Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain

by Norman Gelb

  *

  Pilot Officer Dennis David

  We were scrambled from Tangmere — myself and one other — to intercept a suspected enemy coming in towards Manston. They sent us up because we had better weather than most of the airfields in the south, where the fog was right down to the ground, though it was also pretty grim where we were. We got down to the coast and flew along it at under a hundred feet. Near Manston, we were directed towards the French coast, hoping the weather would be better when we got back so we’d be able to find our way home. Then suddenly we were in blue sky — and there was the Ju 88 we’d been sent to find. He saw us at about the same time we saw him. He jettisoned his bombs and turned to go back, but we caught up with him and riddled that plane. I’ve never seen a worse looking mess. If it got back, it would have been the best advertisement yet not to come to England. The thing is, we were surprised to see it because we’d been having no trade at all.

  I was down in Brighton on a bit of leave around then when a 109 showed up, dropped a bomb way out to sea and fired a few rounds before heading back for France. I remember standing there thinking, ‘What has he done that for?’ I think he just wanted to report back that he’d been there.

  *

  Pilot Officer Peter Parrott

  Our squadron had taken a beating and had lost a lot of men in August before we were pulled out and sent up to Scotland to recover. We were relieved to go. We needed the rest. But when we came back into the combat area towards the end of the battle, we were disappointed when we were scrambled and couldn’t connect up with the enemy. There were still high flying 109s coming over during the day, doing a bit of random bombing from about 20,000 feet, just dropping an egg on the London area. But often we went up several times in a row and didn’t see anybody. Once when we did meet some, they didn’t want to know. They just turned around and went home.

  *

  Pilot Officer Brian Considine

  Having lost a stone in weight during the previous weeks, I began putting a few pounds back on again. We began being released from duty in the evenings.

  *

  Pilot Officer Bobby Oxspring

  Sitting at Gravesend, poking out towards France, we heard Bomber Command and Coastal Command now going over to hit the Germans every night. We knew they were clobbering the invasion barges and laying mines off the ports where the Germans were.

  *

  Squadron Leader Harry Hogan

  We had new pilots arriving in ones and twos to join the squadron. They came to replace people who were still being shot down and others who were being sent to other squadrons. Some of our men had promotions and moved on to other jobs. Some were sent to back up training units.

  The quality of the training was improving considerably. By October, the new men who came to us had already had much more time on Spitfires or Hurricanes than those who had come in August. They came to us far less green. And we were able to give them the coaching and nursing they required in the squadron after they reached us that we hadn’t been able to give earlier, during the hectic times.

  *

  Flight Lieutenant Frederick Rosier

  I had been shot down over France in May and spent some time in hospital. When I returned to the same squadron at Northolt in October, to command, some of the pilots with whom I’d flown earlier were still there. They had remained with it right through the battle and, luckily, had survived. They’d been blooded, of course, and were different than they had been before. One or two, who had tended to be superficial when I knew them first as young lads, had grown up and become men in those few months. They were more serious. Some, who before had appeared to be not very good, had blossomed out. It was the reverse with others.

  The official version is that the Battle of Britain finished in October. It’s true that the weather was often bad then. We said, ‘Thank God!’ when it was bad enough for the Germans not to come over. But as far as our squadron was concerned, the battle just went on and on, petering out somewhat, until we went north for a rest at Christmas time.

  *

  Pilot Officer Dennis David

  Looking back, I don’t see how we won. There were about 650 RAF fighters versus more than 2,000 German aircraft. We had about 1,000 pilots. They had about 3,000. Of our 1,000, only about 600 or so were experienced operational pilots. As the battle progressed, we lost pilots and they lost pilots, but because we were fewer in number, our losses were more serious. At one stage, we were down to less than 350 pilots, which was dicey. That was when it got really critical. I used to look around and think, ‘God, this is getting hairy!’ We never actually thought we’d lose. But looking back, I wonder how the hell we won.

  As damp, blustery autumn weather closed in over the English Channel, Hitler grudgingly conceded that it would, for the time being, be unwise to try to land his troops on the British coast. Instead, he turned his attention eastward and began plotting the thrust of his forces into Russia the following May.

  Officially, the invasion of England was only postponed. But it would never again come under active consideration by the German High Command. If Fighter Command could not be destroyed when it hadn’t been ready for the onslaught, it wasn’t likely to be overwhelmed when the British were prepared. The Luftwaffe simply was incapable of seizing mastery of the skies over England.

  For most people in England, victory in the Battle of Britain had little immediate significance. Most did not even realize the battle was over. Attacks by German aircraft during daylight hours had become a thing of the past, but the massive, horrific night raids on London and other British cities, though doing little to further German objectives, had already begun to transform the way people in Britain lived. The blitz went on through the rest of the autumn, the winter and well into the following spring. It claimed the lives of more than 30,000 civilians, badly injured tens of thousands more, and made more than four million homeless. Large areas of British cities were devastated. And, shattering though it was, the blitz was only a deafening overture to World War Two. That conflict was to thunder on for almost five more years and bring death, destruction and tragedy to millions of people.

  Nevertheless, the defeat of the Germans in the Battle of Britain in 1940 was a milestone. Despite Churchill’s defiant pronouncements about the determination of his countrymen to resist, had the Luftwaffe been able to overwhelm Fighter Command, or force it to abandon southern England, any target, military or otherwise, in that part of Britain or off its coast could have been obliterated at will by the Luftwaffe. The Germans could then have dispatched and landed the formidable invasion forces they had positioned on the other side of the English Channel. British ground forces, underarmed, undertrained and still reeling from their reverses in France, would have been no match for the German invaders.

  Britain might well have been forced out of the war, either through conquest or through being compelled, like France, to sue for peace, the terms of which Hitler would have been in a position to dictate. Nazi Germany, with its instruments of terror, cruelty and oppression, would have been both triumphant and unopposed by any nation on earth. Firmly entrenched throughout Europe, the Nazis would increasingly have been in a position to control the Atlantic sea routes, with unpredictable consequences for America and for the world. The men of Fighter Command achieved far more than they knew.

  *

  Winston Churchill

  Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

  *

  Pilot Officer Hugh Dundas

  I suppose we were all quite proud when we heard that. But I also suppose we thought it was a bit of a joke. We didn’t take that sort of thing very seriously.

  *

  Pilot Officer Jas Storrar

  We’d had our baptism of fire over Dunkirk and had taken a terrible beating in the south. We were up in Scotland recuperating when we heard about that speech by Churchill. We thought, ‘Aren’t they brave chaps down there and thank God we’re not there.’

  *<
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  Pilot Officer Robert Doe

  It was the first time I realized that we might have done something unusual. I hadn’t realized it until then.

  *

  Flight Lieutenant Alan Deere

  We’d had a hellish day. When I heard about what Churchill said about the many and the few, I said to my friend George Gribble — he was killed in action later — ‘By Christ, he can say that again. There aren’t many of us left.’

  *

  Pilot Officer Barrie Heath

  When we heard it up in 12 Group, we thought, ‘We’re doing bugger all. Why doesn’t he call on us to have a bash?’

  *

  Anonymous pilot

  I thought he was talking about our mess bill.

  POSTSCRIPT

  Rarely in history can victorious commanders have been treated as shabbily as were Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding and Air Vice Marshal Keith Park as soon as they had won the Battle of Britain. Dowding had been due for retirement earlier, but had stayed on to direct the operations of Fighter Command during the battle. Within weeks of winning that battle, he was asked to vacate his office within twenty-four hours (and then asked to stay on for another week because his successor wasn’t yet ready to take over). As a sop, Dowding was then given a job to which he was totally unsuited and for which he had no skills — a tour of the United States for the Air Ministry to check on war supplies.

  Park, whose 11 Group had done by far the most to repel the German attack, was also relieved of his command, after having held it less than a year. He was treated as if he had botched his job and, at a time when Britain badly needed his hard-earned battle experience in an operational role, he was sent off to run a training group. To add to this insult, Park was succeeded as 11 Group commander by his arch rival, Air Vice Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, whom Park held responsible for not providing adequate cover for his airfields when his own squadrons were otherwise engaged during the battle.

  It is true that Dowding — aloof, unsocial, stuffy — had few friends in the Air Ministry. Leigh-Mallory and his protégé, Douglas Bader, had close contact and wielded some influence with senior military and political figures, some of whom had been persuaded that Dowding’s refusal to embrace Big Wing tactics had been a dreadful mistake.

  No doubt well-grounded criticism could have been levelled against aspects of Dowding’s command. He might have required Park and Leigh-Mallory to work harmoniously together for the common good whatever their differences and despite their mutual hatred. More profitable use might have been made of 12 Group’s resources, held in reserve not far from the centre of hostilities. Changes in the outdated, dangerous standard Vies of three-flight formation should have been implemented early on throughout Fighter Command. Questions could have been raised about the value of basing fighters on such coastal airfields as Manston and Hawkinge, which were terribly exposed to sneak enemy raids and from which they could rarely achieve height advantage over the incoming enemy when scrambled to intercept.

  But Dowding’s achievements far outweighed whatever shortcomings could have been found in his performance. Aside from saving Fighter Command from being drained away in France before the battle began, he devised and developed from scratch the system for controlling aerial defence forces from the ground over a large area and over a long period of time. He established the system of interlocking Groups and Sectors which received, interpreted and served as a conduit for all available sources of intelligence on enemy raids. And it worked, enabling his frontline squadrons to repel the attack of an enemy far superior in numbers and experience. At the same time, he meticulously husbanded reserves to relieve those squadrons when necessary and to meet any other incursions the enemy might attempt. In military terms, Dowding, victor of the only major battle ever fought exclusively in the air, was a giant.

  Keith Park, brought back into operational service to command the aerial defence of Malta against German attack two years later, employed tactics similar to those he had used in the Battle of Britain, was again successful in repulsing the enemy, and thus made short shrift of the criticism made in the Air Ministry of his performance during the summer and autumn of 1940.

  Nevertheless, the behaviour of those in top command with regard to Dowding and Park remains inexplicable, even that of Churchill, who, though other matters occupied his attention, must have known what was being done to them. However, sometime later he reacted with fury when shown an Air Ministry booklet on the Battle of Britain which neglected even to mention Dowding’s name! Churchill told the Air Minister, ‘The jealousies and cliquism which have led to the committing of this offence are a discredit to the Air-Ministry ... What would have been said if ... the Admiralty had told the tale of Trafalgar and left Lord Nelson out of it?’

  Dowding was stunned but somewhat restrained in his public reaction to the treatment meted out to him. He had for some time suffered discourtesies and worse perpetrated by the Air Ministry. Park had fewer qualms about revealing how he felt. ‘To my dying day,’ he said, ‘I shall feel bitter at the base intrigue which was used to remove Dowding and myself as soon as we had won the Battle of Britain.’

  *

  Squadron Leader George Darley

  Dowding was too nice a chap and he came up against a gang of thugs. Leigh-Mallory was very jealous of him. He felt he wasn’t getting enough of the limelight and he got a lot of backing in the Air Ministry.

  *

  Flight Lieutenant Francis Wilkinson

  It was entirely [Dowding’s] foresight in being able to see where the strain was going to come, and to be able to take the measure of that strain, which allowed Fighter Command to bear the enormous, almost unbearable load that it had when the fighting came. Stuffy had foreseen that our fighter squadrons were going to be depleted in strength. He had foreseen that Sector Operations Room would be bombed. And he’d made plans for the rapid interchange of squadrons between Scotland and northern England and the south. If it hadn’t been for his colossal foresight and meticulous planning right from the very beginning, we’d have had it.

  *

  Squadron Leader Sandy Johnstone

  After Stuffy was made to retire, the war blew up into a global thing. Great names arose — Eisenhower, Montgomery, Alexander, Bradley. Great battles were won — Alamein, D-Day, the crossing of the Rhine. But they were all courtesy of Stuffy Dowding. None of those people would even have been heard of if Stuffy hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t won the Battle of Britain. His statue ought to be standing atop a plinth in Trafalgar Square.

  Appendix I

  THE MAIN EVENTS

  1939

  1 September: German troops invade Poland.

  3 September: Britain and France, honouring defensive treaties with Poland, declare war on Germany. Preparations accelerated for the dispatch to France of the British Expeditionary Force, soon to include the bulk of the British army and several squadrons of British fighter planes and bombers.

  5 October: Last substantial Polish military resistance crushed by German invaders.

  October 1939-April 1940: The ‘phoney war’ — little combat despite formal continuance of hostilities.

  1940

  9 April: Germans invade Denmark and Norway.

  10 May: Germans invade Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Over the next ten days, additional British fighter planes are sent to reinforce forces in France.

  13 May: Germans crack through French defences and launch an offensive to trap the Allied armies.

  16 May: Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding warns that sending more British fighter planes to France to try to salvage the increasingly hopeless Allied position there could result in a total British defeat.

  19 May: Churchill reluctantly rules that no additional fighter squadrons are to be sent to France.

  20 May: German forces reach the French Channel coast, trapping the British Expeditionary Force.

  26 May - 4 June: Evacuation of most of the British Expeditionary Force from the beaches at Dunkirk
.

  22 June: France accepts humiliating armistice terms from the Germans. Britain is now alone against Germany.

  10 July: The Battle of Britain begins. In the first phase, lasting until 12 August, the Luftwaffe attacks British convoys in the English Channel and English south coast ports to lure British fighters into combat against much larger formations of German aircraft based at newly captured nearby French airfields.

  16 July: Hitler orders preparations to be made for an invasion of Britain, to take place ‘if necessary’.

  19 July: Hitler issues ‘a plea for peace’ to the British to enable Germany to consolidate its conquests.

  22 July: British government rejects the German peace bid.

  1 August: Hitler orders acceleration of invasion preparations.

  13 August: Phase two of the Battle of Britain begins. German attacks are now directed mainly against British airfields near the coast, radar installations, and aircraft factories. Despite a favourable RAF kill-loss ratio during this period, losses became an anxious concern for the British.

  24 August: Phase three of the battle begins. Intensification of German efforts to destroy Fighter Command with massive and repeated raids on key airfields and industrial targets. Night attacks are stepped up. The RAF shortage of pilots grows critical. Pilots are brought into operational fighter squadrons with minimal training.

  25 August: Berlin is bombed by the RAF in retaliation for the accidental German bombing of London the previous night.

  7 September: Phase four of the battle begins. To retaliate for the bombing of Berlin, the Germans shift their concentrated attacks from British fighter airfields to London. Civilian casualties are heavy and much damage is done, but the reprieve for the airfields permits Fighter Command to recover its ability to meet the German onslaught.