The Night Battle Of Britain (12 & 13) - FINAL
A brilliant wartime pamphlet that never saw publication
Please pass this on to others -it’s not available to buy!
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IMPORTANT NOTICE
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
The text below is a transcript from images supplied by the Public Records Office of a document, reference code AIR 20/4870. It is Crown Copyright but licenced as above.
This is from the last draft version as amended on 6 May 1945.
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CHAPTER XII
The official word for the beginning of success was “discontinuity”, but behind its heavy colourlessness lay dramatic things. “A discontinuity occurred in March” can give no notion at all of the tension, the high expectancy; the fear and the relief that the end of the month brought. Imagine the situation again. It was rather like the destructiveness of an incoming tide against castles built in the sand. It seemed that nothing could stop it. No sort of barrier could prevent the inrush of the sea, day after day, night after night, or divert it. It washed further and further, with increasing destruction, up the shore. However well your castles were built, and whether they were castles or not, whether they had stood for one year or for a thousand, the power of the tide smashed the stone to dust again. It had been said that a new war would mean the end of civilisation, as we knew it, in Europe. But what had happened was the unfolding of a new era of civilisation, so hideous that we did not know it; had it gone on it might well have been the beginning of a new form of anarchy.
But in March, out of the gloom, at the end of the second winter of ice and snow, a wonderful thing happened. Twenty-two raiders were shot down by fighters alone over Britain at night. Over this and the two succeeding months the A.A. guns secured some 30% of the total victory. Nowadays we should not get excited about twenty-two aircraft destroyed. The figure, by itself, is small. Twenty two aircraft destroyed is an average of less than one a night: a tiny figure compared with some of the enormous daily claims we now hear from the battle fronts of Russia, Germany, the Pacific and the Mediterranean. Yet the figure was relatively enormous. It was nearly six times as large as the achievement in February. It was more than twenty times the achievement - if it could be called an achievement - in January. After the long darkness the effect of it was something like that of the long struggle to perfect the electric filament lamp. The thing had been done; it worked and burned and gave light. It burnt for an hour, five hours, a day and then a night. But could it go on burning, not only for days but for weeks and months, without failure? The tension with which the inventor watched his lamp, that was to revolutionize the lighting of the world, was very like the tension with which the night interception officials must have watched these March figures. Was it only a flash that would go out? Was it a fluke? Or was there really a miracle in the discontinuity?
It was no fluke. What had happened was that at last we had the tools for a difficult job. The tools were working, the pilots knew how to work them and had, in consequence, a new confidence in themselves. Consider the following report. It was made a few days later than the March successes:
While on patrol over base at 11,000 feet at 2345 hours on the night of 7/8th April, my pilot and I sighted a twin engined aircraft silhouetted against the bank of white cloud below. When we first sighted the enemy it was 1,000 feet below and 500 yards to port, and it was quite possible at that distance to identify the machine as a Junkers 88.
My pilot made a perfect attack on the enemy, side-slipping into a position on its starboard beam, about 400 yards below. From this position I had no difficulty in bringing my guns to bear, and when we had closed to 200 yards I fired a 2 second burst into the enemy’s starboard motor, and saw it first into flames. We then experienced return fire from the enemy’s top rear gunner, but it appeared to be passing some distance over our heads. We closed to 100 yards and I gave the enemy of further burst of 1 ½ seconds, concentrating my fire on the damaged engine, which was now well alight. After this burst the enemy lost speed and we were in a position slightly forward and about 200 yards below. The front gunner then opened up on us, but I doubt if he could get sufficient depression on his gun, for, as before, the fire was high. From this position - slightly forward and below, I gave the enemy two more 1 ½ second bursts, this time into the front of the cabin. I could plainly see the effectiveness of the ammunition as it exploded on the front of the machine, and after the second burst the enemy dived steeply down on our starboard with flames pouring out of its crippled engine. We followed down on a shallow dive and when we reached the cloud base, saw the Junkers blazing furiously on the ground.
The attack which my pilot carried out on the enemy gave the gunners very little chance of an effective shot at us. I doubt if we were in their field of fire at any time during the combat.
At all times during the combat I was able to bring my guns to bear on the enemy, and the gun turret and guns functioned splendidly.
There is a touch of smooth clear confidence about this report which could only come from men who had the completest confidence in themselves and their equipment. You get from it the impression that the night-fighters patrol had stopped being quite so much of a wandering hunt in the dark. It had become closer to the day-fighters accomplishment, and in this case a work of art.
Consider another report. It is taken from early April. This time the pilot is an ace who was to head, for a long time afterwards, the list of successful night-fighters. But note too the skill of the operator, the entire confidence the pilot has in him, the smooth cooperation of the two.
The pilot is a conscious person, knowing quite well what he is doing. Like a fine cricketer having plenty of time to make his stroke, he is able to notice the most relevant details and even the exact starboard position, in degrees, of the young moon:
I took off at 2240 hours and was vectored onto an incoming raid which was flying at 10,000 feet. A blip was picked up to starboard 7,000 ft. away and 1,000 ft. above. I was given the necessary corrections and told to throttle back. My operator had some difficulty shortly afterwards and as he had temporarily to look away I got closer to the e/a than he intended, but I saw the exhaust flames of the e/a on the converging course and almost immediately I was told that we were approaching minimum range. As we were closing in too quickly and were too near the same level, I throttled back and dropped down at the same time losing the visual. My operator then brought me in gently from a range of 1,500 to 2,000 feet and slightly below. When I was approximately 1,000 feet distant, I clearly saw four exhaust flames dead ahead and on closing in well below the e/a I identified it as a Heinkel III. It appears that the level of the outboard exhaust was lower than the inboard exhaust on each engine.
Although I saw exhaust flames from 1,000 feet I could not see the aircraft silhouette until I was within 6-700 feet. I then dropped back very slightly and climbed to a point about 80 yards behind and slightly below the e/a when I opened fire. I aimed at the fuselage and immediately I touched the button a blinding flash occurred and the Heinkel disintegrated completely. A number of pieces came back and hit the Beaufighter causing slight damage.
My operator and myself saw a number of burning pieces also falling down into the sea.
During the chase I noticed that the Heinkel was doing very gentle S turns as it was flying on a course of 170° and a speed of 220 A.S.I. During the interception the moon was approximately 20° starboard, behind and was in the 1st quarter.
Both of these reports are from experts, one of them a famous expert in the business of night fighting. Their cases are not isolated, and since experts in complicated and difficult arts are only made through hard and patient training, it is fair to assume that now at last the right training in the use of the right weapons was having its effect.
The assumption is perfectly correct. On the Sunday morning of the 20th of April the newspapers of the country came out with an announcement that smashed all doubt. It was the best and most heartening air news that had been given to the public - long fed on little but Mr. Churchill’s “blood, sweat and tears” - since the Battle of Britain. In two months 66 night raiders had been shot down.
The figure was really more remarkable than it seemed. For of the total of 66 raiders destroyed no less than 45 had been destroyed in the first 20 days of April by fighters alone. In three consecutive April nights, fighters destroyed first six, then ten, and then nine. This average of just over eight per night was remarkable, and the average for the first 20 days of 2 ½ per night was good. But what was most spectacular was that the total in these three nights exceeded the whole number of night bombers destroyed by fighters during the whole of the preceding year.
If there had been the slightest permissible doubt in March, there was certainly none now. The individual records of Squadrons began to tell exactly the same story. In the whole of 1940, one night squadron had destroyed only three raiders. But already, in the first three and a half months of 1941, it had accounted for 24. The leader of the squadron had now 10 victims to his name: three of them scored in a single night of April. Two other squadrons each had records of 12 raiders destroyed. Pilots were already beginning to destroy more than one bomber at night, and one had already destroyed two on each of three separate occasions.
April continued in this triumphant fashion. On April 7 five enemy bombers were destroyed by Beaufighters, Hurricanes, and a Defiant. On the following night six were destroyed; on the 9th, ten were destroyed. On the 10th nine were shot down; and eight more on the 15th. This magnificent run of success could not go unrecognised, and on the 18th of the month the Chief of Air staff sent a warm message of Congratulations to the Fighter Command squadron which in three nights had shot down nine raiders. “My heartiest congratulations”, he said, “on your splendid performance against the enemy night bombers”. This Squadron had now destroyed more than 100 aircraft in day and night fighting. Four of its nine rapid successes had fallen to a Hurricane pilot officer who in peace time was a civil pilot and had more than 3,000 flying hours to his name, no less than 400 of them by night. On the first of his three nights he destroyed two bombers on one patrol and two nights later he shot down another two. In the same squadron a flight commander shot down a raider on each of two successive nights - the first only a few hours after his return from Buckingham Palace, where he had received from the King a bar to his D.F.C.
The exploits of this squadron went back to the last war. Its chosen badge was an owl on a night background, its chosen motto “Foy pour devoir” - faith for duty. Something about this motto and the composition of the squadron which now devoted themselves to it was characteristic of the whole war. For here was a squadron, led by an Englishman, inspired by a motto in French, and which included among its members a Pole, a New Zealander, a Canadian, a South African, an Irishman and a Scotsman. Nor was this an isolated example of a squadron drawing its personnel from all over the world. Many night-fighting squadrons were so composed, and included among their pilots many Czechs, who with their patience, phlegm and quiet determination, not un-English in their resilience and sense of balance and humour, were found to be well adapted to fighting at night. A famous night-fighting squadron commander told how he had under his command an equal number of Czechs and Englishmen, formed into two separate national flights. The arrangement was not at all successful. He at last pooled the two flights and reformed of them as mixed Czech and English units. The increase in efficiency, morale and practical success was immediate. Another night squadron, commanded by a Scotsman of fine repute, with a Czech commander of equal reputation, arranged the composition of his flights in much the same way, always seeking a fair proportion of Czech pilots to mingle with his New Zealanders, Australian, Canadians, Irishman, South Africans and Englishmen. Just as the Poles, with their volatile and belligerent temperament, had made excellent day fighters, and the Dutch, with their steadiness and sea-faring traditions, had made excellent Coastal Command pilots, so the Czechs, many of whom had travelled 10,000 miles to reach England in order to fight for their principles, patiently enduring privation and suffering, made excellent night-fighters.
And here perhaps it maybe well to try to assess the night-fighter’s qualities. Much nonsense has been written of him. Nothing has been more stupid, or has annoyed night fighters more, than the journalistic catch-word “cats-eyes”. This suggests a pilot gifted with very specialised qualities for seeing as well in the dark as he does by day, and conjures the impression of a pilot glaring through the darkness like a fierce tom-cat in search of hostile aircraft. Good night vision, though essential, is only one of many qualities demanded in the night fighter. Perhaps his first essential qualities are patience, by which he can enjoy hours of loneliness at night under very exacting conditions that often give him no no success or excitement, and care, so that he does not crash his machine on landing or take-off. The combination of these qualities will prevent him firing at the enemy too soon, thus giving his own position away, a mistake fatal to success. The ace type of pilot, individual, aggressive, volatile in temperament, used to almost acrobatic methods of fighting, is of little use at night.
The true night-fighter type, in its reticence and patient skill, its touch of the democratic gained through operating as part of a crew, its constant acquaintance with the darkness, cold and loneliness of the air at night, is very close to the men of Bomber Command. Something about operating in the darkness, while the rest of the world sleeps, doing work mostly unseen and rarely spectacular, under conditions demanding the rarest courage, gives these two types a common touch of undemonstrative strength, detachment and charm that set them above and apart from the rest of us.
It was to these men, in the final reckoning, that the great successes of April were due. Scientists had experimented; the best brains of the aircraft industry had planned; committee years had been set up and sat upon; the Air Council had made decisions; the weather and the enemy had done their worst. Without the work of others the pilots could not have operated. But without the pilot and his operator, in the last resource, the work itself would have been quite in vain. It was the final demonstration of their intelligence and patience, tenacity and courage, that began to turn the long black winter of frustration and chaos into something like victory.
CHAPTER XIII
Now for the month of May.
We had come at last to something like this position: we had progressed from the earliest attempts at night interception, which had produced a small percentage of contacts and an even smaller percentage of successes, to a stage where for every 100 Beaufighter sorties we could count on 30% of interception contacts, with about 25% of the contacts ending in successful combats. Figures for visual interception, even with improved ground control, were about 6% to 8% of visual contacts, of which 50% ended successfully. It must not be forgotten, however, that moonlight was still of enormous help in making contact, and that the periods of full moon, especially the full moon of the early summer sky, were periods of the greatest success.
At the same time it could now be confidently said that controlled interception at night was about five times as successful as the standard methods of visual interception by day. We were in fact very near to the position in which we could shoot down 20 or 30 enemy aircraft a night: the danger line beyond which enemy wastage would be so great that he probably would not dare to continue.
But there was no sign, in early May, that the enemy did not propose to continue; no sign at all. The bombers were still coming. They were still strong, still fast, still devastating, and in the first fortnight of the month they were to put forward their biggest effort. Perhaps it may be well to remind ourselves what these bombers were. For the types were not only significant at that moment; they were significant for the future. They were still the fast medium bomber types tested out in Spain, and though they had been improved and were still further to be improved nothing new in real bombers, as distinct from fighter bombers, was to be added to them until the autumn of 1943, no less than 2 ½ years later, when the fast M.E.210 and the Ju.188 - an improved version of the Ju.88 - were to raid London in small fast companies that the Mosquito alone was fast enough to catch. Thus we see the significance of the remark made earlier in this book: that once a nation is committed to a type of aircraft it is committed not for weeks or months, but for years. The decision of the Spanish war formed the strategy of 1941, and, six years later, the strategy of 1943.
In May 1941 the bomber types of the German Air Force principally in use against this country were the ME.III, the Ju.88 - a consistently dangerous and highly adaptable aircraft - and the DO.17. The ME.II0 may occasionally have been used. The best composite performance of the first three aircraft shows a maximum of 250 m.p.h. and a ceiling of 27.000 feet. The three aircraft had only moderate armour, which it was not expected would be increased in the present versions, and in all three cases the defensive armament firing to the rear was very much less than the armament we built into our own and very much larger bombers. As far as we knew, they had no devices within the aircraft for detecting the presence of our fighters.
Against these three - possibly four - night raiders we had an equal number of fighter types in reply. They were the Defiant and the Beaufighter; the Hurricane and occasionally the Spitfire. In the Beaufighter alone was any kind of interception apparatus fitted. It had a speed in excess of 300 m.p.h. and a ceiling of more than 16,000. Its performance therefore was good enough to intercept enemy bombers on their way to the target. The armament of the Beaufighter, consisting of four cannons, was also adequate. The armament of the Defiant was, unfortunately, not adequate, and the Mosquito had not then made its lightning and electrifying appearance on the scene. It was on the Beaufighter therefore - once condemned as a “thoroughly bad aircraft” that the outcome of the climax of May mainly depended.
May opened with powerful and vicious attacks. They were extraordinarily concentrated. Liverpool at once felt the full terror of the sustained attack that had hitherto been reserved for London. From the 1st to the 7th for seven nights, the city was battered very hard. It would be foolish to pretend, now, years later, that it did not come very near to cracking under the strain. No one can put on paper the fury, the disruption, the crazy horror and tragedy of a town that blasts each night of a single week into hell. The people of Liverpool might well have asked, as the people of many other cities might have done: “What is the use of destroying 66 bombers in a month if we, in our turn, lose a city?” It seemed indeed as if the German High Command did not care about its losses if its results were still huge and paralysing enough. The loss of a few bombers was the cheapest price ever paid in the history of war for the destruction of a great city. And since, during the same period, the Luftwaffe raided Tyneside, Belfast twice, Clydeside twice and Hull twice, it seemed very much as if his night losses were going to be no deterrent to him at all. For the first week of the month over 200 bombers a night crossed Britain, principally attacking the north. Their losses were the greatest suffered by an attacking force since the day Battle of Britain - 53 were brought down by the defences - and yet they still came on. What they were doing, it should be remembered, was still part of the battle of ports. It was still the other end of the Battle of the Atlantic. It was still a form of vicious destructive counter-blockade that aimed to starve us at a time when we could, at best, hardly stand on our feet.
Then on May 10th the Germans showed their versatility. They switched to London. It was another stroke at the heart. For London, like all capital cities, is not only a huge material target. It is a moral and propaganda target. In 1940 the world had watched not so much for the collapse or survival of Britain, but for the fall or triumph of London, just as later they were to watch for the fall or triumph of Moscow. The capital is the symbol of its people. When it falls, as in France, the people fall.
So the Germans, always making a fetish of propaganda, and sometimes a very bad fetish, came back at London. They made hell of a night of an English spring. The young leaves of the plane-trees on the banks of the Thames were just bursting, tenderly green, a sight very much loved by Londoners, when scorching terror swept through Westminster on May 10th. It was a raid of many fires - and no water.
There is something ironic about the situation on that May night. Scientists had been working for years on the most complicated scientific phenomena in order to enable a pilot to see and destroy his enemy in the dark. At the moment when success seemed possible the enemy, by exploitation of two of the oldest enemies of man, fire and water, spat catastrophe into their faces. The most primitive terrors in the history of mankind suddenly made the work of scientists and their formulae look puny and small.
In the previous December the enemy had achieved many lucky hits on the water mains of the city. You know I had similar luck a mile or two down the river. God and the German High Command alone knew what the night’s selected Objectives were. Perhaps the raid was a deliberate blow at the seat of Government, a careful plan to smash the Houses of Parliament, to drive the Government from the city and so create a feeling in the citizens of London of their having been abandoned by their leaders. At all events the attack on the Houses of Parliament succeeded. While large fires burned eastward, by the Elephant, where the most fantastic series of tragedies with water-mains, emergency basins and miles of hoses had frustrated all attempts to put them out, the House of Commons itself was hit and began to burn. No one is quite certain how that fire began. But the Nazis, who had burned their own Reichstag for purposes of propaganda and therefore did not need to be told of the value of burning seats of Government, now had the supreme satisfaction of setting the House of Commons ablaze. It was a bitter and dreadful blow. The roof trusses of the Chamber buckled, the outer walls expanded, and soon the whole roof and upper wall collapsed. It was again much more a moral than a material blow. The building in which great 19th century statesman had hammered out some of the foremost social reforms of the world, the home of a system of Government which had managed to keep its people out of armed revolution for three hundred years, was suddenly in ruins. To Germany and German sympathizers - and the world was still very full of them in early 1941 - the moral was obvious. The edifice of democracy was crumbling; the new bright fire of Nazism had fallen on it like a thunderbolt, and had burnt its foundations and its heart.
Three days previously the Prime Minister had spoken in the House that was now destroyed. His words were themselves a challenge which it now seemed as if the German High Command had taken up. After reminding the House that it was a year since the disastrous Battle of France, he said “When I remember all that has gone wrong, and remember also all that has gone right, I feel sure we have no need to fear the tempest. Let it roar and let it rage. We shall come through”.
Now it was roaring and raging in the very place where he had spoken. And as it roared and raged that May night no one could say whether or not this was the beginning of a new blitz campaign. The winter was over, and had gone against us: at least on outward show. Now the summer was beginning and the power of the enemy to hit us very hard was clearly not diminished. Whatever the raid cost him on May 10th you could point to an enormous dividend: the destruction of the House of Commons chamber, with the Press Gallery, the Strangers’ Gallery, the Ladies’ Gallery, and some damage to the ancient Westminster Hall - the real Mother of parliament - and the Abbey itself. This reward would be cheap at the price - whatever the price was.
But the price was, that night, 33 bombers. It was a very high price. It was the highest price yet. It was in fact the limit, perhaps the cumulative limit, for one reason or another, the German High Command decided it could afford to pay. By the end of May the price had gone up, for the month, to 111 bombers. This was double the price of April, five times the price of March. It was double the price for all the previous year.
So the defences of the country waited for June. If May had been double the cost of April, then June might reasonably be double the price of May. If that were to happen we should destroy not less than 200 bombers. This would, judged by the results of the winter, be a wonderful thing. So the anticipation of the R.A.F., of the Air Council, of the night-fighters themselves, of the scientists who had worked hard and in brilliant secrecy, of the A.A. Command and of the Royal Observer Corps, was immense. June, in a sense, was to be the greatest test. If the graph of results sustained its upward curve they were sure of success. If it fell again they might have to begin to doubt the efficacy of the measures that had brought such significant results in May. What would happen? How should we come through?
We shall never know. For in June an event of stupendous portent shook the world. The German Army marched on Soviet Russia, and immediately the air attacks on Britain were interrupted. The German High Command, faced with that war on two fronts which Hitler had declared it would never have to face again, moved immense forces eastward. The peculiar position of the Luftwaffe as a force tied to the will of the High Command, unable to operate with great independent force as our own Bomber Command operates, became at once apparent. No longer could it concentrate its greater strength, reinforced by propaganda boasts of invasion, against the shores of England. Its squadrons were needed now, not for weeks or months but for years, on a front of such magnitude as the world has never seen.
Whether these giant demands, together with the demands of the Mediterranean, were themselves directly responsible for the end of the large-scale air attacks on Britain, or whether the losses of May themselves had reached for the enemy the danger point above which any Air Force finds it difficult to supply operational reserves, we may never know. All we know is that in June the great night-blitz, as we had known and endured it for nearly a year, had ended. In the next few months the scale of German attack dropped to one third. Invasion, so long threatened and held to be a certainty, had not come. The utter obliteration of our cities, so long promised, was only half realized. At last, for one reason and another, we had come through.
And the greatest of these reasons were our own efforts. The British genius for applied science, by which we had overcome in six months difficulties and problems which in peacetime might well have taken ten years, the resilience and phlegm of the common people, the skill and perseverance of the R.A.F. night pilots, the uninterrupted vigilance of the Royal Observer Corps, the courage of gunners and defence workers - by the combination of all these things we had lived through perhaps the blackest winter in British history. The first Battle of Britain, fought in the sweet summer days of 1940, was called the Battle of the Few. The second Battle of Britain, fought in the bitter nights of the winter of 1940-41, might well be called the Battle of the Many. For in some ways it was the oddest battle ever fought in the world. It was the battle of a few thousand airmen against a force of 40,000,000 people and a scientific idea. The airmen began with every advantage; the people began with none. But it was the people and the idea who had, at last, their triumph and their victory.
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Sackerson's note: The first draft of this pamphlet was completed in April 1944, two months before D-Day; it was checked with corrections, suggestions and additions from several sources. The last emendation was made on 6 May 1945; Germany surrendered to the Allies two days later.