Their Finest Hour (47 page)

* * * * *

By the middle of 1941, when at last the rocket batteries began to come into service in substantial numbers, air attack had much diminished, so that they had few chances of proving themselves. But when they did come into action, the number of rounds needed to bring down an aircraft was little more than that required by the enormously more costly and scanty anti-aircraft guns, of which we were so short. The rockets were good in themselves, and also an addition to our other means of defence.

Shells or rockets alike are, of course, only effective if they reach the right spot and explode at the right moment. Efforts were therefore made to produce aerial mines suspended on long wires floating down on parachutes which could be laid in the path of the enemy air squadrons. It was impossible to pack these into shells. But a rocket, with much thinner walls, has more room. A certain amount of three-inch rocket ammunition, which could lay an aerial minefield on wires seven hundred feet long at heights up to twenty thousand feet, was made and held ready for use against mass attacks on London. The advantage of such minefields over shell-fire is, of course, that they remain lethal for anything up to a minute. For wherever the wing hits the wire, it pulls up the mine until it reaches the aircraft and explodes. There is thus no need for exact fuze-setting, as with ordinary shells.

Aerial mines could, of course, be placed in position by rockets laid by aircraft, or simply raised on small balloons. The last method was ardently supported by the Admiralty. In fact, however, the rockets were never brought into action on any considerable scale. By the time they were manufactured in large numbers, mass attacks by bombers had ceased. Nevertheless, it was surprising and fortunate that the Germans did not develop this counter to our mass-bombing raids in the last three years of the war. Even a few minelaying aircraft would have been able to lay and maintain a minefield over any German city, which would have taken a toll of our bombers the more deadly as numbers grew.

* * * * *

There was another important aspect. In 1940, the dive-bomber seemed to be a deadly threat to our ships and key-factories. One might think that aircraft diving on a ship would be easy to shoot down, as the gunner can aim straight at them without making allowance for their motion. But an aeroplane end on is a very small target and a contact fuze will work only in the rare event of a direct hit. To set a time fuze so that the shell explodes at the exact moment when it is passing the aircraft is almost impossible. An error in timing of one-tenth of a second causes a miss of many hundreds of feet. It therefore seemed worth while to try to make a fuze which would detonate automatically when the projectile passed near to the target, whether it actually hit it or not.

As there is little space in the head of a shell, the roomier head of the three-inch rocket was attractive. While I was still at the Admiralty in 1940 we pressed this idea. Photo-electric (P.E.) cells were used which produced an electrical impulse whenever there was a change of light, such as the shade of the enemy plane. By February, 1940, we had a model which I took to the Cabinet, and showed my colleagues after one of our meetings. When a matchbox was thrown past the fuze, it winked perceptibly with its demonstration lamp. The cluster of Ministers who gathered round, including the Prime Minister, were powerfully impressed. But there is a long road between a grimacing model and an armed mass-production robot. We worked hard at the production of the so-called P.E. fuzes, but here again by the time they were ready in any quantity, our danger and their hour had for the moment passed.

Attempts were made in 1941 to design a similar proximity fuze, using a tiny radar set arranged to explode the warhead when the projectile passed near the aircraft. Successful preliminary experiments were made, but before this fuze was developed in England, the Americans, to whom we imparted our knowledge, actually succeeded not only in perfecting the instrument but in reducing its size so much that the whole thing could be put into the head not merely of a rocket but of a shell. These so-called “Proximity Fuzes,” made in the United States, were used in great numbers in the last year of the war, and proved potent against the small unmanned aircraft (V-1) with which we were assailed in 1944, and also in the Pacific against Japanese aircraft.

* * * * *

The final phase of “The Wizard War” was, of course, the radar developments and inventions required for our counter-attack upon Germany. These suggested themselves to some extent from our own experiences and defensive efforts. The part they played will be described in future volumes. In September, 1940, we had nearly nine long months ahead of us of heavy battering and suffering before the tide was to turn. It may be claimed that while struggling, not without success, against the perils of the hour, we bent our thoughts steadily upon the future when better times might come.

A
IR
D
EFENCE
G
REAT
B
RITAIN

My Appeal for Fifty American Destroyers — Lord Lothian’s Helpfulness — My Telegram to President Roosevelt of July
31
— Our Offer to Lease Bases in the West Indies — My Objections to Bargaining About the Fleet — Further Telegram to the President of August
15 —
The President’s Statement — My Speech in Parliament of August
20 —
Telegram to the President of August
22 —
And of August
25 —
And of August
27 —
Our Final Offer — My Assurance About the Fleet of August
31 —
Statement to Parliament of September
5.

O
N
M
AY
15, as already narrated, I had in my first telegram to President Roosevelt after becoming Prime Minister asked for “the loan of forty or fifty of your older destroyers to bridge the gap between what we have now and the large new construction we put in hand at the beginning of the war. This time next year we shall have plenty, but if in the interval Italy comes in against us with another hundred submarines we may be strained to breaking-point.” I recurred to this in my cable of June 11, after Italy had already declared war upon us. “Nothing is so important as for us to have the thirty or forty old destroyers you have already had reconditioned. We can fit them very rapidly with our Asdics…. The next six months are vital.” At the end of July, when we were alone and already engaged in the fateful air battle, with the prospect of imminent invasion behind it, I renewed my request. I was well aware of the President’s good will and of his difficulties. For that

reason I had endeavoured to put before him, in the blunt terms of various messages, the perilous position which the United States would occupy if British resistance collapsed and Hitler became master of Europe, with all its dockyards and navies, less what we had been able to destroy or disable.

* * * * *

It was evident as this discussion proceeded that the telegrams I had sent in June, dwelling on the grave consequences to the United States which might follow from the successful invasion and subjugation of the British Islands, played a considerable part in high American circles. Assurances were requested from Washington that the British Fleet would in no circumstances be handed over to the Germans. We were very ready to give these assurances in the most solemn form. As we were ready to die, they cost nothing. I did not, however, wish, at this time, on what might be the eve of invasion and at the height of the air battle, to encourage the Germans with the idea that such contingencies had ever entered our minds. Moreover, by the end of August our position was vastly improved. The whole Regular Army was re-formed, and to a considerable extent rearmed. The Home Guard had come into active life. We were inflicting heavy losses on the German Air Force, and were far more than holding our own. Every argument about invasion that had given me confidence in June and July was doubled before September.

* * * * *

We had at this time in Washington a singularly gifted and influential Ambassador. I had known Philip Kerr, who had now succeeded as Marquess of Lothian, from the old days of Lloyd George in 1919 and before, and we had differed much and often from Versailles to Munich and later. As the tension of events mounted, not only did Lothian develop a broad comprehension of the scene, but his eye penetrated deeply. He had pondered on the grave implications of the messages I had sent to the President during the collapse of France about the possible fate of the British Fleet if England were invaded and conquered. In this he moved with the ruling minds in Washington, who were deeply perturbed, not only by sympathy for Britain and her cause, but naturally even more by anxiety for the life and safety of the United States.

Lothian was worried by the last words of my speech in the House of Commons on June 4, when I had said, “We shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.” He thought these words had given encouragement “to those who believed that, even though Great Britain went under, the Fleet would somehow cross the Atlantic to them.” The reader is aware of the different language I had been using behind the scenes. I had explained my position at the time to the Foreign Secretary and to the Ambassador.

Prime Minister to Lord Lothian.

9.VI.40.

My last words in speech were of course addressed primarily to Germany and Italy, to whom the idea of a war of continents and a long war are at present obnoxious; also to [the] Dominions, for whom we are trustees. I have nevertheless always had in mind your point and have raised it in various telegrams to President as well as to Mackenzie King. If Great Britain broke under invasion, a pro-German Government might obtain far easier terms from Germany by surrendering the Fleet, thus making Germany and Japan masters of the New World. This dastard deed would not be done by His Majesty’s present advisers, but if some Quisling Government were set up, it is exactly what they would do, and perhaps the only thing they could do, and the President should bear this very clearly in mind. You should talk to him in this sense and thus discourage any complacent assumption on United States’ part that they will pick up the debris of the British Empire by their present policy. On the contrary, they run the terrible risk that their sea-power will be completely overmatched. Moreover, islands and naval bases to hold the United States in awe would certainly be claimed by the Nazis. If we go down, Hitler has a very good chance of conquering the world.

I hope the foregoing will be a help to you in your conversations.

Nearly a month passed before any result emerged. Then came an encouraging telegram from the Ambassador. He said (July 5/6) that informed American opinion was at last beginning to realise that they were in danger of losing the British Fleet altogether if the war went against us and if they remained neutral. It would, however, be extremely difficult to get American public opinion to consider letting us have American destroyers unless it could be assured that in the event of the United States entering the war the British Fleet or such of it as was afloat would cross the Atlantic if Great Britain were overrun.

At the end of July, under the increasing pressure from so many angles at once, I took the matter up again.

Former Naval Person to President Roosevelt.

31.VII.40.

It is some time since I ventured to cable personally to you, and many things, both good and bad, have happened in between. It has now become most urgent for you to let us have the destroyers, motor-boats, and flying-boats for which we have asked. The Germans have the whole French coastline from which to launch U-boats and dive-bomber attacks upon our trade and food, and in addition we must be constantly prepared to repel by sea-action threatened invasion in the Narrow Waters, and also to deal with break-outs from Norway towards Ireland, Iceland, Shetlands, and Faroes. Besides this, we have to keep control of the exits from the Mediterranean, and if possible the command of that inland sea itself, and thus to prevent the war spreading seriously into Africa.

We have a large construction of destroyers and anti-U-boat craft coming forward, but the next three or four months open the gap of which I have previously told you. Latterly the air attack on our shipping has become injurious. In the last ten days we have had the following destroyers sunk:
Brazen, Codrington, Delight, Wren,
and the following damaged:
Beagle, Boreas, Brilliant, Griffin, Montrose, Walpole, Whitshed;
total eleven. All this in the advent of any attempt which may be made at invasion! Destroyers are frightfully vulnerable to air-bombing, and yet they must be held in the air-bombing area to prevent sea-borne invasion. We could not sustain the present rate of casualties for long, and if we cannot get a substantial reinforcement the whole fate of the war may be decided by this minor and easily remediable factor.

This is a frank account of our present situation, and I am confident, now that you know exactly how we stand, that you will leave nothing undone to ensure that fifty or sixty of your oldest destroyers are sent to me at once. I can fit them very quickly with Asdics and use them against U-boats on the western approaches, and so keep the more modern and better-gunned craft for the Narrow Seas against invasion. Mr. President, with great respect. I must tell you that in the long history of the world this is a thing to do
now.
Large construction is coming to me in 1941, but the crisis will be reached long before 1941. I know you will do all in your power, but I feel entitled and bound to put the gravity and urgency of the position before you.

If the destroyers were given, the motor-boats and flying-boats, which would be invaluable, could surely come in behind them.

I am beginning to feel very hopeful about this war if we can get round the next three or four months. The air is holding well. We are hitting that man hard, both in repelling attacks and in bombing Germany. But the loss of destroyers by air attack may well be so serious as to break down our defence of the food and trade routes across the Atlantic.

Tonight the latest convoys of rifles, cannon, and ammunition are coming in. Special trains are waiting to take them to the troops and Home Guard, who will take a lot of killing before they give them up. I am sure that, with your comprehension of the sea affair, you will not let this crux of the battle go wrong for want of these destroyers.

Three days later I telegraphed to our Ambassador:

3.VIII.40.

[The] second alternative, i.e., [granting of] bases [in British possessions], is agreeable, but we prefer that it should be on lease indefinitely and not sale. It is understood that this will enable us to secure destroyers and flying-boats at once. You should let Colonel Knox and others know that a request on these lines will be agreeable to us…. It is, as you say, vital to settle quickly. Now is the time when we want the destroyers. We can fit them with Asdics in about ten days from the time they are in our hands, all preparations having been made. We should also be prepared to give a number of Asdics sets to the United States Navy and assist in their installation and explain their working. Go ahead on these lines full steam.

Profound and anxious consultations had taken place at Washington, and in the first week of August the suggestion was made to us through Lord Lothian that the fifty old but reconditioned American destroyers which lay in the east coast Navy yards might be traded off. to us in exchange for a series of bases in the West Indian islands, and also Bermuda. There was, of course, no comparison between the intrinsic value of these antiquated and inefficient craft and the immense permanent strategic security afforded to the United States by the enjoyment of the island bases. But the threatened invasion, the importance of numbers in the Narrow Seas, made our need clamant. Moreover, the strategic value of these islands counted only against the United States. They were, in the old days, the stepping-stone by which America could be attacked from Europe or from England. Now, with air power, it was all the more important for American safety that they should be in friendly hands, or in their own. But the friendly hands might fail in the convulsive battle now beginning for the life of Britain. Believing, as I have always done, that the survival of Britain is bound up with the survival of the United States, it seemed to me and to my colleagues that it was an actual advantage to have these bases in American hands. 1 therefore did not look upon the question from any narrow British point of view.

There was another reason, wider and more powerful than either our need for the destroyers or the American need for the bases. The transfer to Great Britain of fifty American warships was a decidedly unneutral act by the United States. It would, according to all the standards of history, have justified the German Government in declaring war upon them. The President judged that there was no danger, and I felt there was no hope, of this simple solution of many difficulties. It was Hitler’s interest and method to strike his opponents down one by one. The last thing he wished was to be drawn into war with the United States before he had finished with Britain. Nevertheless the transfer of destroyers to Britain in August, 1940, was an event which brought the United States definitely nearer to us and to the war, and it was the first of a long succession of increasingly unneutral acts in the Atlantic which were of the utmost service to us. It marked the passage of the United States from being neutral to being non-belligerent. Although Hitler could not afford to resent it, all the world, as will be seen, understood the significance of the gesture.