227: The Hardest Days

Description

This episode of History of the Second World War dives into the intense final days of the Battle of Britain, focusing on the critical days following Eagle Day, August 13th, when the Luftwaffe launched its decisive offensive. Despite initial setbacks like poor weather and delayed sorties, the German forces reported significant damage to RAF fighters, fueling confidence in their plan to cripple Fighter Command within days. The episode explores the high-stakes struggle as both sides adapt strategies, revealing the pivotal moments that shaped the outcome of the battle and the broader invasion preparations. Perfect for history enthusiasts eager to uncover the gripping details of this turning point in WWII.

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Transcript

Summary

This episode of History of the Second World War dives into the intense final days of the Battle of Britain, focusing on the critical days following Eagle Day, August 13th, when the Luftwaffe launched its decisive offensive . Despite initial setbacks like poor weather and delayed sorties, the German forces reported significant damage to RAF fighters, fueling confidence in their plan to cripple Fighter Command within days. The episode explores the high-stakes struggle as both sides adapt strategies, revealing the pivotal moments that shaped the outcome of the battle and the broader invasion preparations. Perfect for history enthusiasts eager to uncover the gripping details of this turning point in WWII.

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 227 - The Battle of Britain Part 2 - The Hardest Days. This week a big thank you goes out to Jaker538, Jennifer, Eric, T, Bill, Oberatixx 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. The first day of the Luftwaffe’s great offensive, Aldertag or Eagle Day had occurred on August 13th and overall it was a bit disappointing. Poor weather during the early morning had caused confusion and some delays which meant that there were fewer overall sorties than were originally planned, but there were encouraging reports from those sorties that did manage to make their way over to their targets throughout the day. But that was just the first day of what were planned to be many in the leadup to the invasion and the reports were very good, with over one quarter of all British fighters believed to be destroyed, a number arrived at by the mistaken estimates of total RAF fighter strength combined with the very optimistic estimates made of fighters destroyed on the first day. It seemed to Luftwaffe leaders that they were making serious progress, and that they were on the path to victory within the expected timeframe, which was to eliminate Fighter Command as an effective force in less than a week. This episode will cover the days following Eagle Day, during which the German plan called for the final destruction of Fighter command so that over the following weeks the Luftwaffe’s efforts could be shifted to other missions that were also an essential part of the invasion preparations.

When the operations had ended on August 13th there was serious concern among Luftwaffe leaders that the poor weather that they had experienced during August 13th would carry over into the 14th, hampering another day of operations. However, this would not end up being the case and in fact by mid morning the conditions for flying were very good. Weather will be something that will continue to be discussed during these episodes due to its important to the air campaign was well as the fact that during this period of history they better understood the weather but it was still very challenging to predict what would happen in the future. They simply did not possess the amount of data that we have in the modern world and this made it more difficult to understand what might happen even during the next day. In general the target lists for the morning raids were very heavy on airfields, with the goal once again to hit a large number of airfields and damage them, hopefully putting them out of action entirely. From just the 2nd Flying Corps Stukas were sent against Hawkinge and Lympne while Dorniers would target Eastchurch and Rochester. Changes had also been made to how the German bombers were to be escorted to their targets, with a greater emphasis placed specifically on providing fighter cover for the slower and more vulnerable Stukas. This would come into play when Stukas were flying towards Hawkinge and Lympne. Above the Stuka formations were positioned Bf-109s and they were presented with the perfect opportunity to dive down on the Spitfires of 54 squadron as they attempted to attack the German dive bombers. Having the altitude advantage was critical to the fighters of both sides because it allowed them to have greater speed and energy in their attacks. They could then use that speed advantage to position themselves in the proper place to make attacks runs on the enemy. In this case the Spitfires were caught partially by surprise and had to break off their attacks on the slower German bombers to react to the 109s that were suddenly closing int. The distraction allowed the Stukas to make their bombing runs without as much interference, and also gave them cover as they began to head back to their home bases.

During the afternoon of the 14th there would be a succession of raids that would take place . Both of the Luftflotten would be in action with Luftflotte 2 launching raids on 8 different airfields while Luftflotte 3 sent out 9 raids. This had the effect of spreading out the British response, making it difficult to concentrate enough fighters on any specific raid to be effective at driving it off. When they did attack though, they did often have the intended effect of disrupting the German bombers, preventing them from having a nice easy flight to their targets. Another challenge that the German bombers would always have was finding the correct targets to bomb. This was a time before extremely accurate GPS, and so there was quite a bit of skill and luck involved in arriving over the proper target which became even more difficult when faced with an enemy’s fighters. For one set of German bombers, who were supposed to be targeting the major Fighter Command airfield at Biggin Hill, the evening haze that they would encounter during their flight would cause them to get off course and instead of hitting Biggin they instead would drop their bombs over a satellite airfield at West Malling. It was still a valid target, but even if they put it completely out of action it would not have even close the effect of an attacking on Biggin Hill.

While the 14th had seen several raids against British airfields and other targets, it was not close to what had been hoped due to the continued spotty weather. The expectations were that the weather would remain mostly the same the next day, with continued cloud cover making further operations difficult. To try and make the best out of yet another delay the decision was made for the Luftwaffe leaders to meet back in Germany to discuss the events of Eagle Day and their plan moving forward. While several different topics would be discussed, the most important for the overall course of the campaign was that the German bomber losses were seen by Goering as far above what was sustainable. This was particularly true of the Stuka squadrons which had been hit hard on the 13th during their raids over Britain. In an effort to protect them he would order that the fighter protection for any Stuka raids would have to be drastically increased. For RAF Fighter Command this focus on bomber escort missions was exactly what they wanted, from the very beginning of the campaign the RAF had focused on maximum attrition of German bombers, with British fighters generally just trying to distract German escorts while others moved into attack the more vulnerable German bombers. This served the purpose of reducing the total bombing capacity of the Luftwaffe, which was good, but also pulled the fighters in closer and closer to the bombers, which reduced their effectiveness. Goering also wanted a more narrow target focus on the RAF, dispensing with the raids that had continued to be done on naval targets . This might have been a good decision when it came to trying to achieve the goal of neutralizing the RAF, but it came at the cost of overall invasion preparations.

In retrospect the funniest part of the meetings that occurred on the 15th is that they would not have happened if the weather had been better the days before, and they also would not have happened without the incorrect weather predictions for the 15th. Because instead of the continued bad weather that would hamper air operations the weather on the 15th was great. This meant that instead of it being a slow day while the bosses were away talking about the future, it would instead be the most active day of the campaign so far. One raid would be against the airfields at Hawkinge and Lympne which were targeted by two groups of Stukas with heavy fighter escort. They would make it to the airfields, but in a complete case of luck four of the bombs would actually miss the airfield. Instead they would land near a road on the outside of the airfield and would have a tremendous impact when they just so happened to have cut the power lines that powered three Chain Home stations at Ry, Foreness, and Dover. It is funny how luck works sometimes, those bombs that were dropped by accident had a greater effect, at least temporarily, on British radar coverage than dedicated attacks on the radar stations. The largest raid by Luftflotte 2 on the 15th would be a raid of 88 Dornier 17s which would target two aircraft factories. This raid would be escorted by 130 Bf-109s, which would heavily outnumber the possible British response. When the raid was detected by the Chain Home stations the 24 Hurricanes and 12 Spitfires that were already airborne were sent against it while another 4 squadrons were scrambled to also join in the fighting. They would be largely unsuccessful in pushing through the fighter screens and the German bombers would make it to their targets, dropping about 300 bombs on the factories. Large quantities of parts and components were destroyed which would impact the available of the Short Stirling heavy bombers for months. There would be multiple other raids throughout the day with the goal of trying to take advantage of the actions of other raids that were pulling British fighters one way and then another. All of this resulted in damage to 3 airfields to the point where they were out of action for several days, while 4 others were damaged .

While the majority of the action would always be in the south due to the raids of Luftflotte 2 and 3, on August 15th there would also be a raid from Luftflotte 5 which was based in Norway. The goal for Luftflotte 5 was to use its more northern location to make attacks against targets in the Midlands, which were expected to be at least partially stripped of their fighter protection due to action in the south. The Germans believed that as the raids in the south escalated fighter squadrons from 12 Group, which was the Fighter Command unit in the Midlands, would be sent south not just on a raid by raid basis but also as a way of filling in for reinforcements as 11 Group suffered attrition. This was not a bad assumption, and in fact throughout the course of the battle Dowding would constantly be under pressure from various RAF and political leaders to bring more and more fighter strength south from 12 Group and 13 Group which was in Scotland. However, even if the movement of forces had been a part of Fighter Command’s plan, the German assumptions built on their much inflated expectations of how many fighters they were shooting down along with the belief that Fighter Command had far fewer aircraft than they actually had. This was a problem because due to its position in Norway Luftflotte 5’s raids had one critical weakness, they had to travel too far for the Bf-109s. They could be escorted by Bf-110s, fulfilling the role they had been designed for as long range bombing escorts, but over the previous weeks there had already been several examples of the weaknesses of the 110s when faced by single engine British fighters. To make matters worse, even though the Bf-110s had a much greater range than the 109, even that range was not enough with their normal load of fuel. This meant that for this bombing raid they also had additional fuel tanks fitted, about 1,000 liters which was held in plywood incased ventral fuel tanks. There were two problems, the first was that the fuel tanks unlike some used by other aircraft later in the war were not jettisonable, which meant that they would impact the performance of the heavy fighters, the second problem was that due to the additional weight of the fuel the rear gunner had to be left behind, which removed the one advantage the heavy fighters had over their British rivals, their ability to fire backwards. But with the assumption that Fighter Command had already been knocked back by the first 2 days of fighting the raid of 115 bombers, split between He-111s and Ju-88s along with 34 Bf-110s as escort would make their way over from Norway. They were discovered by British radar far out to sea, and the fighter squadrons were vectored in. 11 Spitfires were the first on the scene, quickly engaging and shooting down 7 110s, then 18 Hurricanes arrived and went after the He-111s with 8 eventually being shot down. Most of the German aircraft abandoned their missions immediately, with the bombers just dropping their bombs wherever they were to gain speed. A few of the German bombers did continue overland, but all they did was damage a few homes in Sunderland. Due to the attention that was focused on the first raid, the second raid that was a bit behind had a better time of it, and the Ju-88s were able to drop their bombs over the airfield at Driffield causing some damage and destroying some Whitley bombers. Even in this successful raid, several Ju-88s and further Bf-110s were lost. Overall the raid was a disaster, with close to 20% of the total attacking force being destroyed by the RAF response. It was the final proof that German bombers were simply incapable of operating without the escort of 109s, the header 110s could not get the job done. This would limit Luftflotte 5 to night time operations only, and in fact the August 15th raid would be their own daylight raid of the entire campaign.

For what had been at first considered a lost day due to weather expectations had turned out to be one of the largest days of the entire Battle of Britain, and it had been costly for both sides. The southern Luftflotten had flown almost 2,000 sorties during the day, they had hit many targets, but had also lost 41 aircraft in total, with 18 of those being bombers. These victories had not come without a cost for the RAF though, with the 22 Hurricanes and Spitfires shown down, primarily by the 109s. This was important, because while the Luftwaffe was only marginally winning the war of attrition overall, the critical fighter versus fighters numbers were actually quite bad for Fighter Command. Of the German aircraft destroyed on the 15th only 4 of them were 109s, giving them a very nice victory to loss ratio specifically over the Spitfires and Hurricanes. The German estimates were much higher though, making their success appear to be much greater, with the German pilots reporting 70 RAF fighters destroyed on the 15th, feeding into the growing disparity between actual Fighter command strength and German estimates of that strength.

August 16th would see further operations of the same types as the Luftwaffe continued to focus on airfield attacks in the areas around London. Over 1,700 sorties were flown in these raids from both fighters and bombers, and they would target a dozen airfields and while some of them were diverted due to cloud cover, they were still able to hit several of those airfields which caused several British fighters to be destroyed on the ground. Due to mostly random chance the number of fighters shot down in the air on both sides was actually higher on the 16th with the RAF losing 19 Hurricanes and Spitfires and the Germans 15 109s. When the number of German bombers and 110s were added in the numbers were very favorable for the RAF, even after considering the aircraft destroyed on the ground during the bombing raids of their airfields. The hope for the Luftwaffe was that the tempo of air raids during the 15th and 16th would be able to wear down the RAF, but it was also wearing down their own pilots. Getting over 1,700 sorties over Britain in a single day often required some squadrons to make multiple trips which wore down the pilots . Some would begin their days flying over the channel while it was still dark and they would not land from their final flight until it was almost dark once again. This was destined to wear down the pilots, involved, and there were limits to how long it could be continued. In recognition of this, August 17th would be a day of rest.

There would be a few flights on the 17th, with the Luftwaffe flying some reconnaissance flights throughout the day and a few very small night time bombing raids, but all of these efforts were very small as most of the Luftwaffe was given some rest. At the same time the commanders and staff of the Luftwaffe units would spend the day reviewing the efforts of the previous days and planning for the future. When they evaluated what had already been done over the previous days the reviews seemed quite positive, both from the first had accounts of the pilots and then reconnaissance flights that had been flown over some of the targets that had been hit by the German bombers. With that in mind the next days of bombing would be heavily focused on a relatively small number of RAF airfields which were seen as the ones most directly in opposition to the planned areas of the Sea Lion invasion. In Luftflotte 2’s areas these were Kenley, Biggin Hill, Hornchurch, and North Weald. All four of these airfields would be targeted by raids on the 18th, with two in the morning and two in the afternoon. Luftflotte 3 would have the same type of targets, again focused on airfields around Portsmouth due to their proximity to the planned invasion beaches. While the German staff officers were planning, and many of the pilots were resting, on the British side the 17th was also a moment for preparations. One of the major items on the agenda was the continued repair of damage done to the various airfields used by Fighter command which had been damaged during the previous days of fighting. This was largely done manually, with picks and shovels and by a combination of ground crews, airmen, and civilian workers, as there were not enough of any kind of mechanical earth mover to go around. The most dangerous items of all were not the craters, as those just required some work, but instead the various unexploded bombs that still lay on the airfields. Some of these were purposefully unexploded, with the Germans having placed timers and triggers on them so that they were just delayed in their detonation. But there were also simply bombs that malfunctioned, but there was no real way to tell the difference between the two groups of what were all classified as UXBs, or unexploded bombs.

Most of the drama on August 18th was focused on the raids by Luftflotte 2 with their first raid targeting Kenley and Biggin Hill. Each of the sector station airfields would have their own raids that would attempt to arrive at roughly the same time, to prevent them from being focused on in succession. And instead of just one collection of aircraft they would arrive in a series of smaller groups that were designed to complement one another. For example against Kenley the first group of German aircraft would be 60 Bf-109s that were designed to knock back the Hurricanes and Spitfires to allow the following groups to have a free bombing run against their targets. The second group would be dozen Ju-88s which were given the task of targeting the hangars and buildings around Kenley. After this groups would come 36 Dornier-17s with most of them executing a medium altitude bombing raid on the landing grounds while a smaller number once again targeted the buildings and hangars. Each of these groups of bombers would have their own fighter escort, although they would be positioned closer to the bombers than the first fighter sweep. Due to the size of the raid it was picked up quite early by the Chain Home system, and the alert went out for a 100+ inbound raid with 8 squadrons initially being sent into the attack. 6 more squadrons were also put in high alert so that they could be airborne in 5 minutes if required. Due to space, time, speed, and of course the presence of German fighters little could be done to prevent the Germans from reaching their targets and bombs would fall on many of the targets. Several hangars and other buildings were hit by the successive raids of bombers, although one group of Dorniers would reach the target first, and the destruction hey caused and the fires they would ignite would cause the Ju-88s to divert to West Malling instead where they did a decent amount of damage. Even if not every German bomber hit Kenley, the facilities were devastated, out of the bases 4 hangars 3 of them were heavily damaged. Almost more importantly, as the head of B Sector, Kenley would not be fully back on line for two and a half days, putting additional strain on the other Sectors to pick up the slack. 10 Hurricanes were also destroyed on the base. The success was not free though, and the Germans would love several bombers during the raid including 6 Dorniers from just one of the bomber groups. And while the raid at Kenley caused a lot of real damage, the raids on Biggin Hill were a bit of a debacle. Three separate waves of He-111s would make the bomb run, and they would largely survive, but they ended up dropping most of their bombs off target, apparently in some woods to the east of the airfields. The only damage reported after the raid was that there were a few craters on the airfield.

While the German medium bombers were focused on more airfield raids, the Stukas were already moving in on other targets. Some groups would target a series of Coastal Command bases that were a risk to the invasion while others would focus the Royal Naval Air Service Ford base, a fourth group would target the Chain Home station at Poling. The Poling station was important because, due to various damage and raids of the previous days, it was the only one in the area still working at full capacity. The results of the various raids were different, but the greatest damage was done to the RNAS Ford base when the bases fuel dump caught fire due to the bombing, various hangers and outbuildings were also damaged during the raid. 12 torpedo bombers were also destroyed by the Stukas. The damage was so bad that instead of trying to repair the base the Royal Navy just abandoned it, and in fact it would not be back in action for over a month by which point it was only brought back online as a Royal Air Force base specializing in night fighter squadrons. A total of 31 Stukas would target the Chain Home station specifically, dropping about 90 bombs in total. They did do some damage, but they did not take the station fully off the air. Fighter Command was not caught completely off guard by these raids, which were initially detected about 30 minutes before they started hitting their targets. However, most of the damage would be done as they tried to make their way back to France. In some cases the damage was staggering, for example in the attacks made against the Coastal Command airfields at Thorney the Stukas did for the most part get their bombs off, but when they were fleeing the scene 10 of them were shot down, and 2 more damaged to the point that they did not make it back to their bases. There were only 28 Stukas in the attack on Thorney, and with 12 not returning almost 1/2 of the group no longer existed. Just another example of the dangers of unescorted raids by the aging Stukas.

There were late day raids planned for August 18th, with one of the largest being executed by 109 bombers escorted by 140 fighters with their targets being the sector stations at Hornchurch and North Weald. However, the weather would intervene and the bombers had to abandoned their attempts at hitting the sector stations and instead they dropped their bombs on a series of secondary targets which were army and Royal Marine barracks. They would do damage to these targets, but obviously they were less important to the overall Luftwaffe objectives than the RAF targets that were first on their list. Overall on the 18th the Luftwaffe flew about 660 sorties, roughly evenly split between bombing and fighter flights. In all of these sorties they would lose 66 total aircraft, including 14 bombers, 19 Stukas, 15 Bf-110s, and 18 Bf-109s. This was balanced against the loss of 34 Spitfires and Hurricanes in the air, and then 10 Hurricanes and 12 Royal Navy torpedo bombers on the ground, 20 other aircraft of various types were lost. When all of that was added together the RAF and Royal Navy lost a combined 76 aircraft on the day. Losing more aircraft to the enemy was bad, and not a good day, there would be a reason that 18th would be given the nickname the Hardest Day. But the ratio was good enough for the British that they were continuing to prevent the Germans from accomplishing their objective of destroying the RAF while retaining enough of their own strength to support the invasion.

Taking stock on August 18th, the Luftwaffe’s track record over the previous 5 days was something of a mixed bag on the one hand they had hit many of the airfields, chain home stations, and other targets. However, the results had not been as catastrophic for the Royal Air Force and the overall structure of the British defenses as was hoped for before the air campaign began. Damage had been caused, aircraft had been shot down and destroyed, but Fighter command continued to exist. Next episode will look at the German command conferences on August 19th as the Germans needed to find adjustments to their plan, because it was not going to achieve its goals without major alterations