aircraft of Air Fleet 5 flying from Norway. The sheer range of targets and attack categories was an exhausting schedule for German air units and it was this, as much as the damage inflicted by Fighter Command, that by early September created a steady attrition of the force and growing strain on the pilots. Later in the war German appraisal of the campaign suggested that the air force had simply been asked to do too much, a view that is difficult to contest. Kesselring in his memoirs dismissed the strategy as ‘muddle headed’.
The systematic assault on Fighter Command during the last two weeks of August 1940 was nevertheless the chief priority, and the great majority of German combat aircraft were assigned to the task. The counter-air campaign replicated the strategy adopted in Poland and the Western campaign. Waves of bombers and dive-bombers were to attack key airfields, installations and stores while fighter aircraft destroyed enemy fighter opposition. Between 12 August and 6 September a total of 53 major attacks were directed at RAF targets, the heaviest occurring between 24 August and 6 September. The German Air Force High Command presumed that the outcome of the campaign would also follow the pattern of previous successes, and early reports from the fighting suggested there was no reason to think otherwise. The German assumption that the RAF suffered declining figures of supply, falling pilot numbers and a crude dependence on local air control encouraged a pervasive optimism. The major raid on the Fighter Command station at Biggin Hill in Kent on 18 August was celebrated as a symbolic German triumph. Pilots were invited to give their accounts of the raid for use in air force propaganda. For many of them this attack was the first major raid they had undertaken against an English target; they returned with smug reports of feeble British defences:
As the machines landed back again after exactly three hours, I saw all the ground personnel standing by the runway. The men worried about us, only wanted to know if all their ‘birds’ had returned unharmed. But we scrambled out of the machines, went over to them, shook them by the hand. ‘Young men, that was nothing at all, we had imagined a quite different defence.’ Is that all England can offer? Or is the English air force already so weakened?78
Another confirmed that anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighters had been invisible; the target airfields showed a sea of flames, shattered buildings, destroyed runways. ‘The German pilots shook their heads,’ the account concluded. ‘Has it gone so quickly? Is England already finished?’ Biggin Hill, ran a third account, ‘completely destroyed … wiped out of existence’.79 In reality, Biggin Hill remained operational almost every day of the battle, its staff and pilots dispersed in nearby villages, an emergency operations room set up in a local shop, its aircraft carefully camouflaged.
It was the impression of overwhelming air superiority and accurate and destructive raids that fuelled the belief among the German Air Force leadership that the RAF was close to collapse in the last two weeks of August 1940. On 20 August Göring directed his forces to complete the elimination of Fighter Command in four days of ‘ceaseless attacks’ against targets that the RAF would be forced to defend, including aero-engine and aluminium production.80 German Air Intelligence concluded by the end of August that 18 Fighter Command stations had been permanently destroyed and the rest disabled (when not one had been out of action for more than a few days); Fighter Command was estimated to be down to around 300 aircraft, including reserves and a monthly production of 280 (when Fighter Command strength was 738 serviceable aircraft on 6 September and fighter production for August totalled over 450). Between 12 and 19 August, based on the eyewitness reports of German pilots, 624 British aircraft were claimed for the loss of 174 German. At Hitler’s headquarters it was recorded on 1 September, ‘English fighter defence strongly affected … the question is can England therefore continue the struggle?’81
It is this perception that explains the shift in the last week of August to a variety of other targets, many of them attacked by small groups of aircraft, but all of them designed to accelerate the decline of Britain’s war effort and so create the conditions for a successful Channel crossing. On the night of 19–20 August there were more than 60 raids across the British Isles on aircraft industry targets and harbour installations. Heavy attacks were ordered on Portsmouth, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham, again almost all at night, although Göring excluded London from the list. Hitler’s headquarters gave specific instructions on 24 August that only Hitler could authorize raids against the enemy capital, but the attacks edged ever closer.82 On the night of 18–19 August the first bombs fell in the London suburbs, on Croydon, Wimbledon and the Maldens, and four nights later the first bombs fell by mistake on central London. There was nothing inadvertent about the next raids. On the night of 24–25 August there were bombs on Croydon, Banstead, Lewisham, Uxbridge, Harrow and Hayes. On the night of 28–29 August, London was under red alert for seven hours and bombing was reported in Finchley, St Pancras, Wembley, Wood Green, Southgate, Old Kent Road, Mill Hill, Ilford, Chigwell and Hendon.83 Although the bombing of London, indeed the official start of the ‘Blitz’, is usually dated from the major daylight raids of 7 September 1940, industrial and military targets in the suburbs were under attack throughout the previous three weeks, paving the way for a final wave of attacks timed to take place shortly before the launch of Sea Lion. On 31 August Hitler gave the order to prepare for major attacks on London. A directive was issued by Göring on 2 September and approved by Hitler three days later.84
The decision to begin a systematic aerial campaign against London has always been seen from the British perspective as a merciful reprieve from the battering sustained by Fighter Command. It is argued that the switch to bombing London saved the RAF and exposed the German bomber forces to debilitating losses as they tried to bomb by day in large formations. It is usually explained as Hitler’s indignant response to two small raids on Berlin on the nights of 25–26 and 29–30 August. These raids caused little damage but had a profound moral effect on the population of the German capital, which had been told repeatedly that German air defences would keep British bombers at bay. ‘The Berliners are stunned,’ wrote William Shirer, who witnessed the massive response of German anti-aircraft artillery and searchlights, ‘a magnificent, a terrible sight’.85 During the second raid on 29 August, 10 people were killed in Berlin and 21 seriously injured. So shocked was Hitler that he immediately returned from his headquarters to the capital. After the first raid the Propaganda Ministry ordered a modest six-line communiqué; after the second raid Goebbels ordered banner headlines condemning the raid. ‘Berlin is now in the theatre of war,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘It is good that this is so.’86 The raids gave Hitler the opportunity to present the planned attack on London to the German public as a reprisal and plans for the first major daylight raid were given the title ‘revenge attack’ (Vergeltungsangriff ). His speech on 4 September condemning the British bombing of Berlin was given full publicity and the ‘revenge attack’ on 7 September was
greeted in the German press with jubilation: ‘one great cloud of smoke stretches tonight from the middle of London to the mouth of the Thames’.87
Revenge for the Berlin raids certainly played a part in explaining the timing of the campaign against London, but the issue is more complicated. The decision to attack London was taken against a long background of British raids on urban targets in Germany. The first raid, on Mönchen-gladbach in the Ruhr, had been made on 11 May. Throughout the period from mid-May to the Berlin raids, British bombers attacked German targets on 103 days, mainly on the North Sea coast or the Ruhr-Rhineland area. The raids were seldom heavy and involved comparatively few casualties but they had the effect of forcing the German population into air-raid shelters for many hours over wide areas not directly affected. During most of August the number of night-time sorties flown by the RAF over Germany was approximately double the number flown by the German Air Force against Britain.88 So inaccurate was the British bombing that the German authorities had great difficulty in working out the rationale behind it. After the first raids, the local civil defence units were warned to get everyone into air-raid shelters when the alarm went because enemy bombers ‘drop their bombs planlessly just anywhere’.89 By July the apparent aimlessness of attacks, even against small villages or farmsteads, forced civil defence alerts in remote rural areas. The civil defence authorities assumed from repeated attacks on residential districts that British pilots had been given the single task of ‘dropping bombs only to do damage to the civilian population’.90 The result of the regular raids on civilian targets in western Germany was to provoke a good deal of public anxiety and demands for retaliation, which grew louder as the British bombing expanded in scale. The Security Service report for 2 September summed up the growing impatience of the population: ‘It is high time that something serious was done about measures of revenge threatened for months.’91
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