Battle of Britain
We celebrate the heroes who defended the skies over Britain, in what was their finest hour
Marking the 80th anniversary of this pivotal WWII battle
By the summer of 1940, the German war machine appeared invincible. Britain had suffered a humiliating defeat in northern France, and although the evacuation of over 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk in May and June was a massive achievement, a huge amount of equipment had been lost. Germany had yet to suffer a major defeat at this point.
“The Germans had been, to put it mildly, in a good run of form,” says Craig Murray, a curator at the Imperial War Museum’s RAF Duxford site. “They’d quickly destroyed Poland’s obsolete airforce and had managed to beat both France and Britain in a matter of weeks. Even to the German High Command this was probably beyond their wildest dreams. However, now they were left with a quandary. Hitler had wanted to negotiate peace with the British. He’d never seen Britain as a natural enemy, more as an ally and not a substantial threat, and he switched regularly between invasion and negotiation.”
Yet, despite these negotiation attempts, there was an invasion plan in place and ready to be implemented. “This is Operation Sea Lion,” says Murray. “For a long period Hitler sits on this and attempts to bring Britain to an agreement. Sea Lion is a massive gamble. It requires all three aspects of the German armed services to work well together, which they don’t. The army thinks it’s a relatively easy job to have troops shipped over in barges across 20-odd miles of water. The Kriegsmarine (the German navy), however, are a little bit more hesitant and see the disparity in strength between themselves and the Royal Navy; they’re not really in that league. The plan also relies heavily on the Luftwaffe achieving air superiority. The problem for the Luftwaffe, however, is in winning the battle with Britain for France they’ve lost about half their operational strength, so it hasn’t been an easy victory. It’s a very difficult plan to pull off. As Moltke, the Prussian field marshal, said,
‘No plan survives initial contact with the enemy.’ It’s not a great plan and eventually they abandon it altogether.”
Despite these initial concerns, however, the German High Command decided to implement Sea Lion, which raises the question: how ready were the RAF for a large-scale attack? The answer is, of course, extremely ready. Fighter Command had been preparing for a considerable amount of time and despite defeat in the Battle of France, in the Battle of Britain they were able to utilise an ingenious new system organised by Commander-in-chief Hugh Dowding. “He comes up with an integrated battle management system which utilises radar,” Murray explains. “He’s seen the advantage of radar early on. He’s got no scientific or technological background but he intuitively understands good
technology and what he’s going to do with it. This gives the initial warning when the Germans are at Calais and as soon as they take off the British know about it. He integrates this with the Observer Corps, who are essentially volunteers that sit in small posts in the countryside and on top of high buildings in towns, using binoculars etc to view aircraft overland. At this point radar can only really track across the Channel, so they are the eyes once the aircraft cross the coast. This information will be filtered and processed before reaching group headquarters, who then decide which fighters are going to go up and how many aircraft they need.
“The real genius is it allows you to have a proportional tactical response to any raid. You don’t have to wait in patrols, the aircraft hanging about and waiting for things to happen, wasting fuel. You only use what you need. Integrally it looks after the most important asset the RAF has – its pilots. There’s a chronic shortage of pilots and the fact they don’t waste more pilots than they need to does help.
“THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN SHOWED THE WORLD THE NAZIS COULD BE STOPPED”
Keith Park at 11 Group is the one that really wields the weapon that Dowding has created and if we’re talking about great British commanders, he’s one of them. He sustains a brilliant defence using this system for five months through what must have been extraordinary pressure.”
The Battle of Britain, unlike other battles, which tend to have a clear start and end date, stretches over several months and it’s not necessarily agreed on as to when things started and ended. Despite this, however, there are several distinct phases through which the events of the battle can be explained.
“It’s generally broken up into several phases,” says Murray. “It begins in June when the Germans start probing the defences of Britain in what could best be described as nuisance attacks, sending over a few bombers. This then moves into another phase called the Kanalkampf, when the Luftwaffe is tasked with bombing Channel shipping to destroy supplies and drag the RAF away to defend ships. There’s one attack in July which leads to the biggest dogfight over the Channel so far, which is why the British tend to date the start as 11 July. However, German historians look more to the next phase and 13 August, when the Luftwaffe began the Eagle attack, which is the main month-long attack in which the Luftwaffe tries to destroy the RAF, bombing industrial cities and airfields. They switch again in September when they move into the Blitz phase when they have day and night attacks on London, and then after that period they’re still bombing London and the occasional daylight attack. So it runs through these various phases in which the Germans try different things and invariably fail.”
Following the main phase of the battle and the failure of the Eagle attack, the Germans would change tactics significantly and the period known as the Blitz would begin. Starting on 7 September, German planes attacked London every night but one until midnovember, with Birmingham and Bristol following suit in mid-october. But how did the Battle of Britain lead to this next phase, the systematic bombing of the British capital and other major cities?
“They’ve been trying to knock out the RAF for a month,” Murray explains “They’ve done damage and stretched the RAF but they’ve never beaten them. They’re forced to chop and change so often that they begin to concentrate their attacks on cities. The principle is to attempt to bomb the civilian population into submission and hopelessness, forcing it to collapse. However, strategic bombing in Vietnam and other conflicts has since shown that this as a policy doesn’t really work and neither does the Blitz. There’s a huge loss of life, there’s no denying that, and it’s not underplaying what the Blitz did, but for the Luftwaffe it’s just another failed attempt to win.”
The Blitz was not the only way the German military was forced to rethink its tactics. The Battle of Britain had shown that total domination of Europe was not going to be possible. If they were going to continue to face Britain it would have to occur in a different setting.
Murray explains: “Importantly, the Germans now obviously shift their attention to the invasion of Russia.
This has been on the cards before, but
now they begin to seriously focus on opening an Eastern Front. It also means that the Germans have suffered their first military setback and defeat since they started the Blitzkrieg.”
But what was the immediate effect for the British? After five long months of defending that ended in a crucial victory, where would they take the fight next?
And what about the future of the Allies?
“The RAF haven’t destroyed the Luftwaffe outright but they have been beaten and it means that Operation Sea Lion is essentially off,” says Murray. “As a result things in Britain essentially carry on as before, except now they start to open up a front in North Africa. It also fundamentally changes the American view and proves that Britain can survive and has survived. Before there was certainly some feeling that Britain was going to fall, but this proves otherwise and shows Britain is an ideal place to launch the invasion of Europe in 1944. An island base where you can land your troops and equipment.”
However, for some of the key players within Britain’s defence, not all of the results were positive. “One unfortunate consequence is that Park and Dowding lose their jobs,” Murray explains. “It comes down to something called the ‘Big Wing’ (a formation of five squadrons) under 12 Group’s command. The principle behind the use of the Big Wing was essentially the idea that it didn’t matter if the Germans had already bombed the towns and cities, you strike with this mass force when they began to return home, whereas the Dowding system works on the principle that you attack before. Additionally, getting five squadrons in the air is very cumbersome. So basically Park wanted them to come down and defend 11 Group’s airfield while they engaged the enemy. Often the Big Wing didn’t turn up, were late or decided to go off and do their own thing, which would leave air fields unprotected. This increased tension between the two groups to the point where Park would not speak to them. However, pro-big Wing thinking reaches high office and although Dowding would have been retired soon anyway, Park is seen as being difficult (due to his opposition to the Big Wing) and as a result he’s replaced.” But this was not the end of Park. “Park goes to North Africa and Malta, where he wins and ends up in Italy and the Far East, winning wherever he goes,” Murray states, laughing, before solemnly concluding: “That’s one of the negatives: the architects of victory lose their jobs over it.”
When discussing the war and Britain’s role, emphasis is more often than not placed on offensive campaigns launched towards the end of the war rather than this earlier defensive struggle. Yet Murray is very clear on the Battle of Britain’s significance: “It’s important for the world. It shows that the Nazis can be stopped because before then it didn’t look like they could. It’s an important point – a marker has been laid down. They haven’t won here, they’ve been defeated. It’s extremely important for the Allied victory because it means we’re still in the game and we’re not going to be invaded.”
IWM Duxford’s new exhibition, The
Ops Block: The Battle of Britain, explores the experience of being inside an operations room the day the battle ended. The exhibition will be open to the public from 15 September and grants visitors access to previously unseen and newly transformed World War II rooms. Further information can be found at: iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-duxford.