218: What Are We Doing Now?

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In this episode of History of the Second World War, delve into the pivotal moment during the Battle of Britain as Britain grapples with the decision to reject German negotiations, leaving its fate hanging in the balance. Explore the high-stakes strategies employed by the Royal Air Force, from cutting-edge communication systems to coded orders like “scramble” and “vector 180 angels 10,” which shaped the course of the conflict. With gripping insights into leadership, resilience, and the fog of war, this episode reveals how Britain’s defiance became a turning point in the fight against Nazi Germany. Don’t miss the behind-the-scenes look at the chaos and courage that defined this historic battle!

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Summary

In this episode of History of the Second World War, delve into the pivotal moment during the Battle of Britain as Britain grapples with the decision to reject German negotiations, leaving its fate hanging in the balance . Explore the high-stakes strategies employed by the Royal Air Force, from cutting-edge communication systems to coded orders like “scramble” and “vector 180 angels 10,” which shaped the course of the conflict . With gripping insights into leadership, resilience, and the fog of war, this episode reveals how Britain’s defiance became a turning point in the fight against Nazi Germany. Don’t miss the behind-the-scenes look at the chaos and courage that defined this historic battle!

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 218 - The Battle About Britain Pt. 2 - What Do We Do Now? This week a big thank you goes out to Brendan, Patrick, Mario, and Russell for supporting the podcast by becoming members. Members get access to ad-free versions of all of the podcast’s episode plus special member only episodes roughly once a month. Head on over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members to find out more. Once the decision had been made to not enter into negotiations with Germany, either through the offers made by Italy in May or otherwise, the path forward for Britain was a bit unclear. The British Empire had entered the war as part of a coalition of nations aligned against Germany, and since that moment the coalition had shrunk drastically as one nation after another was invaded by the German Wehrmacht. In the short term the only option was simply to continue to resist, whatever that might mean and whatever that might require, with any path to victory being far in the future. Even just continuing to exist would be a problem for the Germans though, a constant drain and strain on German resources even if the British never launched a single offensive action in Europe. To make a comparison to the First World War, because you know that is what I do here, they were a Country in Being, just like the German fleet during the First World War had pursued the strategy of a Fleet in Being. Just by existing, the British Empire was a problem for the Germans, just by existing they ensured that the Kriegsmarine would be occupied in actions against the British Empire, just by existing they forced the Germans to devote manpower and material to the defense of Western Europe, just by existing they could continue to alter the course of the war. The problem, was that they had to find a way to continue to exist. This episode will examine some of those efforts, not necessarily invasion preparations, that will come later, but instead how the British gained intelligence about German plans, how they evaluated the strength of Germany, and then during the second part of the episode how they planned to organize their defensive air campaign. You could make the case that how they planned this organization and how they planned to digest and utilize the information gained from sources like the Chain Home radar stations was one of the most important factors in the outcome of the aerial battles over Britain.

The decision to remain the war was primarily driven by the idea that it would be unlikely that Germany would provide reasonable terms, and even if they did they could not be trusted to honor them given the results of similar agreements at Munich. But there were also some optimistic reports from various British intelligence committees that supported the decision to keep fighting. From the Ministry of Economic Warfare were a consistent stream of reports that made it clear that they believed that Germany would begin running out of essential materials to maintain the war by the summer of 1941, particularly the all important oil that Germany had limited access to in 1940. The Romanian oil fields were the only direct source of oil that they had access to, and even that was limited in its total output. This made it seem like all of the efforts made by Britain to put in place its own blockade of Germany, preventing as much as possible, imports from outside of Europe might be a war winning strategy in the long run. There would be growing concerns in 1940 that the amount of territory under German control would greatly reduce the effectiveness of this economic warfare, which would prove to be completely accurate. As Churchill would say ‘The weapon of blockade has become blunted and rendered, as far as Ger- many is concerned, less effectual on account of their land conquests.’. But there was long term hopes that eventually the war could be taken back to Germany in the form of an aerial bombing campaign by the RAF. The goal was to begin this bombardment campaign at some point in 1941, with the assumptions always being that it would be far more successful than Bomber Command had any hope of being during the early years of the war. Churchill again here: “The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. There- fore our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the Air. The Fighters are our salvation, but the Bombers alone provide the means of victory. We must therefore develop the power to carry an ever-increasing volume of explosives to Germany, so as to pulverise the entire industry and scientific structure on which the war effort and eco- nomic life of the enemy depends, while holding him at arm’s length in our Island”. While building out Bomber Command efforts would also be made to expand the British Army, with the goal of equipping 55 divisions of troops by the end of 1941. Where those troops would be used, and how many could be saved for offensive actions instead of defensive actions in the Mediterranean and elsewhere remained unclear. If they were to be used against a target on the continent, then British intelligence groups would be a critical way of determining how best they could be utilized. The most famous area of British Intelligence would be the cryptographers at Bletchley Park who spend years deciphering German secret codes, but they were just one small piece of a much greater intelligence apparatus. It was all coordinated by the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee which had been first formed in 1936 and had eventually been constructed so that the heads of intelligence for the three armed services were all part of the Committee. Coordination was key, which is something that the German intelligence groups largely lacked. The Intelligence Sub-committee was not perfect though, and it was not really used very much before May 1940, having been invited to brief the Joint Chiefs of Staff only once during the war up to that point. But that did not prevent them from gathering information from a variety of sources. Reading the contents of radio messages was always the best way to gain intelligence, and there would be an important source of information during 1940. One example of this would be through the decryption of the Luftwaffe’s encrypted traffic, which used the Enigma machine just like other groups within Germany, but had a set of procedures that made it easier for the British cryptographers to decipher. A huge debt was owed to the Polish cryptographers that had been working on decyphering and reading Enigma messages for most of the 1930s, and had shared that information with the French and British near the start of the war. The radio traffic that was decrypted from Luftwaffe allowed the British to have a pretty good idea of the exact order of battle of the Luftwaffe, the new about the plans for the start of the German invasion preparations not long after Goring sent out his orders, and they also had some idea of the plans for the German invasion. None of this information was perfect, and even the fragmentary information was only what was contained in some Luftwaffe messages, but it was enough to point to German intentions. Radio traffic was a major source of information, just as it was for anybody during the war, but it was not always the content of the radio messages that gave away information. For example it was common for the British to use radio signals to determine that a German raid might be on its way due to the radio messages that were sent between aircraft over the French air fields they called home. There was also information that could be gained based on the radio beacon information from German airfields . Each airfield had a unique signal that it used for its beacon so that aircraft that used the airfield as a home base would be able to navigate via the beacon’s signal. These beacons would then be turned on before a raid was launched, which was a signal to anybody who could see the signal that aircraft were about to take off. Then once the aircraft got in the air there were almost always some radio signals between the aircraft and the air controllers.

These messages were encoded, but the encryption on these messages was quite simple, it really had to be because aircraft at the time and airmen had a more limited ability to encode and decode messages while in flight. This meant that throughout 1940 more and more of the codes used for this purpose were broken, allowing an ever greater understanding of the start of German air raids and also a better understanding of where specific aircraft were being based. A specific team was setup to work on these signals, based at RAF Hawkinge on the southeast coast of England. The team would be expanded rapidly during the summer months, bringing onboard many German speaking members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force to help with decryption and translation of the messages in a timely manner. The end goal of this work would be better prepare for German air raids and eventually to launch British bombing raids against the German airfields.

Radio interceptions were far from the only way that German air raids were uncovered and prepared for by the RAF. Instead there was an entire system of radio, observers, and ways to interpret and disseminate the information gained. If everything went perfectly, this allowed the RAF to intercept German bombing raids before they reached their targets, but even if that was not possible due to the timing, there were still major benefits to shooting down German bombers after their bombs had already fallen. This was clearly outlined by the Deputy Chief of Air Staff Air Vice-Marshal William Sholto Douglas before the war when he would write in 1938 that “It is immaterial in the long view whether the enemy bomber is shot down before or after he has dropped his bombs on his objective. Our object is not to prevent bombers reaching their objectives, though it would be nice if we could, but to cause a high casualty rate among enemy bombers, with the result that the scale of attack will dwindle rapidly to bearable proportions.”. Then in December 1940 he would write “The best, if not the only way of achieving air superiority is to shoot down a large proportion of enemy bombers every time they come over. It would be better to do this before they reach their objective if possible, but I would rather shoot down fifty of the enemy bombers after they have reached their objective than shoot down only ten before they do so.”. The overall attrition of German bombers was an important aspect of British policy, and in some ways this policy mirrored the objectives of the German U-boats during the maritime was in the Atlantic. During the battles against British trade, the goal for the Germans was to sink ships, whether or not they they were carrying things was only moderately important, because the goal to to prevent that ship from being used the next time. It was the same for the RAF and the Luftwaffe bombers, letting one load of bombs drop was sad, but the greater concern was what that bomber could carry the next raid, and the one after that, and all of the raids in the future. Trying to intercept German bombers, on any part of their flight path was a problem that the RAF would put a lot of thought into before the war, and there would be several different components to the process.

While the Chain Home radar systems were the most famous of these components, during 1939 and 1940 they were supplemented by the most low tech solution possible, people, with eyeballs. These people made up the Observer Corps which had been first piece of the British air raid early warning system to be put in place in 1936. The Corps was made up of civilians that were placed at specific areas around Britain, with there being more than a 1,000 observer posts by the start of the war which were manned by 30,000 totally observers. Before the war the Observers were all volunteers and generally trained on a few evenings or weekends, but in late August they were mobilized and set up a system that would provide for around the clock manning of all of the observer posts. Mobilization also shifted control of the Observers from local control, often by the local police, to the Air Ministry. Most of the Observers were not issued a uniform, although they did have helmets and were entitled to an hourly wage. To provide for an easy flow of information all of the observer posts were placed in a group, which was generally made up of around 30 total posts. And then each of them had a letter and number designation so that if they made a report they could easily be identified on a map. Each of the posts generally had around 20 observers that made up the complement of individuals that would rotate in and out of shifts to ensure that it was manned 24/7. While the usage of a literally just a bunch of people looking at the sky seems like a very low tech solution when there were solutions like radar, it was actually a very flexible and useful component of the overall early warning system. The Chain Home system of 1939 and 1940 had issues tracking targets after they had crossed over the coast which is where the Observers took over. Also, somewhat remarkably the Observer Corps was also very efficient when it came to gathering and then reporting information quickly. The numbering of the posts, and then the fact that there was no need for interpretation or translation of the data, it was just a person seeing an aircraft, meant that reports could go from an Observer post to Fighter Command in under a minute. Even if they Observers were not perfect, and were limited by the fact that there were normal people with normal eyes, they were still a important part of the overall system.

The goal of the Observer Corps, along with the Chain Home systems were to funnel data as quickly as possible back to Fighter Command Headquarters which were located at Bentley Priory. At Bentley Priory the goal was to maintain a picture of everything that was happening for RAF Fighter Command so that decisions could be made to best utilize all of the resources available to meet German raids. This also involved a large plotting table, the type of table that anybody who has seen any World War 2 movie would recognize containing the estimated location and status of both German Raids and British fighter squadrons. To this end all of the information available from all sources came together through the Filter Room at Bentley Priory, this Filter Room then put together information that was passed up the chain. The Headquarters would then send information down to a hierarchy of groups that would help to make the specific airfield and squadron decisions. The first step was Operational Groups which would each have their own Operations Room similar to that at Bentley Priory, and then each of these Operation Groups was broken down into Sectors. It was the Sector Groups that directly controlled squadrons of fighters and which handled the specific interception activities. Generally a Sector would have an airfield that was the headquarter and then satellite airfields where additional squadrons were stationed. The sectors headquarters would then manage around four squadrons of fighters, which were the maximum that could be really controlled at any given time by a sector. The limitation was more around communications rather than anything else . Each sector had a single radio frequency which meant that there would simply be too many people talking at any given time if there were too many aircraft on the single frequency. One of the important impacts of this limitation was that squadrons often could not communicate directly with adjacent sectors because it would overwhelm them. There was no problem with sending a squadron into another sector’s airspace, but once they got there they could not coordinate with that sector group’s headquarters which was less than optimal. In all cases the speed of communication between all of the various levels and sectors was critical. It is not an exaggeration to say that every second that it took from the moment that a raid was detected until the aircraft were taking off had an important impact on the success and survival of the pilots and their aircraft. This was due to the fact that altitude was so important to fighter tactics, with the aircraft with the higher elevation having an important advantage in speed. To improve the speed of communication multiple systems were put in place to simplify the information that needed to be parsed and then how information was communicated down the chain of command. This started at central command where the status of squadrons was kept up to the date through a set of categories which signified various states of readiness. This ranged from squadrons that were not available to those that were on standby and could be airborne within 2 minutes. This ensured that orders were not sent to squadrons that were not able to execute them. Then there was a series of code words that were used to typical orders. This is where words like ‘scramble’ would enter into the Battle of Britain lore because that meant that that a squadron should take off as quickly as possible, then its route would be determined by phrases like ‘vector 180 angels 10’ which would meant that they should fly on a course of 180 degrees and the enemy was expected to be at an altitude of 10,000 feet. All of these pieces of communication were standardized as much as possible across fighter command so that everybody was working off of the same information and to minimize the miscommunications that could happen. It also allowed for a level of decentralization, which information being passed down to each level of command, and then each of those levels of command deciding how it needed to be passed down to the next. All of this resulted in efficiency that allowed for a very short amount of time between when the orders went out from Bentley Priory, with the best speed being about 90 seconds between the order being given and planes leaving the ground. While speed was important, the overall system allowed for a tremendous level of force and effort conservation. Without the ability to gather, process, and disseminate information the only option available would have been to stage standing fighter patrols. These patrols were very wasteful of resources because it burned through the all important ‘fight time’ of the squadrons involved. By minimizing the amount of time the squadrons spent in the air while not on direct intercept courses the availability of squadrons for further missions. This was a critical component in maximizing the utility of the numbers of fighters available and allowed for only a small number of total sorties, under 10% to be just standing patrols, with all of those being patrols over shipping in the English Channel where it was simply possible to intercept German attacks due to the short distance between the British ships and the German airfields.

Getting fighters into the air at the right time, and getting them into the right place to intercept German air raids was important, but the RAF also needed fighters. Throughout the summer the Ministry for Aircraft Production did everything in its power to boost aircraft production. Between May and June the weekly production of total aircraft doubled, moving from under 150 per week to peaking at 300 per week at some point in June. Only around half of these were fighter aircraft but the number of fighters produced still rose drastically. Almost more important, due to a serious focus on making sure that nothing got in the way of aircraft production the availability of spare parts drastically increased, which meant that damaged aircraft and those that needed repaired for any reason were turned back around faster. The overall availability rate for aircraft is always and overlooked statistic, because it did not matter how many were coming out of the factory if a small mechanical issue kept them out of the air. The efforts of the Ministry for aircraft Production, the Air Ministry, and of course all of the workers on the lines meant that the number of available Spitfires and Hurricanes increased from 331 at the start of June to 587 at the end of June. This tremendous rate of delivery would be critical in the months that followed. But none of these aircraft would have been able to be used successfully without all of the work that was done in the less glamorous areas of Fighter Command. The Few would have amounted to little without the work done by the staff officers at Bentley Priory and the Operations rooms all over southern Britain, or the ground crews keeping the aircraft in fighting shape day after day, or the workers on the lines keeping them supplied with spare parts, or the radar operations in the Chain Home stations, or the civilians of the Observer corps at the observation posts looking at the sky. The analogy of the spear is often used when describing the importance of logistics in warfare, with the combat troops at just the tip of the spear supported by many that give them to ability to carry on the fight. It was no different in the skies over Britain, the fighter pilots entrusted with defending the skies were supported by an endless number of those behind the scenes. And they were supported by systems like the early warning system developed before the war and refined in its first year that allowed for information to rapidly move from the discovery of raids to the cockpits of Spitfires and Hurricanes scattered around southern Britain