Anniversary talks

15 September 1940, Battle of Britain

Brad Manera Presented by Ian Hodges, Military Historian, Australian War Memorial, on Monday, 15th September 2003 beside the Roll of Honour at the Memorial.

Transcript

Between July and October 1940 a battle raged in the skies over England that has come to be regarded as one of the turning points of the Second World War. Just weeks before, France had surrendered to an ascendant Germany. All of Western Europe was now under German occupation. Hitler expected that Britain would bow to the logic of his military victories, and its own isolation, and seek peace. Instead, England, under the leadership of the combative and charismatic Winston Churchill, only recently made Prime Minister (10 May 1940), committed to continue the fight. For the Germans, no attempt to invade, or even subdue England, could succeed without the defeat of the RAF, already weakened by heavy losses in France. The aerial campaign that followed was quickly named the Battle of Britain.

Normally talks here at the Memorial concentrate on Australian battles or campaigns. In this case, however, few Australians were involved. Twenty-five were considered eligible for the Battle of Britain clasp to the 1939-45 campaign medal. The clasp meant its recipient had flown at least one operational sortie between 10 July and 31 October 1940. And we should remember that Australians were not only in Fighter Command. Some were flying with Coastal Command, others with Bomber Command, but there were far fewer in 1940 than in later years. Each of these other branches of the RAF contributed to the Battle of Britain even though it is most readily associated with the deeds of fighter pilots.

However many were involved, there is still some doubt, but almost certainly no more than 35, Australians made up just a fraction of the 2,917 Fighter Command pilots who have been recognised as having fought in the Battle of Britain. One, Pat Hughes of Cooma, who shot down 14 German aircraft, was among the top ten aces of the battle. Eight other Australians also became aces - ie. They shot down at least five enemy aircraft.

When the battle began, the RAF had 591 aircraft ready to face the enemy. They had several hundred more, but these were not considered serviceable. Most were Hurricanes and Spitfires. Against this the Germans had more than two thousand planes; twin-engined bombers, twin-engined fighters, stuka dive-bombers and the famous single-engined Messerschmidt fighters. In simple terms they outnumbered the RAF by about 4 to 1.

But the numbers only tell a part of the story. The RAF had other advantages — they fought over their own bases and had the ability to retrieve and, where possible, repair crashed aircraft and, of course, uninjured pilots who parachuted out of damaged aircraft would be able to fight another day. They also recognised, well before the Germans did, the importance of radar.

By the spring of 1940 Britain was covered by a mesh of radio beams ranging from the tip of Scotland almost to Land’s End. They could detect enemy aircraft, while they were forming up, as far as 150 miles away at altitudes of up to 30,000 feet. It wasn’t quite this simple and it took some time for the radar operators to work out problems with establishing the enemy’s altitude and strength. It remained, nevertheless, an invaluable weapon and one which the Germans underestimated to their cost.

Air Chief Marshal Dowding knew it would not be possible for the RAF to destroy the Luftwaffe in the air, and it was not his intention to do so. As long as Fighter Command remained intact, he and other senior British figures, knew that the Germans could not invade England. And in the early stages of the battle he ordered his pilots to avoid direct combat with German fighters, to flee them if necessary and concentrate on attacking bombers. The RAF hoped to keep their fighters in the sky until worsening weather in the coming autumn made a seaborne invasion impossible.

German attacks began against Channel shipping in early July and for the next month heavy fighting took place over the waters between France and England as the Germans tried to draw the RAF into battle. Throughout this period RAF pilots were able to shoot down more planes that they lost, but in the 3 weeks to the end of July Fighter Command lost 220 pilots.

The airmen themselves were often learning on the job. Some regulations went by the wayside as men discovered how to improve their chances of survival. The vee formations, impressive in peacetime, were abandoned in favour of looser formations modelled on those used by the Germans. The sheepskin collars on the pilots Irving flight jackets were cut off; you had to be able to move your head freely if you wanted to live. Pilots soon learned that having their guns set so that the bullets would converge at 650 yards was too far. They found themselves firing wildly all over the sky. Men soon readjusted their guns; most kills were achieved at close range.

Despite the losses, morale remained high even as the German attacks became heavier and more frequent. Many pilots remember the exhaustion as much as the fear. Most engagements lasted less than 15 minutes, but the tension and fatigue were relentless. After flying three or four sorties pilots would fall asleep in their cockpits as soon as they landed. When they awoke they faced another 3 or more sorties before sunset. In the air, pilots could find themselves in a sky full of aircraft, fighters and bombers, friend and enemy and sometimes it was impossible to tell which was which. British planes carried about 14 seconds worth of ammunition. If you wanted to live you wouldn’t fire a burst of more than 3 seconds before breaking off. Anymore and you were just as likely to become a victim yourself. Constant maneuvering was the key. You couldn’t linger on a straight flight path.

Confusing and innacurate statistics were believed and promoted by both sides, but the British were more concerned with accuracy than the Germans. By mid-August Goering believed that the RAF was almost finished. He was wrong, aircraft production in England was higher, and losses lower, than the Germans believed. Nevertheless, the outcome of the battle was by no means certain and the Luftwaffe still outnumbered the RAF by about 2 to 1.

On 13 August the Luftwaffe switched its attacks to RAF airfields. Two days later on what was dubbed ‘Eagle Day’ by Goering, the Luftwaffe made its heaviest attacks to date against airfields across the south and west of England. German squadrons based in Denmark and Norway, hoping to draw fighters away from southern England, joined the battle for the first time, but they suffered such heavy losses that they played no further part. The slow and vulnerable Stukas were also withdrawn from the battle.

The Germans succeeded in inflicting severe damage on British airfields and even though their losses were heavier than those of the British, Fighter command was in crisis. It was having trouble replacing its pilots, a quarter of whom had already been lost in the battle. The training period for fighter pilots was cut from 6 weeks to 2. Some new pilots had never fired their guns. Some were just teenagers. Bomber pilots were being retrained on fighters and many had logged fewer than ten hours before being sent into the battle. Reserves were steadily shrinking and in the last days of August the Germans launched their heaviest attacks so far. The Luftwaffe was perilously close to dominating the skies over the area earmarked for invasion. The coming days would be crucial and by 7 September the British government believed that the invasion would begin within 36 hours.

What they didn’t know was how uncertain Hitler’s plans were and although they were unaware of it, the key event determining the battle had already occurred. On 24 August 170 German bombers, on a raid against oil installations at Thameshaven and an aircraft factory at Rochester had got lost and jettisoned their bombs while they were above London. The RAF retaliated the next night by bombing Berlin. It was a militarily insignificant attack, but it was the first time the German capital had been hit — Berliners were stunned and Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to turn its attention to British cities. Attacks on airfields continued for the next ten days but on the night of 4/5 September the Luftwaffe bombed London for the first time. This was the beginning of the blitz and it gave Fighter Command valuable breathing space as the Luftwaffe’s attention was transferred from airfields to towns and cities.

On 10 September Hitler postponed Sea Lion and on the 14th did so again. But Goering believed that the RAF had been broken and planned a final decisive assault on London for 15 September, 63 years ago today. It has since become known as ‘Battle of Britain day.’ The RAF shot down 58 German aircraft for the loss of 26 of their own. The realisation that they had not achieved air superiority was a blow to German morale. Two days later Sea Lion was postponed indefinitely. By the following year, when weather would again permit an amphibious assault German attention had turned to Russia.

Although some fierce fighting remained, 15 September marked the point at which the Germans recognised they could not win the battle. They had lost 2,660 aircrew, Fighter Command, 537. By November, the Luftwaffe cancelled daylight bombing operations, they were too costly. Future raids took place only at night and even these were broken off six weeks before the attack on Russia. The Battle of Britain gave Britain breathing space and the realisation that they would not lose the war. But as one senior officer remarked it remained difficult at the time to imagine how she might yet win it.