A Summer Bright and Terrible (29 page)

It was not only a gorgeous summer day, but also
a Saturday, and the fields and meadows of the countryside were dotted with
people relaxing and trying to forget the war. White-trousered cricket players
and parasol-holding ladies with picnic baskets, children rolling hoops and
throwing balls, babies crawling and old men stretched out in deck chairs
gathered in the sunshine and looked up into the blue sky at the birds
flitting—until a far-off rumbling broke in over the chirping birds, drowning
out the sounds of children calling, babies crying, bats hitting balls.

The rumbling grew from a sullen thunder into a
deafening roar as the black-winged monstrosities took over the sky Straight up
the Thames they came, blocking out the sun, a cloud of death twenty miles wide
and forty miles long. It took a full ten minutes for those locusts with black
crosses on their wings to pass overhead. Unbelievably, minute after minute, as
the lead planes passed over the horizon, more of them came trailing their
thunder, covering the cricket patches and meadows with their terrible shadow.

Up the river they roared. Motorists heard their
angry sound and pulled off the road to stare up into a suddenly foreign,
hostile sky. Families picnicking in the fields gathered up their children in
fear, hoping the bombs wouldn’t fall out of those bellies onto their heads,
wondering where they would fall, wondering where the RAF was, afraid that this
might be their last day in a free country.

Underground, far from the sun and sky, deep
under the earth of Bentley Priory, Dowding and his Controllers could see no
airplanes. They stood silently on the balcony watching nothing but the markers
on the map table below, but these were all too real—and too scattered. The red
markers signifying the British fighters were far from London, guarding their
airfields, as the black Luftwaffe markers were pushed slowly and steadily
straight up the Thames toward London.

And still they waited and watched as more
counters were placed on the board. There never had been so many. Outside in the
bright sunlight, a thousand German aircraft were thundering up the Thames.
Clearly now, this was going to be the largest aerial bombing attack in history.
Every one of Park’s 11 Group fighters was in the air and too far away, for now
it became clear that the bomber formations were not breaking up, scattering
toward the aerodromes; they continued on their way, inexorable, straight to
London.

Responding late, finally realizing that
something new was happening, the Controllers brought their fighters in, taking
them away from the airfields and racing them due east to meet the enemy. But
they were too few and too late.

The first contact was made by four squadrons
that wheeled around a towering cloud and past a bank of haze, and when they
broke into the clear, they suddenly faced a sky full of black German planes
racing toward them at a combined closing speed of more than four hundred miles
an hour. There was no time to think, just barely enough time for instant
reaction. They wheeled and dove into them.

The bombers were in the centre, but around them
and pulled up high above them were swarms of angry Messerschmitts, hundreds of
them, filling the sky. The Spits dove into them, but couldn’t stop them. The
bombers got through, as Baldwin had warned they must; they came through the
fighter defences and others came streaming in behind them, and London town
twenty thousand feet below exploded and disappeared into a thick, black pall of
smoke.

The British fighters came racing in from where
they had been held around their scattered airfields. They came tearing into the
bombers as quickly and ferociously as they could, but the 650 Messerschmitts
drove them off again and again, and wave after wave of bombers came through the
dogfights and dropped their bombs into the roaring inferno that now was London.

Winston Churchill spent the afternoon with
Keith Park in 11 Group’s Operations Room. “In a little while, all our squadrons
were fighting, and some had already begun to return for fuel. All were in the
air . . . there was not one squadron left in reserve. At this moment Park spoke
to Dowding at Stanmore asking for three squadrons of No 12 Group to be put at
his disposal in case of another major attack . . . this was done. . . . I
became conscious of the anxiety of the Commander, who now stood still behind
his subordinate’s chair. Hitherto I had watched in silence. I now asked: ‘What
other reserves have we?’ ‘There are none,’ said Air Vice Marshal Park. In an
account which he wrote afterwards he said that I ‘looked grave.’ Well I might .
. . the odds were great; our margins small; the stakes infinite.”

Dowding sent Park’s request for help up to
Leigh-Mallory, and Douglas Bader’s 242 Squadron was scrambled from its
aerodrome at Coltishall, northeast of London. But a few days previously, Leigh-Mallory
had told Bader that the next time the Group was called on for help, he was not
only to take the three Coltishall squadrons, but also to rendezvous with two
more from nearby Duxford and lead them all in one massive wing. He was to take
the radar information fed to him by 11 Group, but he was to decide himself how
best to use it to set up his attack. He was ordered to ignore any orders from the
11 Group Controllers.

And so as London burned, Bader wheeled his
three squadrons around over Coltishall, getting them into battle formation. He
then took them over to Duxford and wheeled around again as the two Duxford
squadrons joined him. But, being held in readiness every day, they had never
had time to practice this move, which proved more difficult than Bader had
imagined. As they finally climbed away toward London, he tried to line them up
into a mass he could control, but there were too many of them; the formation
was too cumbersome for the rapid manoeuvring that was necessary. One of the
squadrons, No. 303, was composed of Polish survivors of the Warsaw massacre who
had found their way to England. They had been kept out of the fighting because
they barely understood English, which made it impossible to control them in the
air. Now they conveniently forgot the little English they had and ignored Bader’s
orders, leaving his swirling, half-formed Wing behind, climbing full throttle
and alone to find the Germans.

By the time Bader caught up with the enemy, he
had lost two more of his squadrons and the Poles had already disappeared into
the German swarm—and that swarm had already unloaded its bombs and turned for
home. He led his partial Wing into a diving attack, shooting down one bomber
and losing two Hurricanes. The other two squadrons of the Wing never arrived in
time to do any fighting at all.

London exploded and burned. City homes and
apartments, office buildings and docks crumbled and disappeared in the worst
inferno since 1660—and that inferno was soon surpassed. Fire spurted into the
air and along the streets and even into the Thames when a sugar warehouse
poured a stream of burning, liquefied sugar that covered the surface of the
river. The oil tanks, the gasworks, the heart of the city, and the suburbs
blazed from end to end.

But the fires at the airfields had been put
out, and no new ones started on this day. The ground crews were busy at Kenley
and Biggin Hill and Tangmere, repairing the damage of the previous weeks
without being interrupted by falling bombs. They were filling in the craters
and clearing away the rubble at Manston and Ramsgate, they were repairing the
telephone lines and the maintenance shops at Croydon and North Weald. The radar
stations at Ventnor, Dover, Rye, and Pevensey had been out of the battle for
days, but now new generators were installed and new wires were being strung for
the aerials.

Fighter Command lost another twenty pilots that
day, but they destroyed fifty German planes, and when the Spits returned home
they came back to peaceful aerodromes. They didn’t have to circle towering
black fumes rising from the cratered grass, looking for a safe place to land.
Instead they found the fields in better condition than when they had left, they
found the mechanics waiting to repair their shot-up kites, and the NAAFI was
waiting with a hot mug of tea.

When his bombers returned and reported the
fires raging all over London, the sky black with smoke, the city devastated,
Goring bounced around in joy. He radioed to Hitler that the invasion could take
place as scheduled. The RAF had been defeated and the way lay open.

But the Kriegsmarine waited till that evening,
when all the returning planes had been counted, and then pointed out that fifty
of them had not come home. Goring laughed them off: He had sent out a thousand
planes and had lost only 5 percent. Yes, the admirals replied doubtfully, but
still, fifty planes . . . obviously there were at least a few British fighters
still around.

All right, all right,
der Dicke
laughed
at their concern. He would hit London again.

Twenty-nine

When Churchill left 11 Group’s Operations
Room at the end of the day, he got into his car with General Sir Hastings
Ismay, who remembered the moment clearly: “His first words were, ‘Don’t speak
to me. I have never been so moved.’ He sat in silence for a while, then leaned
forward and whispered, ‘Never in the field of human conflict has so much been
owed by so many to so few.’”

The German admirals again confronted Goring
with their concerns. They told Hitler that they could not guarantee the safety
of the invading force unless the sky over the Channel was swept free of the
RAF, and despite Goring’s blustering, it was clear to them that the RAF was
still alive and well.

Hitler nodded, and Goring blushed furiously. He
spent the next day gathering his forces together. He called his fighter
commanders to Karinhall and presented them with the Gold Pilot Medal, then
suddenly began to lambaste them for not fulfilling his predictions of victory. “Are
you purposely trying to make me look foolish before the Fuhrer?” he screamed.
(Pete Rose once told me that the secret of being a good manager is knowing
which players need a pat on the back and which need a kick in the ass.
Evidently, Goring’s managing strategy was to give his players both.)

General Adolf Galland, the Luftwaffe’s top
fighter commander, whom Goring had only recently promoted to this position,
told his men, with just a bit of tongue in cheek, “The Reichsmarschall let us
know quite plainly that he was not satisfied with the fighters.” Goring then
turned friendly again, asking what he could do to help them. What did they need
to destroy the RAF? Galland replied, “I should like a squadron or two of
Spitfires.”

Goring was not amused. “He stamped off,
growling as he went.”

Transporting the Wehrmacht across the
English Channel would necessitate a series of preparations, such as the laying
of a minefield to keep the Royal Navy at bay. The Kriegsmarine needed ten days
to do this, so if the invasion was to take place on September 20, they had to
begin by September 11. On September 9, Goring announced he was ready to storm
the British sides yet again, to finish the job, to wipe out those “last few
Spitfires.” Hitler nodded without comment; he would wait for the results of
this day’s fighting before issuing the order to begin the mine laying.

The first reports were good. The Messerschmitt
pilots came back and reported they had destroyed thirty British fighters. But
then came second thoughts. Goring had thought there weren’t that many Spitfires
left; if the German fighters had destroyed thirty, how many were there in the
air this day? And then came the reports of the bomber squadrons: They had lost
nearly forty.

It was perplexing. Clearly the RAF was stronger
than Goring had thought. Actually the score would have been even worse had
Bader’s Big Wing proved as effective as he had thought. After circling around
to get his planes in formation, he had finally found a group of Dorniers and
dove in to attack, claiming nineteen of them shot down. But no Dornier wrecks
were found on the ground, and the German records show that all those planes
returned to base. Two of Bader’s pilots collided in the overcrowded sky; both
were killed.

Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion once more.
The invasion barges would have to cross the Channel under cover of darkness,
but with a full moon so they could find their way. They would have to reach the
beaches at dawn, and the landing had to be made on an ebb tide so the landing
craft could be securely beached. Putting all this together meant that the
invasion night would have to match a full moon with an ebb tide coincident with
the following dawn. The week of September 19—26 would have these conditions,
but this would be the last time before the winter rains and snow would come.
Postponement beyond that date would be impossible. Hitler decided on one last
delay: Invasion was scheduled for September 24, with the final order to go or
to cancel to be given on the fourteenth.

At the beginning of the summer, when Hitler
first decided to invade England, Goring had promised to destroy the RAF “within
a few days.” That was precisely what he now had left.

Weather was bad on September 10, but on the
eleventh, the Luftwaffe rose again to the attack, and again those last few
Spitfires doused Goring’s jollity. The losses were more than forty aircraft for
each side. All right, Goring thought, the RAF did have more fighters than he
had expected, but they had just lost another forty. They couldn’t have many
more; the job was nearly finished. One more massive raid
—once more into the
breach, my band of brothers,
he thought, quoting Shakespeare, whom the
Germans loved just as the British loved Beethoven. Once more into the breach,
and the victory is ours!