Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain

Perhaps it is not too much to suggest that Milch found in the Nazis, with their despotic regality and regalia, elaborate rallies and displays, something to appeal to the ardent monarchist he had always been. Although his role as Göring’s right-hand man brought him sometimes into arguments with his boss (who was marginally younger than Milch), his loyalty to Hitler and his Nazi kingdom was unquestioning.

And Hitler gave his two airmen a comprehensive slice of the kingdom. They had control of everything from Lufthansa ticket clerks to fighter pilots, and from the secret construction of military aircraft to the gliding clubs, which were now a part of the NSFK (Nazi Flying Corps). Such flexibility made these men the envy of other service chiefs, who had no such access to semi-trained personnel, and no access to Hitler via civil channels. Nor did other service chiefs have such control over the design and development of their weapons, and the supply of them, as the Air Ministry had over the aircraft industry.

But there is little to support the allegation that, even before the Nazis came to power, the German aircraft industry produced fleets of warplanes, thinly disguised as civil aircraft. Of seven major aircraft types used by the Luftwaffe for operations in the Battle of Britain, only two had prototypes flying before 1935. One of these – the Ju 52/3m – was undoubtedly designed as a transport aircraft, as its sale to the airlines of twenty-nine foreign countries, and its brief and unsuccessful career as a Spanish Civil War bomber, indicated. The other aircraft was the Dornier Do 17, which flew in prototype form in the autumn of 1934. But this ‘Flying Pencil’ was put into storage after flight testing, and was adapted for military use only after being discovered there.

Hitler gained power when the Reichstag passed his Enabling Act in March 1933. The Luftwaffe must be dated from the big aircraft-building programme that started in January 1934. But few of these machines were suitable for modern warfare, for air forces do not start with warplanes: the first need is training aircraft. And so, of the 4,021 aircraft the Luftwaffe ordered in January 1934, 1,760 were elementary trainers (Arado Ar 66 and Focke-Wulf FW 44). Only 251 were fighter types, and all of these were biplanes.

On 1 March 1935, the existence of the Luftwaffe was officially announced. It was accepted as a fact of life by the Allied powers that had forbidden it. In Berlin a huge and grandiose Air Ministry building provided a thousand offices, where ambitious men bickered. Göring had neither the technical knowledge nor the inclination to give the new air force a clear directive. Hitler asked only for the greatest possible number of combat aircraft in the shortest possible time. It was in this atmosphere that all thoughts of a long-range strategic bombing force languished.

There was no strong opposition to the four-engined long-range bomber (possession of which would have totally changed the Battle of Britain), it was simply a matter of priorities. The complex problems of manufacturing such aircraft would delay all the other programmes.

The priorities of the new air force preoccupied the men in the German Air Ministry. Petty jealousies and vicious vendettas flourished as empires were built. Milch was tough enough to handle the men under his command but this did not endear him to Göring. On the contrary, the relationship between the two men became steadily worse as time went on. Frustrated by the technicalities of a new sort of air war that he could not master, Göring condemned them all as unnecessary ‘black boxes’. He sought out men who could share his memories of the Red Baron and the wind in the wires. And he gave them jobs.

FIGURE 3 (#litres_trial_promo). Ernst Udet

War hero, stunt-flyer and bon vivant, Ernst Udet made this self-portrait in 1933.

Ernst Udet, although no close friend of Göring, was just such a flyer. Udet was an amiable, much-travelled man who lived only for flying. Germany’s second most successful fighter ace (after von Richthofen), Udet had continued to fly after the war. He had got finance for an aircraft factory that bore his name, took one of his products – a U.4 – to South America, and won an air race from Rosario to Buenos Aires. He severed his relationship with the Udet factory, and lived by giving stunt-flying demonstrations round Germany. He flew for an expedition filming African wildlife, and went so low that one of the aircraft was damaged by a lion that jumped at it. He made an impressive showing at the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio, where he stunted his old Flamingo biplane. He flew in Hollywood and in Greenland, where he worked with Leni Riefenstahl, the famous German woman film-maker.

In the USA, in September 1933, Ernst Udet watched a flying demonstration of Curtiss F8C biplanes. These were rather old by American standards and the Americans had no objection to Udet’s buying them. The Curtiss company called this design a ‘Helldiver’ and gave the same name to all their subsequent divebomber designs. Although the exact way in which Udet found enough money to buy two such machines has not been established, it seems virtually certain that on Udet’s recommendation, Göring paid money into Udet’s bank account, and the aircraft, when shipped to Germany, were tested for the new air force. The concept of aircraft using machine guns and small bombs against front-line infantry had been discussed by German theorists since the First World War. Now Udet demonstrated his Helldivers, and the accuracy of this sort of bombing attack – within 30 yards of the target was not unusual for an expert pilot – persuaded the German Air Ministry to ask Junkers and other companies to design such a machine. The Junkers Ju 87, the famous Stuka, was the result. It became the world’s most successful dive bomber.

Many times Udet was offered a job with Göring, but he was unable to decide what he wanted to do. And yet during these years, when the air force was being created, Udet always had access to the top levels of command. It was a memorandum of Udet’s in 1933 that first considered the military application of the glider. This idea eventually brought far-reaching changes to military operations. And Udet kept in touch with the aircraft industry too, and could prove as suspicious of new ideas as Göring was. In August 1935, 39 years old and still a civilian, he sat in the cockpit of the Bf 109 prototype.* (#ulink_97122656-26b8-5065-a8f7-ffeb0b8739e8) Professor Messerschmitt said that Udet looked uneasy as the mechanic closed the canopy over his head. The prototype was not yet ready to fly but Udet pronounced on it. ‘When he got out, he patted me on the back and said, “Messerschmitt, this will never be a fighting aeroplane. The pilot needs an open cockpit. He has to feel the air to know the speed of the aeroplane.”’

There was no argument but Messerschmitt knew that his archenemy, Professor Ernst Heinkel, was his most serious rival for the new fighter contract, and that the Heinkel prototype had an open cockpit.

No wonder that there were so many criticisms and misgivings when ‘the flying clown’ joined the Luftwaffe in January 1935, and one month later was named as Inspector of Fighters and Dive Bombers. By June of that same year, Udet was chief of the Development Section of the Luftwaffe’s Technical Department.

Some said that Udet’s quick promotion was Göring’s way of limiting the fast-growing power of Milch. The workings of Göring’s mind have to remain conjecture but Udet was temperamentally and intellectually unsuited for this vitally important job. Milch, in spite of all the outward gestures of friendship for Udet, despised him and resented his appointment. He did not like having to consult the over-manned and disorganised department that Udet headed, and Milch resolved to get control of it. Eventually, as we shall see, he did.

Udet was an unusual combination of noisy Bohemian wit and sensitive timidity. In the First World War, having returned from air combat without having fired his guns, he said he couldn’t be sure whether it was a reluctance to kill or fear of being shot down.

As a flight commander with Jagdstaffel 15, he had once gone alone on a balloon-bursting expedition, only to find himself in a dog-fight with another lone machine. As they looped, dived and circled, looking for an opening, Udet read the words ‘Vieux Charles’ painted on the enemy fighter. He knew he was fighting Charles Guynemer, the French ace. During the combat Udet’s guns jammed. Seeing this, the Frenchman flew over Udet inverted – and waved to him before flying away.

It was suggested to Udet that Guynemer’s guns had also jammed but Udet rejected this idea emphatically. He insisted that even modern warfare could find a place for chivalry. Such a lonely romantic would find little in common with the hard-eyed ambitious men who were jockeying for power in the huge Air Ministry building in Berlin.

Ernst Udet’s critics pointed out that he smoked too much, drank too much, and had the disconcerting habit of scribbling acerbic caricatures of his friends and colleagues. Yet Udet’s love of flying gave him an advantage in the matter of assessing new aircraft designs. He liked to describe himself as the Luftwaffe’s chief test pilot, and when he got a chance to see the Bf 109 in flight he was magnanimous enough to change his mind about Messerschmitt’s new fighter.

Initially there had been four fighters from which to choose. The Arado was eliminated because it had a fixed undercarriage, and so was the Focke-Wulf prototype (which had a parasol wing supported by struts). Its wheels retracted into the fuselage, and this complicated mechanism was never satisfactory. This left the Heinkel He 112 as the only rival for the Bf 109. German engine development, or rather the lack of it, forced both manufacturers to use a Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine in the prototype.

At first it seemed certain that Heinkel would get the contract. His fighter was based upon the beautiful He 70. It was strongly made, with a top speed only marginally less than its rival. The structure was rather complex, but its wing loading (that is, the weight per square foot of wing area) was calculated to appeal to the biplane protagonists, and so was its open cockpit.

Messerschmitt’s fighter was radically new. Its wing loading was so high that it needed ‘gadgets’ such as slots, and the wings were incredibly thin compared to the Heinkel’s. But once in the air the Messerschmitt was supreme: rolling, diving and excelling in all the tests that the Air Ministry specified. And although the aerodynamics were advanced, the slab-sided, square-tipped wings and very narrow but otherwise orthodox fuselage would give no production problems. It would be superior in cost, in man-hours and in materials.

Heinkel’s readiness to compromise with the aerodynamics of the biplane had resulted in a prototype that was heavy and unresponsive to the controls. Heinkel took his sluggish prototype and changed it, not once but many times, until eventually it was comparable to the Bf 109, but Udet took Professor Heinkel aside and told him that, now the Bf 109 was in full-scale production, there was no place in his building programme for the He 112 fighter. Stick to bombers, he told Heinkel.

The Messerschmitt Bf 109 was Udet’s most important contribution to the Luftwaffe. His decision came at a time when the unconventional Udet was at the height of his influence. Hitler described him as the world’s greatest pilot. Sourly Milch added, ‘But he also saw him as one of our greatest technical experts, and here he was very mistaken.’ But Milch was not yet ready to get into conflict with one of Hitler’s favourites and Udet became a member of Milch’s group of influential cronies who dined regularly at Horcher’s famous restaurant in Berlin.

Neither did Udet have much to fear from Göring. As elected chairman of the Richthofen Veterans Association, Udet had expelled Göring, the unit’s last commander. Udet accused Göring of falsifying his First World War record and victory claims and said he could prove it. Milch said that Göring admitted it was true, and was frightened of Udet.

By now Milch had few friends. Heartily disliked by Göring, he found little support from the Luftwaffe General Staff. In spite of this, the irrepressible Milch, working like a beaver, consolidated his authority, and in certain areas increased it. When the Spanish Civil War started and Franco asked for Hitler’s aid, Milch instantly recognised it as a chance to increase his power. He took charge of the intervention.

The Spanish Civil War

By early 1937 Milch had a small experimental air force unit operating in Spain. One of its first missions had been the air-transporting of 10,000 fully equipped Moorish infantry from Tetuan, in Spanish Morocco, to Seville. They used Junkers Ju 52/3m aircraft, and the movement went almost without a hitch. In some respects it was as significant as any of the Condor Legion’s combat actions.

The Condor Legion’s commander was Sperrle, who later became an Air Fleet commander in the Battle of Britain. His Chief of Staff was Wolfram von Richthofen, a dive-bombing and close-support specialist. (He was a cousin of the First World War ace.) The Luftwaffe’s first taste of combat was a terrible disappointment for Göring, Milch and the High Command. The Junkers Ju 52/3m proved unsuitable for bombing, and most bombing turned out to be far less accurate than had been hoped. The Heinkel He 51 biplane fighters were inferior to the I-16 fighters (supplied to the other side by the USSR) in speed, climb, manoeuvrability and armament. Reluctant to believe this, the German flyers often misidentified them as ‘Curtiss fighters’. But as German skill improved and newer German aircraft arrived, things got better: Berlin’s apprehension turned into equally wrong complacency. When Dornier Do 17 and Heinkel He 111 bombers proved faster than enemy fighters the Schnellbomber concept seemed vindicated. Rashly the men in Berlin concluded that bombers would never require fighter escort.

The Junkers Ju 87 dive bomber also exceeded expectations, and its small bomb-load was more than compensated for by the fast turn-around time at its bases: some of the units completed half-a-dozen missions per day. And von Richthofen’s close-support techniques proved decisive in some actions, even though the war’s front line was notoriously difficult to see. There was a shortage of aircraft radio but the airmen relied on signals spread out on the ground. They did little to improve air-to-air or air-to-ground radio. This, too, was to prove a grave error.

The Messerschmitt Bf 109s arrived to take over the fighter combat tasks. Heinkel He 51 biplanes were already adapted to carrying 10-kg high-explosive bombs and improvised petrol bombs. This flat-trajectory bombing in support of infantry attacks became a specialised technique of German (and Allied) light-bomber squadrons. It was one of the few new methods to evolve in the Spanish fighting.

The Luftwaffe’s first building programme had begun in January 1934; it went to war in September 1939. By 1937 there was clearly little time left for redesigning the Luftwaffe’s aircraft. These aircraft types that fought in Spain – Bf 109s, He 111s, Ju 87s, Ju 52s – remained the basis of the Luftwaffe’s strength right up until the end of the Second World War.

Milch sent Hugo Sperrle’s Condor Legion to Spain to assess the aircraft already in production. With this in mind, many different aircraft types were sent there, including even float-planes. The flying personnel were rotated after six months to provide combat experience for as many crews as possible. All ranks were encouraged to send reports to a specially constituted department of the Air Ministry.

Just as men from von Seeckt’s Defence Ministry provided the Luftwaffe with its staff and its Air Fleet commanders, and Lipetsk (the secret training school in Russia) provided its field commanders, so now did Spain provide combat specialists. Men such as Adolf Galland and Werner Mölders came back from leading a fighter Staffel in Spain to revolutionise the formations and tactics of the fighter arm.

Adolf ‘Dolfo’ Galland was an outstanding personality of this period. Born in 1912, of Huguenot ancestry, Galland, like so many other Luftwaffe aces, was attracted to the sport of gliding while still a teenager. Accepted by the Air Transport School at Brunswick, Galland was soon selected for the secret Luftwaffe. At 22 years old he was an instructor at the famous Schleissheim Fighter Pilot School. Galland went to fight in Spain but, flying a Heinkel He 51 biplane, deliberately avoided combat with the far superior Russian- and American-made enemy monoplanes.

The poor performance of the He 51s caused them to be relegated to the infantry support role. Galland pioneered these experiments and produced a considerable body of written material about the use of aircraft in support of ground forces. This fitted very well with the dive-bombing theories of Udet, which were by now enthusiastically received by senior officers, including General von Richthofen, Chief of Staff of the Condor Legion, who would soon command the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka units in the Battle of Britain.

And so Galland found himself trapped into the role of ground-support air specialist. As the Bf 109s were shipped to Spain, Galland handed his command over to a young man who was to become his rival as the most famous fighter pilot in Germany – ‘Vati’ (‘Daddy’) Mölders. As Mölders began to use the monoplane fighters to win victories, Galland returned to Berlin and a job in the Air Ministry.

In September 1937, as the Condor Legion fighter units near Santander, Spain, flew seven sorties a day against crumbling resistance, senior Luftwaffe officers paid an official visit to Britain. Milch and Udet were invited to inspect RAF Fighter Command at Hornchurch, a key airfield in the defences of London. The aircraft there were Gloster Gladiator biplanes which, like the Hawker Fury fighters also in service, were slower than the Luftwaffe’s bombers.

There were virtually no monoplanes of any sort in RAF service at this time. The Hurricanes and Spitfires were suffering new delays caused by a modification to the nose that an engine improvement demanded. It is sometimes said that this was part of a nicely timed deception plan, for the RAF’s first Hurricanes reached 111 Squadron during the following month. Why such a provocative deception would have been desirable is not explained.

The German Navy

Although by tradition subordinate to the army as a fighting force, the German navy was independent of it in a way that the Luftwaffe was not. In the spring of 1940 the German navy fought a brilliant and daring campaign in Norwegian waters. This had to some extent been made possible by the navy’s B-Dienst cryptanalytic department which, by the time war began, was able to read even the most secret of the British Admiralty’s messages, having broken the codes and ciphers.

In the spring of 1940 the German navy’s prestige was high. Its strategists demanded more steel for submarines and were preparing a surface fleet that, with Italian help, might control the Mediterranean by 1942.

But the navy needed time to recover from the grave, but worthwhile, losses that the conquest of Norway had caused it. So the Admirals had little enthusiasm for hasty and dangerous invasion plans that would their hazard few remaining ships in the Straits of Dover.

In Norway it had lost ten destroyers and three cruisers. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had been put out of action by torpedo hits. Of the three ‘pocket battleships’ with which Germany had entered the war, the Lützow had been damaged by torpedoes, the Admiral Scheer had engine trouble, and the Graf Spee had been scuttled after the naval action off Montevideo, Uruguay. The new battleships, Bismarck, Tirpitz, and the cruiser Prinz Eugen, would need until the following year to train their crews and work up to combat readiness.

To cover the Sea-lion invasion, face the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet, motor torpedo boats, coastal batteries, submarines, minefields, and the combined air units of the Fleet Air Arm and the RAF, the Germans had only one heavy cruiser, Hipper, two light cruisers, half-a-dozen destroyers and some U-boats.

No wonder that the German navy had sent motorised naval commandos with the panzer armies that invaded France, as part of an attempt to seize French warships. But the French sailed away. Even the incomplete battleship Jean Bart had escaped just before the Germans got to St Nazaire.

Churchill, afraid the Germans would still be able to barter armistice terms for the warships they badly needed, ordered the Royal Navy to persuade the French crews to sail beyond German reach or scuttle. In July at Oran in French North Africa units of the French navy came under the gunfire and bombs of the Royal Navy. The blood of 1,300 French sailors spattered all over the British, for two or three generations.

Sea power still decided the fate of nations. In the USA nothing worried Roosevelt and his advisers more than the threat to their eastern seaboard that would come if Germany controlled the Royal Navy’s ships. All American decisions were based on this fear, and Churchill tried unsuccessfully to play on it.

Operation Sea-lion

Undoubtedly Hitler – and most of his advisers – would have preferred a negotiated peace with Britain after France fell. Count Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law, wrote in his diary, ‘Hitler is now the gambler who has made a big scoop and would like to get up from the table risking nothing more.’