Please pass this on to others -it’s not available to buy!
_____________________
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.
IF YOU ARE USING OR SHARING THIS DOCUMENT PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU INCLUDE THE ABOVE STATEMENT
_____________________
CHAPTER VIII
There is a sense of bright security and fulfilment about Christmas, and a fine edge of expectancy about the New Year. Christmas in Britain in 1940 was dark and quiet; there were neither raids nor any bright candles in the windows. Not that the Luftwaffe had any particular respect for special days in the Christian calendar. Among other things December had been remarkable for an interesting development of German tactics; on every single Sunday of that month a British city had been set on fire. It had occurred to the Germans that at week-ends, and more especially on Sundays, many factories would be empty of workers and that no one would be able to deal with large numbers of incendiaries as they fell. Accordingly some old inflammable crowded city was selected for redundant and attack every Sunday; on December 1st, Southampton; on December 8th, London; on December 15th, Sheffield; on the 22nd, Manchester; on the 29th, London again. The old year went out with the burning of vast and hideous candles whose dreadful light was cast forward into the New Year.
About Christmas time winter really began. It was to be one of the severest, coldest winters known all over Europe for many years. January in Britain was bitterly cold, with great frosts and much snow: so cold that on January 3rd Bristol, the great western port that had been considered so immune and safe that the B.B.C. had in the early days of the war moved its headquarters there, had a fantastic ordeal of ice and fire. Bristol had already been raided, very severely, in November, and again, on two nights, in December. The attack on January 3rd and 4th was carried out in bitter weather by about 150 planes. The effect was fantastic. As some buildings burned and the water from fire-hoses fell on them and on other buildings standing near, great icicles formed wherever the heat of the fire could not reach. Civil defence workers serving tea to firemen, said “The firemen put the cups with dregs down and they froze. The tea froze. The hose froze. We had a choice of being frozen, burned, blown up, or drowned in tea”.
For thousands of people in Britain, during that bitter January, the choice was no less dismal. We had only the weather to thank, as a high Air Force official pointed out, if the raids did not achieve the intensity of November and December. But if the intensity was not there the threat was there. The Luftwaffe came over on most nights, if in smaller numbers, and the potential dread of a new big raid was always in the minds of the people. It was of them, and especially of Londoners, who had been raided 90 nights out of 93 between September and the New Year, that the Prime Minister was thinking when he later said:
“I remember one winter evening travelling to a railway station - which still worked - on my way north to visit troops. It was cold and raining. Darkness had almost fallen on the blacked-out streets. I saw everywhere long queues of people, among them hundreds of young girls in their silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, who had worked all day and were waiting for bus after bus, which came by already crowded, in the hope of reaching their homes for the night. When at that moment the doleful wail of the siren betokened the approach of the German bombers, I confess to you that my heart bled for London and the Londoners”.
He said later in that speech, addressing Germany in words that were at once defiant and prophetic: “You do your worst - and we will do our best. Perhaps it maybe our turn soon; perhaps it maybe our turn now”.
But in January and February of that dark and bitter winter it was still not quite our turn. There was little comfort for us. All our defences - the fire services, the A.A. batteries, the A.R.P. squads, all the innumerable civil volunteers, and the Royal Observer Corps - of whom we shall hear much more in a moment - continued to work magnificently. But not one of them alone, nor all of them together, could defeat the night raider. Among them only the guns were forces of destruction, and it was destruction alone that could force the Luftwaffe to give up its attacks. The forces of prevention, control, succour and re-organisation were all essential. Yet the best that they could do, even in combination with the will and spirit of the people, was from time to time to enforce a change of enemy tactics. They had already, in 1940, done this several times. Yet it was really irony that the more magnificent their efforts were the more the blitz, until the R.A.F. and the guns defeated it, could go on. Without them, as Mr. Churchill said, “all would have failed”. Yet the very stoutness of their indomitable rock of defence only cause the Luftwaffe to hit it harder and in new ways.
So in the New Year the tactics changed again. In the autumn of 1940 we had seen the Luftwaffe change its methods several times: from attacks on aerodromes to attacks on communications and ports; from fighter combinations to bomber escorted fighter attacks; from bomber attacks to fighter-bombers; from pure blitz to pure incendiarism; from day blitz to night blitz; from London to the provinces.
In the late autumn it had been the turn of the arms towns - Coventry, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester and so on. Now in the New Year, it became the turn of the ports.
The attack began on January 2nd on Cardiff, with 125 planes; continued on January 3rd and 4th on Bristol, with 150 planes; and with Portsmouth on the 10th with 110 planes. Then, in February, came three savage nights on Swansea: the 19th, 20th and 21st, when the heart of the Welsh port was severely hit. All this time the weather continued bitterly cold, with much snow, and there is little doubt that if it had not been bitter the attacks would have been more frequent and severe. As soon as the winter broke indeed, in March, the attacks were more than doubled in strength and fury.
Before this happened, the Prime Minister had something to say about the endurance of the people. On February 9th he spoke, as he termed it, “on the broadcast”. The date was well-chosen; our affairs had “prospered in several directions”. On February 7th Benghazi had been captured by British troops; on February 8th the Lease-Lend Bill has been passed in the United States House of Representatives; and on February 9th British forces had reached the borders of Tripolitania. Mr. Churchill said:
“All through these dark winter months the enemy has had the power to drop three or four tons of bombs on us for every ton we could send to Germany in return. We are arranging so that presently this will be rather the other way round; but meanwhile London and our big cities have had to stand their pounding. They remind me of the squares of Waterloo. They are not squares of soldiers; they do not wear scarlet coats. They are just ordinary English, Scottish and Welsh folk - men, women and children - standing steadfastly together. But their spirit is the same, their play is the same, and in the end, their victory will be greater than far-famed Waterloo.”
It was these people, as Mr. Churchill had pointed out in an earlier speech, who were suffering, so far, the real casualties of the war. At that date, fifteen months after war had broken out, the casualties were remarkable. They were sometimes less per month than the pre-war casualties on the roads, and when compared with the daily losses of the wicked and terrible battles of Somme and Passchendaele they were miraculously low. Where 50,000 soldiers had been lost in a single day in France, now about 50,000 civilians had lost their lives in 15 months. It was, as Mr. Churchill pointed out, a terrible figure of itself but it was, nevertheless, amazing. It was the most remarkable evidence of a new kind of war: a war in which, as had often been prophesied, civilians were paying a greater price than soldiers for the turn of battle.
None of these civilians realised, as the snows of January gave way to the snows of February, that the battle was now about half way finished. Perhaps some of them realised the enormous drama of the moment. This drama was of course less obvious than the drama of the previous summer. In the summer the civilian could look up and see the scenes of the play being acted about his head; he was very aware that the villain might appear at any moment on the cliffs of Dover; he made the Royal Air Force his hero; and in the final act the villain was punished. In the summer the line of the drama, rising in heat and fury, had been as clear as noon-light in the sky.
Now the drama was very dark. The talk of invasion had almost ceased. In place of invasion had come a huge lumbering tornado that hammered down cathedrals and churches that had stood for a thousand years, that burnt books, that blew old and congested cities apart with such fury that in the morning their citizens were lost like children in wide strange spaces, that struck at the very heart of a nation’s life - at its coal, its railways, its ports, its grain, its light, and at the bone and blood of every kind of home, poor and great, everywhere. In the middle of this drama perhaps no one could see, with complete and perfect clarity, what it meant. But we can see now. We can see that if the tornado had gone rushing on, with the fire and blast of November and December, for another six months or more, with nothing to stop it, the life of the nation might have been beaten out. We can be clear and realistic and frank about it now. By the middle of that dark and bitter winter the tornado had blown us to the edge of an abyss.
February was the hour of crisis.
CHAPTER IX
What hopes had we, in what was now the very heart of the battle, of coming through this crisis? Perhaps the question may be framed a little differently. What hopes had we of solving the night-fighters’ problems before the civilians and the cities were beaten down beyond recovery?
We should understand the situation more clearly if we consider how the night-fighter pilot of that time was working; and still better if we see how the night-fighter of early 1940 had been working. In 1941, when a civilian heard the sound of a night fighter in the sky there was no difference to him from the sound as he had heard it in 1940. But the difference was very considerable, and in it lay one of the hopes.
In early 1940 fighter interception at night was a game of chance, and in a moment we shall see how, as late as September 1940, a pilot relied on pure chance, good airmanship, and good shooting to bring an enemy down. At that time the pilot was guided to the area where the enemy was operating by the concentration of searchlights and anti-aircraft fire. It was found quite impossible to see an enemy aeroplane flying at night unless he was above the fighter. Accordingly the pilot of a night fighter knew that as long as he kept lower than the enemy he would not be seen. Yet he himself was very fortunate if he saw anything more of the enemy than a black streak passing near, or the glow of an exhaust. If he were lucky enough to see this he could close up to the enemy, catch up to within 50 yards, and then open fire. It was useless to open fire outside this range, for not only was the attacker’s position given away but the chances of hitting the enemy were so small that he could dive away and disappear in the darkness.
Much was done at this time to improve the night-fighters’ personal qualifications. Pilots were chosen for their carefulness, their good eyes, and above all their patience. Vitamin D was added to their diet. They were schooled in self-control and especially in the art of holding their fire. From the following combat report, taken for January, 1940, we can see how such a pilot behaved:
During a clear moonlight, with 20/25 miles visibility, on patrol line Maidstone to Tunbridge at about 9000’, I sighted the E/A which was illuminated by searchlights at about 5 miles away, and approaching me on the starboard side - I climbed at full throttle in order to intercept and when I got within about 1000 yds. from the E/A I flashed my letter of the day to the guns, which were at the time firing at least 1000 yds. to the rear and about 300 feet below the target - the guns, however, did not cease fire, but I started to attack, which began a stern chase, the E/A heading towards the Coast, and turning alternatively from port to starboard, presumably as an evasive tactic to escape the searchlights. This movement, however, gave me an advantage, as it enabled me to gain ground, by turning inside his turns. When I was 500 yds. to his rear, and about 300 feet below him, I pulled my boost cut out control, and turned on his starboard beam and positioned myself thereon slightly below at 400 yds. distance. From this position I gradually closed in to approximately 30 to 50 yds., still on his starboard beam, when my gunner open fire on my orders - after firing about 600 rounds which were seen by my gunner and myself to hit the E/A directly from tail to head, the E/A turned over in a steep bank to starboard, past the vertical and fell headlong to earth, half on his back. During this violent manoeuvre the E/A almost rammed me, and after recovering from my breakaway, the E/A had fallen so low, that it was out of searchlights, and out of my sight. During the attack the E/A’s speed was approx. 200 m.p.h.
Several things are to be noted about this report. The night was exceptional, with visibility up to 20-25 miles according to the pilot’s own estimation. The discovery of the enemy was an excellent piece of luck: there were no directional ground forces to guide the fighter to him. Indeed the fighter carried no interception apparatus at all. The enemy aircraft was an M.E.111, and the night fighter pilot, later in the same night, had the exceptional good luck to see and damage another. The distance at which the enemy was sighted is given by the pilot as five miles, an exceptional distance even with searchlight illumination, and this would only have been possible under extraordinarily good conditions. Apart from this co-operation from the searchlights, the pilot did not get much help from anyone. The guns, firing at least 1,000 yards behind the target, had apparently not solved the problem of time-lag, and were also firing below the target. Altogether the report shows very well the chanciness of the interception methods of the day. The pilot is revealed as an individual hunter, who now and then has the good luck to see his enemy in hundreds of cubic miles of moonlight sky.
A year later, as you can see from the next report, things were rather different. The pilot of this report of February 1941 is controlled from the ground. After being directed into an area he himself reports great activity in another; he reports this to the controller, who in turn redirects him. He is no longer merely wandering in space. He gets other help too:
Air borne 2015, reported considerable activity to controller N.W. of me. After a few minutes 3 x 3 searchlights suddenly shot up and immediately illuminated an aircraft proceeding E. Gave Tally-ho! Height 12,000 and asked controller not to speak to me. Altered cost to S.E. to intercept. At range 800 - 1000 yds. aircraft lost by lights as it was now out to sea and I was in and out of lights. Lights doused and a moment later sighted aircraft with navigation lights coming towards me from S.E. at 12,000. Turned into intercept suspecting trickery. On crossing coast, searchlights immediately exposed on aircraft. Closed in to identify to about 200 yards. Imagined it was Junkers 88 owing to long-chord cowling of engines and wing plan. Identification difficult, owing to intensity of searchlights and their causing shadow effect on target. Also I was well in searchlight and was anxious not to reveal my identity by coming too close to target, which was almost too good to be true flying straight and level with navigation lights ON! Now passed out to port beam of target for further identification and to avoid searchlights. As I passed port quarter, imagined I saw twin rudders, suggesting Dornier and from port beam decided aircraft was Dornier. Asked Controller if E/A was in vicinity -reply inaudible. Asked for searchlights to be doused, so as to come in really close unseen for final identification. No dousing. From port beam decided to shoot aircraft down as it appeared to be Dornier, and anyway, was observing no recognition procedure - navigation lights ON at 12,000, no resin, no colours of the day or recognition letter. As there was ample illumination, and too much for me below E/A, decided to execute attack from above - slightly unorthodox, admittedly. Accordingly closed, from port beam to line astern. E/A diving slightly otherwise no evasive action. At point blank, line astern, slightly above gave 1 - 2 second burst. Effect of de Wilde ammo. terrific, and was unable to say if there was any return fire - probably not. Pulled out up and right to avoid collision. Banked left and saw E/A diving down, belching white vapour, top rear gunner firing wildly, but not very near me. Shower of large sparks appeared to come from starboard side followed by explosion and red pyrotechnic cartridge. E/A then zoomed up into stalled turn and dived spiralling to crash (with navigation lights still ON!) and exploded. Three parachutes seen to open in S/L beams.
The vividness of this report is not its only virtue. It reveals exceptional skill and Intelligence in the pilot in an extraordinary circumstance. Control from the ground has robbed him of neither elasticity nor individuality. Yet it saves him a long wearisome search in the darkness and in fact puts him handsomely near to his enemy within a minute or two. The searchlights too are now within the scheme of control. They are there to illuminate the enemy instantly. Unlike the pilot of 1940 he is not confused by guns, and the new searchlights are, if anything, almost too bright. The assistance given him is now part of a co-operational plan, all aimed at putting him on the tail of the enemy. Beyond that point, of course, nothing but his own skill and cunning, combined with the intelligence of his observer, can help him achieve success. In this case the pilot needed a good deal of patience and artfulness to make a decision to shoot down an aircraft showing all its navigation lights. All the control in the world does not prevent him from behaving, at the moment of crisis, in a refreshingly unorthodox manner. The conclusion from all this is that night-fighter pilots were fairly helpless without control; but that control was equally helpless, if not impotent, without exceptional qualities of airmanship in the pilot.
The pilot in turn was helpless without a competent observer. So important was this in two-seater night-fighting aircraft, and so scarce at one time were good observers, that one well-known observer, himself one of the most brilliant practical scientists of the time, was often working for two pilots. It was he in fact who records the interesting case of a night pilot of excellent qualifications who had never succeeded in shooting down an enemy at night. A change of observer was suggested and tried. With the scientist himself as observer, the pilot brought down an enemy in the first trip and at once proceeded to repeat the success on several occasions afterwards.
In February 1941, therefore, training, control, the improvement of apparatus and aircraft, the Intelligence of pilots and observers, were at last about to have their effect. The fullness of this effect was not to be felt for two months, and before we look at its progress there is still another kind of night-fighter whose work, in itself enormously interesting and even romantic, was doing much to fret and disrupt the enemy at night. He is the intruder. Mostly operating alone but sometimes with a crew, he did much to strike at the night-bombing evil at its source. Intruding beyond of the northern coast of Europe, sometimes farther south than Paris itself, he struck at enemy aerodromes. He pounced, as in the following report, on bombers about to take off: and at other times, and with astonishing results, on bombers returned from raids in England. Operating over hostile territory he carried none of the new interception apparatus. For the same reason he rarely used his radio. He was the supreme individualist: alone, independent, crafty. The work required not only skill but exceptional qualities of patience and also perhaps some of the same instincts possessed by good fishermen. It was not enough to know how to fish but when and where to fish.
Intruders were not, of course, controlled from the ground except in the ordinary course of landing and take-off. But they received help in other ways, and practically all of it came from the enemy. Some of it came, as it has done on other occasions, from the regularity of his habits. Intruders often found German aerodromes beautifully lighted on dark winter nights and the effect of them, together with many illuminated circling aircraft, was often, as one intruder pointed out, that of a gigantic Christmas-tree. In this fantastic setting the intruder would often shoot down one or more aircraft before the rigidity of the German ground control had relaxed enough to order a change in the situation. The intruder was also helped by catching a returning German pilot at a psychologically bad moment. After a trip over England, his operation finished, his home aerodrome within sight, the enemy pilot often showed a natural tendency to relax. In these moments of relaxed vigilance, intruders often struck at returning German bombers with devastating effect. We see one of them, with his crew, behaving rather like this in the following report:
I took off at 21:30 hours to patrol. I had specially obtained permission to do this trip explaining that as we never normally go over until at least two hours after dark, perhaps we might take them by surprise by going as soon as it was dark.
There were no clouds but slight haze over the Channel and over France when we crossed the coast at Gravelines at 10,000 ft. I reduced height to 4,000 ft. as I approached Lille where the black out was very bad but there was no activity at any of the aerodromes. I then went to Douai where there was a large well illuminated flare path. I dived down to 1,500 feet and dropped a stick of 4 bombs which were seen to burst across the middle of the flare path and all the lights went out. An e/a was taxiing up the flarepath at the time but was not hit. Six S/L’s to the South of the aerodrome came on and although one did pick us up for a brief period three times, he never held us. No flak was seen. I then set course for Achiet but before getting there I saw St. Leger Aerodrome light it up in the port side, there were lights in clusters and rows, leading in lights, etc., extending for at least 5 miles. I saw 2 e/a’s with navigation lights on circling the aerodrome when I was still about ¾ miles away, one appeared to be a very large machine. I open the throttle and followed them round and the smaller fired a 4 red star cartridge and turned in to land, so I continued to chase the other and as I approached he fired a 4 red star and from astern and below I could see 4 exhaust flames and the very great span of his wings. I do not think he had twin rudders. I closed in to a short 50 yards to make sure of my aim and fired at his nose. As I saw my tracer strike his nose, I eased the stick back and saw my tracer striking further back in his belly. There was then a terrific explosion and a blinding flash as the e/a blew up, our aircraft was violently shaken and I thought we must have hit the e/a but I regained control and saw the e/a crash in flames and burning pieces were scattered over a wide area. My air gunner reported that a piece of the e/a had gone through his turret and I thought that the a/c must have been hit in many places so I immediately set course for base and landed at 2359 hours.
Such attack as this often had more than local effect. They were occasions when 5 or 6 enemy bombers were destroyed by intruders in one night over their own aerodromes. The effect of this was undoubtedly severe, if only temporarily, on morale. But when the day came, as it did later, when enemy night bombers were being destroyed in numbers not only over Britain but also when landing and taking off at their own basis, then the effect was very severe indeed. The Luftwaffe pilot began to appreciate then, very sharply, the fact that he was more vulnerable than the cities he bombed.
Slowly, in fact, but very surely, we were struggling out of that position where for so long the enemy night-bomber had been able to do what he liked with us. The nights were still dark; the situation itself was still dark; the enemy had not finished with us. The number of enemy bombers destroyed over Britain in February was more than in January. This in itself was no extreme triumph, only the performance of the Beaufighter in that same two months gives, perhaps, any good reason for thinking that we were coming out of the “dark and deadly valley” of which Mr. Churchill had spoken. Between November and January, of enemy destroyed, probably destroyed or damaged over the United Kingdom by all methods, the Beaufighters had achieved .9%, Defiants 1.8%, Blenheims 10% and single seaters 10%. But by March these figures had changed to Beaufighters 19.8%, Defiants 6.4%, Blenheim 6.4%, and the single seaters 11.1%. The Beaufighters had therefore enormously increased their killing power, but had done so not only because they were in themselves effective, but because happily we had more of them and all this was an encouraging sign of what was to happen with the coming of spring.
Even so there were still people who thought we were not doing well enough. In February it was estimated that we had achieved a 3% - 5% kill. This held no fatal menace for the enemy. We hoped for an improvement to a 5% - 8% kill and finally to a 10% kill. When we had achieved 10% the greatest danger would be passed, then it would be possible to say that if the enemy held a bomber force of 300 aircraft to attack us he would, in the course of a month, lose all of it, even if the high crash-rate of winter-time were discounted. A known loss of 10% might conceivably mean a concealed but real loss of 20%. In February, however, we were still only a third of the way towards achieving this, and it was soon declared by one expert - perhaps with rather categorical gloom - that it was doubtful if the night-fighter could, in the next four or five years, do more than force the enemy to steer a zigzag course, with frequent change of height.
It will be interesting to see, therefore, what the night fighter did do, not in the next four or five years, but in the next four or five weeks.