The Miracle of Freedom

by Ted Stewart

  For the Germans, most of the planes being shot down were the larger bombers with four-man crews. This meant that not only were they losing far more aircraft than the RAF, they were losing crew members by a multiplier of four. Further, most of their losses were occurring over England, which meant that those who bailed out were being taken captive. (Both sides suffered equally when they bailed out over the cold waters of the English Channel, where the likelihood of dying of hypothermia was very high.)

  Still, despite the constant attacks upon the Brits and the enormous losses that the Germans were experiencing, despite the best efforts of the mighty Luftwaffe, the most powerful air force in the world, despite Göring’s threats and rants and pleadings, little progress had been made.

  On August 18, Hitler reluctantly postponed Operation Sea Lion until September 17.

  The Battle Becomes More Fierce

  By mid-August, the Germans had adopted the new strategy that Göring had briefed his commanders on.

  Relying on a recently developed technology involving radio beams, the German Luftwaffe was able to undertake night bombing of military industrial targets with some degree of accuracy. The ability of the RAF to defend against these night attacks was severely limited. With this new capability, the Germans commenced a twofold strategy of bombing airfields during the day and industrial targets at night.

  Despite this growing threat, Dowding remained convinced that he still had but one objective: to keep enough of his chicks alive so as to delay the invasion until the end of September. He had to persevere for just a few more weeks.

  But it was becoming less and less certain that his pilots could hang on.

  • • •

  Through the remainder of August and the first week in September, the conflict raged with growing intensity. During the day, all forward airfields were possible targets. During the night, major cities such as Portsmouth, Liverpool, and Birmingham were being blasted.

  On August 31, Dowding’s fighter command had its heaviest single-day losses: thirty-nine fighter craft shot down and fourteen pilots killed. In turn, the Germans lost forty-one of their airplanes. On September 1, 450 German aircraft hit the airfields again. Frightfully, and for the first time, the British lost the same number of aircraft that the Germans did that day.

  The RAF was dying, whittled away by the overwhelming number of German aircraft, the constant waves of attacks, the loss of experienced pilots, and the sheer mind-numbing exhaustion that all of the flyers were forced to endure:

  Pilots were so tired that one of them landed, then fell forward and slumped over his controls—his ground crew assumed he was dead, but when they ran to his aircraft they discovered he had merely fallen asleep with the engine still running. . . . Ground personnel were numbed by the ceaseless bombing—ground crews refueled and rearmed their aircraft under fire, carrying on with their work even when bombs were exploding nearby; young women dragged unexploded or delayed-action bombs off the runways with tractors, apparently oblivious of the danger.31

  Some squadrons had fewer than one-half of their allotted pilots. Their airfields were being destroyed. Shovels and bulldozers could not keep up with the damage. Hangars for repairing aircraft were being obliterated. Huts where the exhausted pilots ate and slept had been smashed. By September 6, “Fighter Command had approached the breaking point. . . . At last the Germans were in grasping distance of the first precondition for the invasion—the systematic destruction of Fighter Command’s ability to maintain control of the airspace over the Channel, England south of the Thames, and Dover.”32

  With the British RAF against the ropes, the Germans could have—and should have—pressed their advantage. They could have finished off the RAF. That being accomplished, the invasion of the British mainland could have commenced.

  But though they held the clear advantage, the Germans didn’t advance their cause. And the reason why is worth noting.

  Blitz 37 A German Heinkel He 111 Medium Bomber Over Southeastern England

  “Climb!” the dorsal gunner screamed into his oxygen mask. He was watching a pair of RAF Hurricanes move onto his tail, lining up like racing lions chasing down a slower prey. His guns had overheated and the ventral gunner was already dead, leaving them defenseless against the attacking Hurricanes. “Climb! CLIMB! JINK RIGHT!” the gunner screamed again.

  It was too late. The Hurricanes started to fire. He watched a white-hot tongue of tracer bullets stream toward him, a terrifying line of death. His gut tightened up so hard he had to swallow down the contents of his stomach. The line of death reached out to kill him. “CLIMB!” he screamed a final time.

  Instead, the Heinkel pushed over and dove toward the clouds. The gunner felt himself lifting weightless off his seat, his seat belt the only thing that held him from floating to the top of his gunner’s cabin and smashing his head. The bomber screamed down, wind picking up around it, accelerating like a falling piece of steel toward the cloud layer five or six hundred feet below. The two Hurricanes gave chase. The bright moon and stars illuminated the soft layer of clouds as they came rushing up. The pilot pushed the nose over even more and the gunner was weightless once again. The aircraft had accelerated well beyond its redline, he could tell. Wind was screeching through the metal welds, and more than a few rivets along the fuselage had popped off. For a moment, the gunner had to wonder what terrified him more: the Hurricanes with their eight machine guns or the thought of his aircraft falling apart in midair. He glanced back again, his eyes wide. The Hurricanes were falling back. Then suddenly, POOF! they were gone. The blackness of the night turned instantly to a soft gray as the layer of clouds swallowed them up. Then he felt the violent g-forces push him back into his seat as the pilot struggled to level off. His head fell against his chin. His vision narrowed. His arms, suddenly the equivalent of sixty pounds apiece, fell against his gun. The nose of the aircraft climbed and wobbled, then fell level. The gunner swallowed and checked his tail. No Hurricanes. No enemy fighters. They were hidden in the clouds.

  Of course, they would not be alone. How many other German bombers were flying around in here?

  The aircraft wobbled and started climbing, the pilot searching for clear air once again. As little light as the moon and stars had provided, it was far better than the total darkness that had swallowed them inside the clouds.

  Looking down, the gunner saw a trickle of blood dribbling along the metal floor. The other gunner was dead, his head almost completely shot off. The aircraft smelled of gas and oil and blood. He tightened his mask against his face, breathing the pure oxygen, and closed his eyes.

  Forward, in the cockpit, the pilot had gone for almost forty seconds without taking a breath. He concentrated on his flight instruments, rudimentary though they were, fighting to keep the aircraft level while flying inside the clouds. The navigator/bombardier sat to his right, his eyes scanning across the cockpit instruments. “Looks good,” he said, though he really didn’t mean it. He was so disoriented, he didn’t know up from down. The aircraft could have been pointing straight toward the ground and he wouldn’t have recognized it. The pilot saw the blackness of the clouds begin to grow thinner and finally took a breath. Seconds later, they popped out atop the clouds. He leveled off again, keeping the bomber just above the stratus. The layer was perfectly smooth, and he pushed the nose until his aircraft was barely above the clouds. The navigator looked around, struggling to get his bearings while waiting for the spinning inside his head to settle down.

  For a long moment, no one spoke. It felt like no one breathed. They had cheated death again. But she was a jealous pursuer. She wouldn’t give up, they knew.

  “I’ve got nothing on our tail,” the gunner said to fill the empty silence. Everyone knew that he hadn’t seen any more enemy fighters or he would have been screaming into his mask.

  Only a few seconds passed before the pilot asked, “Where’s the targe
t?”

  But none of them answered.

  Because none of them knew.

  • • •

  Military campaigns can turn for many different reasons. A great general may prove his genius. New weapons may permit new tactics to which the enemy does not adapt. Some battlefield fortunes change due to great acts of valor, others for reasons that are beyond the control of man.

  The Battle of Britain swung because a single German aircrew made a small but significant mistake.

  Hitler had always reserved the decision to bomb civilian targets, and specifically the city of London, to himself. On this, he was very clear: No one bombs London until I tell them to! Such forbearance was not because he harbored humanitarian feelings but because he still believed there was a chance that the English would simply cave. He believed his self-control might convince English appeasers to unseat Churchill. But he knew that the will of even the pacifist would be stiffened if his Luftwaffe attacked purely civilian populations. Göring understood this. All of his pilots understood it too.

  Blitz 37 A German Heinkel He 111 Medium Bomber Over Southeastern England

  The theory of nighttime bombing was pretty simple.

  The application of the theory was a very different thing.

  In theory, the crew would use the center of a known radio beam to locate their position. Using one of the 360 radials that emitted from a radio transmitter, they could establish their position, even at night or when flying over a solid layer of clouds. The system was clearly in the very early stages of development—so much so that the British hadn’t even begun to understand how the German system worked. But even though it was rudimentary and not entirely accurate, it had opened up an entire world of bombing to the Germans that had been closed to them before. Being able to bomb at night gave them the cover of darkness for protection. Yes, if the RAF was lucky, and if the moon was bright, and if their pilots managed to locate the German bombers, they could bring some of them down. But all in all, the mortality rate was pretty favorable when the Germans bombed at night.

  Still, as with any new weapon system, there was much that could go wrong. The bomber pilots could make an error. Very common. In the middle of a life-and-death duel in the sky, and with darkness all around them, how many pilots could discipline themselves to follow an invisible and highly suspect radio beam? The radio transmitter on the ground could go down. Very common too. Finally, the navigational equipment on the aircraft could malfunction, or, as had happened with Blitz 37, get shot completely through.

  • • •

  The crew stumbled through the sky for four or five minutes. They had entirely lost their formation, leaving them alone and undefended over the British skies. To their right, they saw occasional bursts of fire and lines of tracers. The battle was still going on, but they had slipped away from the center of the conflict when they had dipped into the clouds.

  Which left them alone . . . defenseless . . . without any friendly fighter escorts . . . low on fuel . . . one dead crewman . . . their aircraft battle damaged . . . the pilot thinking that they were losing fuel . . . a long flight across the deadly English Channel . . . and a bomb bay full of bombs.

  The decision was pretty simple.

  The clouds below them grew thin from time to time, letting just a hint from the British spotlights shine through. From that, they estimated they were somewhere over the south side of London.

  Their target was on the south side of London!

  That was good enough for them.

  They opened the bomb bay doors and let 1,500 pounds of bombs fall away.

  Below them, dozens of houses and family dwellings exploded into deadly flames.

  • • •

  Five miles to the east, and three thousand feet above the German bomber, a young British pilot saw a flash across the moon. He immediately recognized the Heinkel’s unique shape, but it was too far away to catch it. And he was very low on fuel—so low, in fact, that his engine had started to sputter.

  That didn’t worry Manson much. RAF Biggins was only twelve miles to his left, and he was high enough that he could have glided to the airfield if he had been forced to. Better yet, he knew that his home base had not been hit—the Germans couldn’t strike such small targets as runways when bombing at night—so he wasn’t worried about where he was going to land.

  Still, watching the single German bomber flee, he wanted to give chase. And there is no doubt that he would have if he had only had a little gas.

  A Fatal Error

  On that fateful night of August 24–25, after making a navigational error, a German pilot accidentally bombed a neighborhood in London.

  Churchill had expected that London and his other population centers would eventually be bombed. In preparation for this, he had instructed Bomber Command to be ready to retaliate as quickly as possible. He, of course, had no way of knowing that the Germans had simply erred. Once he got word that the Germans had escalated the war by attacking citizen targets in London, he immediately ordered retaliatory attacks on Berlin.

  Hitler—who, critically, had not been told about the inadvertent bombing of London—was outraged when Churchill attacked his German population centers. So, this was how his hand of goodwill was to be met—with the bombing of Berlin! Furious, he ordered Göring to begin revenge attacks on London, declaring, “If they attack our cities, we will raze their cities to the ground! We will stop the murderous activities of these air pirates, so help us God!”33

  So it was that, without being given a critical piece of information, and just as the relentless day-and-night bombing of British airfields and military armament factories was ready to bear fruit, Hitler changed his tactics. The Luftwaffe was directed to begin bombing civilian targets, abandoning the only strategy that had any hope of leading them to victory. Bombing assignments started being made not based upon any tactical or strategic considerations, but on Hitler’s desire for revenge.

  Upon this change in tactics, the outcome of the battle turned.

  The attacks against the British cities began on September 7 with three hundred bombers and six hundred fighters.34 They came back the next day. The next night. The next day and night after that. Dowding’s fighters fought the good fight, inflicting major losses on the Germans, but many hundreds of Londoners were being killed every day.

  The fact that the Fighter Command continued to offer major resistance was beginning to cause Herr Göring great distress. For weeks, his intelligence officers had been telling him that Fighter Command was down to two hundred planes. Yet, day after day, Spitfires and Hurricanes appeared in the skies to blow his airplanes to pieces, killing his aircrews in numbers that he simply could not sustain.

  He was completely bewildered.

  They had not achieved air superiority over England. They could not protect their invasion force from the obnoxiously determined RAF.

  The date for the invasion had to be postponed once again.

  The Turn

  On September 11, another series of airstrikes were undertaken against London and other major cities: five hundred bombers during the day and two hundred at night. That day, Dowding lost more planes than the Germans did—a very bad sign. Had that trend continued, the tipping point would have fallen to the Germans in a very short time. Of additional concern was the fact that, for the first time, the Germans had been able to partially jam Dowding’s precious radar.

  September 15 turned out to be a most important day. It was, in fact, the day when the outcome of the battle would finally turn.

  Sensing a serious weakening in the RAF Fighter Command, Göring ordered another massive attack. Two hundred fifty aircraft formed up over France. British radar detected the coming attack.

  Dowding’s instincts told him that it was time to modify his tactics.

  Rather than stick to his previous strategy of pinp
rick but relentless fighter attacks, he ordered Fighter Command to organize a full-scale response. Nothing was held back. Squadron after squadron was sent to meet the German bombers and their fighter escorts.

  The number of British defenders waiting for them over the skies of England took the Germans completely by surprise. For weeks, they had been told there was only a handful of fighters left in all of England, yet here they were, fighting their way toward their targets through wave after wave of Spitfires and Hurricanes!

  One of the great aerial combat scenes in history played out over the skies of southern England, with more than five hundred aircraft engaged in a giant dogfight. That afternoon, another wave of German aircraft arrived to meet another full response from Dowding’s chicks. By the end of the day, sixty German aircraft had been destroyed to twenty-six RAF fighters.

  The German leaders were finally forced to face the bitter truth. After losing hundreds of precious aircraft and thousands of highly trained pilots, they had failed. The RAF was not destroyed. Air superiority had not been won. Winter was coming quickly, and they were still unable to protect their invasion forces if they had been commanded to cross the English Channel.

  The next day, Hitler ordered the postponement of Operation Sea Lion for an indefinite period.

  The Battle of Britain had been lost.

  What the Victory Meant

  Dowding’s measured strategy had worked. Despite their substantial losses, the RAF had survived.

  But no one—not Dowding or the people of Great Britain, not Hitler or Göring or any of the German High Command, and, in fact, not even Churchill—realized the enormous implications the victory was going to have.35