The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (19 page)

A
S PLANNING FOR THE INVASION
of England progressed, Hitler issued a new directive, No. 17, which called for an all-out assault on the RAF. “
The German Air Force is to overpower the English Air Force with all the forces at its command, in the shortest possible time,” Hitler wrote. “The attacks are to be directed primarily against flying units, their ground installations, and their supply organizations, but also against the aircraft industry, including that manufacturing anti-aircraft equipment.”

Hitler reserved to himself “the right to decide on terror attacks as measures of reprisal.” His continued reluctance to authorize raids against central London and the civilian districts of other big cities had nothing to do with moral distaste but, rather, stemmed from his continued hope for a peace deal with Churchill and a wish to avoid reprisal raids on Berlin. This new campaign against the RAF was a milestone in the history of warfare, according to the Luftwaffe’s own later assessment. “
For the first time…an air force was going to conduct, independent of operations by other services, an offensive which aimed at decisively smashing the enemy air force.” The question was, Could air power alone “undermine the general fighting power of the enemy by massed air attacks until he is ready to sue for peace?”

The task of planning and executing this new strategic-bombing offensive fell to Hermann Göring, who code-named the launch date
Adlertag,
or Eagle Day. He set it first for August 5, then pushed it back to August 10, a Saturday. He had absolute confidence that his air force would fulfill Hitler’s wish. On Tuesday, August 6, he met with his senior air commanders at his country estate, Carinhall, to fashion a plan for the new campaign.

Until now, the Luftwaffe had engaged in limited operations against England, intended to probe its air defenses and draw out RAF fighters. German bombers conducted short, isolated raids against communities in Cornwall, Devon, South Wales, and elsewhere. But now Göring, given as always to flamboyant gestures, envisioned a mass attack unlike anything history had seen, aimed at delivering an annihilating blow to Britain’s air defenses.
He expected little resistance. According to reports by his intelligence chief, Beppo Schmid, the RAF had already been badly mauled, and could not possibly produce enough new aircraft to compensate for its losses. This meant the RAF’s strength was decreasing by the day. In Schmid’s appraisal, soon the RAF would have no serviceable aircraft at all.

Goaded by Göring and fortified by Schmid’s reports, the air force commanders gathered at Carinhall decided they would need only four days to destroy what remained of the RAF’s fighter and bomber operations. After this, the Luftwaffe would proceed step by step, in day and night raids, to eliminate air bases and aircraft manufacturing centers throughout England—a bold plan, with one very large indeterminate and crucial variable: weather.

Göring transferred hundreds of bombers to bases along the channel coast of France and in Norway. He planned an initial attack involving fifteen hundred aircraft, a modern armada meant to surprise and overwhelm the British. Once airborne, Göring’s bombers would need only six minutes to cross the channel.

What Beppo Schmid’s reports depicted, however, was very different from what Luftwaffe pilots were experiencing in the air. “
Göring refused to listen to his fighter commanders’ protests that such claims were not realistic,” Luftwaffe ace Galland later told an American interrogator. In encounters with the RAF, German pilots found no hint of diminished strength or resolve.

The big attack was to begin that coming Saturday. If all went well, invasion soon would follow.

O
NE OF THE MOST DISTINCTIVE
aspects of Churchill's approach to leadership was his ability to switch tracks in an instant and focus earnestly on things that any other prime minister would have found trivial. Depending on one's perspective, this was either an endearing trait or a bedevilment. To Churchill,
everything
mattered. On Friday, August 9, for example, amid a rising tide of urgent war matters, he found time to address a minute to the members of his War Cabinet on a subject dear to him: the length and writing style of the reports that arrived in his black box each day.

Headed, appropriately enough, by the succinct title “
BREVITY
,” the minute began: “
To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points.”

He set out four ways for his ministers and their staffs to improve their reports. First, he wrote, reports should “set out the main points in a series of short, crisp paragraphs.” If the report involved discussion of complicated matters or statistical analysis, this should be placed in an appendix.

Often, he observed, a full report could be dispensed with entirely, in favor of an aide-mémoire “consisting of headings only, which can be expanded orally if needed.”

Finally, he attacked the cumbersome prose that so often marked official reports. “Let us have an end to phrases such as these,” he wrote, and quoted two offenders:

“It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations…”

“Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect…”

He wrote: “Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.”

The resulting prose, he wrote, “may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.”

That evening, as he had done almost every weekend thus far, he set off for the country. The private secretary on Chequers duty that weekend was John Colville, who rode in a separate car with Clementine and Mary. Other guests had already gathered at the house, or soon would, including Anthony Eden, Pug, and two key generals, who all converged to dine and sleep. Churchill also invited First Sea Lord Dudley Pound but failed to tell anyone else, which, as Colville noted, “occasioned some hectic rearranging of the dinner table.”

After the meal, Mary and Clementine left the dining room, as per custom and Clementine's preference.

Among the men, the talk turned to the threat of invasion, and to measures taken to defend England.
Anti-tank mines had been secreted along many of the country's beaches, and these, wrote Colville, “had been shown to be most devastating.” Indeed, he noted, they had claimed the lives of a number of English citizens. Churchill told the story, possibly apocryphal, of an ill-starred golfer who managed to direct a golf ball onto an adjacent beach. Colville summarized the denouement in his diary: “He took his niblick down to the beach, played the ball, and all that remained afterward was the ball, which returned safely to the green.”

After dinner, Churchill, the generals, and Admiral Pound moved to the Hawtrey Room, where large timbers had been installed to brace the structure against explosion. Within the room were innumerable treasures, among them a book dating to 1476. Meanwhile, Colville read memoranda and arranged the papers in Churchill's black box.

At one point, a German aircraft flew overhead. With Churchill in the lead, the group charged out into the garden to try to catch a glimpse of the plane.

To the amusement of all, Admiral Pound tripped while descending the steps. Wrote Colville, “
The First Sea Lord fell down first one flight of steps and then, having picked himself up disconsolately, he tumbled down another, ending in a heap on the ground where a sentry threatened him with a bayonet.”

Pound righted himself, muttering, “This is not the place for a First Sea Lord.”

Churchill, amused, said, “Try and remember you are an Admiral of the Fleet and not a Midshipman!”

S
ATURDAY MORNING BROUGHT MORE
work for Colville, in the form of cables to send and minutes to relay. He then had lunch
“en famille,”
with Churchill, Clementine, and Mary, “and it could not have been more enjoyable.” Churchill was “in the best of humors,” Colville wrote. “He talked brilliantly on every topic from Ruskin to Lord Baldwin, from the future of Europe to the strength of the Tory Party.” He complained about the dire lack of munitions and weapons for the army he was trying to build. “We shall win,” he declared, “but we don't deserve it; at least, we do deserve it because of our virtues, but not because of our intelligence.”

The talk turned silly. Colville began reciting bits of doggerel. One quatrain gave Churchill particular delight:

Oh, Moon, lovely Moon, with thy beautiful face

Careering throughout the boundaries of space

Whenever I see thee, I think in my mind

Shall I ever, oh ever, behold thy behind.

After lunch Colville, Clementine, and Mary climbed one of the adjacent hills. Colville and Mary turned the walk into a race, to see who could reach the top first. Colville won, but ended up “feeling iller than I have ever felt and was quite unable to see or think.”

Mary's appraisal of Colville was steadily improving, though she still had reservations. In her diary for Saturday, August 10, she wrote, “I like Jock but I think he is very ‘wet' ”—“wet” being a British colloquial term for appearing to lack character or forcefulness. For his part, Colville continued warming to Mary as well. In his diary the next day he wrote, “Even though she takes herself a little seriously—as she confesses—she is a charming girl and very pleasant to look upon.”

F
OR
H
ERMANN
G
ÖRING THAT
Saturday, there was disappointment: This was the day he had designated as Eagle Day, the start of his all-out campaign against the RAF, but bad weather over the south of England forced him to cancel the attack. He set the new start for the next morning, Sunday, August 11, but then postponed it again, to Tuesday, August 13.

One consolation: With the moon by then well into its waxing gibbous phase, rising toward a full moon the coming weekend, those sorties designated to take place at night would be easier and more successful. Germany's beam-navigation technology had reduced the Luftwaffe's dependence on moonlight, but its pilots remained wary of the new system and still preferred attacking in clear weather over a landscape agleam with lunar light.

I
N
B
ERLIN, WORKERS CONTINUED
building grandstands in Pariser Platz, at the center of the city, to prepare for the victory parade that would mark the end of the war. “
Today they painted them and installed two huge golden eagles,” wrote William Shirer in his diary entry for Sunday. “At each end they also are building gigantic replicas of the Iron Cross.” His hotel was on the same square, at one end of which stood the Brandenburger Tor—the Brandenburg Gate—through which the victorious army was to pass.

Within Nazi Party circles, Shirer found, there was talk that Hitler wanted the stands ready before the end of the month.

A
UGUST–
S
EPTEMBER

A
T DAWN ON
T
UESDAY,
A
UGUST
13, two groups of German bombers totaling about sixty aircraft rose into the skies over Amiens, France, climbing in broad ascending circles to flight altitude, where they assembled in battle formations. This took half an hour. Getting so many planes into position was difficult even on clear days, but this morning the challenge was compounded by an unexpected change in the weather. A high-pressure zone over the Azores that had seemed poised to deliver fair weather in Europe had abruptly dissipated. Now heavy clouds covered the channel and the coasts of France and England, and fog clung to many German airfields. Over England’s southeastern coast, the ceiling was as low as four thousand feet.

A third group of aircraft, with one hundred bombers, rose over Dieppe; a fourth, with forty planes, assembled north of Cherbourg; a fifth gathered over the Channel Islands. Once in formation, numbering well over two hundred bombers, the planes began making their way toward England.

This was to be Hermann Göring’s big day,
Adlertag,
Eagle Day, the start of his all-out assault on the RAF to gain control of the air over England, so that Hitler could launch his invasion. Over the previous week, the Luftwaffe had launched lesser attacks, including forays against England’s chain of coastal radar stations, but it was time now for the main event. Göring planned to blacken the sky with aircraft in a display of aerial might that would stun the world. For this purpose, and for the sake of drama, he had amassed a force totaling twenty-three hundred aircraft, including 949 bombers, 336 dive-bombers, and 1,002 fighters. At last he would show Hitler, and the world, what his air force truly could do.

No sooner did the attack begin, however, than the weather forced Göring to call it off. Although the Luftwaffe’s secret navigational beams now permitted its bombers to fly in overcast weather, a raid of this size and importance required good visibility. Fighters and bombers could not find each other in clouds; nor could they communicate directly with one another, and fighters lacked the equipment needed to follow the beams. The cancellation order failed to reach many of Göring’s units. In one case, a formation of eighty bombers set out for England while their designated escorts, which did receive the order, returned to base, leaving the bombers dangerously exposed. Their commander continued onward, apparently in the belief that the overcast skies would limit the RAF’s ability to find his force in the first place.

As one group approached its target, a swarm of RAF Hurricanes appeared, their arrival so unexpected, their attack so furious, that the bombers dropped their munitions and fled into the clouds.

Göring gave orders to resume the offensive at two o’clock that afternoon.

A
MONG THE PILOTS TAKING
part was Adolf Galland, who by now held a near-mythic reputation not only within the Luftwaffe but also among RAF pilots. Like Churchill, his signature was the cigar. He smoked Havanas, twenty a day, which he lit using a cigar lighter scavenged from a car, and was the only pilot authorized by Göring to smoke while in the cockpit. Hitler, however, forbade him from being photographed while he smoked, fearing the influence such publicity might have on the morals of German youths. Galland and his group were now based at a field in Pas-de-Calais, on the French coast. For the Luftwaffe, accustomed to the easy victories of the early phase of the war, this period was, Galland said, “a rude awakening.”

The ninety-minute flying time of his group’s Me 109 fighters was proving an even greater liability than usual, given the half hour needed to assemble formations of bombers and escorts over the French coast before heading to England. Galland’s fighters had an operational range of only 125 miles, or roughly the distance to London. “
Everything beyond was practically out of reach,” he wrote. He likened German fighters to a dog on a chain, “who wants to attack the foe but cannot harm him, because of the limitation of his chain.”

The Luftwaffe also was fast discovering the limitations of its Stuka dive-bomber, which had been one of its most potent weapons in the western campaign of May and June. It could place a bomb with far more precision than a standard aircraft, but owing in part to its external bomb load, it flew at about half the speed of a Spitfire. It was most vulnerable while diving, a trait British pilots quickly exploited. Wrote Galland, “These Stukas attracted Spitfires and Hurricanes as honey attracts flies.”

Germany’s larger bombers also flew at relatively slow speeds. In Spain and Poland, those speeds were fast enough to avoid effective interception, but not now, against the latest British fighters. The bombers needed a big protective escort. How this could be provided was a growing source of conflict between the fighter pilots and Göring, who insisted that the fighters fly “close escort,” staying level with and close to the bombers all the way to their targets and back. This meant the pilots had to fly at the bombers’ much slower speeds, not only making themselves more vulnerable to attack but also limiting their opportunities to accumulate kills, which was all any fighter pilot really wanted. One pilot recalled the frustration of looking up and seeing the “bright blue bellies” of British fighters and not being allowed to go after them. “We clung to the bomber formation in pairs—and it was a damned awkward feeling,” he wrote. Galland favored looser patterns that allowed fighter pilots to fly their planes as they were meant to be flown, with some flying slow and close but others weaving among the bombers at high speeds, while still more flew high above the bomber formation, providing “top cover.” But Göring refused to listen. Galland and his fellow pilots increasingly saw him as being out of touch with the new realities of aerial combat.

Although popular perception—influenced by Göring’s self-promotion—portrayed the Luftwaffe as a nearly invincible force with a might far greater than the RAF’s, in fact Galland recognized that the British had several major advantages that he and his fellow pilots could do nothing to neutralize. Not only did the RAF fly and fight over friendly territory, which ensured that surviving pilots would fight again; its pilots also fought with the existential brio of men who believed they were battling a far larger air force with nothing less than Britain’s survival at stake. RAF pilots recognized the “desperate seriousness of the situation,” as Galland put it, while the Luftwaffe operated with a degree of complacency, conjured by easy past successes and by faulty intelligence that portrayed the RAF as a desperately weakened force. German analysts accepted without challenge reports from Luftwaffe pilots of downed British aircraft and crippled airfields. In fact, the bases often resumed operation within hours. “
At Luftwaffe HQ, however, somebody took the reports of the bomber or Stuka squadron in one hand and a thick blue pencil in the other and crossed the squadron or base in question off the tactical map,” Galland wrote. “It did not exist any more—in any case not on paper.”

The RAF’s greatest advantage, Galland believed, was its deft use of radar. Germany possessed similar technology but, thus far, had not deployed it in a systematic manner, in the belief that British bombers would never be able to reach German cities. “The possibility of an Allied air attack on the Reich was at the time unthinkable,” Galland wrote. German pilots saw the tall radar towers along England’s coastline as they crossed the channel and occasionally attacked them, but the stations invariably returned to operation soon afterward, and Göring lost interest. Yet day after day, Galland was struck by the uncanny ability of British fighters to locate German formations. “For us and for our Command this was a surprise and a very bitter one,” Galland wrote.

Göring himself was proving to be a problem. Easily distracted, he was unable to commit to a single, well-defined objective. He became convinced that by attacking a multitude of targets across a broad front, he could not only destroy RAF Fighter Command but also cause such widespread chaos as to drive Churchill to surrender.

T
HE ATTACK RESUMED.
As Eagle Day progressed, nearly five hundred bombers and one thousand fighters entered the skies over England. In the aerial parlance of the day, this was called “landfall.”