THE ADVERSARIES
The situation as it presents itself for our Air Force for the decisive struggle against Britain is as favourable as it can be… What will happen when the German Air Force employs its whole strength against England? The game looks bad for England and her geographical and military isolation. We can face with confidence the great decision to come!
GENERAL QUADE, FORMER COMMANDANT,
LUFTWAFFE STAFF COLLEGE, JULY 19401
The military confrontation in the autumn of 1940 became a test of strength between two rival air forces. The other services waited on the outcome. Armies on both sides of the Channel trained for the coming battle. Navies waited to contest the narrow seas across which German soldiers would have to be conveyed in makeshift transports and hastily converted barges. But none of this mattered as long as the German Air Force had not yet won mastery of the air over southern Britain. For Hitler this was the essential precondition for invasion. ‘If the effect of the air attacks,’ he told Admiral Raeder at the end of July, ‘is such that the enemy air force, harbours, and naval forces, etc., are heavily damaged, operation “Sea Lion” will be carried out in 1940.’ If Germany’s air force could not achieve what would now be called the ‘degrading’ of British air and naval forces, Hitler proposed postponing invasion until May 1941.2
The two air forces that fought what later came to be called the Battle of Britain were led and organized in very different ways. The contrast was personified at the very top, in the choice of air minister. This was a difference typical of the gulf that separated a populist, authoritarian dictatorship from a parliamentary democracy dominated by established elites. Germany’s air minister was the flamboyant National Socialist Hermann Goering, a decorated First World War fighter pilot with the famous Richthofen Squadron. He was an ‘Old fighter’ of the Party, who had risen to become one of the principal political playmakers of the Third Reich. He became minister in 1933, and in 1935 also became the German Air Force commander-in-chief, combining both administrative and military responsibilities. Thanks to his considerable political weight, the air force was built almost from the ground up in only six years. He was a vain and ruthless man, a crude popular orator, a corrupt and ambitious lieutenant whose power expanded during the 1930s in step with Germany’s massive remilitarization. The popular image of a baroque, drug-dependent sybarite is largely caricature. As a commander he lacked judgement, but he did not lack energy or interest. From early August 1940 Goering assumed direct command of the air war against Britain.
Britain’s air minister was Sir Archibald Sinclair. He had been second-in-command of the battalion that Churchill briefly led on the Western Front in 1915–16. After the war he went on to a career as a Liberal Member of Parliament, and by 1940 was leader of the Liberal fraction in the Commons. He had no experience of air power (though his parliamentary under-secretary had flown in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War). Churchill appointed him to his post on the day he became prime minister, which left him with less than three months in office before the onset of the battle. Sinclair was straight out of that rich British tradition of the gifted amateur. As a result he was not regarded as a particularly good minister, though by all accounts a good parliamentary speaker, and a committed defender of the force he represented. His virtues, according to Sir Maurice Dean, who worked with Sinclair throughout the war, were those of the British genteel establishment: ‘thoroughly competent, completely devoted and highly respected… a great gentleman’.3 Sinclair epitomized that British elite of dignified public servants so much despised and ridiculed in German propaganda. Goering, on the other hand, was everything Sinclair was not.
Sinclair, unlike his opposite number, made no pretence at leading the Royal Air Force. The British system did not include a commander-in-chief for each defence service. It was a system run by committees. The military side of the British air effort was placed under the Air Staff, whose leader sat on the Chiefs of Staff Committee, where all major issues of strategy and operations were decided. In August 1940 this position was held by Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall, a career airman nearing the end of his tenure. He was not regarded as an inspirational leader. Like Sinclair’s, Newall’s is not a name that has entered the Battle of Britain pantheon. He was none the less one of the key architects of RAF expansion in the critical years between 1937 and 1940, and a keen defender of air force interests. The British system required effective committee men and military managers; Newall did not command the battle, but he made it possible to fight.
It was the commander-in-chief of Fighter Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, who gave battle to Goering. In 1940 he was already fifty-nine years old and at the end of his career. The son of a Devon schoolmaster, he joined the army in 1899 and served in India and the Far East. A keen skier and polo-player, he taught himself to fly and became a reserve officer in the fledgling Royal Flying Corps in 1914. In the First World War he flew regularly in combat, though already a senior officer in his mid-thirties. In 1916 he was posted to Training Command, and his front-line assignment given to Newall, a former officer in the Gurkhas and the future chief of staff. Dowding became a career air officer in the post-war RAF and when the service was reorganized into separate commands in 1936, he was appointed to lead Fighter Command. Unlike the German system of air fleets, each of which was composed of a mixed force of fighters, bombers, dive-bombers, etc., the RAF was organized functionally, with separate commands for fighters, bombers, coastal aircraft, reserves, training and, later, maintenance. The new system was designed to improve the efficiency and fighting power of the air service; in Fighter Command it produced an organization ideal for the unified defence of the British Isles.
Dowding devoted himself to the task of creating that defensive shield, and in the process was often at loggerheads with the Air Ministry and the Air Staff. His merited reputation as a prickly and independent-minded commander is often used to explain the decision to retire him in June 1939, but he had simply come to the end of his term of appointment. When his designated successor suffered an air accident, the Air Ministry decided, given the tense international situation, to keep Dowding on until March 1940. At the last moment, on 30 March, Newall wrote to him asking him to retain his office until 14 July. On the very brink of the air battle, Dowding still expected to retire. On 5 July, however, with Churchill’s backing, Newall asked Dowding for the third time to remain in office a little longer, until 31 October. Dowding huffily consented, but he fought the Battle of Britain with retirement hanging over his head.4
The Command that Dowding led in July 1940 was composed of four operational groups. The front line in south-east England was held by 11 Group, commanded by the New Zealand airman Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, who had been Dowding’s deputy staff officer in the 1930s. North of London was 12 Group under Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory. The north of England and Scotland were defended by 13 Group, and the west and south-west by 10 Group, which comprised only a handful of squadrons. On 19 June, at the end of the campaign in France, Fighter Command had only 768 fighters in operational squadrons, and of these only 520 were fit for operations. By 9 August, shortly before the launch of the full German air offensive, the situation had improved significantly. There were now 1,032 aircraft at operational bases, of which 715 were immediately ready for operations. There were a further 424 aircraft in storage units, ready for use the next day.5 These figures remained more or less constant throughout the coming battle.
One of the most enduring myths of the Battle of Britain is the idea of the few against the many. The official battle narrative produced by the Air Ministry talked of the unequalled achievement of ‘a force so small, facing one so large’.6 Yet on 10 August 1940, the German single-engined fighter forces assigned to the battle over Britain had an operational establishment of 1,011, slightly fewer than Fighter Command. They enjoyed a marginally better serviceability record, with 805 fighters immediately ready for operations. It is, of course, true that Fighter Command was spread across Britain, while the German fighter force concentrated attacks on the south. It is true, too, that Fighter Command also faced enemy bombers, dive-bombers and heavy twin-engined fighters deployed in the battle, but apart from the heavy fighters, which proved to be outmatched in combat, the bombers and dive-bombers were not a major threat to fighter aircraft, whose job it was to shoot them down while trying to avoid enemy fighters themselves. Air superiority for the German side meant defeating the enemy fighter force, as it did later for the Anglo-American air forces in their bombing offensive over Germany. During the course of the battle, Fighter Command was often outnumbered in the many smaller engagements, but its aggregate numbers were maintained despite high losses. The German Air Force, however, suffered heavy attrition of its fighter units; by 7 September there were only 533 serviceable single-engined fighters. On 1 October the number fell temporarily to 275. Early in the battle there was a rough parity in fighter numbers; in the last weeks Fighter Command had the edge.
The key to this success was aircraft production. During 1940 the numbers of fighter aircraft initially planned for production were substantially exceeded. The Harrogate Programme published in January 1940 designated the output of 3,602 fighters during 1940. Actual production reached 4,283 over the year, and rose very substantially from June onwards throughout the months of the air conflict. In May Churchill appointed his old friend Lord Beaverbrook, the owner of Express newspapers, as Minister of Aircraft Production in the hope that his energy and experience might speed up aircraft deliveries for the coming battle. Though he harried and bullied the manufacturers, it was not his urgent activity alone that produced the finished aircraft. The large-scale output of aircraft was possible only after a considerable period of gestation and could not be conjured out of thin air. The expansion of output in the summer of 1940 was the fruit of earlier preparation under Newall’s stewardship.
Nevertheless, real anxieties existed about the supply of aircraft. Throughout the battle, equipment had to be sent overseas to meet the demands of the war against Italy in North Africa. It is easy to forget that the RAF was forced to fight on two fronts in the summer of 1940, following Italy’s declaration of war on 10 June. Between July and October 161 fighters were sent to the Middle East, including 72 Hurricanes.7 It was hoped that this outflow might be compensated by a swelling stream of aircraft from North America, where Britain placed orders for 14,000 aeroplanes. The results were disappointing. During the period between July and the end of October some 509 aircraft were imported, half of them from late September when the air battle was nearly over. This figure included only 29 Hurricanes produced under licence in Canada, and a mixture of trainer and light bomber aircraft; there were no other fighters for the battle.8 In May, the fiercely anti-communist Lord Beaverbrook suggested the unusual step of buying fighters from the Soviet Union. Cripps, the British ambassador in Moscow, thought the prospects ‘improbable’. The Air Staff, with little enthusiasm, agreed that the I 16 fighter might be ‘usable’, at least in the Middle East theatre. The Chinese ambassador in London volunteered the services of his country as a go-between in the trade, but when Cripps finally approached the Soviet side in June, he was told to wait until Anglo-Soviet trade was on a sounder footing.9
Britain was forced to fight with what she could produce herself in 1940. The aircraft available for the battle were among the very best fighter aircraft in the world. There is no myth surrounding the performance of the Hawker Hurricane and the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire, which between them formed the backbone of Fighter Command. The other aircraft available, the Bristol Blenheim twin-engined fighter and the Boulton-Paul Defiant, lacked the performance necessary to compete with German aircraft by day and were converted early in the battle to a night-fighter role. There were never more than a few squadrons throughout the battle, two of Defiants and six of Blenheims. Bristol Beaufighters began to appear late in the battle as night-fighters.
The great bulk of Fighter Command was composed of Hurricanes. The almost complete identification of the Spitfire with the Battle of Britain has come to obscure the true balance of power between the two models. Spitfires only became available in quantity in the late spring of 1940. Spitfire production lagged substantially behind Hurricane output until early 1941. (See Table 1 p. 145.) Hurricanes provided 65 per cent of the combined output of the two models, Spitfires 35 per cent. In early August, Hurricanes supplied 55 per cent of operational fighter aircraft, Spitfires only 31 per cent, and 11 Group throughout the battle had twice as many Hurricane squadrons as Spitfire.10 The most telling statistic is the loss ratio. From early May to the end of October 1940, Spitfires accounted for almost 40 per cent of combined losses, while constituting only one-third of the force. Spitfires were shot down faster than Hurricanes.11
Both aircraft were at the cutting edge of fighter technology. The Spitfire Mark IA carried an armament of eight .303 machine-guns, the Mark IB (used experimentally in August 1940) had four .303 machine-guns and two 20 mm cannon. The Mark II, which began to arrive in June 1940, had a higher rate of climb and higher service ceiling, but was slightly slower – 354 mph against 362 mph at 18,000 feet. The Hurricane was a slower aircraft, but sturdier. The Hurricane Mark I had armament of eight .303 machine-guns, and had a maximum speed of 325 mph, and an average of 305 mph. The Mark IIA had a maximum speed of 342 mph, and was delivered in small numbers from August 1940. Both marks had a ceiling of 34–35,000 feet.
There was room for improvement on both designs. The Hurricane had a number of drawbacks, but the most serious was the failure to supply a self-sealing fuel tank in the fuselage. The tank, positioned close to the pilot, was easily ignited and was the cause of serious burns for any pilots lucky enough to survive the experience. The pilot canopy was also difficult to dislodge before baling out, and was later modified. Dowding urged Hawker from early in 1940 to seal the fuselage tanks with ‘Linatex’, but not until the battle was the modification slowly carried out. During the battle both Spitfires and Hurricanes had their less-effective two-pitch propellers replaced with constant-speed propellers, which improved general handling qualities and gave them an extra 7,000 feet of ceiling. A more serious problem was the supply of effective armament. Although the eight-gun fighter was regarded as an advance on German models, the .303 armament could not penetrate the armour installed in German fighters and bombers. Mixed armament was supplied for the eight guns in the hope that a mixture of armour-piercing and incendiary bullets would hit something vulnerable. But in his despatch on the battle, Dowding concluded that with better armament higher casualties could have been inflicted on the enemy.12
The supply of trained fighter pilots promised to be a much more damaging constraint on Fighter Command operations than the supply of aircraft. Yet this deficiency can be wildly exaggerated. The number of fighter pilots available for operations increased by one-third between June and August 1940. The personnel records show an almost constant supply of around 1,400 pilots during the crucial weeks of the battle, and over 1,500 in the second half of September. The shortfall of pilots was seldom above 10 per cent of the force. The German single-seater fighter force, on the other hand, had between 1,100 and 1,200 pilots, with around 800–900 available for operations, a deficiency of up to one-third. The German fighter force was able to cope with this shortage only because it enjoyed a lower rate of loss than Fighter Command.13 If Fighter Command were the ‘few’, German fighter pilots were fewer.
Little of this was appreciated at the time on the British side. Air Intelligence estimated that the German Air Force had around 16,000 pilots in the spring of 1940, with at least 7,300 in operational units.14 There was a flurry of activity to try to raise pilot output to match these numbers. The training system was overhauled in the summer of 1940 with the addition of three operational training units capable of supplying 115 pilots instead of 39 every two weeks. This did not satisfy Churchill, who badgered the Air Ministry all summer with unhelpful suggestions for getting men into the cockpit. When he discovered that 1,600 qualified pilots were assigned to staff duties and a further 2,000 to training, he demanded an urgent inquiry, despite Sinclair’s assurance that most of the men were over-age or under-trained. More was expected of the many foreign airmen who made their way to Britain during 1940. By June they included some 1,500 Poles, who were undergoing training near Blackpool. Churchill was determined ‘to make the most of the Poles’, and in early July the War Cabinet authorized the creation of two all-Polish squadrons for Fighter Command.15 By August there was also a Canadian and a Czech squadron, but the rest of the Command had its share of American, Irish, Commonwealth and European volunteers. Two of the four Group commanders were non-British: Park was a New Zealander and Brand, commander of 10 Group, was South African.
Where there were obvious deficiencies was in the supply of non-combat personnel needed to make the whole Command organization work efficiently. There were shortages of manpower of all kinds at the air stations: fitters (grades I and II), armourers, instrument mechanics, maintenance and construction workers. There were shortages of signals personnel, which was a real drawback for a force that relied on communication. It was discovered in the summer that because of losses in France there was a dangerous shortage of tanker lorries for refuelling aircraft. Churchill’s response to this news was simply to exhort the ground crews to work faster: ‘the turn-around of aircraft in units should be a drill comparable with the Navy’s gun drill at Olympia’.16
Technical problems like these may seem trivial when set against the sombre prospect of invasion, but they were the necessary components of a complex system of ‘command and control’ which gave Fighter Command a real striking power and operational flexibility. The heart of the system lay at Command headquarters at Bentley Priory in Stanmore, on the outskirts of London. It was here, in the Filter Room, that information on incoming aircraft was relayed by landline from all the radar stations around the coast. The plots were laid out on a large map table, and once the aircraft track was clearly established, this information was relayed in turn to the Group Headquarters and the individual Sector Stations (airfields). Additional intelligence was supplied by the Observer Corps whose members plotted enemy aircraft visually once they had crossed the coast. This information went first to an Observer Corps Centre, and then straight to Sector Stations and Group Headquarters. Group commanders then had to decide which of their sectors to activate, while Sector Station commanders were responsible for deciding which of their squadrons should fly on a particular operation. Once airborne, aircraft were controlled by Radio-Telephony Direction-Finding (R/T-D/F). The whole process was supposed to take minutes only. Without speed and clear instructions the system was pointless.17
The entire structure of communication was dependent on early warning and continuous observation. The heart of the system was the Radio Direction Finding (RDF) apparatus, better known by the acronym RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging). The technology was first developed in 1935 when it was demonstrated that aircraft reflected back to ground short-wave radio pulses, which could be captured on a cathode ray tube. By 1939 there were 21 so-called Chain Home radar stations circling Britain’s coastline, theoretically capable of detecting the height and range of approaching aircraft up to 200 miles distant. Average range was only 80 miles, but adequate for the German air threat across the Channel. The radar stations could not detect aircraft flying below 1,000 feet, and a second system of Chain Home Low stations was established after the outbreak of war to detect low-flying aircraft and coastal shipping. These stations had a range of only 30 miles and could not predict height, though that mattered less at such low altitudes.
Radar could not yet work inland. It had to be supplemented by the Observer Corps, formally founded in 1929, and commanded in 1940 by Air Commodore A. D. Warrington-Morris. It was staffed by volunteers across the country who largely trained themselves in aircraft recognition and methods of height estimation. On the outbreak of war there were 30,000 observers and 1,000 observation posts, each armed with a grid map, a height estimator, telephone, coloured map markers and the means to make tea. Posts were manned continuously; the system worked well in fine weather, but was defeated by low cloud cover and rain. Height estimation was difficult and often inaccurate. Group headquarters found that numerous Observer Corps plots cluttered up the map tables with a surfeit of less reliable information.18
Radar, too, was by no means infallible. Height readings could be thousands of feet out; the time-lag was at times too long between sighting enemy aircraft and scrambling fighters to meet them (it took a minimum of four minutes for the squadrons to receive radar warning, but only six minutes for enemy aircraft to cross the Channel); radar equipment was continuously upgraded, which left some stations inoperable for brief periods while new technology was installed. By the time of the battle, secret intelligence was being supplied from decrypts of German Air Force ‘Enigma’ traffic, but although this was useful in building up a clearer picture of the German order of battle, it was less useful in giving information quickly enough on the scale and destination of major raids. This was not the case with low-level radio interception, whose role has generally been neglected. The RAF wireless interception station at Cheadle took advantage of the slack radio discipline displayed by German aircrew to supply a regular diet of accurate reports on range, destination and origin of aircraft which was relayed directly to Command headquarters as well as Group and Sector commanders. The net effect of all these different sources of intelligence was to create a web of information that gave Fighter Command an essential counter to the element of surprise enjoyed by an enemy who could pick and choose when and where to attack.19
Fighter defence was supplemented by a network of anti-aircraft guns and barrage balloons. Anti-Aircraft Command was established only in April 1939. Headed by Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Pile, it was integrated with Fighter Command to provide a unitary defence network. A crash production programme for anti-aircraft artillery was pushed through, but could not make up for severe deficiencies. By June 1940 there were 1,204 heavy and 581 light anti-aircraft guns to cover the entire country, far short of the planned 2,232 heavy and 1,860 light guns. The batteries were activated, like the fighter stations, from Fighter Command headquarters. The country was divided into 130 warning districts, based on the layout of the national telephone system. Three telephone operators at headquarters kept in continuous contact with trunk-exchanges in London, Liverpool and Glasgow. When enemy aircraft were 20 miles distant, a ‘yellow’ warning was sent to the endangered districts to place emergency services on alert. Five minutes later a ‘red’ alert would follow and air-raid sirens would start up, followed shortly by the anti-aircraft barrage. ‘Green’ indicated that the aircraft had passed and signalled the all-clear. It was a system that worked almost too well. During the summer of 1940 whole areas of the country were sent scurrying into air-raid shelters at the distant approach of a handful of aircraft. The disruption to normal work-time brought the government to the point of abandoning air-raid warning altogether. In June 1940 the Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, suggested that people should accustom themselves ‘to receiving no warnings when only a few aircraft were in the neighbourhood, even if these aircraft dropped bombs’, but the Cabinet sensibly opted to retain some element of warning.20
The air defence system was set up to counter an enemy bombing offensive and to ameliorate its effects on the bombed population. In the summer of 1940 it had to be adjusted to the threat of invasion. The two operations were by no means the same. Invasion presented Fighter Command with a range of new responsibilities, including close collaboration with Bomber Command, whose aircraft had to be protected as they pounded the invasion beaches. Provisional plans were considered as early as October 1939 when it was agreed to supply the army with two squadrons of Blenheims and one army co-operation squadron to repel an invasion force. The assumption underlying this feeble gesture was that no invasion could be attempted until Fighter Command had been neutralized, and that the real battle would be fought in the skies over southern England long before invasion could be undertaken.21
By the summer of 1940 invasion was a much more realistic threat. Fighter Command was instructed by the commander-in-chief of Home Forces, General Sir Alan Brooke, to prevent the German Air Force from achieving air superiority and to protect airfields and other vital military targets. At the same time fighters were expected to attack, in order of priority, enemy transport aircraft bringing in men and supplies, enemy dive-bombers, high-flying reconnaissance aircraft and enemy fighters attacking RAF bombers over the invasion area. This dizzy list was enlarged in late summer by additional requirements to protect naval vessels and bases and to attack enemy barges and sea transports with cannon-armed fighters. Bomber Command, meanwhile, was asked to attack ports of embarkation by night. During invasion, bombers were needed immediately over the invasion beaches, where it was hoped invasion could be nipped in the bud in no more than forty-eight hours of ‘utmost physical and mental effort’.22
Much thought was given to subterfuge. In the October directive it had been assumed that Germany might try to seize airfields using small units of tough airborne troops.23 German success in capturing the fortress of Liège in May 1940 gave real substance to the fear, and priority was given to strengthening airfield defence. The results were often lamentable. Two separate inspections were undertaken by army commanders. They found some anti-aircraft guns placed on the roofs of vulnerable buildings, others scarcely concealed, and many incapable of either seeing or engaging low-flying aircraft. Many stations had neither barbed wire nor pill-boxes. It had been decided that RAF ground personnel should not be armed, so that airfields had to rely on local army units, which would be expected to arrive only after a delay of one to two hours, and in force in only four hours. In August, RAF airfield staff were given arms again, but were not yet properly trained in their use.24 Reports showed that when enemy aircraft occasionally landed on British airfields, they were able to take off again unmolested.
There were also fears that German forces would use poison gas to achieve swift mastery of key front-line airfields. To this threat the only answer was deemed to be retaliation in kind. The Air Ministry sent stores of gas bombs (chiefly mustard gas) to airfields, where they were prepared ready for use at three hours’ notice. The Air Staff preferred the idea of using gas against soldiers on the invasion beaches to be sure of containing the threat at once, but Churchill and the chiefs of staff instructed the Air Ministry in late September to plan for gas attacks on the German civilian population in case gas was used by the Germans in the early stages of invasion.25 Gas attacks were also considered in the special case of a German surprise attack on Ireland, a fantasy that still lived on in Whitehall circles throughout the summer and autumn of 1940. In late June the Air Staff directed the small air force stationed in Northern Ireland to prepare for an attack on German troops ‘and I.R.A. irregulars co-operating with them’. Bomber aircraft were to fly from the mainland bringing either gas or high-explosive bombs. All air crew were asked to exercise ‘particular discretion’ when attacking targets south of the border ‘which may cause loss of life to Irish civilians’.26 This prospect must have seemed a peculiarly daunting one for the force of 12 fighters and 20 light bombers available in Northern Ireland to repel the hitherto unstoppable Wehrmacht. In the end, none of these fears materialized, neither the gas and airborne assault, nor the invasion of Ireland. German military leaders recognized that the preliminary to any land operation was the elimination of the enemy air force, and made their plans accordingly. Victory over France transformed the prospects for a successful air campaign for it allowed the German Air Force to fly from any point on the European coastline from Norway to Brittany. The critical factor for the German side was the short range of the Messerschmitt Me 109 single-engined fighter. Flying from Germany, it would have had hardly any time for combat over southern England; even flying from bases in northern France, the Me 109 could only reach as far as London. When engaged in heavy combat, which used up fuel more rapidly, London was difficult to reach. Some efforts were made to extend fighter range. A disposable drop fuel tank made of moulded plywood was developed before the war, but it was prone to leak and easy to ignite, and was not used. In the summer of 1940 experiments were conducted in towing fighter aircraft for the first part of their flight, but this tactic was also abandoned.27 Prior to invasion, the German Air Force could only contest air superiority across an arc stretched over Kent, Sussex and Surrey.
The air forces that faced Fighter Command were nevertheless stretched out around the northern European littoral. Air Fleet 5 was stationed in Norway, and could only attack with long-range aircraft. Preliminary skirmishes by day in August showed that these aircraft would take unacceptably high losses both from enemy action and the long over-sea flight, and Air Fleet 5 took no further part in the battle. The territory covered by Air Fleet 2 stretched from northern Germany, through Belgium and the Netherlands as far as Le Havre in occupied France. Fighter squadrons were clustered in and around the Pas de Calais, close to their targets. To the west lay Air Fleet 3, which had a much larger complement of bombers and dive-bombers for the attack on coastal areas and naval targets.
Air Fleets 2 and 3 were led by two middle-aged Bavarians, the cream of the new generation of air force commanders appointed in 1935 when the German Air Force was refounded. Air Fleet 2 was led by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, recently promoted for his contribution to the defeat of France. He is best remembered for his stubborn and occasionally brutal defence of northern Italy against Anglo-American armies later in the war, when he once again reverted to his original career as an army officer. Though lacking air experience, he proved an able organizer, with a genuine authority. His geniality made him a popular leader. Kesselring’s fellow commander in charge of Air Fleet 3 was Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle, who led the notorious German Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War. He, too, was a career army officer, with limited flying experience from the First World War. Sperrle, like Kesselring, was energetic and popular, his corpulence a match for that of his plump commander-in-chief. Though neither had the long air force experience of Newall or Dowding, they brought with them all the qualities of organizational and operational understanding that set the German army apart in the early years of the war.
The task the two commanders faced in the summer of 1940 was one poorly anticipated in the 1930s. The German Air Force had to adjust in short measure from the role of close army support to a campaign of independent air operations against a well-armed air enemy. This change brought a host of practical problems. A whole network of air bases had to be established across northern France. Some existing French air stations could be used, but even these needed to be supplied with stocks of food, oil and spare parts to function effectively. The repair organization, vital for maintaining high levels of serviceability, was more difficult to improvise locally, and many damaged aircraft had to make their way by road and rail back to the Reich for repairs. In order to cope with the new conditions, German fighter forces were gathered into separate operational commands, rather on the lines of the British Group. However, they lacked two significant advantages enjoyed by the RAF: they had no way of tracking where the enemy was, and there was no way of controlling the whole fighter force from the ground once it was airborne.28
The German Air Force also operated throughout the coming battle with low levels of reserves. This was largely a consequence of the poor performance of German aircraft production. Even though Hitler granted special priority in June to the air and naval armaments needed to subdue Britain, the supply of aircraft remained sluggish throughout 1940. Pre-war planning had anticipated a doubling of aircraft production in the first year of war to reach more than 20,000, but these targets were regularly scaled down during 1939 to match factory output. Plan 15, in September 1939, and Plan 16, drawn up only two months later, both reduced planned production in 1940 to little more than 11,000. A new plan was drafted in July 1940, but it offered even lower output for the second half of the year. Some effort was made to give fighter production greater priority, but during 1940 only 1,870 single-engined fighters were produced against a planned output of 2,412.29 This was less than half the British figure. During the summer and autumn of 1940, output of the Me 109 reached 164 in June, 220 in July, 173 in August and 218 in September, a grand total of 775 against the 1,900 fighters produced in Britain.30
There were many causes for the deficiency but complacency was not one of them. Goering pressured and bullied the aircraft industry every bit as much as Beaver-brook. Nor were the resources lacking. The German aviation industry had access to the most advanced aeronautical technology in the world and enjoyed larger resources of machinery, raw materials and manpower than the British. The answer must be sought elsewhere. The leading culprit was the head of air force procurement, Colonel Ernst Udet. If ever there was a square peg in a round hole, it was Udet. A former First World War fighter ace, he became a well-known stuntman and film-star in the 1920s, and was a noted cartoonist. He gravitated to Goering’s social circle, and was chosen out of the blue to head the air force technical office in 1936, partly because of his popular reputation, partly because Goering wanted a subordinate who posed no threat to his authority. Udet was a ladies’ man and bon viveur, a daring test pilot and man of action, but he was also a political lightweight who found himself utterly out of his depth in a senior bureaucratic post in which long experience and wide technical knowledge were irreplaceable assets. He was manipulated and misled by the businessmen and officials who surrounded him. Later, in 1941, in desperation at his impossible position, he committed suicide, scrawling on the wall of his apartment before he died that Goering had betrayed him to ‘Jews’ in the Air Ministry.31 His place was taken too late by Field Marshal Erhard Milch, state secretary in the Air Ministry and a former director of Lufthansa, who had been sidelined by Goering in the late 1930s because he threatened to be too competent.
The German Air Force was still a formidable enemy in 1940. It was armed with some of the best combat aircraft then available. The high standard of production and the technical complexity of German aircraft provide at least part of the explanation why Udet found it so difficult to raise the production threshold quickly. In the Messerschmitt Me 109 (also known as the Bf (Bayerische Flugzeugwerke) 109) Germany possessed arguably the world’s best all-round fighter aircraft. The bulk of the force that fought in the battle bore the suffixes E-1 and E-3, variants with improved engine performance introduced during the course of 1939 and 1940. The Me 109E-1 had a top speed of 334 mph at 19,000 feet, and a ceiling of 34,000 feet. It was armed with two 20 mm cannon and two 7.9 mm machine-guns. The cannon provided a less rapid rate of fire than British fighter weapons, but the explosive shells were more effective. In the summer, armour was added to give the pilot enhanced protection. The Me 109E could be out-turned by both the Hurricane and the Spitfire (though whether this was due to the fact that British aircraft used higher-octane aviation fuel remains open to debate); at heights above 20,000 feet, however, the performance gap between the two sides widened considerably in the Messerschmitt’s favour. Because the German fighter’s DB 601 engine had a hydraulic supercharger, which allowed variation of speed with altitude, the Me 109 could fight much more robustly at high altitudes than it could at the lower levels flown by German bombers. If the Battle of Britain had been fought at 30,000 feet, the RAF would have lost it.32
The other German aircraft used extensively in the battle were less effective. The second fighter employed was the Messerschmitt Me 110C/110D twin-engined heavy fighter. It could fly further than the Me 109, and had a comparable speed of 336 mph at 19,000 feet, but it proved much less manoeuvrable than the smaller fighters, and its range was much less than expected under combat conditions. The Me 110’s purpose was to lure enemy fighters into battle, allowing the bombers that followed them to fly on to their targets unmolested. In the event the Me 110 had itself to be protected by the Me 109 to prevent insupportable losses. When the Me 110 flew beyond single-seater fighter range, it proved a sitting duck. The British thought that the German Air Force flew a third fighter, the Heinkel He 113, but it proved to be a figment of the imagination. The only aircraft with this designation was a twin-seat dive-bomber developed in 1936, but the model was renumbered the He 118 by its designer because Heinkel feared pilot superstition. The aircraft remained jinxed none the less; when Udet test-flew it himself in June 1936, it broke up in mid-air and he narrowly escaped with his life. The He 118 never saw service. Its mistaken identification in the battle has been attributed to German misinformation.
German bomber aircraft were generally no match for the RAF. The Junkers Ju 87B dive-bomber suffered the same fate as the Me 110. Much slower than the heavy fighter, it was highly vulnerable during bomb attack and was withdrawn early in the battle. The standard twin-engined bombers, the Heinkel 111 and Dornier 17, were early designs and faced obsolescence by 1940. They were slow and poorly armed for combat with high-class fighters; they carried a small bomb-load (around 2,000 pounds maximum), which they could deliver with at least a limited accuracy thanks to a system of radio navigational beams. The newest German bomber, the Junkers Ju 88A-1, could fly further, had a higher speed, and in a dive could not only bomb with greater accuracy, but could outrun a Spitfire. It was produced in small numbers in 1940, and the maximum bomb-load was only 4,000 pounds, about one-fifth of the load carried later in the war by the Avro Lancaster used in the bombing of Germany. Like all German bombers, its defensive armament was weak, and even its extra speed brought it no immunity during daylight operations against the more manoeuvrable and heavily armed British fighters.
The German Air Force also possessed a large complement of highly qualified air crew, with extensive combat experience. Although the single-engined fighter force had fewer pilots than Fighter Command, they survived longer and had a higher rate of operational readiness.33 Most of the pilots who began the air battle had been trained well before the outbreak of war, though night-flying technique was neglected until the summer of 1940. The average age of German pilots captured in June and July was twenty-six; their average length of service was almost five years.34 The pilots who engaged in the battle represented the cream of the German Air Force. The training system in 1940 was reformed, like the British system, to try to speed up the throughput of pilots, but standards of training were rigorous. Even if Udet had succeeded in conjuring more aircraft out of German factories, the air force would still have had difficulty supplying the men to fly them.
The task the German Air Force was called on to perform resembled, at least superficially, the opening days of the campaigns against Poland and France when the enemy air force was swiftly neutralized by concentrated bomber and dive-bomber attacks on airfields and support services. A German radio broadcast in early August explained the similarity: ‘the main weapon is the bomb. German bombers will be employed with concentrated effect and in continuous waves. The effect obtained by them has already been shown in such towns as Warsaw, Rotterdam…’35 German Air Force records suggest, however, that the fighter was regarded as the principal weapon. The object of the air campaign was to wipe out Fighter Command, using the bombers as bait. ‘Whether the objectives were convoys in the Channel,’ ran a post-war interrogation of German air leaders, ‘or airfields inland, or London, the object was always the same – to bring the defending squadrons to battle to weaken them.’36
There was in truth a certain confusion in the instructions issued to the German Air Force in July and early August. On 11 July the three air fleets were issued with an operational directive to begin ‘intensive air warfare against England’, and on 17 July they were ordered to full readiness. Probing attacks began against ports and shipping on the basis of instructions issued earlier in May, but still current, for blockade attacks on British imports. Yet another directive, issued on 16 July for Operation Sealion, ordered further preparations for invasion. Air fleets were expected to attack coastal defences, enemy troop concentrations and reserves, key communication targets and naval installations. The only object they were not yet ordered to destroy was the enemy air force, whose elimination was supposed to be the primary pre-condition for launching an invasion at all. Only in late July did the air force commanders present to Goering their plans for winning air superiority, and not until 1 August did Hitler issue a further directive requiring the air force ‘to overpower the English air force… in the shortest possible time’ through attacks on the whole air force structure and its supporting industries. Once ‘local or temporary air superiority’ was gained, the air force was then expected, without explanation, to switch back to the blockade role it had started with. The knock-out blow against the RAF was set to begin on or shortly after 5 August.37
This plethora of orders reflected the deeper uncertainties about the conduct of the war at the highest level. The air force was much clearer in its own mind about the primary objective, and confident of achieving it. On 6 August at Carinhall, his sumptuous country estate outside Berlin, Goering had a final meeting with Kesselring, Sperrle and the commander of Air Fleet 5, General Hans Stumpff. The operational plan they adopted was straightforward: in four days Fighter Command would be destroyed over southern England. The plan was then to move forward systematically sector by sector, destroying military and economic targets up to a line from King’s Lynn to Leicester, until daylight attacks could finally be extended at will over the whole of the British Isles. The initial aim was to send over small forces of bombers with a light escort, leaving the fighter force free to hunt out and destroy enemy fighters. The day for the start of the attack was codenamed Adlertag, day of the eagles.38
The precise date for the start of the campaign was more difficult to fix, since success depended critically on a spell of good weather. In Berlin the popular mood worsened at the weeks of apparent inactivity, even when skies were clear. ‘Wonderful weather,’ Goebbels noted acidly. ‘Too good for our air force.’ He detected a certain nervousness in the public: ‘The people fear that we have missed the right moment.’ But in Hitler he observed a real hesitancy to take ‘a damn difficult decision’.39 The date for attack was finally fixed for 10 August, but bad weather over southern England forced postponement, first to the following day, then to the morning of 13 August. The tension deepened as each day the weather intervened. ‘People wait and wait for the great attack,’ Goebbels noted for 12 August.40 The following day the weather was indifferent, and attacks were postponed again until the afternoon. By chance, news of the postponement arrived too late for hundreds of aircraft already airborne. They pressed on under poor flying conditions to launch, at only part strength, the long-expected assault. Adlertag began not with a bang, but with a whimper.