Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain

by Norman Gelb

  I therefore order as follows:

  1. The landing will be in the form of a surprise crossing on a wide front from about Ramsgate to the area west of the Isle of Wight ... Preparations for the entire operation must be completed by the middle of August.

  2. These preparations must also create such conditions as will make a landing in England possible, viz:

  (a) The English Air Force must be so reduced morally and physically that it is unable to deliver any significant attack against the German crossing ...

  *

  Associated Press

  Grenoble, 16 July — The newspaper Petit Dauphinois, quoting foreign diplomatic quarters in Switzerland, said today that Germany had

  600,000 troops ready for an invasion of the British Isles and that ‘zero hour’ may come Friday night if weather permits. The expeditionary force, it said, is poised along a 1,200-mile front from Brest, France to Bergen, Norway. Originally the long-threatened assault was scheduled for the night of 9-10 July, the newspaper said, but dissension in the German High Command led to delay. (Unconfirmed elsewhere, the French newspaper report was viewed in some quarters as a possible German-inspired propaganda effort to spur Britain into accepting peace terms.) The newspaper, in a dispatch from Berne, Switzerland, said a group of German generals headed by General Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief, protested that the original plan of attack was ‘too dangerous’. The initial plan, it said, called for a fleet of hundreds of German ships and captured French, Belgian and Dutch passenger liners, freighters, fishing smacks and tug-towed barges to swarm across the English Channel in the wake of minesweepers and waves of bombers.

  *

  Colonel-General Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff Diaries, 22 July

  Führer: No clear picture of what is happening in Britain. Preparations for a decision by arms must be completed as quickly as possible. The Führer will not let the military-political initiative get out of his hand ... Reasons for continuance of war by Britain: (1) Hope for a change in America. (Roosevelt’s position uncertain, industry does not want to invest. Britain runs risk of losing its position of first sea power to the United States.) (2) Puts hope in Russia.

  Britain’s position is hopeless. The war is won by us. A reversal in the prospects of success is impossible.

  *

  Home Defence, Chief of Staff Committee, London

  Air Staff Memorandum on the role of operational Commands of the Metropolitan Air Force in the event of the invasion of this country

  The first phase of the invasion of this country is likely to be a large scale air offensive against the fighter defence, i.e. fighters in the air, fighter aerodromes and organizations, and the aircraft industry ... The task of the Fighter Force is to meet the attack on its own organization and the aircraft industry and defeat it.

  *

  Adolf Hitler

  19 July

  The struggle, if it continues, can only end with the annihilation of one or the other of the two adversaries. Mr Churchill may believe this will be Germany. I know that it will be Britain. In this hour, I feel it to be my duty to appeal once more to reason and common sense in Britain ... I consider myself in a position to make this appeal since I am not the vanquished begging favours, but the victor speaking in the name of reason. I can see no reason why this war must go on. I am grieved to think of the sacrifices it will claim ... Possibly Mr Churchill again will brush aside this statement of mine by saying it is merely born of fear and of doubt in our final victory. In that case, I shall have relieved my conscience in regard to the things to come.

  *

  Associated Press

  Berlin, 20 July — Germany unleashed a thunder of words today in an attempt to sway the British people over the head of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and get them to end the war. The alternative, Nazi Germany says, is destruction. Radio transmitters dinned Führer Adolf Hitler’s ‘last appeal to reason’ into British ears until, as authorized sources here put it, every Briton must know exactly what is in store for him unless he gets rid of ‘the plutocratic ruling clique’ which wants to keep on fighting.

  *

  Count Ciano, Foreign Minister of Italy

  Hitler is now like the gambler who has made a big win and wants to get up from the table without risking anything more.

  *

  Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax

  Radio Broadcast to the British People, 22 July

  Many of you will have read ... the speech in which Herr Hitler summoned Great Britain to capitulate to his will. I will not waste your time by dealing with his distortions of almost every main event since the war began. He says he has no desire to destroy the British Empire, but there was in his speech no suggestion that peace must be based on justice, no word of recognition that the other nations of Europe had any right to self-determination, the principle which he has so often invoked for Germans. His only appeal was to the base instinct of fear, and his only arguments were threats ...

  Hitler has now made it plain that he is preparing to direct the whole weight of German might against this country. That is why in every part of Britain there is only one spirit, a spirit of indomitable resolution. Nor has anyone any doubt that if Hitler were to succeed it would be the end, for many besides ourselves, of all those things which make life worth living. We realize that the struggle may cost us everything, but just because the things we are defending are worth any sacrifice, it is a noble privilege to be the defenders of things so precious. We never wanted the war; certainly no one wants the war to go on for a day longer than is necessary. But we shall not stop fighting till freedom, for ourselves and others, is secure.

  *

  George Axelsson, New York Times

  Berlin, 28 July — The process of ‘softening up’ Britain by means of dive bombers, submarines and torpedo-carrying mosquito craft now seems to have begun in earnest and a big landing attempt may be only a matter of days, if not hours.

  *

  Anthony Weymouth, BBC Commentator

  Personal Journal

  An Englishman said this to me today: ‘I am high on the Nazi blacklist. I have been attacking them for years. If we are conquered I shall be one of the first to be arrested. I can’t stand the thought of being put in a concentration camp. Can you tell me some drug which I could take if they do get here? I would much rather die than submit to what goes on in a Nazi concentration camp.’

  His overtures rebuffed by the pig-headed British, the momentum of his breathtaking European triumphs fizzling out, summertime invasion weather rapidly passing, Hitler finally recognized there had to be an end to shilly-shallying. If the British were to be removed from the war, he had no alternative. He would have to issue unequivocal instructions for invasion preparations to proceed, and to proceed quickly. The Channel would have to be crossed and a landing would have to be made. First the Luftwaffe had to be given the go-ahead for full-scale attacks on the installations and services which kept Fighter Command operational. It was time to seize uncontested control of the skies over England.

  *

  The Führer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces

  Führer Headquarters, 1 August 1940

  DIRECTIVE NO. 17

  FOR THE CONDUCT OF AIR AND SEA WARFARE AGAINST ENGLAND

  In order to establish the necessary conditions for the final conquest of England I intend to intensify air and sea warfare against the English homeland. I therefore order as follows:

  1. The German air force is to overpower the English air force with all the forces at its command, in the shortest possible time. The attacks are to be directed primarily against flying units, their ground installations, and their supply organizations, but also against the aircraft industry, including that manufacturing antiaircraft equipment.

  2. After achieving temporary or local air superiority, the air war is to be continued against ports, in particular against stores of food, and also against stores of provisions in the interior of the country ... I r
eserve to myself the right to decide on terror attacks as measures of reprisal ...

  *

  Alexander Kirk, United States Chargé d’Affaires in Germany, to the Secretary of State

  Berlin, 2 August

  Responsible [German] Government officials continue to stress the view that England should sue for peace and that it is foolhardy for it to attempt to withstand the forces that are about to be directed against Great Britain. Furthermore, private individuals of various neutral nationalities are professing that they are receiving projects for peace in conversations with the highest German authorities but exclusive of Hitler himself and that they are attempting to or have succeeded in conveying those projects directly to prominent persons in England ... In all these efforts, conspicuous emphasis is placed on the opportunity for peace talks ... and all seem to be entirely impervious to the argument that it is difficult to characterize as a peace offer a statement wherein Hitler makes clear that although he professes no wish to destroy the British Empire he will proceed to that destruction unless the British Government accepts a peace which in the Nazi mind is termed reasonable, but which to others tokens the ruin of that Empire as the immediate champion of democracy in the world.

  In the meantime, reports of projects of imminent action against the British Isles accumulate and the rumored date is set from one weekend to another.

  *

  Anonymous

  ‘What did you do in the war, Daddy?

  How did you help us win?’

  ‘Take-offs and landings and stalls, laddie,

  And how to get out of a spin.’

  ATTACK OF THE EAGLES

  Fierce though they were, the July encounters over the Channel and the ports of southern England were only the curtain raiser to the Battle of Britain. The main German objective, mastery of the skies over England, was still to be achieved. By early August, the Germans decided the preliminaries — the probings and the threats — had gone on long enough. It was time to proceed to the main event.

  The heart of the British defences was now to become the target, while the Channel was still to remain as a no-go area for British vessels. Massive formations of bombers, closely escorted by fighters, were to blast fighter airfields (mostly near the coast at first), radar installations and aircraft factories. This was to be the ‘Attack of the Eagles’ (Adlerangriff), the second phase of the Battle of Britain, the onslaught that was supposed to mark the beginning of the end of British air defences and thus set the stage for the invasion.

  Convinced that Fighter Command was reeling from what had already transpired, Reichsmarshal Hermann Goring assured his Air Fleet commanders that it would not take them long to clear the way for a landing on English soil. According to his calculations, British coastal defences would be knocked out within four days and, as the Luftwaffe pressed home its assault, all of Fighter Command would be crippled within four weeks. By then, the invasion troops, equipment, supplies and landing craft would have been assembled for the Channel crossing, and the conquest of the only nation which had so far not succumbed to the German onslaught could take place.

  The British had reason to be apprehensive, and not only because of German invasion preparations. Though they were shooting down more German aircraft than they themselves lost, their losses were frighteningly heavy. Some squadrons had been so badly battered that they had already been pulled out of the line and relieved from the reservoir of jealously guarded reserves in the north. All in all, confidence among British leaders that the enemy could be repulsed was tempered by a sense of foreboding.

  The Attack of the Eagles began on 13 August, codenamed by the Germans ‘Eagle Day’. Though damage to strategic British installations was, in fact, limited that day and though the Germans lost forty-six aircraft to fourteen lost by Fighter Command, the Luftwaffe had flown an unprecedented 1,500 sorties over England by nightfall. Fighter Command was kept fully stretched in the south, trying to intercept wave after wave of raiders.

  Though sometimes astounded by the great numbers of German aircraft they were sent to fight off, British pilots were not intimidated by the odds. At this stage, most of them returned from combat exhilarated by their experiences aloft. As they hopped out of their planes, they flocked together on the airfields, excitedly telling each other of their triumphs and narrow escapes, their swooping hands fashioning dogfights, their voices aping the chatter of their Browning machine-guns, oblivious of the omens that there would be excruciatingly hard days and weeks ahead for them, as the Germans — convinced victory was around the corner — pressed on with the Attack of the Eagles.

  *

  Pilot Officer Roland Beamont

  You were young and you were excited as hell. When you came down from a mission, you’d been up against a challenge and you’d got through it. You wanted to talk to your mates. You’d fought battles in the air alongside them. You may have seen one of them shoot a German off your back — you recognized him from the colour of his spinner or his aircraft number. You wanted to talk about what you’d done and what he’d done. And you wanted to discover who was missing. All this happened right on the field with the frustrated intelligence officer trying to get combat reports from us. But we didn’t want to waste time talking to him. We wanted to stand around chi-hiking — ‘There I was, nought feet and on my back!’ — motioning wTith our hands to show how the dogfights had gone. Meantime, the groundcrew would be turning the aircraft round, refuelling and re-arming them, sticking patches over bullet holes, getting us ready to go up again.

  *

  FROM REICHSMARSHAL GORING TO ALL UNITS OF AIR FLEETS 2, 3 AND 5. OPERATION EAGLE. WITHIN A SHORT PERIOD YOU WILL WIPE THE BRITISH AIR FORCE FROM THE SKY. HEIL HITLER.

  Squadron Leader Ronald Adam, Operations Room Controller at Hornchurch

  We all knew how limited our resources were, how few aircraft and trained pilots we had got ready for action and we did pot — we could not — understand why the enemy did not come for us at once ... We held our breath ... and then early in August, the radar plots began to show the enemy assembling in the air behind Cape Gris Nez in France. There he was, milling around as one formation after another joined up, and we went to our loudspeakers when our Group Headquarters gave the order telling the squadron to take off ... ‘Scramble’ we would say and Spitfires would tear into the sky ... We would sit there on the ground and watch the plots ... We would pass information to the pilots, telling them all changes in the enemy’s direction, how he was splitting up into different formations, what height he was flying at, and guiding our fighters to the most advantageous position up in the eye of the sun, ready to attack. The Battle of Britain is summarized for me in one snatch on the radiotelephone from a famous New Zealand fighter ... I heard his voice in my ear as he sighted the enemy: ‘Christ Almighty, tally-ho! Whole bloody hordes of them.’

  *

  Nurse Frances Faviell

  We began seeing dogfights overhead and watched our Spitfires chasing Messerschmitts and engaging in exciting battles, and in the still summer air we could hear the gunfire from the combatants and could see parachutists descending and the planes crashing down with a spurt of fire from their tails. It seemed impossible at first to believe that these were actually deadly battles and not mock ones as we had watched at aerial displays at Hendon. It gave one a strange, shaking, sick feeling of excitement to watch their every movement as though we were following with rapt attention a mock battle, but never before had we seen such a thrilling exhibition of aeronautics. Twisting, turning, their guns blazing, the sunlight picking them out in the clear sky, they would dive under, over, round, and then straight at their opponents, until one would fall in a trail of smoke and flame, often with a gleaming parachute like a toy umbrella preceding the final crash to earth. It was horrible — but it had a macabre fascination impossible to resist.

  *

  Flight Lieutenant P. B. Robinson

  Combat Report

  As leader of Red Section 601 Squadron I was ordered to inter
cept bandits at Colchester. I saw approximately thirty bombers escorted by Me 109s above. While approaching bombers from astern and to one side, I saw a Me 109 below and to my left. I dived down and the Me 109 pulled up and we carried out a head-on attack at each other. The Me 109 broke away at the last moment and I turned and got on his tail. He was smoking from below his engine and after a short burst, he rolled over and dived inverted for the ground. At this time I saw a second Me 109 and got a short burst in from the quarter. He also emitted smoke and white vapour and dived vertically down. I then ran out of ammunition but saw a third Me 109 dive past me. I followed him down to ground level and chased him southwards. He never rose above 100 feet until well south of Maidstone, and then throttled back. I overtook him and formated on him, pointing downward for him to land. He turned away, so I carried out a dummy quarter attack, breaking away very close to him. After this, he landed his Me 109 in a field at about 140 mph. The pilot got out apparently unhurt and held up his hands above his head. I circled around him and waved to him and as he waved back I returned and threw a packet of twenty Players at him and returned to base.

  *

  Flight Lieutenant Brian Kingcome

  If you did what had been considered the normal thing and came around behind the bombers to bust up their formations, their fighter escorts would get to you before you could get to them. Also, the rear guns of a tightly-packed bomber formation could bring a huge concentration of fire to bear on you. But if you attacked them from the front, it was very frightening for the bomber pilot. He saw a fighter coming straight at him. He didn’t have protective armour plate. As you came at him, you’d see him nervously getting ready for you, bouncing around long before you were within firing range. If you were a German pilot sitting at the front of a bomber with your rear gunners and a whole lot of metal behind you, when there was an attack from the rear you couldn’t really see what was happening back there. So you went droning on towards your target. But if the attack was coming right at you personally, you were in the front line. You’d see the tracers flashing past and the enemy coming at you. They had to be very, very tough and very, very brave to keep going steadily onward.