Article Type: Military History
Article Date: September 13, 2002
The Battle of Britain, Part 1 - Aircraft
Pilots of the Battle of Britain
Many famous airmen got their start, as it was, in this first intense battle in WWII. After Dunkirk it was the Luftwaffe’s job to take the conflict to Britain. The official time span of the Battle of Britain was from July 10 to October 31, 1940 - 114 days. Since the September 3rd 1939 date of the actual declaration of war on Germany both sides got their feet wet, so to speak, in aerial engagements over Poland and France. As Germany probed the English defenses after Dunkirk on May 29th the adversaries got a “feel” for each other in the air. There had yet to be a decisive battle besides Dunkirk where a clear victory was achieved.
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| Stukas proved easy targets |
The Luftwaffe’s aim was what has today become standard procedure in battle—to gain air superiority before other military arms advance. The Germans probed at first and then concentrated their attacks. The first official skirmish of the Battle was the attack on a Channel convoy. Spitfires of No. 74 Squadron intercepted a Do 17P recon ship with twenty Bf 109s escorts from JG 51. A couple hours later, twenty-four Do 17Zs of KG 2 escorted by twenty-six Bf 110s of ZG 26 and two dozen Bf 109s from JG 51.
The RAF got thirty aircraft to intercept. Spits and Hurricanes of No. 32, 74, 56 and 111 Squadrons mixed it up. 111 Sqn. Began their bomber attacks in what was to be the classic style—head on. Three Dorniers were downed or crash-landed, three 110s were lost and three 109s either were shot down or crash-landed. Three Hurricanes were lost but only one pilot was killed.
We must remember that most pilots on both sides were fairly green at aerial gunnery and there occurred much frenzied maneuvering. Often, short bursts were often all that was possible in the aerial melee.
Days During The Battle
Adolf Galland had flown in Spain and gained experience in combat. On the opening day, July 24th, Galland was in action over the Thames Estuary where they “got into a heavy scrap with Spitfires which were screening a convoy. We made a surprise attack from a favorably higher altitude. I glued myself to the tail of the plane flying outside the left flank. During a right-handed turn I managed to get in a long burst. The Spitfire went down almost vertically. I followed until the cockpit cover came flying off and the pilot bailed out. I followed him down until he crashed in the water. His parachute failed to open.”
Galland compared the combatants saying, “The Vickers Supermarine Spitfire was 10-15 MPH slower than our planes (Bf 109E) but could perform steeper and tighter turns. The older Hawker Hurricane compared badly with our 109 as regards to speed, rate of climb and turning ability.” The Luftwaffe's 109s could also out-dive the RAF fighters.
He praised the fuel injection units of the Daimler-Benz engines saying that not only did they not conk out while inverted they did not hesitate during acceleration at critical moments of combat. He continues,” The British fighters usually tried to shake off pursuit by a half roll or half roll at the top of a loop, while we went straight for them.”
“During this action we lost two aircraft. We had three confirmed kills and were no longer in doubt that the RAF would prove a formidable opponent,” states Galland.
Tactics after assembly at 15,000 feet were to climb to 21-24,000 feet and after engaging, fights could ascend to 27,000 feet. The whole mission for the 109s was no more than eighty minutes. This included twenty for combat for about a 250-mile range at maximum. While Galland and his contemporaries pleaded for drop tanks they got new bomb release gizmos. He mentioned that fighter pilots had no interest in bombing and were “glad to get rid of their cargo anywhere.” Many 109s were lost due to lack of fuel as they returned to France.
While the heavy bomber was envisioned in a useful role the Luftwaffe never pushed for development. Only the He 177 was available. This plane was finally produced at Admiral Dönitz’s urging for U-boat protection. Galland describes Hitler’s distaste for the fight with the British he admired as coloring his decisions about the development of long-range bombers. He wanted the Battle to finish and all else was secondary.
During this time the Stuka was found lacking and was shot down easily. Fighters couldn’t dive slow enough to stay with them at only 150 MPH and the fighter pilots were blamed by Göring for the Stuka’s failure. The High Command never sought a replacement for the ungainly dive-bomber until it was much too late in the war.
Galland, who reached his fortieth victory during the Battle, states correctly that the RAF did not break the Luftwaffe’s back as is often surmised. Rather, the Luftwaffe simply failed to achieve their objective of air superiority.
Douglas Bader survived a pre-war crash losing his legs but adapting to mechanical ones by sheer will power. In the dark days when every pilot was needed he passed an RAF proficiency test and by the Battle was leading 242 Squadron. He continually drilled the men with the “beware of the Hun in the sun” dictum extolled by aces of WWI. While Britain had the virtue of a good radar system surprise encounters were often as the group patrolled.
On August 21st he got airborne after a scramble alert and climbed towards the contact near Yarmouth full throttle. Radar control was heard to say, “Hallo Rusty Red Leader. Bandit angels seven over Yarmouth. Sector one-one-zero.” This was the call to 66 Sqdn. But Bader was closer. Upon arrival he saw nothing but a stratocumulus layer at 8,000 feet. “Might be something in that,” he thought as he lifted his Spitfire’s nose and bored in.
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| Douglas Bader - ace despite the loss of both legs |
Twenty seconds later he broke into the clear and just 700 feet above was a glistening Do 17 with a pale blue belly as the plane was passing left to right in front of him. He wheeled up and the Dornier spotted him and dived for the sanctity of the cloud cover. The bomber had to get by Bader to enter and he closed to a couple hundred yards and fired. Bader had maneuvered directly behind now and saw the rear gunner firing at him as he held the Spit’s button down in a long burst. He fired into the grayness as the plane was enveloped in the cloud.
Soon passing through the cloud himself he found no trace of the Dornier anywhere. He couldn’t claim more than a “damaged” at best. This was an often-told story by pilots losing sight of their quarry. But a few days later intelligence contacted him with the news that a couple of bodies recovered near Yarmouth were those of the crew complete with log book confirming a kill he was unsure even happened.
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| Ammo for the Hurricane's 8 .303s |
Normally the eight .303 Brownings carried a mix of four guns with normal jacketed ball ammo, two with armor piercing, and two with incendiaries. The USAF mixed this same variety of ammo alternately in each weapon. RAF pilots like Adolphus “Sailor” Malan and Alan Deering both liked harmonization of the guns at 250 yards convergence.
As leader of JG 51 Werner Mölders had scored twenty-five kills by July 27th with fourteen more in Spain when his group encountered Malan’s 74 Squadron from Manston. As the Hurricanes went for the escorted German bombers the Spits turned to meet the 109s. As they closed Malan took down a 109 and Mölders a Spitfire. As Malan was scoring Mölders was already on his tail. Malan turned towards the attack and the legendary turning radius of the Spitfire soon put the 109 in Malan’s sights. His .303s raked Mölder’s 109 but in the course of things was able to evade and nurse the damaged 109 home with a wound to his leg also. This was Mölder’s 129th combat mission and would have been his last if the Spits had mounted cannon then.
August 15th saw top Bf 110 Zerstörer (destroyer) pilot Hans-Joachim Jabs’ ZG 76 group escorting Ju 88s on an attack of Worthy Down and Middle Wollop. 110s of Major Erich Groth’s ZG 76 were festooned with a shark’s mouth on the nose making then quite distinctive. Jabs’ group saw action in France and he had six kills by the time of Dunkirk.
How hard was it to excel in the 110? Jabs almost made it seem somewhat routine. During the large convergence of Luftwaffe and RAF aircraft in the battle on the 15th Jabs emerged with two Spitfires and a Hurricane to his credit. The downside was that eight of ZG 76’s 110s were lost. In the bigger picture of the day German planes attacked airfield and radar stations with losses totaling around fifty-five while the RAF lost thirty-four in the air and sixteen on the ground.
Jabs ended his Battle of Britain scoring with twenty. Erich Groth had twelve. Living to war’s end, Jabs got seven more in night operations another Spitfire during a daylight defense sortie. Initially some good 110 pilots did well. But by the time of the Battle’s end they were never again used in the West in large-scale operations. The phrase about 110s later made famous by Thunderbolt ace Bob Johnson, “meat on the table,” was very apropos when Allied pilots encountered them and their Me 210 and 410 descendents.
On July 20th Peter Brothers was providing a CAP (Combat Air Patrol) with No. 32 squadron for a convoy ten miles east of Dover. Things were quite boring until ground radar warned of fifty plus incoming enemy aircraft. The Hurris were happily up sun and saw Ju 87s escorted by 109s and 110s.
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| Channel convoy attacked |
As the Stukas dived and Red Section followed, Brothers noticed about thirty Messerschmitts “taking an unwelcome interest in us, so I swung Blue Section around to attack them. This seemed to offend them so much that they picked on my section of three Hurricanes instead, and from what had been a peaceful sky suddenly erupted into a confusing melee of aircraft swirling round firing at anything in sight.”
“One of the Messerschmitts overshot me and I managed to get on his tail. Opening fire in five second bursts at a distance of 150 yards and closing, I had soon set the 109 on fire. This made me even more unpopular with his squadron mates and the dogfight grew in intensity as four of them attacked me from different directions. I made a head on attacked on two before running out of ammunition. As I wheeled around to guard my tail I found the sky had cleared with not an aircraft in sight - friend or foe. Feeling lonely and vulnerable, I made for home.”
Brothers, always the master of understatement and amusing narrative, said the squadron scored against one Ju 87, two Bf 109s and three Bf 110s for the loss of one pilot and two Hurricanes.
Epilogue
The Luftwaffe had 4,050 planes in the Battle of France and mustered 2,550 against England: 998 bombers, 261 dive-bombers, 224 Bf 110s, 805 Bf 109s and 262 other types including 231 reconnaissance planes. Of the 704 RAF fighters available by the second week of August 1949 620 were Hurricanes and Spitfires with the remainder being Blenheims, obsolete Gladiators and Defiants. The Germans must have assumed the Battle would be another romp against a weak enemy and did not increase production of aircraft while England did so.
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| Defiant team- pilot Thorn & gunner Baker- 12 vics France/BOB |
The Defiants were inadequate and the Blenheims had little effect. The 109s had no drop tanks to increase their range though Stukas did and no effort was made to adapt anything for the short-ranged 109s. The Bf 110s escort fighters were a disaster save for a scant few flown by talented pilots. They needed escorts for the escorts in the form of the Bf 109Es! The opening phases were a sparring contest to size up the enemy from each side.
Adlertag, or Eagle Day, was to be a key focus with the Luftwaffe attacking the radar stations. The stations were hit but only one was out of action for eleven days. Decoy raids off course accidentally flew to where a main force was coming in, which was fortuitously met by gaggles of RAF interceptors. Though the Luftwaffe could stand the losses Göring could not stand a battle of attrition in his temperament. Without knowing the damage assessment fully he slashed the stations from the Luftwaffe‘s hit list. If he had persevered the destroyed stations would have spelled the end for any advantage the RAF had and it would have been ground down with the air superiority going to the Germans.
Tying the 109s to the close bomber escort hampered their flexibility. The Americans later did this but saw the error of their ways and changed.
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| Pre-warming He 111 engines |
One good decision Göring made was to order attacks on RAF airfields forcing them to the air to be shot down or be destroyed on the ground. But he never massed his 900 bombers to finish the job. Instead he sent piecemeal forces, which the RAF could generally deal with. So again, indecisiveness lost the day. Had he concentrated and continued his efforts the RAF could have been broken this way. It certainly was effective when the Alllies later used the strategy against the Luftwaffe.
When off-course bombers dropped their ordnance on London on August 24th it rallied the RAF to send their level bombers at night against Berlin. Up to that point only military targets and munitions factories were attacked. Even Hitler played by a warped set of chivalrous rules. But the retaliatory RAF raids galvanized his resolve and he forced a change of focus of the Battle yet again to concentrate on London at night with 350 bombers and 650 other aircraft on September 7th.
But this simply switched the burden of attack to the British civilians and actually allowed the RAF breathing space. It was paramount that Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of England, commence before inclement winter weather. This revengeful folly insured the survival of the RAF and England. From that point on only faster Ju 88s and fighters ventured over the British Isles in daylight while heavy bombardment continued against the cities at night. Had such a focus been directed against the radar facilities and airfields earlier the Luftwaffe would have possessed the air superiority needed to enforce a cross-Channel invasion. It certainly worked well leading up to June 6, 1944, D-Day, when employed by the Allies.
During the final phase of the Battle of Britain in October 1940 only fighter-bombers made quick thrusts and fighter sweeps during daylight. It was another incoherent tactic without cohesion of strategy. The last stage was just a fizzling out of the Luftwaffe’s might.
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| Hitler & Göring- responsible for BOB failure |
Germany lost 1,733 aircraft and some 3,000 aircrew. The RAF lost 1,265 fighters and bombers along with over 1,500 aircrewmen, some 1,000 from Bomber Command alone. The Luftwaffe could take the lumps of the higher losses since they began with such a superior number. The RAF did not beat them in the classical sense. Their own leaders did using a “let’s try this…no, let’s try that” strategy of throwing so much manure on the wall to see what would stick. In the end none of it did. It was washed away by the valiant RAF. Bomb assessment damage and recon failed to paint proper pictures for the Luftwaffe high command when they were successful too.
Couple this with Hitler’s childish revenge syndrome against the English citizenry that allowed the RAF to build aircraft strength to regroup and we can see the seeds of the loss of the entire war being sown in this pivotal aerial engagement. Those seeds blossomed into mighty oaks of the combined Allied forces years later and the ruin of the Third Reich. With England subdued and ringed by U boats the United States would have never been able to enter Berlin in the spring of 1945. The war would have dragged on an unknown amount of time with certainly an alternate outcome.
As it was this battle paved the way that airpower took in the subsequent years. It was a huge contributing factor to the defeat of Germany. The lesson was learned and air superiority has been the first objective sought in all conflicts since.
Sources
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Adolph Galland
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- Bickers, Richard Townsend
The Battle Of Britain
Salamander Books, Ltd. London 1990
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Clash of Wings
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Reach For The Sky
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War Eagles
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Fighter-The True Story of the BOB
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The First And The Last
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Famous Bombers of the 2nd Word War Vol.2
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