Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain

The decisive difference between the British and the Germans is that the British, directed by Dowding, knew what they were doing and the Germans did not. Though the Germans constantly boasted of their overwhelming might in the air, they had never contemplated the problems involved. Like the British Air Marshals they simply clung to the dogma that the bomber would always get through. A full-scale attack on Great Britain had never entered into their plans. Indeed they had never considered a direct attack on Great Britain. All of them from Hitler downwards assumed that Great Britain would make peace once France was defeated, and even the defeat of France came much sooner than they had expected.

The armistice between Germany and France was signed on 22 June. Hitler said to General Alfred Jodl, ‘The British have lost the war, but they don’t know it; one must give them time, and they will come round.’ Hitler gave the British a month. Then on 19 July he addressed the Reichstag. After appealing to ‘reason and common sense’, he threatened the British with ‘unending suffering and misery’ unless they made peace. Lord Halifax, though himself inclining towards a compromise peace, was given the task of brushing Hitler’s peace offer aside on the radio. Hitler’s bluff had been called. He had now to make good his threats. On 21 July ‘Sea-lion’, the invasion of Great Britain, was decided on in principle. Ten days later the date for invasion was provisionally fixed for 15 September. Hitler was sceptical from the start and doubted whether the invasion was ‘technically feasible’. In other campaigns, such as in France and later in Russia, he had gone to the front himself and taken command. With the preparations for Sea-lion, he retired to the Berghof and watched the proceedings with detached curiosity.

Sea-lion has attracted a great deal of attention. As a practical operation it never existed. The army chiefs accumulated a considerable force with which they would overrun England once others had arranged the landings for them. They themselves made no contribution to the problem. Erich Raeder, the Grand Admiral who commanded an almost non-existent German fleet, regarded any invasion as impossible unless the British had already surrendered. He went through the motions of assembling river barges and coastal steamers in order to please the Generals and to avoid annoying Hitler. But he never took the talk of invasion seriously.

The Luftwaffe was therefore on its own. Göring was delighted to undertake the task. Like other air chiefs he believed that the bomber would always get through. ‘Eagle Attack’, the Luftwaffe offensive, and Sea-lion had no connexion. Hitler’s instruction was ‘to establish conditions favourable to the conquest of Britain’. But the Luftwaffe simply assumed that fleets of bombers, escorted by fighters, would sail over England and pulverise the British into surrender – Guernica on a larger scale. The Luftwaffe did not co-ordinate its acts with the needs of the other services. It made few attacks on British warships and often bombed harbours and airfields that the army would need if it ever landed. Luftwaffe strategy was in fact a supreme assertion of the theory favoured by the Air Marshals that bombing unsupported by land and sea forces could win a war.

The Luftwaffe’s attempt to reduce Great Britain by bombing failed, perhaps by a narrow margin. It also suffered from the German failure to consider its problems in advance. The attempt was a rushed affair where no German had time to stop and think, and in any case Göring rarely thought. Raeder was hypnotised by the prospect of the Royal Navy. No German remarked how British ships had been driven back by air attack during the Norwegian campaign. Again no one in Germany seems to have considered independent landings by paratroopers. Many people in England expected them to do so. At all events during my service in the Home Guard in the summer of 1940 I spent my time patrolling the Oxford gas works (with an unloaded rifle) in the firm belief that the entire weight of the German paratroop force would be directed against them.

The Battle of Britain was a fairly small affair. Hitler called off Sea-lion on 17 September and there was never any attempt to repeat it. Hitler was not seriously troubled by this set-back. Sea-lion was a botched plan, rushed up in a hurry and without importance in German strategy. Hitler’s mind was already set on the invasion of Russia and he did not fear that Great Britain, though unsubdued, could do him any real harm. The British on the other hand were invigorated. They believed that they had won a great victory or rather that the pilots of Fighter Command had won a great victory for them. And so they had. The British were a maritime people. They had learned from previous wars that their task was to survive, and victory in the Battle of Britain enabled them to do so. To some extent their confidence was misplaced. Great Britain came nearer to defeat in the prolonged Battle of the Atlantic against the U-boats than she did in the Battle of Britain. But psychologically the Battle of Britain was the more decisive.

The Battle of Britain had an unforeseen consequence, unpleasant to all concerned. Almost unintentionally the Germans turned from daylight to night bombing while the Battle was still on. They continued this campaign throughout the winter, as many British cities bore witness. The British attempted to counter this campaign by night bombing of their own. It seemed that the bomber would always get through after all. This expectation again proved wrong. No decisive results were achieved. The Germans virtually broke off their campaign in May 1941, perhaps because the Luftwaffe was needed in Russia and the Mediterranean. The British continued their campaign throughout the war, again indecisively. Bombing was not effective until long-range fighters could accompany the bombers, and this had to wait until 1944. Yet this had already been demonstrated in the summer of 1940.

The Battle of Britain had a more profound result. It put Great Britain back in the war. After the fall of France it seemed that Great Britain could make no stroke against Germany except such marginal acts as the attack on the French fleet at Oran. Hitler himself, to adopt MacArthur’s phrase, was content when he left Great Britain ‘to wither on the vine’. Suddenly the British showed that they were still in the war and still fighting. The Battle of Britain, though a defensive battle, was at any rate a battle. Thanks to it, Great Britain was still taken seriously as a combatant Great Power, particularly in the United States. As an uncovenanted blessing, Italy gave the British further opportunities for victory in the winter of 1940. These victories may have been irrelevant to the defeat of Germany but they showed that the British were in action all the same.

It would be agreeable to record that the victors were duly honoured as Nelson had been posthumously after the Battle of Trafalgar. Some of them were. Churchill honoured the fighter pilots with the immortal phrase, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ One man was passed over. The Air Marshals were angry that their dogmatic faith in independent bombing had been disproved. The advocates of the ‘big wing’ received official approval after the Battle was over, as Len Deighton describes. On 25 November Dowding was relieved of his command and passed into oblivion. Yet ‘he was the only man who ever won a major fighter battle or ever will win one.’

Such were the strategical ideas and lack of them that lay behind the Battle of Britain. There were more practical considerations. In the last resort battles are decided by the men and machines that take part in them. I am afraid that many of us who write about war neglect this side of it and write in great sweeping terms. Len Deighton does not. After all, if the aeroplane had not been invented, the Battle of Britain could not have been fought, and quality of aircraft is the central feature of Len Deighton’s book. His brilliant analysis makes clear the technical problems of aircraft design in the interwar years. The Germans talked big and almost gave the impression that with such ingenuity and drive they ought to have won. I suspect that Erhard Milch is by way of being Len Deighton’s hero.

Yet, however ingenious the Germans were in design, and however forceful in production, they lost the Battle of Britain, or to be more precise did not win it, which comes to the same thing. Dowding’s superior strategy counted for much but each individual combat in the skies counted also. Here, too, Len Deighton provides a detailed account, fuller than any previously written, of how the British and Polish pilots prevailed. Indeed, in one way or another, he explains everything that happened in those days, now distant, of August and September 1940.

FIGURE 1 (#litres_trial_promo). The Battlefield

The two German Air Fleets had a boundary line (black broken line) that extended over England. The German single-seat fighters (Bf 109s) were concentrated at Cherbourg and the Pas de Calais under the command of Jagdfliegerführer – Jafü – of Air Fleets 2 and 3 respectively. The black line (marked BF 109) shows the extreme range of the Messerschmitts, but combat would make this much shorter, as the pilots used full throttle and more fuel.

The most important bomber units – Kampfgeschwader 1 (KG 1), etc. – are shown as at the airfield of Geschwader staff. Kampfgruppe 100 (KGr 100), shown as the most westerly Luftwaffe unit, was the German pathfinder force.

From Marine Gruppe West four-engined Focke-Wulf FW 200s were sent out into the Atlantic – sometimes flying all the way round to Stavanger, Norway – and provided the weather reports that the Air Fleets needed to plan their attacks.

The vitally important RAF sector airfields, where the Operations Rooms were situated, are ringed; other fighter airfields are shown as dots. Bawdsey was the home of British radar development. The extent of the normal 10-metre Chain Home radar coverage, for aircraft up to 15,000 feet, is shown as a broken line (marked CH). It includes inland areas where the German aircraft formed up, but at this range it was little more than what the operators called ‘mush’.

Göring’s private train went back to Germany, and then to the Pas de Calais. It is shown at Beauvais, its original site, which was also the HQ of Fliegerkorps I. Other Fliegerkorps HQ are shown as F. These, like the Air Fleet HQs, had advanced HQs nearer the coast.

Lowestoft marks the place where Peter Townsend went after the Dornier Do 17, and Cromer is where Douglas Bader also found a Dornier. (See text for 11 July, beginning on p. 144.)

PART ONE (#ulink_d6af076a-667e-5935-a71e-d666a3a3df31)

Sea-Lion (Otariidae). A carnivore modified for aquatic life.

– ENCYCLOPEDIA

History is swamped by patriotic myths about the summer of 1940. Many of these were generated by the shame of that portion of the British public who – after the fall of France – declared that it was time to negotiate terms with Hitler’s Germany. It was a view shared by men of the Left and of the Right. The former believing that the Hitler-Stalin peace pact would last, and the latter hoping that it would not.

The Swedish ambassador in London reported back to his Ministry in Stockholm that he had spoken with people, including Members of Parliament, who wanted to seek terms with Hitler. He reported a senior member of the British government as saying common sense not bravado would govern British policy. From Washington, the British ambassador was prepared to seek out contacts for such a move. In Lisbon Sir Samuel Hoare and in Berne David Kelly made contact with possible intermediaries to get German viewpoints.

Lloyd George, the ‘Churchill’ of the First World War, wanted peace with Hitler, had wanted it for some time, and seemed not to mind who heard him say so. In Berlin his name had already been mentioned as a possible leader of a puppet regime. Even in the tiny, five-man War Cabinet that Churchill had formed, there was not unanimous determination to go on fighting. Lord Halifax, the Foreign Minister (who had only narrowly missed becoming Prime Minister instead of Churchill), suggested that they prepare a reply to Germany, to have ready if Hitler offered peace on reasonable terms. Chamberlain, now in Churchill’s War Cabinet as Lord President, supported the idea of compromise.

Sardonic then was Churchill’s choice of Halifax to go on the BBC and reject unequivocally Hitler’s peace offer. For Churchill there would be no talk of peace terms. Already 65 years old, long derided as a warmonger, he declared his intention to fight, ‘however long and hard the road may be’. Significantly perhaps, Churchill went to great trouble to get an important member of the Royal Family to the far side of the Atlantic where the Duke of Windsor became Governor of the Bahamas.

Churchill called himself Minister of Defence, artfully ‘careful not to define my rights and duties’. Daily meetings with the Chiefs of Staff gave Churchill tight control of the progress of the war. The three service ministers were brushed aside and not even invited into the War Cabinet.

Churchill had his priorities right; Fighter Command’s men and machines would decide whether or not Hitler came to London. Churchill, the first British Prime Minister to wear a uniform while in office (even Wellington did not do so), chose the uniform of the RAF. His only major change in the system, or the men who ran it, was to create a Ministry of Aircraft Production and give it to a newspaper tycoon to run.

But not until the Battle of Britain was won did Churchill gain the wholehearted support of the British public. No wonder then that he devoted so much of his time and energy, to say nothing of rhetoric, to convincing the British that they had won a mighty victory.

Broadcasting over the BBC on 11 September 1940, Churchill said, ‘It ranks with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel, and Drake was finishing his game of bowls; or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon’s Grand Army at Boulogne.’ Later he was to point out that the great air battles of 15 September took place, like Waterloo, on a Sunday.

The Battle won, men forgot their ideas about a compromise peace with Hitler. Wartime propaganda, much of it primarily intended for American newspaper and radio correspondents, provided material from which a David and Goliath myth was engineered. It suited all concerned, except the Germans, who still today insist that there was no such event as the Battle of Britain.

The Battle of Britain, although small in scale compared with the later fighting, was nevertheless one of the decisive battles of the Second World War. It converted American opinion to a belief that the British, given help, might win. This belief fed anti-German feeling. Until now dislike of Nazism had been repressed, because Americans felt that they couldn’t do much about it. In 1940 they began to believe they could do something about it, and Britain provided a focal point for many disparate anti-Nazi elements, from émigrés to labour unions.

In military terms, the Battle proved that Britain was a secure base, from which the USA could fight Germany. More importantly, but less accurately, it convinced America that air-power was the decisive weapon with which to do it.

In June 1940 the French signed an armistice with the Germans. The British had been killed, captured, or had departed. The refugees turned round and began the walk home. Hitler took two old comrades on a tour of the 1914–1918 battlefields, where he had served as a corporal.

Hitler now ruled a vast proportion of Europe: from the Arctic Ocean to the Bay of Biscay. Stalin, his new friend, was supplying oil, cattle, grain and coal. Rumania, Hungary and the Balkans were all anxious to do business with their rich and powerful neighbour, as teams of German technicians investigated the resources of the conquered lands.

The German victories had been a direct result of brilliant generalship and highly skilled, well-equipped armies with good morale. Yet by the spring of 1940 – in spite of months of war with Britain – the Wehrmacht had made no preparations whatsoever for any direct assault upon a hostile shoreline.

FIGURE 2 (#litres_trial_promo). June 1940 – Hitler Rules Europe

By the summer of 1940 Hitler had created a centralised Europe ruled from Berlin. The USSR had invaded Poland and split it down the middle with Germany. That part of France not occupied by the German forces was little more than a satellite. The German mark was pegged artificially high in respect to other currencies so that wealth moved back into Germany without the victims realising what was happening. Anxious to be in at the kill, Italy declared war in the final hours of France’s agony and nibbled pieces of territory. The Balkan countries, given the choice of co-operating fully or being taken over, co-operated.

Unlike the Anglo-American armies later in the war, the Germans had no landing craft – for tanks, trucks, or men – no artificial breakwaters, no trained beach-masters, or any system of sea-route marking. In fact, the only army with any experience, or adequate equipment, was the Japanese army, which operated its own sea transport. It had made amphibious landings on the banks of the Yangtse river in 1938. At the time there had been a flutter of interest from military commentators but, apart from some experiments by the United States Marine Corps, no high commands envisaged a need for such techniques.

It was not until 12 July 1940 that the OKW – the High Command of the Wehrmacht – prepared a memorandum about invading England. Even then General Alfred Jodl, its author, described it as being ‘in the form of a river crossing on a broad front’. He called it operation Löwe (Lion). Hitler took this memo and used it as a basis for his Directive No. 16, ‘on preparations for a landing operation against England’. He changed the name to Seelöwe (Sea-lion).

Hitler’s Directive No. 16, a top-secret document of which only seven copies were made, asked the army and navy chiefs for more proposals. But the Luftwaffe had a specific task: it must reduce the RAF morally and physically to a state where it could not deliver any significant attack upon the invasion units. To Göring that seemed possible.

In the heady days of that summer anything seemed possible. In Berlin representatives from the Welsh Nationalist movement were already talking of their coming role. So was a senior official of the IRA, which had been exploding bombs in England for several months before the war. The Welshmen made no progress with the Germans; the Irishman was sent home in a U-boat in August 1940, but died en route and was buried at sea, his body shrouded in a German naval ensign.

In France the German army was devoting some of its finest units to preparations for a great victory parade through Paris. Generaloberst Heinz Guderian, architect of the blitzkrieg, was in the capital, along with many other senior members of the army and air force. Feldmarschall Hugo Sperrle, commander of Air Fleet 3, had made it his headquarters.

Units rehearsed for the victory procession included massed motorcycles and tanks. German flags were prepared for all the façades in the Place de la Concorde, and blue hortensias for the Étoile. Press reports of the event were prepared but not yet dated. The only cloud on the horizon was a growing fear that the widespread publicity would invite a decidedly unfriendly flypast by the RAF. On 20 July caution prevailed; the whole scheme was abandoned and the men went back to their units.

By that time, Berlin had enjoyed a victory parade. It was a modest affair. Local conscripts of the 218th Infantry Division marched through the Brandenburg Gate. Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, took the salute. Hitler was not present. He was saving himself for the following evening, when the whole Reichstag and an astounding array of Generals had been summoned to hear his speech. Appropriately this glittering event took place in the Kroll Opera House. Hitler’s speech was a long one and he used it to claim personal credit for the victories of 1940. ‘I advised the German forces of the possibility of such a development and gave them the necessary detailed orders,’ said the ex-Corporal to one of the most dazzling arrays of military brains ever gathered under one roof. ‘I planned to aim for the Seine and Loire rivers, and also get a position on the Somme and the Aisne from which the third attack could be made.’

One eye-witness was William Shirer, who later described Hitler as an actor who this day mixed the confidence of the conqueror with a humility that always goes down well when a man is on top. Almost in passing, Hitler offered Churchill a chance to make peace. It was ‘an appeal to reason’, said Hitler. Whether he hoped that his appeal would bring peace is still argued. Some say it was no more than a way of ‘proving’ to the German public that it was the British – and more specifically Churchill – who wanted the war. We shall never know. It was in Hitler’s nature to seek opportunities and pursue those that seemed most promising. ‘So oder so,’ he would repeatedly tell the men around him: achieve it either this way or that way.

When the applause of that multitude of generals, politicians and foreign dignitaries died away, Hitler began to distribute the honours. He created no less than twenty-seven new generals. Mostly they were men who had commanded armies or panzer groups to win for him the great victories in Poland, Norway and the west. But artfully Hitler arranged that yes-men such as Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel – who had told Hitler, ‘my Führer, you are the greatest military commander of history’ – got double promotions and seniority. While Gustav von Wietersheim – whose motorised infantry corps had consolidated the panzer thrust by which Guderian skewered France – was passed over because he had argued with the Führer in 1938. The lesson was learned by some.

So many new promotions were announced that there was not time for the Generals to receive Hitler’s personal congratulations. As each name was called, a General stood up and gave the Nazi salute. There was then a brief pause while other officers leaned across to shake hands and, according again to Shirer, slap the back of the officer honoured.

By the time that Hitler had finished creating Generals, and no less than a dozen Field Marshals, there could have been few men in the opera house who did not understand that this was a cunning piece of megalomania that, while thoroughly debasing the coinage of high rank, defined Hitler as the man who owned the mint.

It was an unprecedented step. The Kaiser made only five Field Marshals in the whole of the First World War. Even General Erich Ludendorff had failed to find a baton in his knapsack. Now Hitler made twelve after less than a year of war, and the fighting had covered only a few weeks. But the new Generalfeldmarschälle were delighted. In Germany such exalted rank, from which the holder could neither be retired nor demoted (or even promoted), brought the provision of an office, a secretary, a staff officer, motor vehicles and horses, and full pay and privileges. And all this for life – or until defeat. A Field Marshal ranked above Reich Chancellor in the protocol lists but not above Führer, which was a new post invented by Hitler for himself.

In order to rescue Göring from the new squalor of Field Marshal rank, Hitler invented a new post for him too. Göring received an extra-large baton. Hitler passed it to where Göring was sitting alone in the Speaker’s Chair, and the Reichsmarschall could not resist opening the box to get a glimpse of it. And for Göring an old medal, the Grosskreuz, was revived. From this date onwards Göring can be seen in photographs wearing his special uniform with the huge cross dangling at his neck.