MAP OF THE MONTH – Battle of Britain, 1940 – 41

MAP OF THE MONTH - Battle of Britain, 1940 - 41

Armchair General has partnered with The Map as History, a company that produces outstanding animated maps with accompanying narration. Each month, a link to one of their animated maps will be featured on the ACG site. This month's map explores the Battle of Britain and "the Blitz," Adolf Hitler's air war 1940-41 that was intended to bring Britain to its knees.

Battle of Britain - 7 September 1940

Most historians agree that the very nature of the Battle of Britain changed on 7 September, with a shift away from the direct attack on Fighter Command's airfields and the factories which produced its aircraft. The change in targeting was driven by Goring and supported by Kesselring, who felt that the anti-airfield campaign had run its course, and that Fighter Command was finished. But Sperrle protested strongly, believing that Fighter Command probably still had a thousand aircraft left, and wished to continue to scourge the No.11 Group airfields. He was overruled.

But it would be a mistake to see the targeting of London as necessarily marking a fundamental change in direction by the Luftwaffe. The aim was still the destruction of Fighter Command, and the targeting of London merely represented a switch to a target which the Germans felt was most likely to draw the RAF's fighters into the air, where they could be destroyed. It was, in the words of one German officer, the 'only target that Fighter Command would give everything to defend.' That, at least, was Goring's theory, although it did also mark an opportunity for vengeance following Bomber Command's raid on Berlin on 25 August. And London was a vitally important target. It was Europe's largest city, and was the capital city of a nation whose capital was of unparalleled importance. It was the centre of Britain's economy, a major industrial and port city, the seat of government and the home of the King. Small wonder that it was a tempting target.

But just as Goring had rethought his battle plans, so too did Dowding adjust his tactical thinking, and restructured his forces. By coincidence, as the new phase of the Battle began, Dowding's reclassification of his squadrons came into effect. Thereafter, the frontline squadrons in No. 11 Group were categorised as Class A squadrons, as were those units in Nos 10 and 12 Groups which Park might call on to reinforce his Group. Class B squadrons were fully manned and fully established, and were ready to be called into action, but might be lacking in combat experience or be suffering from a degree of fatigue. Finally, Class C squadrons were those which had suffered severe losses, and were being rested and re-equipped. Experienced survivors from these units were taken (as soon as they were ready) to act as replacements for pilots killed or wounded in the higher category units. This cut the link between an individual pilot and his original unit, but ensured that newly formed squadrons would have a core of combat-experienced veterans. Meanwhile, Keith Park instructed his controllers and pilots to henceforth obey altitude orders from Group, without making any personal interpretations of the heights given. He did this to ensure that climbing fighters did not emerge below their targets, but it caused delays and sometimes meant that the RAF fighters fought the escorts instead of the bombers, which often flew slightly lower.

As if to deliberately confuse Fighter Commander, the Luftwaffe began 7 September as it had begun many of the past days, with a handful of reconnaissance sorties, but thereafter, the radar screens remained clear and the plotting tables empty. The long delay seemed ominous. The Air Ministry had already issued an 'Invasion Alert No. 1' (meaning attack imminent) without having previously issued Alert Nos 2 and 3 (attack probable within two and three days, respectively).

History records that the first raid counter was placed on the plotting table at Bentley Priory at 1554, and that within minutes counters representing many hundreds of aircraft were on the table. Goring had launched virtually the full strength of KG 1, KG 2, KG 3, KG 26 and KG 76, together with the Bf 110s of ZG 2 and the Bf 109Es of JG 2, JG 3, JG 51, JG 52, JG 54, I./JG 77 and I./ and II./LG 2. This colossal armada numbered 965 aircraft, stepped up from 4268m to 7010m (14,000ft to 23,000ft) advancing along a 32.2km (20-mile) front. Dowding and Park correctly guessed that only London could be the target of such a vast force, and at 1617 11 fighter squadrons were ordered into the air, with 21 units airborne by 1630. All available fighters raced towards the capital, with no thought of standing guard over their airfields. The RAF fighters were massively out-numbered by the German escorts, but tore into the enemy with great ferocity. The German bombers aimed for the docks, but their bombs fell over a wide area, from Kensington in the west but concentrated in the East End, and doing as much damage to the densely packed terraces of working-men's houses as to the docks, gasworks and power stations that were also hit. The enemy bombers turned around and were all en route home by 1745, albeit with huge gaps in the neat formations.

As the skies above London emptied of aircraft, the fight was taken over by the firemen, who fought the spreading fires with a grim determination. They fought to douse the burning buildings, the wooden-block road surfaces on older streets and even the surface of the River Thames itself (where floating liquid sugar ignited), all the while with the warehouses of paint, oil, explosives and ammunition blowing up in terrifying explosions. But it was not just the obviously dangerous materials that exploded - flour and pepper were equally dangerous, and the conflagration threatened to become self-sustaining as the fire sucked in oxygen from the surrounding streets. Burning debris was tossed into the air like straw, setting new fires wherever it landed. The London Fire Brigade classified a fire requiring 30 pumps as a 'Major' fire, yet in the early evening of 7 September, the Fire Brigade were tackling nine fires which were officially rated as 'Conflagrations', in that they required more than 100 pumps each. The largest was in the Surrey Docks, where the fire was too large to classify, and where it was arbitrarily rated as a 300-appliance fire.

At about 2010, the next wave of 318 German bombers began to pour down tons of incendiaries. 306 civilians died in the bombing, and 1337 more were seriously injured in the City, with 142 more killed in the suburbs. An enormous pall of smoke hung over the capital, and the fires burned on.

The first day cost Fighter Command dear, with the loss of 15 Spitfires (and four pilots) and 17 Hurricanes (with seven pilots). But the Luftwaffe lost 38 aircraft, including 14 Bf 109s. The balance of attrition was not very different from that suffered during the past weeks, although this changed as the campaign wore on, and the onslaught on London soon became much more costly to the attacker than to the defenders. And the blitz against London lasted long after the Battle ended, bleeding the Luftwaffe white in the process. The attacks continued on 76 consecutive nights, with only a single exception. This was 2 November, when the weather was too poor to allow the German bombers to operate. Perhaps most crucially, the Fighter Command airfields, and the Chain Home stations were given precious respite by the switch in targeting. Even the pilots themselves were rested when not actually in the air over London. Squadrons spent whole days without coming to readiness, and there was even time for newly arrived pilots to be taken on training and familiarisation sorties -luxuries which would have been unthinkable only days before. And, as in the phrase popularly used at the time, 'London could take it'. Dowding was relieved by the switch in targeting, commenting that 'The nearness of London to German airfields will lose them the war.' Churchill put it in typically over-blown fashion. 'London is like some huge prehistoric animal, capable of enduring terrific injury, mangled and bleeding from many wounds yet preserving its life and movement.'

The beginning of the bombing of London Part I

On September 2 Reichsmarschall Göring had received the Führer’s permission to begin large-scale day bombing of London (as well as continuing night bombing). He arrived at the Pas-de-Calais on September 7 in his luxurious private train to oversee the initial operation himself, and watch the big formations of both his air fleets’ bombers and their escorting fighters heading toward the white cliffs of Dover in the afternoon and on to London. There were more than 300 bombers and 600 fighters, and the spectacle left most people who saw it speechless; translated into electronic blips and squiggles on a radar screen, it dismayed the RAF radar operators and controllers. This immense raid—the largest so far in the history of air warfare—was far from being a military secret. It was watched by Göring and his staff as it flew overhead, in wave after wave, and was the subject of ecstatic reports on German radio at home as it took place. The radio reports were artfully orchestrated by Dr. Goebbels’s staff, with awe-inspiring music and sound effects. Göring himself announced on the radio to the German people, “I have taken over personal command of the Luftwaffe in its war against England.” Some people noted the strange implication that he had not hitherto been in command; others perhaps recalled that he had also promised that Berlin would never be bombed. But the tone of the day in the German media was not only optimistic but triumphalist, even orgiastic, in the tradition of Nazi propaganda. The British radar operators, who were not listening to Radio Berlin, were at first uncertain about what the Germans were planning to attack as they formed up in such large numbers over Calais, and jumped to the conclusion that Kenley and Biggin Hill would once again be the targets, as on previous days.

Fighter Command was, as a result, for once caught flat-footed. Some of the confusion was the result of Park’s instructions to his controllers two days earlier. Although his criticism of Leigh-Mallory was what most of those who read the document noticed first, a second, and more important subject was his dissatisfaction with the way controllers were positioning No. 11 Group’s fighter squadrons. To understand this, it is necessary to keep in mind that radar had originally been an unreliable indicator of height. Radar operators had therefore developed a habit of adding a few thousand feet to their estimate of height because their radar sets generally indicated a height they knew was too low. This technical problem had been largely corrected by August 1940, but many of the operators were still adding on a couple of thousand feet when they communicated their reading of the screen to the controllers. Unfortunately, the fighter pilots themselves usually added on another couple of thousand feet to the figure they were told, partly out of experience and habit and partly because fighter pilots always want to seek the advantage of height when attacking. The higher a pilot is, the better his view of the enemy, and, of course, for a pilot height also equals speed—diving at high speed on the enemy from above and behind was the best guarantee of making a kill and escaping alive. Since it took time for a Spitfire or a Hurricane to climb to a given altitude (about eleven minutes for the former to reach 25,000 feet), for obvious reasons the higher a squadron climbed, the longer it would take to get there. The result was that squadrons were often too late to attack the German bombers on their way in to their target and were attacking after the bombs had been dropped. One complaint about Dowding and Park was that however many German aircraft their pilots shot down, they were not doing enough to prevent the Germans from dropping bombs in the first place.

This was related to the second consequence of climbing to a higher altitude than was necessary—the higher British fighters climbed, the more likely they were to meet German fighter escorts, some of which, despite Göring’s order to stick close to the bombers, still flew well above them (which was, of course, the only sensible way to protect them). This had the effect of increasing fighter-to-fighter combat, and of decreasing attacks on the bombers, which usually flew at least 4,000 to 5,000 feet lower. In theory, the Spitfire squadrons should have been taking on the German fighters high up, the Hurricane squadrons should have taken on the bombers lower down, since the Spitfire was faster and could reach a higher altitude than the Hurricane. But in practice this neat division of tasks was not happening, and the pilots were therefore not taking full advantage of each plane’s particular characteristics—against the bombers, the Hurricane was a sturdy and rock solid “gun platform”; but the Spitfire was at its best at higher altitudes, where its speed, maneuverability, and tight turning circle allowed it to fight with the Bf 109 on equal terms, or better.

The beginning of the bombing of London Part II

Adding to Fighter Command’s difficulties that day, the arrival of large numbers of barges in the Belgian ports had led many to conclude that the German invasion might be imminent and that the big German raid building up was the opening move, thus further deflecting attention from what was actually happening. The German tactics were also designed to confuse the British. The huge bomber force crossed the coast to the southeast of London at a much higher altitude than usual, and at many different points, to confuse the radar operators about the direction of the attack. Then it reassembled at an altitude of about 16,000 feet and followed the Thames estuary directly toward RAF Kenley, Biggin Hill, and Croydon, which were in any case what Dowding and Park assumed were the targets; but having flown beyond Croydon it suddenly turned back toward London’s East End. The approach to No. 11 Group’s crucial Sector airfields was well protected, but the approach to London was not, and it was too late to change that—at first, Park could put in only four squadrons of fighters against the great mass of German bombers and fighters. Even veteran fighter pilots were amazed when they came into view of these aircraft. “It was a breathtaking sight,” one of them commented later. “You couldn’t help feeling you’d never again see anything as remarkable as that.” Another said, “I’d never seen so many aircraft,” and this was a common reaction among the pilots, the radar plotters, and the observers on the ground. Nobody had ever before seen so many aircraft gathered into one carefully organized formation, so numerous that they seemed unstoppable. As five o’clock in the afternoon approached, they were obviously headed for the East End of London, with its docks, warehouses, factories, endless rows of small homes, and sprawling tenements—perhaps the most densely populated urban target in the world.

The initial fighter attacks were pressed home with vigor, but there was no way that four squadrons of British fighters could deter or break up so big and well-defended a mass of aircraft, let alone prevent them from bombing. The best Fighter Command could do was to attack the Germans as they withdrew to the north over London, then turned east over the sea to fly back to their bases. Between four-twenty and five o’clock, Dowding managed to get twenty-one squadrons into the air, including Douglas Bader’s controversial “Duxford Wing” of three squadrons, but the hard fighting did not begin until the bombs were already falling on the East End.

They fell on the London docks, Limehouse, Tower Bridge, Woolwich, Bermondsey, Tottenham, Barking, Hackney, Rotherhithe, and Stepney, they destroyed the Harland and Wolff factory, oil refineries, and warehouses; they damaged a gasworks, the Battersea Power Station, and the oil storage tanks at Thameshaven, which had been hit the day before; they forced “the entire population of Silvertown, surrounded by raging infernos . . . to be evacuated by water.” By the end of the day 306 civilian Londoners were dead and 1,337 were seriously wounded; whole neighborhoods were turned into “raging infernos”; train lines, tram lines, gas and water mains, sewer lines, and electricity and telephone cables were cut all over east London; three main railway stations were seriously damaged and put out of operation; whole streets were reduced to rubble; buses and trams were crumpled sheet metal; and a dense pall of smoke, grit, and burned oil spread over all London, mixed with an occasionally more pungent smell as vast quantities of tobacco and liquor in the burning bonded warehouses by the docks went up in flames. Contrary to the predictions of von Ribbentrop, there was no sign of panic. Even so professional a judge of class warfare as Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom, noted not only the scale of destruction but the calm behavior of those who were bombed. Stoically and patiently, East Enders, Jewish and gentile, abandoned their ruined homes and burning possessions, and threaded their way through the bomb craters and rubble to be looked after by organized volunteers.

During the night of September 7–8 the Luftwaffe came back, almost 300 bombers strong, and dropped more than 300 tons of high explosive bombs and nearly 500 incendiary bombs on the already gutted neighborhoods of the East End, guided to their target by the flames still rising from the oil storage tanks, refineries, and broken gas mains. In the streets below, no fewer than nine “major conflagrations” were being battled by about 600 fire engines, and most of the firemen (and volunteer firemen)* and emergency workers of greater London.

That evening Göring called his wife, Emmy, in Berlin to tell her triumphantly, “London is in flames.” A more perceptive comment came from the distinguished American journalist James Reston, then the correspondent of the New York Times in London, who cabled to his paper that night: “One simply cannot praise the average man here too highly. Out of history and environment of these past 1,000 years he has inherited a quality of courage which is a true inspiration. . . . One simply cannot convey the spirit of these people. Adversity only angers and strengthens them. They are tough in a way we Americans seldom understand. That curious gentility among their menfolk confuses us. We underestimate them. . . . The British people can hold out to the end.” 9 Hitler had made the great mistake of choosing London as the target, instead of Fighter Command, and the result would be not only a propaganda victory for the British, who were suddenly proving to the world that they “could take it,” but a real victory for Fighter Command.

That same night, while fires still blazed in London from the raid during the day, the Chiefs of Staff, after studying the photographs taken of the German barges and naval vessels and reviewing the latest intercepts of German radio and cable traffic, finally issued the dreaded code word “Cromwell”—the warning that an invasion was expected imminently. All over southern England, members of the Home Guard mustered and were issued live ammunition; the army was placed on full alert; church bells were rung; and in some places, with, to echo the words of Talleyrand, trop de zèle, roads were blocked, and a few strategic bridges were blown up by overenthusiastic sappers of the Royal Engineers.

But when morning came, the seas remained empty, the beaches were untouched by the boots of German infantry, and no swarms of parachute troops had landed at strategic points. Fighter Command had lost twenty-eight aircraft, with nineteen pilots killed or missing. The Germans had lost forty-one aircraft—thirty less than the RAF claimed, but still a substantial number, and a considerable improvement over the days earlier in the month when losses on both sides were about equal.