The Splendid and the Vile

by Erik Larson

  As one group approached its target, a swarm of RAF Hurricanes appeared, their arrival so unexpected, their attack so furious, that the bombers dropped their munitions and fled into the clouds.

  Göring gave orders to resume the offensive at two o’clock that afternoon.

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  AMONG THE PILOTS TAKING part was Adolf Galland, who by now held a near-mythic reputation not only within the Luftwaffe but also among RAF pilots. Like Churchill, his signature was the cigar. He smoked Havanas, twenty a day, which he lit using a cigar lighter scavenged from a car, and was the only pilot authorized by Göring to smoke while in the cockpit. Hitler, however, forbade him from being photographed while he smoked, fearing the influence such publicity might have on the morals of German youths. Galland and his group were now based at a field in Pas-de-Calais, on the French coast. For the Luftwaffe, accustomed to the easy victories of the early phase of the war, this period was, Galland said, “a rude awakening.”

  The ninety-minute flying time of his group’s Me 109 fighters was proving an even greater liability than usual, given the half hour needed to assemble formations of bombers and escorts over the French coast before heading to England. Galland’s fighters had an operational range of only 125 miles, or roughly the distance to London. “Everything beyond was practically out of reach,” he wrote. He likened German fighters to a dog on a chain, “who wants to attack the foe but cannot harm him, because of the limitation of his chain.”

  The Luftwaffe also was fast discovering the limitations of its Stuka dive-bomber, which had been one of its most potent weapons in the western campaign of May and June. It could place a bomb with far more precision than a standard aircraft, but owing in part to its external bomb load, it flew at about half the speed of a Spitfire. It was most vulnerable while diving, a trait British pilots quickly exploited. Wrote Galland, “These Stukas attracted Spitfires and Hurricanes as honey attracts flies.”

  Germany’s larger bombers also flew at relatively slow speeds. In Spain and Poland, those speeds were fast enough to avoid effective interception, but not now, against the latest British fighters. The bombers needed a big protective escort. How this could be provided was a growing source of conflict between the fighter pilots and Göring, who insisted that the fighters fly “close escort,” staying level with and close to the bombers all the way to their targets and back. This meant the pilots had to fly at the bombers’ much slower speeds, not only making themselves more vulnerable to attack but also limiting their opportunities to accumulate kills, which was all any fighter pilot really wanted. One pilot recalled the frustration of looking up and seeing the “bright blue bellies” of British fighters and not being allowed to go after them. “We clung to the bomber formation in pairs—and it was a damned awkward feeling,” he wrote. Galland favored looser patterns that allowed fighter pilots to fly their planes as they were meant to be flown, with some flying slow and close but others weaving among the bombers at high speeds, while still more flew high above the bomber formation, providing “top cover.” But Göring refused to listen. Galland and his fellow pilots increasingly saw him as being out of touch with the new realities of aerial combat.

  Although popular perception—influenced by Göring’s self-promotion—portrayed the Luftwaffe as a nearly invincible force with a might far greater than the RAF’s, in fact Galland recognized that the British had several major advantages that he and his fellow pilots could do nothing to neutralize. Not only did the RAF fly and fight over friendly territory, which ensured that surviving pilots would fight again; its pilots also fought with the existential brio of men who believed they were battling a far larger air force with nothing less than Britain’s survival at stake. RAF pilots recognized the “desperate seriousness of the situation,” as Galland put it, while the Luftwaffe operated with a degree of complacency, conjured by easy past successes and by faulty intelligence that portrayed the RAF as a desperately weakened force. German analysts accepted without challenge reports from Luftwaffe pilots of downed British aircraft and crippled airfields. In fact, the bases often resumed operation within hours. “At Luftwaffe HQ, however, somebody took the reports of the bomber or Stuka squadron in one hand and a thick blue pencil in the other and crossed the squadron or base in question off the tactical map,” Galland wrote. “It did not exist any more—in any case not on paper.”

  The RAF’s greatest advantage, Galland believed, was its deft use of radar. Germany possessed similar technology but, thus far, had not deployed it in a systematic manner, in the belief that British bombers would never be able to reach German cities. “The possibility of an Allied air attack on the Reich was at the time unthinkable,” Galland wrote. German pilots saw the tall radar towers along England’s coastline as they crossed the channel and occasionally attacked them, but the stations invariably returned to operation soon afterward, and Göring lost interest. Yet day after day, Galland was struck by the uncanny ability of British fighters to locate German formations. “For us and for our Command this was a surprise and a very bitter one,” Galland wrote.

  Göring himself was proving to be a problem. Easily distracted, he was unable to commit to a single, well-defined objective. He became convinced that by attacking a multitude of targets across a broad front, he could not only destroy RAF Fighter Command but also cause such widespread chaos as to drive Churchill to surrender.

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  THE ATTACK RESUMED. As Eagle Day progressed, nearly five hundred bombers and one thousand fighters entered the skies over England. In the aerial parlance of the day, this was called “landfall.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Perplexity

  ONCE AGAIN, ENGLAND’S CHAIN HOME radar network detected the approach of German aircraft, but this time the number of bombers and fighters exceeded anything the radar operators had seen before. At about three-thirty P.M., they identified three formations of German aircraft with some thirty bombers, each crossing the channel from bases in Normandy. Then came two more formations, totaling roughly sixty aircraft. RAF sector commanders ordered their fighter squadrons into the air. At about four P.M., more than one hundred RAF fighters were airborne and racing toward the attackers, guided by ground controllers using location information provided by the radar stations and by ground observers, who began reporting the types of approaching aircraft and their altitude, speed, and location. A massive formation of German fighters flew well ahead of the approaching bombers. Both forces met in a tumult of roaring engines and chattering machine guns, maneuvering wildly through a scree of heavy-caliber bullets and cannon fire. The bombers continued forward. Bombs fell on Southampton and a range of other locales, in Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Canterbury, and Castle Bromwich.

  British observers were mystified. Bombs fell everywhere, on airfields, harbors, and ships, but with no clear pattern or focus. And strangely, the bombers left London untouched, a surprise, since the Germans had shown no such reticence in their attack on Rotterdam.

  By late afternoon, the fighting in the skies over Britain had reached an intensity not previously experienced. Wave after wave of German bombers and fighters were met by RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires flying seven hundred distinct sorties, guided by radar. The Air Ministry reported that the RAF destroyed seventy-eight German bombers, at a cost of three of its own pilots.

  At 10 Downing, there was jubilation. But there was unease, too: The intensity of the day’s raids seemed to signal an increase in the size and violence of Germany’s aerial attacks. What the RAF did not yet understand was that this was the start of a major German offensive, the beginning of what later became known as the “Battle of Britain,” though that phrase would enter common usage only early the next year, with publication by the Air Ministry of a thirty-two-page thusly titled pamphlet that sought to capture the drama of the campaign and sold a million copies. But on Tuesday, August 13, 1940, none of this was clear. For now, the day�
�s raids merely seemed to be the latest episode in an intensifying and perplexing pattern of aerial attack.

  “The question everyone is asking today is, what is the motive of these gigantic daylight raids, which cost so much and effect so little?” wrote John Colville in his diary. “Are they reconnaissance in force, or a diversion, or just the cavalry attack before the main offensive. Presumably the next few days will show.”

  As it happened, the day’s score proved to be exaggerated, a common problem in the immediate aftermath of battle, but the ratio still seemed propitious: The Luftwaffe lost forty-five planes in all, the RAF thirteen, for a ratio of over three to one.

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  IN WASHINGTON THAT DAY, Roosevelt met with key members of his cabinet and told them he had reached a decision on how he would transfer the fifty aging destroyers to England. He would use his executive powers to authorize the ships-for-bases deal without seeking congressional approval. Moreover, he would not tell Congress about it until the deal became final. Roosevelt informed Churchill of his plan in a telegram that reached London that night.

  Churchill was delighted, but now he had to find a way to make the deal palatable to his own government and to the House of Commons, where the idea of leasing the islands—sovereign territory—aroused “deep feelings.” Churchill understood that “if the issue were presented to the British as a naked trading-away of British possessions for the sake of fifty destroyers it would certainly encounter vehement opposition.”

  He urged Roosevelt not to announce it to the public as a this-for-that exchange but, rather, to frame the destroyer transfer and the leases as completely separate agreements. “Our view is that we are two friends in danger helping each other as far as we can,” he cabled Roosevelt. The gift of the destroyers would be, he wrote, “entirely a separate spontaneous act.”

  Churchill feared that casting the deal as a commercial transaction might cause him grave political harm, for it clearly favored America, in that it provided ninety-nine-year leases of British territory, while the U.S. Navy was handing over a flotilla of obsolete ships that Congress had once wanted to scrap. To frame it publicly as a contract, with the destroyers as payment for territory, would inevitably raise questions about which party had gotten the better deal, and it would quickly become clear that America had come out much the winner.

  But Roosevelt had worries of his own. His decision carried with it the potential to derail his campaign to win a third term as president, especially at a time when the conscription bill in Congress was already inflaming passions on both sides of the aisle. To give a gift of fifty destroyers spontaneously would constitute a clear violation of neutrality laws and stretch the bounds of executive authority. It was crucial for the American public to recognize not only that the deal had resulted from some hard and savvy bargaining but also that it increased the security of the United States.

  As to security, there was little debate—provided the agreement itself did not drag America into the war. “The transfer to Great Britain of fifty American warships was a decidedly un-neutral act by the United States,” Churchill wrote later. “It would, according to all the standards of history, have justified the German Government in declaring war upon them.”

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  THE NEXT DAY, WEDNESDAY, August 14, was supposed to be the second day of Göring’s promised four-day drive to destroy the RAF, but once again he was thwarted by the weather, which was even worse than the day before, and kept most of his planes on the ground. Nonetheless, some bomber groups managed to carry out sorties against targets scattered throughout western England.

  Adolf Galland was delighted to receive orders to fly “detached escort” for a formation of eighty Stuka dive-bombers. His was one of an equal number of fighters assigned to protect the bombers, of which about half would fly well ahead, like Galland, while the rest stayed close to the formation. As Galland and his wingman walked to their Me 109s, Galland said he could tell it was going to be a good day—what he called a “hunter’s day.” The bombers were to approach England over the Strait of Dover, the narrowest point in the channel. To Galland, this meant he and his squadron would have plenty of time for combat before their fuel limits drove them back across the channel. That the RAF would make an appearance seemed to Galland beyond question. And, in fact, British radar in Dover detected him and his group even as they massed over France. Four squadrons of RAF fighters rose to meet them. Galland saw them in the distance well before his plane passed over the famous chalk cliffs at Dover.

  Galland dove headlong into the phalanx of fighters and picked out an RAF Hurricane, off by itself, but the pilot was too quick. He rolled his plane, then plunged in a fast dive toward the sea, pulling up only at the last second. Galland chose not to follow. Instead, he gunned his engine and climbed one thousand feet, in order to get a better look at the unfolding fight. He rolled his plane 360 degrees to give him a full view, his trademark maneuver.

  He spotted a Hurricane fighter that was clearly about to attack one of the Stuka bombers, which was lumbering along at a pace that made it an easy target. Galland fired at long range. The Hurricane bolted into a cloud. Acting on a hunch, Galland positioned himself near where he guessed the British plane would emerge, and an instant later the Hurricane popped from the cloud right in front of him. Galland fired, blasting away for three full seconds, a minor eternity in a dogfight. The Hurricane spiraled to the ground. Galland returned safely to France.

  In the course of this second day of air battles, the Luftwaffe lost nineteen aircraft, the RAF eight.

  Göring was very unhappy.

  CHAPTER 31

  Göring

  THE WEATHER CONTINUED TO DISRUPT Göring’s grand plan for the annihilation of the RAF, grounding most of his aircraft. On Thursday, August 15, the day his bombers and fighters should have nearly completed the campaign, he used the lull to summon his top officers to his country estate, Carinhall, and reproach them for their lackluster performance thus far.

  Late that morning, however, as his inquisition progressed, the weather suddenly improved, yielding clear skies, prompting his field commanders to launch a colossal attack involving more than twenty-one hundred aircraft. Forever after, within the Luftwaffe, the day would be known as “Black Thursday.”

  One incident seemed emblematic. The Luftwaffe believed that with so many German aircraft approaching from the south, the RAF would dispatch as many fighters as possible to England’s southern coast to defend against the coming onslaught, including fighters that were usually based in northern England, thereby leaving the north unprotected.

  This presumption, coupled with intelligence that described the RAF as a severely eroded force, prompted one Luftwaffe commander to order a raid against RAF bases in northern England, using bombers from Norway. Ordinarily a raid like this, in daylight, would have been foolhardy, since Germany’s best fighters, the Me 109s, did not have the range to escort the bombers all the way across the North Sea.

  The mission was a gamble but, given the underlying assumptions, seemed tactically sound. So it was that at twelve-thirty that afternoon a force of sixty-three German bombers approached England’s northeast coast, escorted by a skimpy force of two-man, twin-engine fighters, the only kind capable of flying so long a distance but far less agile than the single-engine Me 109, and thus more vulnerable to attack.

  The RAF, however, did not behave as expected. While Fighter Command had indeed concentrated its forces in the south, it had kept some northern squadrons in place to defend against precisely this kind of strike.

  The German bombers were about twenty-five miles offshore when the first Spitfires arrived, flying three thousand feet above the formation. As one RAF pilot looked down, he saw the bombers silhouetted against gleaming white cloud tops and exclaimed through his radio, “There’s more than a hundred of them!”

  The Spitfires dove throug
h the formation, blasting away with terrifying effect. The bombers scattered, seeking shelter in the clouds six hundred feet below. They jettisoned their cargoes, scattering bombs over the coastal countryside, and turned back, never having reached their targets. In this one encounter, the Luftwaffe lost fifteen aircraft, the RAF none.

  And this was just one of thousands of aerial battles that took place that Thursday alone, the Luftwaffe flying eighteen hundred sorties, the RAF a thousand. It proved to be the last day of life for a young Luftwaffe lieutenant who piloted one of the twin-engine Me 110s. The second seat was occupied by a wireless telegraph operator, who also manned a machine gun. RAF intelligence recovered the pilot’s diary, which told worlds about the harrowing life of German air crews. His very first “war flight” had taken place the previous month, on July 18, during which he had fired two thousand rounds of machine-gun ammunition and his plane had been hit by opposing fire three times. Four days later, he learned that his best friend, a fellow airman, had been killed. “I have known him since he was eleven and his death shook me considerably.” A week after this, his own fighter got hit thirty times and his wireless operator was nearly killed. “He has got a wound as big as my fist because bits of the machine were driven in by the bullet,” the pilot wrote. Over the next couple of weeks, more of his friends died, one killed when the control column of his Me 109 broke off as he tried to pull out of a dive.