Battle of Britain (8 page)

“We would fly through these columns of smoke, down towards the men, firing our guns into them.” He shook his head. “That was no job for a Luftwaffe pilot. There was no honour in that.”

I looked at him but he stayed turned away. In the end I turned away too. I felt like he wanted me to say something, to say it was OK. But I couldn't – no one could. As for honour; was there honour in any of this? And what would I have done in his place? I just didn't know any more.

A kittiwake flew alongside me, only a couple of yards away, its face level with mine. It turned and seemed to look straight at me, its head cocked to one side slightly. Its black eyes glinted and then it banked away from me and glided clear of the boat and out of sight.

I looked back towards the German. At first I thought he was just hanging his head and looking at the deck, but then I realized he was slumped forward. I got up and caught him as he fell and sat him up again. I put my arm around him.

A pool of deep red blood was sinking into the wooden decking below him and the pale grey blanket was soaked with it. His pale hands were cold. I whispered to him. I asked him his name, but there was no reply. He was dead.

He was dead and suddenly I wanted to know his name. Suddenly I had the weirdest feeling that I had more in common with this man than with anyone else I knew. His head rested against my shoulder and I put my arm around him to stop him falling.

And then, in the midst of those staring fishermen, I did something I had never done in the whole course of the war. I began to cry. . .

 

 

Anyway, my leg was patched up. They pulled a few pieces of shrapnel out and stitched me up, good as new – or almost, anyway – and before I knew it I was back in the cockpit. I ended up with this rather good scar in my calf shaped like the letter “m” or the way little kids draw birds.

Then one day in April '41, I was lying on my bunk reading a book Lenny had sent me. One of the orderlies came in and gave me a package that had arrived from my folks. I used a letter from Harriet to keep my place, closed the book and opened it up.

There was a copy of a pamphlet the Government had brought out. The cover showed vapour trails against a darkening sky and the words
The Battle of Britain
. Underneath that, across the black silhouette of a building, was written:
August–October 1940
.

The Air Ministry had published it, so it was full of stuff about RAF tactics, with diagrams and the like, and maps covered in arrows. There was a photo of laughing pilots walking across a sunlit aerodrome, hair and scarves blowing in the breeze. I wondered how many of them were still alive.

The pamphlet made it all seem much less of a shambles than it felt at the time. The dawn scrambles and the rabid dogfights had all been smartened up and dusted down. There were little drawings of planes with dotted lines coming from their guns and others with smoke trailing out. It all looked so clean and simple. No blood or pain or burning. No screaming. I couldn't read it then and haven't since.

Mum and Dad wrote and said they were so proud of me. They said I was part of history now. I wrote back and told him so were they. So was Edith. So was Lenny. Harriet. We all were.

But there was truth in it. We had made a difference, we “Few” – I had to admit it. We hadn't beaten the Nazis, but we'd shown they couldn't get everything their own way. We'd given the bully a black eye and winded him a little. And maybe there was honour in that after all. Yes, I think that maybe there was.

 

 

Officially, the Battle of Britain was fought between 8 August and 30 October 1940 and was the first time that aircraft had played such a decisive role in the War. As well as ensuring that Britain remained free of German control, and free of Nazi deportations to concentration camps, the battle proved to be a major turning point in the War. It helped to convince the Americans to enter the War on the side of the Allies. British resistance also meant that there would be a base from which to bomb German forces (and civilians) and eventually launch an allied invasion of Europe in June 1944.

From the outset, the Germans knew that if they were to invade Britain successfully, they would have to put the RAF out of action first. The German air force (Luftwaffe) began to attack British shipping convoys in the Channel, to disrupt trade, to stop supplies reaching British shores from other countries, and to lure Spitfires and Hurricanes into dogfights over the sea.

During the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command was led by Air Vice-Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding. It was divided into four Groups: 10 Group covered the West Country, 11 Group covered the South East, 12 Group covered the area roughly from London to York, and 13 Group covered the remaining North of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

11 Group was commanded by Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park from its HQ in Uxbridge, and was divided into sectors, each with its own Sector Station – Biggin Hill in Kent being perhaps the most famous. As it was closest to German Occupied France, 11 Group was the first line of defence during the Battle of Britain and squadrons in this Group were reinforced from squadrons in other groups to keep them up to full strength. Although Harry Woods is fictional, it is a squadron in 11 Group in which he is seen to serve.

The odds were in favour of a German victory at the beginning of the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe were well equipped and had well-trained, battle-hardened pilots and crews and the RAF had experienced heavy losses in France and Norway and during the Dunkirk evacuation. At the end of June it had less than 400 Spitfires and Hurricanes for the defence of the whole country. But Britain did have one secret weapon.

Radar, or Radio Direction Finding (RDF) as it was known, was first developed in 1935. It used shortwave radio pulses to pick up incoming aircraft. The radio pulses bounced back and were captured by a cathode ray tube, showing up as blips of light on a glass screen. By 1939 there were a string of radar stations along the coast from Shetland to the south coast of England.

Information gathered by radar stations (and from members of the Observer Corps dotted around the coast) was relayed by landline to the Filter Room at Fighter Command HQ at Bentley Priory in Stanmore near London. The aircraft were plotted on a large map table and then the information was relayed to the Group Headquarters and then to Sector Stations (airfields). Group commanders decided which Sector Stations to activate. Sector Station commanders decided which squadrons should fly.

Radar had its problems though. Radar picked up all sorts of things – clouds, flocks of birds etc – as well as planes. Height readings were very inaccurate and although it might only take four minutes to warn the squadrons, it only took six minutes for German planes to cross the Channel. Luckily for the RAF, Messerschmitts were at the limit of their range by the time they got to England and Me109s had hardly any fuel in their tanks for dogfights over southern England and could barely reach London.

Radar was a secret and there was a lot of speculation in the country about what the radar stations with their huge masts and antenna were for. The WAAFs, like Harriet in this story, who worked in the airfield Ops rooms, were sworn to secrecy and pilots like Harry would not need to be told. The Germans knew we had it, but failed to put it out of action during their attacks on 12 August.

Germans also failed to follow through on their attacks on RAF airfields. Too often they targeted the smaller satellite airfields rather than the important sector airfields. Even so, they did kill many pilots and ground crew and destroyed valuable aircraft. Though it was terrible for the people of London, it was a let off for the RAF when Hitler changed tactics and started bombing cities instead.

Civilian losses became heavier and heavier as the Luftwaffe's bombs rained down. Over 13,000 Londoners had been killed by the end of 1940 and another 18,000 hospitalized. Thousands more were killed in other cities across the country. Despite this, most people learned to cope with the bombing, and many were eventually able to sleep through it!

Pilot losses were horrendous during the Battle of Britain; at the end of August 1940, RAF pilot losses were approaching 120 men a week. Replacing pilots was an even bigger problem than replacing aircraft, as operational training time was shortened and shortened, with many pilots entering combat never having fired their guns before. Many only flew one fatal sortie.

More than 80% of the 3,080 aircrew listed were British, but those that were not had often volunteered, making their way to Britain at their own cost and often at great personal risk, often escaping from the advancing German army. Six of the twelve top-scoring Fighter Command pilots were from countries other than Britain.

Most Polish pilots, like the fictional Waldemar in this story, were more highly trained than their British counterparts, but as they rarely spoke fluent English, they had British squadron and flight commanders allocated to their squadrons.

Although the Polish squadrons did not become operational until August 1940, they accounted for 7.5% of all the aircraft shot down by the RAF, and the Polish 303 Squadron had the highest score rate in Fighter Command.

 

Nationality of aircrew involved in the Battle of Britain:

 

 

The Home Guard

There was a constant threat and fear of invasion in 1940 and the government made a radio appeal in May for any men not already conscripted (because they were too old, for instance) to form platoons of Local Defence Volunteers. Renamed the Home Guard by Churchill, one million men had joined by August – far more than expected. The government could not afford to arm them all and so they made do with whatever they could lay their hands on.

 

 

30 July 1936
RAF Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) is formed.

13 March 1938
Germany, led by Chancellor Adolf Hitler, annexes Austria.

June 1938
Spitfires first enter service with 19 Squadron, RAF Duxford in Cambridgeshire.

15 March 1939
Germans invade Czechoslovakia.

23 March 1939
Britain and France declare they will defend Belgium, Holland and Switzerland from German attack.

6 April 1939
Britain, France and Poland sign mutual assistance pact.

28 June 1939
Women's Auxilliary Air Force (WAAF) is formed.

1 September 1939
Germans invade Poland. RAF Reserve & RAFVR called up for active service.

2 September 1939
RAF deployed in France.

3 September 1939
Britain declares war on Germany after it refuses to withdraw troops from Poland.

27 September 1939
Warsaw surrenders.

12 October 1939
British troops sent to France as British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

1 January 1940
Two million British 19-27 year olds are conscripted into the Armed Forces.

9 April 1940
Germans launch full-scale invasion of Norway.

10 May 1940
Germans attack France, Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg. Chamberlain government falls and he is succeeded as British PM by Winston Churchill, who appoints Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production.

15 May 1940
Germans break through the French line.

25 May 1940
British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, authorizes the withdrawal of the BEF to Dunkirk.

31 May 1940
RAF provide air cover for the evacuation of Dunkirk.

4 June 1940
Operation Dynamo completes the evacuation of 338,000 British and allied troops from Dunkirk.

18 June 1940
Churchill famously states: “
The Battle of France is over. I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin
.”

22 June 1940
France surrenders to the Germans.

7 July 1940
Hitler issues a directive for the “War against England”.

10 July 1940
Beaverbrook calls on British housewives to donate anything aluminium for use in aircraft manufacture. British pilot operational training cut from six months to four weeks.

16 July 1940
Hitler orders “Operation Sealion”, his plan for the invasion of Britain by a surprise landing of troops on the south coast.

19 July 1940
Hitler offers peace to Britain but Britain rejects his terms.

1 August 1940
Hitler orders the Luftwaffe to overpower the RAF “in the shortest possible time”.

2 August 1940
Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, orders Adlertag (Day of the Eagles) – a plan to destroy British air power and open the way for invasion.

12 August 1940
German raids against radar stations on the south coast.

13 August 1940
Adlertag begins in poor weather – the German date for the start of the battle.

15 August 1940
British radar stations attacked again.

17 August 1940
British pilot operational training cut again – from four to two weeks.

18 August 1940
German attacks on RAF fighter airfields.

20 August 1940
Churchill makes his “
Never in the field of human conflict
” speech to Parliament.

24/25 August 1940
German bombs fall on Slough, Richmond Park, Dulwich and the City.

25/26 August 1940
nighttime raid on Berlin by Bomber Command in retaliation for bombing of the City.

28/29 August 1940
Germans bomb London suburbs.

29 August 1940
British air raid on Berlin.

30 August 1940
RAF bases bombed.

31 August 1940
Hitler postpones “Operation Sealion”.

1 September 1940
RAF bases bombed.

5 September 1940
Hitler switches bombing campaign to towns and cities, including London.

7 September 1940
Mass daylight air raid on London. 448 civilians killed and 1,600 injured.

15 September 1940
Fighter Command destroys 25% of a German air assault on London. (Battle of Britain Day.)

17 September 1940
“Operation Sealion” postponed indefinitely.

18 September 1940
Luftwaffe forced to switch to nighttime raids because of heavy losses.

30 September 1940
Blitz begins – nightly bombing campaign against London.

14 November 1940
Coventry devastated by German bombers.

29 December 1940
Biggest air raid of War with a third of City of London destroyed.

March 1941
Air Ministry publishes a pamphlet called
Battle of Britain
. More than a million sold. The Ministry chooses 8 August as the official start of the Battle and 31 October as the end.