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Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making and inevitably a number of people have given me a considerable amount of help along the way. First of all, I would like to thank Malcolm Smith, former Secretary of the Battle of Britain Fighter Association, who was a great help ten years ago in putting me in touch with a number of veterans of the Battle of Britain. I would also like to thank the late Squadron Leader Joe Leigh, Maurice Mounsden, and Wing Commander Bob Doe, who were amongst the first Battle of Britain pilots to give me their time and to talk to me at length. I would also like to particularly thank Group Captain Allan and Barbara Wright, who have taken the trouble to talk to me numerous times over the years, and Squadron Leader Geoff Wellum, who has similarly recounted his memories of those days at great length as well as becoming a good friend. I also have Geoff to thank for prompting me to begin a career as a historian.
Similarly, Wing Commander Tom and Eileen Neil have allowed me to pester them a number of times over the years and Tom has shared not only his memories but also his wider knowledge and understanding of those days, for which I am extremely grateful. Our conversations have been both great fun and absolutely fascinating. I am also very grateful for all the time and help given to me by the other British veterans and their families and would like to particularly thank the late Air Commodore Pete Brothers, Vicky Bartley, Norman Field, Andrew Jackson, Jimmy and Jeanne Corbin, Lady Robbie Dundas, Jamie Dundas, Stan Fraser, Sandy Ellis, Jane Sacchi and her daughter, Camilla, Joe Steele, John Penna, Robin Penna, Ken Sparks, Wendy Maxwell, Wendy Kyrle-Pope, Douglas Mann, Daphne Hughes, and John and Patricia Wilson. My especial thanks also go to Norman Field’s son, Richard Field, who has given help beyond what could be reasonably expected of anyone.
In Germany, I would like to thank Sarah Rivière for her considerable help in helping to locate German citizens who had been in Berlin in 1940, and also to her husband, Michael, for the hospitality both gave me over there. In Berlin I would like especially to thank Hilda Müller, but also Albert Wünderlich. I must also thank Sean Whyte of the excellent SWA Fine Arts for putting me in touch with Stefan Körlin in Aachen. Stefan, thank you for all your huge help. I shall never forget that extraordinary week driving around Germany interviewing Luftwaffe veterans. Thank you also for all your subsequent help as well. I am also, of course, extremely grateful to those German veterans who were willing to talk so freely and openly: Hajo Herrmann, Hans-Ekkehard Bob, Julius Neumann, the late great General Günther Rall, Johannes Naumann, the late Rudi Miese and Günther Seeger, and, in Austria, the late Karl Spreitzer. I am also very grateful to Kurt Dahlmann and Erich Rudorffer.
I owe thanks to a number of people in the various archives in Britain, Germany and the United States. At the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg, I would particularly like to thank Frau Jena Brabant, but also all the staff there who helped. I would also like to thank the staff at the Deutsches Tagebucharchiv, Emmendingen, and at the Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart. At the Imperial War Museum in London, I am particularly grateful to Richard Hughes in the Sound Archive, but also Roderick Suddaby and his team in the Department of Documents, and to the staff in the Photographic Archive. My thanks also to the staff at the National Archives in Kew, London; the archive there has been transformed in recent years and it is now one of the best equipped and most user-friendly archives there is. Thanks also to the staff at the Royal Air Force Museum, St John’s College, Cambridge, the House of Lords and Birmingham University Archives. In Leeds, I would also like to thank Cathy Pugh and her fellows at the Second World War Experience Centre. It is a fantastic resource and Cathy, you are always incredibly generous with your time and help. Thank you. In America, I must thank Tami Davis Biddle for her help and advice and at Maxwell, Alabama, Richard Muller. My thanks also to Stephen Plotkin and Sharon Ann Kelly at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.
I must also thank a number of good friends, who have given considerable help along the way: Antony Beevor, who encouraged me to write the book in the first place, and whose advice has been greatly appreciated. Seb Cox, as the head of the Air Historical Branch, has also provided incredibly helpful advice, is a font of wisdom and knowledge, and has patiently put up with too many of my inane questions. I am also particularly grateful to him for painstakingly reading through and checking the manuscript. I am very grateful as well to Dr Peter Caddick-Adams, who was particularly helpful with the western campaign in May-June 1940 and steered me in the right direction on lots of different matters. He has also been an incredibly helpful sounding board, and someone with whom I can chat about these matters both at great length and with complete enjoyment. Thank you, Peter. I must also thank two other great buddies, Guy Walters and Rowland White, with whom it is always similarly good to talk through ideas and from whom encouragement is always given at just the right moment. Thanks are also owed to another dear friend and travelling companion, David Walsh, who accompanied me through northern France and the Low Countries, and to Germany. Thank you, too, to Professor Jeremy Black, a tutor of mine at Durham and now Professor of History at Exeter and a good friend. His advice and counsel have been an enormous help. My thanks, too, go to Clive and Linda Denney. Clive is a brilliant latter-day pilot and has been very helpful with both technical matters and in giving me an aerial tour of southern England and of a number of the Battle of Britain airfields, not least Biggin, North Weald, Duxford, Manston and the Pas de Calais. I also want to thank my brother, Tom, who has always been an enormous inspiration. My respect for him as a writer, academic and historian knows no bounds, and it is as a devoted younger brother that I am able to dedicate this book to him. Thanks, Bro.
No-one, however, has given me more help than Professor Rick Hillum. Not only does Rick have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the period, but he is also a technical wizard. His understanding of all scientific matters from flight to radar is incredible and he has patiently explained what were, to me, very complicated issues and translated things into clear, layman’s terms. Rick has been with me all the way through the writing of this book, and it truly could not have been written without him. Rick, I shall be eternally grateful – thank you.
I also want to thank Lalla Hitchings, who has, as ever, been brilliant, transcribing numerous interviews, and Ute Harding, who both translated and transcribed my conversations with German veterans. I am also very grateful to the following for their help along the way: Giles Bourne, Chris Goss for the loan of much hard-garnered archive material, and Peter Osborne and Independent Books for so generously letting me cite from his book with Ulrich Steinhilper and for the use of photographs.
Thank you, too, to Patrick Walsh and to Claire, Alan, Jake, Alex and Alexandra, and all at Conville & Walsh. I am also really grateful to all those who have helped at Bantam Press. To Madeline Toy, Steve Mulcahey, Sheila Lee, Larry Finlay, Katrina Whone, Vivien Garrett, Mark Handsley and everyone else who helped on the book. My especial thanks, however, go to Bill Scott-Kerr, who has, as ever, been a joy to work with and whose enthusiasm and support have been just fantastic. Thank you.
Finally, I must thank my Rachel, Ned and Daisy. Writing books such as this are a great privilege, but they mean lots of time away and even more time spent locked in a study furiously writing. I am conscious that they have lived this war and in particular the Battle of Britain for longer than was the reality back in 1939–45. But I am very, very grateful to you. Thank you.
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Picture Acknowledgements
All photographs have been kindly supplied by the author except those listed below. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders; those overlooked are invited to get in touch with the publishers.
Endpapers in the hardcover edition only are taken from a German map of central London entitled ‘Savoy Hotel and Somerset House’ highlighting places not to be bombed, September 1940.
ILLUSTRATION SECTIONS:
Section 1
Page 1
David Crook: Frontline Books.
Pages 2 and 3
Lord Halifax and Joseph Kennedy, 27 August 1939: Popperfoto/Getty Images; Sir Winston Churchill with Neville Chamberlain, London, c. 1939: © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis; Gort and Pownall: Imperial War Museum/O 358; Franz Halder, 1938: akg-images; Hitler and von Brauchitsh, 1939: Imperial War Museum/MH 13148.
Pages 4 and 5
Erwin Rommel, May-June 1940: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1972-045-02; Heinz Guderian, France, spring 1940: Imperial War Museum/MH 9404; German troops with radio, France, 14 May 1940: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1991-045-07/Lohmeyer; German tanks near Sedan, 13/14 May 1940: ullstein bild-SZ Photo; German officer on a horse; German soldiers with a Panzer Mk I: both Dr Peter Caddick-Adams; German troops advance through Belgium, 11 May 1940: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1990-100-32A; German troops advance with bicycles through Compiègne, 13 June 1940: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-2010-0027/v. Hausen.
Pages 6 and 7
Bombing of Rotterdam: courtesy Julius Neumann; Hajo Hermann, January 1944: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-2005-0025; Günther Rall: courtesy Günther Rall; Ulrich Steinhilper and pilots of JG52: Peter Osborne/Independent Books; Adolf Galland: Imperial War Museum/HU 4128; Siegfried Knappe: Deutsches Tagebuch Archiv, Emmendingen; Stan Fraser: photo courtesy Stan Fraser; Arthur Hughes: courtesy Daphne Hughes; Billy Drake: Imperial War Museum/C 1296; Hurricane Mk I aircraft of 85 Squadron in flight: Imperial War Museum/CH 1510.
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