The Night Battle Of Britain (2 & 3)
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 II
The Battle of Britain campaign had been very interesting as an example of the German use of air power. The Germans, having gathered what they considered to be useful experience in the Spanish Civil War, began the war of 1939 with certain fixed conceptions of war in the air. One of their views, shared by the Italians, Americans, and indeed by ourselves, was that day bombing because of its greater accuracy, was if practicable superior to night-bombing as an offensive weapon. Their plan for the conquest of Europe, including Britain, took note of this idea. The types of aircraft chosen for assisting the execution of the plan were types tested in the war in Spain - i.e. the Messerschmitt 109 fighter, the Ju. 86, the Heinkel 111 and the Stuka Dive Bomber. Some of these were excellent aircraft, but none of them were heavy bombers, designed to carry an immense bomb-load at night over great distances. Nor, according to the needs of the German plan of blitz krieg, by which the war was to be short and sharp, had they any need to be. They were admirable types of aircraft for carrying out brief and devastating military campaigns in which they were used, among other things, as offensive mobile artillery. They were completely justified by the German victories in Holland, Belgium, Norway, France, Poland and Greece. Their first and final failure was in the Battle of Britain.
History, as the German are fond of saying, is only important while it is being made. But when, one may ask, is history made? The history of the Battle of Britain and still more perhaps of the night battle of the winter of 1940 - 41, of which this pamphlet is the story, was to some extent made in the Civil War in Spain. By the experience gained there, and still more perhaps by the choice of aircraft used there, the Germans determined how and by what means, from their side, the Battle of Britain should be fought. Perhaps the choice of aircraft was the more important of these two things. For it is a fact that when a country is once committed to the production of a type of aircraft it is not simply committed for a few months. It is irrevocably committed for years. After the war in Spain the Germans committed themselves, on a large scale, to the production of various types of aircraft suited to the conduct of a short war. Today, though the war has ceased being short and has now become longer than the last Great War, they are still largely committed to the same types or improved versions of them. History is indeed important when it is being made.
When these same types of aircraft, variously and skilfully used, were defeated in the Battle of Britain, it was obvious that the Germans would have to recast their plans. The day battle was over. The German Air Force good though it was had been defeated by better men in better machines. What were its plans now? Great Britain with an air force that was an independent service had early in the war decided to abandon at any rate temporarily and in view of the types of aircraft it then possessed, any idea of a daylight offensive totally waged by unescorted bombers. Instead it began to concentrate on a plan for bombing by night. It looked far ahead, basing its strategy not on a short war, as the Germans did, but on a long war. It had already committed itself heavily, though not entirely, to the production of large four-engined bombers, capable of long flights, carrying large bomb-loads. Sterlings, Halifaxes and Lancasters would carry the offensive power of the future. All through the early days of the war Bomber Command was training, often against great difficulties of weather, navigation and shortage of supply, to build up this power.
When the Battle of Britain ended The Luftwaffe had no such long-term, four-engined night plan to replace the abandoned strategy of the day war. It possessed no aircraft specifically designed for night work, simply because it had never believed them necessary for its plans. It had conceived the day war as short, swift and successful. When it failed, the Luftwaffe was in an interesting dilemma.
It should be remembered that is it a German principle, though it is of course not exclusively German, that all three services, Army, Navy and Air Force, form a single combined force; this is called the Wehrmacht, and the planning of its operations is carried out, in the final resort, by the Supreme Command, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. This Supreme Command arranges its plans so that the force making the main effort (Schwerpunkt) is given adequate support by the remaining services. Thus in the successful land campaigns in Poland, France, Holland, Belgium and Greece, with the army making the main effort, the Luftwaffe did not act as an independent force. It was always an army co-operation force whose tactics were at the discretion of an invading army. The ultimate success of these campaigns was always an army success. The Luftwaffe in consequence had little flexibility.
This lack of flexibility was very noticeable at the end of the Battle of Britain. An independent Air Force, such as the R.A.F., is capable of carrying out, if necessary over a period of years, an offensive entirely of its own. Such an offensive has in fact been carried out by Bomber Command for more than four years. The Luftwaffe had however never been designed for such an independent campaign. Its aircraft, its tactics and its military direction had all been designed for the short war, and the short war, as far as Britain was concerned, had failed.
The Luftwaffe was, however, very fortunate in many other things. The conquest of France, Holland and Belgium had given it an unlimited opportunity for developing airfields within short range of Great Britain. It did not need, therefore, bombers of long range. Its fast, short-range medium bombers though they had failed by day were capable of adaptation for work at night. Their bomb-load was not great, but their flights were so short that they could often, if necessary, make more than one trip per night. What it lacked in flexibility therefore the Luftwaffe made up with a happy geographical position.
This position, as we shall see, was perhaps even more advantageous for a night offensive than for attack by day. The short interval between the end of the day Battle and the beginning of the night Battle is therefore not surprising. As early as September 1940 it had been recognised that, faced with heavy losses by day, the enemy might transfer the entire weight of his bombing attacks to night. By October 1940 - before the day Battle had ended - the full night attack began.
CHAPTER III
For the defence of Britain against air attack by day we had, in 1940, the following weapons: first, fighter aircraft; second, anti-aircraft fire; third, the balloon barrage; and fourth, and in indispensability most important, the system of warning now known as radiolocation, and the Royal Observer Corps, whose work is no less invaluable. These defences were just adequate, and only just, to win the victory.
What were the defences we possessed against air attack by night when, in autumn of 1940, the Germans decided to switch their forces to night attack? Let us be very honest about it. We had no specialised adequate defence at all. This was not because we had not searched for it. We had in fact searched for it for a long time. Technical development had simply not reached a practical stage.
What was the position? It was roughly this. Up to 1934, only five years before the war began, the sole method of night interception known to us was the method practiced in the war of 1914-18: that is to say, patrols of single fighter aircraft operating on lines of interception aided by searchlights which located enemy aircraft by sound-detection methods. No new technical devices in night interception methods had therefore been discovered, although they had been searched for diligently, for about twenty years.
During this time, however, great progress had been made in the speeds of modern aircraft. They were becoming faster and faster. This very progress had made the sound detection method of locating aircraft inaccurate. For by the time the sound of a bomber had been received by the sound detector the bomber had flown on for so great a distance that its position was drastically altered.
What of the other systems? The balloon barrage had been adopted before the war as an auxiliary means of defence; but it was quite obvious that it could guard, and then only in a limited way, only very small selected areas of the country. It was static, inflexible, and limited in height. In addition there was the method of anti-aircraft fire. Unfortunately our anti-aircraft guns were, at the beginning of the war, lamentably few, and though A.A. was in course of time to account for a great many raiders, the whole system was hampered by darkness and by the speed and flexibility of the modern bomber. A.A. guns had the virtue of keeping the raiders high, and perhaps precluding accurate bombing, but their job of shooting at a raider at night has been described as rather like shooting at a bee in a dark room with a rifle.
It was obvious that none of these methods, though they might deter an enemy night raiding force, could hope in themselves to destroy enough of that force to make raiding disastrously expensive. The only other system we had was still theoretical. We knew that it was essential somehow to find the bomber, to intercept him in the sky and to fix his position so that a defending aircraft could shoot him down. The combatant nation which first provides for night interception, said a famous scientist in 1940, is the nation likely to win the war in the air.
As early as 1935 a committee of scientists had been formed to investigate and attempt to solve the problem which the increasing speed and climb of modern bombers present to the defences. These speeds were increasing immensely and the ceiling of the bomber was such that, at that time, searchlight could not be relied upon to give the answer. Both sound and light therefore had failed us, and it was necessary to turn to other physical means for a solution. Radio was the answer.
What the scientists had discovered was this: that by the application of a known electrical phenomenon they could detect the presence of an aircraft, or any object such as a house, a hill or a ship at sea, even though these objects were too far away to be visible to the human eye. It was by this means, now known as radar, that approaching enemy aircraft had been detected in the Battle of Britain; and it was by the success of this method of giving information to our defending aircraft that the battle had been largely won.
The problem of day interception had in fact been fairly simple. By radio our aircraft had been put on the line of the enemy advance, and battle had been joined by our fighters actually seeing the enemy. But by night all this was quite another story. When there is no moon a pilot will be able to see objects only about a thousand feet away; when there is a moon he will see three times that distance. The whole essence of the night defence problem therefore is the necessity of bringing the fighter close enough to the enemy to enable the pilots to see it and shoot it down.
When war began the scientists knew that a solution to that problem was essential; but their work has still not reached a practical stage. Until that stage was reached we hoped therefore that we could rely, as we did in the last war, on single engined day Squadrons working with searchlights. These searchlights was spaced at a distance of 6,000 yards around the London area, and when the enemy first attacked at night the system was successful, largely because the enemy came in at heights of about 8,000 feet. But the enemy soon learned his lesson and subsequently came in at heights of between 15,000 and 20,000 feet - heights at which, unfortunately, the searchlights of those days could not illuminate him. Even if the system itself had been successful for a longer time it is still doubtful if we could have pursued it. For we had still another problem. We lacked fighters. Day squadrons had suffered severe casualties in the Battle of Britain, and the number of experienced fighter pilots who could fly by night was already, by the late autumn of 19 40, very small. No. 11 Group of Fighter Command, which was responsible for the defence of the main night target, London, could not work both by day and night continuously.
Let us consider the position, then, again. On the one side is the Luftwaffe, grouped on the northern and north-west coast of the continent of Europe. It possesses adequate bases; it has fleets of fast medium bombers to which all parts of England are easily accessible. Its pilots need to remain over hostile territory only for an hour or so, often only for a fraction of an hour. On the other side are the defences of Great Britain: the R.A.F., the A.A. Command, the searchlights, the Balloon barrage, the Observer Corps and the A.R.P. Services. Not one of these defences, of itself, can repel and destroy the invader. The destructive part of them - the R.A.F. and the A.A. Command were, as has been seen, inadequate. We were, in fact, in no other position, said a famous Air Marshal, then to accept what the Luftwaffe could do to us with very little chance of counter offensive.
This, then, was the position towards the end of 1940, when the word “blitz” was about to be added to the English language and when the people of Britain, especially of the great cities, were to face what was possibly the gravest six months in their history.