Days of Glory

Day 114 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-31T00:06:00.007+01:00

Officially, it's over. Today, after 114 days, the Battle of Britain formally ends. For the fliers, it is the quietest day for four months.

A few bombs are splattered over East Anglia and Scotland but neither side loses any aircraft in combat. The RAF loses a Beaufighter in a landing accident and the Germans lose two Do 17s in non-combat incidents.

This one time, even the night is quiet. The "raiders passed" siren sounds at the earliest time since September. People in shelters look at each other "almost in disbelief". But, warns the Daily Mirror, in a front-page headline the next morning: "Don't think air war is over". Curiously absent are the headlines declaring that the Battle of Britain is over - or even any sense that a turning point has been reached.

To inject a note of reality, the government issues an edict that the closing hour for shops through the winter — from 17 November to 2 March - will be 6pm, with an extension to 7.30 one night a week. That is the effect of a defence regulation, similar to that which was in force the previous winter. That much, at least, has changed.

That is one of the very few things that does change. The Mirror's warning is well made. Overnight on 1 November, heavy raids on London and a number of other towns and cities resume. Göbbels remarks in his diary that "Churchill invents a new lie about a massive attack on Berlin that never actually took place. Things must be very bad for him", he says. And the next day, and the days after than, it is bombing just the same.

Despite this, whatever the definition of the battle, and the time frame, it is indisputable that the Germans eventually lost. But could the Germans have ever won? That is a question posed by Lt Col Earle Lund, USAF, who carries out a Campaign Analysis Study in January 1996.

Lund asserts that the Luftwaffe at least twice, held victory in hand, yet failed to gain that victory. The point is simply this, he writes: all efforts should have been directly linked to the primary objective, which in both cases they were not. As proponents of Clauswitzian-style theory, and purveyors of the Principles of War - even of Douhet - the Luftwaffe failed miserably in the application of air warfare.

We are cautioned to bear in mind, though, that major air operations against Britain were discontinued not because they were recognized as hopeless or because they could no longer be justified in terms of the losses incurred. They ceased "by order of top-level command because the German Air Force was needed for the forthcoming war with Soviet Russia." In the final analysis, Lund asserts that the Germans could have won. Perhaps, if they had aggressively pursued either campaign strategy they could have won, he says, adding the rather obvious caveat that this "will always remain conjecture".

Therein though, lies the bigger story. As we saw only a few weeks ago Hitler's campaign against Russia was intended to serve many purposes, not least further isolating and cowing England - and thus helping to keep the US out of the war. After a swift victory, the bombers could return in force in the autumn of 1941. And in the meantime, out in the Atlantic, the U-Boats waited, augmented by the dreaded FW Condors.

In the autumn of 1940, therefore, the battle was far from over. It was to continue into the Spring of 1941 and then only the air component was put on hold while the Soviets were fought. That the campaign against the Soviet Union faltered on the outskirts of Moscow and then to become bogged down and founder in the cauldron of Stalingrad is perhaps the real reason why the Battle of Britain was finally lost by the Germans.

Hitler's fantasy, largely supported by his Generals, was that the Soviet Union could be conquered within six months. Had that happened, there is every reason to believe that, come the winter of 1941, the Luftwaffe air fleets would again have been camped in northern Europe, resuming the nightly blitz against London and other British cities. With the Soviet Union then out of the war, and the United States still sitting on the margins, who is to say that Britain would have resisted the renewed onslaught?

What then of the Battle of Britain? Beyond the hype and the rose-tinted spectacles, it really does have to be said that the short period of the daylight air fighting through mid-August to early September, was a strategic irrelevance. The much-vaunted "defeat" of the Luftwaffe on 15 September, celebrated as Battle of Britain day, was thus far from being the victory which it is so often portrayed. For sure, it was a reverse, but the effect was to enforce a change of policy, from day to night bombing - which was happening anyway. But from then, until the end of the Blitz in May 1941, far more damage was done than had hitherto been achieved.

One then has to ask what was the strategic purpose of this activity. The answer for this phase of the battle is the same as for the early phase (or phases) - to take Britain out of the war, achieving a cessation of hostilities. Missing here is the word "defeat" in the sense of securing the overwhelming military victory of the type inflicted on France. All the evidence indicates that Hitler would have accepted a deal, which kept the UK as an unoccupied nation, with its Empire largely intact.

This, then, points to a much-neglected aspect of the Battle of Britain - the politics. Having pieced together some of what went on and looked at those events as part of an integral whole, the entire complexion of the Battle changes. Essentially, the first phase of the fighting, up to 13 August 1940, is simply skirmishing - the greater strength of the Luftwaffe being held back while various peace initiatives were pursued.

It was only in early August, when Churchill finally rejected the peace proposal brokered by the King of Sweden, that the full force of the Luftwaffe was finally committed. We then see an attack on the RAF, which actually has very little direct relevance to preparations for an invasion. The invasion is best seen as more threat than reality, alongside the air campaign, creating psychological pressure on Churchill and his government, in the hope of a moral rather than military collapse.

This, in the context, is far from unreasonable or illogical. The fall of France was engineered as much by moral dominance as military victory, and Hitler quite clearly had expectations of repeating the trick. And when the direct assault on the RAF - together with the "hype" about an impending invasion - failed to have a desired effect, the tactics were changed, and London was bombed.

Far from being a "mistake" as is commonly portrayed in the standard hagiographies, this was effectively a repeat of the earlier strategy, albeit on a more intense scale - an air assault followed by peace "feelers" in the expectation of a deal.

Here, although we lack clear documentation, there are unmistakable signs and extremely good evidence that peace initiatives recommenced in early September, alongside that start of the Blitz. There is, however, no clear evidence as to when these were concluded - as we see with the August rejection. Perhaps it continued into the Spring, culminating in the mysterious flight of Rudolf Hess in May 1941, about which even today there is much controversy.

The point in our narrative though is that we see three phases to the Battle of Britain. First, there was an intensification of the fighting through July, accompanied by a peace initiative, the two issues closely interwoven. Then we see an intensive air assault through August - this one in the expectation of a moral collapse of the British government. This was followed by phase three, the Blitz, again accompanied by a peace initiative(s), running through until May 1941. The air battles of phase four, to be commenced in the winter of 1941, never happened - although the background economic war continued in the form of the Battle of the Atlantic.

That we never had to suffer a renewed air assault of the intensity of the earlier Blitz is something for which we have to thank the Soviet Union. Its defence of its territory proved to be the saviour of Britain, and paved the way for the victory of the Allies in 1945. But the British contribution was to stay in the war. But that Battle did not last a mere 114 days. It ran from the fall of France to December 1941, when the first and most important strategic aim of the British was achieved. The United States joined the war.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 113 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-30T21:49:00.012+01:00

"People need coal", says the leader in the Daily Express, on page 4. The front page headline is focused entirely on the war in Greece. The only reference to the Battle of Britain is a report on the appearance of the Italian Air Force in British skies.

Not even the growing ranks of the Air Ministry propaganda unit can give the air battle any higher profile. Fighter Command has disappeared, pro temp, from the script, and never again will it capture the headlines in the way it has done over the heady days of July through to September.

The reality of war is now upon people who are looking to their second winter of the conflict, dreading its onset. And well they might. The transport system is on the brink, and to make matters worse, trains are ordered to slow to 10mph through the innumerable air raids. The delays mean they are simply not delivering the coal. Despite the summer to replenish stocks, shortages of supply loom, replicating the winter before.

Thus complains the Express leader, "Mr Smith has no pile in his backyard, Mr Jones cannot order a ton and be sure of getting it. Again, we repeat. Risk is our normal lot. Safety must not impede speed. For we cannot be safe now, and we will not be safe ever unless we work at speed to throw off this great parasite of war that sucks at our happiness, our wealth, and our free will."

The great battles of the summer, with contrails criss-crossing the sky, are no more. Today, sullen October weather hampers flying. Only small numbers of Luftwaffe brave the rain and the autumnal gloom. Even the night raiders, who are used to flying in poor visibility, are discouraged by the poor weather.

In the public mind, the "few" is a distant memory, although operational intensity is as high as it has ever been (and higher than it was at the beginning of the battle) and they still are taking losses. An RAF fighter pilot's life is measured as 87 flying hours. Just today, the last day in which there are combat casualties, seven fighters are written off and three pilots are killed. Eight Luftwaffe aircraft are lost, including a Henschel 126 in a non-combat incident.

One RAF pilot is shot down over the Channel. He does not survive. A Me 109 pilot is also shot down over the Channel. He is rescued by Sennotflugkommando, unwounded. RAF Battle of Britain survivors eventually come to be lionised as "The Few". The Air Ministry's task, it seems, is to make sure there are as few of the few as possible.

Meanwhile several newspapers, without any great prominence, are publishing the latest figures for shipping losses. The week ended 20-21 October has been the blackest since the evacuation from Dunkirk. Britain has lost thirty-two ships, totalling 146,528 tons, Allied losses run to seven ships, totalling 24,686 tons, and six neutral ships totalling 26,816 tons are lost. The cumulative total is 198,939 tons,

We are told that Germany paid for her successes with U-boat losses, and that the Navy is increasing its precautions against U-boat attack, but there is no disguising the growing crisis. Despite this, there is no repeat of the Daily Mirror's sentiment from earlier in the month, even if here is writ large one important effect of the invasion threat. With so many patrol vessels kept in UK ports at immediate readiness, convoy escorts have been dangerously depleted.

Whether intended or not, Göring, his airmen, and the threat of invasion have assisted the blockade by drawing off resources which might otherwise have been used to protect shipping. Fighter Command may be taking the glory for the battle in the skies above Britain, but merchant seamen are paying the price.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 112 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-29T15:12:00.006+01:00

The newspapers have now fully caught up with the first day of the Italian invasion of Greece. That, with heavy raids by Bomber Command of the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia, drive news of RAF Fighter Command operations from the front pages. The official Battle of Britain has only three more days to run, including this one, yet the air war is already dropping in visibility.

Despite this, fighting is continuing at a significant level. After early mist which keeps aircraft grounded, raids start mid-morning and carry on through to the early evening, just as darkness gathers in overcast skies. Four daylight raids on London are recorded and two on Portsmouth, the largest involving 40 bombers escorted by Messerschmitt fighters. No. 602 City of Glasgow Sqn distinguishes itself, shooting down eleven Me 109s in six minutes, for no loss.

Fifteen Italian BR 20s (type pictured above), escorted by CR 42 biplanes attack Ramsgate. Five are damaged by anti-aircraft fire. At dusk, RAF airfields in East Anglia, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire are attacked by Ju 88s and Me 109s.

On the day, the Germans lose 24 aircraft, including 15 Me 109s. They lose 110s, two Do 17s - even two He 115s to accidents. Fighter Command loses ten aircraft, including two Hurricanes caught while taking off from North Weald airfield during an attack. One pilot is killed there. Heavy night bombing of Birmingham and Coventry is recorded. London is also bombed.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 111 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-28T15:43:00.011+01:00

Germany announces "European Front" against England. This is no mere polemic, but a carefully constructed propaganda campaign aimed at the United States, to position the United Kingdom as the "aggressor" against a united Europe. Only England's intransigence is causing the war to continue. Without her, and the warmonger Churchill, there would be peace.

It is the Daily Mirror, oddly enough, which picks up the vibes on Greece most prominently, splashing the Italian moves on its front page as the lead item. Initiated without consultation with the Germans, Hitler is said to be furious and an emergency meeting is arranged. It is too late to stop Mussolini, so a facade of unity is projected to the outside world. But it makes a mockery of Germany's propaganda play.

Too soon for the British press to report, the details on the moves on the ground are retailed by the New York Times. The Italian government had served an ultimatum at 03:00hrs, to expire at 06:00hrs. Italy was then reported to have attacked Greece by land, sea and air, "hurling" at least ten divisions of 20,000 troops across the Albanian-Greek border.

British sources declared that warships of the British Mediterranean Squadron were steaming from their patrol posts to the assistance of Greece, "who holds a British guarantee of aid in event of attack",

The Daily Express chooses to feature RAF raids on Berlin, claiming that the heaviest bombs ever have been dropped on the city in a "fierce" ninety-minute raid that "showed Berlin what blitz-bombing is really like". "Many works smashed, trams and buses wrecked, gas cut off", the sub-heading to the report reads. There is a small item about the Empress of Britain in the Mirror, the paper noting that the Nazis are saying that the ship is still on fire, having claimed two days ago on the Saturday that it had been sunk.

There is little more on Petain, with the Yorkshire Post noting that "this has been a week-end of waiting in London for further news" on the Hitler-Petain pact. Until further information on the terms of the pact, and on certain other questions, is available, it would be fruitless to speculate widely on what the agreement may involve, the paper says. It continues:

It seems at least possible, however, that Petain is still trying to hold out against some of Hitler's demands. But the veteran leader of the Vichy Government has placed himself in an extremely difficult position with Hitler by his unconditional capitulation last summer. Petain may now feel that he is faced with only two possibilities: complete surrender to the Fuehrer or resistance which France is in no position to maintain.

Back in Britain, night spotters of enemy aircraft assert that three-engined aeroplanes have been used for some of the attacks on London. This lends confirmation to the German report that the Regia Aeronautica has been in action against Britain. Very soon, there is the physical evidence.

As the war goes on elsewhere, a haunting incident occurs far out in the Atlantic. Sunderland P9620 becomes lost while on convoy patrol after its compass fails in an electrical storm. The aircraft runs out of fuel and is forced to ditch, some 200 miles west of Ireland. It stays afloat for nine hours in gale conditions before breaking up. Of the 13-man crew, nine are rescued by HMAS Australia. In gathering darkness, a crewman is seen on the keel of the upturned craft as it drifts away into the gloom. He is not saved.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 110 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-27T09:02:00.004+01:00

The long-running Petain saga seems to be coming to a close, with the word "collaboration" high up in the lists of comment. France, somewhat under force majeure, is to integrate politically and economically with Germany, as part of the Nazi's idea of a new world order. However, Petain seems to have avoided full military integration, with a declaration of war against Great Britain. It is still a hostile power, but not a belligerent. The United States threatens to seize French overseas possessions if military co-operation between Vichy and Germany is too close.

In the same edition of the Observer, where we see the news on France, there is also news of the Empress of Britain. German radio has declared her sunk. This is premature as, even as the paper rolls of the presses, a heroic struggle is under way to get the ship into port. The coup de grace comes not until tomorrow. The New York Times, on the other hand, has the ship on fire and beyond salvage.

This day, a German radio message is picked up by a radio listening post in Britain. Deciphered by the top-secret facility at Bletchley, and included in the "Ultra" intercepts, it instructs German forces gathered at the invasion ports "to continue their training according to plan". This is interpreted as meaning that an invasion could hardly be imminent, if training was to continue. Churchill is informed of the intercept and the conclusion.

The next day, photographic reconnaissance picks up substantial movement of shipping out of the invasion ports. It is moving eastwards, away from Great Britain. By 2 November, Churchill's private secretary is writing in his diary that the prime minister "now thinks the invasion is off".

Meanwhile, tension between the Greeks and the Italians who are camped in Albania along the Greek border, are increasing. Late in the evening, Italian ambassador in Athens Emanuele Grazzi relays an ultimatum from Mussolini. It demands that Italian troops be allowed occupy strategic points in Greece. Ioannis Metaxas, the Greek dictator, rejects the ultimatum, noting "Alors, c'est la guerre". The Greeks know of the Italian plans and have already mobilised in the areas facing the expected attack.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 109 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-26T09:06:00.009+01:00

There is no official or semi-official information as to the scope of the conversation between Hitler and Marshal Petain. A statement issued by the official German News Agency says: "Hitler did not hesitate to treat the Marshal as a great and honourable opponent deserved to be treated." That is the "take" from the Yorkshire Post. Others, like the Daily Mirror, hint at "surrender", and the Daily Express covers US intervention, aimed at stopping a Franco-German pact.

Noting Petain's discomfort, evidenced by the protracted negotiations, the Express cannot resist the temptation to moralise. "Now you see what it is like to be beaten. Look at France. Look at Petain creeping to the feet of the conqueror, asking what it is he wants," the paper storms. "As we watch each step of that dreadful and pitiful pilgrimage we sing anew the praises of our invincible Navy and our unbeatable Air Force".

Several newspapers focus on yet another gun duel across the Straits of Dover, the narrative running to a pattern established back in late August when the German shelling started. The German guns shell a convoy - unusually, German aircraft join in. The British guns respond. British bombers roar into action, launching the biggest raid yet on German-occupied France. Honour is satisfied. The warriors stand down, clean their guns and finish off the day with a late tea, or something stronger. Alan Brooke and others fret about the enormous expenditure of manpower on Winnie's "pets".

For the rest, it is déjà vu all over again. A small number of jabos and their escorts fly across the Channel and head towards London. Like the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, some actually get to drop their bombs over the city. This time, the Royal Chelsea Hospital is hit.

The RAF flies 732 sorties, nine German aircraft are destroyed as are nine RAF fighters - by no means all, on either side, through combat damage. Two Hurricanes are lost on night take-offs, their pilots killed, and one Blenheim crashes on landing after a night sortie. The crew is unhurt. Additionally, two Beauforts, a Blenheim, two Hudsons, a Hampden and a Whitley are lost by Bomber and Coastal Commands. The FAA loses a Swordfish.

The big event though - not yet broadcast to the nation - is a Luftwaffe attack on the former liner and now troopship the Empress of Britain. She is found by a roving Condor about 150 miles from land, off the north-west coast of Ireland. Hptm. Bernard Jope, the aircraft captain, releases two bombs on the ship. He then strafes her, taking return fire from deck-mounted machine guns.

The bombs start large fires which soon cripple the ship. Many crew are trapped below deck by the fires, some forced to escape through portholes into the sea. A Sunderland and three Blenheims assist with the rescue. Under constant air cover from Hurricanes from No. 245 Sqn out of Aldergrove, the ship limps eastwards, only to be torpedoed by U-32 on 28 October while under tow.

Most of the 643 passengers and crew are taken off. Only 45 are killed, all passengers in the initial attack. At 42,348 grt, she is the largest liner to be sunk through the entire war. Jope is eventually to become a senior Captain with Lufthansa. U-32 is sunk by the destroyer Harvester, two days after she despatches the Empress.

Back in Britian, the creatures of the night are on the prowl again. They hit London and Birmingham heavily. New Street station in Birmingham is closed by an unexploded bomb. But for some, the war has become a spectator sport once more. The Daily Express reports thousands of people crowding Kent seafronts to watch and hear "terrific battles between convoys, planes and long range guns which shook the coast from early yesterday evening to long after dark," as German long-range guns, with the aid of a terrific bombing by the RAF, lit up the whole French coast between Calais and Boulogne.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 108 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-25T13:53:00.007+01:00

We are actually no further forward in our understanding of the Petain affair. The newspapers have little more to add than when they first reported the meeting with Hitler yesterday.

The Yorkshire Post, however, rather stiffly informs its readers that Germany might be about to launch a monster propaganda campaign carrying falsification to lengths, far exceeding those already attempted designed to show that Britain's chances of withstanding German might are hopeless. "There will, it is thought, be no repetition of the recent Axis slip of admitting that Britain might contain 47,000,000 Churchills," the paper says, adding: "It should not be assumed that Hitler's new methods will succeed."

What is especially interesting about the news coverage of the Daily Mirror though is its reference to a "Better Night Fighter Plane". The paper, with others, is reporting on a BBC commentary the previous evening by Air Marshal Sir Philip Joubert. Amazingly, he was referring to the Defiant, saying that the aircraft, "originally designed as a night fighter and used experimentally for a while by day," has now been restored to its proper role and "with certain developments that we are considering, should be very effective."

This is, to say the very least, disingenuous, both as to its original role and as to its future effectiveness. The aircraft is not suited to carrying interception radar and, although the Mk II model is fitted with the AI Mk IV, it is never really successful as a night interceptor. With the Beaufighter already on the stocks, the aircraft is withdrawn from combat duties in 1942 and used only for target towing and sundry other routine non-combat tasks.

That Joubert feels the need to talk up the Defiant, however, reflects the growing unease at the inability of the RAF to deal with the night bomber. In force though is the "D-Notice" system which prevents the media discussing the capabilities, and particularly the shortcomings, of British weapons. Thus, while the concerns are very much in the minds of many commentators, they are not given much of an airing.

Something of the horror of the war continues to escape into the public domain. Three people are killed when a fighter-bomber scores a direct hit on trams in Blackfriars Road, London, during a daylight raid. The trams worst hit are in the middle of a group of five, drawn up near traffic lights. The dead include a driver, a conductor and a woman passenger. Without hesitation a number of women rip up their clothes to provide temporary bandages for the injured. At least four are taken to hospital. Many others are cut by flying glass. Adjoining buildings are also badly damaged.

For the first time, Italian aircraft are committed to an operation over British soil. Thirteen aircraft take part in a raid against Harwich.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 107 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-24T21:04:00.013+01:00

A few individual raiders and reconnaissance flights is the extent of German daylight air operations. From a British perspective, this is seen to be a ritual to keep the British defence system on alert, with no strategic significance whatsoever. The main effort now is through the night.

Flight magazine has already made a decision about this. The Battle of Britain is over as a battle and has degenerated into unimportant but spiteful slaughter and destruction, it says. But, once again, it is focused on day operations and the fighter war.

This, however, is not the German "take" on the situation. General von Bötticher, the German Military Attache to Washington, reports that the situation in England is becoming more precarious. The objective to make life more difficult and to make life difficult is being achieved. Production has decreased and the traffic situation is difficult. There is a danger that epidemics might break out. Reports from the embassies in Lisbon and Sofia agree. There has been an "impressive change" in the tone of the British press.

On the British front, however, internal politics rather than the Germans are keeping Dowding busy. He has let the enmity between Keith Park at 11 Group and Leigh Mallory at 12 Group go too far. The knives are out, and Dowding's own position is threatened. But, while the headline issue is the so-called "big wing" controversy, the politicians are also dismayed at the lack of protection Fighter Command can offer against the night bombers. Heads must roll.

To prove the point, London gets 50 aircraft in the night. Birmingham is also a target while Basingstoke is also hit. The Luftwaffe roams virtually unmolested, still owning the night sky. The weather is the bigger enemy, accounting for more losses that the RAF on this day.

RAF politics, though, is trivial stuff, when the real thing is in plentiful supply. News is emerging of a meeting the previous day between Hitler and Franco on the border of Spain. During the Brenner meeting between Hitler and Mussolini, news had been circulating to the effect that Spain's dictator, Franco, had decided to stay out of the war. Now Hitler is trying to reverse that decision.

In a two-hour, head-to-head discussion, though, Hitler fails to change his mind. Famously, Hitler later confides with Mussolini that he would "rather have three or four teeth pulled" than go through another meeting with Franco. And so, Gibraltar is safe.

From the Spanish border, Hitler travels to Montoire in France to meet Petain. News has since come through that Petain has rejected any deal with Hitler over the transfer of the French Navy. However, the fleet is said to be massing in Toulon. The only explanation for this "mysterious move", is said to be that the French Navy minister, Admiral Darlan, who is a strong supporter of deputy premier Laval, gave the orders on his own initiative.

While the world waits with bated breath for news of developments, the War Cabinet is treated to a sombre appraisal on the current fighting. In particular, it learns that mines are having a significant effect on the shipping in coastal waters and on the Royal Navy in particular.

In the preceding week, they have accounted for the numerous ships. Minesweeper HMS Dundalk is badly damaged 16 October off Harwich and founders early the next day while under tow. HM Trawler Kingston Cairngorm is sunk off Portland on the 18th, and HM Destroyer Venetia (pictured) goes down in the Thames Approaches on the 19th. There are 96 survivors from the latter ship, but five officers, including the Captain, are missing.

HM Trawler Velia is also sunk in the same locality. The Minesweeping Trawlers Wave Flower and Joseph Button are sunk off Aldeburgh, apparently by mines, on the 21st and 22nd respectively, and HM Trawler Hickory sinks off Portland on the 22nd.

The picture for merchant shipping is no better. During the period, 36 ships (150,091 tons) have been reported sunk. Of these, 17 British (89,199 tons), three Norwegian (14,080 tons), three Swedish (13,533 tons), three Dutch (10,878 tons), two Greek (7,408 tons), one Estonian (1,186 tons), one Belgian (5,186 tons) and one Yugo-Slav (5,135 tons) were sunk by submarine.

Three British vessels (1,722 tons) were sunk by mine, one British (1,595 tons) was sunk by E-Boat and a British trawler (169 tons) was sunk by aircraft. In addition, three British ships (21,059 tons) previously reported as damaged were now known to have been sunk. Damage by aircraft, mine or submarine to 21 British ships (79,791 tons) had been reported and two additional British ships (10,232 tons) are now known to have been damaged in the previous period.

As to civilian casualties, the approximate figures for the week ending 06:00hrs on 23 October are 1,690 killed and 3,000 injured. These figures include the estimated 1,470 killed and 1,785 injured in London, 56 killed and and 261 injured in Coventry, and 30 killed and 203 injured in Birmingham.

But there is one thing few are concerned about - the invasion. Even the Lord Halifax is in the loop. On this day he notifies a British embassy that: "‘Though Hitler has enough shipping in the Channel to put half a million men onto salt water – or into it, as Winston said the other day –it really does seem as if the invasion of England has been postponed for the present".
’

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 106 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-23T17:26:00.012+01:00

Weather here good, writes Göbbels in Berlin, bad over England."Few incursions into the Reich, but neither do we drop much in England". The propaganda minister is not far wrong. Low cloud and drizzle, with the concomitant poor visibility, prevents any significant German air operations, either by day or night.

The Luftwaffe reverts to its standard bad weather programme, sending out reconnaissance flights and single bomb-carrying fighters. One Hurricane is lost to an Me 109 and the Luftwaffe loses three bombers, two from the night contingent. Only one of the three is a direct combat loss - the other two crash on home territory.

The OKW War Diary this day records a report from London which states that the effects of the German attack on London and the British industry were not very strong during September. During October, however, the effects are said to have been stronger. "The British people is said to be fatalistic," it notes. "The people, however, does not appear demoralised".

Separately, in relation to the dispersion of forces intended for operation Seelöwe, it is recorded that: "long periods of time will, in future, be required to get this operation going". It then adds: "The measures to deceive the enemy are to be continued but the main effort of this deception should be directed to Norway".

The diary also carries a report on Luftwaffe operations. "The morale of the flying units is excellent", it says. "These units are strained but not over-strained." It then goes on to observe that, in general, only fighter-bomber aircraft equipped with 250Kg bombs are to be committed in daylight operations against London and alternate targets. These are to fly at extremely high altitudes and, it is thought, the damages caused in London are "very considerable".

In Britain, the media focus is not on the domestic front. Big events are being staged in France where, only 24 hours after Churchill has made a radio appeal to the French to rise up and set Europe aflame.

Predictably, Göbbels is less than impressed. "Impudent, insulting, and oozing with hypocrisy", he calls it, "A repulsive, oily obscenity". He releases the speech to the [German] press for them "to give it a really rough and ready answer" Otherwise, he writes, the English will carry on living an illusion. We shall battle on remorselessly to destroy their last hopes.

This day, Hitler arrives secretly in Paris to have a long conference with Pierre Laval. Reports emerging from Berlin indicate that Hitler is offering final peace terms to France in exchange for the surrender of the remnants of the French fleet. With the help of the French, Hitler and Mussolini are said to be planning a "decisive blow against the British Fleet in the Mediterranean.

According to the Daily Express, "Jubilant Nazi officials in Berlin boast that the three navies could either destroy the British Fleet or drive it off our great Empire lifeline."

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 105 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-22T10:19:00.003+01:00

Today sees what can only be regarded as a "planted" story on the front page of the Daily Mirror. Too close to the convoy disasters of SC7 and HX79 to be a coincidence, without giving any details of the events, it tells of a "Big U-Boat Blitz on our ships," the lead text stating:

Hitler has started an intensified U-boat war in the hope of starving Britain into subjection by blockade now that his air attack and invasion plans have been rebuffed. Prowling in the wastes of the Atlantic, U-boats are hunting shipping, attacking on a scale greater than ever before. Scantily armed cargo boats, carrying food, raw material and munitions are their prey.

More U-boats have been ordered into the Atlantic than at any time since the outbreak of war, the paper continues. In remote shipyards in Norway and the Baltic work has been pressed forward to repair the losses inflicted on the German underwater fleet in the early stages of the war by the Royal Navy and the RAF. The new vessels have been dispatched direct from their trials with the instructions, "Britain must be blockaded at all costs. Merchant ships must be intercepted and sunk."

This is Führer Directive No. 9 writ large. It has never really gone away and now, of the three options for defeating Britain, it is the only one left. As the paper acknowledges, openly, "air attack and invasion plans have been rebuffed." The "terror" bombing has failed. That leaves the economic war - the blockade.

But, says the Mirror, Britain's food chiefs give the lie to Hitler's starvation threat. It will be averted, said Lord Woolton, Minister of Food, last week. "By the grace of God and the vigilance of the Royal Navy, the courage of the Mercantile Marine, the devotion of the dock labourers and transport workers and of food traders and the patient efforts of the farmers."

With the recent disasters yet to be released, this has every sign of a piece which has been designed to soften people up for the bad news. Soon, convoy survivors will be coming ashore and talking. Details of the sinkings cannot be concealed for ever.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 104 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-21T12:08:00.002+01:00

The photograph is taken today, according to the agency file which tells you nothing more than the obvious - three survivors from a bombing raid in London. To get past the censor, there is no detail which will help pinpoint the location or anything specific about the circumstances of the incident it purports to depict. For all we know, the scene has been staged. Many were.

The previous night's flying by the Luftwaffe may well have dispossessed these ladies, but Bomber Command, too, has been particularly active. It detailed 192 aircraft for missions, of which 135 report successful attacks on targets ranging from the Channel ports, German marshalling yards, armament factories in Czechoslovakia and factories in Italy. Nine aircraft are lost.

The exercise gives the Daily Mirror its headline for the morning, which offers the legend: "RAF's 100-a-minute bombing". But less comfortable is the news that an Italian push is expected in the Western Desert - the one area in the world where there is currently direct confrontation between British and Axis ground forces.

In England during the day, there is low cloud and mist over most areas of the south-east, which persist for much of the day - indicative of the general deterioration in weather conditions which effectively rule out any idea of an invasion. There is very little flying, with the RAF losing three aircraft to accidents and none to combat.

This, once again, is regarded as a "quiet" period - but come the night, Coventry suffers heavy raids, with considerable damage done to the Armstrong-Siddeley works. There are also raids over London, Birmingham and Liverpool. To the Battle of Britain commentariat, though, the night bombing is still all but invisible. One could speculate on what might have been the response had Fighter Command been equipped with effective night fighters. One presumes the the narrative would then have been extended to cover the night.

Perhaps the most significant news, however, is a report in the Yorkshire Post, on "New Drive for Shelters". Measures announced over the week-end, it says, "suggest a determined attempt by the Government to come to grips with the shelter problem. To speed up the provision of shelters, the whole cost of building and equipment in future is to be paid by the Government so long as local authorities show reasonable economy in their schemes."

This is an important development, and is unlikely to be unrelated to the recent spate of shelter disasters. The Yorkshire Post remarks that "this is a promise that has long been needed." Much of the delay in shelter construction, it says, "has been due to uncertainty in the minds of local authorities whether they would find themselves burdened with intolerable debts if they showed initiative and went vigorously ahead with shelter construction. It is to be hoped that laggard authorities will now set to work with confidence."

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 103 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-20T22:04:00.002+01:00

It is now just over two weeks to the general election in the United States, upon which outcome will depend Britain's fate. If Roosevelt wins, there is a chance America will enter the war. His opponent, Wendell Wilkie is running on an isolationist ticket, which could auger ill for the UK, except that Roosevelt looks to have a two to one lead in the electoral college.

Back in the war, the Luftwaffe is continuing to pursue its daylight tactics of sending over high-level fighter bombers. Such aircraft and their escorts amount to 300 on this day, in five separate waves, keeping RAF pilots busy and tired. Fighter Command flies 745 sorties and loses four aircraft, the Luftwaffe combat losses amounting to eight, including a Do 17 on a reconnaissance flight. As always, the RAF exaggerates its score, claiming 14 aircraft downed.

Overnight, bombers revisit London. Coventry is heavily bombed and considerable damage is done. Rescue parties are heavily tested as several people are trapped in wrecked buildings. Minelayers are also active off East Anglia, and from the Humber to the Tees.

Meanwhile, British Intelligence has picked up rumours that the Vichy government is preparing its ships and colonial troops to aid the Germans in the war against the United Kingdom. Churchill is informed, but does not believe the rumours. Nevertheless, he appreciates that, if the French fleet, now at Toulon, was handed over to the Germans, it would be a very heavy blow. He writes to the US president, expressing his concerns.

Roosevelt responds in very positive fashion, warning that such an action would constitute "a flagrant and deliberate breach of faith with the United States Government". It would definitely wreck the traditional friendship between the French and the American peoples, create a wave of bitter indignation against France and permanently end all American aid to the French people. Further, there would be no US assistance when the time came to secure for France the retention of her overseas possessions.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 102 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-19T08:49:00.008+01:00

The agony of Convoy SC7 continues into today. SS Empire Brigand and her load of trucks disappeares beneath the waves. Six of her crew die. Even the Commodore's ship is not immune, and SS Assyrian sinks beneath him. Vice Admiral Mackinnon is saved. SS Fiscus loaded with 5-ton ingots of steel, sinks like a stone. There is only one survivor from her crew of 39.

Twenty ships out of 34 which had remained in the convoy have now been sunk. The loss amounts to 79,592 tons, worth millions, even at 1940 prices. The German "star" is Otto Kretschmer. He operated for only 18 months of WW2 before being captured but sank 56 ships totalling 313,611 tons. This is a feat unequalled by any other U-Boat Captain. In U-99 this night, he sinks seven ships.

And still the killing has not finished. Those U-boats with torpedoes remaining join up with U-47, commanded by Gunther Prien, to attack HX79, another Liverpool-bound convoy, this one completely unescorted. A further 12 ships are sunk, with no loss to U-Boats, making this the worst loss of ships in a 48 hour period for the entire war.

Despite this, the U-boats are by no means the only weapon ranged against the Atlantic convoys. The long-range Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor (pictured above), first operating from Norway and later from France, is able to fly far out into the North Atlantic, out of the reach of the RAF's shore-based Spitfires and Hurricanes, and even the longer-range Blenheims.

The Condors provide detailed reports on convoy positions to waiting submarines, they send meteorological reports and mount direct attacks on the shipping with their own bombs. Between June 1940 and February 1941, this type alone accounts for sinking over 365,000 tons.

As to the fate of SC7 and HX79, it is still too early for anything of these convoy disasters to reach the media. H Taylor Henry, writing for AP, his copy to reach millions of Americans, reports on the war in London: "High explosive bombs dropped by raiders in the heaviest early-evening assault since the battle of Britain began killed many Londoners last night and caused "severe" damage in the British capital", he says. "One bomb landing outside a hotel," he adds, "killed an unannounced number of people in the bar; two others were killed in a cafe, and a direct hit which demolished a London club killed an undetermined number of casualties".

Golden prose this is not - and the details are suspect. Henry may be eliding incidents from several days into one narrative. But the report captures the flavour of events. The bloody war just got bloodier. This is corroborated by the Ministry of Homes Security activity report, which tells us that the bombing commenced at dusk and for the first four hours was abnormally heavy, then continuing on a large but more usual scale. The main attacks were against the London area, but Liverpool, Manchester and Coventry districts received considerable attention.

Reading the Daily Express, however, you would think it was a different war:

For the third Friday in succession, last night's London blitz was quieter than usual. This weekly "quiet night" has been marked by the anti aircraft gunners, who call it "Jerry's Amaminight." On each of the two previous Fridays an early "Raiders passed" was sounded. Last night's raid, which ended the blitz's sixth week, began in a blanket of mist and low-lying cloud that made it impossible to pick out targets from the air.

Bombs were unloaded blindly and. as on the previous night, there were long lulls. A public house was blown into the roadway, and people were buried under the wreckage. A cafe and a shop were demolished by the same bomb. Close by, incendiaries fell on a hospital, but were quickly put out.

It's how you tell 'em, I guess.

The main news, however, is an account culled from US newspapers of how aircraft from Bomber Command under their former leader Charles Portal, assisted had in mid-September pounded the assembled German invasion fleet so hard - killing 40-50,000 troops - that it had forced the cancellation of Der Tag - the projected invasion day.

Although Bomber Command had indeed mounted a "maximum effort" on the night of 15 September, and again on the 17th, the account is almost entirely fictional. Despite this, it is, according to the Express, "officially confirmed". The Air Ministry is thus crediting Bomber Command rather than Dowding's Fighter Command with the victory. - a victory which, according to the legend, is the reason why Portal has been promoted to Air Force Chief of Staff.

How times change. With the Battle of Britain "brand" having become the exclusive property of Fighter Command, bomber crews are not even awarded the Battle of Britain clasp.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 101 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-18T08:48:00.013+01:00

Unknown at the time, and only to be discovered after the war when German war records are translated, the war against Britain in 1940 has been initiated by Führer Directive 16, since postponed, but also the earlier Directive No. 9. That this is still in force is seen most immediately by the thirty-five merchantmen making up Convoy SC7, outbound from Nova Scotia since 5 October.

They were headed for Liverpool, escorted by a single Royal Navy Warship, the sloop HMS Scarborough. Leading the convoy in the small 2,962 ton SS Assyrian, Vice Admiral L.D.I. Mackinnon, a retired Naval Officer, acting as convoy Commodore. Typical cargoes carried show the range of goods that Britain most needs to import to sustain her. Pit props from East Brunswick destined for British coal mines, lumber, and grain for the daily bread of the English population from the Great Lakes area, steel and ingots ex Sydney Cape Breton, iron ore from New Foundland.

The largest of the 34 ships was the Admiralty tanker SS Languedor of 9,512 tons - already sunk yesterday, and a load of important trucks fills the holds of SS Empire Brigand. The majority of the ships belong on the British Register, but others have their home ports in Norway, Greece, Holland, and Sweden.

The attacks actually started in the early hours of 16 October, when one ship was lost, but the convoy is then joined by the sloop Fowey and corvette Bluebell. On the 18th, two further escorts join the convoy, the sloop Leith and corvette Heartsease. That night, the convoy is under sustained attack from one of the first German U-boat "wolfpacks", with seven submarines coordinating their attacks.

One, the SS Creekirk (3,917grt) with a cargo of iron ore (pictured), is hit by torpedoes from U-101 early in the attack. Weighted by the iron ore, she sinks almost immediately, with the loss of her master, Elie Robilliard, 34 crew members and one gunner. No one survives.

The disaster is not yet played out and little enough is to filter into the media, and then not for some little time. But it says something of the the importance to Britain of sea warfare that the appointment of a new C-in-C to the Home Fleet gets star billing on the front page of the Daily Express and many other newspapers of the day. Novelty wins out with the second lead, giving the Dean of Canterbury high profile as his house is bombed for the second time.

In the end, that is what it comes to. Even the horrific becomes so routine that it gets a one-column "round-up" article. In peacetime, any one of the hundreds of incidents would have merited front-page treatment on their own. Not any more - wartime has deadened the sensibilities and re-ordered the hierarchy of death.

During the day, the Luftwaffe is back, its aircrew fortified by an Order of the Day from Göring, who tells them: "German airmen, comrades! You have, above all in the last few days and nights, caused the British world-enemy disastrous losses by uninterrupted, destructive blows. Your indefatigable, courageous attacks on the heart of the British Empire, the city of London with its 8½ million inhabitants, have reduced British plutocracy to fear and terror. The losses which you have inflicted on the much vaunted Royal Air Force in determined fighter engagements are irreplaceable."

The Luftwaffe "celebrates" by mounting four fighter sweeps over Kent, some reaching the London district and the Thames Estuary. Approximately 300 fighter aircraft are deployed, some of which carry bombs. Four are claimed downed, while Fighter Command loses three aircraft with three pilots killed or missing.

One needs to be reminded that London is not the only recipient of German largesse. This night, as with many before, Birmingham takes the strain. The air raid warning sounds at 19.47hrs and the first bomb drops just over 15 minutes later. By the time the "all clear" comes at 23.29hrs, approximately 116 HE bombs have dropped, 34 of which do not explode. About 107 incidents involve incendiaries and about 78 fires are started.

The districts most affected are Sparkbrook, Sparkhill, Balsall Heath, Duddeston and Aston - names which are meaningless to most outside the area. Slight damage is caused to a number of factories, production is interrupted in a number of others because of the unexploded bombs, and there are some shops damaged. Trains are delayed on the main LMS Birmingham to London line, after a bomb damages an embankment. Other damage included the local gas works and a local canal.

But for all that, the total casualties were ten fatalities and 18 injured. But, over term, Birmingham is the third most heavily bombed UK city during the war, behind London and Liverpool. During the Blitz 2,241 people are killed, and 3,010 seriously injured. A total of 12,391 houses, 302 factories and 239 other buildings are destroyed, with many more damaged. Overall, around 2,000 tons of bombs are dropped on Birmingham during the conflict.

Yesterday, it was much the same. The siren sounded at 19:57 hrs and started falling at 20:05hrs. The "all clear" sounds at 21.35hrs. That time, approximately 117 HE bombs are dropped, and 41 do not explode. There were 95 incendiary bomb incidents.

The districts most affected represent another litany of unknown places: Sparkhill, Sparkbrook, Small Heath, Saltley, Bordesley Green and Erdington. Many houses were damaged in these areas and the total casualties run to 17 dead and 14 injured. Nine of those are killed and six are injured in one street as when an HE bomb demolishes a group of houses. A family of twelve is trapped in one of the houses.

A long list of domestic, commercial and industrial premises damaged marks another raid. The Brummies dust themselves off, bury their dead, treat their injured and repair the damage. The chief fire officer and already resigned. He was useless and has been replaced.

The rescue services now work tolerably well, and their members too are taking casualties. Two Police Constables are overcome by coal gas fumes as they go to the aid of the stricken in one incident. A fireman is killed and three badly injured were an HE bomb demolishes Small Heath Motors Garage, an AFS (Auxiliary Fire Service) Station.

That is the nature of attrition. And tragically, on this day, the slaughter is not confined to the Midlands. London is also on the receiving end, as it has been for so many nights. Iin Lambeth, the Rose and Crown Public House is completely demolished at 20:25hrs by a direct hit. Over 40 are killed.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 100 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-17T16:07:00.011+01:00

This week's edition of the specialist aviation magazine Flight is published today, and in its leader and a long review of the "War in the Air", it offers a series of insights which possibly hold the clue into the thinking which drives the Battle of Britain legend.

Oddly, for an aviation magazine, the front cover has an advert which depicts a motor torpedo boat engaged in a fleet action - but this is possibly explained by the fact that the manufacturer, the British Power Boat Company, also produces seaplane tenders and rescue launches for the RAF. The investment of a cover ad suggests that there might be business in the offing - the RAF looking to order some air-sea rescue launches perhaps.

That aside, the magazine's offerings must be taken in reverse order, to get the full flavour, starting with its analysis of the war in the air. In this, it notes that the Germans have lately been "largely employing" Me 109s fighters converted into bombers, which is indeed the case - but the "conventional" bomber force is still actively deployed on night missions.

The leader, however, does not refer to this. Rather, it suggests that the use of Me 109 fighter bombers "indicates that the Germans have admitted to themselves that the attempt to overwhelm Britain from the air has failed." It then concludes that:

If the next great compaign (sic) is to be staged in the Balkans, or if bomber reinforcements are to be sent by Germany to the help of the Italian forces in Africa, there is good reason for conserving the German heavy bombers, which may be gradually withdrawn to the other spheres. That is one reading of the present position, and events should soon show whether it is correct.

Curiously, the analysis here is being based on developments in the day fighting, almost as if the night bombing does not exist. Yet the reality is that the Germans have changed tactics, following the British in confining their heavy bomber fleet to night operations, while harassing the RAF during the day with raids by fighter bombers (a tactic which is giving 11 Group some considerable grief). That the night bombing had just been ramped up to a new peak of intensity and savagery is hardly indicative of the Germans having admitted failure.

But the clue to the reason behind this thinking is in the leader. Doffing its cap to the recent damage done by the night bombing, it goes on to declare:

We suffer indeed, but such sufferings do not affect our power to carry on the war, and indignation at the tragedies makes the British people all the more grimly determined that this barbarism must be stamped out of the world. From the military point of view, the Battle of Britain is going well for the enemies of the Axis.

For all its brave discussions in past editions about total war, Douhet's theorising and the rest, the magazine (or its editorial team) is still looking at the conflict as one fought between military forces. And, in the sense that the RAF has confronted the Luftwaffe in the daylight battle and "won" means, in those terms, that the "Battle of Britain" - defined as a military conflict between the two air forces - is indeed going well.

But the Luftwaffe, having failed to prevail over the RAF in the light of day, has bypassed it and is by night attacking the population directly, seeking a resolution by means other than armed warriors prevailing over another set of armed warriors. This idea, it seems, Flight magazine - and the military in general (or, most certainly, the RAF) - cannot cope with. A battle between the military of one nation, on the one hand, and the people of another, does not count as a "proper" battle. So it is ignored. The people in the shelters do not count.

Yet, in the week up to today, German bombing has killed 1,567 people, nearly three times the number of Fighter Command aircrew killed in the entire Battle of Britain period. And, unlike the memorials so carefully tended, the names of the airmen so assiduously recorded, for many of the "unknown soldiers" of this conflict, there is no marked grave, no memorial. And many are killed in the line of duty. This day, in Streatham, at approximately 21:35hrs a direct hit is registered on the fire station. Two heavy appliances are wrecked. Twelve firemen are killed and eight are injured.

Even then, there is another huge "elephant in the room" - the sea war. And while a specialist aviation magazine might not be expected to take a broader view of the conflict, there is little excuse for historians who take the "Battle of Britain" at face value or, more specifically, the value attributed to it by Fighter Command.

But early on this day, the Kriegsmarine destroyer flotilla based in Brest is out hunting. Comprising once more destroyers Steinbrinck, Lody, Ihn and Galster, it is joined by six torpedo boats out of Cherbourg, intent raiding British shipping at the western exit of the Bristol Channel.

Three convoys are in grave danger but, fortunately, the destroyers are sighted at 07:19hrs by aircraft of Coastal Command, shortly after they have left Brest. The convoys are ordered to steer west until the threat is dealt with. Light cruisers Newcastle and Emerald, with five destroyers race out of Plymouth at 11:00hrs and, five hours later, have sighted the German force.

At distance, gunfire is exchanged but the Germans do not close for battle. They pull clear and disengage by 18:00hrs, turning for home. They are pursued by Blenheim bombers of No. 59 Sqn, one of which fails to return. All three crew are killed, the only casualties of the action.

Compared with the huge publicity afforded to Fighter Command, the activities of which are emblazoned on newspaper sellers' boards before even the fighter engines have cooled, this successful action gets a grudging mention, down page in the Daily Express two days later, and the back page of the Daily Mirror.

And yet, this is only a tiny fraction of the war at sea this day, a war which is never give the "star treatment" afforded to the fighters. As they do virtually every day of this long war, the coastal convoys are on the move, OB.230 departing Liverpool escorted by destroyers Antelope and Clare, corvettes Anemone, Clematis, Mallow, and anti-submarine trawlers St Loman and St Zeno.

Coastal convoy FN.311 departs Southend, escorted by destroyers Verdun and Watchman, headed north, while convoy FS.312 at the other end of the chain starts is southward journey, escorted by destroyers Wallace and Westminster. Anti-aircraft cruiser Curacoa transferred to convoy SL.49 A east of Pentland Firth and escorted it towards Buchanness, then joining convoy EN.10.

For the German U-Boats, the period July to October - right through the Battle of Britain - is called the "happy time" by commanders. In these four months, 144 unescorted and 73 escorted ships are sunk, with only six U-boats destroyed by British forces - of which only two are destroyed by attacks on convoys. And October is shaping up to be the worst month of them all for allied shipping.

On this day, U-38 sinks Greek steamer Aemos (3554grt), a straggler due to bad weather from convoy SC.7. Four crew are lost. U-48 attacks on convoy SC.7, sinking British tanker Languedoc (9512grt) and steamer Scoresby (3843grt). It damages steamer Haspenden (4678grt). U-93 attacks convoy OB.228 and sinks Norwegian steamer Dokka (1168grt) and British steamer Uskbridge (2715grt). Ten crew are lost on the Norwegian steamer, two on the British ship.

Then there are the mines. The British steamer Frankrig (1361grt) is mined in the North Sea. Nineteen crew are rescued. British fishing vessel Albatross is sunk by a mine off Grimsby. All but five crew are lost. Faroes motor fishing vessel Cheerful is sunk on a mine off the Faroes Island. British steamer Ethylene (936grt) is damaged on a mine close to the East Oaze Light Buoy. British steamer George Balfour (1570grt) is damaged on a mine eight miles from the Aldeburgh Light Vessel.

Six miles north, northwest of Smith's Knoll, British steamer Hauxley (1595grt) in convoy FN.311 is torpedoed by German motor torpedo boat She sinks under tow of Destroyer Worcester at 06:45hrs on the 18th. One crew is lost on the British steamer. British steamers P L M. 14 (3754grt) and Gasfire (2972grt) in the same convoy are damaged by German motor torpedo boats British steamer Brian (1074grt) claims sinking one of the German S-boats.

Only a fraction of this is to reach the media, yet the human energy expended far exceeds that devoted to the air war. And, while the fighting over the skies of Britain has descended into a meaningless scrap, of no strategic importance, upon the sea battle - in its totality - depends the very survival of Britain.

(Inquiry into daytime tactics)

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 99 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-16T15:54:00.008+01:00

The newspapers note on this day that the Ministry of Information has produced a propaganda film on the Blitz, called "London can take it". Narrated by American journalists Quentin Reynolds, it is intended for a US audience in a country where there is less than a month to go before the presidential election.

Theoretically, the Battle of Britain is still in progress but the RAF is not mentioned. The focus is on the Londoners, the civilians, with Reyolds saying: "These civilians are good soldiers ... ". His narration tells us:

The searchlights are in position, the guns are ready, the people's army of volunteers is ready – they are the ones who are really fighting this war, the firemen, the air raid wardens, the ambulance drivers – and there's the wail of the banshee (siren sounds) ... the nightly siege of London has begun. The city is dressed for battle.

This is very much the "People's War" imagery, as embraced by the socialists, wholly distinct from the elitist vision of the war that Churchill has offered with his "few". Would the message have been different had the film been produced for domestic consumption?

The propaganda element, though, is transparent to a modern audience and would be even more so to a Londoner in the midst of the carnage and destruction. The bombers have given London another pasting overnight and the cumulative effects of the bombing have already changed the face of the city.

Further, the contemporary shelter dweller, who would find it difficult to see any similarity between their circumstances and the scenes depicted in the film. And given that there have been three major shelter incidents in three consecutive days, the timing of the film and its general message, is unfortunate. As long as the censorship holds, however, the message can survive unchallenged.

Fortunately, there is some alternative entertainment to report, the success of the cruiser Ajax in an action against the Italian navy, where three destroyers have been sunk. This legitimises keeping the air raid news off the front page which, had the shelter incidents been allowed into the public domain, would have dominated the news on this day and for days to come.

Crucially, though, taking up the Ministry of Information's own theme of London being a "city under siege", defended by a "citizen army", it is utterly bizarre to posit that the Battle of Britain is solely an RAF "show", much less the property of Fighter Command, or that the battle is in any way won. Possibly, all that stands between the collapse of civilian morale and overwhelming political pressure on the government is the evident success of the censorship operation, in keeping bad news off the front pages.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 98 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-15T09:09:00.015+01:00

By common accord, the night bombing had been the worst yet, provoking a classic "damage limitation" report from the Daily Express, which featured a banner headline claiming "Soon we may bomb Berlin by day, too".

The story is about the possible introduction of the American Boeing Flying Fortress into RAF service. It is interesting from several respects, not only for being a transparent attempt to divert attention from the intensification of the German bombing.

Firstly, in British hands, the aircraft are never to come to much - the few models sent to the UK ending up as Coastal Command patrol aircraft.

Secondly, the prophesy of day bombing of Berlin by the British is not to come true, and for the USAAF, it is always a perilous task, eventually requiring the development of long-range escort fighters to contain spiralling losses. That this would be the case was evident daily in the skies over Britain but the US military, like those around the world, was not going to let a little thing like experience change their plans.

The diversion of the moment, however, is concealing the fact that London had had a truly dreadful night. A full moon has given Göring's bombers maximum opportunity to spread havoc and mayhem, which is precisely what they have done. Over nine hundred fires are caused this night, roads are blocked throughout the city, and the Underground rail network is severed in five places. A reservoir, three gasworks, two power stations and three docks are hit, causing extensive damage.

Then there is the human cost. Over four hundred people are killed and more than 800 are badly wounded. Some incidents particularly stand out. One such is the destruction of Morley College (pictured right), on the Westminster Bridge Road.

As an educational institute, it had been largely abandoned and is now being used as a rest centre for people who had been bombed our of their homes, pending relocation. Nearly 300 people are taking refuge when, at 19:40hrs, HE bombs fall on building, ripping it apart. Of the 195 people actually known to be in the building, 84 come out alive unhurt. Of the injured, 54 are sent to hospital and 57 people are killed, of whom ten died in hospital. More may have been buried under the debris, their bodies never accounted for or recovered.

This was certainly the case in an even worse incident at 20:05 - almost 24 hours to the minute after the Balham incident. Then, a bomb hit the public shelters in Kennington Park. According to witness accounts, only a 25kg bomb hit, but this was a trench shelter, shored with wood, roofed with corrugated iron and covered with earth. Fatally vulnerable to blast effect, the walls collapsed killing many of the people sheltering. There is no official casualty figure, but at least 104 are believed to have lost their lives. Only 48 bodies were recovered, the rest lying buried in the park. In November 1940, the damaged trench was filled in, but others in the complex continued in use.

The fatal inadequacies of the official shelter policy are now laid bare - or would be but for the intervention of the censor and the acquiescence of the newspapers. In three days, there have been three shelter incidents and a rest centre bombed - the high level of casualties all in some way the result of inadequate public policy, with nearly 500 unnecessary deaths arising. Hence, the people must not be told.

Instead, amid a level of almost unimaginable pain and suffering, the Prime Minister came to the House of Commons to answer questions ... on war aims. He was challenged by Samuel "Sydney" Silverman the Labour MP for Nelson and Colne, a prominent activist on Jewish causes, a pacifist who had spent time in jail in the First World War as a conscientious objector, and a reluctant supporter of the current war, in response to Hitler's anti-semitism.

"[I]n anticipation of the time when this country and its Allies are in a position to resume the military offensive," Silverman asked, would he state, "in general terms, our aims in this war, so that this country may take its rightful place as the leader of all those, wherever they may be found, who desire a new order in Europe, based not upon slavery to Germany but upon collective justice, prosperity, and security?"

Silverman, however, was given the opportunity of repeatedly questioning the Prime Minister, in a way not seen in contemporary Commons exchanges. He therefore asked Churchill whether a "continued negative attitude in this matter" fostered "the quite false impression that we are fighting this war merely to retain the status quo". This elicited what amounted to an affirmation that this was precisely the Prime Minister's intent, with his clearest statement yet on his position:

I do not think anyone has the opinion that we are fighting this war merely to maintain the status quo. We are, among other things, fighting it in order to survive, and when our capacity to do that is more generally recognised throughout the world, when the conviction that we have about it here becomes more general, then we shall be in a good position to take a further view of what we shall do with the victory when it is won.

What had originally brought up the matter had been an announcement by the Ministry of Information that they were running a series of meetings throughout the country on the very subject of war aims, reported in The Times and the News Chronicle and also the subject of a Mirror cartoon on 30 September, which had a Duff Cooper as a dove reading from "the Great Peace Manifesto" – with Hitler in the bushes attempting to shoot him with a revolver.

This had excited the interest of Sir Geoffrey Mander, a Liberal MP, wealthy industrialist, philanthropist and Parliamentary Private Secretary to Archibald Sinclair. He had thus initiated an adjournment debate on the matter. That is how it came to pass that, amid the wreckage of London, Duff Cooper was called to answer a debate which excited considerable interest from the Members.

But, if they came expecting a statement of aims, they were to be disappointed. There was no intention to make a statement on war aims, even if Cooper showed where his sympathies lay, telling the House, "I admit quite frankly the desirability of issuing a statement as soon as possible, but ... there should be no undue haste".

Having spoken at length of the "threat of tyranny" and of taking up arms to defend our liberty and the freedom of the world, he was then sharply corrected by Richard Stokes, the Labour MP for Ipswich, Military Cross winner in the First World War and soon to become an arch critic of the area bombing policy. Cooper, said Stokes, had enunciated what we were fighting against, but not what we were fighting for. "[It] is no use fighting for a negative object. You must have a positive one, and the sooner that [is] stated the better". That brought an impassioned response from Cooper:

We are fighting for our liberty. When we walk about the streets of London we see how buildings have been destroyed. Some of them may have been beautiful houses, and some may have been ugly houses. If we had been asked a year ago whether we wanted to destroy those houses in that way, we would have said, "No, let them stand and serve their purpose as long as possible." But now naturally it is our duty to take thought of how, when the time comes, we can build them up again, better and more useful than ever. Equally this world which is now being destroyed by this terrific war, a war which we never desired and which we were prepared to do almost everything to avoid, when this war shall have destroyed a great part of the modern world, it will be our duty then, as it must be our duty now, to think how we can rebuild a more and more beautiful fabric.

But the Prime Minister had spoken – it was to be the status quo. There was to be no vision of how we could rebuild "a more and more beautiful fabric".

Meanwhile, the dirty business of war continued. At noon on this day, six large enemy motor torpedo boats are sighted nine miles off Dover proceeding to westwards. They are engaged by shore batteries, but not hit. HMS Erebus is again in action, this time off Dunkirk.

After nightfall, she fires 50 rounds from her 15-inch guns, 45 of which are thought to have fallen on the port facilities. Spotting conditions are good and a flare-dropping aircraft draws the ground defence fire so that the spotting aircraft is undisturbed. Fires are observed on the quays. There is no enemy action against Erebus or its escorts.

Interestingly, with this success yet to come, Churchill has cause earlier in the day to rebuke his own Naval Staff. Reading a prepared paper on the current situation, he finds it "pessimistic and nervous" and in many instances "overdrawn". Claims that the German battleships Bismark and Tirpitz must be added to the German strength, he dismisses as "not true". The Bismark still has to be worked up and the Tirpitz is three months behind.

Churchill is thus able to bring his own knowledge and experience to bare to challenge his own military, which he threatens to do if the paper is presented to the War Cabinet. In other areas of activity, his touch is less assured.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 97 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-14T10:11:00.004+01:00

At 20.02hrs a 1400kg semi armour piercing bomb penetrates 32 feet underground into Balham tube station in South London. It explodes just above the cross passage between the two platforms causing debris partially to fill the tunnels where about 500 people are sheltering. Water pours in from fractured water mains and sewers. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), sixty-seven people in the station are killed - although some sources report 68 - and more than seventy injured.

Above, the High Street collapses into the void, leaving a huge crater into which a No.88 double-decker bus, travelling in blackout conditions, plunges. Huge damage is caused to surrounding buildings, leaving them in a perilous state, some close to collapse.

As with the other major shelter disaster, news of the event is kept under wraps, the government fearing that the grisly death of so many would be a huge propaganda blow and possibly put civilians off using the underground as shelter. Word of mouth spread about the deaths, however, and the highly visible work to open the station again takes until January 1941, the last bodies being found at the end of December.

The picture of the bus in the crater later becomes an iconic representation of the Blitz, but not just yet. But is it on small part of the violence of which visited the citizens of London on the Saturday night continued through into Sunday night and even into the early hours of Monday morning. So intense and savage is the bombing that some see it as a new wave of what is being labelled more widely as "the Blitz".

But it is difficult to gauge the ferocity of the bombing from the newspaper coverage. As so often when the country has taken a hurt, the headline stories focus on the derring-do of the RAF - as we see from the headlines of today's Yorkshire Post. The difference now, from the earlier part of the battle, is that the bombers, rather than Fighter Command, tend to be in the news.

The technique is predictable, and in retrospect, obvious - the emphasis is on the "good" news, even if it has to be fabricated, while the bad news is buried or omitted altogether. This much can be seen again and again, as with the lead story in the Manchester Guardian for this morning - a witness account of last week's raid on Cherbourg. The Berlin raid gets a two-column centre spot, while the overnight bombing of Britain gets a single column with an anodyne, uninformative headline.

A different technique is used in the Daily Express, where cross-page headline is "Duce masses troops for a new invasion" - early warning of an invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece. The Daily Mirror, on the other hand, offers an account of a naval action in Maltese waters as its front-page lead story - which is actually of some importance. Also getting front-page treatment is the debut broadcast by princess Elizabeth, the queen-to-be, with the full text of her address on the BBC.

Nowhere is there any mention of Stoke Newington. That 173 people die in a single bombing incident, trapped in a wholly inadequate shelter, is a non-event. The censor has been hard at work. But is this to keep information from the Germans, in the interests of security, or is the news being withheld to protect the government from criticism?

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 96 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-13T08:39:00.003+01:00

One incident late in this night perhaps illustrates the great divide between those who see the Battle of Britain as a great aerial joust and those who see it in broader context. Endless narratives, newspaper commentary and analysis all agree that, in this phase of the war, the Germans are targeting the cities and the people within. They are doing so in an attempt to force a political crisis in which the present government is deposed and then replaced by one more amenable to discussing peace terms.

By any proper measure, therefore, "the people are the prize" - a phrase coined much later in the context of counterinsurgency campaigns. If, under the pressure of continuous bombing, the people crack, Churchill as prime minister would probably not survive and if his successor - possibly Lloyd George, who is often referred to in this context - opened negotiations with Germany, Hitler would have won.

The battle, therefore, is not between the pilots of the RAF - heroic or otherwise. They, through no fault of their own and to their intense frustration, are able to offer next to no protection against the night bombers of the Luftwaffe. The battle is between, primarily, the night bomber and the people. The weapons on the one side are incendiaries and high explosives. The defence is not steel, not the largely useless batteries of anti-aircraft guns, nor any other weapon of war. It is the endurance of the people, their will, their stubbornness and their refusal to do the bidding of Hitler, and attack their own government.

And a small but important part of the battlefield this night is Stoke Newington, an inner London suburb, then quite unfashionable and with a large Jewish (and Irish Catholic) population. Without any significant industry, it has no strategic or military value whatsoever, and it is also peculiarly vulnerable. It is one of those areas of London poorly served by the tube, relying on the surface railway. The nearest tube station, several miles to the south, is Liverpool Street, or the long trek to the west to get to Manor House on the Piccadilly Line.

With a large number of flat dwellers, the effects of the government's refusal to develop a deep shelter policy is at its most apparent, for there is not the option of the Anderson shelter for many. They must rely on public shelters. One such has been constructed from the shallow basements of three shops on Coronation Avenue, Stoke Newington Road, housing the best part of 250 people on this fateful night.

Late in the night, but definitely on the 13th, according to most accounts - repeated on the local memorial in the Abbey Road Cemetery (pictured above) - a large bomb hit the parade of shops completely demolishing them. The five-storey buildings collapse into the basements, blocking the entrances, and trapping scores of people. In total, 173 are killed, many - it is thought - poisoned by town gas from a fractured main.

Had it not already been thoroughly discredited, this would have put the seal on the shelter policy - but the impact was slight and localised. The government is also a "player" in this battle and it has its own array of weapons, not least censorship.

Shortly after the bombing, the weekly Hackney Gazette referred to the event but was not allowed to release details. It reported, "On Friday the King and Queen ... paid an informal visit to an area where there had been casualties owing to a bomb demolishing a block of tenements underneath which was a shelter". The other "weapon", of course, was the King and especially the Queen, which is deployed skilfully to stiffen resolve and present a "caring" image to the outside world.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 95 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-12T13:04:00.010+01:00

Many of the newspapers are covering the Cherbourg raid as the front page lead - not least the Daily Mirror (right) which offers "Navy guns Nazi port". But is is Saturday, a day when the media often slackens the reins and allows more wide-ranging comment than it would on the main business days.

Intriguingly, such a piece finds its way into the Glasgow Herald. Written by the political correspondent, it states:

It is known in political circles that not many days ago, "peace feelers" reached the Cabinet by a circuitous route. Their authenticity was not definitely established, and Ministers were not, it seems, called upon to give them serious consideration. In any case the Government, I learn, is not prepared to pay attention to any proposals unless they are proved to come from our principal enemy, and in this case such proof was lacking.

So far as my informants are aware, Mr Churchill and his colleagues did not reply directly to this vague invitation, but the whole tone of the Prime Minister's speech in the House of Commons on Tuesday was in effect an answer in its fresh registration of an unswerving determination to carry on to carry on the war until complete victory was won.

Mr Bevin's sturdily defiant series of speeches in the North of England this week are also cited to me as inferentially the Cabinet's attitude to any proposal for a peace short of the destruction of Hitlerism. The Minister of Labour doubtless knew of the attempt to get Britain to talk peace terms, and his firm, uncompromising negative is taken to express the minds of his colleagues.

Hitler, or those who claim to represent him, will no doubt try again, simultaneously with his drive eastwards, which may be used as an intimidating weapon. Parliament, however, has given the country proof this week that, together with the people, it is resolutely opposed to any patched-up peace, and, however often Hitler and his associates may craftily endeavour to inveigle us into a peace trap, the certainty of failure will await all his efforts.

Such reports need to be treated with great caution, the very Glasgow Herald having warned in late September that the Nazi propaganda machine was working intensively to spread rumours of peace initiatives, primarily aimed at engineering a split between the British and Americans.

The main thrust of these rumours, however, is of the moves coming from the British, using Roosevelt who, "according to legend" will make himself responsible for conveying the proposal to Germany. By this means, it is hoped to confuse public opinion in the expectations of destroying friendly relations.

What makes this current report different is that the "feelers" are said to come from the Germans. That makes perfect sense. Embarked as they are on an air offensive, aimed - in part if not in whole - on forcing the British government to the negotiating table - one would expect the Germans to be keeping channels of communication open and occasionally testing the water.

Limited support for the idea that there was indeed a peace offer comes from the US media. At the beginning of November there is a report by the United Features Syndicate which refers to the "inside fact" that sub rosa peace feelers have been put out again and again for some time.

Usually, says the report, they come from Swedish sources, sometimes are conveyed by prominent Frenchmen, but always are vague "on-an-if, but-and-when" basis. They are just persistent enough, however, to indicate that Hitler would like to make peace if he could pretty much dictate the terms.

Then there is a syndicated report which does the rounds in mid-November. This has it that the story of imminent European peace deals which floated around London, Berlin and Washington just before the US presidential election, held on 5 November, "was no myth". "Inside fact" was that some very tentative ideas had been discussed by Sir Samuel Hoare, British ambassador in Madrid and a leader of the British appeasement group.

These are said to have dated from the time "Hitler's proposed invasion of England was frustrated last September." According to this narrative, Nazi diplomats had sent out feelers "to the effect that Germany now had almost the entire continent of Europe and might be satisfied to drop the war, leaving England to stick to its own islands".

So powerful and persistent do these rumours become that, on 5 November we see an AP report via the Irish Times headed: "Peace Offers are superfluous". This is the record of a formal response from the European Axis powers, which states:

In view of their present political and military position, Germany and Italy have no reason for making the enemy a peace offer, it was stated today in the Wilhelmstrasse. The statement was made in reply to questions by foreign Press representatives about alleged peace moves by the Axis powers. The speaker declared that it was "superfluous" to make such a declaration.

The date of the presidential election seems to have marked the end of peace offer speculation, for the time being but, before that time, a view that the British government had been "softened up" enough and might be prepared to deal would not have been wholly illogical. In the first place, there were the exaggerated bomb damage reports being fed back by the Luftwaffe.

However, what was probably also extremely influential was a much-leaked and highly damning report from US Ambassador Joseph Kennedy (pictured above) sent in letter form to president Roosevelt on 27 September. In this he wrote:

The night raids are continuing to do, I think, substantial damage, and the day raids of the last three days have dealt most serious blows to Bristol, Southampton, and Liverpool. Production is definitely falling, regardless of what reports you may be getting, and with transportation smashed up the way it is, the present production output will continue to fall.

My own feeling is that… [the British] are in a bad way. Bombers have got through in the daytime on the last three days, and on four occasions today substantial numbers of German planes have flown over London and have done some daylight bombing.

I cannot impress upon you strongly enough my complete lack of confidence in the entire [British] conduct of this war. I was delighted to see that the President said he was not going to enter the war because to enter this war, imagining for a minute that the English have anything to offer in the line of leadership or productive capacity in industry that could be of the slightest value to us, would be a complete misapprehension.

On top of this, the hostile press over the Dakar affair, and the signals given off by the recent Cabinet reshuffle might have led the Germans genuinely to have believed that Churchill was in a politically weak state - which indeed he was, although not weak enough to be deposed.

In fact, on 8 October, the very day Churchill addresses Parliament with his monthly review of the war, the Glasgow Herald notes that "if ... Hitler really believes the reports give to him and sent all over the world that London is beaten to its knees, he may try the peace trick in the hope that ... the Government will be compelled by public opinion to listen to his offer".

Seen in this light, the Churchill statement to the House on 8 October does fit quite neatly as a rejection of a peace offer - or a move to pre-empt an offer in the making. It sets out an unequivocal case for continuing the war, embodied in it, as there is, the analysis of why the German air offense must fail. As a response, it would be entirely logical. Similarly, the bellicose text of Bevin's speech to the TUC could be serving the same, albeit undeclared, purpose.

In that context, the heavier than usual raids on London on 9 October and every night since could be taken as a response to Churchill's response. This could have been the Germans saying, "very well, the war goes on". But it was to be a different war.

On this day, 12 October, Hitler issued a secret message to his operational services, formally cancelling any further invasion preparations. The barges, fishing boats and tugs were to be returned to their former duties, the soldiers to prepare for other adventures, the invasion of the Soviet Union high on the list. Only Göring and his bombers were to continue the war against England.

As the British reconnaissance picked up the dispersal of the shipping, it was assumed that this was a response to the British air force and naval raids, and in particular the recent attack by the battleship Revenge.

But there is no evidence in German records that Hitler - and it was his decision to cancel the invasion - was in any way influenced by the materiel losses. In fact, despite the intensity and frequency of the British counter-action, less than ten percent of the shipping was sunk or damaged - a level which could be replaced from the reserves already assembled.

Equally compatible with events is Churchill's rejection of the recent peace feelers, leading Hitler to conclude that there was little chance of an immediate British collapse. Hitler was now reconciled to a long war and thus his transport fleet was not needed for the time being.

It was back to the original plan - an economic war against England. And that, comprising an air war, with the U-boat offensive, had never been expected to yield swift results. He could conquer Russia - which was expected to take only six months - and then deal with England, a country further cowed by having had a potential ally removed from the field.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 94 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-11T10:22:00.010+01:00

As so often, the previous day had been the calm before the storm, the Luftwaffe stepping up its tempo over the night of 10/11 October. Göbbels remarks on the "ideal weather", recording that "we attack England and in particular London without pause, by day and night", causing "wild devastation" - a wider area than any previous raid, one in which the roof of St Paul's Cathedral is breached and the High Altar devastated. But, although many houses are wrecked, only one major fire is started.

While the German bombers are circling over London, RAF traffic is in the opposite direction. Despite Churchill's lament about its poor accuracy, in the early hours of this morning Bomber Command is again in action over Cherbourg - but with a difference. The aircraft are acting as spotters for the battleship HMS Revenge. Starting at half past three in the morning, for twenty minutes she fires 120 fifteen-inch and 800 4.7in shells into the port complex. "Very large fires" are reported, visible from 40 miles.

This is operation Medium, which has the battleship escorted by seven destroyers and a similar number of motor anti-submarine boats, the group having sailed from Plymouth the previous evening. On the west flank, it is guarded by the light cruisers Newcastle and Emerald, with four destroyers. They had left Devonport on the 10th. To the east is the light cruiser Cardiff, plus two destroyers, which had departed from Portsmouth on the 9th.

Screened by gale force conditions, with heavy rain obscuring visibility, the warships had approached undetected. The presence of RAF aircraft overhead confuses the German defenders, who initially mistake the gunfire for bombing and respond only with anti-aircraft fire. When the first shells land, an RAF observer notes that they (the defenders) "didn't know whether it was Christmas or Easter. The searchlights went drunk, waving aimlessly about the sky. The guns kept firing but goodness knows what at. There was complete chaos down there."

Latterly, a shore battery (estimated up to 13-15in) returns fire, some salvoes falling so close to the ships that it is suspected that the Germans must be using gun-laying radar. However, none of the ships are hit. All return safely to their bases without further enemy intervention.

Come the morning though, there is less welcome news. At 09:20hrs, destroyer Zulu, fourth ship in a line, is damaged by an acoustic mine not far from Beamer Rock in the Firth of Forth. The mine explodes 40 feet off the starboard side abaft of the bridge. There are no casualties on the destroyer but there are many minor leaks, machinery defects and distortion of the bulkheads caused by the explosion. Then HM Patrol Yacht Aisha is sunk, with two wounded, and HMS Jersey is damaged in the Thames Estuary. These too have succumbed to acoustic mines.

While this is happening, five German torpedo boats (type pictured below), Falke, Greif (leading in pic), Kondor, Seeadler and Wolf, slip out of Cherbourg Harbour, headed for the Isle of Wight and the convoys which assemble on the roads.

Late in the day, they are spotted by the anti-submarine trawler Warwick Deeping and the former French armed trawler Listrac, both of the 17th Anti Submarine Group. Although heavily outclassed, they engage the torpedo boats. Greif sinks the Listrac with a torpedo, the skipper and eleven ratings dying with their ship. Kondor and Falke then sinks Warwick Deeping with gunfire.

Past midnight, the German force runs into the French submarine chasers CH 6 and CH 7, both captained by British officers. Again the Germans sink the craft. Twenty from the two ships die and twenty are taken prisoner by the Grief.

Their sacrifices, however, have bought time for a response. Destroyers Jackal, Jaguar, Jupiter, Kelvin and Kipling come racing out of Plymouth and two destroyers depart from Portsmouth. At just after three in the morning, Jackal engages two of the German ships. They break off and turn for Cherbourg, arriving back mid-morning on the 12th. They will be back.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 93 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-10T22:56:00.011+01:00

Churchill assuming the leadership of the Conservative Party, succeeding Chamberlain, is given some considerable coverage in British newspapers, although not high profile - as can be seen from the morning's Manchester Guardian. The long-term political ramifications of this are profound. Churchill has vastly strengthened his power base.

There are also some reports of the TUC conference, which is addressed by Ernest Bevin. He appeals for "the last ounce of energy" to build up "overwhelming forces" to defeat Hitler. He doesn't get that "last ounce", or anything like it. There is another war being played out, one which will continue long after Hitler is dead. Nevertheless, the Guardian (and others) find the ramifications of the decision to reopen the Burma Road of greatest interest. Such is the inevitability of the bombing that it has become routine.

The media is having difficulty maintaining interest, although the censor may be having an influence. Reports have the feel of going through the motions, as most of the papers lead on other matters. The announcement that the US fleet is to be brought up to full strength is another issue which seems to get a higher profile than domestic war news, while the Daily Mirror (left) features Moscow-US relations as it front-page lead.

As to the air war, Mason finds it difficult to ascribe to German daylight tactics any other purpose than that of creating nuisance and fatigue among British pilots. If that is the aim, then it is largely successful, although it also takes its toll of German men and machines.

Here, we have seen the word "attrition" creep into a number of reports. In that context, there is the broader effect on the British population to consider - and the effect which the Germans believe they might be having, the two being somewhat different and divergent. Reich propaganda minister Göbells notes that the RAF yesterday mounted heavy air raids on Bremen. "In return," he writes in his diary, "we attack London without pause day and night. And to considerable effect". Göbells really believes this. Our Luftwaffe's losses, he states, have been heavily exaggerated (which, indeed, they have). He continues:

It goes without saying that the losses among squadrons against England have been considerable. In all, including all those destroyed in accidents during training, we lost fewer than 700 aircraft in September. And we produced 1800. That is quite a tolerable ratio. Losses have been kept within normal bounds even for aircrew. Against this we must set the English losses and the devastation in their country. Just now there are dramatic reports of this from London. If these are true, all hell must be loose over there ...

Inevitably, the reality is different. For sure, the 24 hour bombing is having an unsettling effect. But the daylight raids, spread over 700 square miles or more, are generally insignificant in terms of the damage they cause (relative to the mass raids) to be anything more than a nuisance. And the population is coming to terms with the nightly raids. More to the point, the Civil Defence services (as they are to be called) are getting the measure of the beast, especially the fire services.

The first twenty-two days and nights of the London raids have been the most testing, during which they and their regional and other reinforcements have attended nearly 10,000 fires. The nightly total exceeded 1,000 on three nights and the total on other nights fluctuated between 40 and 950. As the last aircraft had departed on the first night of the Blitz, there had been nine conflagrations, nineteen fires that would normally have called for thirty pumps or more, forty ten-pump fires, and nearly a thousand lesser blazes, a score of which would have made front-page headlines in peace time.

But in October, the attack has not been so heavy - even if the total still reaches 7,500 with nearly 2,000 of them on two nights. But, in the entire month, there are no conflagrations and only twelve fires of more than thirty pumps. If, like fractious children, the Germans are seeking to be the centre of attention, on this day they have failed and, as time progresses, the impact of the assault is diminishing. For today, the great Battle of Britain is little more than "noises off".

Almost completely unregarded by the major players and the media of both sides, though, the small-scale naval war goes on, with its steady toll of casualties. HM Patrol craft Girl Mary is the latest. She is sunk in the Firth of Forth by a mine. Two of the crew are lost and the skipper is seriously wounded. The British steamer Till (367grt) is also damaged on a mine

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 92 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-09T20:00:00.014+01:00

Overnight has been rough for London - reported as one of the heaviest series of overnight raids since the bombing had began back on 7 September. The Daily Express reports that 94 places have been bombed. Amongst other targets, an air raid shelter harbouring 150 people, including children, is hit. At least eight are killed, some poisoned after a gas mains fractured. Many more are injured.

East Ham Memorial Hospital has been badly damaged by a land mine. Three complete floors are wrecked, destroying wards housing 108 elderly men and women, killing more than 50. In the morning, as the rescuers were reaching the trapped and injured, another bomb falls. Horrified commuters scrabble through the wreckage to put a small fire out and assist the injured. By contrast, the RAF is reported to have despatched 30 bombers to Berlin. The Germans claimed they have been driven off.

With the wreckage still smouldering in London and elsewhere, the newspapers are out on the streets, many proclaiming that the invasion threat is not over. The Glasgow Herald features this prominently, its take on Churchill's speech to the Commons yesterday. The speech is thoroughly raked-over by the media, but few seem to have understood the point he is making about the casualties. The analysis generally is poor.

The big problem, though, is that the war is now getting complicated - not that it was ever that simple. And despite the importance of the air raids, the Express leads on the Burma Road situation, its second main concern being the developments in Romania. But the layer upon layer of complexity, with the passage of time, and the degrees of interaction make for an equally complex narrative. One can understand the attraction of the simple "Battle of Britain"story, converting history into a simple, romantic joust between modern-day knights in armour on flashing steeds (aka aircraft).

But it remains bizarre that, nine days into October with Luftwaffe bombers dominating the night skies, this is still deemed to be part of the Fighter Command's version of the Battle of Britain. Yet, the RAF is evident only during the day, its night-fighting capability still immature. To all intents and purposes, the aerial day fighting over Britain is strategically irrelevant - even more so than previously.

That said, lower down the front page in the Express is a small article, clearly seen as important enough to have such a prominent spot, but hardly given the attention it deserves. Under the heading, "It's not a blitzkrieg any more", the article in its entirety reads:

Germany has called off the blitzkrieg. The Nazis have abandoned the "lightning war" against Britain and have decided to go in for "hammering and destruction". This announcement, says Reuters, was made in English over the Rome radio last night, reporting the statement of a High German Air Force officer at a press conference in Berlin on Monday.

The German author of this statement is not named, and there is nothing obviously that corroborates it - other than the circumstantial evidence of the change in pace of the bombing. From the last few days, when the raids have been relatively low-key, the tempo has suddenly intensified. Does this presage a change in policy?

One area where there has been no change, however, is in the U-boat campaign. The Daily Mirror picks up the latest Admiralty communiqué and reports: "U-Boats 15 Ships in a week". Ten British ships, total tonnage 55,927, four Allied ships, 12,119 tons , and one neutral ship, 4,291 tons, had been sunk by the Germans during the week ended 29-30 September. The week before, says the newspaper, we lost twenty ships, totalling 134,975 tons. It then goes on to say:

The somewhat self-evident commitment was made in London yesterday that the Navy has never been large enough to give complete security to our shipping all over the world at the same time, but the stronger the escort provided to fewer will be the losses and the more hesitant the U-boat commanders to attack.

The general shortage of escorts, however, was not the only issue. As a precaution against invasion, on 1 July, Churchill had minuted the Admiralty, instructing it to "endeavour" to raise the flotilla in the "narrow seas" (the English Channel) to a strength of 40 destroyers, with additional cruiser support.

With the demands from other theatres, including the Mediterranean, and latterly Dakar, this left perilously few warships to escort the convoys, a deficiency of which Churchill was very obviously aware. "The losses in the Western Approach must be accepted meanwhile," he wrote.

C-in-C of the Home Fleet, Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, was not entirely at ease with this line. With adequate intelligence and reconnaissance, he maintained, there should be sufficient advance warning of an invasion attempt for his destroyers to be employed on convoy escort and other duties, subject to rapid recall should signs of an imminent assault be detected.

This has become a running sore in the relations between Forbes and an Admiralty acting under the direct instructions of Churchill, with the Admiral as late as 28 September making a final appeal to the Admiralty. He writes a letter stating that "the Army, assisted by the Air Force, should carry out its immemorial role of holding up the first flight of an invading force". The Navy, he asserts, "should be freed to carry out its proper function - offensively against the enemy and in defence of our trade - and not be tied down to provide passive defence of our country, which has now become a fortress".

His entreaties are not to prevail, and the U-Boats are quick to exploit the absence of escorts. The results are now plain to see.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 91 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-08T20:15:00.018+01:00

Competing with news about the deteriorating situation in Romania is a report of the first day of the TUC annual congress at Stockport. President W Holmes - not a name instantly recognised - laid down a series of demands to government, calling for "instant and dramatic" action.

With the government ruled by a coalition, headed by a prime minister who had been awarded dictatorial powers, where parliament had become effectively emasculated, the TUC was the only effective opposition. And in the name of his 5,000,000 members, Holmes wanted better air raid shelters, the problem of the homeless dealt with and an end to profiteering. The shelter problem, he said, was "not insoluble and its remedy is overdue". As to the homeless, it was the nation's bounden duty, by immediate and comprehensive compensation, to enable the people to restore their shattered homes."

On profiteers, he said, "If the manifestations of the people's spirit do not shame the greedy and the selfish, better measures than the Government has yet applied must restrain them and make it impossible for anybody to slink away at the end of the war richer than he entered it." He affirmed the determination of the workers to carry on this struggle to the bitter end. "None shall make profit out of the war," said Holmes. " Profiteering, in such circumstances as the nation is called upon to face, is as dastardly a crime as looting the shattered homes of the poor."

As to the war, this continues. Morning raids totalling 150 aircraft cross the coast and head towards London. Bombs are scattered over a number of targets, including central London. The aircraft are mostly high-flying jabos, with top cover flying as high as 32,000ft. Several raids develop in the afternoon involving substantial numbers of aircraft, again comprising high-flying jabos. The tactic gives Park considerable problems, even if the bombing damage is slight, in relative terms.

This is the day Churchill addresses the House of Commons to give his monthly "war situation" report. He reminds MPs that a month has passed since Hitler "turned his rage and malice on to the civil population of our great cities and particularly of London." Curiously, Churchill makes a reference to Hitler's speech of 4 September, a speech which he ignored at the time. He notes that it was then that the Führer had said "he would raze our cities to the ground." Since then, he observed, "he has been trying to carry out his fell purpose."

Taking day and night together, 400 bombers on average had visited the UK every 24 hours and, the prime minister said, it was doubtful whether "this rate of sustained attack could be greatly exceeded". The strain upon the German bombers was "very considerable" and the bulk of them "do not seem capable of anything beyond blind bombing".

With this under his belt, he then says: "I always hesitate to say anything of an optimistic nature, because our people do not mind being told the worst." He adds: "They resent anything in the nature of soothing statements which are not borne out by later events, and, after all, war is full of unpleasant surprises." Then he declares:

On the whole, however, we may, I think, under all reserve reach, provisionally, the conclusion that the German average effort against this country absorbs a very considerable part of their potential strength. I should not like to say that we have the measure of their power, but we feel more confident about it than we have ever done before.

Churchill then proceeds to examine the effect of this "ruthless and indiscriminate attack" and notes the German claim that by 23 September, 22,000 tons of explosives had been dropped on Britain since the beginning of the war. No doubt, said Churchill, this included the mines on the coast. He then says:

We were told also, on last Thursday week, that 251 tons were thrown upon London in a single night, that is to say, only a few tons less than the total dropped on the whole country throughout the last war. Now, we know exactly what our casualties have been. On that particular Thursday night 180 persons were killed in London as a result of 251 tons of bombs.

That is to say, it took 1 ton of bombs to kill threequarters of a person. We know, of course, exactly the ratio of loss in the last war, because all the facts were ascertained after it was over. In that war the small bombs of early patterns which were used killed 10 persons for every ton discharged in the built-up areas.

Therefore, the deadliness of the attack in this war appears to be only one-thirteenth of that of 1914–1918. Let us say "less than one-tenth," so as to be on the safe side. That is, the mortality is less than one-tenth of the mortality attaching to the German bombing attacks in the last war.

The expectation on entering the war had been up to 3,000 killed in a single night and 12,000 wounded, night after night. Hospital provision had been made for quarter of a million casualties "merely as a first provision". But, up to last Saturday, as a result of air bombing, about 8,500 killed and 13,000 wounded. Churchill did not say "only" but it was there - the context made that clear.

Furthermore, since the heavy raiding had begun on 7 September, the figures of killed and seriously wounded had declined steadily week by week, from over 6,000 in the first week to just under 5,000 in the second, and from about 4,000 in the third week to under 3,000 in the last of the four weeks.

This explains the confidence. Churchill - or his advisers - have done the maths. Casualties are far lower than expected and at the present rate of bombing, even in Greater London and its population of eight million spread over 700 square miles, it is beyond the resources of the Luftwaffe to inflict terminal damage. As long as morale can be maintained (and improved) the air offensive cannot deliver a decisive result.

He makes great play of the role of the shelters, but does not acknowledge how poor the provision has been in some areas - and thus that the casualty rate could have been considerably less. And, although in the process of committing enormous resources to a reciprocal bombing programme, Churchill does not concede that the enemy population might be better protected and that his offensive might yield similarly mediocre results.

The prime minister, however, is not done. He asks, rhetorically of course, "What has happened to the invasion which we have been promised every month and almost every week since the beginning of July?" But the issue is raised for him then to declare, "Do not let us be lured into supposing that the danger is past." He goes on:

On the contrary, unwearying vigilance and the swift and steady strengthening of our Forces by land, sea and air which is in progress must be at all costs maintained. Now that we are in October, however, the weather becomes very uncertain, and there are not many lucid intervals of two or three days together in which river barges can cross the narrow seas and land upon our beaches. Still, those intervals may occur. Fogs may aid the foe.

Our Armies, which are growing continually in numbers, equipment, mobility and training, must be maintained all through the winter, not only along the beaches but in reserve, as the majority are, like leopards crouching to spring at the invader's throat. The enemy has certainly got prepared enough shipping and barges to throw half a million men in a single night on to salt water - or into it.

This scenario is so deeply implausible, on so many levels, as to be laughable. And Churchill must know it. The RAF and other reconnaissance efforts will have indicated to him a rough shipping capability and he will know that it goes nowhere near being able to transport half a million men - with their equipment - in one lift. That the Germans should, in any event, have that many men on immediate standby, on the off-chance that there is a foggy period (which must also coincide with favourable tide states) is a highly dubious proposition, and then there is the small question of re-supply.

But one can see from the context and the remarks around his assertion what Churchill is doing - and it makes sense. He cannot afford to have either the military or the population relaxing - especially the Army. Of this, he says, "During the winter training must proceed, and the building of a great well-equipped army, not necessarily always to be confined to these islands, must go forward in a hardy and rigorous manner." Churchill needs to maintain the threat level to keep his military alert, motivated and committed to its training.

But there are other issues, not least the failure of a recent expedition to Dakar, and an attempt alongside de Gaulle and his Free French to take over the African territory held by Vichy forces. The details need not detain us. What is important is that the embarrassment and the sense not only of failure but of poor judgement - a "fiasco", some are calling it. It has damaged confidence in Churchill's handling of the war and in his government. He needs to give the people (and the MPs) some good news. A victory will do.

This, Churchill has ready-made. "The main reason why the invasion has not been attempted up to the present is, of course," he says, "the succession of 297 brilliant victories gained by our fighter aircraft, and gained by them over the largely superior numbers which the enemy have launched against us". He adds:

The three great days of 15th August, 15th September and 27th September have proved to all the world that here at home over our own Island we have the mastery of the air. That is a tremendous fact. It marks the laying down of the office which he has held with so much distinction for the last three years by Sir Cyril Newall, and it enables us to record our admiration to him for the services he has rendered. It also marks the assumption of new and immense responsibilities by Sir Charles Portal, an officer who, I have heard from every source and every side, commands the enthusiastic support and confidence of the Royal Air Force.

These victories of our Air Force enable the Navy, which is now receiving very great reinforcements, apart altogether from the American destroyers now coming rapidly into service, to assert, on the basis of the air victories, its sure and well-tried power.

The prime minister's speech then gets a response from the acting leader of the opposition, a relatively unknown if interesting politician by the name of Hastings Lees-Smith.

A strong supporter of Churchill, he refers to the "encouraging nature" of the speech, especially that part of it in which he dealt with "the central danger", the invasion of Britain. As to Dakar, he says, "after an episode like that, the country may, for a moment, lose its sense of proportion". It may "not realise that victory in the Battle of Britain is, in its final effect, more important than anything which happens elsewhere, even at Dakar".

The Battle of Britain is beginning to acquire an identity of its own and, not for the first time, is being used - and successfully - for wholly political purposes.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 90 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-07T08:52:00.012+01:00

So unusual is the bombing break that it makes the front page lead in the Daily Express, acquiring the label "Blitzpause". The story lies alongside one which is clearly government-inspired, talking up the woefully inadequate defences against night raids, and promising "secret night fighters" soon.

Meanwhile, the war goes on and, if there is absolute determination on the part of the British people to defeat Hitler - and there can be little doubt that there is - there is by no means any sense of unity as to how the war should be fought. More specifically, there is an acute political divide on how Britain should emerge from the war and a strong determination on the Left that there should be real social change.

To that extent, there are two wars going on - the war against Hitler and a class-centred domestic political war which had dominated politics since the end of the First World War, taking in issues which were unresolved in the General Strike of 1926.

And on this day, the eve of the annual congress of the Trades Union Council (TUC) the second war flared briefly into prominence in the Daily Mirror leader. It noted that, since the Westminster Parliament seemed to have disappeared for the moment (which it had, meeting infrequently and irregularly), "we must rely for information about, 'the voice of democracy' upon a much larger Parliament that meets at Southport tomorrow. It is composed of the representatives of five million members of the TUC."

The chief topic for discussion, the paper says, is the conduct of the war. But, "from what point of view?" it asks, creating the opportunity to make the archly critical point: "Obviously, from the Labour point of view – if there still is one,", reflecting unease in the labour movement at the silence of two members of the gradually growing War Cabinet, who are also members of the "Workers' Parliament".

These are Clem Atlee and Ernest Bevin (pictured above), former General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU),a pair whom the paper calls, "Mr Academic Atlee and Blunt Bevin. It hopes that the Southport meeting will prefer bluntness and:

... that it will bluntly ask Mr Bevin whether official Labour, now represented in Government, is doing enough – or doing anything – to secure that this should be a People's War; whether this is a war fought "for the people by the people"; and whether there is not far too much of the old privileged-gangster spirit at its old game of cajoling the workers while it fights for the few. We have seen this so often that we may be excused doubts.

The paper then continues:

Particularly, when we note that stern Labour men seem to be getting so pally with the others. Of course they must work with the others. But with a difference. War work, not bouquets with compliments. We have noticed that the energetic Lord Beaverbrook appears to have appointed himself Minister of Bouquets. He handed one to Sir Kingsley Wood. Last week he handed another to Mr Herbert Morrison as "a great fellow at the Ministry of Supply". Which shows that they are all getting on well together. But does it show that Labour is getting on with its job of influencing Government in the right – we mean the Left – direction?

We put this to the Parliament of Southport.

There is a great deal to be said of this one editorial - written under a strict censorship regime which does not easily permit open criticism of the conduct of the war. It recognises that, in the absence of an active parliament, the unions are becoming the unofficial opposition and that the parliamentary Labour Party was not meeting the expectations of the labour movement.

Crucially though, it also highlights the concept of the People's War, and asks whether this war is being fought "for the people by the people" or for the benefit of the privileged "few". This is a different vision of "the few" - which long pre-dates Churchill, but it is a recurrent vision. There are accusations, for instance, as early as 1921, that "war does not pay, except to a few", with insinuations that the United States engaged in the First World War "for the financial profit of the few".

The concept of government for the many, and not for "the profits of the few" is one raised frequently by Roosevelt in the early-mid thirties, particularly with reference to the "new deal" and is found in diverse socialist writings, amongst them Marx and Trotsky, forming the central tenet of socialism and the basis of union ambitions, who seek "a system of production for service to the many, not for the profit of the few."

One cannot help but wonder at this contrast between "the people" and "the few". The latter is the term Churchill uses to describe the airman fighting the war, when he stresses that never has so much been owed by so many to so few.

But back in August when he used the phrase, the one which has become the defining phrase of his version of the Battle of Britain, was he instinctively trying to capture and redefine a term which the labour movement had for over a decade used to describe its class enemy? Was he thinking not so much of the airmen, but of the ruling class to which he belonged, trying to re-assert a relationship, the legitimacy of which was being challenged by his political rivals?

If Churchill is aware of this nuance, at this time, he does not publicly acknowledge it. With the recent promotion of Sir Charles Portal to Chief of the Air Staff, The Daily Mail (via Airminded) reveals the prime minister's dream, with a headline: "RAF Preparing a Great New Bomber Offensive". It tells its readers that "powerful new RAF bombers now being produced in great numbers and an amazing new long-range fighter are likely to be used, in the immediate future, for a greatly intensified bombing offensive over Germany.

The report is in many ways delusional – with only very small numbers of the new four-engined Stirling being produced, but not least in its claim about a new "long-range fighter". This may be a reference to the Mosquito being built by de Havilland in Hatfield, but the reality is that the RAF – now obsessed with its Spitfires – consistently fails to produce an effective long-range escort fighter.

Nevertheless, the paper declares: "Hitler's people can look forward to more than a taste of the medicine their Luftwaffe is administering over here."

Dramatic though this might sound, Portal - and Churchill for that matter - to say nothing of the Daily Mail, might have been advised to read a piece written by Ruth Cowan for the AP, and widely syndicated throughout the US. Headed, "Londoners will get used to bombs in time, noted psychiatrist says," it records the views of Dr Lawrence Kolb, assistant surgeon general in charge of mental hygiene in the United States public health service.

He has been studying how human beings react under aerial bombardment and identifying the "mental after effects" – if any. He had thus been putting "Mr Average citizen of London" under a long-range microscope to see how the islander was standing up mentally under "death from the air". Dr Kolb had "found him doing very well".

Air raids had two effects on civilian populations, Kolb explained. First, terror, stress and anxiety tended to break down certain people – whose resistance was not high. But second, the ordeal tended to strengthen those people whose personalities were well or better-integrated. This group could get used to being bombed and stand more of it without bad mental after-effects.

However, the first reaction of even well-integrated individuals to sudden, unexpected bombing, especially if it is a novel experience, "may be panic ...". But instead of going to pieces, this type of individual will react realistically to adjust to conditions.

Yet, with Portal's great bombing offensive in the planning, the very psychology which was set to make Hitler's Blitz a failure was now to be revisited on the Germans, with exactly the same results.

Less sanguine about the effects of the bombing was US Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. A report had emerged that he was asking Washington to send another "rescue ship" to remove Americans from "embattled Britain." A consistent pessimist about the ability of Britain to resist the German onslaught, he had now fixed on the idea of evacuating his fellow countrymen.

Negotiations were "understood" to be in progress between Kennedy and Washington, the main question hinging on whether Germany and Britain will give safe passage to such a ship. Whether Kennedy himself would be a passenger on the ship was not known, although rumour had it that he intended to return to the US in November.

Kennedy, though, was not the only one contemplating getting out of London. Announced by Malcolm McDonald, the health minister was an inspired scheme for large-scale evacuation of the London area.

All mothers with school-age children, or under, were offered guaranteed transport out of capital. Billets would be found for them and lodging paid. Those who wished to make their own arrangements were being offered travel warrants and a lodging allowance. There were to be no bureaucratic obstacles, the tasks being to remove those around which dissent might be fomented, and to relieve the burdens on public services and shelter accommodation.

In the event, only around 10,000 women and children took advantage of the scheme. But the offer had been made. Those who stayed put were "volunteers" for whatever was to come.

As for the wider war, in a situation which had been building for some time, Italian and German troops had entered Rumania, with much of the press making this their lead item for the day. The take-over, and that is what it amounts to, gives the Germans access to the oil fields at Ploesti. Until bombed to destruction by the USAAF, this supply will provide a vital adjunct to Germany's war-making capabilities.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 89 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-06T18:34:00.009+01:00

Speculation is rife on what actually went on at Brenner, while German shortwave broadcasts are stoking up the invasion threat. They are claiming that "maybe" the waves of German bombers now flying towards England will be followed "soon" by hundreds of thousands of troops standing by. The propaganda machine thus is obeying the Hitler directive to exploit the continued presence of troops to keep up pressure on the British.

The weather said otherwise. Overnight, poor weather had prevented all but a handful of sorties, with London visited by a mere seven bombers - the lightest attack since the offensive had begun on 7 September.

A dismal day with continuous rain over almost the entire country then prevents all but a few Luftwaffe flights. One catches a Polish Hurricane from No. 303 Sqn between hangers at RAF Middle Wallop, blowing it and its pilot to smithereens. Four land mines were dropped at Uxbridge, one close to 11 Group HQ, threatening the entire command operation (although the operations room was deeply buried in a bunker). Sub-Lt Horace Taylor defused that mine, earning him a well-deserved George Cross.

On the British side, every effort is being made to keep up with the Germans in the propaganda war. This effort focuses mainly on the activities of Bomber Command which, despite the foul weather, manages to despatch 21 Blenheims to attack targets in Germany. The thick clouds - on which the aircraft rely for cover - causes ten sorties to be abandoned. The rest attack alternative targets - mainly shipping and barges in the Channel ports. One crew attacks Deipholtz aerodrome and reports bomb bursts on the tarmac in front of the hanger.

Not much could be expected in what were atrocious conditions, when simply to fly in such primitive machines is a significant achievement. But the activity is translated a communiqué declaring: "British bombers attacked Nazi coastal objectives and shipping from Harlingen in the Netherlands to Boulogne in France in a series of raids which began soon after dawn and lasted until late afternoon".

This is not exactly a lie, but it gives the impression of purposeful activity and suggests results far beyond those achieved. Interestingly, the same language is used in the resumé which goes to the War Cabinet, which means the false impression goes right to the top.

On the day, three Hurricanes and a Spitfire are lost. Seven Luftwaffe bombers are lost and several others very badly damaged. A Hudson is also lost attacking two armed merchant ships off the Dutch coast. The crew is posted as missing. Even at this stage of the war, German flak is lethal.

Come the night, the sirens sound with weary predictability. And then nothing happens. No aircraft, no bombs, no gunfire. Where thousands guns failed, where the pitiful technology of the RAF provides no deterrent, the wild weather over the Channel and northern France has prevailed. The bombers have stayed at home. Cautiously, people emerge from their shelters and soon, the pubs and restaurants are doing a roaring trade. Many sleep in their own beds this night, the first time for over a month.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 88 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-05T20:19:00.011+01:00

There is much domestic news, but the Manchester Guardian is in no doubt as to the most important story - the meeting between Hitler and Mussolini. The headline refers to a failure of the attacks on Britain, and a threat of "new ways of intensifying the war".

The paper's news values are shared by the New York Times. It also homes in on the Hitler Mussolini meeting, although its emphasis is on a possible widening of the war. There is a recognition that the war against Britain will be prolonged "through the winter", but also speculation that the war will not be fought exclusively round the British Isles.

The Hamburger Frendemblatt asserts that the war has changed from a European dispute between a continent led by Germany, Italy and Great Britain into a great final struggle of a new world. It will not only be carried out in the regions of the British Isles, but also on African soil.

This is an interesting and not illogical assertion, and one that has already been discussed openly in the British and American press, most recently three days previously.

The Axis leaders will know the vital role of Egypt and the Suez Canal in linking the UK with the Empire and dominions, and know that Britain must defend that territory, even to the extent of transferring forces from Britain (which is exactly what is happening). Thus, attacks in Africa serve to weaken the defence of the home country - a pressure Churchill is continually having to deal with as he balances the forces available to him.

This is something the Daily Express correspondent picks up as well. "Hitler has not quite abandoned his dreams of a Blitzkrieg against the British Isles," he writes, "and wants to engage Italy in an intensive campaign of divertive (sic) action".

This creates a further perspective to the battle of Britain. There is the tendency to look at the fighting in the UK in isolation, with the Africa campaign separate and distinct. Hitler and Mussolini, however, seem to be making the linkage. Pressure from the Italians, particularly in North Africa, is judged to have a direct effect on the fight on British soil, drawing resources from it. On that basis, the two campaigns are conjoined - British and dominion troops fighting in Africa are part of the Battle of Britain.

What works for Britain, however, also works for Africa. And here, William L Shirer, monitoring Italian comment on the Benner meeting, relays the view that the Duce is angry with the Germans for giving up the plan to invade Britain. German forces on British soil would have the effect of reducing pressure on Italian forces in Africa. And the delay by the Germans means that the Italians are the only Axis partner confronting British ground forces.

The Glasgow Herald also reports the meeting at length. It notes that the Nazis are "reticent" about it. But the paper cites the Italian newspaper Popolo di Roma which published a piece before the meeting. This suggests that the Axis leaders would probably discuss a joint plan for "a long fight to the finish" against Britain.

From this and the general tenor of the coverage, it is crystal clear that any prospect of an invasion of Britain this year is over. It is now October, the weather is generally foul and the likelihood of there being the requisite period of good weather are non existent. Even without the Brenner meeting, the British must know there is no imminent risk of invasion.

And that is certainly the view of Major E G E Lloyd, MP for East Renfrew – reported by The Glasgow Herald on this day. "I am convinced that the possibility of a successful invasion and conquest of Britain is now finished and done with for ever", he says. "The Battle of Britain, in my judgement, is almost over, and has been won by us." Lloyd adds that, "We may have to face heavy bombardment this winter," but he then goes on to say that, with the passing of this month, the real centre of the war would travel from Great Britain to the Mediterranean.

With this, the Germans should know - if they are thinking straight - that the air war against Britain is not going to yield immediate, or any, strategic results. But, it would appear, they are not thinking straight. Shirer writes that they are in "a great state of mind because the British won't admit they're licked". They cannot, he says, "repress their rage against Churchill for still holding out hopes of victory to his people, instead of lying down and surrendering, as have all Hitler's opponents to date". He thus writes, "The Germans cannot understand a people with character and guts".

And across the Atlantic, in a remarkable intervention in the US press, David Lloyd George, prime minister during the previous World War, wrote a lengthy authored piece. He had refused Churchill's entreaties to join his government, thereby eschewing the opportunity to make his views heard within the Cabinet. But now he was complaining that the government he had refused to join had failed clearly to state its peace objectives. The first step his 1917 War Cabinet had taken had been to clarify its ideas as to the ultimate objects it sought to obtain by the war, and then to consider the ways of obtaining them. Is anyone considering these problems today, he asked. If not, it is now time it should be done.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 87 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-04T16:08:00.009+01:00

The much-advertised meeting between Hitler and Mussolini at the Brenner Pass takes place - three-hours in an armoured train, a gift from the Fuhrer to the Duce. "The War is won," Hitler tells Mussolini. The British people are under an "inhuman strain" and, Hitler claims, it is only a matter of time before they crack.

In Berlin, foreign office spokesmen told neutral journalists that the principal subject discussed by the two leaders and their foreign ministers was an appeal to the British to call off the war. However, the Italians were quick to note that Hitler no longer talks about invading Britain. In Rome, Il Popolo di Roma (newspaper) commenting on the talks, speaks of a long war in prospect, with Germany unable to invade Britain this year.

William L Shirer covers the meeting from Berlin - although is frustrated by the complete lack of information in the official communiqué. Although warned against speculation, he confides to his diary that: "The best guess here is that Mussolini is sore because the Germans apparently have abandoned the idea of invading Britain this fall, leaving him holding the bag with his offensive in the Egyptian desert ...".

Associated Press writer Kirke L Simpson is reporting on the same issues from another perspective. "The battle of England," he writes, "seems slated to bog down into as tragic winter stalemate of attrition warfare by air and seam fraught for Britons and Germans alike, with unimaginable horrors. Yet it also means that England will enjoy surcease from fears of the worst - successful Nazi invasion. Simpson continues:

That, at least, is the now undisguised British view. Prime Minister Churchill's reshuffling of his war cabinet means that he is preparing to tighten England's belt for a winter of tit-for-tat warfare with the Nazi foe, carried to the bitter end. It is for that that Churchill has shaken up the leadership his vast war machine.

The Axis powers see the reshuffle in a completely different light. In particular, the German press sees "sweet vengeance", according to the Associated Press. The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung observes that "Chamberlain has been dead politically since May 10, when he surrendered the premiership to Churchill". It added that Chamberlain, who a year ago said he hoped to live to see the day when Hitler was destroyed, was now himself destroyed politically.

A German government spokesman said that the Cabinet changes indicated that "something is rotten in England" The spokesman added that Mr Churchill is "under pressure, and had to sacrifice someone to show that he is active and the old man Chamberlain came in handy".

German radio said: "Chamberlain played the angel of peace as long as Britain was armed. He dropped the mask as soon as he felt secure. Chamberlain's unlimited guarantee to Poland was the immediate cause of the war. Chamberlain has gone, but Churchill remains, and with him all the other warmongers. Nobody will lose a tear for Chamberlain who will carry the responsibility for this war, but this resignation is a sign of weakness in Churchill's Cabinet".

Italian radio said: "Churchill has got rid of Chamberlain, but that is only a manoeuvre of Churchill's to divert the attention of the British people from the victorious activities of the German Air Force and Italy's victory in Somaliland; from the fiasco of Dakar, and particularly from the Three-Power pact signed in Berlin".

The productive Kirke L Simpson, meanwhile, writes of another development. Spain has voted to stay out of the war. She is not convinced that her Nazi-Fascist friends have yet licked John Bull and his Navy. General Franco, he writes, is apprehensive that an air-tight British blockade of Spain would invite starvation-bred disorders there that could unseat him as military dictator. He has no intention of stepping in to grasp at the Axis-preferred Gibraltar prize until it is far more certain that Britain has been beaten.

As the nation in Europe occupying the best ringside seat to observe the Battle of Britain, Spain's indicated decision to stay out of it is an important development. It means that Britain faces only a two-front, not a three-front attack this winter. There is not going to be a siege of her Gibraltar sentry box.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 86 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-03T15:26:00.006+01:00

Overnight sees much reduced Luftwaffe activity, meriting a mention on the front page of the Daily Express. But the news is dominated by Neville Chamberlain's resignation. Worn down by the stress of office and age, and now aware that he has a terminal illness, he has resigned from the cabinet, triggering a reshuffle.

Herbert Morrison becomes home secretary and minister of home security, replacing Sir John Anderson, whose reluctance to provide deep shelters has triggered one of the most distressing and potentially dangerous home front crises of the war. Anderson takes Chamberlain's vacated post as Lord President of the Council, and joins the war cabinet.

During the day, typical autumnal weather, with heavy rain and low cloud, prevents any concerted attacks. The Luftwaffe resorts to its standard bad weather operating pattern, and despatches a series of single aircraft to carry out raids throughout the country. Through the gloom, bombs are dropped more or less at random.

A Ju 88 finds the de Havilland works at Hatfield. From a height of 50ft, it machine-guns workers as they run for their shelter trenches and then drops a stick of four bombs on the plant, killing 21 and injuring 70 - more casualties than Fighter Command has taken in over a week. Anti-aircraft fire brings the aircraft down.

Fighter Command losses for the day are limited to one Blenheim, crashing in driving rain during a patrol, killing the whole crew. The Luftwaffe loses nine, including one to a take-off accident and another to an unexplained engine failure.

In Berlin, William L Shirer is back in harness, writing to his diary that something special is expected on the morrow, in a meeting between Hitler and Mussolini at the Brenner [pass]. There is much speculation as to what this will entail.

This is the day that Alan Brooke writes in his diary that he is "beginning to think that the Germans may after all not attempt it [the invasion]. Despite being the man charged with defending England, he must be the only man in the country who was under any illusions that the Germans were still coming. One wonders whether he is serious, or whether he is so focused - building and training his new army - that he has no time to look at the broader intelligence picture.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 85 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-02T15:17:00.007+01:00

With the RAF having made daylight conditions too dangerous for the Luftwaffe's bombers, a major conversion programme was under way to allow larger numbers of Me 109s to be equipped as fighter bombers - or Jabos, as the Germans called them. And already they were being sent over in increasing numbers, usually at high altitude, where only the Spitfires could reach them.

From a strategic point of view, however, it is difficult to see what Göring was trying to achieve, other than give RAF Fighter Command flying practice, and an opportunity for a few pilots to increase their personal scores. The number of aircraft and the density of bombing is not enough to cause anything other than a nuisance, and it is not without cost. This day, the Luftwaffe loses 16 aircraft, against the RAF's loss of only three Spitfires - two of them in a ground collision.

Day flying, therefore, seems to be in flux - apparently carried out for the sake of it, downing enemy aircraft because they are there to be shot at, but without any hope of forcing a strategic decision. Both sides could carry on doing this to the end of time, and it would make absolutely no difference to the outcome of the war.

By now, of course, Sealion has been cancelled, although this intelligence is confined to the highest echelons of the British command. However, this does not stop speculation. And on this day, Drew Middleton of the Associated Press files a report which states that the "zero hour for [the] invasion of Britain this year has passed." He cites as his source, "neutral military observers and unofficial British sources". Intriguingly, they add that "there are signs that the battle of Britain will be fought in Africa".

British military sources are thus cited, saying that they had "no reason to doubt" that the German High Command had taken over the direction of the Italian operations in North Africa and “no good reason not to believe" that Germany had moved troops into Italy, presumably to reinforce the Italians in Africa.

Military sources also suggested that the Germans would keep concentrations of troops in the Channel ports, and the risk of invasion would keep the British North Sea fleet at home, but it nevertheless seemed that the next important battlefield of the war would be Egypt. With that, an invasion of the UK was "always possible" but the almost nightly bombing of the invasion ports plus the increasingly unfavourable weather were "whittling down any chance that such an attempt should succeed".

To assess the validity of this speculation, we can perhaps cheat and go forward seven years to 1947 and a report by Admiral W E Parry, then Director of Naval Intelligence on the German plans for the invasion of England. Addressing claims that the operation was abandoned because of the Luftwaffe's failure to achieve effective air supremacy, he argues that there was another prerequisites for the operation, command of the sea.

Even had the Germans gained temporary air superiority, and helped by luck, the invasion army had been landed intact and without excessive losses, the main difficulty would only then have begun. Facing the Germans then would be the task of supplying their forces in the face of an opponent who on his own territory must have become stronger day to day.

Against an all-powerful sea opponent – resolute and prepared for great sacrifices – it could not be assumed that the Luftwaffe alone, largely dependent on the weather, would succeed in permanently preventing the enemy's forces from disorganising supplies, says Parry.

On the basis of an evaluation of the events, he asserts that, when the time arrived for making a final decision, not one of the responsible authorities was ready to speak decisively against the operation, although all recognised the inherently serious objections. But all, he says, were privately relieved when the failure of air superiority afforded a good reason for outwardly justifying the abandonment of the operation.

Then comes an interesting observation which seems to provide some support for the analysis so far. The cancellation, says Parry, was materially facilitated by the fact that the German Supreme Command at that time regarded the general military situation as particularly favourable.

Just then, their hopes were at their height of winning the war through the combined effect of attacks on shipping and air attacks on industry. Hence there seemed no necessity to embark on this extreme measure involving such great risk, since a failure would mean a serious disaster for the Germans while increasing British prestige in the eyes of the world.

Certainly, it seems hopes of winning were high – but much of that rests on the supposed effect of the bombing on Londoners. But still there was some faith – and high hopes – that the attacks on shipping, combined with attacks on economic targets, would force Churchill to the negotiating table. More and more, the day battle becomes an irrelevance. The real Battle of Britain is being fought out on different battlefields. In many senses, it always has been.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 84 - Battle of Britain

2010-10-01T20:58:00.011+01:00

It seems natural that, as the defensive, daylight battle winds down, the RAF should have its plans to go on the offensive. The Daily Mail having done the story, now it is the turn of the Yorkshire Post to tell its readers that the tide is turning. Otherwise, it is more of the same - the RAF sees off the day raiders, bombs a few invasion ports, and lets the night raiders through. And on this day, we learn that Dowding has been awarded the KGC.

From the other side of the coin, Reich propaganda minister Joseph Göbells writes in his diary that following "absolutely massive attacks on London", "It is possible to see the demoralising effect from the English press". But of the British attacks on Germany, he claims that "one can no longer discern English intentions with any certainty".

How Göbells discerns the "demoralising effect" from the English press it not easy to see. The Daily Express, for instance (below), offers readers the upbeat news that British experts are finding an answer to the night bomber, while bigger, faster, more powerful bombers are coming off the production lines. The RAF claims 49 aircraft for the day previously, bringing their claimed total shot down in September to 1,095 - with 2,500 airmen lost - bringing to an end the "summer phase of the war".

Amongst the narrators of Battle of Britain history, however, there seems to be a degree of confusion developing. Len Deighton, in his Fighter, has long ago given up following the story, taking 15 September as marking the effective end of the battle. T C G James writes of "The Decline of the Battle", and can't be bothered with a daily narrative. Even the faithful Mason writes of the "October anti-climax".

Korda seems to have dropped out completely, taking his cue from Deighton and declaring that, in mid-September 1940 - perhaps without even realising it - Hitler lost the war. Only Wood and Dempster seem to plod on regardless, diligently, and dispassionately, charting the course of the battle that no one seems to be able to define.

Wood and Dempster thus tell us of a strong daylight raid which attempts to bomb Southampton. They mark it out as "different" as it comprises mostly Me 109s and 110, some of them carrying bombs. There is, however, nothing particularly novel about that, although the removal of dedicated bombers does reflect the drubbing the force had the day previously.

In fact, the day battle is petering out - it is no longer of any significance - and the objective (as far as it was ever real) of gaining air superiority for the invasion has long ceased to have any relevance. Gradually, and without any fanfare, Me 109 squadrons are also being returned to Germany, their pilots for rest and the aircraft for repair and refitting.

In truth, the day battle characterised as the Battle of Britain has effectively ended. Even the contemporary reports recognise this. We have the Manchester Guardian - quite obviously taking its briefing from Ministry sources - telling us that the "first phase" of the air war is over. Note that the battle as a whole, so far, is regarded as a "phase". The attacks will continue, the paper opines, although the form is "not known".

Only RAF fighter command - and then after the event - wants to redefine the "phase" as the complete battle, then prolonging it, while trying to maintain it is a joust between the RAF fighters and the Luftwaffe. But the artificiality of the construct which dominates current histories becomes more apparent with the scrutiny of each passing day.

An uninformed observer, relying on the US media, certainly would not get any sense of a deadly battle being fought in the skies over England. The New York Times headlines, for instance, tell him of RAF raiders pounding Berlin for five hours. The Germans claim only one bomb is dropped but our only reliable independent witness, William L Shirer, has no diary entry for this day. Nevertheless, his earlier reports refer to damage caused as "negligible", although he reports that the psychological effects of the RAF raids are profound.

The bare statistics are unimpressive. Forty-two Hampdens, Wellingtons and Whitleys are despatched to bomb the Air Ministry in Berlin on the night of 30 September/1 October. Only seventeen crews even claim to have reached the target and bombed it. We have no reliable record of how many actually hit the target, and no German records remain from that period. There is, however, no evidence that any significant damage is done, yet two Wellingtons and a Hampden are lost. The crews might have been better employed bombing their own ministry.

On the other hand, the Luftwaffe is making its usual night time presence felt over London. It has an easier job. The distances involved are shorter and the crews have the ribbon of the Thames to guide them to the city, the size and density of which is such that it is almost impossible not to hit something, even when bombing blind. Perversely, although the physical damage is significant, the psychological effect is less so. Londoners are going through the process of adaptation. The shock effect has worn off and they are getting used to being bombed.

As importantly, the authorities are learning how to respond and are gearing themselves up to deal with the extraordinary situations with which they are confronted. Projects which would have taken months in the planning and weeks in execution are worked out on the back of the proverbial fag packet and completed in hours or days. At Kilburn and Brondesbury (now Kilburn) Underground station, for instance, major air-raid damage is dealt with almost as a matter of routine. Here (illustrated above), wooden framework has been constructed to replace the missing part of the bridge and a train can be seen running over it.

To an extent, therefore, Korda is right in that Hitler has lost. But it is premature to say at this stage that he has lost the war. He has lost two battles - the battle for daytime air superiority, needed for the invasion, and the battle for the people's morale. Barring some dreadful combination of events, public morale is never going to be as fragile as it was in the immediate aftermath of the early September bombing of London.

But it simply cannot be stressed enough that there are the three components to the battle against Britain. And, in particular, we still have the "blockade". This, as we know, has several components, the sea war, including the growing depredations of the U Boats, and the air war, which not only includes the bombing of ships and the laying of mines, but the bombing of the ports. The outcome of this component - the battle of the blockade, of which latterly the Battle of the Atlantic becomes a part - is still very much open. On this leg alone, the war can still be lost.

The question to be addressed, therefore, is whether this part of the battle against Britain is also part of the Battle of Britain, with the "B" in "battle" capitalised.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 83 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-30T14:08:00.020+01:00

The newspapers are making a great play of the weekend activities of the RAF, featuring - as does the Daily Express - the raids on Berlin and the claims of damage to "Nazi bases".

In a bullish account, the paper's war reporter, Sefton Delmer, tells how "Revenge bombs will not win the war". He writes: "I spent five hours yesterday morning driving round London and its suburbs carefully observing the damage done by Hitler's bombs in last night's raids". And there is one conclusion which before all others impressed itself on me at the end of it, he says, adding:

Let us beware of allowing our anger over these indiscriminate bombings of London to carry us into indiscriminate bombing of Berlin or any other part of Germany. Random bombing, of the kind the Germans carried out over London on Saturday night, just does not pay. And it's not worth imitating. Let us stick to our careful selection of economically and militarily important targets.

...

At the places where the bombs fell they were working with hammer and nails, wood and tarpaulin, patching up their broken windows and roofs. I spoke to three families who escaped unhurt from their wrecked homes and were sitting in the street with such furniture as they had been able to save. All the men said the same: "I am just waiting to fix things up this afternoon. We shall stay with friends. Tomorrow morning I am going to my work as usual." Is it worth bombinz people if that is how they take it? I should say No.

The Luftwaffe day raids this day amount to two waves totalling 200 aircraft. The first wave crosses the Kent coast at around 09:00hrs and is met by eight squadrons of Hurricanes and four of Spirfires. The bombers get as far a Maidstone before they are turned back.

An hour later, a formation of Me 109s and 110s try their luck. They are met by a strong force of 60 Hurricanes and 18 Spitfires barring their way. Next, the Germans try sending a 100 bombers, escorted by 200 fighters, over the Sussex coast towards London. Only one Gruppe gets as far as the outskirts, and suffers heavily for its folly.

A final raid is tried on the Westland factory at Yeovil. Forty He 111s, escorted by Me 110s cross the coast near Weymouth. Once again they are met by a welcoming committee from Fighter Command and are forced to scatter, dumping their bombs over Sherbourne and district.

Progressively, the RAF is getting the measure of the daytime threat, which no longer holds the terrors it once invoked. But the night-time slaughter continues unabated, when the Luftwaffe owns the sky. The attacks are concentrated mainly on south and west London, with attacks on the Home Counties as well. There is light bombing on Merseyside.

But the traffic is not one-way, by any means. Despite unfavourable weather, the RAF visits targets in northern Germany and a small number of bombers again raid Berlin, their aiming point designated as the German Air Ministry. Overall Bomber and Coastal Command losses are relatively high. A Fleet Air Arm Albacore is lost on operation, two Blenheims go down - one crashing on take-off, and a Hudson is lost shortly after take-off. A Hampden, three Wellingtons and two Whitleys are also lost.

This night, the 15-inch gun monitor HMS Erebus (pictured above), escorted by destroyers HMS Vesper and Garth, takes up station 4-5 miles off Calais and shells gun emplacements there. Her two guns, weighing 100 tons each and hurling shells weighing nearly 2,000lbs, fire 17 rounds before the ship retires. The Germans respond with by nine 240mm rounds from the radar-guided Prinz Heinrich Battery. Curiously, no mention are made of this actions in official communiqués, so no details are publicised in the British or foreign press, despite reports of RAF activity over the Channel ports.

This may reflect the disparity in the resources expended by the Air Ministry on PR/propaganda, it spending nearly 17 times more than the Admiralty. On their own account, the airmen are winning the propaganda war. Yet the sensationalism of the air war is obscuring solid developments and achievements at sea. Even though Hitler has stood down Sealion, it is only a postponement. The Royal Navy is sending him a very clear message that he should not bother re-instating it.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 82 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-29T18:31:00.006+01:00

The Sunday Express is asking whether the raid on the Friday might have been something more than "merely an unusually vicious air attack", speculating that it might have been part of another invasion attempt, smashed once more by the RAF. The paper also records Churchill sending his message congratulating Fighter Command on the results of that day.

But there is no respite. The Luftwaffe comes soon after dawn, clocking in at 06:50 and then 09:00hrs. The bombers visit Berkshire, Essex, Kent and Surrey, but - in the dry words of the official log, "no incident of importance took place".

Later in the morning it is the turn of East and South East England. At 11:20hrs 18 HE bombs were dropped near the naval base on Lowestoft. A land mine detonates and some ammunition explodes, causing damage to property, water mains and telegraph wires. There are several casualties. Several aircraft try for London during the afternoon but only a few make it, and there are no major occurrences. In the evening, Sittingbourne is heavily bombed.

And with weary predictability, the night brings a fresh wave of bombers. They start their murder at about 20:00hrs, hitting London but also spreading their bundles of death around the south and south east of England, South Wales, the Midlands. In the south east, HE bombs are dropped at 21:20hrs at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Unfortunately, the only effect is the bursting of a water main.

Liverpool's visits are later, around 22:35hrs, when fires are started at Duke's Dock and Salthouse Dock. Four warehouses, including one containing grain, catch fire.

Railways take a hit again, but not on any great scale, a number of factories are damaged and the the City takes its quota of bombs from around 00:15hrs onwards, causing several fires, the most serious being in Upper Thames Street. An unexploded bomb is also reported in the South East corner of St Paul's Churchyard, causing major traffic disruption. Cheapside and Queen Victoria Street are already closed. Horse Shoe Wharf, Cannon Street and Carter Lane were also affected.

And so goes the war - pointless murder and mayhem. There is no strategic issue at stake. Nothing will be decided. The Luftwaffe drop their bombs, and the people endure. The next day, it starts all over again.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 81 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-28T20:29:00.007+01:00

With every reason to feel very pleased with its performance the previous day, the RAF still manages to over-egg its success, claiming 130 kills against the 55 aircraft it actually brought down. For propaganda effect, though, it needs the exaggeration. A "mere" 55 raiders destroyed for the loss of 34 fighters does not look tremendously impressive.

Churchill is so taken with this "victory" that he has sent a telegram of congratulation to the Air Ministry: "Pray congratulate the Fighter Command on the results of yesterday," he instructs. "The scale and intensity of the fighting and the heavy losses of the enemy ... make 27th September rank with 15th September and 15th August as the third great and victorious day during the course of the Battle of Britain".

What particularly marks out this message is that it is probably the first time that Churchill makes a reference to the "Battle of Britain" in the specific context of the RAF and fighter command. Later, in his history of the Second World War, he marks the 27th as the day when Göring "gave up hope that his method of winning the war might succeed. Yet, he says, the "Battle of London" was still to be fought out. He does not mention the RAF successes of this day.

By now, though, Churchill's mind is elsewhere. He has been taxed by the excessive disruption arising when people stop work and take shelter when the sirens sound, and his concerned at the amount of production lost. He has introduced a scheme where the warning is regarded as an "alert", with a system of "spotters" who give local warning if aircraft appear. Only then are workers supposed to take cover

Another of his immediate preoccupations is the number of unexploded bombs. By the end of October, there are 3,000 in London alone, and their disruptive effect is enormous. Churchill thus is taking a very keen interest in the minutia of deactivation techniques.

Nevertheless, if Churchill has any expectations that this great battle holding the Americans in thrall, he is disappointed. In the grander scheme of things, the previous day has seen an event of enormous significance, one which is eventually to bring the US into the war. This is Japan signing a "tripartite pact" with Germany and Italy, making it formally a member of the Axis.

Japan recognises and respects "the leadership of Germany and Italy in the establishment of a new order in Europe". Germany and Italy reciprocate on respect of Japan and "Greater East Asia", the US sees this as a move hostile to its interests. America is thus turning, perceptibly, away from Europe to the East. Churchill now has a new and different problem - on how to keep it focused on Britain's travails. Yet, even with the benefit of hindsight, Churchill only give this issue two lines in his history.

As for the battle, today saw a sharp reversal in the fortunes of Fighter Command. It suffers the loss of four Spitfires and nine Hurricanes, with nine pilots killed, in exchange for four combat losses in the Luftwaffe. Accidents and other losses bring the balance to 18 to the Luftwaffe's ten, but to the Fighter Command's losses must be added three Wellingtons (type pictured), a Hudson and a Beaufort, plus another Wellington and a Hampden the previous day. In two days of fighting, the losses of the two sides are close to parity: 59-65.

Nor does the battle at sea offer any comfort. German destroyers Lody, Galster (pictured), Ihn, and Steinbrinck leave Brest escorted by destroyers Eckholdt and Riedel to lay mines in Falmouth Bay. The destroyers, which had been transferred to Brest earlier in September, complete their task without interference and return to Brest on the 29th. In the following days five ships fall foul of this minefield, proving once again the potency of the sea mine as a weapon.

The armed yacht Sappho, with the loss of five officers and 24 ratings, and the minesweeping trawler Comet are sunk on the 30th. Fifteen ratings are lost in the Comet. There are two survivors. On 3 October, Dutch tug Lauwerzee is towing British cable ship Lady of the Isles when both ships are mined. Twelve crew are lost on the tug and sixteen on the cable ship. Then, on 6 October, the British steamer Jersey Queen goes down. Two crew are lost. By any measure, there is a bloody war going on around this formerly sleepy Cornish port. Yet not a hint of it gets past the censor.

Back on the 28th, the British steamer Dalveen in convoy HX73A is sunk by German bombing off the north-east coast of Scotland. SS Queen City is damaged. Further south, HM Trawler Recoil is lost on patrol, presumed mined, in the English Channel off Portland Bill. Recoil is the former German trawler Blankenburg, captured on 6 April 1940 off Norway by Royal Navy ships. Lt. Ian Martin Wilson, RNVR and his crew of 24 are missing.

The loss is not admitted until 3 October, when the Admiralty announce that the ship is "overdue". The news appears as a down-page item in the Daily Mirror on 10 October. The loss of 25 men, incidentally, is far more than RAF Fighter command will experience on any day throughout the entire Battle of Britain period.

Over land, night activity starts at about 20:00hrs. London is the main objective again, but the south and south east of England, East Anglia as far North as Lincolnshire, Nottingham, Derby, Liverpool and South Wales all receive visitors.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 80 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-27T13:05:00.005+01:00

The air war is the last thing on the minds of the Left-leaning Daily Mirror as the editorial team rips into the government performance on Dakar. In a piece headed "Major Blunder" and a cartoon that has Churchill in a highly unflattering pose, no punches are pulled.

"Are we still in the stage of gross miscalculation, of muddled dash and hasty withdrawal, of wishful thinking and of half measures," it storms, venturing: "So the fiasco of Dakar suggests. Not so much of the Nelson touch about this gallant tip-and-run exploit!" We have another setback to face, another disappointment, more evidence of shuffle and makeshift. Or, as the American comment bluntly puts it, "a major blunder".

Meanwhile, the propaganda war continues. Both sides are branding each others' bombing as "indiscriminate", with the British in particular expending much effort on telling its own population how careful Bomber Command crews are to avoid civilian targets. The truth, of course, is that neither side has the navigational capability, nor the accurate means of delivery, which will enable them to avoid collateral damage, as it comes to be called.

That is especially the case at night time, and any claims as to precision are pure cant. As we see later, getting within five miles of a target is regarded as a "hit". But in daytime, it is a different matter, and this is one of the reasons why the Luftwaffe are persisting with this form of attack, despite its obvious dangers. So it was that, after some early-morning manoeuvring over the Channel, with small-scale attacks on Dover, three Luftwaffe formations, totalling some fifty aircraft, were seen crossing the English coast at Dungeness at an altitude of approximately 20,000ft.

Apparently headed for London, these were met by Fighter Command squadrons, and harried all the way from the coast to the suburbs of the metropolis, were many bomb-loads were jettisoned indiscriminately, causing endless misery to their recipients. After intervention by Me 109s, confused air-fighting took place but the bomber wave was turned back, to the great delight of the watchers and the media the following day.

Nonetheless, considerable damage was caused where the bombs did fall. Nineteen people were killed in Clapham, when a shelter was hit. A main sewer was breached in the area and the Southern Railway line between Brixton and Loughborough junction was damaged. In Battersea there was considerable damage to the weighbridge and Albert yard.

Late morning, another force was detected on its way to Bristol. After the virtually unopposed attack on Filton two days previously, the Luftwaffe was back again to finish the job. But with an additional squadron moved into the area, five squadrons met the raid, which was turned back with heavy losses. The Bristol Aircraft Company was spared further trauma.

Two more raids are directed at London, but none of the formations get through in force. Nonetheless, some of the aircraft do break through and the Houses of Parliament suffers their first recorded hits. An HE bomb and several incendiaries (including an oil bomb) falls on the Old Palace Yard at around 12:10hrs. The western front - the public entrance situated on Abingdon Street and the southern wall of St Stephen's Porch - is badly damaged. A crater is left near the front of the building, doors were broken and ceilings brought down.

The famous bronze statue of Richard the Lionheart is lifted from its pedestal by the blast. The tip of the king's sword was bent forward. Telephone lines are cut and most of the windows in the House of Lords are shattered.

On the other side of Abingdon Street, a falling anti-aircraft shell caused slight damage to the Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey. Masonry and windows are blown out, local water mains are damaged and overhead electric cables are brought down.

The ARP reports several minor injuries. Members of the Home Guard stationed in Westminster Hall are knocked over by blast. Later reports note that one man had suffered a life-threatening leg injury. Damage to the coal gas mains causes a small fire but it is quickly extinguished.

Home Intelligence, in the last of its daily reports, writes that "... the spirit of London is extremely good, even where people have suffered seriously." There is, of course, no connection with the above. However, the fact that daily reports are no longer required itself tells a story. The state of public morale, (rightly) thought to be so crucial, is evidently no longer so volatile that it must be monitored with such frequency. The moment of greatest danger, it would appear, has passed.

For the RAF, also, it has been a successful day. Not one of the Luftwaffe's daylight raids has broken through, and a toll of 55 aircraft has been extracted. But Fighter Command's losses have not been insignificant either. It loses 34 aircraft. And by night, the bombers are back.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 79 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-26T09:54:00.008+01:00

The evening will see the 20th consecutive night of bombing over London, and it is now evident that the Germans are settling down for the long haul. But there is now an entrenched belief that the network of surface shelters (example pictured left) provided by the government is unsafe.

This belief is far from unjustified and is reinforced by a series of scandals where it was discovered that, through a (quite literally) fatal misunderstanding of building specifications, brick shelters have been built with lime rather than cement mortar.

This is an aspect rarely commented upon as we see picture after picture of demolished houses, and sometimes whole street collapsing - despite the relatively small bombs being used by the Germans. Often the reason for this is the use of lime mortar. For London with its clay subsoil and cheap buildings - where footings are often omitted and the foundations, such as they are, are shallow, lime is the ideal material. As the buildings move, it allows movement of the bricks and thus avoids the settlement cracks which plague modern buildings.

For normal domestic buildings, the strength is sufficient - but only just. Bricks rest on each other "by habit" and houses can be demolished by one man with a pickaxe, the bricks separating so cleanly that they can readily be salvaged and re-used. But what is ideal in cheap housing was fatal in air raid shelters, marked by a collapse in Liverpool during the raid of 17/18 September (pictured below), killing two and injuring many more.

With their reinforced concrete roofs, concrete floors and weak walls, in the dark humour of the time they come to be known as "Morrison's sandwiches", named after the minister for home security - who was responsible for civil defence. That was perhaps unfair as Morrison was not to be appointed until early October, long after the surface shelter policy had been devised and implemented.

A rush remedial programme was put in hand, but public confidence was never really restored, as is evidenced in today's Home Intelligence report. It notes that the tube stations are "as crowded as ever", affirming that people do not consider the surface shelters safe.

Crucially, in just one sentence, the report also notes that, "The work of voluntary organisations in stricken areas has done much to prevent the breaking down of morale". Famous for its provision of canteens, mobile (above - serving an anti-aircraft site) and static, very much in evidence is the Salvation Army. Historically, it has a strong presence in the East End and is a major supplier of social services in the area.

As the thesis goes, had morale in the East End collapsed, and the contagion spread to other parts of London and then the nation as a whole, Churchill's government could have been brought down - it was never that secure - and its successor could have sued for peace. Ironically, it could thus be said that the Salvation Army has more of a claim to the title of "the few" who saved the nation than does the RAF.

As to the government, manifestly unable to provide for the needs its people, it devoted its energies on futile raids into Germany, milking the events for their publicity value - alongside tales of derring-do in attacking the German invasion fleet which was never going to leave its ports in anger.

From a propaganda point of view, there was great sense in this strategy. Still, and entirely predictably, the most commonly expressed response to the German bombing was a desire for reprisals, for revenge.

Heedless of the fact that the actual damage caused by RAF bombing command was minuscule, they provided the material for a constant barrage of headlines which sought to reassure the population that Britain was "fighting back". There is considerable public approval of the raids, particularly the policy of bombing Berlin.

Bizarrely, although parading its potency through its attacks on Germany, the RAF is unable to prevent another raid on the Supermarine Woolston factory. In the late afternoon, it is hammered by a force of nearly 60 He 111s, covered by a heavy screen of 70 Me 110s.

With the Me 110s forging on ahead, the Heinkels roared up the Solent to deliver a precision attack on the factory, destroying three completed Spitfires, damaging more than 20 others and bringing production to a halt. It is nine weeks before production is back to par, but there are so many Spitfires dispersed through the distribution and repair pipeline that Fighter Command suffers no shortage of machines. However, 37 people die in the factory.

Across the river, watchers saw the Supermarine works "burn up like a piece of brown paper." But then it was their turn. A phalanx of thirty bombers broke away from the plant and targeted Phoenix Wharf. In ten seconds a hundred bombs burst on the wharf, on the gasworks alongside or in the river. Another 52 people are dead. The wharf, the gasworks and a grain warehouse are destroyed.

A policeman comes out of the smoke towards survivors who are emerging from their shelter. He asks for a volunteer to send a message from the telephone exchange. The girl telephonist offers her services without hesitation and the policeman leads her to her task.

The office is wrecked but the exchange is still in working order and she is asked to put a call through to the ARP. The message she has to pass is: "there is an unexploded bomb underneath the telephone exchange at Phoenix Wharf". The girl never turns a hair and calmly transmits the message. She is later awarded an OBE.

By night the bombers come again to do their murder. This time, as well as London, Merseyside is hit - badly. In Birkenhead, at about 19:45hrs, incendiary bombs start falling between Central Station and Morpeth Docks. Fires are started at the Great Western Railway warehouse, the Customs Offices, a theatre and shop property. The tunnel between Birkenhead Park Station and Hamilton Square Station is damaged by a bomb.

Liverpool gets it even worse, At 21:00hrs, HE and IB are dropped causing "very considerable damage to property and starting severe fires" in the dock areas. Ships and warehouses are left burning. There is considerable loss of stocks of food, copra and palm kernels, and other goods. And this is the second night running. The previous night, amongst other premises, a large cotton warehouse is hit (above), with major losses.

And while Liverpool burns, joined once again by London, with attacks also on the north-east and even Wales, the fighter pilots are safely tucked up in their beds. It is not their fault they are useless - but indeed they are. The technology and the equipment is not yet up to the job of tackling the night bomber.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 78 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-25T10:36:00.008+01:00

Home Intelligence is reporting that "responsible people" are saying emphatically that women, children and old people should be got out of the heavily raided areas. Many of the women are showing "great nervousness and fatigue" and there is "a lot of bitter feeling" about the government's slowness in coping with the emergency.

That it is not wrong is evidenced by the cartoon in the Daily Mirror, which is accompanied by another of its robust editorials. Headed, "Catching up," it notes that the new or newly announced plans for London's security are of course hurried improvisations to meet an emergency.

But, it complains, we must wait, even for them. It is though, the paper "concedes", laying on the irony with a trowel, more than the free provision of earplugs for deafened ears, thus continuing: "This idea reminds us of the quite common official view that what you do not hear cannot harm you. So long as you are not "informed" you cannot be hurt. At least you may get a little sleep."

The situation, however, does not appear to be as black as painted. From Aldwych tube station it is reported that, even though the tunnel is not officially opened, "enormous crowds" had spent the night there, the overflow being accommodated in Aldwych House. Slow it is but, very gradually under the pressure of events, the system is responding. It is not fast enough to avoid massive and wholly avoidable hardship, but it seems to have been enough to temper any revolutionary fervour that might have been building.

And still the bombers come. Despite losses from an increasingly powerful RAF, the Luftwaffe is out in force during the day, attacking Bristol. The Bristol Aircraft Company at Filton is the main focus of attention. The weather is perfect for bombing, with banks of thick cloud broken by patches of clear blue sky. As a result the works is attacked at about 11:50hrs by 58 He 111s, escorted by 52 Me 110s.

Serious damage is caused at the Rodney Works. At the Flight Shed and East Engine Works, shelters are hit by a stick of bombs, with casualties amounting to 60 killed and 150 injured. Production is seriously affected. Eight newly built aircraft, including two precious Beaufighter prototypes, are destroyed.

Bombers scattered their loads over the general areas as well, with Filton village and surrounding districts receiving over 80 tons of high explosive and six tons of "oil bombs". The overall casualty figure is 132 people, of which 91 are Bristol Company employees. A further 315 are injured.

Fighter Command is not quick enough on the scene to intercept the raiders until they have left the target area. Local anti-aircraft gunners bring down an He 111 during its run in to the target. A total of six German aircraft fail to return. Eight crewmen are killed and ten made prisoner, including 5 injured. In addition a further two aircraft crash on return to France, adding two more injured to the casualty list.

After a reconnaissance flight over the damaged area, the Luftwaffe's own magazine, Der Adler, proclaims "this factory will not produce many more aircraft". Major Friedrich Kless, the attack leader is awarded the Ritterkruz on 14 October.

Other areas in the South West are also hit, the naval towns of Portland and Plymouth in particular. In Portland, a large amount of damage is caused to house property, water mains, electric supply and telephone wires when an attack is made by enemy aircraft at 1120 hours. Fractured water mains leave the town dangerously short of fire-fighting capacity. In Plymouth, four HE bombs are dropped, causing an oil main rupture and the destruction of a crane. Railway trucks, a jetty and a carriage shed are also damaged.

In the evening, the bombers visit coastal towns from Margate to Worthing. They make a nuisance of themselves in the south east area of Essex. And then come the night bombers. From just past ten, the asynchronous drone is heard as targets in London, East and South East England, and the Midlands are visited. But targets as far North as Liverpool are attacked. South Wales and the Bristol Channel areas are also targeted.

In the London area, many targets are hit, including the approach road to Vauxhall Bridge (above). The main targets, however, seem to be the railways. A crater is made on the GWR Line near Ruislip Garden Station. HE bombs are dropped on the GW and LMS (London Joint) Railway at Kensington at 05:00hrs, lines being completely blocked by debris. The railway bridge over Thames Road, Chiswick, is hit by HE at 00:55hrs.

A small crater is reported on the LMS down track near Acton Central Station, electric cables are severed and the presence of an unexploded bomb is suspected. The track and an overhead footbridge, belonging to the Southern Railway Company, between Kew Bridge and Grove Park Stations are damaged. Hendon is attacked at 20:45hrs and again at 22:50hrs, resulting in the Station at Collingdale being hit (pictured below).

Major fires are started at Wandsworth, Edmonton, Tottenham, Old Kent Road and Hammersmith. During these fires damage is caused to British Oxygen Co's plant at Edmonton, and the GWR sheds at Hammersmith.

But there are signs of the RAF going on the offensive. While earlier accounts in the battle record German bombing attacks on British shipping, we now see the reverse. Eleven Blenheims make a night attack on five enemy minesweepers off Dover - the so-called R-boots (pictured above). It claims two direct hits and four near misses, one of which lifts the stern of the minesweeper out of the water.

Had not Sealion already been cancelled, the significance of this would have been enormous. Without the Germans being able to clear the extensive minefields in the Channel - and keep them clear - there would have been no chance of offering safe passage to any invasion fleet.

That night, no less than 27 Blenheims are abroad, attacking targets as far afield as Boulogne, Calais, Antwerp and Brussels. Fourteen Fairey Battles attack shipping at Ostend and 33 Wellingtons join in on the attacks at Calais and Boulogne.

However, the invasion has been cancelled, and Churchill knows it. One wonders, therefore, why there is the emphasis on disrupting a fleet that is not scheduled to set sail. There are far more urgent targets, such as Luftwaffe bomber airfields. If the RAF cannot shoot down the night bombers, one might have thought that they would target the airfields.

All is not well in that air force though. The minds of the Whitehall warriors are focused elsewhere, on their more immediate enemy: Dowding. Sir John Salmond, fortified by his position on the Night Defence Committee, is telling Trenchard that Dowding has not got the qualifications as a commander in the field: "He lacks humanity and imagination".

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 77 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-24T17:10:00.012+01:00

Today is actually the day when the optimum conditions for the invasion occur - the best combination of tides, moon and daylight. The British and others have got it wrong because they do not appreciate that, to allow for the complex manoeuvring required to get the shipping into place, German planners have opted for a half moon. This offers the best compromise between the concealment afforded by darkness, and the needs of the skippers. The moon phase puts the invasion into the band 19-27th September, with this the best day.

In Britain, however, there is certainly no realisation that this could have been the invasion day. In fact, Home Intelligence reports that "except in certain areas, invasion talk has receded into the background". Nor would you get any sense of an invasion threat from the British media. On this day it is dealing with the breaking news of Churchill's adventure in Dakar, supporting an effort by de Gaulle to claim the Vichy territory in the name of "Free France". It is too early for the newspapers to report the outcome, but they have picked up the arrival of Vichy French warships on the scene, which are to spell doom for the expedition.

As to the air war over Britain, Mason has it that German daylight operations on this day include an incident that marks the beginning of a new phase. Following the mauling that the air fleets received on 15 September, Göring has decided that the Luftwaffe should revert to its earlier strategy of taking out the British aircraft industry. If the aim of German air power is to prepare the way for imminent invasion, however, this can make absolutely no contribution to that aim.

Nevertheless, the Woolston Supermarine factory in Southampton comes under attack from the precision bombers of Erprobungsgruppe 210 and their Me 110s, flying out of Cherbourg. The raid lasts precisely eight minutes and leaves behind nearly 100 dead as a factory shelter is hit. Much damage is caused, including the destruction of the Supermarine bomber prototype (project B12/36). This project - which might have given the RAF a bomber equivalent to the B-29 - is now abandoned.

Predictably, the long-term effect of raid is minimal. It simply reflects a strategic confusion on the part of Göring, who cannot seem to make up his mind precisely what he wants his air force to do.

Post-war, in his 1954 autobiography, Luftwaffe fighter ace Adolf Galland confirms that confusion was prevalent. Celebrating his fortieth kill on this day (pictured), after an air battle over the Thames Estuary, he was then to remark that he rather doubted if the General Staff ever knew which of their strategic aims was dominent, the total blockade of the island, the invasion, or the defeat of England according to Douhet concepts. The stress, he writes, "was put on all of them in turn" - although as this episode seems to indicate, sometimes simultaneously as well.

During the Battle of Britain, he avers, the Luftwaffe carried out an unlimited struggle for air supremacy, independent of any army operations; strategic air warfare by means of daylight bombing with fighter escort; strategic air warfare by means of night raids; strategic air warfare against supply ships. None of these operations was really successful, simply and solely because it was impossible to complete them successfully with the means available to the Luftwaffe.

This is perhaps getting closer to the truth. The great temptation is to assume that the enemy actually knows what he is doing and is unveiling a carefully co-ordinated master plan. In fact, there is no such thing, merely a series of half-thought moves, with no clear objectives set, no mechanisms reliably for measuring success and almost no means of exploiting such successes as might have been gained.

In the first instance, there is the blockade. This combines the effect of the U-boats, the minelaying campaign, the aerial bombing, surface raiders and E-boat attacks - plus destruction of the ports. And while it is having a damaging effect, there is insufficient resource allocated to bring the UK to its knees in the short-term.

Then there is the invasion. Gen. Alan Brooke, still charged with defending Britain's shores and without access to Ultra intelligence to which Churchill is privy, still believes it is a possibility. Many times through this period he is to write in his diary "still no invasion!". Only on 3 October does he write: "I am beginning to think that the Germans may after all not attempt it". But, on this day, most people have already reached that conclusion. Home Intelligence reports, "Except in certain areas, invasion talk has receded into the background".

As for the Douhet effect, the collapse of public morale forcing a change in government which then sues for peace, if there was a moment, it has passed. The government had learned its lesson. William Mabane, parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Home Security, tells reporters that it is to "relate shelter policy to the conditions of the time and the behaviour of the people". It would accept and make the best of present shelter arrangements and the popular attitude to them.

The Manchester Guardian notes that it was "not easy to gather from Mr Mabane what the government thought about London's invasion of Tube stations, but it is clearly prepared to accept it". The stations are now being occupied by sleepers under police supervision, and sanitary arrangements are to be brought up to what is needed for so many occupants. The government cave-in is complete, removing any immediate likelihood of a collapse of morale.

There is variously the objective of degrading Britain's economy, through the incessant bombing, but the Germans clearly have not thought this through. The sheer scale of the economy is such that the handful of bombers that the Luftwaffe is able to deploy can have no decisive effect.

Thus, the war as being waged can only bring a result in the longer term . Neither the German messures, nor the British counter-measures, are calculated to bring an early result. For the time being, it is murder, on an industrial scale, the effect no more or less than to damage property and kill people. Without clearly defined and achievable objectives, it is close to being violence for violence's sake.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 76 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-23T16:49:00.010+01:00

For all that bombs were still falling on London, the newspapers are all agreed on the most important story of the day - the sinking of the liner SS City of Benares, en route to Canada. It had 102 evacuated children on board, 90 of whom were on the government-funded scheme.

In a "tempestuous sea" 600 miles from land, many children had been killed in the explosion or trapped below decks - the torpedo hitting at 10pm. But the ship had foundered so quickly, developing a steep list, that many of the lifeboats could not be properly launched. Only 13 were reported to have survived, with two of their nine adult escorts.

The ship, the name not as yet disclosed, had actually been torpedoed by a U-boat on 17 September, but the authorities had withheld the news for the best part of six days. Delaying the release of bad news was not at all uncommon, but the exact timing is perhaps significant. Those who broke the details to the press on a Sunday night for the Monday morning editions must have known that they would dominate the news.

Traditionally, Mondays are quiet and editors, with skeleton Sunday staffs, sometimes have to struggle to fill their pages. Whether the specific timing was intended or not, it certainly quietened the public controversy over the provision of shelters.

The tragedy of all this was that the children were perhaps as much at risk back home as they were on the high seas - a point made by some to Home Intelligence reporters. And it was not only the enemy who were the cause of the grief. On this day in the East Midlands, a Fairey Battle, flown by LAC E W Rozmiarek of the Polish Air Force, with No. 18 Operational Training Unit at RAF Hucknall, stalled and crashed. Rozmiarek not only killed himself but his aircraft crashed into a house killing five members of the Evans family, including four children aged between two and eight.

Fighter sweeps during the day kept the RAF busy, losing them ten aircraft, against the Luftwaffe's 15. But the day was marked by a broadcast from the King. People feared the worst, but it was to announce the establishment of the George Cross and Medal, the George Cross second only in rank to the Victoria Cross. "Many and glorious are the deeds of gallantry done during these perilous but famous days," he said. "In order that they should be worthily and promptly recognised, I have decided to create at once a new mark of honour for men and women in all walks of civilian life".

Behind the scenes, the War Cabinet was pushing for unrestricted revenge attacks on Germany. That, at the moment, was not favoured by the Air Staff, which wanted to maintain at least the appearance of concentrating on military targets.

Thus, as the drone of deadly Luftwaffe bombers filled the skies of London once more, with others hitting Merseyside, 119 British bombers were winging their way to Berlin, ostensibly aiming to hit gasworks, railway stations, power stations, the aero-engine factory at Spandau, and Tempelhof Airport. Owing to the almost complete impossibility of maintaining accurate course-keeping with the primitive navigational technology then available, only a small fraction of the bombers would get anywhere near their targets and still fewer bombs would actually do any damage.

This was brought home to Churchill somewhat forcibly when he was shown photographs of the results from bombing the invasion ports, which he later admitted "had several times disappointed me". On this day he was moved to write to the Secretary of State for Air, with this lament:

What struck me about these photographs was the apparent inability of the bombers to hit these very large masses of barges. I should have thought that sticks of explosives thrown along these oblongs would have wrought havoc, and it is very disappointing to see that they all remained intact and in order, with just a few apparently damaged at the entrance.

"Can nothing be done to improve matters?" Churchill asks, leaving the question hanging in his book, Their Finest Hour.

However, the answer is already being provided by the Royal Navy, and anti-invasion activities. Since the threat has already passed, though, one wonders why Churchill is still so concerned to break up the invasion fleet. With internal dissent, perhaps it is all the more important that there should be a powerful and immediate external threat. Should that, at this time, have publicly diminished, the pressure for more resources devoted to public protection might have been even greater.

Nevertheless, the media is increasingly dismissive of the threat. United Press "war expert" J W T Mason writes in a syndicated column of the autumn equinox bringing to an end the "traditional six months of smooth water in the English Channel". This, he writes, will seriously increase the transport difficulties of any German force seeking to invade Great Britain. "For the coming six months until the vernal equinox next March, storms and gales , at unpredictable intervals, will threaten shipwreck for the flat-bottom fleet of barges on which Hitler must rely for ferrying troops to England".

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 75 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-22T17:08:00.006+01:00

Hitler's Lufwaffe continues to help relieve the stresses that have built up in the fabric of British society - which have at the very least the potential to tear the state asunder. To the very great but unspoken relief of many senior politicians and others, the shift in the focus of the bombing seen since the 16/17th is being maintained. More and more properties in the west are being hit.

As Gen. Alan Brooke remarks in his diary on the 17th, bombs had dropped overnight in Burlington Arcade, Bond Street, Berkeley Square and Park Lane. "It is hard to believe that it is London", he wrote.

The next night, there was considerable damage in Oxford Street and the world-famous John Lewis shop was left a smouldering, gutted shell (left). By the morning of the 19th, Brooke was complaining of the difficulties in getting to Hendon where his aircraft was based which conveyed him throughout the country. Most road we closed, he reported, Piccadilly, Regent St, Bond St and Park Lane. There were "big craters around Marble Arch, etc.," and that evening, he wrote: "Heavy bomb has just fallen in the vicinity which shook the whole club building".

For once, the "toffs" were taking it was well as the East Enders and the misery was being shared. The effects were as significant as the bombs which dropped on Buckingham Palace. From being a divisive force, Göring's little gifts were becoming a unifying force.

As for the other little local difficulty, the New York Times hails: "Public Opinion Wins Demand for Use of Subways in Raids - Government Yields," adding with neat irony a sentiment that was to be repeated down the decades: "Slum clearance by Nazis - Homeless Move to West End". In truth, some of that which had been destroyed should have been razed to the ground years before. However, the arbitrary destruction of settled and stable communities is causing huge trauma.

To an extent, though, the Home Intelligence reports are capturing the shift in mood. From the distinctly downbeat note on 19 September, the next day tells of general morale being "excellent". People are more cheerful, it says, adding a note which perhaps reflects the essence of J B Priestley's talk: "The feeling of being on the front line stimulates many people and puts them on their mettle in overcoming transport and shelter difficulties".

But there is also the hint of steel, with the warning: "Taking shelter in underground stations continued last night. People were orderly but the conditions were very insanitary. There is evidence that people do not intend to pay attention to official requests not to shelter there". But, by 21st, after the government has caved in, the report is of London conversation being almost exclusively about air raid, but: "it is gossipy, not panicky, and it is centred in personal matters".

Interestingly and perhaps of greater significance than has ever been acknowledged, the report continues: "There appears to be very little relationship between 'the bomb at the corner of our street' and the war as a whole. Interest in the total aspect of the war is very low ...". It is not completely clear how that relates to Priestley's "front line", but that is another aspect of assessing morale, in that so often, sentiments can appear to be completely contradictory - as Churchill was to find in 1945 when he was voted out of office.

Not yet for Churchill but, on this day, a Sunday, Fighter Command was being progressively written out of the script. Apart from a few lone raiders, there is little air activity during the day. The Command, as a result, flies a mere 158 sorties, the lowest number since the official start of the battle. One Spitfire on the ground is lost to a hit and run bomber at Duxford, while the Germans lose a Ju 88, shot down by a Spitfire over the Channel. Three aircraft are written off after accidents.

Come the night, around 120 Luftwaffe bombers visit London. With the continuous flashes of the guns and sparks of bursting shells in the sky with haloes of searchlights, the approach to London "looked like approaching Dante's inferno", writes Alan Brooke. The RAF send up twelve night fighters - Blenheims and Defiants. But, with their primitive equipment, they fail to make any interceptions.

As for the invasion, the small article in this Sunday's Observer gives a hint of where things stand, noting as it does that the Navy is "our first defence". This is a reference to Churchill's speech earlier in the week, but there is more to it.

Special anti-invasion patrols have been carried out nightly by destroyers in the Channel and the southern North Sea. They have been joined by MTBs which carried out a sweep off the mouths of the Dutch rivers on the night of the 22-23rd.

The Polish destroyer Blyskaivica sinks a French fishing vessel by ramming off the Brittany coast, having first removed the crew. E-Boats have been-active in the Channel and North Sea. The Armed Trawler Loch Inver was sunk on the night of the 21st, and the Armed Trawler Edwina, which was in the vicinity, claims to have hit an E-boat with her 12-pdr.

Had Hitler any real ambitions to mount an amphibious assault, the Royal Navy is sending him a very clear message.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 74 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-21T15:32:00.011+01:00

The Manchester Guardian observes this morning that East Enders have not been taking the least bit of notice of the government's call to "refrain" from using the Tubes as shelters, much less the entreaties of the Daily Express. At half-past eleven the previous night, it notes that Piccadilly Circus station had been packed tight with sleepers, thus reporting:

It was impossible to go along the corridors except by striding over legs and picking one's way with care. Even then one woke people up by treading on them. The platforms were filled to within a foot of the edge. Men, women, and children had their boots and shoes off and slept in spite of the thunder of the trains.

Under the circumstances, the government does the sensible thing - it caves in. Announcing a new shelter policy, it removes any official prohibition from using the Tubes as shelters. And, as what it calls part of its "deep shelter extension policy", it decides to close down the short section of the line from Holborn to the Aldwych and turn the tunnel into an air raid shelter.

Churchill does not seem to have been directly involved in the formulation of the new policy, although he approves of it - and is a little perplexed. In a minute to Sir Edward Bridges, the home secretary, and the Minister of Transport, he recalls that when he had asked Cabinet "the other day" whether the Tubes could be used, "even at the expense of transport facilities", he had been assured that this was "most undesirable", even after a review. What had happened to supersede "the former decisive arguments," he wanted to know. "Pray let me have more information about this," he instructed.

Unhappily, we do not get to see the response, if indeed there is one. But in this short minute there is a wealth of information, for it records the government's determination that the Tubes should not be used as shelters, and then a clear, unequivocal U-turn - a defeat.

What is remarkable is how little has been made of this, although doubtless the censor contributed greatly to its obscurity. But there can be no doubt at all that the people of London - or, at the very least, tens of thousands of Londoners - had openly defied the government in an egregious episode of mass civil disobedience, and with, it would appear, the acquiescence of the Police. The government had thus been confronted with the choice of enforcing its policy or backing down, and - with great speed - had chosen the latter.

Had it taken the former option, one can only speculate as to what might have happened. It may even be the case that the police would have refused to obey orders. Had they done so, there could well have been bloody riots. Certainly, there had been a riot in Portsmouth when the Police had sought to enforce a policy of keeping air raid shelters locked through the day, to prevent interruptions to war production. When a group had tried to force their way into a shelter, the police had drawn their truncheons and made a baton charge, triggering the riot.

London riots, in front of the world's press, would have been far worse and, in the febrile mood of the times, might not have ended there. A perverse decision could have triggered the very event that Hitler and Göring so much wanted - a collapse of the British government.

At this point, the people possibly came as close to insurrection as they ever did throughout the war. Never again does there seem to be the precise combination of circumstances and the degree of tension experienced in these closing days of September. It there was a true pivotal moment in the entire campaign, when the Battle could have been lost, it was maybe this day, 21 September.

However, to what extent this was ever a threat is almost impossible to tell. Political correspondent Laurence Thompson, writing of the general period, states that on the nights of 7 and 8 September there was something which an eye witness "choosing the words with care" described to him as "near panic".

It was not on a large scale, nor lasting beyond that short time, but watched with anxiety because of pre-war anticipations, and the contagious quality of the panic which had so recently been seen in France and Belgium.

But such is the sensitivity of even the suggestion of panic that Sir Harold Scott, chief administrative officer of the London Civil Defence Region was at pains to dispel. He assured Thompson that he was "certain there was no panic of any importance".

By coincidence, on this day, a long piece by Ritchie Calder is published in the New Statesman. Amongst other things, he sets out the background to the appalling disaster of the South Hallsville School incident. He is caustic about those who so glibly claim to be able to characterise the state of morale of the East Enders, as he describes the inefficiency and incompetence of the officials and government institutions.

But while there are those who claimed to be able to measure "morale", what is immeasurable is "sullen resentment". It is very much a truism that the most dangerous situations arise not when the troops are complaining, but when they are not, the situation immortalised by Rudyard Kipling in his poem, Norman and the Saxon.

What was being measured in the last few days was sullen resentment, an absolute refusal to obey orders from the very highest level. It might perhaps have only taken a spark, one wrong move, to have triggered violent rebellion. The fact that the government backs away from a confrontation speaks for itself.

That evening, in a postscript to the 6pm BBC news, Clement Attlee, then Lord Privy Seal, speaks to the nation of the "Battle of Britain", telling his audience:

Those who have been killed in air raids have died for their country no less than the soldier killed in battle, for this present air attack is not directed primarily on our factories, docks, and public services, but on the spirit of our people. It is here that Hitler is sustaining his heaviest defeat.

Stating that he was one of those charged with the duty of working at the centre, and thus was able to survey the whole field with a full knowledge of what was happening, Attlee said, "I speak with a deep sense of confidence in the success of our cause".

After paying a tribute to the work of the RAF, he continued, "Our forces on land are in good heart I include in these forces, not only the Navy, Army Air Force, and Home Guard but also the civil defence services, police workers in industry and, indeed, all the men, women and children of our nation. We are all in this war". I believed that the Battle of Britain was "the turning point of the war". Defeat of this attack, he said, marks the turning of the tide. We may have to endure worse things yet. There is no room for easy optimism. But there is very cause for confidence.

Later that evening, Churchill is at Chequers, where Lord Gort and Dowding join him for dinner. As the conversation develops, John Colville notes that it "becomes steadily more apparent how well-prepared the enemy is for invasion." He then recalls:

The PM thinks that from North Foreland to Dungeness is the real danger point and that the most dangerous condition will be fog. Ismay is sceptical about the Germans being able to keep in contact in thick fog.

Gort says he would guarantee to land on that coast in a fog and he points out that once landed the Germans will push straight ahead. He is afraid of the mentality of the British Army which, based on Lady Butler's picture of "The Thin Red Line", is always to fall back in order to keep the line intact. That is what ruined the French: against rapid penetration by small forces the only thing to do is stand firm and let isolated detachments get through.

The PM, Dowding and Gort think that the first wave will be storm troops – all picked men – lightly armed and conveyed in fast motor boats. The second would be tanks, landed from craft with specially constructed bows. The third would be heavy artillery and the mass of the infantry. The first two should be able to effect a landing before darkness or the fog lifted. But, of course, meanwhile, our bombers would be throwing their full weight against the posts of embarkation.

The PM seems rather more apprehensive than I had realised about the possibility of an invasion in the immediate future and keeps on ringing up the Admiralty and asking about weather in the Channel.

Churchill seems remarkably well informed of the detailed plans of the Germans, and of their timetable.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 73 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-20T13:20:00.015+01:00

Rainstorms and and a howling gale lash the Channel coasts, making it evident that there can be no invasion. It is not sufficient to prevent two-way bomber traffic, but the weather clearly rules out the idea of flat-bottomed barges putting to sea. Churchill tells his private secretary that "he is doubtful whether the invasion will be tried in the near future", but says there is no doubt that every preparation has been made.

And, despite the RAF's victory on 15 September, we see the headline on the front page of the New York Times, telling us of the latest raids that "Huge Bombs Fall". This is the first recorded use of land mines in London, the effect of which is devastating. "As daylight faded into darkness another night of destruction began," the newspaper observes sombrely.

But after dark, this is no longer the Battle of Britain. By a strange, convoluted process, it becomes transformed into the Blitz. Despite that, the Battle is kept going until 31 October and even those who now fly just one sortie qualify for a clasp on the campaign medal. Not a few wonder whether that is the reason the cut-off period is so protracted.

There is, of course, no campaign medal - or even clasp - for the Blitz. That is being fought by British civilians. The RAF struggles to maintain a presence and does not even dent the onslaught. At night, the Luftwaffe is losing more aircraft to landing accidents than it is to the Spitfires that are rolling off the production lines.

During the day it is different. The Germans this day only send over fighter sweeps, leaving AVM Park with the difficult decision of whether to allow Hurricanes to meet them and get batted out of the sky. In the event, Fighter Command sends Spitfires but still loses six of them, demonstrating that the enemy still has a bite. It also loses a Hurricane on a "local flight". Those seven losses compare with three write-offs reported by the Luftwaffe, only one of which is an Me 109.

The real battle, however, is on the ground, for the hearts and minds of the population. The government, having set its face against the Tube system being used as shelters, is casting around for alternatives.

The increasingly unpopular Sir John Anderson ventures out of his Whitehall office to have a look for himself at the situation in a tube station. He then comes up with a scheme for requisitioning basements of commercial premises and for areas where there is insufficient provision, setting up an elaborate transport scheme run by local authorities to move people to areas where there are shelters.

The Daily Express, not only gives the issue front page treatment but, in its role as unofficial government spokesman, runs an editorial which borders on the frenetic. "Listen people of London," it says, "this is the truth". In like vein, it continues:

It is your destiny to lead Britain to victory. It is your right as citizens of the greatest city this world has ever known to show all others the way. It is not an easy way. Victory cannot be achieved by seeking safety and forgetting the rest. But the results of your endurance will be glorious. There will be a crown for your courage.

Then, under the heading, "Keep the tubes free", it declares:

Here is the situation. It is true that there is more safety from bombs in the London tubes than anywhere else. But the tubes were built to get the worker to and from his desk and bench. That is their function, which is a hundred times more vital now that the siege is on.

For the tube is the one means of transport unlikely to be seriously damaged by bombs. And it must be kept free for the workers. Your safety will count for nothing is the work of the City is allowed to to slow and falter and stop.

Then, in a final piece, the editorial devotes itself to another message. Headed: "We know his plan", it states:

For Hitler seeks to strike not at, but behind, the armed force of every country he attacks. He did that to Holland. He did it to France. By the time he attacked the Maginot Line, it had no meaning, for the country it was built to protect had already fallen.

Now he tries the same tactic on us. He skirts our Navy and aims to paralyse both Army and Air Force by crippling the heart of the Empire, which they were built to defend. But we see him coming; we know his plan. London knows her destiny.

The Glasgow Herald sums up the situation with a similar observation, noting that Göring, having failed to get results so far, "is trying to force an early issue by trying to destroy London's morale." Then, almost parodying the official line, from a distance of over 200 miles it notes:

That stout fellow, the Cockney, is determined that the effort will fail, and he is adapting himself with good humour to the uneasy conditions which the enemy, with refined barbarity, has imposed upon him. By a "Grin and bear it" attitude the Londoner means to be his own contribution to the victory.

The RAF, says the paper, "have fairly and squarely won the day duel in the air." But, it say, "patience is required from everyone for a little longer until the menace of night bombing is mastered." Patience is running out though, and the menace of night bombing is very far from being mastered. Furthermore, that "stout fellow", the Cockney, is on the march, in an undeclared war against the government, fighting the battle of the shelters.

While the government is working on its alternatives, thousands of Londoners have taken matters in their own hands. They have again flocked to the Tubes for shelter. At some stations, they begin to arrive as early as 4pm, with bedding and bags of food to sustain them for the night.

By the time the evening rush hour is in progress, they have already staked their "pitches" on the platforms. Policemen patrol but do not intervene. Some station managers, on their own initiatives, have provided additional toilet facilities and even the Transport Minister, Sir John Reith, and the chairman of London Transport, Lord Ashfield, have ventured into Holborn station to see the conditions for themselves.

The atmosphere is unpleasant. Legitimate travellers are jostled by "Tube night boarders" carrying their bedding. The overcrowding is "disgraceful", a passenger says. And the station actually "stinks". But virtually every station between Edgeware and the Strand is occupied, turned into over-crowded dormitories. The atmosphere is so thick and heavy at one station that a reporter investigating conditions feels "faint".

The situation is untenable. Something must be done.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 72 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-19T21:54:00.017+01:00

With unconscious irony, the morning's Yorkshire Post illustrated precisely the contradictions at the heart of the reporting on the Battle of Britain. On the one hand, there is the lead story proclaiming "Another RAF triumph". Next, there is the second lead declaring: "Smashing blows at invasion plans", an account of yet more attacks on invasion ports. Then, centre page, is pictured the devastation in the very heart of the West End, testimony to the RAF's failure to deny the night sky to the Luftwaffe.

The Associated Press is almost poetic in its description. "Battered, grimy London took its 13th straight day of devastating bomb assault today, shook off the horrors of the war's worst night and dealt staunchly with the prospect of spending a winter underground," it records. The Australian Associated Press is of the same mind, reporting: "Many observers regard last night's raid on London as the most savage yet." It goes on to say: "The Germans flew lower than ever previously, and took suicidal chances as they frenziedly endeavoured to pierce the hellish curtain of fire around and over London."

The raiders made no effort to seek out military objectives, it says. They sought only to unload their bombs as near as possible to the heart of the capital and in the most thickly populated areas. With a few exceptions, Germany's only gain from this barbaric onslaught was damage to objects of historic interest throughout the world and destruction of private property. Some military experts say that the German raids are no longer reprisals, but have become expressions of blind fury at the resistance of Britain and particularly London.

By common consent, London has experienced the worst bombing of the war - but this is muted in the Manchester Guardian (left). It leads on the anti-invasion campaign - also conveying the upbeat message that the RAF is on the ball, dealing expeditiously and effectively with the most serious threat on the horizon - the German invasion of Britain.

The claims of "heavy damage", though, are not without merit. The OKW War Diary of this day records 80 barges having been sunk, and an ammunition train with 500 tons of explosives blown up. It also reports that Torpedo Boat T-11 received two hits and that T-3 was sunk owing to a bomb hit.

Churchill, however, knew on 17 September - two days ago - that the invasion had been been postponed. And while the UK is still officially at maximum invasion alert after the declaration of "Cromwell" on 7 September, the prime minister yesterday was minuting his military advisor, General Ismay, to inquire of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, "whether in view of the rough weather Alert No. 1 might not be discretely relaxed to the next grade". Weather or no weather, if he thought the invasion was imminent, he would not have been asking for a relaxation of the state of alert.

But while there is no longer a threat of invasion, it is being talked up. On the other hand, the misery of the bombing being played down. That this is a coincidence is dispelled by an inadvertent (or perhaps not) remark in an Australian AP story, that: "a new censorship hid the running story of the day's alarm sirens and 'all clear' signals". The signs are that the government is worried - and the issue is the growing shelter crisis.

Censorship or not, this morning The Daily Mail breaks ranks. It leads with a vigorous campaign for improved air raid shelters and better arrangements for the daily lives of the ten million residents of the greater London area. The paper notes that the government has become aware that that underground stations are being used as shelters but it declares: "something much better must be devised".

It adds: "no question of cost should be allowed to hold up construction." It then blames the "reluctance to provide such quarters" on the government of the former prime minister Neville Chamberlain and its "cheeseparing policy". The present shelter policy, it says, "has been proven by experience to be wrong".

The Daily Mirror takes a different tack, but is just as critical in its own way. "When did the possibility, then the probability, then the certainty of aerial attack upon London and other big cities begin to be 'considered' by those unimaginative bodies or persons known as the authorities," it asks - then continuing:

It ought to have been, and indeed was, vaguely reconsidered from the moment, when Germany was permitted to rearm; and again, intensively, when Goering, the "likeable" pal of a British Ambassador, boasted that he would turn London into ruins. And so on, with increasing urgency, from Munich onwards.

Well, a lot of considering was done, with argument, consultation, investigation. A deep-shelter scheme was rejected. During those years of considering, that scheme could have been executed for a sum that certainly seemed enormous then; but that now sounds trifling. Useless, at the moment, to go back on all that.

Still, it does seem odd that even now, in the midst of the; air war, learned persons should still be considering, inquiring, investigating and, making notes. Just one example - sheltering in tubes. The Ministry of Home Security is apparently mixing itself up with the Ministry of Health. It's wondering about the medical aspect of crowding in, deep shelters - say, in the tubes. You might catch something, you know!

Eminent medical men might invent a new disease—as their way is. Call it Shelteritis. That yon would rather catch Shelteritis than catch a bit of a bomb on the head isn't their affair. You're not asked. It's for them to decide. They may decide that death in a tinpot shelter is better for your health.

The Daily Express is alarmed enough at developments to head it editorial: "Hold Fast", addressing what it feels to be a defeatist sentiment creeping in. Unequivocally, addresses its readers with this message:

The Daily Express makes this appeal to the people of London, many of them homeless, many of them in nightly fear of being made so. On your courage and discipline much depends. You are asked to show unparalleled fortitude In face of this great menace. Life is held cheap by our enemies and they seek to disrupt you physically and mentally. If you hold on, behaving with the bearing of soldiers, obeying the instructions you are given, then liberty will one day be yours again. But If you give way then you face the prospect of a lifetime of misery and torture under a foreign heel.

Through the day, the Press Association reports that the prime minister and government are convinced that "deep or heavily protected" shelters are impossible to construct in wartime and that the job would be "more or less impracticable" even in peacetime.

William Mabane, the parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Home Security, urges the public not to leave their Anderson shelters at their homes for public shelters, saying it deprives others of shelter. "We're going to improve the amenities in existing shelters," he adds, "We're setting about providing better lighting and better accommodation for sleeping and better sanitary arrangements."

But the damage is already done, The Ministries of Home Security and Transport, far from relaxing the current shelter policy, have issued an "urgent appeal" asking the public "to refrain from using Tube stations as air-raid shelters except in the case of urgent necessity".

A sign of how the discord is spreading it that the story has even reached the ears of the New York Times. In a "special cable", its correspondent writes of the Commons going into secret session to discuss the mounting housing crisis, the absence of suitable deep shelters and the failures to take care of citizens bombed out of their homes. There is also reference to people kept in rest centres "for several days" without hot food while officials try to arrange transportation.

For the first time we begin to the political consensus under stress. "Laborites" have cooperated with the government in maintaining this "people's war", we are told, but many of them now point out that the victims are not being cared for well enough. The people, "Laborites" argue, will put up with the hardship of this total war if they are convinced the government is doing everything it can, first to guarantee their security and, second, to care for them and their families if they are bombed.

In response to the government's appeal on the use of Tubes as shelters, the paper notes that "crowds crushing into subways indicate the growing demand for security". And in what must be a worrying development for the government, even Home Intelligence deserts them today. "People are not so cheerful today," it reports. "There is more grumbling. Elation over the barrage is not so strong: people wonder why it is not more effective in preventing night bombing". Amongst the many points of tension identified, "determination of the public to use underground stations as shelters" is listed.

This is becoming a trial of strength. Despite Churchill's blithe optimism, bolstered by the threat of the invasion having been lifted, the government is close to losing the confidence of the people. From an external threat, the threat is now from within. Nevertheless, Colville notes in his diary, "The PM is sufficiently undismayed by the air raids to take note of trivialities. Yesterday he sent the following note: 'The First Sea Lord. Surely you can run to a new Admiralty flag. It grieves me to see the present dingy object every morning. WSC.'"

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 71 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-18T21:33:00.012+01:00

Civilian morale is fragile under the weight of bombing. Even Home Intelligence cannot entirely conceal the disquiet. It reports that Londoners are still outwardly calm and are putting up with difficulties extremely well. But, it says, there are still numbers of people anxious to get out. One Earls Court square has practically evacuated itself after bombing there. Others in a less fortunate position need a scheme to help them.

The report admits that there has been a certain amount of panic shown in individual cases, where people have had horrible experiences. But this is often due to temporary physical reaction, it says.

With growing evidence of the inadequacy of shelter provision, the official strategy is to talk up the success of the anti-aircraft defences - the only visible sign that the country is able to fight back. This is reflected in the Daily Express front page headline, but even then its absurdly optimistic headline can only offer four raiders downed.

Page two, though, gets a special message from the leader - a highly condensed version of the prime minister's speech to the House of Commons. Mr Churchill, declares the lead story, "urges you to carry on". He also says: "Terror raids will not force Britain to sue for peace". Everyone, said the prime minister, must endeavour to carry on his work, and see that output and the public services do not suffer — or suffer only the minimum interruption.

This day, though, there is an interesting counter-point. Every Sunday evening, J B Priestley has continued to give his immensely popular radio talks on the BBC. He had spoken as usual Sunday last and today, it is picked up by the Manchester Guardian. The paper felt that Mr Priestley had made one of his best points so far. He had said that "civilians under air bombardment should be encouraged not to think of themselves as civilians trying to lead an ordinary life but as soldiers actually engaged in a great battle".

"As indeed they are", the Guardian observes, going on to say that Mr Priestley's usual insight made him stress this point, for strange and devastating events are much easier to accept as a normal part of battle than as an abnormal part of civilian life.

Such an idea is the very embodiment of the truth, but it gains no traction with Churchill. In his address to Parliament the previous day, he has been telling MPs:

The German attacks upon the civil population have been concentrated mainly upon London, in the hopes of terrorising its citizens into submission or to throw them into confusion, and, of course, in the silly idea that they will put pressure upon the Government to make peace.

Thus does Churchill identify a German war aim, an obvious objective of the Blitz. This cannot be entirely random nastiness - schrecklichkeit. The violence must have a purpose. Putting pressure in the civilian population is one such. It is not a "silly idea". Churchill knows this. The use of aerial bombing is an idea he himself believes can be applied to German civilians who, if so pressured, he hopes will depose Hitler and force a new government to make peace.

But ridicule is part of Churchill's rhetorical toolkit and, in employing it here, he misses – or perhaps chooses to ignore – the opportunity to recognise and applaud the true role of the British people, Londoners in particular. They are, as Priestley puts it, "soldiers" engaged in a great battle. And the battle is not over – it has barely begun.

Why Churchill should be so blind or so reluctant to accord the people the recognition they deserve is worthy of some speculation. Coming from the patrician wing of British politics, he is perhaps uneasy with the idea of people, en masse, determining the fate of the British Empire. He maybe prefers them as supplicants, dependent on wise, munificent leaders - such as himself - to guide them to the sunlit uplands.

The idea of the people at the centre of the battle, with the political élites dependent on them, may not be one with which Churchill is wholly comfortable. It changes the relationship, where the élites are dependent on the people - who then have rights and expectations. It is far better to have them as dependants, supplicants, as the cartoon from Low illustrates (above), reproduced in today's Manchester Guardian from the Evening Standard.

This is the problem to which George Orwell has referred which, along with the growing crisis in the shelters, is being considered by the government "as a matter of very great urgency" - over a year after war has been declared and now eleven days into the German campaign of intensive bombing.

Raising the issue of delay, the Daily Mirror delivers a robust condemnation of ministry inertia. "Everything takes time," it says mimicking the "generally soothing maxim and message of the Ministry of Health, noting that the reminds us of our aged and imbecile friend: "Time is on our side." Everything takes time if you are never prepared for anything, the paper declares. But, it asks:

Why allow the homeless to wait in odd holes and corners, in amateurish shelters and improvised dugouts, until Somebody or Something - some local pundit or fussy official gets on with the scheme for opening every West End or other comparatively safe basement to all comers. The work is already done - in parts. Make it complete and do it at once. A few words in the right quarters.

The real venom, however, is focused elsewhere:

That done, there is still time — but not too much to get on with further evacuation schemes and with provision of deep shelters hitherto rejected, with unparalleled obstinacy by Sir John Anderson. The homeless people of London are not just nondescript, improper persons wandering "without visible means of subsistence." They are soldiers, fighters in the front line; and as such worthy of all the first aid we can give them.

They, the paper concludes, must be denied nothing that can be provided, stopped by no silly pedantry. No time for that. For one thing that wastes no time - unless its delayed by chemical devilry - is a Nazi bomb,

As for the war, the newspapers are behind the curve, giving prominence to prime minister's prediction that the invasion will come. The news that it has been postponed comes to Churchill after he has given his speech to parliament.

The howling gale in the Channel through the night, however, is being described as "Churchill's weather". Newspapers are carrying reports of the German invasion fleet having variously been driven to shelter or "scattered". And, of course, the RAF has carried out attacks on barges and shipping, which are being bombed and "harassed".

Later edition newspapers and the US media thus play down the Churchill "warning". The New York Times leads on "Gales Scatter Nazi Channel Fleets", with allusions to the gales that shattered the Spanish Armada. A well-orchestrated deliverance is at hand, the RAF, the steadfast government and the forces of nature all combining to save the British people from the "Nazi threat". This, of course, is a "top down" salvation. Their own exertions are not recognised.

Churchill, for his part, is questioning the Home Secretary about the supply of glass to replace that shattered by bombing. He also asks the Postmaster General for a report about Post Office service during air raids. There are "considerable complaints", he says.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 70 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-17T11:03:00.018+01:00

This is the day Churchill gives his appreciation of the "war situation" to the House. He tells the MPs that the deployment of the German barges and ships in preparation for the invasion of Great Britain and Ireland "continues steadily". "We must", says the prime minister, "expect that he will make an attempt at what he judges to be the best opportunity. All our preparations must therefore be maintained in a state of vigilance."

The Glasgow Herald takes a more bouyant view. "It seems safe to say that the recent attacks on London must have had two main objects," it says – the exhaustion of the RAF and the creation of a spirit of defeatism in the Metropolis such as could have made a lightning success possible for an invading force. Neither of these objects has been achieved. London stands firm and our Air Force is more formidable than ever.

In such circumstances a German invasion would look very like an act of suicide for the enemy. In place of such an attack we may have to face a prolonged attack on our morale, a new war of words mingling with a war of bombs. If it comes, this will be a further test, but one which British people are now particularly well fitted to meet.

On the other side of the Channel, the compiler of the War Diary at German War Headquarters records that "The enemy air force is still by no means defeated; on the contrary it shows increasing activity. The weather situation as a whole dos not permit us to expect a period of calm ... The Führer therefore decides to postpone Sealion indefinitely." To avoid the attentions of the British bombers the invasion vessels are to be widely dispersed but there is some hope that a combination of fine weather and German air supremacy will allow the invasion to be re-mounted.

Hitler's decision is soon being transmitted to operational formations, the signals mostly via secure landlines. But a radio signal to Holland concerning air-loading equipment is intercepted by the British, decoded and passed to Churchill. It is discussed at the Chiefs of Staff Committee that evening and Churchill asks the Chief of the Air Staff to explain it. Cyril Newall is said to have told Churchill that "this marked the end of Sealion", at least for this year ...".

Wreathed in a "very broad smile" Churchill lit up a cigar and suggested to his chiefs that they took "a little fresh air". But even as they did, Bomber Command was mounting its largest ever night raids to date against invasion barges in the Channel ports and shipping in the German ports.

The decision to postpone comes on the day that ripping through the Channel is what Alan Brooke calls a "mild hurricane". An Associated Press correspondent based in Dover telephoned in an on-the-spot report: "There's a nasty cross-sea running and the channel would be bad for regular steamers in peace time, let alone for any flat-bottomed troop barges."

Any invasion would have had to have been proceeded by the complex process of loading the invasion barges, first with the stores, weapons and equipment, and then with the men. For the most distant forces - starting from Norwegian ports, this would have had to be in hand a week or more before the actual invasion date. Even in the French and Belgian ports, a lead time of several days would be required. And, with aircraft making daily reconnaissance flights over all the main invasion ports, no signs of such preparations are seen.

Later, Churchill is to write that even had the Germans possessed well-trained amphibious forces equipped with all the apparatus of modern amphibious war, their task would still have been forlorn in face of our sea and air power. "In fact," he wrote, "they had neither the tools nor the training". All now depended on the battle of the air, Churchill then wrote, with the question to be resolved as to whether "the British people would stand up to the air bombardment, or whether they would crumple and force His Majesty's Government to capitulate".

"About this, Reichmarschall Göring had high hopes," Churchill writes, "and we had no fears". But, on this day, Harold Nicolson, still serving under Duff Cooper in the Ministry of Information, is worried.

According to the entry in his personal diary, he is not alone. "Everybody is worried about feeling in the East End," he writes. "There's much bitterness. It is said that even the King and Queen were booed the other day when they visited the destroyed areas".

Such candid insights are exceedingly rare, but the rarity should not detract from the importance of the message or suggest that it is unrepresentative and therefore lacks veracity. To dismiss it would be to fail to recognise the unique environment of the 1940s, where truth has been parked for the duration and lies have become normal currency.

Even at the lowest level of society, expression is controlled. Anyone of a pessimistic frame of mind is wise to hold their peace. To utter anything which could be construed as being" likely to cause alarm or despondency" is a criminal offence, and the justices deal with this harshly.

This is very much in keeping with the spirit of the time. In the Daily Mirror of today is told the tale of two men, Charles Groman, thirty-two, a porter, of Cannon-street-road, Stepney, East, a Pole, and David Rothman, nineteen, a street trader, of Bancroft Road, Stepney – both living in the centre of the devastation brought by Hitler's bombers (pictured below - actually photographed on 17 September 1940).

The two men, imprisoned on remand, had appeared before magistrates at Old Street , London, charged with being concerned in the theft of toffee, a piece of chocolate and a dummy chocolate carton, total value 9d (less than 4p) "which had been left exposed or unprotected as a consequence of war operations" – i.e., looting.

The men, however, were relieved to learn that an alternative charge of simple larceny had been preferred, to which the men had pleaded guilty. Each was sentenced to three months' hard labour.

In evidence, it was stated that a confectionery shop had been damaged by a bomb and part of the window stock had fallen to the pavement. A police constable had seen the men pick up some of the confectionery. Groman had been seen to pick up an empty chocolate box and throw it away. Rothman had a previous conviction for theft.

On Rothman's behalf, it was stated that he now realised the gravity of the offence, which "in certain circumstances was punishable by death". Some time ago, the report continued, he fell from a window, and his mother said he was "a bit out of the ordinary".

The reference to the death sentence was in respect of the original charge of "looting" and it is therefore unsurprising that the men "preferred" the alternative charge of larceny, and the sentence of a mere three months' hard labour.

Returning to the control of information, anything that might be deemed to have any significance to the enemy or aid him in any way - and much else besides - is censored, and even more is subject to security restrictions. On the conduct and progress of the war, the government is given to lying freely, without restraint, under the guise of propaganda. And even publicly to question the lies is not permitted.

More information is suppressed. Much else is misinformed or plainly wrong, even if there is no intention to deceive - and, for a variety of reasons, there is often every intention to deceive. Movement is restricted, photography is minimal and controlled, access to many areas is prohibited. Opportunities to check on facts and events are limited, if at all available.

Manpower shortages and the need often to employ untrained or inexperienced staff means that record-keeping is often poor or non existent. Amid the devastation, where the focus was most often on sheer survival, many records are lost or damaged, or destroyed in fires, bombing or the aftermath, where a huge amount of water damage is caused by ill-trained, ill-equipped and inexperienced firemen.

Under the circumstances, much of the history is polluted - poisoned. Even personal recollections, in now published archives, cannot necessarily be relied upon. To the normal problems affecting such records, self-censorship, actual censorship, selection bias and active attempts to deceive - amongst other things - must be added to the potential distorting factors. Nothing can be wholly trusted - nothing should be treated as completely reliable.

And that, of course, applies to Nicolson, although the fact that he is writing to a private diary not intended for immediate publication possibly minimises some of the distortions. And there are plenty of clues which suggest that he may have caught the true flavour of the moment. One of those is another diarist, George Orwell (aka Eric Blair) who writes on the same day:

There has of course been a big exodus from the East End, and every night what amount to mass migrations to places where there is sufficient shelter accommodation. The practice of taking a 2d ticket and spending the night in one of the deep Tube stations, e.g. Piccadilly, is growing . ... Everyone I have talked to agrees that the empty furnished houses in the West End should be used for the homeless; but I suppose the rich swine still have enough pull to prevent this from happening. The other day 50 people from the East End, headed by some of the Borough Councillors, marched into the Savoy and demanded to use the air-raid shelter. The management didn't succeed in ejecting them till the raid was over, when they went voluntarily. When you see how the wealthy are still behaving, in what is manifestly developing into a revolutionary war, you think of St. Petersburg in 1916.

Orwell has it as a "revolutionary war", which for an unrepentent leftie is hardly surprising, but the interesting thing is that the two extremes of the political spectrum are picking up the same thing.

The left-leaning Manchester Guardian is articulating complaints "on every side about the apparent failure of transport to adjust itself" to the raids. It notes that ordinary Londoners have had to do so, but the transport system has not. The paper tells of "considerable hardship", with a girl from the office having had to walk ten miles to her home. A man had to walk five-and-a-half hours to get to his home in the East End of London because the buses are not running. The paper notes that Londoners are asking why the Minister of Transport does not take a firm grasp of the situation and do whatever is needed to ease it.

A more formal source is the daily Home Intelligence report and, at first sight, it appears to inhabit a different world. "Intensified raids have not affected morale; rather the reverse: confidence is increased, opinion is stiffer and there is a feeling of growing exhilaration. The spirit of the people in raided areas is excellent".

There are three explanations for this apparent anomaly though. Firstly, as the Daily Express headline records, from being centred on the docklands in East London, inhabited almost exclusively by the working class, the focus of the bombing is moving east. The force of an element of discord is being thus reduced, as the "nobs" are sharing the grief.

Secondly. as Home Intelligence itself recognises, there has been a massive exodus from the raided areas. Those people who are most fearful, disaffected or distrustful of government policy, have already left the area, those remaining constituting a larger proportion of government workers and volunteers who are in some way involved in war work.

Thirdly, people are reacting to the very visible presence of the RAF and the shooting down of German aircraft. Time and again, people show themselves to be far more resilient and tolerant of hardship when they can see for themselves evidence of fighting back against the Germans. The response is typified by this account from a Tottenham postman:

I was on a delivery in Westbury Avenue when the warning went. I carried on until the guns started when a man offered me shelter in his dug out, as it was getting a bit hot overhead and a few tramlines and old bedsteads started whistling round, I accepted. Just as I entered the shelter he said "Look postman". I turned round and there on jerry's tail was one of our Spitfires, he put a burst into the jerry who rolled over, our boy was after him, then jerry straightened out and tried to turn,then the Spitfire flew right over and under him and gave him another burst. I think he must have killed the jerry because he roared down with his engine full out. It was a grand fight, after seeing that I don't mind paying another 1/2d on fags.

The preferred, official line was "London can take it", but the actual response was more in line with "give some back", and where there had been such a visible display of this happening, sentiment was bound to reflect such events.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 69 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-16T17:46:00.003+01:00

The newspapers, predictably, make much of the RAF's great victory, accepting uncritically the Air Ministry figures and splashing them across their front pages.

The daily Home Intelligence report records "enthusiastic praise" for the junior service. On the basis of published claims, this is hardly surprising. And perhaps in response to the recent media coverage, the report also notes that "most people anticipate an invasion in the next few days, and are confident that it will be a failure".

This is completely at odds with the subsequent hagiographies, which have the British breathing a sigh of relief at having been delivered from their fate by the RAF the previous day.

What is not noted is a tiny article in the Manchester Guardian headed: "Invasion not necessary" (pictured below right). This conveys, via Reuters and the correspondent from Basler Nachrichten that "official quarters" in Germany believe that Britain can be brought to her knees by the destruction of her economic life by air attack and blockade. Whether the air attack is directed at economic targets or destroying public morale (or both) is moot - and it is certainly the case that air attack is one of the mechanisms for enforcing the blockade.

All this notwithstanding, the options the correspondent is spelling out are exactly in line with those set out by the British Chiefs of Staff on 25 May 1940, when they note that there are three ways in which Germany might break down the resistance of the United Kingdom, which we have addressed earlier.

The first of these options was unrestricted air attack aimed at breaking public morale. The second was starvation of the country by attack on shipping and ports. Third, last and possibly least was "occupation by invasion." The invasion option was about to be ruled out - in effect, it had never been an option. That left the "terror bombing" and the blockade - one down two to go. But, in either case, there was only one objective - the surrender of the British.

This is spelled out in a piece reported by the New York Times of 14 September (left), which cites the authoritative German publication Das Reich. It calls on "London" to surrender, or face the fate of Warsaw or Paris, subjected to a bombing offensive which would "law waste" to the Capital.

A long editorial in the Manchester Guardian for the same day, unwittingly puts this issue in context. The attack on London is causing damage and disorganisation to the daily life of the capital city, it says, but "that can hardly be an end in itself." The paper also notes that Göring needs mastery of the air "in order to support whatever plans his Führer may have for an invasion." It then notes that "neither fires behind St Paul's nor bombs on Buckingham Palace will bring it any nearer in a military sense."

The logic is unarguable. Bombing London is not an end in itself, and the process does not assist in achieving air superiority. Therefore, there must be another agenda. The paper does not spell it out, but the article in the New York Times does. The battle has coalesced on one that one issue: surrender or London is annihilated. The battleground has become the streets of London, shortly to be joined by the other towns and cities.

That is where the Battle of Britain is now being fought - not in the skies above. This is not a question of the Battle of Britain being fought and won, and then being followed by the Blitz. The Blitz is part of the Battle of Britain, and is now the decisive part. The RAF is shaping the battle but the people have become the main protagonists.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 68 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-15T20:54:00.008+01:00

This is the day hailed as the climax of the Battle of Britain and subsequently celebrated as "Battle of Britain day", a day of stupendous air battles with contrails marking the skies of south-east England. At this time, of course, it is not recognised as such. The Battle of Britain has yet to be invented. There is, nevertheless, "enthusiastic praise" for another of the RAF's aerial successes.

This is a real success. Buoyed by the tardy response to its last great daylight raid of 7 September, believing its own propaganda about kill rates and vastly under-estimating the UK's aircraft production and repair capacity, the Luftwaffe mounts another large daylight raid on London, without mounting any deception techniques and flagging up its intentions, giving the RAF controllers plenty of warning.

In a series of actions, which includes Sergeant Ray "Arty" Holmes ramming a Do 17 over London, the tail-less aircraft impacting in the forecourt of Victoria Station (above and below), RAF squadrons dispose of 55 Luftwaffe aircraft, damaging many more, at a cost to itself of 27 aircraft - a roughly 2:1 exchange rate.

However, since the propagandists in the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Information are reporting RAF highly inflated "successes" by the day, this success must be inflated even further, the relatively modest score of 55 soaring to 185, plus 41 "probables" and 72 damaged.

The excuse for the gross inflation is the confusion in the heat of battle, yet no one thinks to check on the number of wrecks littered over the countryside. Even Churchill is slightly concerned that the figures do not sound credible, but the statistics are nevertheless touted widely, in broadcasts and to the media.

What is difficult to reconcile is the inherent contradiction in the claim that the shift made by the Luftwaffe from attacking the RAF to bombing London represents a major error by the Germans - letting the RAF "off the hook", and today's claim that the Luftwaffe losses represent the ultimate victory, removing the threat of invasion and thus the threat to the nation's independence.

If on the one hand, the Luftwaffe has given up the challenge of defeating the RAF - which is taken to be the case with its decision to concentrate its resources on bombing the cities - that necessarily means that the bid to achieve air superiority has been abandoned. That also means that the ambition to invade Britain has likewise been abandoned.

This, if invasion is the only or main threat, then the "victory" was gained on 7 September - assuming that the invasion was ever a realistic proposition.

On the other hand, if invasion is not the only or not the main threat, and the alternative plan is to so damage the morale of the British population that Churchill is forced to sue for peace, then nothing very significant has happened. The bombing continues and, for many cities, including London, the worst is yet to come.

For sure, the RAF is teaching the Luftwaffe a lesson - that sending bombers into defended airspace is unsustainable. They seem to be slow learners but the Luftwaffe is eventually to concentrate its resources on night bombing. The result of that is more misery for Londoners and many others. Far from the battle being won, absolutely nothing has been decided. There is everything to play for.

Further, completely overshadowed by the much more visible activity of Fighter Command, a "maximum effort" is mounted by Bomber Command. Overnight, forty-eight Blenheims are tasked to bomb barges at Boulogne, Dunkirk, and Flushing. They also attack the guns at Cap Griz Nez. Twenty-four Whitleys attack targets in Berlin, Hamburg, Wesermunde, Wilhelmshaven, Cruxhaven, Dunkirk and Wangerooge. Thirty-six Wellingtons attack marshalling yards at Soest, Krefeld and Brussels, as well as shipping at Calais. Twelve Fairey Battles bomb Boulogne and thirty-nine Hampdens bomb the marshalling yards at Hamm, Osnabruk and shipping at Antwerp. Another six mine the Elbe estuary.

Despite over 150 aircraft in hostile skies, there are no losses. However, a Hampden of No. 83 Squadron, while attacking Antwerp from low level, takes a direct hit from flak in its bomb bay, setting it on fire. As the aircraft starts to disintegrate, first the gunner and then the navigator bales out. However, 18-year-old Sgt John Hannah, the wireless operator, quells the flames. He is badly burned in the process but still manages to give assistance to the pilot, helping him fly the aircraft back to base. For his valour, he is awarded the Victoria Cross.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 67 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-14T12:53:00.021+01:00

Despite the pessimism of his own staff, Admiral Räder is bullish about the Luftwaffe operations - at least in his expressions to Hitler when he meets him for a routine conference. The air attacks against England, and in particular those against London, he says, must continue without interruption. Given suitable weather conditions, he also tell Hitler that the attacks should continue at the expense of the preparations for Sealion. Räder also advocates an increase in the "intensity of the attacks without regard for Operation Sea Lion, because they might bring about a decision of the war."

It is not possible to determine whether Räder believes this. His opposition to Sealion, however, is well known. It is entirely compatible with his broader views, therefore, that he is simply telling Hitler what he wants to hear. There is no question of cancelling the invasion, though. Hitler sums up the situation with a short but perceptive analysis:

Attacks to date have had enormous effects, though perhaps chiefly upon nerves. Part of that psychological effect is the fear of invasion. That anticipation of its imminence must not be removed. Even though victory in the air should not be achieved before another ten or twelve days, Britain might yet be seized by mass hysteria. If, within the coming ten or twelve days, we achieve mastery of the air over a certain area, we could, by a landing operation, compel the enemy to come out with his destroyers against our landing fleet. We could then inflict upon the enemy such losses that he would no longer be able to protect his convoys. Cancellation of our plans would not remain a secret. It would ease the strain on the enemy’s nerves, and consequently must not be ordered now.

Sealion stays on the books, but it is effectively a psychological weapon rather than a military operation capable of execution - as perhaps it has always been. Nevertheless, doffing his cap to the idea that it can still be executed, Hitler does promise to make a final decision on whether the invasion will go ahead, in three days time - the 17 September.

While over 100 Londoners lie dead from the latest raids, there is no confusion in the British media as to the most important story. It is not the invasion, fear of which is remarkably absent. What really matters is the raid on Buckingham Palace. This is the second time the palace has been hit, the previous time by a delayed action bomb, but this is the incident that really makes the headlines, led by the British press (above) and repeated worldwide (as in the New York Times - see below).

Famously, the Queen is said to have remarked to a policeman on the day after the bombing that she was glad they (the Royal family) had been bombed, as she could now look the East End in the face. And well she might be glad. The degree of unpreparedness to deal with the plight of the homeless is assuming scandalous proportions.

Within the Air Ministry, however, there are different concerns. Air Staff are only too conscious of the failure of RAF Fighter Command to intercept the night bombers. To explore countermeasures, a former Chief of the Air Staff, Sir John Salmond, is appointed to chair a powerful committee to look at the problems of air defence during the hours of darkness, the so-called Night Defence Committee.

Salmond, alongside Trenchard, his predecessor, is no friend of Dowding and he is joined by Air Marshals Freeman, Joubert, Tedder and Sholto Douglas - not a single Dowding supporter amongst them. Through this committee, they will represent Fighter Command's inability to tackle the night bomber as Dowding's own personal failure. It will be this, on the face of it, that engineers his downfall.

At a less rarefied level, that evening, to highlight the plight of the people of Stepney, Communist councillor, Phil Piratin, takes some fifty workers, including a group of what Time magazine called "ill-clad children" from Stepney. With then, he bursts into the Savoy Hotel and occupies the air raid shelter, just as the air raid sirens are sounding. There, he declares, "if it is good enough for the rich it is good enough for the Stepney workers and their families”.

No authoritative account of this occupation seems to have survived. There are several different versions of what transpired, and not even total agreement on the timing, although most accounts have it on this day. However, some accounts have it that the invaders had the help of sympathetic waiters.

The hotel manager, realising that that could not be seen to send women and children out into danger, is forced to allow them to remain . The group settled down and after an element of negotiations the catering staff agreed to provide silver trays laden with pots of tea, bread and butter and for the children. Apparently then it was relatively good-humoured and the demonstrators left when the "all clear" sounded, not before having a "whip round" to tip the doorman.

The Manchester Guardian regarded this as a "symptom" of the "serious deficiencies" in the provision of aid services for those affected by the bombing. Those who gave suffered, it said, should not be treated as "victims of misfortune whose adversities are to be tempered by charity" but as "citizens who happened to have received blows from a common enemy which other citizens have so far escaped".

And indeed, the demonstration is a "symptom". There are more than a few signs that the political consensus is breaking down, with Labour Councillors in a northern town demanding better shelters for school children, condemning existing provisions as "totally inadequate". Elsewhere, there is concern being expressed at the lack of amenities in public shelters, and the number of people, women with babies, children and old people who were coming away from shelter "almost on the point of collapse".

These are the undercurrents on a day when, as predicted, the weather is unsettled, with bands of cloud and rain scudding across England and northern Europe. The weather is now of vital importance as it is this will determine - superficially at least - whether an invasion can go ahead. And it is not invasion weather. Hitler decides that five days of good weather are needed for the Luftwaffe to achieve a result in the air. After a conference with his own Chiefs of Staff, he postpones Sealion until 17 September.

Back in Britain, Home Intelligence reports that "there is little interest in the possibility of an invasion, nor does the prospect alarm people". In the regional reports, the observation from Leeds (north-east) is: "Despite warnings about invasion, it cannot be said that most people take the threat seriously".

This is not surprising. Despite the tendency of their rulers to regard them as stupid, the British people are a seafaring nation. More to the point, every major city is criss-crossed with waterways, from the Manchester Ship Canal, the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, the Grand Union Canal, and the River Lea, canalised for most of its length, running into the Thames in London, the greatest port in the world.

Everywhere there are barges, thousands of them. They line the banks of the Thames and are a daily sight for millions. Hundreds of thousands work on them or with them, from the bargemen to the dockers. After hours, they are a magnet for little boys. People are familiar with barges. They know how they handle. They know, for instance, that even in a light wind, with its huge freeboard and shallow draught, an empty barge can be "frisky" to he point of unmanageable. If Raeder thinks he is going to have problems delivering the barges to the English beaches, his seamen will have even greater problems returning them empty.

And people are not stupid - even if their rulers are. They can work out for themselves the perils of crossing the Channel with a fleet of river barges laden with troops and equipment, at the back-end of September when the weather can change from good to bad in an hour. So when they are told Hitler is coming, they don't believe it. They are right not to. Yet, this evening, Alan Brooke writes in his diary:

Ominous quiet! German shipping reserves greatly reduced. Have the Germans completed their preparations for invasion? Are they giving their air force a last brush and wash up? Will he start tomorrow, or is it all a bluff to pin troops down in this country while he prepares to help Italy to invade Egypt etc??

The "ominous quiet", at least, is appreciated by the RAF. The lull in day fighting since 9 September allows Fighter Command to rebuild some of its operational strength with newly-manufactured and repaired fighters. They also repair airfields and radar stations and integrate newly trained pilots with rested veterans. Park reshuffles squadrons so that Hurricanes (to attack bombers) and Spitfires (to attack the fighter escorts) work in pairs.

During the day, 150 German aircraft cross the coast to bomb London at 15:30hrs and another 100 attack London and some airfields at 18:00hrs. Most bombers do not get through to their primary targets, but numerous isolated bombing incidents are reported. Despite good weather overnight, there is little bombing of London after dark. Leicester is bombed and four houses are demolished.

But such bald descriptions do not even begin to confront the reality of what is going on, day-on-day, without remission. Two examples give a taste of quite how ghastly it all is. The first is in the north-west town of Warrington. There, on a fine Saturday afternoon, families enjoying a "Spitfire gala" on Thames Board Mill's recreation ground, held to raise money towards the town's Spitfire fund.

Without warning, a bomber dives down and releases two bombs on the ground. One completely wrecks the light wooden clubhouse. Two families are partly wiped out, members of others are gravely wounded. One bomb fell in the canteen and 150 people were buried in the wreckage. Of these 14 are killed and 21 seriously injured. It is all over in seconds, leaving the dead, dying, injured and a mass of mangled debris as the Nazi bomber sweeps back into the skies and vanishes. "Bomber Kills Women, Babies," screams the local press. "Mothers and tiny babies were among the helpless civilians killed by a lone German raider ...", it reports.

Hundreds of miles away in Brighton, on the south coast, eleven-year-old Monica and her nine year old brother have gone to the Odeon Kemp Town cinema to watch a matinee performance. As they sit in the cinema full of children, a Spitfire is pursuing a Dornier bomber that has become parted from the rest of its formation.

In a vain last ditch attempt to escape its pursuer, the pilot jettisons his bombs and 25 hundred-pound bombs rain down on Kemp Town. Two of the bombs smash into the cinema, killing three children outright. Monica is hit in the neck by flying shrapnel and is bleeding very badly from her wounds. Her brother, in a desperate attempt to save his sister's life, carries her to the nearby Sussex County Hospital. She dies there of her injuries.

In the whole of the war, 198 people die in Brighton from the bombing. Including Monica, fifty two die on this day, representing over a quarter of that total. And this is a day that RAF Fighter Command regards as a "lull", recording an "unusually low level of attack". Flying 860 sorties, it loses 15 aircraft against the Luftwaffe's nine, one of which is a Seenotflugkommando He 59.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 66 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-13T14:03:00.015+01:00

Two days after the US is treated to the alarming claim that the Nazis have assembled an invasion fleet against Britain, the British public is offered a version of the same story. This time, though, the it is tempered by reports that Nazi convoys in the Channel have been bombed, and "barge concentrations" attacked - news of events that happened two days ago.

These stories, their positioning and emphasis, have been approved by the censors. Independent newspapers are no longer their own masters. Their messages are controlled. And in this case, it would not be untoward to suggest that the aim is to raise concerned rather than fear. The authorities want the people worried but do do not want them panicking.

A considerable amount of literature now exists about the practical difficulties that the German invasion fleet faced, not least the incomparable "Invasion 1940" by Derek Robinson. But it is easy to dismiss such writings as being wise after the event, or "revisionist", except for one thing – these difficulties were known at the time and openly discussed in the media.

For instance, in The Glasgow Herald of today's date, we see a "Naval Correspondent” write under the rather appropriate heading of "Invasion problems confronting Germans". There is little question, he writes, that the Nazi leaders hopelessly underestimated the difficulties they would encounter in assembling shipping in the Northern Channel ports in order to have the shortest possible sea passage. He continues:

They forget, if they ever knew, that Napoleon brought together in the ports and roadsteads between Ostend and Etaples some 1339 vessels of all sizes for his project, and that the area was so overcrowded that many of the ships had to lie at anchor in exposed positions, from which every now and again they were torn or driven by stormy weather and a large percentage wrecked. Moreover, those ships only had the short-range armament of their age to fear, whereas similar assemblies today are open to attack from the air and from long-range naval guns.

If Hitler finds that the Calais-Boulogne area is hopeless for his purpose he will be driven back to his next best assembly point, the mouth of the Scheldt. There too, the shipping will be constantly exposed to air attack, and in addition the whole expedition will be faced with a sea passage of some 120 miles instead of 21 miles.

Constant references to barges and self-propelled barges among the targets for our bombers makes it certain that the convoys, if they ever put out to sea, will be slow moving. It is probably optimistic to suggest that the sea passage would take at least 15 hours, for only in the calmest weather could tows of barges be moved at an average of eight knots. The excessive speeds at which air war is waged have tended to obscure this fundamental point in a sea-borne expedition.

Despite this, Gen Alan Brooke writes in his diary, "Everything looks like an invasion starting tomorrow from the Thames to Plymouth! I wonder if we shall be hard at it by this time tomorrow." It is very hard to take this comment seriously. The German planners have allocated ten hours for troop embarkation and even common sense will tell you that the meticulous process of loading for combat must be time consuming.

The distances from France to Plymouth is at a minimum of 120 miles and, given the time needed to marshal the convoys and get them to their destination, even as Alan Brooke wrote, the fleet would have had to have been in transit. It is inconceivable that RAF reconnaissance and naval patrols, which are out every night, would not have picked up this movement. Had there been a serious expectation that Brooke would have been "hard at it", he would not have been speculating. He would have known.

In the Manchester Guardian, there is an account of the Albacore attack on the 11 September, (second story), in which is included this detail:

At least three enemy fighters were destroyed and others severely damaged in another Coastal Command operation off Calais by Fleet Air Arm Albacores protected by Blenheim fighters. Large numbers of Messerschmitt 109s attacked this raiding force. One Messerschmitt 109 fell in flames after a single burst from three hundred yards. A second, also on fire, crashed when a gunner of an Albacore went back to his post after being wounded and fired another burst.

While a Blenheim fighter was having a duel with a Messerschmitt another Blenheim swept down to one thousand feet, flattened out on the enemy's beam and with one burst from fifty yards range sent the Messerschmitt plunging into a dive.

The account is pure fiction. Two Blenheim IV fighters are shot down in the confrontation, their crews killed. One Albacore of No. 826 Sqn is forced to ditch after being heavily damaged. Two of the crew is rescued by an MTB - a third is killed in the attack. In a second aircraft, two of the crew are wounded, but manage to return safely. In a third, two crew are badly wounded and one is unscathed. The Luftwaffe escape without loss.

The travesty of the official account cannot simply be mistakes made in the heat of battle. This is deliberately misleading. However, the Germans claim four Albacores and four Blenheims destroyed. Both sides, of course, are playing the same game.

The real casualty, as always, is the truth. In this case, what is being concealed - from the British public rather than the enemy - is the suicidal inadequacy of the Blenheim fighter. Plenty is made of the limitations of the Me 110, but by comparison with the Blenheim it is superlative and easily the master of the British machine. To pit Blenheim IVs against Me 109s is murder. And the Air Ministry, complicit in the deed, then lies about the inevitable consequences.

As for this day, the air activity is of little strategic importance, although some damage is caused to the Naval dockyard in Chatham during an air raid. But there was one which had massive propaganda implications - an attack on Buckingham Palace.

With heavy cloud and poor weather over the south-east, major daylight operations are ruled out and the Luftwaffe resorts to despatching single aircraft on "nuisance" raids. One of the aircraft penetrates to central London. A bomb is dropped in the garden of Downing Street and then a stick of five bombs is dropped on Buckingham Palace, causing damage to the Royal Chapel.

Overnight, 105 bombers carry out raids over the capital. Casualties are regarded as relatively light, with 110 killed and 260 injured in the London area. There are also harassing raids in the Home Counties and East Anglia, while four bombs fall in a "Lancashire coastal town", identified by the Germans as Liverpool. The raid kills seven, injures 15 and destroys ten houses. Emil Wirth (62), a Swiss, and his wife Alma (61) are fined 15s each in a West London Police Court, for black-out offences. Charges of signalling to enemy aircraft are dismissed.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 65 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-12T17:04:00.017+01:00

The war diary entry of the Naval Operations Staff for the day laments that, "the air campaign is being conducted specifically as an air offensive without regard for the current requirements of naval warfare ... the fact therefore remains that chances for the execution of the landing operations have remained uninfluenced by the effects of the intensified air offensive ...". As far as the Kriegsmarine is concerned, the Luftwaffe is making no contribution to the preparations of Sealion. And without the full commitment of air forces, it is hard to see how any invasion can succeed.

As one might expect, the British are unaware of this. On the back of Churchill's speech to Parliament, the Manchester Guardian (below left) decides to ramp up the invasion threat, catching up with the US media. The story is the lead item. It is accompanied by an analysis from Brigadier General John Charteris, who tells us "the stage is set" and that "the actors are ready". However, much is made in the main article of Hitler's failure to secure mastery of the air. The tone is not at all alarmist.

The Daily Express (above), on the other hand, prefers to major on the overnight anti-aircraft barrage. But it also throws in news of yet more raids on barge concentrations, as indeed does the Guardian. This is a feature of British propaganda and a measure of its skill. Some bad news, or even the potentially frightening, is allowed - but it is always "offset" with the counterpoint. Thus, Hitler assembling his invasions forces is balanced by "RAF attacking invasion forces". The effect is unremittingly upbeat.

In the Glasgow Herald, we can see the same order of priorities but the paper also runs an article based on an Associated Press report, datelined Constantinople. Hitler, it says, "may make another peace offer in the next few weeks". It would be made directly or may come through intermediaries. The source of this information is "several persons recently arrived from Germany", who state that Hitler is extremely anxious to avoid another winter of war and a direct attack on England, "which he realised would be a risky enterprise".

According to these sources, Hitler still believed that it may be still possible to defeat Britain as he had defeated France, by means of the double weapon of indiscriminate bombing coupled with intensive propaganda. The plan of bombarding British civilians, it was reported, "will be continued at all costs in the hope of undermining their morale". Then he would make another "generous gesture" and offer the possibility of peace, hoping to cause dissension amongst the politicians of Great Britain.

On the domestic front, the daily Home Intelligence report does not convey wholly complimentary news. The prime minister's speech was generally well received, it says, but not so enthusiastically as usual. "... there is evidence that many people, having convinced themselves that the invasion is 'off' disliked being reminded of it again". Intuitively - on some things at least - it would appear, the people have a better idea than the experts and the politicians of what is real. The invasion is not considered one of those things.

One gets a sense of an "agenda" being played out here, though. Despite the small chance of the invasion actually materialising, talking up the threat enables the British authorities to claim a victory when it does not materialise. The ever-present reality of the bombing, however, is very much harder to deal with. It thus makes sense from a propaganda perspective to focus minds on the invasion - if for no other reason then, at an advantageous time, to announce its defeat.

No more evident is this artificiality than in Winston Churchill's own book, Their Finest Hour, part two of his history of the Second World War, where there is a split between the battle of Britain - which even at this stage is not capitalised - and the Blitz. Yet, in separate chapters, one headed "The Battle of Britain" and the other "The Blitz", he describes the same events in early September, offering a slightly different narrative under each heading.

In the Battle of Britain Chapter (p 296) we are told thus:

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 over-estimation of our losses.

Then in narrative about the Blitz, we read:

But on September 7 Goering publicly assumed command of the air battle, and turned from daylight to night attack and from the fighter airfields of Kent and Sussex to the vast built-up areas of London. Minor raids by daylight were frequent, indeed constant, and one great daylight attack was still to come; but in the main the whole character of the German offensive was altered. For fifty-seven nights the bombing of London was unceasing. This constituted an ordeal for the world’s largest city, the results of which no one could measure beforehand. Never before was so wide an expanse of houses subjected to such bombardment or so many families required to face its problems and its terrors.

The sporadic raiding of London towards the end of August was promptly answered by us in a retaliatory attack on Berlin. Because of the distance we had to travel, this could only be on a very small scale compared with attacks on London from nearby French and Belgian airfields. The War Cabinet were much in the mood to hit back, to raise the stakes, and to defy the enemy. I am sure they were right, and believed that nothing impressed or disturbed Hitler so much as his realisation of British wrath and will-power. In his heart he was one of our admirers. He took of course full advantage of our reprisal on Berlin, and publicly announced the previously-settled German policy of reducing London and other British cities to chaos and ruin. "If they attack our cities," he declared on September 4, "we will simply erase theirs". He tried his best.

Far more logical, and true to the facts is the German view, that the battle started on 13 August (although some would argue that it started when the Battle of France finished) and continued without a break until May 1941, when Luftwaffe forces were pulled back and redeployed for the invasion of the USSR.

If the view is accepted that the span of the battle covers a much longer period than officially allowed for, then the role of the "few" takes on a different perspective, without in any way diminishing the importance of their contribution. But we are then able to see the RAF pilots as one group in a larger cast of "actors", a much larger group being the people of London, who are as much combatants as ever were the pilots.

The argument is relatively easy to sustain if we consider the prizes for which the battle is being fought. In the direct air war, the aim of the Germans is to destroy Fighter Command - the pilots' aim being to defend it and to keep it functional. In the "Blitz" phase, Fighter Command is progressively written out of the script. The prize becomes the morale of the people under attack - in this case Londoners, although many others are soon to join the ever-expanding cast.

The attackers, in this phase, remain the Luftwaffe, although the night bomber rather than the fighter becomes the primary weapon. Ranged on the other side is a huge cast which includes the administrative apparatus of central government, the local authorities, the civil defence organisation, police, the fire brigades, hospitals and much else, including organisations as diverse as the Womens' Voluntary Service (WVS) and Anti-Aircraft Command, as well as the Home Guard and, of course, the people themselves. This is not the "few" but the many, a cast of millions.

At this stage, there can, or should be, no illusions. If the morale of a great city like London had collapsed, the nation would have become ungovernable. So far, according to the official legend, it was holding up. A telegraphic report from the Metropolitan Commissioner of Police, on this day when the Blitz is five days old, states: "My latest reports are that there is no sign of panic anywhere in the East End ... In ---- and ---- the inhabitants are shaken by continued lack of sleep but no sign of panic and no wish to evacuate. No defeatist talk".

Had things been only a little different, had there been a breakdown of law and order and/or the widespread collapse of administrative structures, that could have forced Churchill and his government to give up the fight and sue for peace, under terms which would not have been particularly favourable.

Thus, it could be said that we are entering another phase of the Battle of Britain. We have seen the battle for air supremacy - this is the battle for the people, their "hearts and minds". Before that, there was - and still is - being played out the other battle, the economic battle, and the task of resisting the attempt by the Germans to create a stranglehold on the flow of supplies to and within the UK.

This, as we have noted before, amounts to an attack on long-range shipping - by U-boat (mostly), surface raider and aircraft, the attack on coastal shipping, and the attack on the ports. This phase starts before the battle for air supremacy and does not conclude until May 1943 with the defeat of the wolfpacks.

Then there is the propaganda battle, the fight for the soul of America, bringing the US into the war. This is a fight we actually lose, but it is then won for us by the Japanese in December 1941 and thence by Hitler who declares war on the United States a day after Pearl Harbour. Finally, there is a real but scarcely acknowledged political battle going on - the battle for who rules the peace, and on what terms. This is a battle which, in 1945, Churchill is to lose.

In its own way, however, the current battle for the people is the most extraordinary of all - one every bit as remarkable as the battle for the air and one which, from the evidence, it appears we very nearly lost. It was a far closer run thing than has ever been acknowledged - more so considering that even the fact that there was a battle going on at all has been obscured by the narrow focus on the battle for air supremacy.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 64 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-11T09:20:00.010+01:00

All of a sudden, there are several different air wars going on - all seemingly unrelated. Fighter Command is still battling away against the daylight elements of the Luftwaffe which, in the morning comprises one Henschel 126 on a tactical reconnaissance mission near Dover and one machine bombing the radar station at Polling. After lunch, the Germans put up a series of raids.

The first is aimed largely at London, with bombs falling on the City, but also on the docks, Islington and Paddington. Others fall on Biggin Hill, Kenley, Brooklands and Hornchurch. A second, despite the best efforts of harrying fighters, manages to dump bombs on Southampton and Portsmouth.

Then a force of Me 109s appears over Dover on a barrage balloon shoot. Then we get another force attacking a Channel convoy, disabling the escort Atherstone - a throwback to phase one of the battle. And while that is happening, there is a progression of single aircraft headed off to bomb diverse inland RAF aerodromes.

On the day, Fighter Command loses 32 aircraft - the Germans only 26. A particularly tragic loss is Sgt Mervyn Sprague. After his escape on 25 August, he is shot down again – another Me110. South of Selsey Bill, his Spitfire crashes into the Channel. This time there is no "Digger" Aitkin to save him. Sprague's body is washed ashore at Brighton on 10 October.

Firmly anchored to the ground, through the first days of the London Blitz, prime minister Churchill had been out and about, very much in the public eye - the picture above from yesterday, 10th September. How much he would have learned from his carefully sanitised, controlled visits, with the crowds vetted, selected and fed slogans by the ever helpful men from the Ministry of Information, is debatable.

Undoubtedly. his main source of information was that vital asset, the daily Home Intelligence bulletin. The edition for 10 September was told Churchill that the substantial "unplanned" evacuation of East End families was continuing apace. Families in the Deptford area were making for the hopfields of Kent, taking with them "such of their belongings as they can carry". Others were simply making for the nearest mainline station, with no apparent destination and no apparent objective other than to "get away from it all".

This was becoming a real problem. Towns to the west of London, such as Reading, Windsor and Oxford, found themselves unwitting hosts to thousands of refugees who had spent their very last pennies on getting as far from the conflagrations as they could afford. In this case, largely, local authorities, churches and voluntary groups rallied to the challenge and found them accommodation. In Oxford, the university colleges acted as clearing houses and five hundred to a thousand people were sheltered for nearly two months in the Majestic cinema on the city's outskirts.

In other areas, notably parts of Essex, the incomers were treated with considerable hostility, with obvious potential for confrontation, ugly scenes and even violence. Something had to be done. Home Intelligence advised that, as these people were being referred to as "soldiers in the front line", this sentiment should be encouraged. "It would undoubtedly help", the report said "if the public were made to feel that their friends and relations had died for their country, in the same sense as if they were sailors or airmen".

The Wednesday report must have made for worrying reading as it told of morale being "rather more strained than the newspapers suggest". There had been an increase in the number of people listening to "Lord Haw Haw" and rumours, mostly "exaggerated accounts of raid damage and casualties" had increased considerably.

That evening, at 6pm, Churchill was due to broadcast to the nation. When he did, it was quite evident that had had taken heed of the advice given. "These cruel, wanton indiscriminate bombings of London are of course a part of Hitler's invasion plan," he told his listeners. "He hopes by killing large numbers of civilians and women and children that he will terrorise and cow the people of this mighty Imperial city and make them a burden and anxiety for the Government, and thus distract our attention unduly from the ferocious onslaught he is preparing."

This is a clever pitch, linking the blitz with the invasion. But ultimately its genesis can be seen in the Home Intelligence reports. Churchill continues:

Little does he know the spirit of the British nation or the tough fibre of the Londoners who forebears played a leading part in the establishment of Parliamentary institutions and who have been bred to value freedom far above their lives. This wicked man the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul destroying hatred, this monstrous product former wrongs and shames, has now resolved to try to break our famous island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction.

What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagrations he has caused in London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe, and until the Old World and the New can join hands to rebuild the temples of man's freedom and man's honour on foundations which will not soon or easily be overthrown.

This is the time for everyone to stand together and hold firm, as they are doing. I express my admiration for the exemplary manner in which the air raid precaution services in London are being discharged, especially the fire brigades, whose work has been so heavy and also dangerous.

All the world that is still free marvels at the composure and fortitude with which the citizens of London are facing and surmounting the great ordeal to which they are subjected, the end of which, or the severity of which cannot yet be foreseen.

It is a message of good cheer to our fighting forces, on the seas, in the air and in our waiting armies, in all their posts and stations that we send them from this capital city. They know that they have behind them a people who will not flinch or weary of the struggle, hard and protracted though it will be, but that we shall rather draw from the heart of suffering the means of inspiration and survival, and of a victory won not only for ourselves, but for all, a victory won not only for our times, but for the long and better days that are to come.

It was the speech for the moment. Churchill was rewarded the next day with the report that "in London, morale is particularly high: people are much more cheerful today".

However, this might have had something to do with the rushed movement of hundreds of anti-aircraft guns into the capital, the useless but noisy barrage over term killing more Londoners from shrapnel splinters than it did German pilots. But the clatter gave Londoners in their shelters great heart, the all important sense that we were "fighting back". Of such sentiment is morale made - the difference between being helpless victims and fighters in a scrap. The great showman Churchill has, perhaps, pulled off a significant PR coup.

But there is much more to this speech. In his appeal for "the Old World and the New" to "join hands to rebuild the temples of man's freedom and man's honour on foundations which will not soon or easily be overthrown," is a direct appeal to the United States to join the war. There is here an indication that Churchill believes London's agonies are sufficient reason for this to happen.

But, while the speech - quite obviously - is accessible to the British audience, what they do not see is that it is clearly part of a sustained propaganda push in the United States. Nor is this easy to appreciate from a view of the leading newspapers in the US, owing to the diffuse nature of the media, where there is no national daily paper as such. Thus, the message is spread by a myriad of what we would regard as the "local" papers, such as the Florida-based Sarasota Herald Tribune, illustrated above.

Using agency copy, supplied by the Ministry of Information, this paper and hundreds like it which bear similar if not identical headlines, the collective audience measured in tens of millions. And here there message is stark. Based on Churchill's speech to Parliament, it highlights the threat of Hitler's invasion fleet, poised on the other side of the Channel, ready to strike.

The message conveyed is heavily distorted. From the 8th to the 10th September, moon and tide conditions were favourable for an invasion. This led the Chiefs of Staff to conclude that an invasion could shortly become imminent. However, there was no mechanism established for bringing forces up to an enhanced but still intermediate state of readiness.

Thus, as the German bombers were pummelling London on the evening of the 7th September, the coded warning "Cromwell" was issued to Army and some Home Guard Units, meaning that invasion was "imminent". Church bells were rung, some bridges were blown up and forces throughout the South-East went on high alert.

The censors ensure that there is no mention of the "Cromwell" alert either in the newspapers or Parliament, and no warnings of any nature about an invasion being imminent are given to the British public. And nor is the invasion warning given any prominence in the English press.

Even then, Churchill knew the threat was remote. Hitler has not even decided on the date of the invasion. More to the point, on 8 September, after he had returned from his visit to the bombed areas of London, Churchill was told of an Enigma decrypt which, (according to Gilbert in Churchill, a life, p 675) which "made it clear that the German invasion plans were so ill-advanced that even the training was not complete" and that there had been no "hard and fast decision to take action in any particular direction."

Yet, two days later - on this day - the British propaganda machine is talking up the threat to an American audience, making as its main pitch that an invasion could come "at any minute". The "Old World" is in peril, in dire need of assistance. This far from subtle message can only have one aim - to pressure Roosevelt into bringing the US into the war, thus fulfilling the UK's main strategic objective.

Of the attacks on the shipping by the Blenheims and Beauforts, it is late Thursday before the news of these raids is released to the media, and Friday before the British public sees it.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 63 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-10T09:50:00.016+01:00

The headlines tell the story, not that anyone in London needs telling. On the third night of the Blitz, the bombing has been heavier than ever. In the centre of the docklands area, so badly afflicted by the bombing, was an area known as Canning Town. This was a district which, prior to the 19th century, was largely marshland accessible only by boat or toll bridge. With hundreds of people in the area made homeless by the bombing on the 7th and 8th, they gravitate to a "rest centre" in Canning Town set up in the now vacated South Hallsville School. They are promised of transport out of the area and accommodation away from the heat of the battle.

Journalist Richie Calder visited the school, which he described as "a bulging dangerous ruin" which had survived the raids of the 7th only by a miracle. But he was distinctly uneasy. "It was a calculable certainty" that it would be targeted again, he wrote. Yet he was impressed by the phlegmatism of the East Enders within, including a child who slept through the crash of a bomb seven yards away, and now ran from room to room pretending to be a Spitfire.

Legend would have it that, on 9 September, promised transport failed to show up, mistakenly diverted to Camden Town in North London. The refugees thus settled down to spend another night in the school buildings - one of the most dangerous places on earth. And, at 03:45hrs on the Tuesday morning, the predictable (and predicted) tragedy struck in the form of what must have been a large calibre HE bomb, dropped by a Luftwaffe aircraft (pictured above).

Civil Defence workers dragged 73 bodies out of the wreckage. But, according to Calder, as they worked, a cordon was thrown around the area to keep people from seeing what was happening. The censor, or so we are told, warned the press there were to be no reports or pictures of the tragedy, so devastating would the effect be on the morale of the already shattered population.

In fact, a brief report appears in next day's Manchester Guardian, with most of the main details, including the a note that "a tragic feature" of the incident was that arrangements had been made to transfer the people occupying the school to the country. Rescue was then expected to take at least 24 hours. However, the report suggested that very few would be found alive.

Rescuers would have continued searching beyond then, in the hope of finding survivors. And, in fact, work seems to have been carried out for three days. Then, according to legend, by "government order", the origin of which is not known - the search was abandoned. The wreckage was limed and razed to the ground.

Given the huge pressure on resources, civil defence squads were not infrequently having to make such dreadful decisions, so there may not have been anything particularly sinister about abandoning the site.

As the urban legend goes, locals are convinced that the authorities concealed the full death toll, which was far higher than the official figure, with some saying it might have been as high as 400 or 450. The Manchester Guardian of 12 September reports the casualties of Monday night being 400 with 1,400 injured, "the majority of the fatalities occurring when an elementary school in the East End of London ... collapsed".

The event is regarded locally as the worst civilian bombing disaster of the war. Rightly or wrongly, there is bitterness that no effort was made to discover the identities of the many for whom this illusory refuge became their final resting place and the incident became a festering sore in relation between the much-troubled people and the authorities.

The full horror was yet to be fully realised as this September day dawned. It revealed a blanket of low cloud across much of Northern Europe. Large-scale daylight operations are not an option for the Luftwaffe this day. However, the pressure of time is closing in on the preparations for the invasion. Over 2,000 barges and other vessels have been assembled with a view to transporting the German army across the Channel and a decision must be made on whether they are going to be used.

Provisionally, the invasion is now planned for the period 21-29 September ("pencilled in" might be a better description) but the actual landings must be preceded by a period of all-out air assault. With the weather forecast for the next ten days offering unsettled conditions, Hitler decides to delay a decision on whether to embark troops until the 14th September.

In view of the poor weather on this day, air activity is confined to sporadic attacks and "nuisance" raids. By night time, however, the air fleet is on the move again. No less than 148 bombers visit London. Liverpool Street Station (pictured) is hit and a number of other landmarks suffer.

A Luftwaffe bomb breaches the northern outfall sewer, the great work of Victorian engineer Joseph Bazalgetti which carried the bulk of London's sewage. Freed from their bounds, the contents poured into the River Lea, adding a pungent stench to the already overloaded atmosphere. The metaphor is somewhat fitting.

The German Navy, though, is not impressed with these efforts. The Naval Staff War Diary records: "It would be in conformity with timetable preparations for the operation of Sealion if the Luftwaffe concentrated less on London and more on Portsmouth and Dover, as well as on the naval forces in and near the operational area, in order to eliminate the potential threats of the enemy."

Nevertheless, it went on: "But the Naval Staff does not consider this a suitable moment to approach the Luftwaffe or the Führer with such demands". Hitler thinks the major attack on London may be decisive. Thus a systematic and prolonged bombardment of London may result in the enemy adopting an attitude which will render Sealion superfluous. "Hence the Naval Staff will not proceed with the demand".

This, effectively, acknowledges that the aim of the air was has shifted from invasion preparations to a "terror" bombardment in the manner of Douhet. A German communiqué issued on this day, to all intents and purposes, confirms this. It states that the air offensive will be "pressed relentlessly" until the British capitulate. New waves of German bombers flying against London "will carry out remorseless and relentless warfare", the Nazis declare, "until the smoking ruins of industrial and military objectives, decimation of the British Air Force and shattered morale of the British people bring into power a government that will accept German terms".

It would be unwise to rely entirely on the published diatribes of the Nazi propaganda machine, but this public statement fits with the Naval Staff appreciation. It is perhaps a remarkably candid declaration of the German war aims - to force the ousting of the Churchill government and its replacement with one which would do a deal.

In this context, it is entirely logical to expect that the Germans would be seeking to explore all available channels of communication with the English - as they so often insisted on calling their enemy. A they did in July, right up to August following Hitler's peace offer on 19 July, one might also expect the German government to work through intermediaries. This is how, since time immemorial, hostile governments do business with each other.

Thus, on this day, we see that Karl Haushofer sends a letter to his son, Albrecht - whom we met only two days ago - referring to "secret peace talks" which are going on with Britain. There is talk of "middlemen" such as Ian Hamilton (head of the British Legion), the Duke of Hamilton and Violet Roberts, the widow of Walter Roberts.

The Roberts were very close to Stewart Menzies, chief of MI6 (SIS), the British Secret Intelligence Service (Walter and Stewart had gone to school together). Violet Roberts is now living in Lisbon. And Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland are said to be the four main places where secret peace negotiations are taking place.

All these things may be connected - and maybe not. But, behind the scenes, something is most certainly going on. This is not to enter the realms of conspiracy. If Hitler is expecting to bludgeon England into surrender, he must have avenues for discussing terms - as he did earlier in the year.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 62 - Battle of Britain

2010-09-09T14:40:00.011+01:00

With hell fire and fury having rained from the skies, Londoners in particular, are confronting a savagely re-modelled landscape. This is St Thomas's Hospital in Westminster, taken today by an unknown photographer after taking a direct hit overnight.

Life nevertheless goes on - it has to. And the ordinary problems of daily life do not go away. One problem for the editors of the Monday newspapers was how to deal with the great raids of the Saturday, running into the Sunday morning, with a further set of raids on the Sunday evening. The Manchester Guardian (below) handles it by giving the headline lead to the Sunday night but then devoting most of the copy to the Saturday raids, about which there was now considerable detail.

The bland headlines, however, conceal a growing trauma. Home Intelligence reports that the strongest feeling is "one of shock amongst all classes", who have lulled themselves into a false sense of security, saying: "London is the safest place", and "they'll never get through the London defences".

But centre page in the Guardian spread is the tragic story of "Bomb's havoc in crowded public shelter". This, though, admits to only 14 deaths and the location - as always - is unnamed. Elsewhere, however, in Whitechapel, a much greater tragedy is playing out. A bomb has hit K block, one of eight blocks of flats (one pictured, left) on the Peabody estate, sandwiched between the Royal mint and East Smithfields Goods Station. The bomb caused the entire building to collapse, killing people in the basement shelter. It is latterly acknowledged that 78 people died and marked by a memorial plaque (below).

Nothing of this gets into the media, despite the knowledge of the tragedy being widely known locally. Yet the authorities are deluding themselves if they think that the censorship is preventing the spread of news. In the tight-knit community of the East End, the story of the disaster spreads like wildfire. As a result, there is - as Home Intelligence constantly acknowledges - a growing cynicism over official casualty reports. This helps fuel rumours of mass casualties, exaggerating the number of deaths - and they are serious enough as it is.

Home Intelligence reassures its readers that there are "no signs of defeatism" except amongst a small section of elderly women in the "front line" districts such as East Ham, "who cannot stand the constant bombing". Districts sustaining only one of two shocks soon rally, says the report, but in Dockside areas "the population is showing visible signs of nerve cracking from constant ordeals". The narrative continues:

Old women and mothers are undermining morale of young women and men by their extreme nervousness and lack of resilience. Men state they cannot sleep because they must keep up the morale of their families and express strong desire to get families away from danger areas. Families clinging together, however, and any suggestion of sending children away without mothers considered without enthusiasm. People beginning to trek away from Stepney and other Dockside areas in families and small groups. Many encountered in City today with suitcases and belongings. Some make for Paddington without any idea of their destination.

What must have worried the authorities was then the intelligence that there were "many expressions of bitterness" at the apparent impossibility of stopping German raiders from doing what the like. This issue was "bewildering and frightening people" more than anything else. And the opinion of anti-aircraft gunfire was "astonishingly small".

All the newspapers, in fact, were playing down the effects of the bombing. Some were doing so out of a sense of patriotism, conscious of the fact that downbeat reports could damage morale. To that extent self-censorship was operating alongside the official censor, notwithstanding that proprietors, editors and indeed journalists, faced potential prison sentences under the Emergency Powers Order, if their conduct was deemed likely to have caused "alarm or despondency". Thus do we see in the Manchester Guardian, the editorial:

London as a whole had its first big raid and has come out of it well. It can hold its heat up now with those heroic towns of the South-east which have stood up to repeated batterings. Its ARP services have stood the test equally well, and its citizens have kept their heads and, on the whole, their tempers. One of the most remarkable things this week-end was to stand beside the shattered little homes near the Elephant and Castle and note how little futile raging there was in the talk of the onlookers when they mentioned as all of them did that the bomb had fallen just after the "all clear".

Then, also, we get an eye-witness report from a journalists who had toured the damaged areas in the East End of London. He wrote in the paper:

I saw nothing to show that the raids had daunted the spirits of the East End. Women went on preparing their Sunday dinners, even though they had no water or gas. They borrowed water from their neighbours and lit fires to roast their joints. One of them, who had spent the night in an air-raid shelter which rocked with every concussion, was preparing her meal in a house where the dividing wall between dining-room and drawing-room lay in chunks across the floors.

In other papers, there were laudatory accounts of the sang froid of the nurses at St Thomas's, where there were only slight injuries. The Daily Mail in an Illingworth cartoon, makes great play of the fact that Göring has taken personal charge of the air offensive. But in the cartoon, it is toeing the government line, projecting a lack of fear belied by the Home Intelligence reports. An editorial then deplores talk of reprisals, choosing instead a curious form of words:

We prefer to put it another way: that the British Forces, the RAF especially, will pursue a steadily increasing campaign against Germany for set purposes to victory, and that object will in time become overwhelming.

Many authors attest, however, that this restraint has been "guided" by the Ministry of Information's preferences on reporting the public responses to the bombing. The gut reaction for revenge is played down, and the image of a blood-thirsty public deliberately suppressed. In its place, the preferred image is one of people "stoically heroic and stolidly good-humoured". This is characterised in an MoI-inspired catchphrase, "London can take it", assiduously promoted by the Ministry, later becoming in all its variations, the basis for a number of newsreel titles.

Even as the readers were settling down to absorb the news of recent events, more daylight raids are in progress. Unlike those described in the newspapers, though, these are hitting widely dispersed targets, which include South London suburbs such as Weybridge, Kingston and Croydon. As bombers meet with fighters from 11 Group and jettison their bombs, considerable damage is done to residential premises in suburban areas, with Kingston and Surbiton suffering heavily. Southampton and Rochester are also targeted again.

At 18:06hrs, the first of the night shift crosses the Sussex coast, headed for London, and it is another night of pummelling - the third in succession. Apart from the landmark St Thomas's Hospital, Somerset House and the Royal Courts of Justice are amongst those also hit.

And, as the night comes, so do the bombers once again/ This time the newly completed surgical wing of Great Ormond Street Hospital is seriously damaged (pictured). It is narrowly saved from complete destruction when veteran stoker William Pendle turns off the hospital's flooded and damaged boilers before they explode. His bravery earns him the award of the George Medal.

By morning, three more main line stations are out of action, another 370 Londoners are dead and more than 1,400 are injured. The murder continues.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread