All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [57]
The RAF’s Bomber Command has received less than due credit for its part in the campaign: between July and September it lost twice as many men as Fighter Command, during attacks on concentrations of invasion barges in the Channel ports, and conducting harassing missions against German airfields. The latter inflicted little damage, but increased the strain on Luftwaffe men desperate for rest. ‘The British are slowly getting on our nerves at night,’ wrote pilot Ulrich Steinhilper. ‘Because of their persistent activity our AA guns are in virtually continuous use and so we can hardly close our eyes.’
Goering now changed tactics, launching a series of relatively small bomber attacks with massive fighter escorts. These were explicitly designed to force the RAF to fight, especially in defence of airfields, and for the German planes to destroy it in the air. Dowding’s losses were indeed high, but Luftwaffe commanders were dismayed to find that each day, Fighter Command’s squadrons still rose to meet their attacks. Increasing tensions developed between 11 Group, whose fighters defended the south-east, and 12 Group beyond, whose planes were supposed meanwhile to protect 11’s airfields from German bombers. In late August and early September, several stations were badly damaged. Why were 12 Group’s fighters absent when this happened? The answer was that some of their squadron commanders, Douglas Bader notable among them, favoured massing aircraft into ‘big wings’ – powerful formations – before engaging the enemy. This took precious time, but in arguments on the ground the ‘big wing’ exponents shouted loudest. They were eventually given their heads, and made grossly inflated claims for their achievements. The outcome was that the reputation of Keith Park, commanding 11 Group, suffered severely from RAF in-fighting that in September became endemic, while 12 Group’s Trafford Leigh-Mallory – more impressive as an intriguer than as an operational commander – gained influence. Posterity is confident that Park was an outstanding airman, who shared with Dowding the laurels for winning the Battle of Britain.
Many of the RAF’s young fliers, knowing the rate of attrition Fighter Command was suffering, accounted themselves dead men, though this did not diminish their commitment. Hurricane pilot George Barclay’s 249 Squadron was posted to one of the most embattled stations, North Weald in Essex, on 1 September. A comrade said bleakly as they packed for the move, ‘I suppose some of us here will never return to Boscombe.’ Barclay himself took a slightly more optimistic view, writing in his diary: ‘I think everyone is quite sure he will survive for at least seven days!’
At the end of August, the Germans made their worst strategic mistake of the campaign: they shifted their objectives from airfields first to London, then to other major cities. Hitler’s air commanders believed this would force Dowding to commit his last reserves, but Britain’s leaders, from Churchill downwards, were vastly relieved. They knew the capital could absorb enormous punishment, while Fighter Command’s installations were vulnerable. The men in the air saw only relentless combat, relentless losses. George Barclay wrote to his sister on 3 September in the breathless, adolescent style characteristic of his tribe: ‘We have been up four times today and twice had terrific battles with hundreds of Messerschmitts. It is all perfectly amazing, quite unlike anything else … One forgets entirely what attitude one’s aeroplane is in, in an effort to keep the sights on the enemy. And all this milling around of hundreds of aeroplanes, mostly with black crosses on, goes on at say 20,000ft with the Thames estuary and surrounding country as far as Clacton displayed like a map below.’
Sandy Johnstone ‘nearly jumped clean out of my cockpit’ on getting his