All Hell Let Loose

by Hastings, Max

  ‘People who stayed in a burning cockpit for ten seconds were overcome by the flames and heat,’ said Sgt. Jack Perkin. ‘Nine seconds and you ended up in Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead in Dr Archie McIndoe’s burns surgery for the rest of the war. If you got out in eight seconds you never flew again, but you went back about twelve times for plastic surgery.’ Hurricane pilot Billy Drake described the experience of being shot down: ‘It was rather like having a motor-car accident. You can’t remember what the hell happened.’ Both sides suffered heavily from non-combat mishaps, born of momentary carelessness or recklessness by tired and often inexperienced young men: between 10 July and 31 October, 463 Hurricanes suffered such damage, sometimes total and fatal. As many as one-third of both Dowding’s and Goering’s overall losses were accidental.

  Few pilots who bailed out offshore were recovered: a man in a dinghy looked pathetically small to rescue-launch crews scouring the Channel and North Sea. Ulrich Steinhilper gazed below as he flew back over the Channel from a September mission: ‘Our track across those wild waters became dotted with parachutes, pilots floating in their lifejackets, and greasy oil slicks on the cold water showing where another Me109 had ended its last dive. All along the coast near Boulogne we had seen 109s down in the fields and on the grass, some still standing on their noses.’ Nineteen German aircrew drowned that day, while just two were picked up by floatplanes.

  The chivalrous spirit with which the British, at least, began the battle faded fast. David Crook returned from a sortie in which his roommate had been killed, and found it strange to see the man’s possessions just where he had left them, towel hanging on the window. ‘I could not get out of my head the thought of Peter, with whom we had been talking and laughing that day. Now he was lying in the cockpit of his wrecked Spitfire at the bottom of the English Channel.’ That afternoon, the dead pilot’s wife telephoned to arrange his leave, only to hear the flight commander break news of his death. Crook wrote: ‘It all seemed so awful. I was seeing at very close quarters all the distress that casualties cause.’ After Pete Brothers’ squadron was engaged a few times and he had lost friends, he abandoned his earlier notions that they were playing a game between sporting rivals. ‘I then said, “Right, these are a bunch of bastards. I don’t like them any more. I am going to be beastly.”’ Very early in the struggle, pilot Denis Wissler wrote in his diary: ‘Oh God I do wish this war would end.’ But few of the young men who fought for either side in the Battle of Britain stayed alive through the five-year struggle that followed it. To fly was wonderful fun, but a profound and premature seriousness overtook most aerial warriors in the face of the stress and horror that were their lot almost every day they were exposed to operations.

  Through August the Luftwaffe progressively increased the intensity of its assaults, attacking Fighter Command airfields – though only briefly radar stations. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, C-in-C of Fighter Command, began the battle with an average of six hundred aircraft available for action, while the Germans deployed a daily average of around 750 serviceable bombers, 250 dive-bombers, over six hundred single-engined and 150 twin-engined fighters, organised in three air fleets. South-east England was the main battleground, but Dowding was also obliged to defend the north-east and south-west from long-range attacks.

  The first concerted bombings of airfields and installations took place on 12 August, when Ventnor radar station on the Isle of Wight was put out of action. The Luftwaffe intended ‘Eagle Day’ on 13 August to be decisive, but in thick weather this degenerated into a series of poorly coordinated attacks. The Germans mounted their heaviest effort two days later on the 15th, dispatching 2,000 sorties over England, losing seventy-five aircraft for thirty-four British, two of those on the ground. Raiders flying from Scandinavian airfields – too remote for single-engined fighters – suffered especially heavy losses, and the day became known to German aircrew as ‘Black Thursday’. The two sides’ combined casualties were even higher three days later on the 18th, when the Luftwaffe lost sixty-nine planes against Fighter Command’s thirty-four in the air and a further twenty-nine on the ground.

  Both air forces wildly overestimated the damage they inflicted on each other, but the Germans’ intelligence failure was more serious, because it sustained their delusion that they were winning. Fighter Command’s stations were targeted by forty Luftwaffe raids during August and early September, yet only two – Manston and Lympne on the Kent coast – were put out of action for more than a few hours, and the radar receivers were largely spared from attention. By late August the Luftwaffe believed Fighter Command’s first-line strength had been halved, to three hundred aircraft. In reality, however, Dowding still deployed around twice that number: attrition was working to the advantage of the British. Between 8 and 23 August, the RAF lost 204 aircraft, but during that month 476 new fighters were built, and many more repaired. The Luftwaffe lost 397, of which 181 were fighters, while only 313 Bf109s and Bf110s were produced by German factories. Fighter Command lost 104 pilots killed in the middle fortnight of August, against 623 Luftwaffe aircrew dead or captured.

  The RAF’s Bomber Command has received less than due credit for its part in the campaign: between July and September it lost twice as many men as Fighter Command, during attacks on concentrations of invasion barges in the Channel ports, and conducting harassing missions against German airfields. The latter inflicted little damage, but increased the strain on Luftwaffe men desperate for rest. ‘The British are slowly getting on our nerves at night,’ wrote pilot Ulrich Steinhilper. ‘Because of their persistent activity our AA guns are in virtually continuous use and so we can hardly close our eyes.’

  Goering now changed tactics, launching a series of relatively small bomber attacks with massive fighter escorts. These were explicitly designed to force the RAF to fight, especially in defence of airfields, and for the German planes to destroy it in the air. Dowding’s losses were indeed high, but Luftwaffe commanders were dismayed to find that each day, Fighter Command’s squadrons still rose to meet their attacks. Increasing tensions developed between 11 Group, whose fighters defended the south-east, and 12 Group beyond, whose planes were supposed meanwhile to protect 11’s airfields from German bombers. In late August and early September, several stations were badly damaged. Why were 12 Group’s fighters absent when this happened? The answer was that some of their squadron commanders, Douglas Bader notable among them, favoured massing aircraft into ‘big wings’ – powerful formations – before engaging the enemy. This took precious time, but in arguments on the ground the ‘big wing’ exponents shouted loudest. They were eventually given their heads, and made grossly inflated claims for their achievements. The outcome was that the reputation of Keith Park, commanding 11 Group, suffered severely from RAF in-fighting that in September became endemic, while 12 Group’s Trafford Leigh-Mallory – more impressive as an intriguer than as an operational commander – gained influence. Posterity is confident that Park was an outstanding airman, who shared with Dowding the laurels for winning the Battle of Britain.

  Many of the RAF’s young fliers, knowing the rate of attrition Fighter Command was suffering, accounted themselves dead men, though this did not diminish their commitment. Hurricane pilot George Barclay’s 249 Squadron was posted to one of the most embattled stations, North Weald in Essex, on 1 September. A comrade said bleakly as they packed for the move, ‘I suppose some of us here will never return to Boscombe.’ Barclay himself took a slightly more optimistic view, writing in his diary: ‘I think everyone is quite sure he will survive for at least seven days!’

  At the end of August, the Germans made their worst strategic mistake of the campaign: they shifted their objectives from airfields first to London, then to other major cities. Hitler’s air commanders believed this would force Dowding to commit his last reserves, but Britain’s leaders, from Churchill downwards, were vastly relieved. They knew the capital could absorb enormous punishment, while Fighter Command’s installations were v
ulnerable. The men in the air saw only relentless combat, relentless losses. George Barclay wrote to his sister on 3 September in the breathless, adolescent style characteristic of his tribe: ‘We have been up four times today and twice had terrific battles with hundreds of Messerschmitts. It is all perfectly amazing, quite unlike anything else … One forgets entirely what attitude one’s aeroplane is in, in an effort to keep the sights on the enemy. And all this milling around of hundreds of aeroplanes, mostly with black crosses on, goes on at say 20,000ft with the Thames estuary and surrounding country as far as Clacton displayed like a map below.’

  Sandy Johnstone ‘nearly jumped clean out of my cockpit’ on getting his first glimpse of the massed Luftwaffe assault of 7 September. ‘Ahead and above a veritable armada of German aircraft … staffel after staffel as far as the eye could see … I have never seen so many aircraft in the air all at one time. It was awe-inspiring.’ At the outset, German aircrew derived comfort from flying amid a vast formation. ‘Wherever one looks are our aircraft, all around, a marvellous sight,’ wrote Peter Stahl, flying a Junkers Ju88 on one of the September mass raids. But he and his comrades quickly learned that security of mass was illusory, as formations were rent asunder by diving, banking, shooting Hurricanes and Spitfires. By late afternoon of the 7th, a thousand planes were locked in battle over Kent and Essex. George Barclay’s Hurricane was hit and he was obliged to crash-land in a field. The Germans lost forty-one aircraft on 7 September, while Fighter Command lost twenty-three. As in all the battle’s big clashes, the British had the best of the day.

  Ulrich Steinhilper, flying a Bf109, was one of many pilots who, between spasms of intense fear and excitement, was struck by the beauty of the spectacle they created: over London one September day, he gloried in ‘the pure azure-blue of the sky, with the sun dimmed by the sinister smoke penetrating to extreme height; this interwoven and cross-hatched by the con trails of fighters locked in their life-and-death struggles. In among this, the burning balloons and the few parachutes in splendid and incongruous isolation.’ The Luftwaffe’s 15 September onslaught was unaccompanied by the usual feints and diversions, so that Fighter Command was in no doubt about the focus of the threat, and could throw everything into meeting it. Squadrons were scrambled to meet the raiders in pairs, intercepting as far forward as Canterbury, while the Duxford ‘big wing’ engaged over east London. That afternoon, the Luftwaffe’s second attack also met strong defending fighter forces; in all, sixty German aircraft were shot down – though the RAF claimed 185. Between 7 and 15 September, the Luftwaffe lost 175 planes, far more than German factories built.

  The assault remained incoherent: the attackers had begun by seeking to destroy the RAF’s defensive capability, then, before achieving this, switched to attacking morale and industrial targets. Their relatively light bombers carried loads which hurt the British, but lacked sufficient weight to strike fatal blows against a complex modern industrial society. The RAF did not destroy the Luftwaffe, which was beyond its powers. But its pilots denied the Germans dominance of the Channel and southern England, while imposing unacceptable losses. Fighter Command’s continued existence as a fighting force sufficed to frustrate Goering’s purposes. Throughout the battle, British factories produced single-engined fighters faster than those of Germany, a vital industrial achievement. Fighter Command lost a total of 544 men – about one in five of all British pilots who flew in the battle – while 801 Bomber Command aircrew were killed and a further two hundred taken prisoner; but the Luftwaffe lost a disastrous 2,698 highly skilled airmen.

  Churchill’s personal contribution was to convince his people, over the heads of some of their ruling caste, that their struggle was noble, necessary – and now also successful. The Battle of Britain exalted their spirit in a fashion that enabled them to transcend the logic of their continuing strategic weakness. ‘Our airmen have had a gruelling time, but each day that passes the more magnificently they seem to carry on the fight,’ wrote an elderly backbench Tory MP, Cuthbert Headlam, on 20 September. ‘It is odd to see how much we owe to so small a number of young men – here are millions of us doing nothing while the battle is being decided over our heads by a chosen band of warriors drawn from here, there and everywhere … They must be a superb body of men … one would like to know the difference in material strength of our RAF and the Luftwaffe: some day presumably we shall know – and then, more than ever, I expect, we shall salute the gallant men who are now doing such untold service for their country.’

  Britain’s people endured the nation’s ordeal with some fortitude. Those who lived outside conurbations were spared from Luftwaffe attack, but fear of invasion was almost universal. If Churchill was committed to fight to the last, he was also brutally realistic about the implications of possible failure and defeat. Brigadier Charles Hudson attended a senior officers’ conference in York in July which was addressed by Anthony Eden as secretary for war. Eden told his audience that he had been instructed by the prime minister to take soundings about the army’s morale. He proposed to ask each general in turn whether, as Hudson recorded, ‘the troops under our command could be counted on to continue the fight in all circumstances … There was almost an audible gasp all round the table.’ Eden intensified the astonishment when he said that ‘a moment might come when the Government would have to make, at short notice, a terrible decision. That point when … it would be definitely unwise to throw in, in a futile attempt to save a hopeless situation, badly armed men against an enemy firmly lodged in England.’ He asked how troops might respond to an order to embark at a northern port for Canada, abandoning their families.

  Hudson wrote: ‘In dead silence one after another was asked the question.’ The almost unanimous response was that most regular officers, NCOs and unmarried men would accept such an order. However, among conscripts and married men, ‘the very great majority … would insist either on fighting it out in England … or on [staying behind to take] their chance with their families whatever the consequences might be’. In other words, senior officers of the British Army believed that, in the face of imminent defeat, many of their men would make the same choice as had French soldiers – to give in, rather than accept the uncertainties and miseries of continuing the struggle in exile. Hudson concluded: ‘We left the conference room in a very chastened mood.’ Neither he nor most of his colleagues had contemplated the prospect that fighting on to the end might mean doing so from a foreign country, with Britain vanquished. Churchill accepted such a contingency; but in this, as in much else, Britain’s prime minister was willing to contemplate extremities of sacrifice from which many of his fellow countrymen flinched.

  Hitler might have attempted an invasion of Britain if the Luftwaffe had secured control of the airspace over the Channel and southern England. As it was, however, instinctively wary of the sea and of an unnecessary strategic gamble, he took few practical steps to advance German preparations, beyond massing barges in the Channel ports. Churchill exploited the threat more effectively than did the prospective invaders, mobilising every citizen to the common purpose of resisting the enemy if they landed. Signposts and place names were removed from crossroads and stations, beaches wired, over-age and under-age men recruited to local ‘Home Guard’ units and provided with simple weapons. Churchill deliberately and even cynically sustained the spectre of invasion until 1942, fearing that if the British people were allowed to suppose the national crisis had passed, their natural lassitude would reassert itself.

  Uncertainty about German intentions persisted through that summer and into autumn. Among the population at large, fear was mingled with a muddled and excited anticipation, all the keener because the prospect of fighting Germans in the fields and villages of England seemed so unreal. One aristocratic housewife injected some of her hoarded stockpile of Canadian maple syrup with rat poison, destined for German occupiers. To the dismay of her family, however, after some weeks she forgot which tins had been treated, and was obliged to deny the delicacy to her disa
ppointed children. Wiltshire farmer Arthur Street caught something of the pantomime element in people’s behaviour, in an account of his own workers’ and neighbours’ conduct on 7 September, when a warning was transmitted to the Home Guard that German landings were imminent:

  The Sedgebury Wallop platoon was on the job that night, and marched seventeen bewildered civilians to the local police station because they had forgotten their identity cards. But at 0700 the farmer in Walter Pocock woke up, and he suggested to his shepherd that he might abandon soldiering for shepherding for half an hour. ‘You’ll be wanting to see your sheep, but take your rifle and ammo,’ he advised. ‘The fold’s only ten minutes walk away, and I’ll send for you the moment anything happens.’ ‘I ’low me sheep’ll be all right eet awhile,’ reported Shep. ‘The day’s fold were pitched eesterday, an’ although young Arthur be but fifteen, I’ve a-trained ’im proper. Any road, I bain’t gwaine till the “All Clear” be sounded.’ At about 11 o’clock, when the word came through that the real or imaginary threat of invasion had passed, grumbling was rife. ‘Bain’t ’em reely comin’, sir?’ asked Tom Spicer wistfully. ‘’Fraid not, Spicer,’ replied Walter. ‘Jist wot I thought,’ growled Fred Bunce the blacksmith. ‘There bain’t no dependence to be put in they Germans.’

  Those Wiltshire rustics enjoyed a luxury denied to the peoples of continental Europe: they could mock their enemies, because they were spared from the ghastly reality of meeting them: on 17 September Hitler gave the order indefinitely to postpone Operation Sealion, the Wehrmacht’s plan to invade Britain. The British people and the pilots of Fighter Command saw only a slow, gradual shift during October from massed daylight air attacks to night raids. Between 10 July and 31 October, the Germans lost 1,294 aircraft, the British 788. Hitler had abandoned hopes of occupying Britain in 1940, and also of destroying Fighter Command. He committed his air force instead to a protracted assault on Britain’s cities which was intended to break the will of the population. The Luftwaffe chose as primary targets aircraft factories, together with London’s docks and infrastructure. Due to the limitations of German navigation and bomb-aiming, however, in the eyes of the British people the attacks became merely an indiscriminate assault on the civilian population, a campaign of terror.