Book Two

Alone

1

The Battle of Britain

The Decisive Struggle — Hitler’s Dilemma — Three Phases – Advantages of Fighting in One’s Own Air — “Sea Lion” and the Air Assault — The German Raid Against Tyneside — Massacre of the Heinkels — Lord Beaverbrook’s Hour — Mr. Ernest Bevin and Labour — Cabinet Solidarity — Checking German Losses — First Attacks on London — Uneasiness of the German Naval Staff — My Broadcast of September 11 — The Hard Strain from August 24 to September 6 — The Articulation of Fighter Command Endangered — A Quarter of Our Pilots Killed or Disabled in a Fortnight — Goering’s Mistake of Turning on London Too Soon — A Breathing Space — September 15 the Culminating Date — With Number 11 Group — Air Vice-Marshal Park — The Group Operations Room — The Attack Begins — All Reserves Employed — A Cardinal Victory — Hitler Postpones “Sea Lion” September 17 — Afterlight on Claims and Losses — Honour for All.

OUR FATE now depended up on victory in the air. The German leaders had recognised that all their plans for the invasion of Britain depended on winning air supremacy above the Channel and the chosen landing places on our south coast. The preparation of the embarkation ports, the assembly of the transports, the minesweeping of the passages, and the laying of the new minefields were impossible without protection from British air attack. For the actual crossing and landings, complete mastery of the air over the transports and the beaches was the decisive condition. The result, therefore, turned upon the destruction of the Royal Air Force and the system of airfields between London and the sea. We now know that Hitler said to Admiral Raeder on July 31: “If after eight days of intensive air war the Luftwaffe has not achieved considerable destruction of the enemy’s air force, harbours, and naval forces, the operation will have to be put off till May, 1941.” This was the battle that had now to be fought.

I did not myself at all shrink mentally from the impending trial of strength. I had told Parliament on June 4: “The great French Army was very largely, for the time being, cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousand armoured vehicles. May it not also be that the cause of civilisation itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen?” And to Smuts, on June 9: “I see only one sure way through now – to wit, that Hitler should attack this country, and in so doing break his air weapon.” The occasion had now arrived.

Admirable accounts have been written of the struggle between the British and German Air Forces which constitutes the Battle of Britain. In Air Chief Marshal Dowding’s despatch and the Air Ministry pamphlet number 156, the essential facts are fully recorded as they were known to us in 1941 and 1943. We have now also access to the views of the German High Command and of their inner reactions in the various phases. It appears that the German losses in some of the principal combats were a good deal less than we thought at the time, and that reports on both sides were materially exaggerated. But the main features and the outline of this famous conflict, upon which the life of Britain and the freedom of the world depended, are not in dispute.

The German Air Force had been engaged to the utmost limit in the Battle of France, and, like the German Navy after the Norway Campaign, they required a period of weeks or months for recovery. This pause was convenient to us too, for all but three of our fighter squadrons had at one time or another been engaged in the Continental operations. Hitler could not conceive that Britain would not accept a peace offer after the collapse of France. Like Marshal Pétain, Weygand, and many of the French generals and politicians, he did not understand the separate, aloof resources of an island state, and like these Frenchmen he misjudged our will-power. We had travelled a long way and learned a lot since Munich. During the month of June he had addressed himself to the new situation as it gradually dawned upon him, and meanwhile the German Air Force recuperated and redeployed for their next task. There could be no doubt what this would be. Either Hitler must invade and conquer England, or he must face an indefinite prolongation of the war, with all its incalculable hazards and complications. There was always the possibility that victory over Britain in the air would bring about the end of the British resistance, and that actual invasion, even if it became practicable, would also become unnecessary, except for the occupying of a defeated country.

During June and early July, the German Air Force revived and regrouped its formations and established itself on all the French and Belgian airfields from which the assault had to be launched, and by reconnaissance and tentative forays sought to measure the character and scale of the opposition which would be encountered. It was not until July 10 that the first heavy onslaught began, and this date is usually taken as the opening of the battle. Two other dates of supreme consequence stand out, August 15 and September 15. There were also three successive but overlapping phases in the German attack. First, from July 10 to August 18, the harrying of British convoys in the Channel and of our southern ports from Dover to Plymouth; whereby our Air Force should be tested, drawn into battle, and depleted; whereby also damage should be done to those seaside towns marked as objectives for the forthcoming invasion. In the second phase, August 24 to September 27, a way to London was to be forced by the elimination of the Royal Air Force and its installations, leading to the violent and continuous bombing of the capital. This would also cut communications with the threatened shores. But in Goering’s view there was good reason to believe that a greater prize was here in sight, no less than throwing the world’s largest city into confusion and paralysis, the cowing of the Government and the people, and their consequent submission to the German will. Their Navy and Army Staffs devoutly hoped that Goering was right. As the situation developed, they saw that the R.A.F. was not being eliminated, and meanwhile their own urgent needs for the “Sea Lion” adventure were neglected for the sake of destruction in London.

And then, when all were disappointed, when invasion was indefinitely postponed for lack of the vital need, air supremacy, there followed the third and last phase. The hope of daylight victory had faded, the Royal Air Force remained vexatiously alive, and Goering in October resigned himself to the indiscriminate bombing of London and the centres of industrial production.

* * * * *

In the quality of the fighter aircraft there was little to choose. The Germans’ were faster, with a better rate of climb; ours more manoeuvrable, better armed. Their airmen, well aware of their greater numbers, were also the proud victors of Poland, Norway, the Low Countries, France; ours had supreme confidence in themselves as individuals and that determination which the British race displays in fullest measure when in supreme adversity. One important strategical advantage the Germans enjoyed and skilfully used: their forces were deployed on many and widely spread bases whence they could concentrate upon us in great strengths and with feints and deceptions as to the true points of attack. But the enemy may have under-rated the adverse conditions of fighting above and across the Channel compared with those which had prevailed in France and Belgium. That they regarded them as serious is shown by the efforts they made to organise an efficient Sea Rescue Service. German transport planes, marked with the Red Cross, began to appear in some numbers over the Channel in July and August whenever there was an air fight. We did not recognise this means of rescuing enemy pilots who had been shot down in action, in order that they might come and bomb our civil population again. We rescued them ourselves whenever it was possible, and made them prisoners of war. But all German air ambulances were forced or shot down by our fighters on definite orders approved by the War Cabinet. The German crews and doctors on these machines professed astonishment at being treated in this way, and protested that it was contrary to the Geneva Convention. There was no mention of such a contingency in the Geneva Convention, which had not contemplated this form of warfare. The Germans were not in a strong position to complain, in view of all the treaties, laws of war, and solemn agreements which they had violated without compunction whenever it suited them. They soon abandoned the experiment, and the work of sea rescue for both sides was carried out by our small craft, on which of course the Germans fired on every occasion.

* * * * *

By August, the Luftwaffe had gathered 2669 operational aircraft, comprising 1015 bombers, 346 dive-bombers, 933 fighters, and 375 heavy fighters. The Fuehrer’s Directive Number 17 authorised the intensified air war against England on August 5. Goering never set much store by “Sea Lion”; his heart was in the “absolute” air war. His consequent distortion of the arrangements disturbed the German Naval Staff. The destruction of the Royal Air Force and our aircraft industry was to them but a means to an end: when this was accomplished, the air war should be turned against the enemy’s warships and shipping. They regretted the lower priority assigned by Goering to the naval targets, and they were irked by the delays. On August 6, they reported to the Supreme Command that the preparations for German mine-laying in the Channel area could not proceed because of the constant British threat from the air. On August 10, the Naval Staff’s War Diary records:

Preparations for “Sea Lion,” particularly mine-clearance, are being affected by the inactivity of the Luftwaffe, which is at present prevented from operating by the bad weather, and, for reasons not known to the Naval Staff, the Luftwaffe has missed opportunities afforded by the recent very favourable weather….

The continuous heavy air fighting of July and early August had been directed upon the Kent promontory and the Channel coast. Goering and his skilled advisers formed the opinion that they must have drawn nearly all our fighter squadrons into this southern struggle. They therefore decided to make a daylight raid on the manufacturing cities north of the Wash. The distance was too great for their first-class fighters, the M.E. 109’s. They would have to risk their bombers with only escorts from the Me 110’s, which, though they had the range, had nothing like the quality, which was what mattered now. This was nevertheless a reasonable step for them to take, and the risk was well run.

Accordingly, on August 15, about a hundred bombers, with an escort of forty M.E. 110’s, were launched against Tyneside. At the same time a raid of more than eight hundred planes was sent to pin down our forces in the South, where it was thought they were already all gathered. But now the dispositions which Dowding had made of the Fighter Command were signally vindicated. The danger had been foreseen. Seven Hurricane or Spitfire squadrons had been withdrawn from the intense struggle in the South to rest in and at the same time to guard the North. They had suffered severely, but were nonetheless deeply grieved to leave the battle. The pilots respectfully represented that they were not at all tired. Now came an unexpected consolation. These squadrons were able to welcome the assailants as they crossed the coast. Thirty German planes were shot down, most of them heavy bombers (Heinkel 111’s, with four trained men in each crew), for a British loss of only two pilots injured. The foresight of Air Marshal Dowding in his direction of Fighter Command deserves high praise, but even more remarkable had been the restraint and the exact measurement of formidable stresses which had reserved a fighter force in the North through all these long weeks of mortal conflict in the South. We must regard the generalship here shown as an example of genius in the art of war. Never again was a daylight raid attempted outside the range of the highest-class fighter protection. Henceforth everything north of the Wash was safe by day.

August 15 was the largest air battle of this period of the war; five major actions were fought, on a front of five hundred miles. It was indeed a crucial day. In the South all our twenty-two squadrons were engaged, many twice, some three times, and the German losses, added to those in the North, were seventy-six to our thirty-four. This was a recognisable disaster to the German Air Force.

It must have been with anxious minds that the German Air Chiefs measured the consequences of this defeat, which boded ill for the future. The German Air Force, however, had still as their target the port of London, all that immense line of docks with their masses of shipping, and the largest city in the world which did not require much accuracy to hit.

* * * * *

During these weeks of intense struggle and ceaseless anxiety, Lord Beaverbrook rendered signal service. At all costs the fighter squadrons must be replenished with trustworthy machines. This was no time for red tape and circumlocution, although these have their place in a well-ordered, placid system. All his remarkable qualities fitted the need. His personal buoyancy and vigour were a tonic. I was glad to be able sometimes to lean on him. He did not fail. This was his hour. His personal force and genius, combined with so much persuasion and contrivance, swept aside many obstacles. Everything in the supply pipeline was drawn forward to the battle. New or repaired airplanes streamed to the delighted squadrons in numbers they had never known before. All the services of maintenance and repair were driven to an intense degree. I felt so much his value that on August 2, with the King’s approval, I invited him to join the War Cabinet. At this time also his eldest son, Max Aitken, gained high distinction and eleven victories as a fighter-pilot.

Another Minister I consorted with at this time was Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour and National Service, with the whole man-power of the nation to manage and animate. All the workers in the munitions factories were ready to take his direction. In October he, too, joined the War Cabinet. The trade-unionists cast their slowly framed, jealously guarded rules and privileges upon the altar where wealth, rank, privilege, and property had already been laid. I was much in harmony with both Beaverbrook and Bevin in the white-hot weeks. Afterwards they quarrelled, which was a pity, and caused much friction. But at this climax we were all together. I cannot speak too highly of the loyalty of Mr. Chamberlain, or of the resolution and efficiency of all my Cabinet colleagues. Let me give them my salute.

* * * * *

I was most anxious to form a true estimate of the German losses. With all strictness and sincerity, it is impossible for pilots fighting often far above the clouds to be sure how many enemy machines they have shot down, or how many times the same machine has been claimed by others.

Lord Beaverbrook told me that in Thursday’s action upwards of eighty German machines had been picked up on our soil. Is this so? If not, how many?

I asked C.-in-C. Fighter Command if he could discriminate in this action between the fighting over the land and over the sea. This would afford a good means of establishing for our own satisfaction the results which are claimed.

While our eyes are concentrated on the results of the air fighting over this country, we must not overlook the serious losses occurring in the Bomber Command. Seven heavy bombers last night and also twenty-one aircraft now destroyed on the ground – the bulk at Tangmere – total twenty-eight. These twenty-eight, added to the twenty-two Fighters, make our loss fifty on the day, and very much alters the picture presented by the German loss of seventy-five. In fact, on the day we have lost two to three.

Let me know the types of machines destroyed on the ground.

The important thing is to bring the German aircraft down and to win the battle, and the rate at which American correspondents and the American public are convinced that we are winning, and that our figures are true, stands at a much lower level. They will find out quite soon enough when the German air attack is plainly shown to be repulsed. It would be a pity to tease the Fighter Command at the present time, when the battle is going on from hour to hour and when continuous decisions have to be taken about air-raid warnings, etc. I confess I should be more inclined to let the facts speak for themselves. There is something rather obnoxious in bringing correspondents down to air squadrons in order that they may assure the American public that the fighter pilots are not bragging and lying about their figures. We can, I think, afford to be a bit cool and calm about all this.

I should like you to see on other papers an inquiry I have been making of my own in order to check up on the particular day when M.A.P. [Ministry of Aircraft Production] said they picked up no fewer than eighty German machines brought down over the land alone. This gives us a very good line for our own purposes. I must say I am a little impatient about the American scepticism. The event is what will decide all.

* * * * *

On August 20 I could report to Parliament:

The enemy is of course far more numerous than we are. But our new production already largely exceeds his, and the American production is only just beginning to flow in. Our bomber and fighter strengths now, after all this fighting, are larger than they have ever been. We believe that we should be able to continue the air struggle indefinitely and as long as the enemy pleases, and the longer it continues, the more rapid will be our approach first towards that parity, and then into that superiority, in the air, upon which in large measure the decision of the war depends.

Up till the end of August, Goering did not take an unfavourable view of the air conflict. He and his circle believed that the English ground organisation and aircraft industry and the fighting strength of the R.A.F. had already been severely damaged. They estimated that since August 8 we had lost 1115 aircraft against the German losses of 467. But of course each side takes a hopeful view, and it is in the interest of their leaders that they should. There was a spell of fine weather in September, and the Luftwaffe hoped for decisive results. Heavy attacks fell upon our aerodrome installations round London, and on the night of the 6th, sixty-eight aircraft attacked London, followed on the 7th by the first large-scale attack of about three hundred. On this and succeeding days, during which our anti-aircraft guns were doubled in numbers, very hard and continuous air fighting took place over the capital, and the Luftwaffe were still confident through their overestimation of our losses. But we now know that the German Naval Staff, in anxious regard for their own interests and responsibilities, wrote in their diary on September 10:

There is no sign of the defeat of the enemy’s air force over Southern England and in the Channel area, and this is vital to a further judgment of the situation. The preliminary attacks by the Luftwaffe have indeed achieved a noticeable weakening of the enemy’s fighter defence, so that considerable German fighter superiority can be assumed over the English area. However … we have not yet attained the operational conditions which the Naval Staff stipulated to the Supreme Command as being essential for the enterprise, namely, undisputed air supremacy in the Channel area and the elimination of the enemy’s air activity in the assembly area of the German naval forces and ancillary shipping…. It would be in conformity with the time-table preparations for “Sea Lion” if the Luftwaffe now concentrated less on London and more on Portsmouth and Dover, as well as on the naval ports in and near the operational area….

As by this time Hitler had been persuaded by Goering that the major attack on London would be decisive, the Naval Staff did not venture to appeal to the Supreme Command; but their uneasiness continued, and on the 12th they reached this sombre conclusion:

The air war is being conducted as an “absolute air war,” without regard to the present requirements of the naval war, and outside the framework of operation “Sea Lion.” In its present form the air war cannot assist preparations for “Sea Lion,” which are predominantly in the hands of the Navy. In particular, one cannot discern any effort on the part of the Luftwaffe to engage the units of the British Fleet, which are now able to operate almost unmolested in the Channel, and this will prove extremely dangerous to the transportation. Thus the main safeguard against British naval forces would have to be the minefields, which, as repeatedly explained to the Supreme Command, cannot be regarded as reliable protection for shipping.

The fact remains that up to now the intensified air war has not contributed towards the landing operation; hence for operational and military reasons the execution of the landing cannot yet be considered.

* * * * *

I stated in a broadcast on September 11:

Whenever the weather is favourable, waves of German bombers, protected by fighters, often three or four hundred at a time, surge over this island, especially the promontory of Kent, in the hope of attacking military and other objectives by daylight. However, they are met by our fighter squadrons and nearly always broken up; and their losses average three to one in machines and six to one in pilots.

This effort of the Germans to secure daylight mastery of the air over England is, of course, the crux of the whole war. So far it has failed conspicuously. It has cost them very dear, and we have felt stronger, and actually are relatively a good deal stronger, than when the hard fighting began in July. There is no doubt that Herr Hitler is using up his fighter force at a very high rate, and that if he goes on for many more weeks he will wear down and ruin this vital part of his air force. That will give us a great advantage.

On the other hand, for him to try to invade this country without having secured mastery in the air would be a very hazardous undertaking. Nevertheless, all his preparations for invasion on a great scale are steadily going forward. Several hundreds of self-propelled barges are moving down the coasts of Europe, from the German and Dutch harbours to the ports of Northern France; from Dunkirk to Brest; and beyond Brest to the French harbours in the Bay of Biscay.

Besides this, convoys of merchant ships in tens and dozens are being moved through the Straits of Dover into the Channel, dodging along from port to port under the protection of the new batteries which the Germans have built on the French shore. There are now considerable gatherings of shipping in the German, Dutch, Belgian, and French harbours – all the way from Hamburg to Brest. Finally, there are some preparations made of ships to carry an invading force from the Norwegian harbours.

Behind these clusters of ships or barges there stand large numbers of German troops, awaiting the order to go on board and set out on their very dangerous and uncertain voyage across the seas. We cannot tell when they will try to come; we cannot be sure that in fact they will try at all; but no one should blind himself to the fact that a heavy full-scale invasion of this island is being prepared with all the usual German thoroughness and method, and that it may be launched now – upon England, upon Scotland, or upon Ireland, or upon all three.

If this invasion is going to be tried at all, it does not seem that it can be long delayed. The weather may break at any time. Besides this, it is difficult for the enemy to keep these gatherings of ships waiting about indefinitely while they are bombed every night by our bombers, and very often shelled by our warships which are waiting for them outside.

Therefore, we must regard the next week or so as a very important period in our history. It ranks with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel, and Drake was finishing his game of bowls; or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon’s Grand Army at Boulogne. We have read all about this in the history books; but what is happening now is on a far greater scale and of far more consequence to the life and future of the world and its civilisation than those brave old days.

* * * * *

In the fighting between August 24 and September 6, the scales had tilted against Fighter Command. During these crucial days the Germans had continuously applied powerful forces against the airfields of South and Southeast England. Their object was to break down the day fighter defence of the capital, which they were impatient to attack. Far more important to us than the protection of London from terror-bombing was the functioning and articulation of these airfields and the squadrons working from them. In the life-and-death struggle of the two air forces, this was a decisive phase. We never thought of the struggle in terms of the defence of London or any other place, but only who won in the air. There was much anxiety at Fighter Headquarters at Stanmore, and particularly at the headquarters of Number Eleven Fighter Group at Uxbridge. Extensive damage had been done to five of the group’s forward airfields, and also to the six sector stations. Manston and Lympne on the Kentish coast were on several occasions and for days unfit for operating fighter aircraft. Biggin Hill Sector Station, to the south of London, was so severely damaged that for a week only one fighter squadron could operate from it. If the enemy had persisted in heavy attacks against the adjacent sectors and damaged their operations rooms or telephone communications, the whole intricate organisation of Fighter Command might have been broken down. This would have meant not merely the maltreatment of London, but the loss to us of the perfected control of our own air in the decisive area. As will be seen in the Minutes printed in the Appendix, I was led to visit several of these stations, particularly Manston (August 28), and Biggin Hill, which is quite near my home. They were getting terribly knocked about, and their runways were ruined by craters. It was therefore with a sense of relief that Fighter Command felt the German attack turn on to London on September 7 and concluded that the enemy had changed his plan. Goering should certainly have persevered against the airfields, on whose organisation and combination the whole fighting power of our air force at this moment depended. By departing from the classical principles of war, as well as from the hitherto accepted dictates of humanity, he made a foolish mistake.

This same period (August 24 to September 6) had seriously drained the strength of Fighter Command as a whole. The Command had lost in this fortnight 103 pilots killed and 128 seriously wounded, while 466 Spitfires and Hurricanes had been destroyed or seriously damaged. Out of a total pilot strength of about a thousand, nearly a quarter had been lost. Their places could only be filled by 260 new, ardent, but inexperienced pilots drawn from training units, in many cases before their full courses were complete. The night attacks on London for ten days after September 7 struck at the London docks and railway centres, and killed and wounded many civilians, but they were in effect for us a breathing space of which we had the utmost need.

During this period I usually managed to take two afternoons a week in the areas under attack in Kent or Sussex in order to see for myself what was happening. For this purpose I used my train, which was now most conveniently fitted and carried a bed, a bath, an office, a connectible telephone, and an effective staff. I was thus able to work continuously, apart from sleeping, and with almost all the facilities available at Downing Street.

* * * * *

We must take September 15 as the culminating date. On this day the Luftwaffe, after two heavy attacks on the 14th, made its greatest concentrated effort in a resumed daylight attack on London.

It was one of the decisive battles of the war, and, like the Battle of Waterloo, it was on a Sunday. I was at Chequers. I had already on several occasions visited the headquarters of Number 11 Fighter Group in order to witness the conduct of an air battle, when not much had happened. However, the weather on this day seemed suitable to the enemy, and accordingly I drove over to Uxbridge and arrived at the Group Headquarters. Number 11 Group comprised no fewer than twenty-five squadrons covering the whole of Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, and all the approaches across them to London. Air Vice-Marshal Park had for six months commanded this group, on which our fate largely depended. From the beginning of Dunkirk, all the daylight actions in the South of England had already been conducted by him, and all his arrangements and apparatus had been brought to the highest perfection. My wife and I were taken down to the bomb-proof Operations Room, fifty feet below ground. All the ascendancy of the Hurricanes and Spitfires would have been fruitless but for this system of underground control centres and telephone cables, which had been devised and built before the war by the Air Ministry under Dowding’s advice and impulse. Lasting credit is due to all concerned. In the South of England there were at this time Number 11 Group H.Q. and six subordinate fighter station centres. All these were, as has been described, under heavy stress. The Supreme Command was exercised from the Fighter Headquarters at Stanmore, but the actual handling of the direction of the squadrons was wisely left to Number 11 Group, which controlled the units through its fighter stations located in each county.

The Group Operations Room was like a small theatre, about sixty feet across, and with two storeys. We took our seats in the dress circle. Below us was the large-scale map-table, around which perhaps twenty highly trained young men and women, with their telephone assistants, were assembled. Opposite to us, covering the entire wall, where the theatre curtain would be, was a gigantic blackboard divided into six columns with electric bulbs, for the six fighter stations, each of their squadrons having a sub-column of its own, and also divided by lateral lines. Thus, the lowest row of bulbs showed as they were lighted the squadrons which were “Standing By” at two minutes’ notice, the next row those “At Readiness,” five minutes, then “At Available,” twenty minutes, then those which had taken off, the next row those which had reported having seen the enemy, the next – with red lights – those which were in action, and the top row those which were returning home. On the left-hand side, in a kind of glass stage-box, were the four or five officers whose duty it was to weigh and measure the information received from our Observer Corps, which at this time numbered upwards of fifty thousand men, women, and youths. Radar was still in its infancy, but it gave warning of raids approaching our coast, and the observers, with field-glasses and portable telephones, were our main source of information about raiders flying overland. Thousands of messages were therefore received during an action. Several roomfuls of experienced people in other parts of the underground headquarters sifted them with great rapidity, and transmitted the results from minute to minute directly to the plotters seated around the table on the floor and to the officer supervising from the glass stage-box.

On the right hand was another glass stage-box containing Army officers who reported the action of our anti-aircraft batteries, of which at this time in the Command there were two hundred. At night it was of vital importance to stop these batteries firing over certain areas in which our fighters would be closing with the enemy. I was not unacquainted with the general outlines of this system, having had it explained to me a year before the war by Dowding when I visited him at Stanmore. It had been shaped and refined in constant action, and all was now fused together into a most elaborate instrument of war, the like of which existed nowhere in the world.

“I don’t know,” said Park, as we went down, “whether anything will happen today. At present all is quiet.” However, after a quarter of an hour the raid-plotters began to move about. An attack of “40 plus” was reported to be coming from the German stations in the Dieppe area. The bulbs along the bottom of the wall display panel began to glow as various squadrons came to “Stand By.” Then in quick succession “20 plus,” “40 plus” signals were received, and in another ten minutes it was evident that a serious battle impended. On both sides the air began to fill.

One after another signals came in, “40 plus,” “60 plus”; there was even an “80 plus.” On the floor table below us the movement of all the waves of attack was marked by pushing discs forward from minute to minute along different lines of approach, while on the blackboard facing us the rising lights showed our fighter squadrons getting into the air, till there were only four or five left “At Readiness.” These air battles, on which so much depended, lasted little more than an hour from the first encounter. The enemy had ample strength to send out new waves of attack, and our squadrons, having gone all out to gain the upper air, would have to refuel after seventy or eighty minutes, or land to rearm after a five-minute engagement. If at this moment of refuelling or rearming, the enemy were able to arrive with fresh unchallenged squadrons, some of our fighters could be destroyed on the ground. It was, therefore, one of our principal objects to direct our squadrons so as not to have too many on the ground refuelling or rearming simultaneously during daylight.

Presently the red bulbs showed that the majority of our squadrons were engaged. A subdued hum arose from the floor, where the busy plotters pushed their discs to and fro in accordance with the swiftly changing situation. Air Vice-Marshal Park gave general directions for the disposition of his fighter force, which were translated into detailed orders to each fighter station by a youngish officer in the centre of the dress circle, at whose side I sat. Some years after I asked his name. He was Lord Willoughby de Broke. (I met him next in 1947, when the Jockey Club, of which he was a steward, invited me to see the Derby. He was surprised that I remembered the occasion.) He now gave the orders for the individual squadrons to ascend and patrol as the result of the final information which appeared on the map-table. The Air Marshal himself walked up and down behind, watching with vigilant eye every move in the game, supervising his junior executive hand, and only occasionally intervening with some decisive order, usually to reinforce a threatened area. In a little while all our squadrons were fighting, and some had already begun to return for fuel. All were in the air. The lower line of bulbs was out. There was not one squadron left in reserve. At this moment Park spoke to Dowding at Stanmore, asking for three squadrons from Number 12 Group to be put at his disposal in case of another major attack while his squadrons were rearming and refuelling. This was done. They were specially needed to cover London and our fighter aerodromes, because Number 11 Group had already shot their bolt.

The young officer, to whom this seemed a matter of routine, continued to give his orders, in accordance with the general directions of his Group Commander, in a calm, low monotone, and the three reinforcing squadrons were soon absorbed. I became conscious of the anxiety of the Commander, who now stood still behind his subordinate’s chair. Hitherto I had watched in silence. I now asked, “What other reserves have we?” “There are none,” said Air Vice-Marshal Park. In an account which he wrote about it afterwards, he said that at this I “looked grave.” Well I might. What losses should we not suffer if our refuelling planes were caught on the ground by further raids of “40 plus” or “50 plus”! The odds were great; our margins small; the stakes infinite.

Another five minutes passed, and most of our squadrons had now descended to refuel. In many cases our resources could not give them overhead protection. Then it appeared that the enemy were going home. The shifting of the discs on the table below showed a continuous eastward movement of German bombers and fighters. No new attack appeared. In another ten minutes the action was ended. We climbed again the stairways which led to the surface, and almost as we emerged the “All Clear” sounded.

“We are very glad, sir, you have seen this,” said Park. “Of course, during the last twenty minutes we were so choked with information that we couldn’t handle it. This shows you the limitation of our present resources. They have been strained far beyond their limits today.” I asked whether any results had come to hand, and remarked that the attack appeared to have been repelled satisfactorily. Park replied that he was not satisfied that we had intercepted as many raiders as he had hoped we should. It was evident that the enemy had everywhere pierced our defences. Many scores of German bombers, with their fighter escort, had been reported over London. About a dozen had been brought down while I was below, but no picture of the results of the battle or of the damage or losses could be obtained.

It was 4.30 P.M. before I got back to Chequers, and I immediately went to bed for my afternoon sleep. I must have been tired by the drama of Number 11 Group, for I did not wake till eight. When I rang, John Martin, my principal private secretary, came in with the evening budget of news from all over the world. It was repellent. This had gone wrong here; that had been delayed there; an unsatisfactory answer had been received from so-and-so; there had been bad sinkings in the Atlantic. “However,” said Martin, as he finished this account, “all is redeemed by the air. We have shot down a hundred and eighty-three for a loss of under forty.”

* * * * *

Although post-war information has shown that the enemy’s losses on this day were only fifty-six, September 15 was the crux of the Battle of Britain. That same night our Bomber Command attacked in strength the shipping in the ports from Boulogne to Antwerp. At Antwerp particularly heavy losses were inflicted. On September 17, as we now know, the Fuehrer decided to postpone “Sea Lion” indefinitely. It was not till October 12 that the invasion was formally called off till the following spring. In July, 1941, it was postponed again by Hitler till the spring of 1942, “by which time the Russian campaign will be completed.” This was a vain but an important imagining. On February 13, 1942, Admiral Raeder had his final interview on “Sea Lion” and got Hitler to agree to a complete “stand-down.” Thus perished “Operation Sea Lion.” And September 15 may stand as the date of its demise.

* * * * *

The German Naval Staff were in hearty accord with all the postponements; indeed, they instigated them. The Army leaders made no complaint. On the l7th I said in Parliament:

The process of waiting keyed up to concert pitch day after day is apt in time to lose its charm of novelty. Sunday’s action was the most brilliant and fruitful of any fought up to that date by the fighters of the Royal Air Force…. We may await the decision of this long air battle with sober but increasing confidence.

An impartial observer, Brigadier-General Strong, Assistant Chief of the United States War Plans Division and Head of the American Military Mission which had been sent to London to observe the results of the Luftwaffe attacks, arrived back in New York on the 19th, and reported that the Luftwaffe “had made no serious inroad on the strength of the R.A.F., that the military damage done by air bombardment had been comparatively small, and that British claims of German aircraft losses were ‘on the conservative side.’ ”

Yet the Battle of London was still to be fought out. Although invasion had been called off, it was not till September 27 that Goering gave up hope that his method of winning the war might succeed. In October, though London received its full share, the German effort was spread by day and night in frequent small-scale attacks on many places. Concentration of effort gave way to dispersion; the battle of attrition began. Attrition! But whose?

* * * * *

In cold blood, with the knowledge of the after-time, we may study the actual losses of the British and German Air Forces in what may well be deemed one of the decisive battles of the world. From the table our hopes and fears may be contrasted with what happened.

No doubt we were always oversanguine in our estimates of enemy scalps. In the upshot we got two to one of the German assailants, instead of three to one, as we believed and declared. But this was enough. The Royal Air Force, far from being destroyed, was triumphant. A strong flow of fresh pilots was provided. The aircraft factories, upon which not only our immediate need but our power to wage a long war depended, were mauled but not paralysed. The workers, skilled and unskilled, men and women alike, stood to their lathes and manned the workshops under fire, as if they were batteries in action – which, indeed, they were. At the Ministry of Supply, Herbert Morrison spurred all in his wide sphere. “Go to it,” he adjured, and to it they went. Skilful and ever-ready support was given to the air fighting by the Anti-Aircraft Command under General Pile. Their main contribution came later. The Observer Corps, devoted and tireless, were hourly at their posts. The carefully wrought organisation of Fighter Command, without which all might have been vain, proved equal to months of continuous strain. All played their part.

Further tables will be found in Appendix C.

At the summit the stamina and valour of our fighter pilots remained unconquerable and supreme. Thus Britain was saved. Well might I say in the House of Commons, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”