The Second World War (27 page)
The priority was to break up the bombers before the umbrella of Me 109s could intervene. If several squadrons had been ‘vectored’ on to the enemy force, the faster Spitfires would take on the enemy fighters, while the Hurricanes tried to deal with the bombers. Within seconds the sky was
a scene of chaos, with twisting, diving aircraft jockeying for position to ‘squeeze off’ a rapid burst of gunfire, while trying to remember to watch out behind. Obsessive concentration on your target gave an enemy fighter the chance to come in behind you without being spotted. Some new pilots, when fired on for the first time, felt paralysed. If they did not break out of their frozen state, they were done for.
If the engine was hit, glycol or oil streamed back and covered the wind-screen. The greatest fear was of fire spreading back. The heat might make the cockpit hood jam, but once the pilot had forced it open and released his harness straps, he needed to roll his machine upside down so that he fell clear. Many were so dazed by the disorientating experience that they had to make a conscious effort to remember to pull the ripcord. If they had a chance to look around on the way down, they often found that the sky, which had been seemed so full of aircraft, was now suddenly deserted and they were all alone.
Providing that they were not out over the Channel, RAF pilots at least knew that they were dropping on to home territory. The Poles and Czechs understood that, despite their uniforms, they might be mistaken for Germans by over-enthusiastic locals or members of the Home Guard. The parachute of one Polish pilot, Czes
aw Tarkowski, caught in an oak tree. ‘
People with pitchforks
and staves ran up,’ he recorded. ‘One of them, armed with a shotgun, was screaming “Hände hoch!” “Fuck off,” I answered in my very best English. The lowering faces immediately brightened up. “He’s one of ours!” they shouted in unison.’ Another Pole landed one afternoon in the grounds of a very respectable lawn tennis club. He was signed in as a guest, given a racket, lent some white flannels and invited to take part in a match. His opponents were thrashed and left totally exhausted by the time an RAF vehicle came to collect him.
The honest pilot would admit to ‘
a savage, primitive exaltation
’ when he saw the enemy plane he had hit going down. Polish pilots, told by the British that it was not done to shoot German pilots who baled out, resorted in some cases to flying over their parachute canopy instead so that it collapsed in the slipstream and their enemy plummeted to his death. Others felt a moment of compassion when reminded that they were killing or maiming a human being, rather than just destroying an aeroplane.
The combination of exhaustion and fear built up dangerous levels of stress. Many suffered from terrible dreams each night. Inevitably some cracked under the strain. Almost everyone had ‘an attack of the jitters’ at some stage, but pushed themselves to continue. A number, however, turned away from combat, pretending they had engine trouble. After a couple of occurrences, this was noted. In official RAF parlance it was attributed to ‘lack of moral fibre’, and the pilot concerned transferred to menial duties.
The vast majority of British fighter pilots were aged under twenty-two. They had no option but to grow up rapidly, even while the nicknames and public school boisterousness in the mess continued, to the astonishment of fellow pilots from other countries. But as Luftwaffe attacks on Britain mounted, with increasing civilian casualties, a mood of angry indignation developed.
German fighter pilots were also suffering from stress and exhaustion. Operating from improvised and uneven airfields in the Pas de Calais, they suffered many accidents. The Me 109 was an excellent aircraft for experienced pilots, but for those rushed forward from flying school, it proved a tough beast to master. Unlike Dowding, who circulated his squadrons to make sure that they had a rest in a quiet area, Göring was pitiless towards his aircrews, whose morale began to suffer from mounting losses. The bomber squadrons complained that the Me 109s were turning back, leaving them exposed, but this was because the fighters simply did not have the fuel reserves to remain over England for more than thirty minutes, and even less if involved in heavy dogfights.
Pilots of the Me 110 twin-engined fighters were meanwhile depressed by their losses and wanted Me 109s to escort them. British pilots with steel nerves had discovered that a head-on attack was the best way to deal with them. And even a furious Göring was forced to withdraw the Stuka dive-bombers from major operations after the massacre on 18 August. Yet the Reichsmarschall, spurred on by hopelessly optimistic assessments from his chief intelligence officer, was certain that the RAF was about to collapse. He ordered an intensification of attacks on airfields. His own pilots, however, became dejected at being told constantly that the RAF was at its last gasp when they met as furious a response on every sortie.
Dowding had foreseen this battle of attrition, and the mounting damage to airfields was a major concern. Although the RAF downed more German planes than it lost on almost every single day, it was operating from a much smaller base. An impressive increase in fighter production had removed one worry, but pilot losses remained Dowding’s greatest anxiety. His men were so tired that they were falling asleep at meals and even in the middle of a conversation. To reduce casualties, fighter squadrons were ordered not to pursue German raiders over the Channel and not to react to strafing attacks by small groups of Messerschmitts.
Fighter Command was also affected by a dispute over tactics. Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, the commander of 10 Group, north of London, favoured the ‘big wing’ approach, concentrating numerous squadrons. This had first been advocated by Wing Commander Douglas Bader, a courageous but obstinate officer, famous for having made his way
back as a fighter pilot after losing both his legs in a pre-war crash. But both Keith Park and Dowding were deeply unhappy about the ‘big wing’ innovation. By the time 10 Group had assembled one of these formations in the air, the German raiders had usually left.
On the night of 24 August, a force of more than a hundred German bombers overflew their targets and bombed eastern and central London by mistake. This provoked Churchill into ordering a string of retaliatory bombing raids on Germany. The consequences were to be grave for Londoners, but they also contributed to Göring’s fatal decision later to switch targets away from airfields. This saved RAF Fighter Command at a crucial stage of the battle.
Under pressure from Göring, German attacks intensified even more at the end of August and during the first week of September. On one day alone, Fighter Command lost forty aircraft, with nine pilots dead and eighteen seriously wounded. Everyone was under intense strain, but the knowledge that the battle was literally a fight to the finish and that Fighter Command was inflicting heavier losses on the Luftwaffe steeled the pilots’ resolve.
On the afternoon of 7 September, with Göring watching from the cliffs of the Pas de Calais, the Luftwaffe sent over a thousand aircraft in a massive attack. Fighter Command scrambled eleven squadrons of fighters. All over Kent, farmworkers, Land Girls and villagers strained their eyes watching the vapour trails as the battle developed. It was impossible to distinguish which side fighters belonged to, but every time a bomber came down belching smoke, there was a cheer. Most of the bomber squadrons were headed for the docks in London. This was Hitler’s retaliation for Bomber Command’s attacks on Germany. The smoke from the fierce fires caused by incendiaries guided the following waves of bombers to the target area. London, with over 300 civilians dead and 1,300 injured, suffered the first of many heavy blows. But Göring’s belief that Fighter Command was spent, and the decision to attack cities instead, mostly at night, meant that the Luftwaffe had failed to win the battle.
The British, however, still expected at any moment the ringing of church bells to announce the invasion. Bomber Command continued to attack the barges assembled in Channel ports. Nobody knew Hitler’s own doubts. If the RAF were not destroyed by mid-September, then Operation Sealion would be postponed. Göring, well aware that he would be blamed for the failure to crush the RAF, as he had boasted he would do, ordered another major assault on Sunday, 15 September.
That day, Churchill had decided to visit the headquarters of 11 Group at Uxbridge, where he stood in the control room alongside Park. He watched avidly as the information from the radar stations and the Observer Corps
was converted into German raiders on the plotting board below. By midday, Park, following his instinct that this was an all-out effort, had scrambled twenty-three squadrons of fighters. This time, the Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons had received plenty of warning to gain altitude. And once the escorting Me 109s had to turn back when short of fuel, the bombers found themselves overwhelmed by the fighters of an air force they had been told was finished.
The pattern repeated itself during the afternoon, with Park calling in more reinforcements from 10 Group and 12 Group in the west of England. By the end of the day, the RAF had destroyed fifty-six aircraft for the loss of twenty-nine fighters and twelve pilots killed. There were more attacks a few days later, but nothing on the same scale. And yet, on 16 September, Göring was convinced by his ever optimistic chief intelligence officer that Fighter Command was down to 177 aircraft.
A fear of invasion remained, but Hitler decided on 19 September to postpone Sealion until further notice. The Kriegsmarine and the OKH were even less keen to invade now that the Luftwaffe’s failure to crush Fighter Command had become clear. With the war in the west approaching a stalemate, indications of it turning into a global conflict began to appear. The Japanese had recently been taken aback by Communist forces in northern China launching a series of attacks. The Sino-Japanese War was flaring up again in another round of brutal fighting. On 27 September, the Japanese signed a tripartite pact in Berlin. This was clearly aimed at the United States. President Roosevelt promptly summoned his military advisers to discuss the implications, and two days later Britain reopened the Burma Road for the transport of war materials to the Chinese Nationalists.
The Battle of Britain was deemed to have ended at the end of October, when the Luftwaffe concentrated on the night bombing of London and of industrial targets in the Midlands. If one takes the figures for
August and September
, the core of the battle, the RAF lost 723 aircraft, while the Luftwaffe lost over 2,000. A strikingly high proportion came not from ‘enemy action’ but from ‘special circumstances’, which mainly meant accidents. In October the RAF shot down 206 German fighters and bombers, yet the total Luftwaffe loss for that month was 375.
The so-called Blitz on London and other cities continued throughout the winter. On 13 November, RAF Bomber Command hit back at Berlin on Churchill’s orders. This was because the Soviet foreign minister, Molotov, had arrived the day before for talks. Stalin was uneasy about the presence of German troops in Finland and about Nazi influence in the Balkans. He also wanted a German guarantee of Soviet shipping rights from the Black Sea through the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean. Many
found it strange to hear a Wehrmacht band playing the ‘Internationale’ on Molotov’s arrival at the Anhalter Bahnhof, which was festooned with red Soviet banners.
The meetings were not a success, producing only mutual irritation. Molotov demanded answers to specific questions. He asked whether the Nazi– Soviet pact of the year before was still valid. When Hitler replied that of course it was, Molotov pointed out that the Germans were establishing close relations with their enemies, the Finns. Ribbentrop urged the Soviets to attack south towards India and the Persian Gulf, and share in the spoils of the British Empire. The suggestion that the Soviet Union should join the Tripartite Pact with Italy and Japan for this purpose was not one that Molotov took seriously. Nor was he inclined to agree when Hitler, in a characteristic monologue, lectured him on how the British were as good as beaten, as did Ribbentrop. So when the air-raid sirens sounded, and Molotov was led downstairs into the Wilhelmstrasse bunker, he could not resist remarking to the Nazi foreign minister: ‘
You say that England
is defeated. So why are we sitting here now in this air-raid shelter?’
The Luftwaffe attacked Coventry the next night, but this had been planned in advance and was not a reprisal. The heavy raid hit twelve armaments factories and destroyed the ancient cathedral, as well as killing 380 civilians. But the night-bombing campaign failed to break the will of the British people, even though 23,000 civilians were killed and 32,000 seriously injured by the end of the year. Many complained of the sirens, whose ‘
prolonged banshee howlings
’, as Churchill called them, were soon reduced to give people a chance to sleep. ‘The sirens go off at approximately the same time every evening and in the poorer districts queues of people carrying blankets, thermos flasks, and babies begin to form quite early outside the air-raid shelters.’ Boarded-up shop windows smashed by bomb blast carried stickers announcing ‘Business as usual’ and the inhabitants of houses destroyed in the east end of London placed paper Union Jacks on the piles of rubble which had been their homes.
