Battle of Britain diary

[stona]

Thanks Andrew. I am enjoying doing it!

My normal job involves live entertainment and large crowds, the bigger the better, so as you can imagine there is nothing doing. I have plenty of time on my hands to collate the information from a substantial book collection collected over the last thirty years. I'm certainly not a historian but I have had a passion for WW2 aviation and everything that comes with it since I can remember, probably since I took that first blue plastic Airfix Spitfire out of its bag. More seriously, these were momentous events, a story often told, but one which should never be forgotten.

There is a large pile of books in the front room which has attracted the attention of the Fuhrerin who has already enquired why they are not on the bookshelves. The fact that I am using them everyday seemed an unconvincing excuse, at least to her. :smiling3:

[colin m]

Again Steve, excellent work.

[stona]

Monday 16th September

Cloud and rain blanketing the UK and Channel area.

In the early hours of the morning, before first light, as Fighter Command’s pilots dragged themselves out of their beds and prepared for the next phase of the Battle they were greeted by what, for them, was the most perfect weather. It was obvious that for the time being any flying would be limited.

This was not what the Germans wanted to see. Ulrich Steinhilper wrote to his mother,

“This morning we wanted to go to London again but there was so much cloud and a high risk of icing, so no chance. Now we hope for good weather; about another eight days would finish things. Let’s hope for an improvement.”

This young fighter pilot was clearly still more confident than some of his more senior colleagues.

Goering convened a conference with his commanders in Boulogne. He made some valid tactical points. Yesterday, the fighter commanders had failed to get the second wave of fighters in place at the right time; they should have been able to shoot down more British aircraft. The objection from one of his commanders that the British surprised the Germans by sending in their fighters ‘en masse’ did not impress the Reichsmarschal. ‘If they attack en masse, we should also be able to shoot them down in large numbers!’ It is a fair point that underlay the entire Luftwaffe strategy. He also acknowledged that his men were becoming exhausted before once more making several points that would later appear in Spiedel’s report to the OKW. The British had used the breathing space to strengthen their fighter force with pilots from flight schools and new aircraft from their factories, including aircraft that have not yet even been painted; the British engaged the German bomber units with less well trained fighter squadrons, with several cases of deliberate ramming taking place as a last resort; German fighters came under attack from better trained British fighter pilots; the weak resistance that the two attacks against Portsmouth and Southampton had met on the afternoon on 15 September proved that the British had concentrated their remaining fighters to defend London.

None of this was true. It is impossible to overstate just how bad the German Intelligence assessments of Fighter Command strength and capabilities were, throughout this entire period.

Goering concluded that a few more days were all that were required to finish “British fighter aviation”

There would be a change in tactics. The Luftwaffe had found a way to make the British fight, raids on London would continue. The British aviation industry would be targeted in an attempt to deny the British the ability to replace their losses. On the other hand, the Luftwaffe’s losses of the 15th were not sustainable either. Large bomber formations would no longer be used, unless circumstances were exceptional. Instead, small formations of bombers with large fighter support and escort would be used. Fighter sweeps would attempt to lure the British fighters into combat.

This evening Goering boarded his special train and headed back to Germany.

From a British perspective, Park felt that more of the German aircraft should have been shot down, but he acknowledged that his system had worked well. The high interception rates were particularly pleasing and would be unmatched for the rest of the Battle.

The Luftwaffe made sporadic raids usually with single aircraft, using the cloud as protection. Most were unmolested as interceptions were almost impossible. A Section of No 616 Squadron intercepted and shot down a Ju 88 of the east coast. The drama was increased when one of the three aircraft, flown by Sgt Iveson, ran out of petrol and ditched in the sea twenty miles off Cromer. He was fortunate to be rescued by an RAF launch.

An He 115 was shot down by anti-aircraft fire attacking shipping. It was towed, upside down, into Eyemouth harbour Northumberland. Here the inverted aircraft has clearly become a major attraction for the locals.



Another He 115 ran out of fuel and came down at New Aberdour, about 12 miles from Frazeburgh in the Scottish Highlands. A Ju 88 of 1./KG 54 crashed near Coventry after hitting a balloon cable.

Today the Luftwaffe had lost just 4 aircraft on operations against Britain, with another 2 damaged. Fighter Command had lost just 1, Iveson’s Spitfire (L1023), with another, a 605 Squadron Hurricane, damaged.

The Luftwaffe would make a major effort tonight. 170 aircraft dropped 200 tons of bombs, London again being the principal target.

Bomber Command bombed barges in the Channel ports again. The bombing of the ports was having a possibly unintended effect on the Luftwaffe personnel based at the nearby airfields. Today JG 54’s Hannes Trautloft wrote in his diary,

“The nightly anti-aircraft gunfire disrupts the pilots’ important sleep. Explore the possibilities to accommodate pilots further inland. Possibly it must be done even at the cost of longer routes to the airfields!”

[adt70hk]

Thanks Steve, yet again!

[Guest]

One side of the RAF is forgotten in this Battle of Britain. Bomber Command.

They were beavering away at the German supply chains armoury factories. They, the Germans, were short of all these commodities

They also attacked the installation in harbours the merchant men, trawlers & landing craft. Calais Dunkirk Rotterdaam. Just cannot find about these shipping raids. I read about them some years ago but I can not find them. I know they destroyed enough to make it virtually impossible to mount an invasion attack.

An interesting article about the above.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-bomber-command-helped-win-the-battle-of-britain

[stona]

Hi Laurie,
Bomber Command certainly tried, but received a bewildering number of directives from the beginning of the war until the second half of 1940, after the Fall of France.

I think the fact that between 24 June and 27 August Bomber Command dropped a total of just 3,131 short tons of bombs on all targets is telling, certainly when compared to the effort later in the war. The Command simply did not have the bomb lift capacity to seriously damage any of the targets laid out in the Directives (all of which were still based on the Western Air Plans as of September 1 1939).

An effort was made against the invasion ports in September, as well as targets in Germany.

On September 9 it was considered that German bombing of Britain had become indiscriminate, and consequently RAF crews were not required to bring their bombs back if they failed to identify their primary target. Instead, they could aim them at secondary targets, even if these were in built up areas. They were not supposed to aim them indiscriminately at a city, but of course...

At the end of October 1940, when it was clear that there would be no invasion this year, oil was restored as the first priority, followed by the German aircraft industry. Cities were advocated as secondary targets, but not formally adopted until January 1941, along with 17 specific oil targets. This was the beginning of what we now call area bombing and a reversion to the Trenchardian doctrine which had been in competition with notions of a more precise application of force since the end of the First War.

All the bombing in 1940/41 was largely ineffective. Bombers could not regularly find their targets, let alone hit them. This was finally recognised with the publication of the Butt Report in August 1941. I have a copy of the report*, which goes into all sorts of detail about bombing in various conditions and the effects of everything from 'ground features' to AA fire, but it is the summary which is most often quoted. Here are the two most important points.

1. Off those aircraft recorded as attacking the target, only one in three got within five miles.

6. All these figures relate only to aircraft recorded as attacking the target; the proportion of the total sorties which reached within five miles is less than by third. Thus, for example, of the total sorties only one in five get within five miles of the target, i.e. within the 75 square miles surrounding the target.

Emphasis in original.

*Appendix 13 of Volume IV (Annexes and Appendices) of the official history, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-1945, from p.205 in my version.

[Guest]

Hi Laurie,
Bomber Command certainly tried, but received a bewildering number of directives from the beginning of the war until the second half of 1940, after the Fall of France.

I think the fact that between 24 June and 27 August Bomber Command dropped a total of just 3,131 short tons of bombs on all targets is telling, certainly when compared to the effort later in the war. The Command simply did not have the bomb lift capacity to seriously damage any of the targets laid out in the Directives (all of which were still based on the Western Air Plans as of September 1 1939).

An effort was made against the invasion ports in September, as well as targets in Germany.

On September 9 it was considered that German bombing of Britain had become indiscriminate, and consequently RAF crews were not required to bring their bombs back if they failed to identify their primary target. Instead, they could aim them at secondary targets, even if these were in built up areas. They were not supposed to aim them indiscriminately at a city, but of course...

At the end of October 1940, when it was clear that there would be no invasion this year, oil was restored as the first priority, followed by the German aircraft industry. Cities were advocated as secondary targets, but not formally adopted until January 1941, along with 17 specific oil targets. This was the beginning of what we now call area bombing and a reversion to the Trenchardian doctrine which had been in competition with notions of a more precise application of force since the end of the First War.

All the bombing in 1940/41 was largely ineffective. Bombers could not regularly find their targets, let alone hit them. This was finally recognised with the publication of the Butt Report in August 1941. I have a copy of the report*, which goes into all sorts of detail about bombing in various conditions and the effects of everything from 'ground features' to AA fire, but it is the summary which is most often quoted. Here are the two most important points.

1. Off those aircraft recorded as attacking the target, only one in three got within five miles.

6. All these figures relate only to aircraft recorded as attacking the target; the proportion of the total sorties which reached within five miles is less than by third. Thus, for example, of the total sorties only one in five get within five miles of the target, i.e. within the 75 square miles surrounding the target.

Emphasis in original.

*Appendix 13 of Volume IV (Annexes and Appendices) of the official history, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-1945, from p.205 in my version.

Yes Steve agree & add certainly most of the war bomding was inefective except the Mosquito.

Produced a film about the Mosquito. The figures I searched out what it did it's accuracies. Better if they had conce;ntrated o]n that than the Lancaster.

But then i will be shouted down but the data is there. One day i will put the film on Ytube when i get the urge.

Laurie

[Guest]

Typos appearing. Weird typing with just left hand & using mouse on left hand. Brain is brainswashed for normal
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[stona]

Tuesday 17 September

Heavy cloud and rain in the morning but clearing slightly with squally showers and bright intervals later.

Ideal weather for the defenders this morning.

At 15.00 Luftflotte 2 finally got its fighters airborne and a fighter sweep comprising the Bf 109s of JG 27, III./JG 26 and III./JG 53. The fighters came in over the Dover-Folkestone area in two waves. These were largely ignored by Park though No 501 Squadron, patrolling over Ashford, was bounced by JG 53, losing one Hurricane and Sgt Eddie Egan who was killed. Sgt Tony Pickering gave this account.

“We were flying along, just the two of us, looking out all the time for trouble, and I saw four Spitfires, or what we thought were Spitfires, behind us. We were talking to each other on the R/T, monitoring the movements of these fighters. Suddenly one of them zoomed forward, just left the others standing, shooting Eddie down. I turned towards Eddie’s assailant but the old Hurricane was just too slow. The Hun just shot Eddie down and flew off with the others, they just climbed high and left us.”

No. 607, up in two separate Flights was patrolling the Biggin Hill-Gravesend line, covering the south eastern approaches to London, when it was bounced by Bf 109s of JG 27. P/O Harry Welford was shot down, but he accounted for one of the Bf 109s.

“…an unseen 109 fired a cannon shell which hit my air intake. I did a quick flick roll which dropped me below cloud. Again no 109s about and just a lone Hurricane which guarded my tail as I force landed. The engine had seized and looking down I saw a field into which I thought I could land. As I made the approach glycol and smoke streamed from the engine and when I opened the hood the fumes were sucked into the cockpit and impaired my vision. The field was smaller than I thought but there was a wattle fence that acted as an arrester wire and the plane skidded across the second field, and was brought to an abrupt stop by a tree at the far end, making me crack my head on the reflector sight and blood poured from my face. Thinking that the plane might catch fire, I undid my belt and jumped out only to fall flat on my face because my leg, which was injured by shrapnel, collapsed on me. Two farm workers rushed over and picked me up and put me on a wattle fence telling me that there was a German plane down in the next field with the pilot in it, very dead. I regret now that I declined their offer to show me, but at the time I felt pretty dicky.”

Welford made light of his injuries and he did not return to his squadron until 20 October. He was credited with the dead German in the next field. No JG 27 loss matches this claim, in fact I can’t find any trace of this mysterious ‘dead German’.

Spitfires of No 41 Squadron were pulled into combat with Bf 109s of JG 53 over east Kent, as was the Duxford Wing. Nos 19 and 303 (Polish) Squadrons claimed successes. As JG 53 withdrew in some disarray it was attacked by a lone Hurricane near Ashford. This was flown by 501 Squadron’s Sgt James ‘Ginger’ Lacey. The Germans blocked his attack, and immediately afterwards Hauptmann Wolf-Dietrich Wilcke, commander of III./JG 53, got into position behind Lacey’s Hurricane and set it on fire. When Lacey abandoned his burning Hurricane and took to his parachute it was the third time in less than three weeks that he had been shot down. He remained on 18 victories, having failed to add to his tally. Lacey, unlike a German in a similar situation, made a prompt return to his squadron.

Uffz Karl-Heinz Bock of JG 26 suffered an engine failure and made a good landing in his 'White 2' at Broomhill Farm, East Sussex. The British recorded the werknummer of this aircraft as 6294F. The F stands for 'Flugklar' showing that this aircraft had suffered major damage at some time previously, but had been repaired and cleared for flight. Despite this it had not been upgraded from its E-1 standard, being yet another Bf 109 with armament recorded by the British in the Crashed Enemy Aircraft Report as 'Four MG17'. Again, it is not true that all Bf 109s flying in the Battle of Britain had cannon armament. I'm repeating this because I watched James Holland on television a couple of nights ago arguing that it was the cannon armament of the Bf 109 that gave it an edge over the British fighters, which begs the question, what does that make the roughly 40% of Bf 109s flying in the Battle armed with just half weight of armament of the British fighters?
For the model builders out there, a very good photograph of the cockpit interior shows it and the framing of the windscreen to be in a dark colour, presumably RLM 66 applied at the time of the repair. (The hood and rear canopy were jettisoned.)

Today the Luftwaffe had lost 5 of its aircraft with three more damaged. The RAF both lost 6 fighters withy 5 more damaged but repairable.

Also today, five copies of an order, ‘Nr 00 761/40 g. Kdos’ was sent from Hitler’s Supreme Headquarters to the High Commands of the Army, Navy and Luftwaffe. It stated that order ‘Nr 33 255/40 g. Kdos. Chefs’ of 3 September, fixing S-Day, the launching of Sealion, for 21 September was postponed until further notice.

Tonight, the Luftwaffe again made a significant effort. 268 bombers attacked London and other targets. The John Lewis department store on Oxford Street was a notable victim. Merseyside also suffered a heavy raid. British night fighters had limited success, accounting for two bombers. One was a Ju 88 of I./KG 54, shot down by Sgts Laurence and Chard flying a Defiant night fighter of No 141 Squadron, who took full advantage of the full moon. A lone German aircraft managed to hit the cruiser HMS Sussex in Glasgow’s harbour so badly that the ship burned for 23 hours and finally had to be beached.

Bomber Command mounted its biggest operation of the war so far. It dispatched 194 aircraft, two thirds of which attacked German invasion preparations in the Channel ports. An ammunition train was hit at Dunkirk causing a large explosion. Whether ‘500 tons’ of ammunition exploded, as is often claimed, is a moot point. Eighty barges were sunk or damaged.

[adt70hk]

Steve

Yet again thanks for this!

ATB

Andrew

[Tim Marlow]

Thanks yet again for this....with respect to the performance of the fighter aircraft, I thought it was the dive/zoom capability of the 109 that gave it the edge in combat? Armament in fighter v fighter combat is only really useful if you can get in position to use it ......

[stona]

Thanks yet again for this....with respect to the performance of the fighter aircraft, I thought it was the dive/zoom capability of the 109 that gave it the edge in combat? Armament in fighter v fighter combat is only really useful if you can get in position to use it ......

I don't think that the Bf 109 had an edge over the Spitfire or vice-versa. I think that the deciding factors were invariably the skill of the pilots and the tactical situation when the fight began. Time and again you will read accounts where formations were 'bounced' by the enemy, almost immediately losing at least one or two aircraft. Whichever side had the advantage and made the 'bounce' won.

Much is made, for example, of the ability of the Bf 109 to bunt into a dive due to its fuel injection system. It is true that if a Spitfire or Hurricane attempted this manoeuvre it would suffer a rich cut out as the engine flooded, causing the clouds of smoke and puffing and banging described by those who experienced it. However, as I once saw Bader explain, negative g is 'rather unpleasant' and causes dust dirt and 'old spanners' to fly up from beneath the pilot. Any pilot worth his salt would simply roll his aircraft inverted and pull into the dive with positive g subsequently rolling back to hopefully see the Bf 109 in front of him. The advantages of carburettors are often ignored, most obviously the increase in power afforded by the cooling of the charge introduced to the cylinders.
The Bf 109 could dive fast but there was a belief in the Luftwaffe that pulling out too hard from a fast dive could result in wing failures. The loss of Balthasar is an example often mentioned. This meant, in Bader's words, that the German pilots tended to be 'a little porky on the joystick when going very fast', allowing a well flown Spitfire to cut the corner and close up on the Bf 109.

All of this depends on pilot skill, not any intrinsic property of either aircraft which were so closely matched.

Hans Eckhardt Bob always maintained that he could out manoeuvre a Spitfire in his Bf 109, and I believe him. He was a superb pilot who could fly his machine at its limit. Many of the men he flew against were not and could not. If a Spitfire and Bf 109 are both flown to their limit, the Spitfire will always out turn the Bf 109, whatever has been written elsewhere. This is basically a matter of physics, not pilots :smiling3: As the man who designed the Spitfire's wing, Beverley Shenstone, explained. "Wing loading is the vital point. No matter how fast one can fly, if the wing loading is high, one is caught by the more lightly loaded aeroplane when manoeuvring." There is a reason why the short stubby wing of the Bf 109 used high lift devices (the slats).

Holland said a lot of things in that programme with which I would not agree, but this is just an indication of how strong and ingrained certain myths have become. For example, he correctly said that Goering asked his fighters to operate in a free hunting way, flying high above the bombers, making sweeps ahead of the bombers etc. but then later ordered them into close escort. It's just not true. The fighters were ordered to provide a closer escort; it happened tomorrow, eighty years ago, after the Battle was already lost, and the order was not Goering's, it was Kesselring's. Kesselring had a background in artillery, he was not a fighter pilot like Goering.

[Guest]

Thanks fo the little extra on the Barges. Very interested in that aspect.

As you have poited out soe aspects of what happened are circumspect.

Just wondering if in Enemy Coast Ahead by Guy Gibson may have info. Do no have the book after disposing of my 800 colection.

[stona]

As you have pointed out some aspects of what happened are circumspect.

Sometimes it is just impossible to reconcile claims and losses or individual accounts, like that of the the dead German in the field with a specific person. Welford had no reason to make such a story up, and I don't doubt that he was told that the downed German was in the next field. It is almost certain that there was a downed German nearby, it's just that today, so many years later, we can't say who he was. I don't think he was from JG 27, but that's about all we can say.

I was just looking at some accounts from the fighting in a few days' time. There is a famous photograph which, almost by repetition, is captioned as a No 72 Squadron Spitfire flying over a downed Luftwaffe machine. In my humble opinion this must be a No 41 Squadron Spitfire flown by P/O George ‘Ben’ Bennions. It doesn't matter, whenever that image is reproduced in the future it will be captioned as a No 72 Squadron Spitfire :smiling3:

[Guest]

Yes at the moment the news programmes put out some nonsense on the B o B. Plus with no explanation at all.

Dan Snow is another. One of my sons, a film editor, worked on the invasion beaches. Being my son Peter I looked at the content in detail.
So much speculation and this is then trapped in people's minds.

Hasten to add my son did an exemplary job but did not have an input on content.

On this subject way off topic we were a boating family. One trip we investigated from Cherbourg to Le Havre. Fascinating to see all the remains of the temporary harbours etc. Dived into most of the villages small towns with marinas & saw a lot of what went on. Pity Snow did not.

Look out for Peter Stewart editor supreme. had to say that :smiling: Apologies.


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