Richard Overy - The Battle of Britain

It was perhaps with a sense of relief that the German Air Force finally received Goering’s order to destroy Fighter Command in four days of intensive attacks in the middle of August. Bad weather interfered not only on Adlertag but on several subsequent days, so that the decisive shift in German strategy was obscured from the British side. Fighter Command did observe an increase in activity against radar installations from 8 August, and on fighter stations near the coast. But only by 18 August did the attack manifestly increase in intensity and move further inland against the entire structure of the fighter force. 10Two days later, with aircraft grounded again by poor weather, Goering issued a directive to the German air fleet commanders to finish off Fighter Command with ‘ceaseless attacks’ by day and by night, in time for a landing in Kent and Sussex now scheduled for 15 September. 11

The attack on Fighter Command airfields has always been regarded as the hub of the Battle of Britain. Between 12 August and 6 September there were 53 main attacks on airfields, but only 32 of these were directed at fighter stations. All but two of these attacks were made against 11 Group airfields. There were additional small raids on a wide range of lesser targets; the German Air Force calculated that there had been approximately 1,000 altogether, against industrial installations, air force supplies and communications. There were six main raids against the radar stations on the south coast, most of them on 12 August; they were not attacked repeatedly, and hardly at all towards the end of the second phase of the battle. 12According to those attack reports that gave details of casualties, some 85 personnel were killed, at least seven of them civilians. The single largest loss of life occurred at Biggin Hill on 30 August, when 39 were killed and 25 injured in an accurate low-level bomb attack. The number of aircraft destroyed on the ground was remarkably small, and declined quickly once serious efforts were made to disperse and camouflage aircraft. Air patrols were instituted to protect refuelling squadrons from a sudden surprise attack. In total, 56 aircraft were destroyed on the ground, 42 of them in the first week of the attack, but only seven in the whole of September. 13

The airfields that suffered severely were the group most easily reached from France. These included the forward fields at Manston, Lympne and Hawkinge near the Kent and Sussex coasts, all of which were temporarily shut down following a number of attacks. Of these Manston was the most heavily attacked, and was rendered unserviceable on six days and five nights between 14 August and 12 September. Nevertheless, desperate efforts were made to keep airfields operational. After the first attack on Manston on 12 August, 350 men were brought in to carry out repairs and the station was operational again the following day. Aircraft were kept flying after subsequent raids until five raids in one day on 24 August left a number of unexploded bombs. This impeded full recovery for only two days. 14

The attack on Lympne on 13 August was particularly heavy, with 400 bombs falling on the landing ground alone. Repairs were slow because construction workers had been sent to Manston to help with the attacks of the previous day. The Air Ministry sent 100 of its own building workers to help, and 150 men were found from firms in the surrounding district. When Lympne was attacked once more, on 17 August, the local men were so upset that they left, with only a small landing strip yet clear. They were induced back only to be hit by a third raid on 30 August. This time five local workers were killed when a bomb hit a slit trench; work was once more delayed. Park took the opportunity of this unfortunate history to press the Air Ministry to supply at least one bulldozer and one excavator at each aerodrome, and to allocate repair parties of 150 men from a central pool of government workers.

German Air Intelligence suggested at the end of August that at least eight airfields had been knocked out entirely and the rest of the system severely depleted. The truth was quite different. Fighter Command adapted itself quickly to the new phase of attack. Park was able to move aircraft to aerodromes further inland and to prepared satellite fields. The inland circle of airfields was then protected by the aircraft of 10 and 12 Groups, while 11 Group fighters fought the raiding aircraft. New tactics were issued to the squadrons on 19 August to cope with the airfield campaign. Fighters were told to engage the enemy over land and not risk combat over the sea, where clusters of enemy fighters waited to escort the bombers back to safety and to destroy any unwary pursuers. Pilots were encouraged to attack bombers first and avoid combat with enemy fighters, while at first notice of incoming aircraft, stations were ordered to send up a squadron to patrol below cloud cover over the airfield to minimize risk of a surprise attack. Once airborne, Spitfires were encouraged to engage enemy fighters, while Hurricanes hunted down German bombers, which may help to explain their different loss rates. 15

The communications web held together well under the strain of attack. Sector operations rooms were out of commission on only three occasions, though the supplementary emergency operations rooms, constructed above ground some distance from each sector station, proved inadequate as replacements. They were too cramped to house all the necessary personnel and the paraphernalia of plot tables and radio equipment; they lacked sufficient telephone landlines to operate as an integral part of the system. Radar stations emerged with remarkably little damage. The attack on Dunkirk RDF (in north Kent) destroyed two huts but inflicted no serious damage on the transmitter. The Dover station suffered slight damage to the aerial towers. At Rye, on the Sussex coast, all the huts were destroyed on the morning of 12 August, but the transmitting and receiving blocks were unscathed and operations restarted by noon. At Ventnor on the Isle of Wight all buildings were destroyed in two attacks on 12 and 16 August. 16

If German commanders had realized sooner the role that radar played in the system, attacks might have been pressed more persistently. But because it was assumed that Fighter Command fought a decentralized battle, with squadrons tied to the radio range of their individual stations, attacks on radar were not given a high priority. They were, in any case, difficult targets to destroy completely, even more so once the Junkers Ju 87B dive-bombers were withdrawn from battle on 18 August to avoid further high losses and conserve them for the invasion. German commanders were also lulled into a false sense of security by the reports of heavy losses inflicted on the RAF in the second half of August. At the end of the month, German Air Intelligence estimated that the RAF had lost 50 per cent of its fighter force since 8 August, against a loss of only 12 per cent of the German fighter force: 791 British aircraft against 169 German. In early September, Goering was informed that Fighter Command had been reduced at one stage to a mere 100 serviceable fighters after the attacks on airfields. 17

The real picture was remarkably different. On 23 August, Fighter Command actually had an operational strength of 672, with 228 Spitfires and Hurricanes ready in storage depots; on 1 September there were 701 operational aircraft and on 6 September the figure was 738, with 256 in stores ready for immediate despatch. 18The losses suffered were understandably higher in late August, but the RAF daily casualty records show cumulative losses of only 444 between 6 August and 2 September, 410 of them Spitfires and Hurricanes. 19German records of fighter losses show at least 443 for the slightly shorter period from 8 August to 31 August, with total aircraft losses during the same period standing at a little under 900. 20Both sides made extravagant claims about the losses inflicted on the other, largely because of double counting by pilots who could not tell clearly in the aerial mêlée who had shot an aircraft down. Yet by an odd statistical coincidence, fighter losses on the two sides were almost exactly the same in August. An evident gap opened up between the German commanders’ perception of the battle and the reality facing German pilots as they engaged daily against a numerous and deadly enemy.