The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  However exhausting it may have been, at least 1 Squadron’s pilots were all still alive. The same could not be said for far too many of the pilots and crew of the Fairey Battle squadrons. During the winter and spring, Battles had already proved themselves unsuited to the task given them. Single-engine machines, they were designed as two-seater day bombers, but they were horribly under-armed with just one manually operated Vickers machine gun to the rear and one machine gun on the right wing, much the same armament as a later First World War aircraft. Even without their bombs they were too slow and sitting ducks for modern fighters. Despite their obvious uselessness for a modern war, they had been sent into action on this first day. The first target that morning had been a German column advancing through Luxembourg, and attacking low at just 250 feet, the first eight Battles sent into action met a hail of small-arms fire. Three were shot down immediately. More Battles were sent into action later in the day and fared no better. Of thirty-two despatched over the battle area, thirteen were destroyed and every single one damaged to some lesser or greater degree. It was a high cost in return for negligible results.

  It was a sobering day for the Allied air forces, which were new to this kind of war. The RAF was in France primarily to offer close air support to the forces on the ground, yet official policy within the RAF was to avoid direct air support; after all, most of Britain’s air rearmament programme was dedicated to the home-based Fighter, Bomber and Coastal Commands. Of course, if there were no doctrine for close air support, it follows that there should have been little training in such practice either.

  What was already self-evident was that not enough planning or thought had been put into RAF air operations in France. There could be no benefits to low-level reconnaissance, for example, if none of the aircraft sent on such missions ever came back, as in the case of 18 Squadron. Others did make it home, but their reports were often sketchy. Equally, vainly patrolling in the hope of finding the enemy was hardly an efficient way of fighting an air war either. Worst of all was the lack of communication and co-ordination. At midday, the AASF had been asked to bomb the German airborne troops at Waalhaven, but at the same time six Blenheim fighters – rather than bombers – had been sent from Manston in Kent to attack the same Dutch airfield. Intercepted by Me 110s, only one made it back. The RAF conducted just thirty-three bomber sorties on 10 May. One sortie represents a combat flight of one aircraft, so a bombing mission of six Blenheims is six sorties. Thirty-three sorties all day from more than 220 bombers hardly represented maximum effort.

  By May, 85 per cent of the Armée de l’Air’s aircraft were modern types, but its organization was poor. Its forces were divided into areas of command called Zone d’Opérations, each of which had its complement of all types of aircraft. The commander of each zone, however, was independent of the others, which made it very difficult to bring a concentration of air power to bear in the way that the Luftwaffe had been doing. Once again, the lack of control and co-ordination on the ground meant the Armée de l’Air could never hope to fulfil its potential. The Luftwaffe, as it intended, could deal with them a bit at a time, chipping away at those they encountered in the air and bombing airfields, aircraft and communications on the ground before the Allies knew what had hit them.

  The RAF in France suffered sixty-one aircraft lost or damaged, with a further fourteen casualties from the UK. Of those, twenty-six would be repaired and flown again. The Armée de l’Air suffered seventy-four lost or damaged, of which eighteen would fly again. These were serious but not yet critical losses. For the Dutch and Belgian air forces, however, 10 May was truly a day of infamy as their weak air forces crumbled under the weight of Luftwaffe attacks. The Dutch lost half their aircraft.

  As far as Göring and his commanders were concerned, the air war was going very much to plan. Experience in the Spanish Civil War and then in Poland and more recently Norway had proved that their tactics were right. Yes, they had expected stiffer opposition from the Allies than they had from the Poles, but the enemy did not appear to have known what had hit them. Careful planning and co-ordination, combined with initiative, had seen to that.

  Yet it had not gone all the way of the Luftwaffe on 10 May. Admittedly the assault on the Belgian forts of Eben Emael had been a great success – even though the Belgian defenders would not finally surrender until the following day – and airborne landings around Rotterdam were also largely successful, yet the occupation of The Hague by airborne troops failed with horrendous losses of transport planes and of paratroopers.

  Although the 2,500 aircraft the Luftwaffe could call on was a great number, losses on that opening day of the offensive were, in fact, appalling. For all its supreme confidence, the Luftwaffe had 192 fighters and bombers lost or damaged that day, of which only sixty-six would fly again. But that figure did not include the staggering 244 Junkers 52 transport planes and gliders crashed, shot down and destroyed that day – more than half the number that had been available that morning. In all, no fewer than 353 German aircraft and 904 pilots and crew would never fly again – a huge total for one day of fighting. In the German aircraft factories in April, only 310 fighters had been built, and 338 bombers. That might also sound like a large number but it soon wouldn’t be if the Luftwaffe continued to sustain losses at even a fraction of the rate suffered on that first day.

  Although there had been sporadic small-scale aerial engagements over the previous autumn, winter and spring, and although the RAF and Luftwaffe had faced each other in an unequal contest in Norway, it was 10 May that really marked the beginning of the aerial clash between Britain and Germany – a clash that would continue all through that long summer and autumn of 1940, and would have far-reaching and decisive consequences for the rest of the Second World War. In terms of barefaced courage, that opening salvo showed that the two sides were evenly matched. But courage would not be enough for the men of the RAF or the Luftwaffe. What they both needed were planes – good planes suitable for the task given them – aircrew and pilots. Plenty of trained pilots.

  * From 1926 to 1938, Messerschmitts were given the abbreviation ‘Bf’, which stood for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, the name of the aircraft-manufacturing company at which Professor Willi Messerschmitt was the chief designer. However, in 1938, the company was reconstituted as Messerschmitt AG, and from then on Messerschmitt aircraft were given the prefix ‘Me’. Despite this, aircraft dating from the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke days were still known as Bf 109s and Bf 110s etc. In this book, however, I shall stick with ‘Me’ throughout.

  * The ‘deck’ is the ground.

  6

  Breakthrough

  ‘MORNING REPORTS SHOW further extension of objectives attained,’ scrawled General Franz Halder on the morning of Sunday, 12 May. So far, so good. The German Sixth Army had linked up with the German airborne troops at Eben Emael and the Belgians there had surrendered; the Albert Canal, a key obstacle that ran from Antwerp to Liège, had been crossed. The Dutch army had fallen back on Rotterdam, while the French Seventh Army had been met and forced back from Tilburg towards Antwerp. That meant that most of Holland was now in German hands. Intelligence had also reached the Germans that the British and French were moving up towards the Dyle position, just as Halder had hoped.

  Dutch resistance crumbled even more during the ensuing day, with German troops reaching the shores of the Zuyder Zee. The French Seventh Army, its forward units more than a hundred miles from the French border, was also struggling against one of the few German panzer divisions in the Army Group B and also the attentions of the Luftwaffe. The Belgians were stumbling too, and were now falling back to desperately try to link up with their French and British allies along the Dyle position. Meanwhile, although the BEF was now dug in along the Dyle, Général Blanchard’s French First Army was struggling against the mounting tide of refugees and incessant Luftwaffe attacks to reach its allotted positions. By dusk, only two-thirds of Blanchard’s men had reached the Dyle.

  Nonetheless, as Halder was
well aware, it was in the south, in Army Group A’s sector, that the critical battle would be played out.

  Hauptmann Hans von Luck and his company in the 7th Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment had reached the River Meuse at Houx, a few miles to the north of Dinant that evening, 12 May, incredibly, ahead of schedule. The advance had been through difficult terrain but they had not met any great resistance. Now, from the high ground that rose away from the east bank of the great river, they could see the valley below. The Meuse was more than a hundred metres wide. On the far side, wooded, craggy slopes rose sharply. There were also broken bridges, which they had hoped to take intact. Hans and his men felt their way slowly into the valley, but soon came under well-directed small-arms and heavy-artillery fire.

  In fact, it was the Werner Advance Detachment, troops of the 5th Panzer Division, that had first reached the Meuse, although, because 7th Panzer was so far ahead of the rest of 5th Panzer, these men had been put under Rommel’s command. Luftwaffe aerial support had reported that the bridge at Yvoir, some seven miles north of Dinant, was still intact, so the Werner Detachment had hurried on towards it. At 5.25 p.m., two German scout cars sped on to the bridge and were halfway across when the frantic Belgian engineers managed to blow it, sending the structure and the Germans on it into the water below.

  Although that crossing attempt had been scuppered, it was later discovered that less than a mile to the south at Houx, near to Hans von Luck and his men, there was a weir and a lock system, strung either side of an island in the middle of the Meuse. Incredibly, the footbridge over the weir and lock had been neither destroyed nor blocked. At 11 p.m., men of the Werner Detachment crossed the river at Houx and, although they soon attracted enemy fire, were able to establish a small bridgehead. The first German crossing of the Meuse had been achieved.

  Even so, it would require more than one crossing point and one wider than a footbridge to get the entire division across. Rommel himself had reached his division’s reconnaissance regiment just before first light on the 13th. Arriving in his six-wheeled armoured car he immediately asked them what the situation was.

  ‘Held up by artillery fire,’ Hans von Luck’s commander, Major Erdmann, replied.

  Rommel asked to be shown where it was coming from and, standing up in his car, peered through his binoculars. It was a little after 4 a.m. Eventually, his face still calm, he turned to the reconnaissance men and said, ‘Stay put. This is a job for the infantry.’

  From his position on the wooded, rocky heights above the Meuse, Hans watched the sun rising over the valley. Soon elements of the division’s lead infantry, the 7th Rifle Regiment, began scurrying down the hill, accompanied by engineers with rubber dinghies. Further to the south, at Dinant itself, Hans learned that the 6th Panzer Grenadier Regiment was also about to attempt a crossing.

  ‘Hardly had the first boats been lowered into the water,’ noted Hans, ‘than all hell broke loose.’ Opposite them, on the far bank, and occupying some positions prepared by the Belgians, were French troops of the 5th and 18th Infantry Divisions. French snipers and heavy artillery pasted the defenceless men struggling to cross the river in dinghies. Their own tanks and guns were counter-firing but the French were too well screened for them to make much impact. ‘The infantry attack,’ noted Hans, ‘came to a standstill.’

  Rommel hurried to Dinant, but his men were struggling just as badly there. He needed smoke canisters to create a screen, but he did not have any. Instead, he ordered some houses by the river to be set on fire. The breeze soon carried the smoke across the river, giving the struggling infantry the cover they needed to get across. The general then rejoined the crossing at Houx later that afternoon, organizing covering fire once more, which succeeded in knocking out several French positions, and then personally taking command of the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Rifle Regiment in an effort to try to inspire his men. He was one of the first across, and joined those who had crossed at the weir the night before. Immediately, he ordered a ferry to be built by his engineers. Making it back over to the other side, he was subsequently the first to cross on the ferry in his command armoured car.

  By evening, two bridgeheads had been formed – at Houx with the 5th Panzer Division, and at Dinant. All day, Rommel’s men had come under intense artillery and small-arms fire. The noise in that valley had been terrific as the sound echoed off the rock. But smoke, highly trained men, and the inspiring leadership and determination of their commander had enabled the Germans to get over that all-important obstacle. Throughout the night, Rommel’s engineers worked hard to build pontoon bridges, and, with the ferries, to get tanks, half-tracks and guns across.

  A crucial bridgehead had been made; it was now essential to exploit and widen those gains as quickly as possible.

  The French opposite Rommel had been badly caught out that day. Dinant was in Belgium and although the French Ninth Army had begun moving forward to the Meuse position once the offensive had begun, its commander, Général André Georges Corap, had reckoned on the Germans – should they attempt an assault there – taking at least ten to fourteen days before they could attempt to cross the river. That gave the French all the time in the world to reach the Dinant area, dig in and build up strength. The weir at Houx was also, bizarrely, the boundary between two French corps – the II and the XI. Coincidentally, it was the precise place that German troops had crossed back in 1914. Why a corps boundary had to be at such an obvious weak spot is not clear; but it explains why, when the Werner Detachment crossed, they found a surprising lack of enemy troops on the night of the 12th. They had inadvertently hit upon a French troop vacuum.

  As it happened, the French soldiers from II Corps to the north of Houx had already arrived by the 12th but had not dug in with any urgency at all. To the south, only five of the nine infantry battalions of the 5th and 18th Infantry Divisions had reached the Dinant area. In other words, two German panzer divisions had taken considerably less time to travel the seventy kilometres of their attack than the French divisions had for their almost entirely undisturbed fifty-mile approach. Guderian and von Manstein had always recognized that it would be a race to the Meuse, and at Dinant the Germans had emphatically won hands down.

  Further south, near Sedan, Guderian was also managing to keep to his strict three-day timetable and by the evening of the 12th his three divisions had smashed their way through the five major obstacles that barred their way to the Meuse, the last of which was the French border posts some six miles to the east of the river, which had fallen by the afternoon. His men had done all he had asked of them: charging hell for leather, without a break, pumped up on stimulants, and supported by a meticulously planned and unique logistical system. This included pre-prepared fuel dumps and inserting lorries full of laden jerrycans in with the spearhead that could roll past handing out petrol without stopping. Relief crews had also been transported with the lead panzers. These measures had been simple, effective and ingenious.

  They had also had little interference from the air. Guderian’s lead panzers might have benefited from being the spearhead, but Panzer Corps Reinhardt, following behind, had soon found itself in the world’s biggest gridlock as the infantry divisions supposed to be following behind and along strict march routes began deviating from these orders. In places, divisions competing for road space found themselves cutting across one another – or trying to, at any rate – which led to the kind of traffic jam that would make the M25 in rush hour seem like a race track. General Reinhardt’s divisions became increasingly separated and split up; his lead 6th Panzer Division was shredded as no fewer than four infantry divisions following tried to cut across its advance. By the morning of 13 May, there were traffic jams some 170 miles long.

  Yet although the bulk of Army Group A was thus a sitting duck for any Allied aerial attack, no such assault came. On the night of the 10th and again the following morning, Allied reconnaissance aircraft spotted a number of German columns going through the Ardennes. Although reported, this was not take
n seriously. On the night of 11/12 May another recce pilot reported lengthy columns of enemy vehicles, but this too was treated sceptically. On the afternoon of the 12th yet another reconnaissance pilot reported the same, but although his claims were passed on to the intelligence section of the French Ninth Army, it was dismissed as being absurd. And so a golden opportunity to smash Army Group A went begging …

  While the Allies had obligingly played ball in Guderian’s drive to the Meuse, he was now having a few difficulties with his commanding officer, von Kleist, who was insisting on interfering with plans for the crossing. Guderian accepted von Kleist’s order to attack across the Meuse at 4 p.m. on 13 May, but disagreed about where exactly this attack should be made. He was determined to cross at Sedan, a place he knew intimately from when he had been stationed there during its German occupation in the last war. Von Kleist, however, demanded that Guderian’s divisions should cross at Flize, some eight miles west of Sedan. There were good arguments for both sites, but Guderian resolved this spat by simply ignoring his superior – a high-risk strategy should his crossing attempt fail. But there was less he could do about von Kleist’s interference with the Luftwaffe support promised. Guderian had acted entirely autonomously, going straight to Generalleutnant Bruno Loerzer, Göring’s old First World War flying chum and now commander of VIII Fliegerkorps in Luftflotte 3 to ask for air support. His big problem was a lack of artillery, most of which was still struggling its way through the Ardennes. The Luftwaffe could do the artillery job for him, however. Drafting a carefully prepared fire plan, he asked Loerzer to hit these targets with a kind of rolling aerial barrage of wave after wave of Stukas and bombers. The aim was to stun the French by near-constant attacks.