The Battle Of Britain: The Defeat Of The Luftwaffe

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Viva now beginning to feel the effects of being constantly mulled by the RAF.

Instead of the promised reduction in fighter opposition over England, Viva meets ever more spirited attacks by the Spitfires and Hurricanes.

There's V, still at the front line, the slowly but inexorably bleeding to death. I was not untypical of the pilots in our Goopa, and I had recorded over 150 missions over the channel.

On one day alone, I flew on seven sorties. Takeoff 0700, return 0800.
Takeoff 0840, return 0940. Take off 1020, return 1120.
Take off 1200, return 1300. Take off 1340, return 1440.

Take off 1520, return 1620. Take off 1700, return 1800.
And that was from Leutnant Ulrich Steinhilper, who we've met a little bit before in JG52 and crikey. Seven hours of combat flying.

Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk of Britain. With me, Al Murray and James Holland.
And we have reached the final phase of the Battle of Britain. This is our sixth episode.

And finally, the Love Fuffer is going to be defeated. It is curtains for you, Fritz.
I know the last episode we said we've got to put yourself back into the moment and not

know the outcome and put yourself in Keith Park's shoes as he feels he's running out of pilots that we're going downhill and all that stuff.

But the Love Fuffer is going to be defeated in this episode. So stick with it.
This is the last phase for the 7th of September to the 31st of October.

That's a very, very long, seven or eight weeks, isn't it? That's a long, long stretch for the RAF. And it's characterized by the Luffuffer switching to bombing London.

Which happens on the afternoon, of course, of Saturday, the 7th of September, Black Saturday. We talked about this, of course, in our Blitz episodes, our Blitz series, didn't we?

But we will be talking about it from a Battle of Britain perspective. Tom Neal in 249 Squadron, he scrambled at half past four in the afternoon.
18,000 feet.

They see flakbursts and Heinkels, Dorniers, and above them, the fighters. In they go, tally-ho.
And Tom feels like he's a gnat, basically, isn't it?

Coming in against the hide of some vast creature because they're 12 against more than 100. Mind you, he's attacking the bombers.
He dives on the Heinkels. He doesn't need his gun sight.

He can see the bullets striking the bombers. Then he goes through the formation, keeping his eye open for 109s.
And then the 109s pounce on the fighter command fighters as they pounce.

And incidentally, this is Jorik Steinhilber and Co. Right.
There we are. So our protagonists meet, And he spots a yellow-nosed 109 coming towards him from the right.

Tom turns towards it and fires, then gets on its tail and fires again. I fired again and again.
A few bright strikes. A brief puff of dark smoke.
A thin plume of white.

Then a slightly thicker tail of darkening grey. The 109 suddenly looked tired.
It leaned slowly to its right and slid downwards gently. I fired again and again.

It sat there, tilting, in a way, pathetic. Then momentarily a small puff of debris exploded into the air.
It was dying. The aircraft was dying, like an animal mortally wounded.

Not the pilot or man, but an aircraft. It fell away, sadly.
The angle steepening, the trail thickening. I let it go to its death, watching.
I mean, that there we are in the hot seat.

Vivid account, isn't it? Yeah, incredible. But then he realizes he's made the V error, which he's ended up on his own and he's vulnerable.

And he's been paying attention to what he's been doing and not what's going on around him. And he finds some hurricanes.
Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, from one 1st Canadian, Royal Canadian Air Force Squadron. I mean, this is incredible.

Ends up in what he calls a cavalry charge of the wildest kind, hurtling in a 30-degree dive towards the gaggle of Dorniers. His hurricane screaming, and he feels he's in a diving gannet.

The Thames is below him, pillars of smoke rising into the sky. And then, once he's done that attack, he turns and heads for home.

Get the aircraft down on the ground, get it checked over, and then whoever's going to go next, if they go next, can go.

And you know, I mentioned that Ulrich Steinhilber's flying, you know, he can see London burning, but also he's surprised to see so many RAF fighters, you know, and it doesn't align at all what they're being told.

And he realises he needs to concentrate like never before. Everywhere there's danger from the British fighters, from the heavy flak, and from loose barrage balloons.
I mean, that's another thing.

So a loose barrage balloon has sort of come detached and sort of floating in between them all. I mean, you can imagine, can't you, sort of trailing wire?

The last thing you want to be coming into is a sort of melee. I mean, crikey.
And Seifreed Betka, he's also in the fray, a chat that we've mentioned a number of times from JG2.

He dives down on a squadron of hurricanes, which are now nicknamed whore barges from Kurunkena.

Which I think is quite good. That's pretty good.
It's quite witty. He hits one Hurricane and watches the pilot bail out.
And

there's a sense, I think, from these three different accounts of this sort of massive melee and sort of the confusion, sort of tumbling carnage.

It's a very bad day for Tom Neal's 249 squadron because George Barclay is forced to land. Pat Wells is missing.
Boost Fleming is shot down in flames, but seen bailing out.

Sergeant Killingback bails out but badly wounded. So too Sergeant Smithson and Sergeant Beard.
Boost Fleming later confirmed killed in action. Pat Wells in hospital.

So that's six pilots in one sortie, which is, you know, only got 18 to 20 in the first place. That's a big loss.
Yeah. And as Tom Neal notes, the dispersal hut seemed empty that night.
I bet it did.

Yeah. You know, that's a bad day for fighter command.
It's 25th aircraft shot down and 16 pilots killed in action.

And the other thing about Saturday, the 7th of September, of course, is this is the day that call sign Cromwell is signalled.

I mean, it's amazing because this is the day that the Joint Intelligence Committee, remember Tommy Elmhurst and co. He's part of the JIC from Air Intelligence.
Invasion has to be considered imminent.

You know, hundreds of invasion barges have been photographed in the Channel ports. Stukas reported moving to the Pada Calais.

Four German spies caught landing in rowing boats on the southeast coast and confess they're there to report on troop movements.

I mean, you know, I just want everyone to know that not a single German spy successfully penetrates Britain. Hooray.

Tide and moon conditionings are good on the kind of around the 8th to the 10th of September. So it all seems to be pointing to one thing.

You know, and now with masses of bombers over London, the chiefs of staff accept the JIC advice and issue the official alert. I mean, it's just amazing stuff, isn't it?

Particularly given what we know is going on the other side of the channel, where it's prevarication and

chaos.

chaos and everyone everyone arguing over what they want to do rather than listening to anybody else to the armies at eight hours notice Alan Brooks, chief of staff at General Bernard, he gives an immediate action to all troops in eastern southern commands.

And at 8.07pm, Brooke actually issues the signal Cromwell that troops should go at once to invasion battle stations that evening. It's issued to everyone, to the Home Guard as well.

And lots of people take this to... But it is only a warning.

It's not a signal that the invasion has started. No.
It's just an action station. Yeah, but given what's going on in the skies, people think, well, okay, it's kicking off.

And there are reports of German paratroopers, which I think is absolutely amazing. Well, it's damned airman, isn't it? Of course it is.
Of course it is.

Earlier in the summer, you'd had that whole thing about Fausch and Viega disguised as nuns and all that sort of stuff, that kind of mad nonsense. So it's little wonder that people are twitchy.

And there are, you know, the Royal Navy Patrol Service gets out and has a look. It's a febrile moment, isn't it? It's the truth.
It's edgy. Yeah.

And Park jumps in his hurricane to have a look that afternoon.

He realises that the Lufaffer, now that they've turned their attention to London, he'll actually be able to give the air bases some respite because he knows they really do need it.

Big in Hill's been smashed up, as we said in the last episode. It's in a terrible state.
And, you know, on the 7th of September, 92 Squadron are posted to Big Inn from Pembury.

And Tony Bartley is a late arrival. He's been on leave.
He gets there. He arrives in Anson and he sees it's completely smashed up.
There's roughly patched craters, there's wrecked buildings.

And it's completely, you know, it's shocking to him, isn't it? Because of the state of the place. Yeah, completely.

And he sees his old mate, his great friend Brian Kingscombe, who's the at Kingcombe, who's the flight commander, and says, Brian says, we shoot Huns all day, dear boy, and get bestry drunk at night.

But they are, for all that,

they've been under immense pressure. And the station has really, really been smashed.
And the stores have been smashed. So everyone's just been out pilfering a bit.
Some light pilfering going on.

People helping themselves to whatever they want. And just as they've had this conversation, the flak opens up and a lone JU88 emerges through the cloud and then disappears again.

And Bartley says to Kingcombe, What should I do? And Brian Kinkham says, Just put on a tin hat and strike a hostile attitude.

Yeah, and there's this, there's this moment where Bartley sort of goes that he's got this Ford V8, but the others have been driving it while he's been away on leave.

And it's been wrapped around a tree by Norman Hargreaves. So Tony said, Well, I'm going to fix him for that.
And Brian just goes, Being fixed already, poor chap.

He's gone. Yeah.
You know, so there's some other changes because Bob Stanford Tuck has been posted to 257 Squadron.

That's part of this shifting around of experience that Parker's introduced just on the 7th of September. So remember, this is the 13th of September.
So these changes have already happened.

Two others have been shot down and wounded. There's a new CEO, squadron leader Philip Saunders, but he's accidentally set fire to himself with a cigarette lighter.
So

he's order combat. And they're later stood down without actually having flown.
And the mess is bombed out. So they're now in army buildings a bit further down the road.

And Tony Bartley goes off to raid the stores, as suggested, including a spare parachute. But he makes sure that he chats up the packer first because he wants to make sure it's a good one.

Dinner is in the old army mess, and as they eat, bombers roar over to kind of attack London yet again because it's now the blitz has started.

So after that, they all get into the clamber into the squadron truck and head off down to the White Heart at Brastead. And everyone's yelling, 92 Fighter Squadron, at the top of their voices.

And in the pub, Tony meets two identical twins, the McNeil sisters, who seem to be getting very fresh with all the pilots and seem to be known to everybody else.

And from somewhere, free pints keep appearing.

And he turns to Brian Kingcombe and goes, who's paying for all these pints? And Brian Kingcombe just goes, who cares?

It's not us. So

everyone does get bestially drunk, as Brian Kingcombe has promises. Jeff Wellam, boy Wellam, as he's known, is throwing up outside.

And then they go to the Red House, which is this sort of rather nice home owned by

the family of the McNeil sisters. And they get in there and Tony's given a whiskey and records are being played and there's dancing.
And, you know, he's absolutely obliterated.

And somehow, someone drives him home in the truck again in the early hours of the morning. And then Tony's woken up at 4.30 a.m.
with a cup of tea, straight up to dispersal. He's sort of snoozing.

Most people are still wearing pajamas. You know, and he stayed a scambled three times that day.
Yeah.

It's just amazing.

But, you know, the truth is there are, you know, squadrons are different and each has its own little culture i remember talking to bob doe i think he was in 247 squadron something like that he said hardly anyone ever drunk you know they hardly ever went to the pub but they were much more methodist in their approach yeah so it all just depends of course there's much less drinking in the in the luftwaffe yeah and you know one thing we haven't really talked about a huge amount so far is you know what it's actually like being a pilot you know and what your day looks like and

you know it is very early starts and there is a lot of sitting around um not if you're Ulrich Steinhilper towards the end of the Battle of Breton, but for the most part, you know, you're most in Fighter Commander flying maybe kind of once or twice.

I mean, occasionally four times a day. You wouldn't be flying four hours of combat a day in Fighter Command.
No. But relaxation clearly is absolutely vital to your chances of surviving.

And

it's good to try and switch off when you're not flying, but obviously it's very difficult. I mean, you know, getting blind drunk every night is clearly a questionable approach.

But on the other hand, it's also good not to be living and breathing flying all the time as well. And obviously, what is needed is imperturbability, is you know, a cool, calm head.

You know, being calmer means less body tension, slower heart rate, etc. You know, and the best pilots, unquestionably, are the ones who can be ice-cooling in combat.

I think, I think it's really, really interesting. And, you know, I was lucky enough to talk to a lot of pilots about this.
You know, Hans Ecker Bob was obviously in the Luftwaffe. He's in KG.

JG 54, but he told me that he, you know, when he was flying, he always felt complete control.

And one of the reasons was because he'd been a pre-war pilot with a ton of flying ads so so he the flying bit he just did without thinking you know that's second nature which means that he can concentrate on being a fighter pilot yeah you know and he'd always feel you know he'd get anxious beforehand but once he was in his cockpit once he was actually airborne he'd feel the adrenaline kick in and that kept him also from from feeling scared and he also he developed a sixth sense which is something that we talked about i mean i remember talking you know when we were doing the casino episode we were talking do you remember that fausion yop klein yeah and he was saying that he was standing outside the hotel de rose and suddenly had the the sixth sense to duck and he did and a shell went straight over his head just after he ducked.

And it's the same thing everywhere. And, you know, Hanzekar Bob said to me, you'd get the feeling that someone was looking at you.
So then he'd take evasive action quicker. It is fascinating.
Yeah.

I think it's interesting is because there's lots of debate about improving your chances.

Even though the fighter command guys don't, you know, there is clear advice, you know, keep your eyes peeled, come out of the sun, look out for the hunt in the sun.

You know, fight Salem Alan's list of recommendations for being a fighter pilot, you know, know attack with attack with confidence and all that one example here is pete brothers at 32 squadron spent his time sanding down the rivets on his hurricane reckons he got six miles per hour more out of his hurricane now the thing is is whether he did or not it doesn't matter that's a ritual that's a thing that means he's collected with his aeroplane doesn't it it means he's he's it's something to focus on it's something to do and anticipation is always the killer in any activity isn't it that situation they're in is never easy to deal with is it it's like going out to bat you know you feel nervous beforehand but once you're actually batting it's sort of okay You speak with the confidence of a man with many years at the crease there, Jim.

A profoundly experienced batsman.

Well, all right, but I mean, you know, you're also very experienced now.

You're like Pete Brothers because you've done so much public performing that it no longer holds any mysteries, it no longer holds any fears.

But when you first started out, when you were, you know, first going out to Edinburgh, I bet you were thinking, Christ. But Pete Brothers, to come back to him,

he'd also been taught in the 1930s by First World War Flying Ace, which is the sort of residual, the residual tissue in the RAF for the First World War.

And he'd learned all sorts of tricks to minimize blacking out with this aircraft.

How to yaw the plane with some rudder trims so the plane slightly crabs so you're just sliding sideways, which will which

makes you harder to shoot down. I mean, this is really this counterintuitive tricks as well.
Pete Brothers, he said, suppose you see Tracer passing you on the left.

The instinct is to turn away from it. This chap who's shooting will have noticed that he's flying to the left of you and he will be correcting his aim.
Trick him.

Go through where he's firing and you'll you'll collect a few holes but you'll throw off his aim. God, Christ.
That's some advice.

You'll collect a few holes. But obviously the problem is for Sproggs, for the greenhorn straight out of OTU or the OTU equivalent, whether you're Luftwaffe or Fighter Command.

I mean it's just a nightmare because it's totally terrifying, completely confusing, utterly bewildering. You know, and this is why so many are shot down.

And I remember Pete Brothers telling me that not one single pre-war pilot in 32 squadron was killed in action during the Battle of Vitman. That's amazing.

So people were shot down and they bailed out, but not one was killed.

And you can see when you start to kind of talk to people like Pete Brothers, you start to talk to Hanzeka Bob, you can see why they're surviving.

That sick sense, the kind of tricks of the trade, total control of the machine you're flying. You don't have to think about that at all.
You can completely concentrate on the job in hand.

You know, compared to someone who's with lesser experience, you know, they haven't got a chance, have they?

This is why that Park classification, such a simple system, is so genius and why it's so important to the outcome of the Battle of Britain.

Because actually, Park is worrying about pilots, but for Luftwaffe, it's aircraft. That's the problem.
You know, the losses are not being made up.

And that puts a special strain on the fighter pilots, as we alluded to in

the last episode. And the plane shortage is becoming a bit of a nightmare, particularly for the fighter planes.

You know, Siefri Becker in his diary of the 5th of September, you know, we'd already had a quote, but we had a quote from his diary last episode where he was complaining they only had five aircraft.

He goes, the group still has 18 planes, the second has 12, and the third doesn't have many more than that. One Sestura wing apparently only has 12 planes.
There is currently a crisis with planes.

There are enough pilots. And I mean, that is absolutely amazing.
You know, and on the 5th of September, there's some staffel that can't even put a single plane into the air.

And of course, this then puts extra strain on the pilots, extra strain on the ground cruisers, extra strain on the staffel that do have a few planes.

You know, and no one wants to let a Sprog up in their precious ME-109. And the bottom line is combat flying is very, very tiring.

And I remember talking to Bea Biemont, you know, who we mentioned a few times, who was flying with 87 Squadron. He goes, flying, what fighting was tiring.
It was all cumulative.

The weeks went by, and the pressure never stopped.

And then there was the loss of your colleagues, which you had to, you know, which you have to deal with, which is precisely why Dowding is so insistent that despite this crisis that he feels he's in at the beginning of September, that they still have their 48-hours leave every two weeks, and they have a 24 hours off every week.

And all the rest of them don't fly too hard. And the Luftwaffe isn't doing that.
There's no regular Leaf baked in.

They aren't into the idea of combat fatigue. And also, I mean, also, the entire thing is about, well, we'll do it for another four days and we'll have one.
So why would you rotate your cruise?

One last push. One last heave.
Why would you rotate your cruise in that situation?

And also, there'd be a whole lot of people who wouldn't want to be rotated out when they're on the brink of pulling off something massive, after all. And Kesselring and Speller, they've got no choice.

They've got to keep going because they have to destroy the REF. And that needs a force bigger than the one they have.

Because I think Betka's wrong when he he says there's a crisis with planes he's right about that there are enough pilots he's wrong about the pilots there are not enough pilots they're feeling the pinch both ways they're shorter pilots and they're short of airframes it means the experienced people are getting more experience but they're also getting worn out and so you do see expert and being shot down and the weather is also they're flying when they shouldn't be yeah exactly exactly because they have to fly as the weather's worsening steinhilper i mean it's interesting as he said we began to feel the fatigue and the tiredness that comes with living under constant threat we would feel the relief of returning to base, but would then have to cope with the emotions of having lost friends and colleagues, knowing also that within minutes we would have to do it all over again.

I love the fact that they have this mooleinsatz, which is known as a which, you know, the direct translation is a rubbish action, i.e., you know, going over when there's absolutely no point in flying whatsoever because the weather's bad or they're not going to see anything because it's just a complete mashup.

Yeah.

You know, they're running on fumes, basically, and many are flying back on vapors because after all the issue for the 109 is you've only got 10 minutes of flight over the compact zone and you can get that wrong if you get too if you get too stuck into a combat action.

You can't just suddenly decide to pull out.

You've got to sort out the Spitfire on your tail. Yeah, exactly.

And after the break we will take you to Battle of Britain Day, Sunday the 15th of September, a day when the weather was fine and the visibility was good at dawn.

We'll take you through what for many is the climactic day of the Battle of Britain. We'll see you in a tick.

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Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk, where like an enticing plump cherry dangled on its stalk, we have offered you Battle of Britain Day and not just that the end of the Battle of Britain.

That's what we aim to do in this episode, isn't it, James?

Although there is to come a bonus episode about Douglas Barder and and the Big Wing controversy, it's hugely important for the fate of Fighter Command the following year in its own way.

And also we want to look at Douglas Barda because he is an absolutely amazing, extraordinary person.

But first of all, what we're going to do first is go through, well, I felt it'd be interesting for us to do this in a sort of fairly clinical way is actually look at what really happened on Sunday, the 15th of September, and try and separate some of the mythology around it from the reality.

And then once we've done that, then we can sort of wrap up what happens following on from this at the end of September into October 1940.

But that day, as you said, at the end of the first half, dawn's fine and visibility is good.

Cloud develops steadily over southern England as the morning wears on, however, and by mid-afternoon, there's thick clouds around 4,000, 6,000 feet. However, early morning.

Luftwaffe reconnaissance planes are first seen over spotted over west of England and northwest between 0900 and 1100 hours.

A single Heinkel 111 is shot down over over Bolthead, just south Devon, soon after 9 a.m. And I'm pretty sure that's shot down by 87 Squadron.

There's nothing again in the southeast until after 10 a.m. So, southeast being 11 group, this is Parks area, this is the main event.

When suddenly there is increasing numbers of German patrols over the Straits of Dover, and this is the first sign that enemy raids are likely.

And by 11 a.m., it's clear from RDF data radar that something big is brewing. So, the first wave of major attacks is aiming for London and that is happening between 11.30 a.m.
and 12.45.

The first wave of German bombers doesn't cross the Kent coast until 11.33 a.m., which means that Parks had time, actually, good time, to get himself organised.

And at this stage of the battle, he's coupling squadrons into pairs.

He's got 10 squadrons doing this, and he's bringing in a calling for reinforcements from 10 and 12 groups to his west and to his north, and all before 11 30 a.m for instance the duxford wing was airborne by 11 25 a.m so that on this occasion would be in position to intercept at the at the right moment here we go jim so 11 05 what have we got 72 and 92 squadrons from big and hill are ordered to patrol canterbury at 25 000 feet and this includes tony bartley who we mentioned earlier on he takes off he sees london swathed in low mist which is largely caused by the fires of the previous night he can see the sort of silvery twinkle of barrage balloons and as he climbs higher he can see the silvery snake of the Thames and all the rest of it, and climbs up.

And of course, in 92 Squadron, you're one of only 12 flying at that particular moment. So, you know, you feel pretty vulnerable when you do spot the enemy when it comes over.

1115, 229 and 303 squadron. So, this is the Koshusko squadron poles from Norfolk are ordered to patrol Bigin Hill at 15,000 feet.

So, in other words, protect Biggin while 72 and 92 Squadron are up over towards Kent.

1115 also scrambled are 253 and 510 squadrons from Kenley, which is nearby to Biggin Hill, which is also ordered to patrol Maidstone at 15,000 feet. Again, these are our Hurricane squadrons.

1115, 17 and 33 squadrons from Debden ordered to patrol Chelmsford at 15,000 feet.

1120, 504 squadron from Hendon and 257 squadron from Martlesham ordered to meet over North Weald at 15,000 feet and then patrol Maidstone. 1120, so a brace of squadrons being scrambled at 11.05.

Six squadrons being scrambled at 11.15. Two more squadrons at 11.20 and a further two squadrons at 11.20.
603 squadron from Hornchurch is ordered to patrol Dover at 25,000 feet. This is Spitfires.

Spitfires of 609 Squadron from Middle Wallop

are asked to patrol Brooklyn's Windsor. So this is the edge, the western edge of London.
And their 10 group being brought

being brought east to cover where 11 group can't cover.

11.25, the Duxford Wing, which is 242 squadron commanded by Douglas Barner, 19 Squadron, 301 Czech Squadron, 611 squadrons, all set off from Duxford to patrol Hornchurch at 25,000 feet.

Again, then that's to protect 603 who've already taken off. It all makes perfect sense.
And at 11.33, as we said, the German bombers cross the Kent coast and they're in three columns.

They fly north and then they turn southwest towards Maidstone and spread out with the bombers in five formations abreast.

Most of them are Dornia 17s from 1 KG76 and they're supported by two Grippenov fighters, which is six squadrons, Staffeln, although as we've explained, these are smaller squadrons than the RAF squadrons.

1135, 249 and 46 squadrons from North Weld are ordered towards South London.

At 11.40, and this is the picture's developing for Park in his command centre as he's seeing more, as he's getting more from the Observer Corps, and the pilots reporting what they're seeing now as well.

You've got that added into the mix.

The point is to just peck away at the German formation as much as possible all the time to give them no let up whatsoever to disrupt their formations to kind of you know unnerve them to sort of drive them away from London.

That's the point. 1140 1st Squadron Royal Canadian Air Force, 1 squadron deployed from Northolt and 605 from Croydon.
They've joined over Kenley at 15,000 feet.

At 11.40 at the same time, 41 squadron from Hornchurch were ordered to patrol Gravesend. At 11.42, 66 squadron from Gravesend are ordered into the air.
So there you go, that's the overlap there.

You can see how that's working. At 11.45, enemy formations are engaged by 253 and 501 squadrons in head-on attacks.
Who say they've seen 20 Dornier 17s and 50 109s? Then it gets really gets going.

At 1200 as at noon, the enemy engaged by 66 and 41 squadrons. 66th squadron attacked the bombers.
41 squadron engaged the fighters. That's a five-minute encounter.

At five past 12, hot on the heels of this, 257 and 504 squadrons engage. They say they've seen 25 Dorothea 17s in five lines of five abreast at 17,000 feet, plus the ME109s escorting at 23,000 feet.

These squadrons, they get into these bombers with not too much interference from the ME 109s. And then at 12.05, the Duxford Wing joins the attack and gets stuck in as well.

As well as 249 and 446 squadrons. Basically, I mean, the sky is full of tangling squadrons.
Isn't it? This is amazing. And the leading bombers are

starting to reach London, but the attack is comparatively light at this stage. An electricity station at Beckenham is hit.

Bomb falls in the garden in front of Buckingham Palace, and two bridges across the Thames are damaged. But otherwise, the bombing is sporadic over South London.

The number of bombs dropped suggests a bomber force of 30 Dorniers maximum. It's probably actually a bit less than that.

The bombers are left to fend for themselves and they head west while the ME109s turn to engage the Spitfires of the Duxwood Wing and then turn for home, heading back along the north Kent coast.

So the squadrons from Norfolk also attack the retreating ME-109s. The attack is roughly handled, and the enemy formations are harried from start to finish.

And there are many, many more British fighters in the air than there are Luftwaffe aircraft. So I think this is really, really interesting.
And we'll go into this at the end of this.

We'll do some analysis of the whole thing. So Fighter Command loses 14 fighters and a further five badly damaged, seven pilots killed or missing, and four pilots wounded in that one.
Yeah.

And then there is a second wave. This is a second major attack and a larger attack.

So at 13:45, 1:45 p.m., the first signs that the Luftwaffe is massing as Chain Home, RDF, starts to pick up the signals.

1400, 222 and 603 squadrons from Hornchurch ordered to patrol Sheerness at 20,000 feet. So they're Spitfires.

At 1400, a 17 squadron and 257 squadrons from Debden ordered to meet over Chelmsford at 15,000 feet. So they're hurricanes.

249 also at 2 p.m. from Northwield and 504 from Hendon.
Ordered to meet over Hornchurch.

Same time, 2 o'clock, 6.05 squadron from Croydon and 501 from Kenley, order to take off and meet near Kenley at 25,000 feet. 1405, Luftwaffe formations start moving west.

Also, that time, 92 Squadron scrambled again, and also 41 squadron from Biggin Hill, meet at Hornchurch at 20,000 feet. Yep.

249 Squadron and 1 Canadian Squadron ordered to take off from Norfolk to patrol the base at 5 past 2. You know, and so it goes on.

10 past 2, 41 squadron, 46 squadron, 66 squadron, 72 squadron, all scrambled b flight only of 73 squadron from castle camps ordered patrol maidstone three more squadrons um put into the air at 215 yeah 253 607 213 duxford wing of five five squadrons this time ordered to patrol hornchurch at 25 000 feet 238 squadron from middle wallop ordered to patrol the base then to brooklands and kenley so again covering the backs of the of the and the airfield as those aircraft are up in the up in the air and by quarter past two almost all of the of 11 groups um squadrons are airborne.

Yeah. Pretty methodical, isn't it? Again, it's staggered.
This is about what the Downing system is all about, is management and control of the airspace.

And that you're always covering your back as well, because you need the air bases in after what's been happening in particular, you really need to protect the airfields as well.

And at fourteen between fourteen fifteen and fourteen twenty, three German forces cross the coast between Dungeness and Dover. They advance on parallel lines over Kent.

The estimated size is one hundred and fifty aircraft. The reality is it's about it's between one hundred and one hundred and twenty bombers.
Southern formation is mainly Dornier 17s.

Central formation is Heinkel 111s and Dornier 17s. And the northern formation is Heinkels.
And they're escorted by a smaller number of fighter aircraft. 1420.

So this is all happening on top of itself. Five smaller formations of 90 aircraft come across the Kent coast.
That's the fighter escort. So the fighter ratio...

So 90 plus in total. Exactly.

Yeah, the bomber to fighter ratio is one to two. The overall front of this combined LeFuffer formation is about 30 miles and it's around 300 aircraft.

And the thing is, is later in the war, many more aircraft will be thrown into battles and you'll have thousand bomber raids and all that jazz.

But this is a big effort aimed at London and all this sort of stuff. Imagine seeing that.
Imagine going out into your back garden and watching that lot coming over the coast.

If you really want to understand what it looks like, look at one of the sort of anniversary fly pass that the RAF does. Yeah.

Where basically you've got sort of, you know, 12 aircraft and you're supposed to impress me. And then think what that looks like when you've got 300.

This means that there's going to be another big engagement. At 14.45, 603, and 41 squadrons engage.
B-flight of 73 squadron, which is five hurricanes, gets stuck in five minutes later.

And between 10 to 3 and quarter past 3 that afternoon, between 14.50 and 15.15, Lefuffer formations are under constant attack from different units coming at them at different ways.

66 and 72 squadrons get in, 504 and 249, then 17 and 257, 605 and 501. And soon after that, 92 and 41 squadrons also get get stuck in.

The Germans might be offering a maximum effort, but so is fighter command. At the same time, you've got bombs falling on London.
An electrical power station in Deptford is hit three times.

Telephone exchange at East Ham is put out of action. And a gas holder, one of those great big gas holder things, is destroyed.
Electricity transformer substation destroyed at West Ham.

Oil works set fire at Erith and railway communications damaged at West Ham. It's all pretty lightweight stuff, let's face it.
Yeah, yeah. 510, the Duxwood Wing attacks.

So in all, 10 squadrons from 11 Group, 5 squadrons from Duxwood Wing, all attacking during the 25 minutes between 14.50 and 15.15. In all, only four British finals killed or missing, five wounded.

There's Ray Holmes, isn't there, who attacks in his hurricane and goes straight into Hornier and slices off its tail and it plunges into Victoria Station because he thinks it's going for Buckingham Palace and he thinks he ought to do something about it.

And you know, the truth is, of these two, these are the two big attacks on London on Battle of Britain Day.

And the first one amounts to about 100 enemy aircraft, which are attacked by about 300 Spitfires and Hurricanes.

And in the second one, which is the biggest one, which peaks around 3 p.m., you're looking at 300 German aircraft attacked by 330-plus Spitfires and Hurricanes.

Now, where the whole myth comes from about sort of being massively outnumbered is, of course, that the, you know, as we've already alluded to earlier on in this series, is that the Luftwaffe are massed and coming at the time of their choosing, whereas Park is deliberately sending up Spitfires and Hurricanes in squadrons or pairs of squadrons, so that at the moment of engagement, you as a single pilot feel very, very outnumbered, but collectively you're not.

And it's absolutely no question that Park's tactics of this constant sort of pecking and all the time and harrying the formations from start to finish is the right one.

But that's where this myth comes from.

You know, the truth is, first major attack on the 15th of September, the Luftwaffe is massively outnumbered to a tune of three to one, rather than them outnumbering the enemy, the RAF.

And in the second one, peaking at 3 p.m., they're also outnumbered, albeit, you know, to a lesser degree.

We've just been looking at it in the kind of slightly the wrong way because we look at it from the bias of the individual pilot, which is understandable.

And of course, it's terrifying and all the rest of it if you are one of those individual pilots, but it gives a sort of slightly distorted view of the reality.

And of course, the myth has been enhanced by Churchill's own account by going down to the Uxbridge bunker because he's at Checkers, the, you know, the weekends,

the Prime Minister's Grace and Favour house in Buckinghamshire. And he thinks, oh, this is the kind of weather for a Luftwaffe, and I'm going to go to Uxbridge.

So he drives over to Uxbridge and stands by Park with his unlit cigar in his mouth, clamps in his mouth, looking down on the dais.

And at one point, he turns to Park and says, Where are all the reserves?

And Park says, There are none. But of course, the way it's written is to sort of sound that this is the last gas.
We're on our croppers and all the rest of it.

But what we don't know what Park said before that or afterward, you know, and for all we know, he might have said, I've got, I haven't got any reserves right now because I've chosen to bring them all to bear so that, you know, I can get the maximum amount of my fighter planes.

But by the way, there are another 350 elsewhere in the country. Yeah.
But he doesn't say that.

And this is the point: is that because of the Park classification, there are another 350 Spitfires and Hurricanes and Pilots Plus, you know, operating around the rest of the country at that moment.

So again, it sort of gives a slightly sort of false impression impression of just how dire the situation was.

You know, I think what's really interesting is the situation is perceived to be dire and is obviously quite serious in the first week of September. But by the 15th of September, the tilt has happened.

By directing to London, they are doing mass formations, which are much easier to respond to in terms of ground control because you can see where they're going to go. There's a huge great formation.

They're clearly going to London. You know, they're not going every which way to every single airfield you could possibly think of.

So they're not having to do so much second guessing from a ground control point of view, which means that you can control your response to the battle much better and coordinate it.

And also, by the 15th of September, the squadron classification has been in action for a week and has dramatically improved

a level of group situation. They've now got full strength, pretty much, or 75% strength experienced pilots in each of the squadrons.
And that makes a massive, massive difference.

And as we know, the strength of the Luftwaffe by this point is depleting massively because their aircraft production is not outstripping the losses.

You know, the losses are outstripping aircraft production. And it's worth mentioning again those figures for the end of September.

You know, single-engine fighters by the end of September is around 276. By the end of October 31st, when officially the Battle of Britain ends, they're kind of under 200.
You know, it's not good.

You know, they've been absolutely whipped.

And the truth is, is two days after this, on the 17th of September, Hitler decides to postpone temporarily Operation Sea Lion, which then gets deferred until the spring of 1941 on Friday, the 12th of October, on a day in which airfighting continues.

The irony of ironies is that the only four days of continually good weather take place at the end of September. Yeah.
You know, from the, I think it's the 27th to the 30th. Yeah.

And they're pretty big, big battles. I mean, you look at the major air battles on the 27th of September.
REF lose 20 pilots and 28 planes. Luftwaffe lose 81 crew and 57 planes.

I mean, those are not small numbers. And in fact, the offensive sort of churn after Battle of Britain Day matches anything that's happened in the months before September the 15th.

And they're attacking the right targets. They're going on the 25th, they go to Filton to hit aircraft factories.
They attack Plymouth and Portland.

Friday the 27th is a major day for the Luftwaffe losing 57 aeroplanes. And the 30th, where they lose another 47 aircraft, the Luftwaffe.
The RAF lose 21.

What it means is that the Germans have tried everything. None of it's worked.

They're banging their heads against against a brick wall aren't they look at those casualties for september yeah yeah look at the casualties for september so ref lose 173 pilots and air crew this is ref pilots it's not it's not not just fighter command and 358 aircraft luftwaffe lose 829 air crew and 629 aircraft you know those are bad numbers i mean what you do see is as october kicks in obviously the days are getting shorter so there's less daylight hours for aerial combat between fighter planes and so the numbers do tail off.

23rd of October, RAF loses one pilot, one plane. Luftwaffe loses five air crew, four planes.
Tuesday, the 24th, RAF loses three planes, three pilots, Luftwaffe, 21, 12.

Another quite big day on the 25th of October: RAF loses six pilots, 14 planes, Luftwaffe lose 30 aircrew, and 24 planes. So, the churn goes on.

And again, you know, the numbers for October: total numbers: REF lose 120 aircrew and 185 aircraft. So, you know, not

Luftwaffe lose 492 aircraft and 379. And the bottom line is they're not outstripping the numbers that they've lost.

The interesting thing though is that, and we, you know, obviously we covered in our Blitz episodes, we talked about that campaign. When they switch to night bombing, it's within their capability.

It's something they can actually pull off. When they do, it's really, really effective.
And the fighter command don't have an answer at that stage of the war.

They've been prepared for daylight defence, but not nighttime defence, which takes you into the chapter of the Blitz where really they can't shoot anything down much, and which also then ties into Hugh Dowding's departure from fighter command.

Although there's more to it than that, as we'll see in our Big Wing episode. But really, what's happened here is the Luftwaffe has been beaten.

It's not a draw when the Luftwaffe need to win. It's not as close-a-run thing as all that.
The Luftwaffe has been soundly beaten by Fighter Command. I think it's fair to say.

And it is a really, really significant and catastrophic defeat for Germany because the whole point was to get the West out of the way quickly so they could properly re-arm again, build up their strength, and then tack the Soviet Union.

The problem is, is that Britain is still in the fight, and across the Atlantic is the United States with its huge resources of manpower and potential industrial might as well.

And that is a major problem for Germany.

And what the failure to defeat Britain leads to is Hitler's ultimately catastrophic decision to go go and invade the Soviet Union far earlier than he'd originally anticipated.

Originally, he's thinking, God, in 1943, maybe 1944, something like that. Now he thinks, hmm, actually, spring, you know, early summer 1941.

So at this stage, he's now thinking about May 1941, which as we know becomes the third week of June in 1941. His thinking now is,

okay, I'm running out of resources. We've cleared out Europe.
We're running short of everything. We need to replenish our stocks.

The only place we're going to do that, because we don't have access to the world's oceans, is in the the Soviet Union. This is our Lebensraum thing, living space, but also getting resources.

So we're going to have to go in early. We'll have a quick hammer blow against the Red Army.
And then, once we've done that, then we'll turn back on the West.

But of course, it doesn't play out as he hopes.

So, you know, when we said that right in the very first episode, I think it was, we did that quote from Churchill on the 18th of June where he says, Hitler knows he must destroy us or surely lose the war.

He's absolutely right.

And that is why the Battle of Britain, although it involves comparatively small numbers of people compared to the kind of vast armies that have a slugfest over the rest of the conflict, it is massively significant, of huge strategic importance.

And it's part in the ultimate victory that takes place for the Allies should never be underestimated at all.

It is an absolute war-changing moment. If you're talking about strategic earthquakes, the major strategic earthquake at this stage of the war, of course, is the fall of France in May and June 1940.

But the strategic earthquake for Germany is its failure to cow Britain and the victory of the RAF in the Battle of Britain.

And it marks the maturation of air power as a weapon of war the summer of 1940 because you see its tactical effect in the Battle for France and then you see its strategic effect in the Battle of Britain with it with an adequate fighter defence.

I think it's quite interesting though because at this point Arthur Harris says well we haven't even got started yet when it comes to the air war which is I think an interesting thought hanging over what will come.

And I mean the other thing and we'll get get to this in our bonus episode, some of the lessons drawn from the Battle of Britain are quite misleading, which is quite interesting.

And we'll talk about that in our bonus episode about Anatomy of a Hero about Douglas Barda and the Big Wing and the consequences of that sidebar to the battle.

But the exciting thing is, in six episodes, we have covered the Battle of Britain. We've done it, Jim.

We can all have a lie down. That's an achievement to all itself because, you know, it's in massive danger going on to 12.
Yeah, I think we can go to the White Heart and drink free beer now.

Who cares who's paying for it, Jim?

And then hang out with them at Neil Sisters. Exactly, exactly.
Thanks, everyone, for listening. We hope you enjoyed that.
There's tons to come this autumn as we get into it.

Because let's face it, this is a bottomless pit, the Second World War. It's only six years, but it's

got more in it than anything else. It's like the most richly stuffed sausage.
We'll see you soon. Thanks very much for listening.
Cheerio.

Cheerio.