The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  Key to this was the expansion of the aircraft industry. The main players were Junkers, Heinkel, Focke-Wulf, Arado, Dornier and the Bavarian Aircraft Company (later Messerschmitt). Milch sent the then Colonel Albert Kesselring to inspect the Heinkel works on the Baltic Coast. On the basis of Kesselring’s visit, Heinkel were asked to open a much larger new factory at Rostock. Professor Willi Messerschmitt’s Bavarian Aircraft Company was also given large orders to aid expansion. Only Professor Junkers was digging in his heels. A confirmed pacifist, he repeatedly resisted attempts by Milch and Göring to hand over the patents of his designs and control of his aircraft factories. But eventually, after threats of being prosecuted for treason, the ageing inventor and designer agreed, in October 1933, to hand over 51 per cent of his companies to the Reich. A major obstacle to progress had been overcome.

  Plans for the establishment of a dozen specialized air-training schools for fighter and bomber pilots, bomb aimers, observers and air gunners were also drawn up and were to be completed within a year. Factories making locomotives and shipping were converted to the production of aircraft. Junkers went from making eighteen Ju 52s a year with its 2,200-strong staff to being given an order for nearly a thousand. Milch had begun to envisage a larger air force than had ever been originally suggested – not a thousand aircraft strong but twenty times that size.

  Both Göring and Milch had been fortunate to have one of the most talented of the army’s staff officers as the new Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe.* General Walther Wever had been on both von Hindenburg’s and von Ludendorff’s staffs during the First World War and joined the Luftwaffe with a superb reputation that he soon proved was entirely justified. A clear and realistic planner and thinker and someone who inspired both affection and respect, he was able to draw the best from those around him. Wever had believed, correctly, that the greatest threat to Germany came from the Soviet Union, so he planned to build up, first and foremost, a strategic bomber force that would operate separately from the army, and a solid air defence system. He also recognized, as did Milch, the importance of creating a solid General Staff in which its number were all imbued with a common purpose and who were very much singing from the same hymn sheet.

  It was also General Wever and his staff who drew up the specifications for some of the key aircraft that were now flying over the Western Front: the Messerschmitt 109 and twin-engine 110; the Ju 87 ‘Stuka’ dive-bomber; and the Ju 88. He had also, crucially, issued a specification for a long-range, heavy four-engine bomber. The Heinkel 111 medium bomber was also brought into production with a new large factory opened at Oranienburg just outside Berlin specifically for that task.

  In May 1936, Wever had produced the first Luftwaffe training manual on air strategy, in which he made clear the importance of the strategic bomber force and the ability of a strong Luftwaffe to seize the initiative in any war. ‘In a war of the future,’ he said in an address to the Air War Academy in 1935, ‘the destruction of the armed forces will be of primary importance. This can mean the destruction of the enemy air force, army, and navy, and of the source of supply of the enemy’s forces, the armament industry … Only the nation with strong bomber forces at its disposal can expect decisive action by its air force.’

  In this strategic thinking, Milch was in complete accord with Wever. Tragedy struck, however, when Wever, a new and inexperienced pilot, crashed his aircraft and was killed in June 1936. It was a simple mistake that did for him: failing to release the lock on the ailerons of his Heinkel 70, he had crashed almost as soon as he had taken off. It was an unfamiliar plane to him, and he had been in a rush to get back to Berlin for a funeral. Yet that fatal mistake had ensured that in a trice the Luftwaffe had lost its direction and, critically, its unity.

  No-one could fill Wever’s void; no individual shared his combination of military experience, strategic vision and likeability. It was Kesselring who was asked to take Wever’s place, but although he had served in the army during the last war, he was seen as primarily a civilian managing director and was unable to earn the kind of respect Wever had enjoyed. Nor did Kesselring get on well with Milch. The former tried to increase the power and authority of the General Staff while the latter did his best to undermine Kesselring. Within a year, Kesselring had been replaced by General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff, who was only ever really seen as a stop-gap. In 1939, when still not quite forty, Oberst Hans Jeschonnek became the fourth Luftwaffe Chief of Staff in three years.

  Only in the newly formed Luftwaffe, where speed of growth was everything and there was no tradition to complicate matters, could a man be a major-general at thirty-nine. He had been groomed for the job by Wever, although the latter had clearly never expected him to succeed quite so soon. A former fighter pilot during the last war, Jeschonnek was recognized as having a brilliant mind; yet his apprenticeship under Wever had been far from complete and he had certainly failed to learn his old boss’s deep empathy for his colleagues.

  Moreover, by 1939, he had fallen out with Milch. Originally Milch’s principal staff officer, he had developed a close working relationship with his boss, but, with the death of Wever, Jeschonnek’s ambition as well as clashes over policy had ensured that friendship had sunk to mutual contempt. When, in 1938, Jeschonnek had suggested to Milch that he replace Stumpff as Chief of Staff, Milch had dismissed the notion out of hand. Göring then went over Milch’s head and promoted the young Chief of Staff. Milch understandably saw this as a direct blow to his authority – which it was; Göring did not like anyone becoming too powerful and threatening his own position.

  A further undermining of his authority came when Ernst Udet became head of the Office of Air Armament, a new office created when Göring restructured the Luftwaffe in early 1939. Udet had already been made head of the Technical Department, and he was woefully unsuited for both jobs. A bon viveur, talented cartoonist, former fighter pilot, colleague of Göring’s and stunt pilot, Udet was a brilliant aviator but completely, utterly out of his depth in the dizzy, Machiavellian world of Nazi politics, and had almost no understanding of complex matters such as procurement, as he had freely admitted. ‘I’m a flier and nothing else,’ he had told Göring. ‘I don’t know anything about design and construction.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Göring had replied. ‘But when I announce that you’re head of the Technical Board everyone will be happy and that’s all I want.’ Udet was a close chum of the Commander-in-Chief’s, and that was qualification enough for Göring.

  To make matters worse for Milch, Udet, in his new post, was directly responsible to Göring. Udet now had under his control five research establishments, most notably at Rechlin and Peenemünde, and although Milch was running almost every other aspect of the Luftwaffe, he now had no direct input on procurement and development whatsoever. Udet was left largely to his own devices since Göring had little time for offering any kind of supervision. When the two did meet on rare occasions, they hardly ever talked shop, instead spending their conferences reminiscing about the old days.

  This breakaway of development and procurement was done purely to restrict Milch’s power and it was very much to the Luftwaffe’s loss. There had been big quarrels between Milch and Göring, and several times Milch, exasperated and at the end of his tether, asked to be relieved of his post, but this was always refused. Milch threatened to go sick; Göring countered that he would then be examined and, if fit, would be punished. ‘Then I can commit suicide,’ Milch threatened. ‘That’s the only thing left to you,’ Göring replied.

  Milch and Udet had been friends, however, and there is no doubt that in his new position Udet could have benefited greatly from Milch’s knowledge and experience. Yet Udet was an insecure character, and feared that Milch would undermine him rather than the other way around, which was the reality. The two men became increasingly estranged.

  By May 1940, the original four-engine bomber programme had long been consigned to dust. Jeschonnek was an ardent advocate of short, sharp campaigns in which the air for
ce played a tactical role, that is, in direct support of the ground forces, rather than a strategic, independent mass-bombing role. He was little interested in air transportation and greatly favoured the dive-bombers, which he believed were the only types of aircraft capable of achieving precision bombing. The Junkers 87 Stuka had won the main dive-bomber contract, but from 1938 the priority for production and development was the Junkers 88, the Heinkel 177 and the Messerschmitt 210, an improved version of the 110. The Heinkel was a heavy, long-range bomber and had the unique design of four engines but only two propellers. The Ju 88 was a twin-engine machine, but had been conceived as a long-range, high-speed bomber. Both these aircraft suggested more of a strategic bombing role for the Luftwaffe, which was at odds with Jeschonnek’s views of how air power should best be used.

  Perhaps unsurprisingly then, both Jeschonnek and Udet were behind changes to the specifications for the Ju 88, which they agreed needed diving capability. This, however, shattered its original design aims. In fact, some 25,000 changes were made to the original design. The result was endless delays and an aircraft that, by 1940, had a flying weight not of six tonnes, as had been originally planned, but well over double that. The heavier it became, the slower it became; at 269 mph, it was only fractionally faster than the Heinkel and Dornier mainstays. High-speed it was not; nor were there many of them. Milch described it as a ‘flying barn door’.

  Thus it wasn’t only the British who were struggling to get their best aircraft produced in enough numbers. The He 177 programme also fell behind because of the delays to the Ju 88, and the Me 210 was eventually scrapped altogether. Instead, the bulk of the bomber force was made up with Heinkel 111s and Dornier 17s, both of which were state of the art in the mid-1930s, but by 1940 were already beginning to seem a little under-armed and under-protected, as well as not manoeuvrable enough, and they were capable of carrying only comparatively small bomb loads.

  The Me 109 had been given the nod for single-engine fighter production, even though Heinkel had produced a model, the He 112, which was 50 mph faster. When Heinkel protested, Udet’s office forbade him to pursue the matter. The second-string fighter was to be the cumbersome twin-engine Me 110. It just so happened that not only was Professor Messerschmitt Hitler’s favourite designer, but he was also a personal friend of Udet’s. Development of the world’s first jet-propelled aircraft, the He 178, whose maiden flight was in June 1939, was blocked by Udet; he had already promised jet development to Messerschmitt.

  There were worrying production problems as well – a task that also fell within Udet’s remit. Shortage of aluminium and steel was part of the problem; so too was competition for those raw materials from other areas of the armed forces. Hitler’s refusal to mobilize the economy on an all-out war footing was another contributory factor. Udet’s inadequate understanding of the industry, his lack of initiative and his poor leadership further frustrated production efforts. As a result, production of the major front-line aircraft throughout the winter of 1939–40 was pitifully small: in February 1940, for example, a paltry sixty-two Me 110s, seventy-six 109s, thirty Dornier 17s, fifty-eight He 111s, sixty-six Stukas and fifty Junkers 88s.

  In May 1940, the Luftwaffe was headed by an over-mighty commander whose eye was only partly on the task in hand, and who encouraged dissension and rivalry between his immediate subordinates. Milch, the one man capable of infusing the Luftwaffe with the drive and unity it needed, was constantly battling to maintain his authority and to deflect the hostile stance of Jeschonnek, and increasingly Udet as well. Jeschonnek, in turn, found it hard to work with either Milch or Udet. Udet was simply out of his depth.

  A house can have cracks so long as there is no storm. In May 1940, it seemed as though the Luftwaffe had the world at its feet, its power and strength undoubted. So long as France and Britain could be knocked out of the war swiftly, then the cracks would remain just that. Only if the battle continued would those cracks begin to widen.

  But ten days into the battle, confidence amongst the Luftwaffe’s command was sky-high. In that, its leaders, for once, were as one.

  *Wever was appointed Chief of the Air Command Office when he joined the Luftwaffe in 1933, which made him effectively Chief of Staff. He was not, however, officially given that title at the time.

  12

  What to Do for the Best

  CERTAINLY THE RESIDENTS of Rotterdam had been left in no doubt about the power of the Luftwaffe. On the afternoon of 14 May, almost a hundred He 111s from KG 54 had thundered over the city in an effort to speed up the Dutch collapse. When they had gone again, Rotterdam was a smoking mass of rubble, its historic heart smashed from the face of the earth and unknown numbers of Dutch citizens left dead beneath the dust and debris. Truly, it seemed as though Armageddon had arrived. Early the following morning the Dutch duly surrendered.

  The Luftwaffe had destroyed the Spanish Basque town of Guernica, much of Warsaw and now Rotterdam. In fact, casualties were not quite as high as had been first feared, but some 800 lost their lives and a further 78,000 were left homeless. Nonetheless, for the doomsayers, Rotterdam’s destruction proved all their worst fears about the power of the modern bomber, fears that had begun with the prediction by an Italian colonel, Giulio Douhet, that no effective defence could stop the bomber and had been perpetuated by men in Britain like Air Marshal ‘Boom’ Trenchard and Stanley Baldwin. But for those at the Air Ministry and at Bomber Command it was the final justification they needed to begin a strategic bombing offensive inside Germany.

  Although the ‘medium’ bombers of Bomber Command – the Blenheims and Battles – had been brought into action over the battlefield, there were still sixteen squadrons of ‘heavies’, consisting of Wellingtons, Hampdens and Whitleys – twin-engine aircraft comparable to the trio of German bombers, although the Whitley could carry more bombs than any of the German planes. They were 20–30 mph slower than the German bombers, however, and experience had shown that operations in daylight in the face of large numbers of enemy fighters would be suicidal. Under the cover of darkness, it was a different matter, and the Air Ministry held great faith in their ability to wreak havoc during night-time raids. Germany’s lack of raw materials was well-known, even exaggerated by the British. Sixty per cent of her industrial output stemmed from the dense Ruhr Valley just the other side of the River Rhine, and within easy reach of the heavies. By hitting these targets as well as oil installations, the RAF believed it could strike at the very roots of the German war machine.

  Throughout the winter and spring, the Air Staff had argued vociferously that they should begin a heavy-bomber campaign against the Ruhr the moment the Germans launched an offensive. The French, however, were having none of it. Openly, they refused to believe such attacks would have any substantial impact on the advancing Nazi hordes and insisted instead that the heavies would be better employed over or near the battlefield. Privately, as the British well knew, and in keeping with their intensely defensive mindset, they feared provoking a retaliation on their own cities.

  The French had finally given way at the end of April, agreeing to British bombing of the Ruhr should Holland or Belgium be attacked, but since then it was General William ‘Tiny’ Ironside, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and Churchill and his War Cabinet, who had got cold feet. Air warfare was still new in 1940 and modern planes remained largely untested. When push came to shove, there was a horrible suspicion that heavy bombers were like some kind of super-weapon, which once unleashed would provoke large-scale tit-for-tat destruction and death. Leaders were understandably wary of instigating such carnage.

  Yet in the cases of Guernica, Warsaw and Rotterdam, the Luftwaffe had always attacked in daylight, with good visibility, and with almost no enemy air opposition. Flying in darkness, depending on old navigational tricks such as dead reckoning, and over areas swarming with flak batteries, had no guarantees of producing Guernica-esque levels of destruction at all. Such considerations did not trouble the confidence of bombing’s
advocates within the RAF, however. And with the German bombing of Rotterdam the War Cabinet gave Bomber Command the green light to attack the Ruhr. This, it was recognized, might well provoke the Germans into retaliating over London and elsewhere in Britain; yet such a diversion could not come soon enough to help the French and Belgians. Through air power, if not on the ground, Britain could still play a decisive role.

  That night, 15/16 May, 111 RAF heavies bombed sixteen different targets in the Ruhr. It was the first hundred-bomber raid of the war. Most of those who flew returned confident they had hit their mark. Reports from within Germany were less overwhelmed by Bomber Command’s effort, however. A report from Cologne claimed that bombs directed at the IG Farben Werke at Dormagen hit only a large farm and killed a dairyman. Another report stated that he had switched on an outside light by mistake while on the way to the lavatory and that this provided a mistaken marker for a stick of British bombs. A further five were reported wounded in Cologne. It had hardly set the Ruhr alight.

  False confidence was probably no bad thing for the men of Bomber Command, however. At 10 Squadron in Dishforth near Ripon in North Yorkshire, there was certainly a sense of relief – tempered with apprehension – that they were at last taking the fight to the enemy. Many of the crews had flown over the Reich before, but they had only dropped leaflets urging the Germans to lay down their arms. There had been cries of derision from the crews at the time, but as Leading Aircraftsman Larry Donnelly now recognized all too clearly, the lack of aggressive bombing operations had been a blessing in disguise, for it had given them much-needed experience.

  More recently, they had been attacking airfields and other targets in Norway, a difficult task that had meant flying over long stretches of the North Sea, often through fiendish weather. Inadequate heating, oxygen facilities and clothing had created further unpleasant hardships for the crews. But now it was May and a hop over the Channel and then over the Low Countries to the Ruhr was seen as a more straightforward proposition. Furthermore, 10 Squadron had recently been re-equipped with new Merlin-powered Whitley Mk Vs, a considerable improvement on the earlier models. The wings also now had de-icing equipment, while the draughty one-gun manually operated rear turret had been replaced by a hydraulically operated, tightly sealed four-gun turret. Since Larry Donnelly was, as second wireless operator in the five-man crew, the person to fill that seat, he was delighted with the upgrade. ‘I now felt,’ he noted, ‘I had a much better chance of giving a good account of myself should the occasion arise in future operations.’