Gold From Crete (25 page)

For a moment early in the battle it seemed as if some such factor might indeed be present, when the
Hood
blew up while the first salvos were being exchanged. To this day there is a certain body of opinion which attributes the loss of the Hood to a chance contact with a mine, and not - as is usually held - to an eleven-inch shell from the
Scharnhorst
which found its way to the magazines through a structural defect. The appalling loss might well have daunted a man of less tough fibre than the British admiral, but, as it was, the sixteen-inch guns of the
Rodney
, admirably served, were already winning the battle; Lutjens may have even been already dead at the moment when the
Hood
blew up.

The
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
displayed the remarkable capacity to take punishment which had distinguished German ships since they were first constructed, but from early in the battle they were hardly better than floating targets as a result of the damage done to their fire-control apparatus by the British salvos. The attack by the British destroyers, well timed and not to be evaded, because of the proximity of the Belgian minefields, hastened the end. The
Scharnhorst
, it is believed, took no less than seven torpedoes before she sank on an even keel in the shallows, so that her battered upper works were left awash at low water.

It was a battle of annihilation, as the circumstances made inevitable; the interposition of the German navy had not prolonged the brief German command of the straits by more than three hours at the cost of these frightful losses.

Meanwhile, far down the Channel, a desperate series of minor actions had been fought. Here the two German light cruisers and the other half of the German U-boats had endeavoured to delay the advance eastward of the British forces, gathered in from the Western Approaches. Again it was a battle of annihilation, this time almost of mutual annihilation, for the losses suffered by the British navy, despite the superiority of numbers which they enjoyed here, were very severe indeed. The fighting was as confused as might be expected where submarines intervened in an action between surface craft and where the opposing air forces were continually launching surprise attacks.

The
Nürnberg
sank off Beachy Head; the
Emden
went down while struggling to reach the shelter of Cherbourg, but three British light cruisers joined them on the wreck-littered bottom of the English Channel, and two more only with difficulty managed to limp into the protected waters of The Solent. But even so, that left eleven British destroyers to dominate the surface, and in a series of fierce actions they were able to hunt down the U-boats - the shallow Channel with its numerous minefields was no place for submarines on the defensive. The Channel tides, coursing first east and then west, left the coasts of England and France greasy with the oil that welled up from the sunken ships and dotted with the corpses of the men who died.

And like the tides, the British light forces swept into the Channel from the east and from the west, and that night was made vivid by a hundred minor actions as the German small craft fought to the death, motorboats and torpedo boats and minesweepers opposing a crushing superiority of destroyers and light cruisers. The
Fritz Reuter
was caught, just before dawn, before she had completed her second trip to England - and she came nearer to doing so than most of the unfortunate river craft employed in that luckless venture. Few enough left the invasion beaches at all; the
Fritz Reuter
actually returned to Calais, loaded herself with troops again and headed back for Rye. But seven miles from Dungeness the fat captain, nodding over his wheel as he struggled against sleep, was roused to full wakefulness as a star shell burst overhead, illuminating the
Fritz Reuter
and the water around her with a hard, relentless glare. That was the last he saw as shells at point-blank range came crashing into the frail sides of the
Fritz Reuter
. He was dead before those sides had opened and let in the sea upon the screaming soldiers crammed in the holds.

Once more it must be stressed that these naval actions, important though they were, and effectively though they sealed the fate of the German landing forces, were not necessarily the vital factor in the brief campaign. The air battle began again at dawn over the beaches, to continue through the long and desperate day; if the RAF had been defeated in that air battle, the history of the world might have been different. The military experts to this day argue about every aspect of the campaign. There are many who think that if Hitler had not made his attempt at invasion, but had massed the Luftwaffe for an all- out attack upon England sometime in August, 1940, he might have overborne the RAF by sheer weight of numbers, English radar and the defensive attitude notwithstanding. That is a point which can never be settled, but at least it is agreed that the need to provide air cover for the invasion beaches imposed a decisive disadvantage on the Luftwaffe.

In Fighter Command they tried as best they could to take the measure of the situation. The war could be won or lost in the air, and if it were to be won, it would be the fighters that would win it. So the arduous day went on, and fresh figures were added to the revised balance sheets. The dwindling numbers of British fighter planes and fighter pilots could be counted by all who were in on the secret. The German losses could be guessed at with fair accuracy, the German reserves only between the wide limits of optimism and pessimism. There were crashed German fighters to be counted all over the southern counties between the invasion beaches and the Midlands, but within the ten-mile perimeter held by Von Rundstedt there were many more, not so easy to count; we know now that in those eighty square miles no fewer than three hundred German fighters lay wrecked in the fields and coppices, and a hundred British fighters along with them. The reconnaissance planes could report that there was hardly a field without its wreck, piled among the abandoned parachutes.

Fighter Command could only continue as they had begun, accumulating successive striking forces and launching them to the attack at the moments when the reports of the Observer Corps and the radar devices indicated favourable opportunities. During the decisive day of July first there were no fewer than fifteen of these attacks delivered and, as nearly as can be judged from the defective German records, more than half of these delivered with a numerical superiority of at least three to one, and never once without some small superiority. The occasions when the numbers were nearly even were those when German reinforcements had flown in low over the Channel and were not reported to Fighter Command until it was too late to recall the attack.

There were at least six distinct periods when the air over the invasion beaches was practically clear of the Luftwaffe, and there were four heavy raids launched by Bomber Command in consequence.

The pace was too hot to last. Fighter Command, hoarding its dwindling forces and listening to the anxious reports from wing and from group regarding the fatigue of the pilots, was compelled to keep a considerable reserve in hand in readiness both for some unforeseen move by the Germans and for the final battle when the German land forces should advance. But the Luftwaffe was in worse condition still. To maintain even a quarter of its numbers over the invasion beaches meant no rest at all for any of its fighters; to maintain less than that exposed them to the attack of superior numbers of Spitfires and Hurricanes. The periods when the beaches were left without air cover grew longer and longer, and there was Bomber Command awaiting those moments with the planes fuelled and armed and less than half an hour’s flight from the beaches.

A sort of rhythm soon appeared in the battle, a pulsation; a wave of German fighters would appear and then ebb away; the bombers would strike, and then too late a fresh wave of German fighters would appear. We know now, comparing the records of the RAF with the war diary of the German high command, that this rhythm was not fortuitous; the bomber attacks called forth the widest protests from Von Rundstedt, and these protests, reaching Hitler, brought sharp reprimands upon Göring, and Göring, against his better judgement and to the despair of his staff, was compelled to make fresh demands on his fighter pilots. The memoirs of half a dozen German officers tell of the shifts and subterfuges into which Göring was forced during that dreadful day; his attempts to delay the departure of each fighter force, the lies he told regarding their strength, and his pleading with the
Führer
while the losses grew unbearable, for a slackening of the pace.

The climax came with two stunning blows delivered by Fighter Command in the evening. In each case Fighter Command received early warning of the assembly of the German fighters over the French coast and was able to gather superior forces in readiness, high up and with the westering sun behind them. Those two battles have come to be known as the ‘six-o’clock battle’ and the ‘eight-thirty battle’; and we have a vivid picture in the memoirs of Von Rangsdorf of the effect of the second upon Göring.

The fact that that action was begun was known at once at Luftwaffe headquarters, but the reports that next came in were as fragmentary as may be imagined, although sufficient to arouse apprehension. Then came in reports of German fighters in there was reason to hope for more. But they ceased to arrive, then came in the first reports from the airfields in France as the survivors landed. These all told of losses, but the planes continued to come in, ten, twenty, thirty of them, some with pilots wounded and the planes shot up, but at least while they came in there was reason to hope for more. But they ceased to arrive, and the minutes ticked by, until the limit of fuel endurance was reached and it was plain that no more could arrive.

The Luftwaffe staff stood silent, watching Göring, as he gradually brought himself to accept the fact that he had sent out two hundred fighter planes and that only thirty had returned. That force was the last scrapings of the barrel. One thousand German fighter planes had been destroyed since the invasion began. Göring would have to tell Hitler that the battle was lost, that the RAF had secured command of the air; it was obvious to all who watched that from Göring’s point of view the important fact was that his own position and prestige were imperilled by the necessity of admitting that his boastings had come to naught as his prevarications during the day revealed.

It is interesting that the moment Göring chose to make these revelations followed immediately upon the news of the annihilation of the German navy at the Battle of the North Foreland and provoked the historic scene which several diarists have recorded. Hitler indulged himself in a burst of frantic rage. He sneered at his navy for its incompetence, at his army for its sluggishness, and at Göring and the Luftwaffe for their lack of resolution. He was utterly determined to fight the battle to the bitter end; the alternative, of tamely admitting defeat and abandoning Von Rundstedt to his face, was something he could not contemplate for a moment. He was convinced, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that England was on the brink of surrender. Another resolute effort would bring her down; it was only a question of firmness of will. Hence his violent orders, to Göring to scrape together pilots and planes from every corner of Europe and to continue to give Von Rundstedt air support, and to Von Rundstedt to assemble every man that could march and to strike a blow at London without regard for his own shortcomings.

We have Von Rundstedt’s own account of the next day’s fighting from the German side. There can be no denying that he did all that man could do, more than most generals would have found possible. He had sorted out his disordered army into units and had established a chain of commands; he had improvised thirty batteries of artillery and by one means or another he had made them mobile. He had assembled two sets of bridging equipment out of the incredible muddle and had made them mobile too. He was in complete agreement for once with Hitler regarding the necessity for striking an immediate blow, because, as he points out, there was no possibility of receiving a single ton more of supplies or another battalion from France; his army would never be stronger, whereas the British opposing him would grow stronger every hour. So he was able to answer Hitler’s furious messages with the calm reply that he was moving up his forces that night ready to attack.

This was indeed true. The beaches which Bomber Command were pounding all through the night were practically deserted as we know now. Von Rundstedt left a mass of miscellaneous supplies there, including a considerable amount of artillery ammunition, from sheer lack of transport. He moved up his four divisions - brigade groups would be a better description of them - along the dark roads and lanes to Broad Oak and Beckley, putting almost literally every man he had into the fighting line, abandoning the rest of his perimeter. He had a hundred tanks; he had petrol and ammunition for a single day’s fighting. His deployment was admirably managed even during the dark hours, and at dawn on July second he struck his blow, and the thin screen of British troops along the line of the Rother was shattered instantly into fragments.

In all England at that moment there were seventy-five infantry tanks fit for service, but there were forty cruiser tanks and no fewer than five hundred light tanks. The driving force of the government and the admirable cooperation of the railways managed to make almost all this armour available for battle on July second. During the night when Von Rundstedt was effecting his deployment, the First Armoured Division, battle-hardened and admirably trained, was already assembling at Tonbridge, and the Second Armoured, having completed its complex railway journey, was in touch and detraining at Horsmonden and Goudhurst, an arrangement since criticized as a deployment too far forward, luckily without too disastrous results. There were five infantry divisions in support, deploying along the main-line railway to Ashford. As regards mortars and anti-tank guns, they were almost entirely deficient, but they had two hundred field guns between them and three hundred rounds for each - more guns and twice as much ammunition as Von Rundstedt could boast.