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.
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