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.

Wallis and Whittle

Grand Slam combat operations

Barnes Wallis and Frank Whittle, probably the best-known British inventors of the twentieth century, worked in the air-industrial complex. Both were supported very strongly by it because they came up with new ideas which were felt to be worth trying; their revolutionary inventions were supported because they were so novel, because they promised new offensive capabilities, which promised early victory.

In the summer of 1940 Wallis hatched an incredible war-winning scheme, `a monster bomber to smash the Germans'. By mid-July 1940 he had come up with a plan for a `High Altitude Stratosphere Bomber' (soon to be called the Victory Bomber). This would be a gigantic thing, with a fully laden weight of more than 50 tons, much more than the 30-ton future Lancaster bomber. It would carry 10 tons of bombs but at nearly twice the altitude of the future Lancaster, 40,000 feet, and for a considerably longer range. Wallis claimed to his superior in Vickers that `the new machine is going to be the instrument which will enable us to bring the war to a quick conclusion'. He explained that given the altitude they would operate at, they could fly `at their leisure and in daylight'. Large numbers were unnecessary: `irreparable damage could be inflicted on the strategic communications of the German Empire by . . . ten or twenty machines within the course of a few weeks'. He was confident that a new gyroscopic bombsight would give bombing accuracies of 150 yards from 40,000 feet. Such a machine had another advantage: Britain would have `the machine and the experience to enable us to step right into the forefront of transoceanic civil aviation directly war ceases'. It could fly direct to New York in twelve hours.

Vickers put this plan for a Victory bomber forward to Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Aircraft Production, in November 1940: the aircraft, pressurized and built to Wallis's geodesic principle, which was successfully used in the Wellington bomber, would have six engines. A map showed that it could bomb Moscow from London. The idea was to attack coal mines, underground petrol and oil storage, oilfields and hydroelectric dams, to strike at these `sources of power' rather than humble power stations. Wallis's concept was one of `anti-civil engineering bombing', as he called it; he wanted to destroy great works. The project was taken up by the Ministry of Aircraft Production, but work was dropped in 1942.

Two crucial aspects of the scheme did live on. The first was the idea of attacking civil engineering works, in this case dams. In 1943 Lancasters carrying the `bouncing bomb' designed by Wallis destroyed, temporarily, some dams in the Ruhr region. The RAF did not bomb the repair work; nor did it repeat the use of the bouncing bomb - it was far too expensive in terms of crews lost. In fact the remaining stock of bouncing bombs was dumped in the sea at the end of the war. The second was the idea, already in play in the Victory bomber, of bombs much larger than conventional ones, which would destroy large and strong structures. Great ingenuity and resources went into developing this concept. Wallis planned that the Victory bomber should drop new 10-ton bombs, many times bigger than current ones. Wallis designed the 6-ton Tallboy and then the 10-ton Grand Slam bombs, which were dropped from 1944 and 1945 respectively, but from Lancasters. Tallboys were used with some success against great structures like U-boat pens, the Tirpitz, which was sunk in late 1944 as a result of the third attack with these bombs; the Grand Slams were used to destroy viaducts and bridges, including the Bielefeld railway viaduct. In fact the viaduct had been under continuous attack since June 1944 by US and then British airforces, the latter using Tallboys. It was damaged but was quickly repaired, and a bypass was built making the viaduct significantly less important. The bypass had to be used for years after the war, as the viaduct was destroyed in March 1945 by the first, and much celebrated, Gland Slam raid. Wallis's `bouncing bomb' was of course the subject of The Dambusters film of 1955. As told in the film, bizzarely yet influentially, Wallis battled with a bureaucracy disinclined to accept new ideas from engineers. Yet Wallis received massive support, to produce a weapon which was in the event used on only one raid, one whose results were not as great as expected.

After Wallis, perhaps the most famous wartime inventor was Frank Whittle, in British eyes the inventor of the jet engine. Whittle was an air force officer who had been sent to Cambridge to study engineering in the 1930s; like others, he was given the opportunity to stay on and he developed his idea of the jet engine. With air force support he was seconded to a private company set up to develop his ideas, and this company, with state contracts, was to carry the main but not the only early development effort. All this happened before the war: by 1939-40 the project was well under way. By 1939 plans were being made to fit it to an aircraft; by early 1940 the jet engine was on a list of `war winners' and by late 1940 was ordered into production.

There was a brief hiatus in mid-1940, but Lindemann's interest in jets was `an important factor in the remarkable renaissance in jet propulsion' in autumn 1940.14 During the war the number of jet engine projects multiplied, with the Whittle group one of many, in what was a state-orchestrated collaborative programme, involving many large firms in turbine engineering and aero-engines - essentially Metropolitan- Vickers from October 1940, De Havilland, who got an order in May 1941, Rolls-Royce from June 1941 (though they had employed a jet specialist, A. A. Griffiths, from 1939) and lastly Armstrong-Siddeley. Bristol too were involved. Yet belief in the power of the inventor meant Whittle, without question the key pioneer, was given a lot of scope despite the fact that many and in many respects more powerful players were in the game. His Power Jets company continued to be supported. The first British jet engine into service was a Rover / Rolls- Royce development of the Whittle W2, the W2B / 23, called the Welland by Rolls-Royce. The second was the Halford H-1 (later called the Goblin), designed by the piston-engine designer Major Halford for the De Havilland company. Halford was one the big three engine designers of the war alongside Roy Fedden, chief engineer at Bristol until 1942, and Ernest Hives, general manager of Rolls-Royce. The Goblin was considerably more powerful than the first Whittle engines but was, like Whittle's, a centrifugal compressor design.

A Gloster Meteor Intercepts a V-1 Flying Bomb
by Colin E. Bowley
1944- A Gloster Meteor of 616 Squadron operating from Manston in Kent intercepts a German V-1 Flying Bomb bound for London.
Shooting at a V-1 proved to be extremely dangerous. To be within range to shoot also meant being close enough to be damaged by the huge explosion and deadly flying shrapnel.
Some pilots were able to fly alongside and gently tip the wing of the V-1 to send it out of control and into the empty fields below.

The Gloster Meteor, a fighter equipped with two Wellands, went into partial service in June 1944 and was used against V-1 doodlebugs. However, it was no match for the new fighters powered by the Sabre and Centaurus engines. The De Havilland Vampire, with a single De Havilland Goblin, only came into service after the war, as did a new Meteor powered with Rolls-Royce engines. Such late deployment was not intended. Production orders had been given `off the drawing board' to the Rover car company in 1940. In early 1941 it was envisaged that British jet fighters would be operational in the winter of 1942-3. A jet engine factory at Barnoldswick in Lancashire costing £1.5m and employing 1,600 workers was ready before the engine, resulting in a serious waste of resources in 1942.

Engine development was in effect to be taken out of Whittle's hands late in the war. From 1943 it was intended to nationalize his Power Jets firm, which was supported by private interests, as indeed happened in 1944. Through a series of steps it became part of the civil service after the war. But as he became less important in the actual design, Whittle was celebrated as the inventor of the jet. In 1944 he became a public figure, garlanded with honours from the state and from engineering institutions. Though still a young man he was never to design a jet engine again. Development was now very firmly in the hands of great private firms committed to the next generation of jets. The surprising ending to this story should not obscure the level of support this RAF officer got from the ministry long before the war - remaining a career officer he was seconded to a private firm to develop his invention with government money. The authorities believed in the individual inventor; his special qualities were seen as essential to creativity.