The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  No-one seemed to have much idea what was involved. Ulrich dutifully carried out some research and discovered that he was supposed to have some seventy-five men under him, equipped and trained to operate two 1.5 kilowatt radio stations and two field telephone units, mounted on trucks with their own switchboard, cables and telephones. These were intended to be completely manoeuvrable and to accompany the Gruppe wherever it went and to provide the pilots with both ground-to-ground and ground-to-air communication. The idea was that the field telephone units would plug into the national circuit.

  This was the supposed equipment and the theoretical use for the Nachrichtenzug – the Communications Unit. What was clear, however, was that no-one in JG 433 had given communications much thought. There were seventeen men rather than seventy-five, and although Ulrich battled hard to improve things, there was little enthusiasm amongst the other pilots, most of whom thought that any form of radio in an aeroplane was a waste of time and merely added extra weight. Leading the dissent was Dolfo Galland, who continually argued that they had managed fine in Spain using sign signals, and who was clearly becoming irritated by Ulrich’s youthful over-zealousness.

  But Ulrich had persisted, winning the support of the Gruppe commander, Hauptmann Graf Dietrich von Pfeil, and even an audience with General Martini, the head of Luftwaffe Signals. Gaining more equipment and his full complement of men, and having attended signals courses himself, Ulrich pressed ahead with his efforts to improve the Gruppe’s communications. His big moment came that summer when the Gruppe – now re-designated I/JG 52 – was involved in a large training exercise commanded by General Hugo Sperrle. The fighters were to ‘protect’ Stuttgart from an ‘attack’ by bombers. Each fighter was now equipped with a radio, and Ulrich and his communications unit were, with their radio units set up by the control tower, to direct the Gruppe to attack the bombers. Helping him were the Luftnachrichten, the German Observer Corps, of which there were some 1,200 people. It was a big responsibility for a young twenty-year-old pilot but his theories and persistence seemed to have paid off. The observers provided him with early warning of the arrival of the bombers, and he and his comms unit were able to then direct the fighters on to them.

  Ulrich was feeling very pleased with himself when he attended the mass debrief afterwards, but this quickly turned to disappointment. No-one mentioned the communications and ground controlling at all. Eventually, he plucked up the courage to ask General Sperrle what he had thought, but Dolfo Galland cut in. ‘Good, Steinhilper,’ he said, ‘you have reminded me. You were talking too much. You were just bothering us all of the time. As I’ve always told you, it would be best to throw out all of these damned radios! We don’t need them.’

  Humiliated and deflated, Ulrich realized that for the time being he had taken his communications crusade as far as it could go. Dolfo Galland had moved on soon after, but there was still little enthusiasm to improve matters. And this attitude was not unique to JG 52, but across the board. A junior officer was not going to change the outlook of the entire fighter force let alone the Luftwaffe as a whole. By the end of the French campaign, ground-to-air control remained virtually nonexistent. Ulrich had heard about ‘Freya’ and ‘Würzburg’, but his tentative investigations got him nowhere. Debate had also begun over how many Staffeln should operate on the same frequency. Usual practice was for an entire Gruppe to use one frequency, but even this number could cause confusion, because no matter how often it was drummed into pilots to keep radio discipline, as soon as they found themselves in an action, the airwaves were swamped and all that could be heard was a high-pitched whistling.

  Tentative debate there might have been, but there were certainly no dramatic changes about to take place. If and when the Luftwaffe launched its assault on Britain, it would be doing so with only very limited radio co-ordination. ‘Our communications,’ noted Ulrich, ‘would continue to be fatally flawed.’

  Instead, the Luftwaffe had concentrated on looking to use radar and radio technology to develop in-flight aids for navigation and bomb-aiming. In many ways, this was logical. After all, since the Luftwaffe had so far always been on the offensive there was less need for an early-warning system such as Dowding had established. They had thus, since the mid-thirties, been developing a series of three electronic bombing and navigational aids, and two of these were available for use in Göring’s bombers.

  Since joining Air Intelligence, Dr ‘RV’ Jones’s brief had been to try and obtain early warning of any new weapons or methods used by the enemy. Although he had been spending time researching German self-sealing fuel tanks and magnetic mines, it was towards aids to navigation that RV had been devoting much thought. In early March, he got an interesting lead. Captured German aircrew were all interrogated, but also placed together in bugged cells. Air Intelligence’s chief interrogator, Squadron Leader Denys Felkin, passed on to RV details of a conversation in which one prisoner was telling another about a device called X-Gerät, or ‘X-Apparatus’. ‘The beginning of a thriller,’ noted RV, ‘could hardly have had a more intriguing title.’ This was potentially more exciting than the very best thriller, however. From what the prisoner was saying it certainly seemed that X-Gerät was a bombing apparatus using pulse radio technology, and the more RV thought about it, the more it seemed likely that it was a system of intersecting radio beams from German transmitters, and that where the intersection occurred was the target – hence the ‘X’.

  For the time being, however, RV got no further, but then, later in March, he was passed a scrap of paper, found on a downed Heinkel 111, on which was written: ‘Radio Beacons working on Beacon Plan A. Additionally from 0600 hours Beacon Dühnen. Light Beacon after dark. Radio Beacon Knickebein from 0600 hours on 315 degrees.’ It was the phrase ‘Knickebein on 315 degrees’ that really interested RV. Further interrogation by Felkin revealed that Knickebein was indeed a bomb-aiming aid a bit like X-Gerät, but, other than that, for the time being RV could make no further headway at all.

  It was not until 12 June that RV got another lead. Group Captain Lyster Blandy, head of Air Intelligence’s Y Service, passed on a message. KNICKEBEIN KLEVE, IST AUF PUNKT 53 GRAD 24 MINUTEN NORD UND EIN GRAD WEST EINGERICHTET.’ There was the word Knickebein again – German for crooked leg. Kleve, RV thought, must be the German town, as in Anne of Cleves. This being so, the message would read: ‘Cleves Knickebein is at position 53 degrees 24 minutes north, and 1 degree west.’ The position referred to was in England, roughly on the A1 north of Retford. This was a decoded message, picked up by the cryptologists at Bletchley Park, then passed on to Blandy and then to RV.

  That day, RV saw his old mentor, Professor Lindemann, and told him about Knickebein and that he was convinced it was an intersecting beam system for bombing England. Lindemann argued that this was not possible because it would necessarily be using short waves, which could not bend round the curvature of the earth. RV argued, however, that this was not necessarily so; he had recently seen a report by a leading scientist at the Marconi Company, T. L. Eckersley, who had proved that theoretically radio waves would bend around the earth to a surprising extent. The next day, RV gave Lindemann a copy of Eckersley’s report. Now convinced RV was right, Lindemann wrote to Churchill informing him that the Germans had probably developed a targeting device. The Prime Minister passed this on to Sinclair, asking him to find out more.

  The following day, 14 June, Squadron Leader Felkin told RV that another prisoner had confessed that Knickebein was indeed a bomb-dropping device involving two intersecting radio beams. Immediately, RV began thinking about the possibility of putting in a false crossbeam that would make the Germans drop their bombs before they reached their target. The prisoner revealed more, sketching a transmitting tower at the Luftwaffe’s development centre at Rechlin. As RV instantly realized, it looked just like other towers in Germany that had been photographed by aerial reconnaissance.

  By now, Sinclair had asked Air Marshal Sir Philip Joubert to investigate further. RV was cal
led to a meeting with Joubert, Lindemann and even Dowding. All were agreed that Knickebein needed to be given all priority. So too did Churchill, when he was informed of their conclusions. RV was convinced that Knickebein had to be using Lorenz-type beams, a German invention that they had already discovered. Two beams were transmitted, pointing in slightly different directions but also just overlapping. One of the beams would be represented by a ‘dot’ signal, the other by a ‘dash’, which would be heard through the headset of the pilot or navigator on board an aircraft. The two beams would be set so that when the aircraft was flying on the correct course, the two sounds would merge into one continuous note. If the pilot deviated he would hear more dashes or dots depending on whether he veered left or right.

  If RV was right, then Knickebein would be a further note that would be heard the moment the two beams actually intersected. This would thus be set at a specific target point. The Y Service was immediately put on the alert for any more information; interrogations were also targeted at finding out more. At Boscombe Down, near Salisbury, the Blind Approach Development Unit, which had been experimenting with Lorenz-type beams, was also called upon to help by sending up aircraft using captured Lorenz receivers and trying to pick up beams. It found nothing. RV was sure that one of the beams was coming from Cleves, but he needed to know the location of the second one. This was the key. By good fortune, a breakthrough came almost immediately from another piece of paper salvaged from a shot-down bomber. This fixed the second beam in Schleswig-Holstein. More pieces of the jigsaw were quickly found; Felkin was doing his work well. First, the team at the BAD unit discovered that the Cleves beam was set at 31.5 megahertz, then that Schleswig-Holstein was set at 30.0 megahertz. They now had hard information on the size of the two beams, so the next step was to confirm their existence by discovering and flying along them for themselves.

  It was only eight days since the decoded Cleves message, but events had moved very quickly. RV now found himself urgently called to a meeting with the Prime Minister at Downing Street. It was already in progress when he arrived. Sinclair, Newall and Dowding were there, as were Lindemann and Beaverbrook. So too was Portal, C-in-C Bomber Command, as well as Watson-Watt and Tizard. RV had never met the Prime Minister or many of the other war leaders gathered there but straight away he correctly sensed there was tension in the air – before his arrival, Lindemann and Tizard had clashed, the latter insisting that ‘bending’ beams was not possible. As RV now listened for a few minutes to the continuing discussion, it became clear to him that none of them had really grasped the essence of what had been discovered. Eventually, when Churchill turned to him to ask him some points of detail, RV replied, ‘Would it help, sir, if I told you the story right from the start?’

  ‘Well, yes it would!’ the Prime Minister answered after a moment’s hesitation.

  RV spoke for some twenty minutes. Every man there was both older than and vastly superior in rank to him, but he keenly felt that the threat of Knickebein was so serious that the facts needed to be properly grasped. Certainly, when he finished no-one was left in any doubt as to the serious danger posed by an enemy system that enabled bombers to accurately target their bombs. Churchill wanted to know what could be done. First, they needed to prove the existence of the beams, RV told him, then he planned to try to create some counter-measures. ‘Churchill,’ noted RV, ‘added all his weight to these suggestions.’

  There were still doubters, however, as he discovered at his meeting later that day with Air Commodore Nutting, the Director of Signals. RV was having doubts himself; he had begun to wonder whether perhaps he had fallen for a massive German hoax and had just wasted an hour of the Prime Minister’s time when Britain was about to be invaded. However, in his heart of hearts, he felt sure his conclusions had been right. A hunch now made him suggest that the next investigative flight should assume the director beam was on Derby, the location of the Rolls-Royce works where Merlin engines were built.

  ‘And what do we do if we find the beams?’ Air Commodore Nutting asked.

  ‘Go out and get tight!’ RV whispered to the man sitting next to him.

  RV’s hunch proved right. On the next flight, on the night of 21/22 June, the beams were found, and they intercepted over Derby on a 400-to 500-yard-wide point. It was a stunning breakthrough with potentially far-reaching consequences for Britain’s ability to withstand a future German bombing offensive. When RV returned to Nutting’s office with the results of the flight, there was widespread jubilation; the Director of Signals even began skipping round the room with joy. ‘All doubts were now removed,’ noted RV, ‘and plans for counter-measures could go urgently ahead.’ That was the key – and in developing those counter-measures, there was not a moment to lose.

  31

  First Combat

  IT HAD BEEN A miserable day. The pilots of 609 Squadron had woken at their new base of Middle Wallop, near Salisbury, at 4.30 a.m., and had then flown down to a forward airfield at Warmwell, south of Dorchester. The weather had been terrible and when, at around 9 a.m., a report had come through that enemy aircraft were attacking shipping off Portland, David Crook and Peter Drummond-Hay had set off to investigate in low cloud. In fact, it had been so low it was actually covering the top of the hills. Spotting a gap where a road ran through a narrow valley towards the sea, they roared through it, at tree-top height, causing two cyclists below to throw themselves into a ditch in alarm. They found nothing out at sea, so, disappointed, had returned to Warmwell.

  The rest of the morning and afternoon had been spent sitting inside their dispersal tent listening to rain pattering down on the canvas, smoking, reading and feeling increasingly bored and frustrated. David and Peter had made plans for their twenty-four-hour leave to London the following day, but otherwise there had been little chat between the men.

  Much had happened to the squadron during the past few days. The attacks on Portland and convoy OA178 on 4 July had prompted swift action. Radar had clearly not been able to pick up German aircraft quickly enough for the fighter squadrons to intercept – at least not that far west at any rate – so 609 had been posted from Northolt to the sector station of Middle Wallop. From there it would move daily to Warmwell, near the Dorset coast.

  Needless to say, Dowding deplored the use of his precious fighters to protect Channel convoys and requested that all merchant shipping, even coastal freight, be routed via Scotland and the west coast. This suggestion was turned down by the Admiralty with Churchill’s support, not only because he argued that there was the urgent need for coal traffic to London and the south, but also, bizarrely, because they feared a loss of face should they abandon the east coast. Furthermore, they argued that the east-coast convoys acted as bait for the Luftwaffe north of London out of enemy fighter range. This was a somewhat spurious argument because Luftwaffe operations over the Channel were designed more as bait for Fighter Command than the other way round. By following this policy, they were merely playing into German hands. Unsurprisingly, Dowding vociferously disagreed with it, arguing that attrition over sea would not save Britain and pointing out that if too many squadrons were based on the coast, they would not be able to sufficiently protect inland targets such as airfields and factories. Furthermore, little provision had been made for air-sea rescue. Dowding had not expected his pilots to be operating much over the sea and this was one area that had been badly neglected.

  His arguments fell on deaf ears, however. By order of the Air Ministry, Fighter Command was to meet any Luftwaffe attacks on Allied shipping. As a result a number of squadrons were moved to coastal airfields, both in the Middle Wallop sector and in the south-east in 11 Group. 609 Squadron was a part of this redeployment, along with two Hurricane squadrons, 238 and 501.

  Yet to begin with it was only 609 Squadron that was ordered to use Warmwell as a forward base. The airfield had been a Bombing and Gunnery School and was not really kitted out to support fighter squadrons. ‘Warmwell possessed,’ noted John Dundas laconically, ‘th
ough in rather irregular proportions, the two chief characteristics of a forward station – action and discomfort.’ What facilities there were lay the far side of the airfield away from where the squadron was operating. The focal point during times of readiness was the dispersal, usually a hut or building of some kind, in which there would be a telephone and usually a few chairs and beds. At Warmwell, this was a tent. Nor were there any toilets at their dispersal, but since a pilot would risk missing a scramble if trekking all the way to the main airfield buildings, most went in the hedge, between the edge of the airfield and the road. The station commander also insisted they eat their meals in the main building. The new CO, Squadron Leader George Darley, pointed out that they could neither leave dispersal nor stick to regular mealtimes, but this did not wash at all. Eventually, Darley complained to Air Vice-Marshal Quintin Brand, Air Officer Commanding 10 Group, who arranged for some mobile latrines and an assortment of primus stoves and crockery to be used at dispersal.

  Discomfort aside, logistically, it was also impossible for 609’s groundcrew to maintain the squadron at both Middle Wallop and Warmwell. The only solution was to send half the squadron, one flight at a time. Splitting the squadron in two, however, was far from ideal.

  The pilots hardly needed any more disruption. As it was, the atmosphere in 609 Squadron was not up to much anyway. As David Crook had noticed on his return, the squadron had changed a great deal over the past few weeks. Darley’s arrival had shaken things up. A 27-year-old regular who had been in the RAF since 1932, he had served in the Middle East and in France and had also had a stint as an instructor to two other Auxiliary squadrons. Darley had been unimpressed by the low morale he had found, and had told the pilots in no uncertain terms that they were a miserable and ignorant bunch who needed to pull their fingers out and start learning the lessons from Dunkirk very quickly indeed. The old prewar auxiliaries – the weekend fliers – had been shocked.