A guest post by David Garrett:
The Battle of Britain was fought eighty years ago next year
Eighty
years ago, on 1 September 1939, World War II began when Germany invaded Poland,
and refused a British ultimatum to withdraw from that country. Eighty years ago
next year is the anniversary of the first
and last major battle to be fought in the air: the Battle of Britain. Because
of advances in technology – most notably drones and precisely targeted missiles
– there was never and will never be a
battle like it again. While revisionism
among historians means its significance is arguable, for me it was one of the
most decisive battles of all time, and probably prevented a successful invasion of
Britain by the Nazis.
By
the (northern) summer of 1940, Germany under Hitler had experienced nothing but
victories. The low countries were overrun in days; after Germany attacked
France on 10 May 1940, Paris was in their hands five weeks later. Between 26
May and 4 June, the “Miracle of Dunkirk” saw more than 300,000 British and
French forces – minus almost all their equipment – evacuated from the beaches.
The inability of the Luftwaffe to prevent such numbers escaping was arguably
Germany’s first setback of any significance.
While
Hitler’s true intentions regarding an invasion of Britain are now hotly debated
among revisionist historians, in my view Hitler’s intention was undoubtedly to
invade Britain following what he saw as
its arrogant rejection of his various
“peace offers”. Whether an invasion would have been successful given the Royal
Navy’s unquestioned control of the sea is a much more arguable question – it
may well be that such an attempt would have failed as had every other attempt
to invade across the channel since 1066. What is unarguable is that before such
an attempt could be made, Germany had to wipe the RAF from the skies, and
achieve total air supremacy. In June and July 1940, that they would so do seemed a foregone conclusion.
The
British began the battle outnumbered 4:1 in aircraft. Both sides had superb
fighter aircraft: on the British side the famous spitfire and hurricane, on the
German the Me Bf. 109 E . One could write a book about the various strengths
and weaknesses of both sides’ aircraft; suffice it to say that taken overall, I
believe both sides had machines of roughly the same caliber. Where one had –
say – a slight advantage in speed, its opponent was slightly more maneuverable.
Against
German superiority in numbers, the British had a number of advantages, most
notably radar, which although still rudimentary, was much better than the
German. In addition, radar was primarily a defensive weapon at that time; it
gave the British the crucial 20 minutes or so warning that an attack was
imminent – long enough, all going well, for the spitfires and hurricanes to
take to the skies to meet the invader.
Another
major British advantage was simply that the battle was fought over its own soil
– downed RAF pilots stood a better than even chance of surviving to fight
another day, while German pilots – if they survived – became prisoners. Another related advantage was time – the
German fighters only had enough fuel for 15 minutes or so over England before
they had to break off and retreat back across the channel. On the British side,
it was not uncommon for pilots to undertake two or three sorties per day. At
the height of the battle, on 15 August, some pilots flew 7 sorties in one day.
A
crucial advantage on the British side was the way the battle was fought,
largely under the hand of New Zealander Air Marshal Sir Keith Park. Park
directed the operations of 11 Group, Fighter Command, whose aircraft were the
closest to the channel, and who bore the
brunt of the fighting. Although Park’s contribution was recognized at the time,
it is only perhaps in the last 10 or 15 years that its significance has been
fully appreciated.
In
1947, Lord Tedder, Chief of Air Staff, said of Park:
“If any one man won the Battle of Britain
he did. I do not believe it is realized how much that one man with his
leadership, his calm judgment, and his skill, did to save not only this country
but the world”
Nowadays, revisionist historians argue
that the last part of that statement is hyperbole, and that the various
undoubted obstacles other than the RAF which
existed to frustrate any invasion would have put paid to it. As I have
said, I myself believe that if the
Battle had been lost, Hitler would undoubtedly have attempted an invasion; whether
it would have been successful can never be known, and will always be a matter
of debate.
There is certainly plenty of evidence that an
invasion would be attempted once air
supremacy had been achieved. Europe was scoured for barges which were either
already suitable or could be converted
for use as troop carriers. There is evidence of training for water borne
landings on a hostile coast. It is also important to realize just how weakened
Britain by then was – while 300,000 members of the BEF had been successfully
evacuated from Dunkirk, for the most part the British army was left without
military equipment, particularly artillery and tanks. Almost all of that had
been left behind in France.
But back to the Battle. The leader of
the Luftwaffe, Reichsmarshall Herman Goering, made two major blunders which
together, arguably lost him the battle. The first was his complete failure to
appreciate the crucial role of radar, then almost exclusively a defensive
weapon – which assisted the British to precisely identify their target, direction height and numbers – when they were
still a long way off.
On 12 August 1940, the day before the
battle began in earnest, the Luftwaffe attacked the British “chain home” radar
stations around the south coast. Several were badly damaged, and one put out of
action – but not for long. Crucially, those attacks were not repeated. Unlike
Goering, Park’s boss, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding fully appreciated radar’s significance, and
set up what was the world’s first integrated air defence system; radar and
observer stations linked to Fighter Command’s headquarters. The crucial 20 or
30 minutes warning radar gave enabled the fighters to be scrambled to meet the
German invaders. And scrambled again if necessary. As the battle wore on, the German pilots
became demoralized because the RAF always seemed to be waiting for them.
Notwithstanding the “home” advantages,
and the courage of the pilots and the ground controllers behind them, mostly
women, by the 24th of August
things were dire: the British losses were mounting and crucially, the airfields
in the south were being damaged faster
than they could be repaired. But on the 24th of August providence
intervened. A German squadron of bombers became lost, and bombed London – the
first ever bombing of a non military target in the battle. Churchill immediately retaliated by ordering
an attack on Berlin the following night. The damage done was immaterial, but
the attack enraged Hitler and led to a switch from bombing airfields to bombing
cities. After the failure to appreciate
the importance of radar, it was the second major strategic blunder.
On 17 September, Operation Sealion, the
planned invasion of Britain was postponed indefinitely, while the Battle of
Britain morphed into what became known as the Blitz – London was bombed for
fifty nights in succession in what proved to be a futile attempt to break the
British will to fight on.
As I have said, whether Operation Sealion
would have even been attempted
remains a question worthy of debate.
Whether it would have succeeded in landing troops in sufficient numbers is
equally debatable. What is probably unarguable is had Sealion succeeded in
doing so, Britain would have been knocked out of the war, if only through sheer
force of numbers. A seaborne invasion would almost certainly have been combined
with attacks by paratroops, as occurred later in Crete, and again by the allies
in June 1944 before D Day.
There are no New Zealand Battle of
Britain veterans left, and when I last checked, there were fewer than five
alive in the world. Eighty years on, such veterans would all now be aged 100 or more. In addition to Park, we
as a nation have every reason to be
proud. Despite a population one fourth the size of Australia’s, we had more
“aces” – those pilots who shot down five
or more aircraft.
Overall, the British losses dwarfed those of Bomber Command over
the following five long years; Bomber
Command lost more aircrew in one raid than were lost in the entire Battle of
Britain. Nevertheless, Churchill’s famous quote then remains as true now as it
was then:
“Never in the field of human conflict
was so much owed by so many to so few”
