The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  Of course he was apprehensive about the fighting to come. Although Fighter Command had acquitted itself well so far, it was obvious the Luftwaffe had yet to attack in full strength. Chief of his worries was the number of pilots. Sixty-four squadrons at their full establishment of twenty pilots meant 1,280 pilots. Dowding had 1,434 on 8 August, only a small excess, and there were nothing like enough coming through. Moreover, he would have to send some of those new pilots to squadrons in 11 Group, where the heaviest fighting would be taking place. There would be almost no time for them to acclimatize, to learn essential tricks and skills before being thrown against some of the best men the Luftwaffe had. It would, as he was well aware, be like throwing them to the lions.

  There were other concerns too, chief of which was the lack of suitable night-fighters. It was one thing vectoring aircraft towards a target in daylight, but quite another doing it at night, when a pilot could not rely on eyesight to help. What was needed was airborne radar, but this was not available. A number of squadrons had been practising night-fighting. The two flights of 87 Squadron, for example, had been sent off in turn for a week’s course, while 609 Squadron, amongst others, had sent its pilots up for night patrols. So too had ‘A’ Flight from 92 Squadron, which was posted to Bibury in the Cotswolds, much to the pilots’ disgust, for night-fighter ops against raiders attacking Bristol, Swansea and Cardiff. Tony Bartley and the other members of the flight were really put out about it. ‘This was the last straw,’ noted Tony, ‘when every day we heard on the news what our old friends in 11 Group were doing in the front line.’ Night-flying in a Spitfire was not easy, not least because the flames from the exhaust stubs when the aircraft started were blindingly bright. Bibury was hardly ideal either – a small grass strip in which the only landing lights were paraffin flares and one Chance light. There were a number of accidents and mishaps. Norman Hargreaves got lost and had to bail out; Ronnie Fokes overshot into a brick wall; Geoff ‘Boy’ Wellum hit a wing on the Chance light, and Tich Havercroft ended up on his back in the middle of the flare path. Later, he was hit by a Ju 88’s rear-gunner. They did not get a single enemy aircraft on night ops.

  Of the 107 pilots killed between 10 July and 11 August, eighteen died in accidents, and mostly at night. Twin-engine aircraft were better for the task, because the engines were to the side, where their glare was not in the pilot’s eyes. The Beaufighter, developed from the Blenheim, was the best prospect to take on night-fighting duties, but although it was coming into service, Fighter Command had not received sufficient numbers yet. So long as the Luftwaffe continued to concentrate its efforts during the day, this was not as much of a problem. But Dowding liked to be prepared, and on that score he was not.

  Following the heavy attacks on the convoy on 8 August, the anticipated poor weather meant there was little activity over the next couple of days. There was a lot of cloud and rain about, while on 10 August it was squally and thundery. The next day, there was plenty of cloud in the afternoon, but during the morning it was bright and clear and soon heavy attacks developed.

  The Luftwaffe’s plan was to draw fighters out over the Dover area with harassing raids, and then deliver the main punch at Portland. This latter operation was a major task for Luftflotte 3. Many of the fighters of Jafü 3 were to be involved, some drawing out the British fighters, others escorting a comparatively small bomber force. Since it was a reasonable distance, co-ordination of these fighters into their formations needed to be quick and slickly carried out. It would be a good test – a kind of dress rehearsal, albeit for real.

  Siegfried Bethke, now commanding the 2nd Staffel of JG 2, had attended a briefing the day before, when the pilots had been told that Adlertag would begin any day, just as soon as the weather was set fair. Siegfried was quite struck by the magnitude of what was about to unfold. They were about to take part in the biggest air battle the world had ever known, and his stomach had churned at the thought in a way it had not done before the Battle for France. He felt a bit unsure of himself too, wondering whether he had quite the right attitude. As a Staffel commander, he knew he should set an example, and yet the only thing that was giving him comfort was the thought of being part of such a large mass of fighters when they headed across the Channel. But the Channel worried him too. It was one thing flying over the narrow Straits of Dover, but quite another crossing all the way from Normandy. If any of them went down, he knew their chances of survival would be slim.

  Now, at a little before 11 a.m., French time, he was taking off from Cherbourg, where the Gruppe had flown to earlier, and heading out over the Channel.

  The growing plot over the Cherbourg peninsula had been picked up by radar early, giving the controllers at 10 and 11 Group Headquarters plenty of time to alert their squadrons. With no convoy currently in the Channel, it was also clear that the raiders must be heading for a coastal target, and as the plot developed it seemed likely that Portland was the target.

  Already at Warmwell was 609 Squadron, which had been hastily scrambled and told to patrol over Weymouth Bay at angels 24. By ten, only five minutes after Siegfried Bethke had taken off, 609, along with 1 and 145 Squadrons, was already airborne. Within the next quarter of an hour, aircraft from five further squadrons were also scrambled, including 87 Squadron from Exeter.

  As they headed out over the Dorset coast, 609 Squadron’s pilots saw the armada heading across the Channel. John Dundas was astonished. ‘More Huns than I ever imagined I’d see together in one piece,’ he noted. In fact, there were around a hundred Me 109s and Zerstörers. Squadron Leader Darley took his squadron up to around 25,000 feet, then, with the sun behind them, and with a thousand feet of height to their credit, he gave the order to attack. ‘We came down right on top of the enemy formation,’ noted David Crook, ‘going at terrific speed, and as we approached them we split up slightly, each pilot selecting his own target.’ He now saw an Me 110 Zerstörer ahead, cutting across him. Opening fire, David realized he had not allowed enough deflection, but closing up he opened fire again, this time at almost point-blank range. Smoke burst from the German’s port engine, then he turned to the right and stalled. David was so close, he only narrowly avoided hitting the Zerstörer’s port wing, ducking instinctively as it flashed past him.

  Below he could see Hurricanes also attacking, while above were many more enemy fighters. Unable to find another target in a good position to attack, and thinking it was a rather unhealthy spot to find himself in, he dived down out of the fray, and headed back to Warmwell. John Dundas, meanwhile, managed to hit another Me 110, but was then peppered himself. The squadron landed back in ones and twos, having left the fight in full swing as more squadrons arrived on the scene. To everyone’s amazement, however, all the pilots made it back, even John, whose Spitfire was trailing white smoke from his glycol coolant and had an engine on the point of seizure.

  Yet while this mass of German fighter aircraft engaged one squadron after another, the bombers, escorted by I/JG 2 amongst others, pressed on towards Portland. The bombers were immediately pounced on by Hurricanes of 213 Squadron. Above, Siegfried Bethke and his 2nd Staffel now dived in turn on Hurricanes of 87 Squadron as they arrived on the scene. Siegfried had seen them as he and his Staffel had been flying at around 4,000 metres. ‘They were flying in pretty tight formation,’ he jotted, ‘almost peacefully.’ Coming up behind without being spotted, he opened fire. ‘It broke into pieces after the first shot,’ noted Siegfried. ‘I had to pull away hard to avoid hitting it.’ This was Voase Jeff, Bee Beamont’s flight commander, an ace and veteran of France. He had been due to be married in ten days’ time. The Hurricanes now took evasive action and the Messerschmitts ‘burst’, breaking into their two-man Rotten. Siegfried, almost by chance, found himself behind another Hurricane, this time the Australian, Johnny Cock. A cannon shell hit the Hurricane and it caught fire. ‘As I was turning away,’ added Siegfried, ‘I’m quite sure I saw the pilot bailing out with his parachute.’ He was right; Johnny was later fished out of t
he sea, minus his trousers, which he had discarded to make it easier to swim, much to the great amusement of the rest of the squadron.

  Siegfried had now had enough. One of his pilots had already gone down into the sea, another was hit and struggling back across the Channel. Feeling rather tense and nervy, he decided to head back home. Little damage had been caused at Portland, although smoke was now billowing into the sky. ‘We had about eighty kills,’ noted Siegfried later once they were back on dry land. It was, of course, a massive over-estimation; in fact, the RAF had lost twenty-eight aircraft during the entire day’s fighting. That was still no small number – almost one and a half squadrons. Fighter Command, for its part, shot down thirty-eight German planes. This, however, had been just the prelude. Eagle Day was now almost upon them.

  37

  Adlertag

  WHEN ULRICH STEINHILPER touched down at Coquelles for the first time, he soon discovered the groundcrew had been quick to plunder the large stocks of equipment abandoned by the British ten weeks earlier. They used British bell-tents, considered much better than German equivalents, which were erected in an orchard at one end of the airfield. Inside each tent, a hole around a metre deep had been dug and lined and, Ulrich thought, made for quite a comfortable billet. There were British Nissen huts too. ‘Calais and Dunkirk were rather like vast military supermarkets,’ noted Ulrich. ‘Virtually anything you wanted could be found in or around the harbours or on the beaches.’ Among other things, they had appropriated a Morris triple-axled truck and a large van which they converted into a mobile tool and parts store, and also discovered a plentiful number of barrels of wine floating in the harbour at Calais, which gave them an almost unending supply. Having hitched up the local electricity supply, they found their new home was reasonably comfortable, if a little primitive. They even had a record player.

  Up the road at nearby Guines-South, Hans-Ekkehard Bob was also settling into his new surroundings. Like most fighter airfields in the Pas de Calais, Guines was another field, its crop only recently harvested. It was pretty rudimentary. The aircraft were penned in the woods at the edge of the field. Like Coquelles, there were bell-tents, a kitchen and Nissen huts, where the groundcrew lived, set up in the woods, and a large tent in which aircraft were repaired. ‘The technicians’ tent was really big,’ says Hans, ‘big enough to fit an aircraft in.’

  Hans, along with the other pilots, found digs in the village. He also brought with him his dog, a fox terrier called Chica. She would always fly with him whenever they moved airfields, stowing away in the luggage hold behind his seat. ‘She was a passionate flier,’ he says. ‘She always cried when she wasn’t allowed to come with me.’

  On 12 August, the Gruppe was in action, escorting bombers first to Dover, then Manston, Hans claiming a Spitfire. Ulrich Steinhilper had also flown his first missions over England. On 11 August, he had flown four in one day, and had helped shoot down a Blenheim over the Channel, something that prompted mixed feelings of elation and guilt at having caused the deaths of other human beings. On the other hand, the Blenheim had looked as though it was about to attack a Heinkel 59 seaplane that was searching for downed airmen. Ulrich was not alone in thinking that British attacks on these unarmed rescue planes were nothing short of murder. However, Dowding had made it clear via an official communiqué that he did not consider that military aircraft rescuing downed airmen could legitimately be marked with a red cross. ‘They were engaged in rescuing combatants and taking them back to fight again,’ he wrote, ‘and they were also in a position, if granted immunity, to make valuable reconnaissance reports.’ Pilots were often inured to the gory and violent realities of war; most will say they were always attacking the machine not the pilot. Disgust at shooting at rescue planes is therefore perhaps understandable. At the same time, notions of chivalry were somewhat misplaced. This was war: hard and brutal. Britain could not afford to observe noble niceties when she was fighting for her life. Ulrich, Hans, Siegfried Bethke and others may have been fundamentally decent, upstanding young men, but Hitler, Göring and the Nazi elite were not.

  Ulrich flew several times again the following day, 12 August. The fighters were helping with the final prelude to Adlertag, trying to draw out the British fighters and providing cover for a series of attacks on ‘DeTe devices’, those tall latticed masts which stood defiantly all along the coast on the other side of the Channel. As General Martini had realized, so long as these peculiar-looking masts were still operating, the Luftwaffe would never achieve any surprise.

  Leading the attacks on the RDF Chain was Hauptmann Walter Rubensdörffer, commander of Erprobungsgruppe (‘Experimental Group’) 210. Swiss by birth, the thirty-year-old Walter was a Spanish veteran and former Stuka pilot. However, he was also something of a pioneer and had spent several weeks at the Luftwaffe experimental centre at Rechlin on the Baltic, trialling the Me 110 Zerstörer and Me 109 as precision bombers. Out of these trials, Erpro 210 had been formed, a force of twenty-eight hand-picked, highly skilled pilots. Brought into Luftflotte 2, their results during the Kanalkampf had been encouraging. Having been a sceptic, Kesselring had come to regard Erpro 210 as one of his most elite units.

  Around 8 a.m., Walter was leading his three Staffeln over the Channel, the British coastline looming towards them. ‘Calling 3 Staffel,’ he said over the R/T, ‘proceed on special mission. Good hunting. Over.’ Oberleutnant Otto Hintze acknowledged and with his eight bomb-laden Me 109s headed straight towards the white cliffs of Dover, while Walter peeled off to port with the Zerstörers of 1st and 2nd Staffeln. They now separated themselves, each Staffel to attack different RDF stations at Rye, Pevensey and Dunkirk in Kent. Carrying two 1,000 lb bombs, each plane could pack a considerable punch as those manning the RDF stations now discovered. Flying in low one after the other, each aircraft waited until the targets filled their reflector sights, then dropped their bombs, before flying off again back over the Channel, dust smoke and debris left in their wake.

  Back at Calais-Marck, Walter had good reason to be pleased. His men had reported scoring a number of hits. A number of Ju 88s also later attacked the RDF station at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. Already, Pevensey was reportedly silent, bombs having sliced through the main electricity cable. At Dover, Oberleutnant Hintze had seen the towers clearly swaying and a number of buildings destroyed. Buildings had been destroyed at Rye and Dunkirk too.

  Although some fifteen Ju 88s had peeled off to attack the RDF station at Ventnor, the main target of the sixty-three bombers from KG 51 and KG 54 was the naval dockyards at Portsmouth. In port after returning from another four-day mine-sweep and invasion watch was the converted trawler Darthema. Joe Steele had come ashore that morning to collect the ship’s mail and had met up with a sailor from HMS York. The two were chatting when suddenly they heard the low rumble of aircraft and the sirens begin to wail. The bombers were upon them so quickly they had no time to head for a shelter, so instead they dived behind some sandbags outside the NAAFI shop, from where they had a grandstand view. The bombers arrived in waves, as each Staffel flew over and dropped their loads. Joe was amazed to see the railway tracks around the harbour twisting and contorting as they were wrenched into the air. ‘It was the most tremendous sight,’ says Joe. ‘I’d never seen anything like it.’ Then he saw the chimney on the cookhouse literally disintegrate. It was too much for his friend, who decided to make a dash for it, but Joe stayed put, reckoning he was safer where he was.

  Two hundred yards away was HMS Victory, a ship which had not been surrounded by so much smoke and dust since the Battle of Trafalgar almost 135 years before. Directly in front of Joe was a destroyer, whose guns were now pumping away, as were other ack-ack guns. He watched an airman floating down in his parachute and men from the destroyer were firing at him. ‘I heard the skipper shouting at them to stop,’ says Joe, ‘but there were still more shots.’

  In just a few minutes, it was all over. The harbour was heavy with smoke, dust and the stench of cordite. The harbour rail
way station had been hit, the pier destroyed, a pontoon dock badly holed and fires were raging in several buildings, but miraculously, no ship had been hit. Joe wandered around, looking in wonder at the damage, and saw a dead German airman. Whether it was the same man he had seen coming down or not, he wasn’t sure, but the man was riddled with bullets. ‘It was sad,’ he says, ‘very sad. There was no need to shoot him like that.’

  That afternoon, more bombers were sent over to attack airfields. Lympne was heavily attacked twice, and then, early in the afternoon, so too was Manston, Walter Rubensdörffer’s Erpro 210 in action once again. Pitted with craters, the grass airfield was put out of action for the rest of the day. Workshops were also destroyed and two hangars damaged, although only one person was killed. Hawkinge, further to the south on the Kent coast, was also badly hit, with two hangars destroyed, but although equally riddled with craters, the airfield remained just about usable. Dowding had pressed hard for more concrete runways for Fighter Command, but there was one huge advantage in sticking with grass: with plenty of work teams, craters could be both easily and quickly refilled, not least because Dowding had also arranged for each airfield to have plenty of supplies of hard-core and rubble for just such a purpose before the war.

  Despite their early confidence, by mid-afternoon General Martini was picking up pulses from nearly all the British listening posts once more. In fact, the transmitting and receiving blocks at Rye had been undamaged, Pevensey was up and running again within a few hours, no major damage had been caused at Dunkirk or Dover, and while Ventnor was badly hit and completely out of action, impulses were sent out from a mobile transmitter instead, not least to make the Germans believe it had been repaired. But while Martini had accepted that the British DeTe devices would be harder to destroy than had originally been expected, reconnaissance photographs suggested considerable damage had been caused. Neither Lympne, Manston nor Hawkinge, for example, were expected to cause the Luftwaffe too much trouble any more. Yet again, German intelligence was to prove woefully mistaken.