The Kriegsmarine staff, on the other hand, with their inferiority complex with regard to the British navy, were less convinced this could be achieved. After all, the Luftwaffe’s intensified air war was to be directed at the Royal Air Force, at the expense of attacks on the British naval and merchant fleets, which disturbed Fricke and his staff greatly, and led them to plan an operation in which the invasion fleet would be coming under heavy attack. They did not see the landings as quite the coup de grâce that Hitler did.
At a conference between navy and army staffs on 7 August, irreconcilable differences emerged. The Kriegsmarine was still insisting on a very narrow front from Folkestone to Beachy Head, while OKH was equally insistent that at sixty miles that was too narrow and most likely across the strongest defences. The argument was not solved that day. ‘The issue,’ noted Halder with evident frustration, ‘must therefore be settled [at a] higher level.’
But there was another considerable concern for Konteradmiral Fricke and his team, and that was mines. A channel through enemy mines had to be cleared, whilst at the same time protective minefields big enough to protect German vessels from the British navy needed to be laid either side of this channel. The problem was that as soon as mines were swept, new ones were laid, and as soon as they were laid, the British swept them. Not completely, of course, but the Kriegsmarine would never be able to guarantee a passage free of mines or sufficient protection on its flanks. ‘This fact,’ wrote Fricke, ‘must receive the greatest attention.’
Slipping quietly out of Immingham on the Humber at dusk on 1 August were seven British minelayers, heading for the East Coast Mine Barrier. Amongst them was HMS Icarus, armed with twenty-six Mk XVII and XX antenna mines. A deep and extensive minefield had already been laid around most of Britain, although through the Dover Straits and along the east coast the mines were particularly extensive. The idea was that they were far enough out to give any east-coast convoy a protective shield. They were obviously of no use at all against aircraft, and of limited use against highly manoeuvrable S-boats, but against other enemy shipping – not least barges – they posed a serious threat.
Icarus had been repaired and had been back out at sea by the third week in June, and since then had been carrying out a combination of minelaying duties and invasion patrols. One night in early July it had been suddenly ordered to hurry to Dover with all urgency. ‘We went hell for leather that night,’ says Andrew Begg, who was still one of the ship’s engine room artificers, ‘and it was a black night.’ The rumour going round the ship was that the invasion had started, but when she reached Dover at dawn, there was nothing going on at all, so she headed back to Immingham. ‘We never found out what that panic was about,’ says Andrew, ‘even our skipper never told us.’
Having sailed through gaps in the minefield, the convoy now headed down the eastern side of the barrier until it was off the east coast of Norfolk. At around 10 a.m. on the 2nd, the minelaying operation began, each vessel heading in a steady straight line and dropping mines off the back of the ship. Each mine plunged to the bottom of the sea, where its weight, or ‘sinker’, moored it to the seabed and then the mine floated to the top, where in this case it was set to sit at a depth of around twelve feet. Others were set at different heights, and many floated, half submerged, like a buoy. If a vessel hit one of its contact horns, the charge exploded.
The minelaying did not take long. Between them, the minelayers laid some 300 mines along a fifteen-mile stretch, and after a few hours they headed back to Immingham. It was the comparative speed with which mines could be laid that bothered Fricke. He feared that the British would soon catch wind of any major mine-clearing operation, and then they would hastily lay some more.
The Germans had, meanwhile, been laying their own mines, although because of the lack of suitable ships, they were not as proficient at the task as the British. The S-boat flotillas had been roped into these duties, although each boat could only carry between six and eight at a time. The Luftwaffe had also been carrying out minelaying operations. This had largely been left to 9th Fliegerdivision, of which KG 4 was a part. Hajo Herrmann was involved in a number of such missions during the first ten days of August – not creating a protective barrier in the Channel, but trying to block up the mouths of harbours and ports by dropping mines from their bomb bays. Most were 1,000 kg magnetic or acoustic mines. He did not enjoy these missions at all. ‘Minelaying and the positioning of the mines,’ he says, ‘was a very dangerous thing.’ At Plymouth, for example, where he laid mines several times, there was only a narrow passage into the port, and underneath was one of the heavier concentrations of anti-aircraft fire. ‘We had to go down to only 300 or 200 metres,’ he says, ‘and we had to pass slowly through this passage at just 180 mph or so. It was a terrible thing to pass through there.’
The Royal Navy did have specifically designed minesweepers, but most were converted trawlers from the Royal Navy Patrol Service, better known as Harry Tate’s Navy. This had been formed on the eve of war at Lowestoft on the Suffolk coast with a call to all Royal Navy Reserve to hurriedly report to the holiday camp, Sparrow’s Nest. Six trawlers and their crews were the first to arrive and report for duty at this eccentric new headquarters. They then sailed for Dover to be converted into minesweepers. Almost a year on, there were over a thousand drifters, trawlers and whalers in the Patrol Service, skippered by RNR men and crewed by fishermen, tugmen and lightermen. These men were tough, weatherbeaten and hard as nails. They cared little for naval rules and regulations, many of their ships had long ago seen better days, and they took pride in the fact that they were different from the regular navy; they even wore their own specific silver badge. Their preferred name said it all; ‘Harry Tate’ was slang for being incompetent and amateur. They were nothing of the sort, however. Rather, they were amongst the most resolute and courageous of those helping to protect Britain’s seas.
Even so, Joe Steele had been appalled when he had first joined the service. A 23-year-old former dock worker from Liverpool, Joe had joined the RNVR before the war, and had been trained as a signalman. Called up into the navy before war broke out, in October he had been posted first to Sparrow’s Nest and from there to North Shields on the north-east coast to join HMT Dalmatia, just one of the many trawlers that had been converted into minesweepers. It was a rough old vessel. The fish hold had become the Mess Deck, but that did not stop it from being filthy. There were ashes from the stoves all over the place, and half the food was mouldy. Joe was so aghast at what he’d come to he had actually wept. The skipper was RNR and a former fisherman, while the crew were mostly trawlermen from the Outer Hebrides. He came to like them well enough, but had great difficulty understanding what they were saying. Whenever they were in port, the crew would go out and get horrendously drunk. Soon after Joe’s arrival, the mate had to be hauled off for being raving mad with rum. ‘There wasn’t a semblance of naval discipline,’ says Joe.
Despite this, however, Joe had to admit they did a pretty good job minesweeping, often at the head of an east-coast convoy. And things improved. In the spring, Lieutenant Commander John Benson, an RNVR officer, had taken over as captain of Dalmatia, and had immediately instilled some much-needed discipline. In June, Benson had moved ships, taking over command of HMT Darthema, and with it command of the 29th Minesweeping Flotilla of four ships, including Dalmatia, based at Portsmouth. Joe had soon followed him, to his great relief. Although the crew were still mostly fishermen, they were better. The Darthema was a faster boat as well. ‘With Benson,’ he says, ‘you had to be good.’
Their duties were sweeping by day and patrolling by night. They swept for moored contact mines by lowering a long loop of wire, kept at the right depth by a weight called a ‘kite’. All along the wire, at regular intervals, were cutters. The wire would catch around the antenna, or chain, between the mine and its anchor (or sinker), and drag it until it reached one of the cutters, which would then sever the chain and bring the mine to the surface. This would
then be detonated by firing at it with a rifle.
With minesweeping duties over, they would head out on anti-invasion patrols up and down the Channel as far as Eastbourne and back. ‘There was an odd feeling of intenseness,’ says Joe, ‘because we all thought they would invade, and we would be listening out for the sound of motorboats, aircraft, anything at all which we’d all report.’
Now, at the beginning of August, the Patrol Service was also ordered to carry out convoy protection too, and that included Darthema and the 29th Minesweeping Flotilla. The mauling of convoy CW8 had shocked the Admiralty, but it was also apparent that morale amongst the crews of the colliers and coasters was plummeting. Something needed to be done and fast.
Improvisation and an ability to galvanize whatever resources were available were features of Britain’s defence in the summer of 1940. When the next Channel convoy, CE8, left Falmouth on the afternoon of 5 August, the coasters were accompanied by two destroyers, three antisubmarine trawlers, various minesweeping trawlers and motor boats, and seven ships with barrage balloons tethered to them that had become a hastily devised Channel Mobile Barrage Balloon Flotilla. Specially trained teams of anti-aircraft gunners, called Channel Guards, were also added to the coasters’ crews. Darthema joined the convoy from Portsmouth, helping lead the way to the Straits of Dover. Overhead, Spitfires and Hurricanes once again patrolled. It was an extraordinary combined effort, underlining just how precious these coastal cargoes and their crews were.
CE8 made it through without a single loss, although the next westbound convoy was not so fortunate. Passing through the Straits of Dover on the afternoon of the 7th, it was picked up by German ‘Freya’ radar, and that night attacked by the 1st S-boat Flotilla, albeit without Bobby Fimmen, whose boat, S26, was still being repaired. Using new phosphorous cannon shells given to them from the Luftwaffe, they sank three ships. The Luftwaffe arrived next morning with a series of attacks all along the south coast. No fewer than six squadrons were scrambled to intercept them as the convoy struggled onwards, and despite repeated efforts by the dive-bombers not one more ship was lost. The extra effort had paid off.
Unbeknown to those struggling to keep these convoys going, the Channel Battle was over, however. The Luftwaffe had not managed to sever Britain’s coastal lifeline. Despite the debris now being washed up on Britain’s mine-strewn southern shores, only 24,000 tons of the 190,000 tons of merchant shipping lost around British waters between July and 8 August had been as a result of air attack. Sixty-seven ships had been lost in all, most of them to enemy mines. And 103 coasters and merchantmen had been successfully convoyed through. British waters were still an extremely dangerous place to be, but the coasters were now in for a comparative respite – from the screaming dive-bombers at any rate, which was no small mercy for the nerves of crews. Göring was now going to send his air forces inland.
All three of his air fleets, Luftflotte 3 in Normandy, Luftflotte 2 in northern France and the Low Countries, and Luftflotte 5 in Norway, were ready for the great air battle against Britain by 5 August. Certainly, his units were all in place by then. On 1 August, Ulrich Steinhilper had flown to Coquelles, which was to be I/JG 52’s new base, taking over from the third Gruppe. Ulrich had flown over Dunkirk on his way and below him could still see row upon row of abandoned vehicles. ‘I wondered how any army could lose so much and still be an army,’ he noted. ‘Was there really anyone left in Britain to fight?’ On the morning of the 5th, the last fighter units also reached the coast. Julius Neumann and II/JG 27 had moved to Crépon in Normandy to join Jafü 3 in Luftflotte 3, while Hans-Ekkehard Bob and III/JG 54 moved to Guines just to the south of Calais, to complete the build-up of Jafü 2.
Two things were lacking, however. The first, incredibly, was an agreed plan of action. Such had been the expectation that Britain would come grovelling that no tactical plan had been put together. Once hopes had begun to fade, Göring then decided to wait until Hitler had issued his directive and he had learned what the Führer’s requirements and also restrictions were. So it was not until 1 August that the Reichsmarschall asked his air fleet and corps commanders to submit their plans. These, when they came in, were all quite different, and so needed to be ironed out into a cohesive and co-ordinated plan.
Göring was now firmly ensconced back at Carinhall, and just as Hitler expected his commanders to make the trip to the Berghof, so the Reichsmarschall required his to trek back and forth between their frontline headquarters and his country pile north of Berlin. Several conferences had been held there over the ensuing days, as well as a coordinated map exercise, until by 6 August it seemed everything was at last agreed.
As Göring had breakfasted that morning, listening to jaunty opera excerpts by Daniel Auber, he believed he had every reason to feel optimistic. It was true that he had continued to hope Britain might yet be brought to the peace table, and behind Hitler’s back had sent out further peace feelers through a Dutch businessman, Albert Plesman. These had come to nothing, dead-batted by London as had been all other appeals. So, an air assault it would have to be, and yet all the signs were that the Luftwaffe would be as successful in this as in all its other campaigns. Oberst Beppo Schmid had reassured him about the state of Fighter Command, having put the figure of British aircraft destroyed at more than 350 since the beginning of July. He believed there were only around 500 British fighters left. Schmid was equally reassuring about the state of British aircraft production, reporting that between 1 and 25 July just 240 aircraft of all types had been produced, of which a mere 133 were Spitfires, Hurricanes and Defiants. This meant, he told Göring, that his boys were already shooting them down faster than they were being built.
Milch, Jeschonnek, Udet, Kesselring et al. arrived later that morning, by which time Göring was fresh and changed into his new duck-egg blue uniform. The opening day of the Adlerangriff – the ‘Eagle Attack’ – would be called Adlertag – ‘Eagle Day’. The July fighting had shown that the RAF had an organized defence system, but the Luftwaffe was still not quite sure precisely what it was or how it worked. Part of the battle plan, however, was to destroy the ‘DeTe devices’ – the large numbers of pylons along the coast – as quickly as possible. Göring now even suggested that Stumpff send one of his Luftflotte 5 bombers over as a nuisance raider to destroy the VHF net protecting Scotland and the north of England.
‘Everything depends on using all possible means to defeat the enemy’s air force,’ Göring told them. A tactical plan to support SEALION would come later. ‘To achieve this,’ he continued, ‘our first aim is to destroy his fighters. If they avoid combat in the air, we shall attack them on the ground or force them to accept a fight by using bombers to attack targets within the range of our fighters. Moreover, we must constantly intensify the battle against enemy bomber units by attacking their ground support. When the enemy air force has been defeated,’ he concluded, ‘the Luftwaffe will continue its attacks on vital targets to be specified then.’
This was a perfectly sensible plan, drawn up and co-ordinated largely by Milch. Göring had serviceable and ready 2,422 aircraft with which to fulfil his aim, of which 949 were bombers, 336 dive-bombers, 869 Me 109s, and 268 Me 110 Zerstörers. Destruction of the RAF would take three days, but to be on the safe side Göring wanted four clear days of weather. The timing of the attack, then, was the only remaining sticking point. The next few days were not looking good, but from 10 August a ridge of high pressure from the Azores promised to give them the window they needed.
With everything now agreed and ready for the off, the Reichs-marschall led his commanders to see his latest toy: a vast model train set, complete with miniature farms, houses, stations and six-foot-high papier-mâché mountains. Beaming happily, Göring pressed a button and a flight of bombers running on wires whirred smoothly overhead.
The contrast between the Reichsmarschall and Air Chief Marshal ‘Stuffy’ Dowding could not have been greater. When Colonel Raymond Lee visited Bentley Priory the next day, Wednesday, 7 A
ugust, he found the C-in-C Fighter Command a tall, saturnine man who spoke clearly and calmly. ‘He is the man,’ noted Lee, ‘who directs the force which, more than anything else today, stands between Britain and invasion.’ Dowding took him down below to the underground Filter and Operations Rooms. Lee was struck by the quiet. Only a soft murmur could be heard as messages came and went over headsets, or plotters moved markers from point to point across the giant map table. Dowding carefully explained what was going on and how the system worked. Lee was deeply impressed. ‘I had no idea,’ he jotted, ‘the British could evolve and operate so intricate, so scientific and rapid an organization, the tentacles of which reach out beyond the edges of the country.’
What neither Schmid nor the Luftwaffe command knew was that Dowding had been prudent with his squadrons during July, keeping plenty in reserve in the north. The pilots of 609 Squadron had been getting frustrated at being ordered up in small numbers, but both Park and the C-in-C had quite deliberately kept as many aircraft from operating over the open sea as possible, both well aware that they were probably being deliberately drawn out by the Luftwaffe. Fighter Command had more than 700 fighters, a marked improvement since the beginning of July. No fewer than 496 new fighters had also been built by Beaverbrook’s workforces since then. By 8 August Dowding had fifty-eight squadrons with six more working up, including one Canadian squadron, two Polish and one Czech.
The Battle of Britain Page 54