Battle Of Britain Now Lies A Generation In The Past

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30847, 4 September 1965, Page 5

Battle Of Britain Now Lies A Generation In The Past

[Specially written for “The Press’ 1 ] ]Y|EN and women now old enough to be parents of young families were not even born when the Battle of Britain was being fought in the air. There are many other older men and women—although some as young as their middle 40s—who took a part in the early months of World War II and realise to their genuine surprise that those days of high drama have receded by a complete generation.

The 12 weeks of late summer and early autumn of 1940 are regarded as the period of the Battle of Britain; the climax of this battle 25 years ago was on Sunday, September 15, when the Royal Air Force emphatically demonstrated that it had the Luftwaffe’s measure.

The Battle of Britain has come to mean an air engagement. This label was, however. an accident of history.

The battle was expected to be a fullscale effort of all arms fighting to resist invasion and occupation of the British Isles.

On June 18, the Prime Minister, then Mr Winston Churchill, had warned: “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over: I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin.”

An invasion would have meant a struggle against naval forces to cross the channel followed by a struggle against ground forces until the issue was decided.

The preliminary to this was air fighting. On July 16 Adolf Hitler issued his directive to his high command to prepare "and if necessary carry out” the invasion of England in mid-September. On September 17 he cancelled this directive because he had failed to secure air supremacy.

The air fighting had turned out to be not merely the preliminary and the accompaniment to the major struggle, but the whole struggle itself.

This air fighting therefore found itself, to its surprise, with the enormous label “Battle of Britain” —a somewhat pretentious result in the circumstances.

Dates Unofficial J There can be no “official” I dates for the starting and ending of the battle. ' But on July 10 a formation i of 100 enemy bombers and . fighters had moved above the I channel from their French bases, spiralling up in three ! layers to make a ' “cylinder” i above a convoy, which was , attacked. | Such a Luftwaffe formation i was an unprecedented sight I for the defending R.A.F. I fighter aircraft, and it caused I alarm in Government circles. | That night an announce- ; ment in the House of Commons said: “This afternoon one of the greatest battles of I the war has been going on. At this moment it may be that bombers are over many of our towns. Tonight thousands of our soldiers will be on the alert waiting for an attack which may come in several places at dawn.” In fact, invasion was not imminent: but it could be said that on July 10, 1940, the Battle of Britain began. For weeks the Government had already been preparing the minds of the people in Britain for invasion. The Dunkirk evacuation had

scarcely been concluded in the first days of June when the people were being warned to stay in their homes if invasion came—not to choke the roads with refugee movement. Invasion looked real enough, and preparation was made for it in innumerable ways.

Reluctantly the British people had suspended serious sport.

At Wimbledon, the holy of holies of world tennis, a small pig farm had been started. “There is little tennis and we must do something,” said the secretary of the All England Tennis Club.

The England of July, 1940, would not be recognisable to the young people who were born in that year. It was a museum-piece country by comparison with today.

In Parliament some mem bers still wore the stiff singlewing collar like Neville Cham berlain.

The epic battle was coming. Upon it Winston Churchill has long since spoken the eternal epitaph: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” How few?

From a glance at his highly secret Order of Battle on July 10, the chief of Fighter Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding knew that he commanded some 600 serviceable fighters of varying perform-

ance for the defence of his country, of which the majority were Hurricanes.

A glance at his pilot figures told the fighter chief that of his authorised establishment of 1450 pilots he could muster 1253 operationally-fit fighter pilots: and of these more than 50 were on loan from the Royal Navy. Meanwhile, across the Channel and the North Sea the Germans had assembled three Air Fleets.

In Northern Germany, Holland, Belgium and France, Air Fleets 2 and 3 comprised 1130 medium bombers, 320 dive-bombers, 800 singleengined fighters and 250 twin-engined fighters and about 60 reconnaissance aircraft. In Norway and Denmark Air Fleet 5 included 130 medium bombers, 50 reconnaissance aircraft and 40 twin-engined fighters.

Losses Appalled Britain’s fighter strength was only as great as it was because Dowding has gone before the War Cabinet to plead for fighter squadron movements to France to be stopped. He was appalled by the R.A.F.’s fighter losses in France 250 Hurricanes were lost between May 8 and May 18. The Battle of Britain itself was to end in the death of 449 of the “Few” as they fought between July 10 and October 31, 1940.

The Germans attacked first the Channel convoys, then the radar coastal installations, the ports, the fighter stations and fighter aircraft 'actories and finally London. These attacks passed on from one phase to the next without being decisive in any. It was these butterfly changes in German policy which allowed England to save the day. At the beginning of the battle the Royal Air Force fighters were being sent up against the Luftwaffe formations at odds of seven to one, or more, against them. A section of three for example, would be sent against two squadrons. Policy Doubted There are some who hold that the policy of conservation as the battle began was wrong: that the Luftwaffe would have been defeated over the sea and coastal areas if big wing fighter formations had been built up and sallied forth to meet the enemy, fleet to fleet, as in the naval engagements of old.

This is the major tactical controversy of the Battle of Britain; and more of this later.

In the meantime, it is sufficient to say that the Royal Air Force was still rehearsing and learning by trial and error to meet a peril so unique in the experience of the British armed forces that for two months Germany had believed that Britain would sue for peace and dodge the challenge. The .Hurricane and the Spitfire were good aeroplanes, but they were not as good as wartime propaganda led the public to believe.

In spite of official claims, it was shown that the Hurricane’s top speed was only about 305 m.p.h., and the Spitfire’s about 355 m.p.h.

The truth is that the Hurricane was no match for the Messerschmitt 109. The Spitfire was at least equal to Germany’s best fighter at the beginning Of the battle, but there were only 19 operational squadrons of Spitfires as against 27 squadrons of Hurricanes.

The other fighters in the battle must be counted out. These were a few Defiants—a two-seater fighter with a turret, which was a failure—some hastily converted Blenheim medium bombers and half a dozen Gladiator biplanes. An ernormous improvement in the fighter situation was apparent, of course, as compared with the strength at the time of the Munich settlement. When Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in September, 1938, out of 30 operational fighter squadrons one was equipped with Spitfires and five with Hurricanes —six squadrons with eightgun monoplane fighters in 1938 as against 46 in 1940. So many men and events have been claimed as “vital” to the successful outcome of the Battle of Britain that it is difficult to know where to draw the line.

Inflated Claims However, it can be said that without radar the fighters would not have been able to find their targets to the best effect, and that without Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production the machines would not have come forward in sufficient numbers.

As the battle developed, so did each side make inflated claims of the other’s losses.

If the R.A.F.’s figures of enemy losses had inspired an illusory estimate of. the capability of a few fighters to cope with the large formations, the Luftwaffe was even more deluded by its claims of British aircraft destroyed—--661 between August 11 and 19. While the fighters were meeting German attack byday, the Royal Air Force bomber squadrons were at

least flicking Germany’s hide in attacks by day and night.

The bomber crews had some reason to feel that Churchill's use of vivid phrase solely in the interests of the fighters would mean a permanently ruined attention for any other part of the Air Force.

Moreover, the fighter boys were what the bomber boys had always called “over horsepowered and under brainpowered.” There was bound to be some jealousy, especially if the bombers felt that their work necessarily out of sight of home was neglected in the distribution of praise. The Spit and Hurricane boys wallowed in the glamour of their war (and good luck to them) which was fought literally in binocular sight of their sweethearts, high above tea-on-the-lawn at English country homes on that beautiful summer of 1940.

In the evenings the fighter boys went to the pub with the top button of their uniform jacket undone and perhaps with a map pushed down the side of a flying boot. Some of the bomber crews found this very showy. They were having losses, too. At least two daylight bomber squadrons lost 11 out of 12 on a raid.

“Bombers are fighters,” said one bomber pilot after he had struggled home through repeated Messerschmitt attacks, “and fighters are a piece of cake.” August 15, 1940, is not the commemorated day of the Battle of Britain, but it was the day on which the Luftwaffe flew 1786 individual sorties, the most flown on any one day of dhe battle. Tiny Formations

The battle’s own “Trafalgar Day” falls on September 15. the Sunday at the end of London’s weak of daylight bombing upon which, it was believed, the enemy had lost 185 aircraft.

The Royal Air Force, still defending with tiny formations in the interest of conservation, was unaware of the future success which would attend the banding together of squadrons into pairs or wings in September.

Ninety-four fighter ' pilots were killed or reported missing in the days August 8 to 18, and 60 were wounded, many of them badly burned. Dowding was pleading for replacement pilots from other commands. He was allowed 20 volunteers from Bomber Command and 33 from the Army Co-operation squadrons.

These 53 men became fighter pilots after a course of six days. Britain refused to lose her composure. At the height of the battle, when German aircraft were continually being brought down, a Luftwaffe officer, taken prisoner on Earl de la Warr’s Sussex estate, was conducted indoors by the butler. “There is an officer of the German armed forces waiting to see you in the drawing room, your lordship,” announced the butler. By early September the crisis of the battle was at hand. The outnumbered defenders were being worn down. In one week Britain lost 270 aircraft, while only 140

came from the factories. Equally serious was the drain of fighter pilots: Dowding’s fighter squadrons were each down to 16 pilots instead of their quota of 26.

It has been estimated that if the Germans had been able to keep up their pressure for another three weeks they would have achieved their object of crippling Fighter Command. But now Hitler made a fatal blunder.

Stung by a series of raids on Berlin by Bomber Command, he demanded retaliation: he switched the main attack on Britain from the Fighter Command stations to London.

The Luftwaffe had a heavy initial success. It attacked on September 7; London had not yet been assailed in daylight. Fighter Command, tricked also by a series of feints, was caught off its guard. The docks and the East End lay open to the bombers. And that night the raiders were guided in by the great fires they had started. In the week from September 7 to 14 the Germans brought down 109 R.A.F. aircraft for the loss of 119 of their own, and they were confident.

Policy Change But the Royal Air Force was at last changing its policy of defence, and was to meet the raiders “in maximum strength” instead of in driblets. Thus, when on the morning of Sunday, September 15. the Luftwaffe took time in forming up—awaiting every last unit like the school crocodile which is delayed by the last little boy in the lavatory the Royal Air Force fighters were rising in massed formations.

On this day the R.A.F. fell on the Luftwaffe in a cloud of machines; the Germans encountered some 250 Hurricanes and Spitfires in one running battle to and from London.

This day brought a complete end to any German idea of subduing Britain by daylight air raids. Although it could not be known at the time, on September 15 any possibility of an invasion was finished.

Claims of enemy losses were, in all the excitement and confusion of a huge air battle fought in and out of cloud, inevitably exaggerated.

‘Profit And Loss’ The scores, as they were optimistically calculated, had been chalked on the daily profit and loss slate in the map room of the War Cabinet: Destroyed 183, probables 42, damaged 75, lost 28. The next day the Air Ministry claimed the destruction of 185 aircraft, “Seven of them by anti-aircraft guns and the remainder by our fighters.” Many will think it was perhaps a pity that the results of the frigid accountancy of peace (and there are patriotic diehards who refuse to accept them!) were ever declared. After the most exacting scrutiny of German records and examination of German officers the official grand total has been reduced to 56. But it was enough.