by Norman Gelb
b) The army’s landing forces will first win local bridgeheads with the specially equipped forward echelons of the first wave divisions. Immediately afterwards, they will widen these bridgeheads into a connected landing-zone, the possession of which will cover the disembarkation of the following troops and ensure early uniform control on the English shore. As soon as sufficient forces are available, an offensive will be launched towards the first operational objective, i.e. Thames Estuary — heights south of London — Portsmouth.
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From Cabinet War Room Summary
7 September
A German soldier parachutist, dressed in civilian clothes, was captured by a farmer at 17.20 on September 6. He was in possession of a receiving and transmitting wireless set, automatic pistol, £200 in notes, a Swedish passport and British identity card dated 6-11-1939. The man’s name is Gosta Caroli and he lived formerly in this country and went to Birmingham in October 1939, and left England in December when he volunteered for the German army. His mission was to report on damage to aerodromes.
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War Cabinet Memorandum
Home Secretary, 7 September
DUTIES OF THE POLICE IN CASE OF INVASION
1. The general principles governing the position of the police in the case of invasion are:
a) that the police are not part of the armed forces of the Crown and that therefore, in the event of a landing and effective occupation of an area by the enemy in force, the police should not use arms, nor carry arms, in the occupied area; but
b) that in the event of a landing by isolated parties who do not form part of an occupying force and whose object is, or must be assumed to be, to attack civilians, destroy property and cause confusion and devastation, neither the police nor civilians are debarred, either by international law or domestic law, from resisting and, if possible, destroying the enemy in order to prevent him carrying out these objects.
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Gunner Philip Coad
Other people may have felt differently, but I was immensely happy. I was being trained to be in a field artillery regiment. I was doing what I wanted to do. I was contributing to the war effort. If the invasion took place, I thought I might be given a rifle and shoot somebody or be shot myself. It didn’t worry me. I knew it was desperately important that we win the battle, but I never thought we’d lose it. I may have been foolish not worrying, but I wasn’t alone in that.
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Pilot Officer Robert Doe
It never entered our heads that we might lose. When people said we might be invaded, we talked about what a wonderful time we’d have shooting up the German landing barges.
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Pilot Officer Peter Parrott
We were in the Caledonian Hotel in Aberdeen one Sunday night when we were stationed at Dyce Aerodrome. Not a lot was happening up there. In those days in Scotland, to buy a drink on a Sunday, you had to be a bona fide traveller and to have travelled at least three miles. That was the law. We were in uniform and they knew our aerodrome was just three miles away, so that was all right. A police constable suddenly appeared and went around whispering something to various people there, including some army officers. He came up to us and all we heard was, ‘Sunrise tomorrow morning.’ It didn’t mean a thing to us, but we assumed it meant there was a risk the Germans would invade the following day. It didn’t happen, of course, and I still don’t know what that constable was talking about. But there was very much a sense of expectancy about the invasion those days.
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Gunner Robert Angell
We were twenty-four hours on, twenty-four hours off at our antiaircraft unit at Dover. When we were off duty, we slept in caves under the cliffs of Dover that had been converted into air-raid shelters. One night, we were called out and told the German invasion had started. There was nothing we could do. There were about sixty of us and about twenty rifles and the rifles were antiques, earlier than First World War vintage. We were just standing there, feeling totally exposed, nineteen miles from the French coast and wondering what the hell was going to happen and what the hell we would do when it did. That was the only time in the whole of the war that I was really frightened. We stood there for an hour, peering into the darkness. Nothing materialized. We were stood down and that was that.
Afterwards, rumours began to fly around that there had either been a major German exercise on the French coast, preparing for the invasion, or there had been an attempted invasion. There were stories of Churchill’s secret weapon of pouring oil on the sea and setting light to it. There were rumours that charred bodies had been washed up along the coast.
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Fighter Command Headquarters
The fighter pilot in dealing with enemy aircraft during an attempted invasion should, subject to any special task allotted to him at the time, observe the following priority whenever he has the choice of target:
a) Dive bombers operating against naval forces
b)Tank-carrying aircraft
c)Troop-carrying aircraft
d)Bombers
e)Fighters
During this period, many British civilians were bombed for the first time. It was for them the initial experience of death and destruction raining down from the skies. In some places, concern was expressed about the failure of the RAF to stop the German raiders from reaching them. Of far greater significance for Britain, however, were the raids which had increasingly been concentrated on the airfields. Biggin Hill, Debden, Hornchurch, Hawkinge, Manston were hit again and again. The damage done was sometimes so crippling that the consequences were deemed to be potentially catastrophic.
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Air Vice Marshal Keith Park
The enemy’s bombing attacks by day did extensive damage to five of our forward aerodromes and also six of our seven Sector Stations ...
There was a critical period between 28 August and 5 September when the damage to Sector Stations and our ground organization was having a serious effect on the fighting efficiency of the fighter squadrons, who could not be given the same good technical and administrative services as previously ... The absence of many essential telephone lines, the use of scratch equipment in emergency Operations Rooms, and the general dislocation of ground organization, was seriously felt for about a week in the handling of squadrons by day to meet the enemy’s massed attacks, which continued without the former occasional break for a day. Biggin Hill was so severely damaged that only one squadron could operate from there, and the remaining two squadrons had to be placed under the control of adjacent Sectors for over a week. Had the enemy intensified his heavy attacks against the adjacent Sectors and knocked out their Operations Rooms or telephone communications, the fighter defences of London would have been in a parlous state during the last critical phase when heavy attacks were directed against the capital.
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Pilot Officer Peter Hairs
We’d taken off from Gravesend. My CO was leading. I was his number two. Our squadron codename was Mandrill. Just after we took off, I heard the Biggin Hill Controller, whose codename was Sapper, calling. ‘This is Sapper calling Mandrill leader.’ He didn’t get a reply so he came on again. ‘Mandrill leader. This is Sapper calling,’ and he told us to fly vector so-and-so and angels such-and-such. ‘Mandrill leader, are you receiving?’ No reply. We found out later the CO’s radio wasn’t working properly. I didn’t want to butt in and say I was receiving, because I might have upset things. After a while, I heard the Controller again. ‘Bandits approaching Sapper! They’re approaching Biggin Hill! They’re bombing Biggin Hill! They’re bombing me!’
We eventually arrived at Biggin Hill, but were too late to intercept. The Germans had come in low, dropped their bombs and made off again.
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Pilot Officer Wally Wallens
Where it was possible, a section of three aircraft was kept on the ground till the very last moment when our airfield was attacked.
Those planes were the last defensive reserves for the airfie
ld, the rest of the squadron having already been scrambled to intercept a raid downriver or somewhere. There you’d be, on the field, with the trolley-accumulator to start your engine attached to your plane, the groundcrewmen under the wings and you sitting in the cockpit feeling like a sitting duck. Sometimes, the bombs would begin coming down on the airfield before you were sent up. The airman would press the button on the trolley-ac, you’d press your button and your engine would start. The airman would then pull the trolley-ac away and race for shelter while the bombs came slamming down. You’d start taxiing across the field and hope there wasn’t a bomb crater in your path. It was bloody unpleasant.
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Assistant Section Officer Felicity Hanbury
As the battle grew more intense, we knew we were going to be bombed at Biggin Hill. We were preparing for it all the time. We had drills on what to do when it happened. There were two air-raid warnings. We heard the civilian warnings from Westerham and Bromley, the two towns on either side of Biggin Hill. We didn’t take any notice of them. Civilians there needed more time to get to their shelters than we did. But when the station warning went, we did what we had to, often simply taking cover in preparation for what we might have to do afterwards. When the bombing began and the Germans came down and machine-gunned the station, I think the girls were most frightened of showing they were frightened. They were determined not to let anyone down, however terrified they were.
It was a hot summer. The ground was very hard so that when bombs fell, it was very difficult to get people out who had been sheltering in a trench that had been hit, after they had been hurt or killed. Once, they bombed a trench in which some WA AFs had taken cover and which I’d nearly gone into myself. I was on my way to my office. When I was half-way between two trenches, the station warning went and I went into the other trench. As soon as the aircraft noises quietened down, one didn’t wait for the all clear. One wanted to see what had happened. My first move was to see how the airwomen were getting on in their trench. Half-way there, I discovered it had been hit. Somebody shouted that it had been bombed. There was a frightful smell of escaping gas; they’d hit a gas main. When I got to the trench, I saw it was sort of half bombed. The WAAFs had all been blown to one end of it. Luckily, only one was killed, but there were a lot of serious casualties, some of whom have had a fairly miserable time since, I’m afraid.
They’d destroyed most of the airwomen’s quarters and we had to find some place for them to live. We went around knocking on people’s doors round the station and asked if they could take in one, two, three or whatever of the airwomen. They were tremendously co-operative.
I was posted to London soon after the bombing of Biggin Hill was over. It was heaven being bombed in London after that. You were part of such a vast target in the big city. You could lie in your flat and hear bombs going off not far away, but feel safe. I suppose the difference was that you knew they were after you on a little target and, my goodness, you could see them coming at you, diving right down, and the wretched machine-gunning. I never went to an air-raid shelter in London.
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Pilot Officer Dennis David
The groundcrew — the fitters, the riggers, the others — kept working on aircraft while the Germans were attacking the airfields. Naturally, they broke off when things got too hot. But they made planes serviceable when it looked like it couldn’t be done. They kept us flying.
The bowser drivers were amazing. What could be more dangerous than driving a 900 gallon petrol tanker when bombs were falling, and they did it, refuelling us under fire so that we could take off again to go for the bombers. The armourers who reloaded our guns and the radio men who saw to our radios — they all kept us going when things were darkest.
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Aircraftsman Second Class Albert Hargraves, Bowser driver
It was my birthday, 25 August, when the big raids on Biggin Hill began. The Germans came in with the sun at the back of them. They came over bombing and strafing. Four of my pals in the M/T section were going to go out with me for a drink at night to celebrate my birthday. I never saw them again. They were killed. The celebration was cancelled.
The biggest raid was a few days later. It was a Sunday, around teatime. We’d just come out of the canteen. The station commander announced over the tannoy that everybody who wasn’t essential should go to the shelters. But so many dashed for the shelter than not everybody could get in. I dashed back to my bowser to drive down to flight where there were some trees. I’d just got clear of the main camp part to get onto the perimeter to go around when the Dorniers came down the middle of the aerodrome. They looked like they were only fifty feet off the ground, though they must have been higher than that.
The cab doors of the bowsers had been taken off to let us get in and out in a hurry. I pulled up sharp, jumped out and ran like bloody hell to a hedge and lay down. The bombs were exploding and you could hear the machine-guns and cannon fire from the Dorniers and Messerschmitts. Then it went quiet. The main shelter, the one where not everybody could get in, had been hit. There was a hell of a crater there.
We rushed over and tried to get people out. There were a lot of casualties. There were heads lying around and arms sticking up out of the crater. We were digging away there until three in the morning. We got about fifty bodies out and there were still some left. The next day, they got a load of miners in to help dig the shelter out. They found some more bodies. After they thought they’d got out as many as they could, they just bulldozed the area over.
Headquarters were demolished with all the service records. They didn’t know who was on the base. If anyone had absconded then, they would have got away with it.
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Assistant Section Officer Felicity Hanbury
Joan Mortimer was a sergeant in charge of the armoury. As soon as the bombing stopped, she wouldn’t wait for the all clear. She’d rush out on to the aerodrome to mark all the unexploded bombs and the bomb craters so that when our aircraft came back, they could see where not to land. Goodness knows how many lives she saved by doing that.
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Aircraftsman Second Class Albert Hargraves
There were so many little flags marking off the unexploded bombs, they looked like flowers in a field. We were all commandeered to work at bomb disposal. We got threepence a day extra for it.
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Flight Lieutenant Peter Brothers
We’d see the damaged buildings and craters when we got back to the aerodrome after it had been bombed while we were elsewhere, intercepting other raids. And we’d see the little flags stuck in the ground to mark off unexploded bombs. We’d either land on the perimeter path or make a path of our own through them all.
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Operations Record Book
Biggin Hill, 30 August
A low level bombing attack was carried out by the enemy on the station and very serious damage was done to buildings and equipment. The raiders dropped sixteen big HE [high explosive] bombs, estimated 1,000 lbs weight each, of which six fell among the buildings rendering completely useless and unsafe workshops, transport yard, stores, barrack stores, armoury, guardroom, meteorological office and the station institute and shattering by blast part of the airmen’s married quarters, which were being used as accommodation for WAAF personnel. ‘F’ type hangar in north camp was also badly hit. One shelter trench received a direct hit and two other near hits. The total casualties were thirty-nine killed and twenty-five wounded and shocked. All power, gas and water mains were severed and all telephone lines running north of the camp were severed in three places.
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Aircraftsman Second Class Albert Hargraves
The station commander at Biggin Hill, Group Captain Grice, wanted to get the aerodrome operational again as soon as possible. He went up and had a fly-around to see what it looked like from above. It looked terrible, but he saw that one of the hangars, which was just a shell after the bombing, still looked undamaged from up there. When he came down, he had it b
lown up so the Germans wouldn’t want to have another go at us.
Right through the worst of it at Biggin Hill, the Salvation Army was there. You’d be at dispersal at eleven at night, just in case. There’d be at least two pilots on standby in their cockpits and the Salvation Army would be there with their van and their tea and wads. Wads were buns, a little on the sweet side. You were lucky if you found a currant in one of them. A penny for a cup of tea. A halfpenny for a wad. It was fantastic.
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Squadron Leader Harry Hogan
When we were operating out of Gravesend, we were controlled from Biggin Hill. When Biggin Hill was bombed, and the Ops Room there was knocked out, we had to set up an emergency system for getting our flight instructions. The trolley-accumulator, which was used to start the aeroplanes, was plugged into planes on the ground and I assigned pilots so that there would always be one of them in his cockpit with his radio on, with the trolley-accumulator providing the necessary power so that he could pick up messages from the Ops Room at Hornchurch. The Controller there relayed messages to us from Group. ‘Scramble’ and the rest of it. That kept us operational for at least two days until Biggin Hill was able to set up an emergency Ops Room.
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Wing Commander David Roberts, Sector Commander, Middle Wallop
There was a fair bit of damage when Middle Wallop was hit. A stick of bombs came right across the hangar area. Two chaps were killed while shutting the doors of one of the hangars. One bomb hit an air-raid shelter and killed a workman there. Two or three aircraft were damaged on the ground and lost. Thank God, the Ops Room wasn’t hit. It was only a wooden hut. I stayed there. I was controlling at the time and I had everything in the air. More raids were coming in and they had to be met. When the bombs came down near us, we all went flat on the floor. The WAAFs were under the table. My flight sergeant, the senior NCO in charge of the Ops Room said, ‘This is where we’re all on the same level, sir.’