During the night of September 7–8 the Luftwaffe came back, almost 300 bombers strong, and dropped more than 300 tons of high-explosive bombs and nearly 500 incendiary bombs on the already gutted neighborhoods of the East End, guided to their target by the flames still rising from the oil storage tanks, refineries, and broken gas mains. In the streets below, no fewer than nine “major conflagrations” were being battled by about 600 fire engines, and most of the firemen (and volunteer firemen)* and emergency workers of greater London.
That evening Göring called his wife, Emmy, in Berlin to tell her triumphantly, “London is in flames.” A more perceptive comment came from the distinguished American journalist James Reston, then the correspondent of the New York Times in London, who cabled to his paper that night: “One simply cannot praise the average man here too highly. Out of history and environment of these past 1,000 years he has inherited a quality of courage which is a true inspiration…. One simply cannot convey the spirit of these people. Adversity only angers and strengthens them. They are tough in a way we Americans seldom understand. That curious gentility among their menfolk confuses us. We underestimate them…. The British people can hold out to the end.”9 Hitler had made the great mistake of choosing London as the target, instead of Fighter Command, and the result would be not only a propaganda victory for the British, who were suddenly proving to the world that they “could take it,” but a real victory for Fighter Command.
That same night, while fires still blazed in London from the raid during the day, the Chiefs of Staff, after studying the photographs taken of the German barges and naval vessels and reviewing the latest intercepts of German radio and cable traffic, finally issued the dreaded code word “Cromwell”—the warning that an invasion was expected imminently. All over southern England, members of the Home Guard mustered and were issued live ammunition; the army was placed on full alert; church bells were rung; and in some places, with, to echo the words of Talleyrand, trop de zèle, roads were blocked, and a few strategic bridges were blown up by overenthusiastic sappers of the Royal Engineers.
But when morning came, the seas remained empty, the beaches were untouched by the boots of German infantry, and no swarms of parachute troops had landed at strategic points. Fighter Command had lost twenty-eight aircraft, with nineteen pilots killed or missing. The Germans had lost forty-one aircraft—thirty less than the RAF claimed, but still a substantial number, and a considerable improvement over the days earlier in the month when losses on both sides were about equal.
Seen from Bentley Priory, September 7 had been a victory, but seen from elsewhere, including the Air Ministry and 10 Downing Street, it was something short of Air Chief Marshal Dowding’s “finest hour.” Despite the availability of twenty-one squadrons of fighters, Dowding had been unable to prevent the indiscriminate heavy bombing of London; his night fighters (hampered in part by the smoke over London) had brought down only one German bomber; and, at any rate to those in the know, he and Park had been caught napping, looking in the wrong direction for the target of the German attack. The fact that Bader’s “Duxford Wing” had done well against the Germans (though only after the Germans had dropped their bombs and were on their way home) gave at least some credence to Leigh-Mallory’s campaign for the “big wing” and his complaints that Dowding and No. 11 Group were stubbornly refusing to apply more up-to-date and effective tactics. Certainly, to those who did not understand the intricacies of radar and fighter control, or did not have the patience to delve into them, it did not seem too much to ask that Fighter Command should attack the enemy with its full strength before the Germans arrived over London to drop bombs, rather than afterward.
Those few who were in on the secret of airborne interceptor (AI) radar sets, which were being installed in twin-engine Blenheims, also felt that more might have been expected from the night fighters; but that reaction underrated the problems of new, untested equipment and neophyte airborne radar operators. At this time the airborne radar operators had not yet been made aircrew acting-sergeants or given flying badges, because of the secrecy of airborne radar. Eventually, the radar operator and the pilot would form a team, but for the moment the radar operator was merely an ordinary aircraftman, kneeling in front of a screen no larger than a saucer while being bounced around in pitch darkness at 15,000 feet with “friendly” antiaircraft fire going off all around him and the pilot in front of him asking impatiently for a “fix” on an enemy bomber, so as to make a kill and go home to bed. Communication between the radar operators and controllers on the ground and the night fighters in the sky was uncertain, and the chance that the pilot would actually see the glow of an enemy aircraft’s exhausts was slim. The AI set itself was unreliable and tended to drain the aircraft’s batteries, so it limited the amount of time a night fighter could stay aloft. The entire idea of radar-equipped interceptors was in its infancy, and not until a year later would it mature into an effective weapon.
Thus the two major complaints that would form the basis for doubt (and a well-orchestrated whispering campaign) about the wisdom of Dowding and Park in conducting the battle were already in place on September 7, when it was becoming apparent that Dowding’s strategy was succeeding. A more supple, more subtle man than Dowding might have tried to explain or justify his confidence in Park and his doubts about Leigh-Mallory’s “big wing” or might have explained his larger strategy of using small numbers of squadrons to inflict a constant, and in the end unsupportable, rate of loss on the Germans, rather than risk losing a big, uncontrollable air battle. He might also have pointed out that just as ground radar had presented initial difficulties, which were eventually overcome, the successful use of airborne radar would take some time. He could also have made it clear that the air battle itself was secondary—as long as it continued and prevented the Germans from launching their invasion, it was saving Britain.
Being who he was, of course, Dowding did none of these things.
On the other side of the Channel the day had ended on a nastier and more public tone of anger and recrimination. Despite the vainglorious broadcasts of Radio Berlin, and his own triumphant telephone call to his wife, Göring was infuriated by the losses of the bomber force, for which he blamed his fighter pilots, and dismayed that Fighter Command, whose demise he had repeatedly predicted, was apparently still able to put up significant numbers of squadrons. He ordered the fighter commanders to meet him at Kesselring’s forward headquarters in the Pas-de-Calais, and there, standing on a windy field overlooking the Channel, he berated them for failing to protect the bombers, and even for cowardice. It was perhaps not the best way to greet commanders who had just returned from a furious battle in which they had lost many of their men, and their reaction, while respectful, was frosty. No doubt noticing this—he had after all been a fighter ace himself—Göring changed his tone to one of gruff paternalism, and made his way down the line of the commanders, as they stood rigidly to attention, asking each of them whether there was anything he needed. When Göring got to Adolf Galland, perhaps the most competent and respected fighter pilot in the Luftwaffe (and certainly the most outspoken), Galland blurted out, “I should like an outfit of Spitfires for my Gruppe, Herr Reichsmarchall!”10
With that, Göring, livid with rage, cut short the event, stamped back to his waiting Mercedes-Benz staff car, and departed for his private train, apparently relinquishing the personal command he had assumed over the attack on London only a few hours earlier, though once he had simmered down he would resume it. In the aftermath, Galland felt obliged to explain, many times over, what he had said to his commander in chief, though he never apologized for it, and he was soon forgiven by Göring. It has become one of the most famous remarks about the Battle of Britain—perhaps the most famous remark—particularly in Britain, where it is thought to be confirmation from an expert that the Spitfire was superior to the Messerschmitt; but the truth is that Galland thought then and always maintained after the war that the Messerschmitt Bf 109 was in fact a far
better “fighting machine” than the Spitfire. What he had meant was that the Bf 109 was wasted if it had to stick close to the slower bombers, an argument he had had with Göring before. The Bf 109 had been designed to attack, not to fly close escort; and for that purpose, he thought, though he had never flown one, that the more maneuverable Spitfire might be a better choice. (The RAF, though, never used it in such a role. Given its short range, it would have been even more at a disadvantage than the Bf 109.)
What Galland had in mind, or at any rate later decided he had had in mind, was that the Luftwaffe should have built big, heavily armed four-engine bombers, like the American B-17 and B-24, and the kind of long-range interceptor that could accompany them, like the later models of the North American P-51; but Göring had allowed Milch to quash the former because he didn’t think they’d be needed, and the Bf 110 was intended to have been the latter. In short, Galland was saying to Göring, “If that’s what you wanted, you should have given us a different kind of airplane, and very likely a different kind of fighter pilot,” but this was to be wise after the event—nobody in Germany had ever given much thought to the strategic bombing of Britain, since it was always assumed that Britain wouldn’t fight.* The failure, if the air war against Britain was going to prove a failure, could more reasonably be blamed on Hitler and von Ribbentrop than on Göring, despite his many character flaws and mistakes. Galland was not wrong—the Luftwaffe was poorly equipped for the task of battering the British into submission. Its bombers were too small and too lightly armed, and its fighter had a very limited range. But when the larger British and American bomber forces tried to batter the Germans into submission, they too failed, although they had the right aircraft for the job. In the Pacific, even the B-29 raids, which burned most of Tokyo and other major Japanese cities to the ground, did not bring about the Japanese surrender in 1945—that would take the use of an entirely new and more terrifying weapon over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On both sides of the Channel, therefore, September 7 led to dissatisfaction and to reassessment of the situation. Dowding moved some of his more exhausted squadrons out of the first line of battle and replaced them with fresh ones; more significantly, he took the deeply unpopular but sensible step of dividing his fighter squadrons into three categories: A being those in No. 11 Group directly in the path of German air attacks, B those that could be used at short notice to replace them, and C those that were not yet ready for combat, except against small numbers of bombers or isolated bombers. In practice, this meant dividing the fighter squadrons into sheep and goats. The B squadrons felt slighted, and the C squadrons had their best pilots transferred to the hard-pressed A and B squadrons. Of course no pilot wanted to be relegated to a C squadron, so the categorization did nothing to increase Dowding’s popularity with many of his pilots. The pilots not only found him a remote and “stuffy” figure but also blamed him for the many intricate plans—and the more irritating changes of plan—that made no sense to young men risking their lives or impatient to get into combat.
This scheme to stabilize the strength of the more experienced operational squadrons at the expense of the rest led to numerous complaints from pilots that they were being “buggered about,” and tended to diminish squadron loyalty, which, like regimental loyalty in the army, was a real source of strength and morale—once a pilot found his place in a squadron, it was his home; the other pilots were his friends and comrades; and the ground crews were familiar faces. Being arbitrarily posted to another squadron was a serious matter for pilots clinging to an organizational unit small enough to give them a sense of identity and belonging; and remaining a pilot in a squadron that was downgraded to C was felt as a humiliation. This scheme did not endear the brass hats at Bentley Priory to their pilots. Dowding’s decision of the same day to give up “standing patrols” over convoys also made sense, in that it conserved fighters and pilots, but it was of course resented by the Admiralty, and added fuel to a burning question in the minds of Dowding’s critics: Just what could Fighter Command protect, if it couldn’t protect major cities from being bombed by day or night, or aircraft factories, or, now, it seemed, vital convoys?
From the 8th through the 9th, the attacks on London continued, aided by “fair weather.” The toll of civilian casualties also continued, vastly outstripping the number of pilots killed or missing. On September 8, day and night raids on London cost the lives of 412 civilians; on the 9th, despite strong attacks by No. 11 Group against the German formations, 370 civilian Londoners were killed and nearly 1,500 severely wounded. Cloudy weather, with some rain, diminished the German attacks and the civilian casualties on the 10th, but the 11th dawned fine and clear and was again a day of full-scale attacks, another of those days that stretched everybody’s nerves to the breaking point on both sides of the Channel.
In Germany, the obvious fact that Fighter Command remained un-beaten and that the British were not yet cowed by the bombing of their cities caused Hitler to postpone giving the warning order for Operation Sea Lion again. The German navy needed at least two days of good weather and smooth seas to lay the long, intricately planned barriers of mines that would constitute its principal defense against British warships entering the Channel from the North Sea. Nobody was certain that the mines would deter the Royal Navy, but without them the invasion could be destroyed at sea by British cruisers and destroyers. On both sides there were those who remembered that Turkish minefields had prevented Admiral de Robeck from reaching Constantinople in 1915.
Reports of aerial mining of the sea off the French Channel ports, and of the movement of barges and German naval vessels observed by Photographic Reconnaissance Unit Spitfires, once again caused many people to conclude that the invasion was imminent—that the heavy bombing of London and, once again, of Park’s crucial airfields could plausibly be interpreted as the opening moves of the invasion. Dowding did not appear to share this opinion—he stoutly, though unsuccessfully, resisted an order to transfer some of his precious Bofors antiaircraft guns to the army because the invasion was imminent. He argued that it was not imminent, even though the order came directly from the War Cabinet—but it must be borne in mind that his responsibility was for the air defense of all of Great Britain. If the invasion took place, he would have to use the squadrons of No. 10 Group to attack the enemy in the Channel and on the beaches, and to protect British warships as they engaged the invasion fleet; he could not ignore the possibility that Luftflotte 5 in Denmark and Norway would attack again once the invasion was launched, in which case he would need No. 13 Group to defend the north of England, Scotland, and the all-important naval base of the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow. Unlikely as the invasion might seem to him, he could not afford to concentrate all his strength on the defense of London.
The 11th was a day of intense air activity by nearly 500 German bombers, including large-scale raids on London, Portsmouth, and Southampton, followed by night raids by more than 200 bombers on London and Liverpool. The German fliers ran into more opposition than they had been told to expect—although Göring assumed that Fighter Command now had fewer than 200 fighters left, in fact Dowding had 214 serviceable Spitfires and 387 serviceable Hurricanes available at nine o’clock on the morning of the 11th, almost three times the latest estimate of Beppo Schmidt. This would not be much of a consolation to Dowding, however: by the end of the day his fighters had shot down twenty-five German aircraft, but his own losses came to twenty-nine fighters destroyed and seventeen pilots killed—Fighter Command’s losses in aircraft were higher than those of the Germans, a very bad sign indeed. Even more threatening was the fact that the Germans had finally succeeded in partially jamming British radar, using specially made transmitters placed on the French coast. They were not as yet able to jam the radar completely, but they created enough electronic interference to make it difficult for the radar operators to interpret what appeared on the screens.
Perhaps the most notable building that was bombed on the 11th, surely not by accident, was Bucki
ngham Palace. Six bombs struck the palace, two of them exploding less than twenty yards from where the king was talking with his private secretary, Alec Hardinge, in his “small sitting room.” The royal family took the attack calmly, regarding it as a propaganda victory and a morale builder. The queen remarked, with evident relief, “Now we can look the people of the East End in the face,” and she and the king were photographed examining the rubble and chatting amiably with the emergency workers. The king observed that the “aircraft was seen coming straight down the Mall below the clouds…. There is no doubt it was a direct attack on Buckingham Palace.” However, it seems that this was not a matter of policy or deliberate frightfulness on the part of the German government or the Luftwaffe, but rather a result of high-spirited bomber crews’ betting on which among them would be the first to score a hit on Buckingham Palace.
With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain Page 25