If Britain Had Fallen (12 page)

4
Central London street scene, May 1940

5
Enemy aliens en route to internment, May 1940

6
A roadblock in Southern England

7
Home Guards erecting a wire trap across a road

8 and 9
Anti-air-landing obstructions, July 1940

10
A
roadblock near the coast. Note the farm-cart and the ancient bathing machines

11
The removal of place names. A notice in the Bristol area, June 1940

12
A church notice board, Summer 1940

13
Anti-tank roadblock, July 1940

14
An anti-aircraft gun’s crew taking post, 1940

15
Sea-bathing on the south coast, 1940 style

It had long been agreed that
Sea Lion
should be launched on a night of bright moonlight, to make it easier for Raeder’s inexperienced crews to keep station, and that the ideal landing time was when high tide on the principal beaches occurred just before dawn, so that the troops could land well up the beach, just as it was getting light, and the barges could be towed off again on an ebb tide. The last time when both these conditions would be met before the winter was approaching and now, to everyone’s relief, the meteorologists were able to announce that it coincided with a promised spell of fine weather, with calm seas and good visibility, likely to begin on 23 September and to last at least a week.

All now depended on the Führer, to whom the success of the strategy he had ordered came as less of a surprise than to his subordinates. There was, he said brusquely, no need for further discussion. Operation
Sea Lion
would go ahead as planned and, so that the troops could make the crossing on the first possible night, S Day would be Tuesday 24 September.

Even while the admirals and field-marshals were dispersing to their cars and Goring was ostentatiously making for his private plane, the teleprinters were clattering out the long-drafted operation orders. Already in the timetable drawn up several months before it was S-10 and there was not a moment to be lost. Next day attacks on the British Isles rose to a new degree of fury as Göring, true to his promise, attacked every ship his airmen could find, while others dive-bombed the British coastal batteries already too short of ammunition, had the Germans but known it, to offer much effective opposition to a landing. The RAF was now ceasing to be a factor in the Germans’ calculations and when at dawn on 21 September, S Day—3, the largest German force since 15 August crossed the enemy coast, hardly a plane rose to intercept them. A few Spitfires and Hurricanes, a few brave Blenheims and Defiants, flew across Southern England in search of Germans and, when they met them, fought until their ammunition was gone and, diving to escape, were brought down by one of the waiting horde of Messerschmitts or attacked as they came in to land. All day the ‘hunter groups’ of Junkers 88s ranged the skies of Britain at will looking for ‘targets of opportunity’, and that evening Air Chief Marshal Dowding, never the man to show his feelings, gruffly reported to the Prime Minister that 11 and 12 Groups of Fighter Command, defending Southern and Eastern England, had ceased for practical purposes to exist.

But two days later, on 23 September, the news was even worse. With air supremacy lost, the defences were, as Churchill had always known, fatally crippled. All round the British Isles, at Dover and Deal, Brighton and Newhaven, Seaford and Shoreham, the German bombers, almost at leisure, pounded the beach defences, while pitifully few of the reconnaisance aircraft, sent to photograph the invasion ports, ever returned. Even more serious, the Luftwaffe was rapidly threatening the Navy’s control of the seas. Off the east and south-west coasts eight destroyers had already been sunk by enemy aircraft; sixteen had been sunk or badly damaged while in port, and dock installations and ammunition and fuel dumps had also suffered badly. With the squadrons formerly covering the north now drawn south, to be lost in the general holocaust, the Luftwaffe’s units based in Norway and Denmark had seized their opportunity to strike at Scapa Flow. The battleship
Rodney
was for the moment crippled, unable to play any part in the coming invasion, the cruiser
Manchester
had been sunk, and four destroyers now lay on the bottom or awaiting major repairs. The mighty
Hood
herself, most powerful and famous ship in the whole Royal Navy, had been at sea but a U Boat had stalked her and, with one lucky shot, had cut her maximum speed to 14 knots. The Luftwaffe had also scattered mines, many of them magnetic, over all the approaches to the British Isles. Off the mouth of the Humber a magnetic mine had crippled the cruiser
Birmingham,
hurrying south to reinforce the anti-invasion defences, while off the east coast three destroyers had been mined in a channel swept clear only a few days before. The British public was not told all this bad news at once but enough was released for the day to become universally known as ‘Black Monday’.