Had Hitler succeeded in his plan to invade Britain the world would now be a very different place. The United States would probably have remained neutral, leaving Germany, Italy and Russia to carve up Europe between them. There was just the small matter of destroying the Royal Air Force…
By July 1940, German forces had occupied France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. Hitler’s troops now stood a mere 21 miles from the English coast and had direct access to the Atlantic Ocean for their submarines to prey on British merchant shipping vital to the island’s survival.
Hitler assumed that with the defeat of her mainland allies, Britain could not continue to fight and would sue for peace. He is said to have had some admiration for Britain and her Empire and made several peace overtures to the British government. When these were rejected he ordered Admiral Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine, to formulate plans for an invasion. Unlike the earlier successes on the mainland however, this invasion would need to be seaborne and the German navy set out a number of prerequisites necessary to success.
These were the sealing off of all Royal Navy forces from the landing area and the destruction of the Royal Air Force, the clearing of all mines at the crossing points and the Straits of Dover to be blocked at both ends by German mines. The Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe had both drawn up plans in anticipation of the invasion, with neither of them being very confident of a successful outcome. Herman Goering, head of the Luftwaffe noted that, “a combined operation, having the objective of landing in England must be rejected. It could only be the final act of an already victorious war against Britain as otherwise the preconditions for success would not be met”.
Nevertheless, on the 16th of July 1940, Hitler issued Directive no 16, setting in motion plans for invading Britain, codename “Operation Sea Lion”. He prefaced the order by stating, “As England, despite her hopeless military situation, still shows no signs of coming to terms, I have decided to carry out a landing operation against her. The aim of the operation is to eliminate the English Motherland as a base from which the war against Germany can be continued and, if necessary, to occupy the country completely”.
This was the moment when Britain truly stood alone. Western Europe had been overrun by the Germans and it was only two months since Britain had managed to extricate the remnants of her retreating forces from Dunkirk. Some 330,000 British and Allied soldiers had been lifted from the French beaches, leaving behind huge stores of equipment, trucks and weapons. The army desperately needed time to regroup and rearm. Only the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force were in any condition to oppose an invasion. The RAF fighter strength at the outbreak of war was around 675 aircraft against Germany’s 2000. Despite losses, by August the RAF had 615 Hurricanes and 326 Spitfires in operation as Britain geared up fully for war production.
The ultimate responsibility for Sea Lion was given to Raeder and Goering, neither of whom had much enthusiasm for the task. The Luftwaffe had so far, been fairly ineffective against naval targets, as witnessed in the Norwegian Campaign where, despite air superiority, they managed to sink only two British destroyers. They had not been trained for sea warfare and lacked armour piercing bombs and aerial torpedoes, essential when attacking large warships.
The Kriegsmarine had also suffered heavy losses in this campaign. Two cruisers and ten destroyers had been sunk and others damaged by the British, these being the very ships most suited to protect the invasion forces in the narrow and relatively shallow waters of the English Channel. The heavier battleships and battle cruisers of the German navy had been deployed into the North Atlantic as raiders and would not be available for the operation.
The British navy, despite having much of the fleet engaged in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, still had superiority in numbers over their foes, particularly in small fast Motor Torpedo Boats which, if allowed, could wreak havoc among the landing barges and escorting warships. Britain had over 700 of these vessels, making them a critical threat if the Luftwaffe could not neutralise them. Tellingly, throughout the war, only nine MTBs were lost to air attack out of the 115 total losses and in the whole of 1940, only nine British destroyers were sunk out the 100 stationed in home waters at the time, five of these being sunk while withdrawing troops from Dunkirk.
It was quite clear to the German High Command that the RAF would have to be neutralised before any landing could be considered and from the middle of July through to August 11th, the first phase of the battle, called Kanalkampf (Channel Battle) by the Germans, opened with German bombers, with fighter escorts, attacking British convoys in the English Channel. The need for constant air patrols over the convoys put severe strain on both pilots and machines of the RAF and, being outnumbered, suffered heavy losses as did the Germans. During this phase of the battle, the RAF suffered losses of 148, while the Luftwaffe lost 248. The fighting did however, give both sides some experience of air to air combat and also confirmed that certain aircraft such as the British Bolton Paul Defiant and the German Bf 110 were unsuitable for intense dogfighting and were withdrawn.
The second phase, codenamed Adlerangriff (Eagle Day) by the Germans, began on the 12th of August when a specialist fighter bomber unit attacked four British radar stations in an attempt to “blind” Fighter Command. They failed to follow up the attack however and the stations were back on line within six hours. If they had persisted in their attacks on these stations or the infrastructure that supported them, the outcome might have been very different.
The next day started with major attacks on coastal airfields used by the RAF as forward landing grounds and on satellite airfields such as Manston and Hawkinge. An indication of the scale of the fighting can be gleaned from the events of the 13th of August when the Luftwaffe flew 1485 sorties, losing 39 planes against British losses of 15. The attacks continued throughout the week, steadily moving inland to airfields around London. The 15th of August saw what the Germans called “The Greatest Day” and launched over 1,000 bombers against England, attacking both the South of England and the North where it was thought English defences were weaker. Although much damage was caused, the attackers suffered heavy losses, particularly in the North where the raiding force of 65 Heinkel 111s, escorted by 35 Bf110s were badly mauled by the fighters. Total German losses for the day were 76 against a British loss of 35 fighters.
Attacks continued with more damage done to RAF airfields and facilities, but at a heavy cost to both sides. On the 18th of August, the Germans lost 67 planes against British losses of 33 fighters, of which eight pilots survived. These losses forced the Luftwaffe to revise their tactics and they withdrew the slower but more accurate JU87 Stuka dive bomber from operations against England. This veteran of the Blitzkrieg was too vulnerable to fighters and was preserved for later use in the proposed invasion.
With such heavy German losses, Goering ordered that his Bf109 fighters be used as bomber escorts instead of the hunting sweeps previously employed, a decision that had the effect of concentrating all the enemy aircraft in one place, making a larger target for British fighters. Some of the bombers were switched to night raiding to reduce losses from fighter attack. Hitler’s Directive no 17, dated the 1st August, on the conduct of the war against England, directly prohibited Luftwaffe attacks on civilian targets, it states, “The war against England is to be restricted to destructive attacks on industry and air force targets which have weak defensive forces. It is also stressed that every effort should be made to avoid unnecessary loss of life amongst the civilian population”. He also ordered that no direct raid on London should be made without his express approval.
The German attacks widened in scope on the 23rd of August when Goering ordered attacks on Factories and Ports, with Birmingham and Portsmouth being badly damaged. The following night saw heavy raids on London with Dockland being set ablaze. Some bombs fell on Croydon Airfield, believed to be a due to a navigation error by a group of Heinkel 111s. A similar error resulted in the bombing of Harrow. Whatever the reason, the RAF was ordered to retaliate and on the night of the 25th, sent 81 planes to bomb industrial targets in Berlin. Low cloud prevented accurate identification of the target and some bombs fell on the city, killing civilians and infuriating Hitler, thus starting the pattern of bombing civilian targets that was to continue throughout the war. Continuing RAF raids on Berlin in retaliation caused Hitler to withdraw his Directive and in a speech on the 4th of September threatened to obliterate British cities if British bombing raids on Germany did not stop. He ordered the Luftwaffe to begin a merciless bombing campaign against Britain, thus spreading their forces and relieving pressure on RAF installations.
From now on the aerial battle became a straight fight between the German Luftlotte 2 Bomber Group, tasked with destroying the RAFs resistance and Air Marshall Park’s 11 Fighter Group who opposed them. The Germans concentrated their attacks on RAF installations, desperate to knock out Fighter Command and over the next two weeks Biggin Hill, Hornchurch, Debden and North Weald were repeatedly attacked as well as Croydon, Rochford, Hawkinge and Manston. The Coastal Command airfield at Eastchurch was bombed a total of seven times in the belief that it too was a fighter station.
Despite these attacks, the RAF maintained its offensive capability. Air Chief Marshall Dowding, Commander of Fighter Command noted in a report that the Luftwaffe “had achieved very little” during these raids and the only Sector Station to be shut down operationally was Biggin Hill and that for just two hours. He went on to confirm that while 11 Group’s efficiency was affected by some damage, only two of the thirteen airfields attacked were down for more than a couple of hours.
Although Britain’s factories could make good the losses in aircraft, experienced replacement pilots were harder to find. New pilots joining the squadrons direct from training units had as little as nine hours experience in flying Spitfires and Hurricanes and no training in air to air combat or gunnery, so life expectancy was short. The Fleet Air Arm sent 58 volunteer pilots to join the RAF with a similar number joining from the pilots of the light bomber Fairy Battle squadrons, but it was the arrival of pilots from the Dominions and from the conquered nations of Europe that enabled the fight to continue.
Men from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Rhodesia and Canada, as well as those from Poland, France and Czechoslovakia, all came to fight for Britain. Some were seconded to RAF squadrons while others were formed into their own units such as the Free French or the famous Polish 303 Squadron based at Northolt who were credited with being the war’s highest scoring allied unit. Individuals such as Josef Frantisek, a Czech pilot who had flown from the occupation of his own country to join the Polish and then the French air forces before arriving in England, who achieved, by the RAFs reckoning, the highest number of kills in the Battle of Britain with seventeen confirmed victories to add to the seven shot down while in Europe. Morale among the defending fighter pilots was high despite the losses. They knew that if they were forced to bail out, they would land on home soil while their German counterparts would face either capture or dying in the Channel through drowning or exposure.
The fighting, now known as the Battle of Britain, claimed a heavy cost in men and material. In the month of August 1940 alone, Germans aircraft losses were 669 destroyed and 182 damaged with corresponding British losses of 344 fighters destroyed and 98 damaged. Over the total period of July to September 1940, German aircraft losses were 1636 in total with 1184 of them totally destroyed, against Fighter Command’s total losses of 1274, with 785 destroyed.
At a conference on the 14th of September, Hitler concluded that, despite the optimistic claims of Goering, air superiority had not yet been established and undertook to review the situation on the 17th for a possible landing on the 27th of September or the 8th of October. When it became clear some three days later that the Luftwaffe had greatly exaggerated the extent of their success against the RAF, the plan was postponed indefinitely. Britain was given a breathing space to re-equip her forces and prepare to take the fighting to the enemy on land, sea and air. Hitler turned his attention to his planned invasion of Russia and in so doing, created a war on two fronts that was to be his ultimate downfall.