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By Root 1105 0

first glimpse of the massed Luftwaffe assault of 7 September. ‘Ahead and above a veritable armada of German aircraft … staffel after staffel as far as the eye could see … I have never seen so many aircraft in the air all at one time. It was awe-inspiring.’ At the outset, German aircrew derived comfort from flying amid a vast formation. ‘Wherever one looks are our aircraft, all around, a marvellous sight,’ wrote Peter Stahl, flying a Junkers Ju88 on one of the September mass raids. But he and his comrades quickly learned that security of mass was illusory, as formations were rent asunder by diving, banking, shooting Hurricanes and Spitfires. By late afternoon of the 7th, a thousand planes were locked in battle over Kent and Essex. George Barclay’s Hurricane was hit and he was obliged to crash-land in a field. The Germans lost forty-one aircraft on 7 September, while Fighter Command lost twenty-three. As in all the battle’s big clashes, the British had the best of the day.

Ulrich Steinhilper, flying a Bf109, was one of many pilots who, between spasms of intense fear and excitement, was struck by the beauty of the spectacle they created: over London one September day, he gloried in ‘the pure azure-blue of the sky, with the sun dimmed by the sinister smoke penetrating to extreme height; this interwoven and cross-hatched by the con trails of fighters locked in their life-and-death struggles. In among this, the burning balloons and the few parachutes in splendid and incongruous isolation.’ The Luftwaffe’s 15 September onslaught was unaccompanied by the usual feints and diversions, so that Fighter Command was in no doubt about the focus of the threat, and could throw everything into meeting it. Squadrons were scrambled to meet the raiders in pairs, intercepting as far forward as Canterbury, while the Duxford ‘big wing’ engaged over east London. That afternoon, the Luftwaffe’s second attack also met strong defending fighter forces; in all, sixty German aircraft were shot down – though the RAF claimed 185. Between 7 and 15 September, the Luftwaffe lost 175 planes, far more than German factories built.

The assault remained incoherent: the attackers had begun by seeking to destroy the RAF’s defensive capability, then, before achieving this, switched to attacking morale and industrial targets. Their relatively light bombers carried loads which hurt the British, but lacked sufficient weight to strike fatal blows against a complex modern industrial society. The RAF did not destroy the Luftwaffe, which was beyond its powers. But its pilots denied the Germans dominance of the Channel and southern England, while imposing unacceptable losses. Fighter Command’s continued existence as a fighting force sufficed to frustrate Goering’s purposes. Throughout the battle, British factories produced single-engined fighters faster than those of Germany, a vital industrial achievement. Fighter Command lost a total of 544 men – about one in five of all British pilots who flew in the battle – while 801 Bomber Command aircrew were killed and a further two hundred taken prisoner; but the Luftwaffe lost a disastrous 2,698 highly skilled airmen.

Churchill’s personal contribution was to convince his people, over the heads of some of their ruling caste, that their struggle was noble, necessary – and now also successful. The Battle of Britain exalted their spirit in a fashion that enabled them to transcend the logic of their continuing strategic weakness. ‘Our airmen have had a gruelling time, but each day that passes the more magnificently they seem to carry on the fight,’ wrote an elderly backbench Tory MP, Cuthbert Headlam, on 20 September. ‘It is odd to see how much we owe to so small a number of young men – here are millions of us doing nothing while the battle is being decided over our heads by a chosen band of warriors drawn from here, there and everywhere … They must be a superb body of men … one would like to know the difference in material strength of our RAF and the Luftwaffe: some day presumably we shall know – and then, more than ever, I expect,