The stress and strain of keeping up that level of intense air fighting was immense, and as well as flying over England three or four times a day, they were still regularly being bombed by marauding Blenheims. On their second morning at Mordyck, Siegfried Bethke and his fellows were shaken when a Blenheim came over early and dropped a number of bombs over them. As Hans-Ekkehard Bob points out, there was another meaning to Kanalkrank. ‘It also means your nerves are shot,’ he says, ‘and you simply cannot fly any more.’ At Coquelles, Ulrich Steinhilper noticed that the evening debates were becoming increasingly heated and that tempers had started to fray. One evening, Hinnerk Waller, one of their pilots, became so upset he stormed out of the tent, threatening to shoot himself. ‘The strain of unrelenting front-line flying,’ noted Ulrich, ‘was beginning to show.’
43
Black Saturday
ON 28 AUGUST, Colonel Raymond Lee accompanied Admiral Robert Ghormley and his US naval ‘observation’ team to Dover as guests of the Prime Minister. It was Lee’s second trip in a week to what the journalists had christened ‘Hellfire Corner’, and once again he felt it did not seem quite so dangerous or knocked about as the press were making out. The children had long ago been evacuated, but the shops and pubs were still open and he could only see a few destroyed houses and buildings.
Fighting had developed above them, however. They could clearly see aircraft droning and whirling about the sky, machine guns occasionally sputtering. Then one German plane dived down almost vertically with a high-pitched whine, finally crashing with a dull ‘whoomph’, followed by a pilot drifting down in his parachute. At the same time, a German bomber hurtled into the sea with a large splash.
They lunched at Dover castle, from where they could clearly see Calais. ‘It seemed queer to observe the long stretch of French coast,’ noted Lee, ‘and think that along it are strung the hordes of Hitler, crowding up against the Channel for a pounce upon England.’
A few days later, Ambassador Kennedy invited Churchill and Admiral Ghormley and his team to dinner at the Embassy. The Prime Minister suggested they call it the ‘Destroyers Dinner’ since the deal was due to be signed the next day. The Ambassador was still feeling sidelined and humiliated, having been completely ignored in the negotiations. Over dinner, however, Kennedy learned that the Prime Minister knew almost nothing about the ships that were to be handed over and was learning very little from Admiral Ghormley. ‘Will they be able to come across the ocean on their power?’ Beaverbrook eventually asked impatiently.
‘Perhaps,’ Kennedy replied.
‘Well, I always expected that if I made such a gesture,’ said Churchill cheerfully, ‘you would have to give us something, and, of course, I believe that something is going to be, sooner or later, big financial credits or gifts.’
‘Don’t let America,’ added Beaverbrook, ‘think she is settling for these bases with these old worn-out destroyers.’
Having always suspected that the deal was more about drawing the US into the war than the need for ships, Kennedy now felt Churchill and Beaverbrook were revealing their true hands.
In fact most of the ships did require significant work and modification before they could be used operationally, and although the deal was finally signed on 3 September, they would not be reaching British ports in a hurry. But in many ways Kennedy was right; privately, Roosevelt was doing increasingly more to help Britain. A secret British mission to the US had also secured sixty new merchant ships to be built by a massively expanding American Maritime Commission. Mass production of simply built, welded, 440-foot, 11,000-ton merchantmen was underway. Labelled ‘EC-2 Emergency Cargo’ ships, they would later be known as ‘Liberty’ ships.
In return for this clandestine help, Britain agreed to share some of her technological and scientific advances, including RDF, aerial depth charges, Huff-Duff, the Rolls-Royce Merlin, and a power-driven gun turret. Another secret mission, headed by Henry Tizard, set sail for Washington in late August, carrying with them examples of many of these items. The two countries also began negotiations to exchange code-breaking information. Churchill’s long-held plans to bring American muscle to bear were beginning to take fruit.
Across the Reich, planning for Operation SEALION continued. A compromise had finally been agreed between the OKH and Kriegsmarine. There would be no landing at Lyme Bay, but a single crossing of light forces from Le Havre to Brighton would be carried out in addition to the main landing between Eastbourne and Folkestone. It was now proposed that 4,500 paratroopers from the 7th Fallschirmjäger Division should be dropped on to the South Downs in support of the Brighton crossing. Like most compromises, it pleased no-one. Raeder and Fricke still felt this was too broad a front, Halder and von Brauchitsch that it was too narrow. Both OKH and OKW were now agreed that the invasion could now only be viewed as a coup de grâce – exactly as Hitler had earlier envisaged.
Yet when Raeder suggested that SEALION be converted to an operation of bluff and nothing more, Hitler rejected the idea out of hand and insisted genuine preparations should continue, including the buildup of shipping regardless of the detrimental effect on the economy. There was also talk of launching large-scale terror raids on London on the eve of an invasion, with the intention of causing mass panic. It was hoped that streams of people would flee London, blocking roads in the process and hampering British moves to meet the invasion.
Having returned to Berlin for this critical period in the battle against Britain, Hitler told Jodl on 30 August that he would decide on SEALION on or around 10 September. Since it was accepted that at least ten days’ notice would be needed, a timetable was now drawn up and issued on 3 September. This made the earliest sailing date 20 September, with troops landing early the following morning.
Göring made it clear that he had little faith in SEALION, but Hitler was becoming more optimistic, ironically because at last the Luftwaffe now seemed to them to be emphatically winning the air battle currently raging. At a conference with the Reichsmarschall in The Hague on 29 August, Beppo Schmid confirmed that British fighter strength had dropped to around one hundred, although with the lull up to the 23rd, they probably had an actual strength of around 350. Kesselring reported that according to Generalmajor Theo Osterkamp, the commander of Jafü 2, Germany ‘already had unconditional fighter superiority now’. Only Sperrle was prepared to add a note of scepticism. By the first week of September, the situation looked even more favourable. Fighter units were reporting that the RAF was attacking with between five and seven aircraft rather than full squadrons of twelve to fifteen aircraft. ‘English fighter defence hit hard,’ it was reported to OKW. ‘Ratio of kills has changed much to our favour.’ There was now a feeling of confidence that September’s fighting would see the end of British fighter defence – admittedly, later than had been scheduled, but air superiority over Britain at last appeared to be assured.
*
Some refreshed Luftwaffe units had now arrived at the front. Kampfgeschwader 30 ‘Adler’ had been moved to southern Belgium. For Unteroffizier Peter Stahl, in the 2nd Gruppe, the new posting was no surprise; after all, it had seemed odd that they should have stayed in Germany and Denmark kicking their heels while other bomber crews were fighting to exhaustion. At least he was refreshed, having managed to get four weeks’ home leave. A young NCO pilot, Peter had been a civilian test pilot before the war, and in August 1939 had been newly married and living a very contented life near the Baltic coast in northern Pomerania. Ever an optimist, he had been stunned by the outbreak of war. He had been immediately called up, but although he had dreamed of joining fighters, after a stint of instructing blind flying had been posted to KG 30 and had flown his first operational sorties over France only in June.
He was under no illusions about what lay in store. ‘It is being said,’ he jotted in his diary, ‘that the British are already on their last legs, but when one hears what the operational pilots – and, in particular, bomber crews – have to report, we’re obviously still a l
ong way from victory. The losses suffered by our bomber units must be terrible.’ Their new airfield was yet another series of harvested fields at Chièvre near Mons, and for Peter his first landing did not augur well, as touching down he had a blow-out in one of his tyres and only narrowly avoided crashing his Ju 88. ‘Not the most pleasant of arrivals,’ he noted.
Tommy Elmhirst had been promoted to Air Commodore and posted to Fighter Command HQ at Bentley Priory, where he was to be one of three men who were to keep a twenty-four-hour watch in the vast underground Operations Room. There was not a moment’s relaxation whilst on watch and this was exhausting work, with rotas of a straight eight-hour watch, then sixteen, then a further eight, then a day off. Hugely impressed by the calm, cool efficiency of the staff involved, he nonetheless found it an alarming experience. It seemed to him that counters being shuffled around the plotting table represented the highest stakes imaginable: the destruction of Great Britain and her Empire.
His last task before leaving Air Intelligence had been to make an assessment of how long the battle might continue. His figures for downed German aircraft were inaccurate but they had a fairly clear understanding of German production levels. He therefore predicted that if current German fighter losses continued, the Luftwaffe would probably give up around the third week of September. But at the beginning of the month, after the worst week for Fighter Command since the battle began, this was of little comfort. ‘The great query was, however,’ noted Tommy, ‘whether our fighters could continue their present volume of effort and sustain their present rate of losses for another three weeks.’
The seriousness of the situation was underlined to him on his arrival at Bentley Priory. AVM Douglas Evill, Dowding’s deputy, thought their prospects looked grim, but welcomed Tommy’s paper and hoped they might be able to hang on for another three weeks. From their point of view, 11 Group’s airfields were in turmoil, they were struggling to keep squadrons at strength, and their pilots were, between them, flying between fifty and sixty hours a day to meet the hordes of enemy aircraft that continued to come over. The reality was that Fighter Command squadrons were often in better shape than most Luftwaffe units and their pilots were getting more chance to rest. The Luftwaffe strength seemed so formidable because it could choose when it attacked and was able to concentrate its forces, but in fact, in terms of total numbers of aircraft, the gap between the RAF and Bomber Command was closing, rather than widening as the Luftwaffe High Command thought. Hypothetically, the RAF could have mounted a thousand-aircraft raid on the Pas de Calais. Logistically, it would have been impossible, but it is interesting to think what the German reaction might have been. Dumbfounded shock, probably.
But that was not the point. To those in charge of Britain’s defence, it seemed as though they were reaching crisis point. There was no let-up in the number of enemy raids on the plotting tables at Bentley Priory and Uxbridge, and now photographs by Coastal Command and reports by Bomber Command’s Blenheims warned of huge concentrations of barges and ships suddenly filling harbours all the way from Holland to Le Havre. Dowding had for some time wondered when the Germans might begin delivering massed raids that could not be parried. From the pictures of Continental ports, and the known build-up of Luftwaffe units in the Pas de Calais, the strong suggestion was that the hammer blow was about to come. What worried Dowding was that they would not be able to meet that blow.
On the morning of Saturday, 7 September, Dowding called a meeting with Park, Evill and Sholto Douglas, the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff. He explained that they needed to think about what to do should Fighter Command ‘go downhill’. His assumption was that they would soon be unable to keep squadrons fully equipped with pilots. Certainly, if things continued as they were, his policy of rotating squadrons would become impossible. It also worried him that the Germans might discover how hard hit they were – he had no idea they already believed Fighter Command to be a spent force. He was therefore determined to keep 11 Group at full strength come what may, but was unable to increase the numbers of squadrons in the south-east because of the damage to airfields, the limited number of existing airfields, and other logistical issues of maintenance, airfield protection and infrastructure. Already, he said, Park was demanding more pilots for five of 11 Group’s squadrons, which were now under-strength but had been in the front line for just a short period.
Sholto Douglas insisted that Dowding was being too pessimistic, and reeled off pilot figures that suggested they had ample numbers of new men coming through. But Dowding retorted that it was one thing to be a trained pilot, and quite another to be a combat-ready fighter pilot. At current rates, they were losing 120 pilots a week, a rate that could not be sustained. Losses were now outstripping those coming through the OTUs and the course had already been cut to two weeks. This meant that some pilots were being sent to squadrons with as little as ten hours on Spitfires and Hurricanes. Park now backed up Dowding, pointing out that he had already been forced to put together composite squadrons, a practice to which Dowding was vehemently opposed. ‘You must realize,’ Dowding said to Douglas, ‘that we are going downhill.’
Park had been dealing with the problem of under-trained pilots by insisting they were given further training with the squadron before being made operational. This, he said, was no longer possible, but he now suggested a new scheme. New pilots could be sent to squadrons in the north for extra training, while only fully trained pilots from the north would be sent to squadrons in the south. Dowding pointed out that he needed fresh operational squadrons to exchange with 11 Group’s battle-exhausted squadrons. The two schemes could run in tandem, Park replied. He was only suggesting importing individual pilots, not entire squadrons, and proposed this should take effect only when a squadron’s quota of pilots fell below fifteen. Dowding – and Douglas, for what it was worth – agreed to Park’s proposal. From now on, squadrons were to be given categorization. Class A were those squadrons in 11 Group and some in 10 and 12 Group like 609 and 87 Squadrons, for example, which were fully operational and had their quota of sixteen or more combat-ready pilots. Class B squadrons would contain up to six non-operational pilots in a quota of sixteen, while Class C squadrons would retain at least three fully operational pilots. Most Class C squadrons would be in 13 Group, although there would be some in 10 and 12 Groups too. It was the best they could do in the circumstances. They now had to hope that, in the days to come, it would be enough.
The day before, Reichsmarschall Herrmann Göring arrived in Holland aboard Asia, bringing with him the news that he was now going to take over personal command of the battle. RAF Bomber Command had been back to Berlin again on the nights of 3 and 4 September. For Hitler, these raids were an abomination. Despite the urgings of many senior Nazis, he had insisted on showing restraint, but now the British had pushed him a step too far. At a speech at the Sportsplatz on 4 September, he had vowed revenge. ‘And if the British Air Force drops two, three or four thousand kilos of bombs,’ he railed, ‘then we will now drop 150,000, 180,000, 230,000, 300,000 or 400,000 kilos, or more, in one night. If they declare that they will attack our cities on a large scale, we will erase theirs! We will put a stop to the game of these night-pirates, as God is our witness. The hour will come when one or the other of us will crumble, and that one will not be National Socialist Germany.’
But now it was Göring, who just ten days earlier had been champing at the bit to attack British cities, who had cold feet. He hoped Britain might yet be brought to the peace table. Attacking London, he knew, would shatter those hopes. Reaching the front, he visited his commanders and summoned a number of his new fighter commodores, including Werner Mölders and Dolfo Galland.
The Reichsmarschall was not in good spirits. Wracked with indecision about the mass attacks on British cities that Hitler had now at long last authorized, he felt that it was the fighters that had let him down and told his fighter commanders so in no uncertain terms. Protecting bombers, he told them, was more important than securing record ba
gs of enemy fighters. Then, softening, he asked them what he could do to improve matters for them. ‘I should like an outfit of Spitfires for my squadron,’ blurted Dolfo.
‘We have the best fighter in the world!’ Göring retorted.
Dolfo tried to explain what he meant. Of course he preferred the Me 109. As a fighter it was much better because it could accelerate, climb and dive quickly. But because of its lower wing loading, the Spitfire was more suited to slower manoeuvres, which was what was needed when protecting the bombers. Göring had no answer. Growling, he turned away and left.
Certainly many of the Luftwaffe were anxious to begin massed daylight raids. Despite formations of up to a hundred plus, bombers had rarely been used in numbers of more than that, and usually they were considerably smaller. Dolfo Galland was convinced that really large bomber attacks were the way forward and the only tactic likely to persuade the British fighters to come out into open battle. General von Richthofen was of a similar mind. ‘This afternoon the decision comes to raid London,’ he recorded. ‘Let’s hope the Reichsmarschall stands firm. I’ve got my doubts on that score.’
Von Richthofen need not have worried. The following afternoon, Göring stood on Cap Gris Nez with his assembled commanders and entourage watching the largest Luftwaffe formation ever assembled pass over his head. There were some nine hundred aircraft – three hundred bombers and six hundred fighters – stepped up between 14,000 and 23,000 feet. It was a vast armada, the like of which had never, ever been seen before.
Tom Neil had sensed something was up. Already he had been on two sorties that morning, the first for around fifteen minutes, the second for almost an hour and a half, during which they had patrolled the Thames estuary and as far east as Canterbury. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but it was almost tangible. All of south-east England had been spread before him, basking in the glorious sunshine of a perfect Indian summer, and yet they had not spotted a thing. As his Hurricane had thrummed rhythmically over a silent world, he had felt as though they were the only people alive.
The Battle of Britain Page 65