Their Finest Hour (84 page)

Prime Minister to C.I.G.S.

6.XI.40.

You impressed upon me how important it was to have a first-rate man in charge of the Home Guard, and what a compliment to them it would be if the former Chief of the Staff in France was chosen; so General Pownall was appointed. But a few weeks later I was astonished to learn he was to go to America on the mission now discharged by General Pakenham-Walsh. With some difficulty I stopped this change. However, a little later Pownall was sent to Ireland. Whereas I suppose he would have done very well for the Home Guard, just as he got to know his job and men were beginning to look to him, he was whisked off to something else, and General Eastwood took his place. This is, I think, only a month ago. However, I dutifully set myself to work to make General Eastwood’s acquaintance, and I suppose so did the principal officers of the Home Guard, f formed a favourable opinion of him, particularly on account of his age, which is under fifty. I suppose he has been working very hard for the month, trying to learn his immense new task, and he certainly had begun to speak about it with knowledge. Now you propose to me to send him away, and to appoint a third new figure, all in four months.

All these rapid changes are contrary to the interests of the Service, and open to the most severe criticism. I am not prepared to agree to dismiss General Eastwood from the Home Guard command. If you wish to set up this Directorate-General, he must have it, so far as I am concerned. However, the Secretary of State will be back in two days, if all goes well, and I am sending a copy of this Minute to him. I shall still expect to be consulted.

Prime Minister to C.A.S.

6.XI.40.

Last night at least seven of our planes crashed on landing or were lost. The slow expansion of the bomber force is, as you know, a great anxiety to me. If bombing in this bad weather is imposing altogether undue risks and losses on the pilots, the numbers might be slacked down in order to accumulate our strength while at the same time keeping various objectives alive.

Prime Minister to Sir Edward Bridges.

8.XI.40.

Many of the executive departments naturally have set up and developed their own statistical branches, but there appears to be a separate statistical branch attached to the Ministerial Committee on Production, and naturally the Ministry of Supply’s statistical branch covers a very wide field. I have my own statistical branch under Professor Lindemann.

It is essential to consolidate and make sure that agreed figures only are used. The utmost confusion is caused when people argue on different statistical data. I wish all statistics to be concentrated in my own branch as Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, from which alone the final authoritative working statistics will issue. The various departmental statistical branches will, of course, continue as at present, but agreement must be reached between them and the Central Statistical Office.

Pray look into this, and advise me how my wish can be most speedily and effectively achieved.

Prime Minister to Minister of Transport.

8.XI.40.

Let me know what progress has been made in breaking up the queues, and in bringing vehicles into service. With the earlier black-out it must be very hard on many.

Prime Minister to First Sea Lord.

9.XI.40.

Please let me have a report on the improvements of the Asdic and hydrophone technique which have been made in the last year.

Prime Minister to Minister of Transport.

9.XI.40.

Preliminary inspection seems to indicate that the time of turn round in ports has increased in recent months rather than the reverse. This is probably due to the concentration of traffic on a few west coast ports. Are the delays caused by inadequate port facilities or by difficulties in clearing the goods from the docks? Have you a scheme to exploit to the full our large resources of road transport if the railways prove inadequate to deal with these special problems?

Prime Minister to C.A.S.

10.XI.40.

Altogether, broadly speaking, one thousand aircraft and seventeen thousand air personnel in the Middle East provide thirty and one-half squadrons, with a total initial equipment of three hundred and ninety-five operational types, of which it is presumed three hundred are ready for action on any date. Unhappily, out of sixty-five Hurricanes, only two squadrons (apart from Malta) are available. These are the only modern aircraft, unless you count the Blenheim IV’s. All the rest of this enormous force is armed with obsolete or feeble machines. The process of replacement should, therefore, be pressed to the utmost, and surely it should be possible to utilise all this skilled personnel of pilots and ground staff to handle the new machines. Therefore “remounting” the Eastern Air Force ought not in principle to require more personnel, except where new types are more complicated. However, as part of the reinforcements now being sent – i.e., four Wellington and four Hurricane squadrons – we are sending over three thousand additional personnel.

In the disparity between the great mass of men and numbers of aircraft on charge, and the fighting product constantly available, which is painfully marked both here and at home, lies the waste of R.A.F. resources. What is the use of the six hundred machines which are not even included in the initial equipment of the thirty squadrons? No doubt some can be explained as training, communication, and transport. But how is it that out of seven hundred and thirty-two operational types only three hundred and ninety-five play any part in the fighting?

I hope that a most earnest effort will be made to get full value for men, material, and money out of this very large force, first, by remounting, second, by making more squadrons out of the large surplus of machines not formed in squadrons, third, by developing local O.T.U.’s or other training establishments.

Prime Minister to Minister of Health.

10.XI.40.

I see your total of homeless is down by one thousand five hundred this week to about ten thousand. Please let me know how many new you had in, and how many former went out. With such a small number as ten thousand, you ought to be able to clean this up if you have another light week.

What is the average time that a homeless person remains at a rest centre?

Prime Minister to Secretary of State for Air. 17

10.XI.40.

There is a shelter at Chequers which gives good protection from lateral damage. There is the household to consider. Perhaps you will have the accommodation inspected.

The carriage drive is being turfed.

I cannot bear to divert Bofors from the fighting positions. What about trying a few rockets, which are at present only in an experimental stage?

I am trying to vary my movements a little during the moonlight intervals. It is very good of you and your Ministry to concern yourselves with my safety.

Prime Minister to Secretary of State for War.

10.XI.40.

I hope you will look into this yourself. We had the greatest difficulty in carrying these sticky bombs through, and there was every evidence they would not have received fair play had I not gone down myself to see the experiment. Now is the chance to let the Greeks try this method out, and it would seem that it might be very helpful to them.

What is this tale that they are dangerous to pack and handle? They are, of course, despatched without their detonators, and therefore cannot explode.

Prime Minister to Air C.-in-C., Middle East.

12.XI.40.

I am trying every day to speed up the arrivals in your command of Hurricanes, etc. This is especially important in the next three weeks, Pray report daily what you actually receive, and how many you are able to put into action.

I was astonished to find that you have nearly one thousand aircraft and one thousand pilots and sixteen thousand air personnel in the Middle East, excluding Kenya. I am most anxious to re-equip you with modern machines at the earliest moment; but surely out of all this establishment you ought to be able, if the machines are forthcoming, to produce a substantially larger number of modern aircraft operationally fit? Pray report through the Air Ministry any steps you may be able to take to obtain more fighting value from the immense mass of material and men under your command.

I am grieved that the imperative demands of the Greek situation and its vital importance to the Middle East should have disturbed your arrangements at this exceptionally critical time. All good wishes.

Prime Minister to Sir Edward Bridges and General Ismay.

12.XI.40.

The Prime Minister has noticed that the habit of private secretaries and others addressing each other by their Christian names about matters of an official character is increasing, and ought to be stopped. The use of Christian names in inter-departmental correspondence should be confined only to brief explanatory covering notes or to purely personal and private explanations.

It is hard enough to follow people by their surnames.

Prime Minister to Home Secretary.

12.XI.40.

How are you getting on with the comfort of the shelters in the winter – flooring, drainage, and the like? What is being done to bring them inside the houses? I attach the greatest importance to gramophones and wireless in the shelters. How is that going forward? Would not this per haps be a very good subject for the Lord Mayor’s Fund? I should not be surprised if the improved lighting comes up again before many weeks are out, and I hope that the preparations for it will go forward.

Prime Minister to Foreign Secretary.

12.XI.40.

We shall certainly have to obtain control of Syria by one means or another in the next few months. The best way would be by a Weygand or a de Gaullist movement, but this cannot be counted on, and until we have dealt with the Italians in Libya we have no troops to spare for a northern venture. On no acount must Italian or Caitiff-Vichy influences become or remain paramount in Syria.

Prime Minister to Lord Beaverbrook.

12.XI.40.

I do not think this could be said without the approval of the Air Ministry, and indeed of the C.O.S. Committee. My own feeling would be against giving these actual figures.
¹⁸
They tell the enemy too much. It is like getting one of the tail bones of the ichthyosaurus from which a naturalist can reconstruct the entire animal. The more I think about it, the more I am against it.

Prime Minister to Secretary of State for Air and C.A.S.

15.XI.40.

This amounts to a loss of eleven of our bombers in one night. I said the other day by Minute that the operations were not to be pressed unduly during these very adverse weather conditions. We cannot afford to have losses of this kind in view of your very slow replacements. If you go on like this, you will break the bomber force down to below a minimum for grave emergencies. No results have been achieved which would in any way justify or compensate for these losses. I consider the loss of eleven aircraft out of one hundred and thirty-nine – i.e., about eight per cent – a very grievous disaster at this stage of our bomber development.

Let me have the losses during the first half of November.

Prime Minister to C.A.S.

17.XI.40.

I watch these figures every day with much concern. My diagrams show that we are now not even keeping level, and there is a marked downward turn this week, especially in the Bomber Command. Painful as it is not to be able to strike heavy blows after an event like Coventry, yet I feel we should for the present
nurse
the Bomber Command a little more. This can be done (1) by not sending so many to each of the necessary objectives, (2) by not coming down too low in the face of heavy prepared batteries and being content with somewhat less accuracy, and (3) by picking out soft spots where there is not too much organised protection, so as to keep up our deliveries of bomb content. There must be unexpecting towns in Germany where very little has been done in air raid precautions and yet where there are military objectives of a minor order. Some of these could be struck at in the meanwhile.

2. I should feel differently about this if our bomber force were above five hundred, and if it were expanding. But, having regard to the uncertainties of war, we must be very careful not to let routine bombing and our own high standards proceed without constant attention to our resources. These remarks do not apply, of course, to Italy, against which the full-scale risk should be run. The wounded
Littorio
is a fine target.

(Action this day.) Prime Minister to First Lord and First Sea Lord.

18.XI.40.

I was assured that sixty-four destroyers would be available for the northwestern approaches by November 15. This return of Asdic-fitted ships, which goes to November 16, shows sixty. But what is disconcerting is that out of one hundred and fifty-one destroyers only eighty-four are available for service, and out of sixty for the northwestern approaches only thirty-three are available for service. When we held our conference more than a month ago, the Admiral was found with only twenty-four destroyers available, and all that has happened in the month that has passed is that another nine have been added to his available strength. But meanwhile you have had the American destroyers streaming into service, and I was assured that there was a steady output from our own yards. I cannot understand why there has been this serious frustration of decisions so unitedly arrived at, nor why such an immense proportion of destroyers are laid up for one cause or another. Are the repairs falling behind? What has happened to the American destroyers? Are we failing in repairs and new construction?

I should be glad to have a special conference at 10
A.M.
on Tuesday at the Admiralty War Room.