228: New Plans

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This episode delves into the critical turning point of the Battle of Britain, exploring how the Luftwaffe’s ambitious plans faced mounting challenges as weather disruptions and strategic miscalculations threatened their timetable. Discover the innovative German radio navigation system designed to guide bombers accurately, and the fierce aerial intelligence battle waged by British forces to counter it—a conflict that shaped the outcome of one of WWII’s most pivotal campaigns. Perfect for history enthusiasts seeking gripping insights into the technological and tactical clashes that defined the skies over Britain.

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Summary

This episode delves into the critical turning point of the Battle of Britain, exploring how the Luftwaffe’s ambitious plans faced mounting challenges as weather disruptions and strategic miscalculations threatened their timetable . Discover the innovative German radio navigation system designed to guide bombers accurately, and the fierce aerial intelligence battle waged by British forces to counter it—a conflict that shaped the outcome of one of WWII’s most pivotal campaigns. Perfect for history enthusiasts seeking gripping insights into the technological and tactical clashes that defined the skies over Britain.

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 228 - The Battle of Britain Pt. 3 - New Plans. This week a big thank you goes out to Eric and Ben 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. Just like on August 14th, the forecasts for August 19th made it clear that weather was going to be an issue, and this time the forecasts were correct. This allowed the Luftwaffe leadership to once again assemble to review what had taken place so far over the previous days and what they planned to do moving forward. There was a growing urgency to these discussions because already by the 19th the Luftwaffe’s plans were falling far behind schedule. The most optimistic estimates had been that the RAF could be beaten in only a matter of days, with the most optimistic among the Luftwaffe staff believing it could be done in only 3 days. By the 19th it had been 6 days, and yet every time the Luftwaffe sent its planes of Britain Fighter Command rose to meet them in considerable numbers. At the same time that the Luftwaffe leaders were at Goering’s headquarters at Carinhall for these discussions, back in Britain refinements to processes and procedures were still underway. The commander of 11 Group, the Fighter Command formation based in southeast England often under the greatest threat, would send out new orders to reiterate the importance of focusing on the German bombers, with the only goal with the German fighters being distraction, while also telling his air controllers to make us of the 10 and 12 Group squadrons that were often available. It is interesting to compare the two different groups because in retrospect it feels like the Germans were out hunting for answers while the British seemed to already have the answers and only needed to tweak what they were doing .

The meetings that would occur for the Luftwaffe staff on the 19th were absolutely critical because after a week of fighting, and with the invasion roughly a month in the future time was very much of the essence. Unfortunately it would get off on the wrong foot immediately when the official Luftwaffe intelligence estimates were provided to the assembled leaders as information they could use in their decision making and debate. Every German estimate in terms of damage done, the state of the British airfields, sector stations, and other infrastructure was overly optimistic about the impact of the German bombers. The believe was that of the 50 airfields that had been hit by the Luftwaffe bombers 2 had been completely abandoned, 3 had been severely damaged, and two sector stations were believed to have been ‘virtually destroyed’. In reality, there had been successes, but the actual sustained damage done to the British infrastructure was far les. One base had actually been abandoned, the Royal Naval Air Service Ford base, and others had been damaged but most of that damage had been repaired or at least the major damage had been. Many of the airfields experienced some damage that had degraded their abilities, but it represented a reduction not a removal of their ability to fulfill their role. The overestimation of the damage done by the Luftwaffe also extended to the number of British aircraft that had been destroyed. The German estimates were that they had destroyed around 450 Spitfires and Hurricanes, along with over 100 additional fighter type aircraft since the beginning of July. This meant that they had at most 430 fighters remaining. In comparison to these major losses the Germans knew that they had lost 127 Bf-109s and only 297 total aircraft during the campaign. This made it seem like the balance of forces was not just in favor of the Germans but that it was getting better all the time, included a massive 4.5:1 ratio in the all important fighter category. In fact, the numbers were far more close to that, and particularly in fighters in stead of having a massive advantage in victories the Luftwaffe and RAF fighter command were trading roughly even . The misunderstanding of the “score” in fighters was absolutely critical to German evaluations of the campaign up to this point in the middle of August. They knew that their own bomber losses were severe, with 127 light and medium bombers have been list, about 13% of the total number, and 52 Stukas, about 17% of the total number. These were heavy losses, with the crew losses being particularly severe. But, as long as the German fighters were heavily winning the fighter battle everything could be okay. The fact that they were not, but the Germans thought they were, caused them to make far less drastic changes to their strategy than would have made if they had accurate information.

The bomber losses could not be ignored though, and the attrition that the bombers groups were suffering had to be in some way addressed if they wanted to have enough of them left when the invasion started. The most important force to protect was the one that would be the most beneficial to the support of that invasion, the Stukas. Until it took the skies over Britain the Stuka had been one of the most reliable tools in the German arsenel, and its actions over Poland and France are legendary. But the fact remained that it was a slow aircraft, and over Britain they were faced with a completely different scenario then during those earlier campaigns. The only real option was to use them less, or at least reduce their use to only the most favorable circumstances. Goring’s order would say that this was to be the case until the enemy fighter force was fully broken. The vulnerability of the Stuke was in some ways shared by the other German bombers as well, and the only option that was available was to provide them more protection. And while this was easy to say it was much more difficult to actually accomplish. The general guidelines were that the German fighter escorts needed to double, but there just were not enough fighters to go around. This probably was compounded by the fact that it was clear that the Me-110 was not capable of fulfilling its job as a bomber escort, it was just too vulnerable to the exact attacks that they were trying to defend the bombers from . The only remaining option were the 109s, but given the limited numbers available there would have to severe changes either to how they were operating or find a way to concentrate available strength in a more direct manner. In both cases there would be resistance. In terms of changing how the 109s were operating, this went back to the earlier debates that had been occurring within the Luftwaffe for months. The bomber groups wanted close close support that was always available at a moments notice. The fighters wants as much freedom as possible to execute their own attacks in their own way, believing that it was this freedom that would give them the greatest advantage over the RAF. In Goering’s orders that came out of the August 19th discussions, he understood this, and also agreed with it to some extent saying: ‘Only part of the fighters are to be employed as direct escorts to our bombers. The aim must be to employ the strongest possible fighter forces on free-hunt operations in which they can indirectly protect the bombers, and at the same time come to grips under favourable conditions with enemy fighters.’ . However, with the bomber escort duty being seen as primary, it would always be the free hunting sorties that would be the first to be reduced should it be required. The argument would also be made that the bombers would play just as important of a role as the fighters in cutting down Fighter Command numbers and so escorting them, and defending them from Spitfires and Hurricanes, would be just as effective at wearing down fighter Command as aerial combat would be. But all of this was still being based on the assumption that the Luftwaffe was massively more effective than it really was, with the fighters achieving more than a 4 to 1 kill ratio, and so even if escorting the bombers reduced that a little bit they would still be ahead. With the numbers very close to even, even a small reduction in overall win rate could push the Germans into a losing position.

The requirement for a doubling of the bomber escorts was also simply not possible given the number of fighters available and the sortie rate of German bombers. The fighter pilots were already being pushed to the maximum, they had very little left to give, and more 109s had to be found. Of course more did not exist, and so the only other option was to concentrate them, and this was done by the shift of all of Luftflotte 3’s single engine fighters into Luftflotte 2. This would give Luftflotte 2, commanded by Kesselring, almost 850 109s, and they would be concentrated just against 11 Group in Southeast England. Luftflotte 3 would become an almost exclusively night operation force. Shifting the forces around was a logical move, there was a problem of fighter concentration and they solved it, and by doing so they completely changed the overall structure of the air offensive. Up to mid August the Luftwaffe had been focusing on broad attacks, with many targets all around southern England targeted. Moving forward the efforts would be far more focused. The hope was that this would allow for the real damage that was required for Sea Lion to succeed, but in some ways it also played into the strengths of RAF Fighter Command.

At the same time that the Luftwaffe leaders were determining their path forward, the British were also constantly making adjustments to how they were fighting the battle. For example, on 19 August, the same day that the Luftwaffe meetings were occurring, new instructions were sent around from Air Vice-Marshal Park the commander of the all important 11 Group of Fighter Command, which the Luftwaffe would be focusing on in the following weeks. One of the interesting orders that this contained was that under no circumstances were RAF fighter pilots to stray out over the water further than gliding distance to the coast. The reason for this is that pilots were precious, and while more Hurricanes and Spitfires were rolling out of the factories every single day, the same was not true for trained airmen who generally became drastically more effective the more combat experience that they gained. During the first months of the battle for every 3 pilots that were lost, only 1 replacement would become available by completing training. And it is essential to emphasize that fighter pilots in particular benefited from experience in ways that some other service groups did not, this was true for their ability to shoot down enemy aircraft but also just to survive with experienced pilots having a drastically greater chance of surviving an aerial engagement. The RAF had the advantage that any pilot that had to bail out, as long as they survived the experience, could be back in an aircraft almost immediately, but this was only true if they survived, and many pilots who had to ditch over the ocean did not survive. This was a key advantage for the RAF over the Luftwaffe, who lost every pilot that bailed out over Britain even if they survived the jump. Another important set of orders would be sent out the following week, which touched on one of the major reasons that the concentration of Luftwaffe effort against 11 Group would not be as successful as they hoped. Within the structure of RAF Fighter Command there were multiple different Groups, with the three most important being 10 group, in southwest England, 11 Group is Southeast, and the 12 group just the north. Fighter command was structured so that each of these groups could support one another when required, so for example if 11 Group’s fighters went off to engage a German raid, if they were available squadrons from 10 or 12 group might be called on to also send some fighters to protect 11 Group’s airfields. As long as the sector stations kept operating, and they were allowed to organize and facilitate the support and assignment of squadrons Fighter Command was remarkably resilient. And the Sector stations were, by the middle of August, largely doing just fine. Three of the sector stations most directly in the path of the Luftwaffe were Biggin Hill Southeast of London, Tangmere Southwest of London, and Kenley south of London and while they had been targeted by Luftwaffe bombing raids multiple times they were still completely functional. Kenley had been hit the hardest and it had only been taken down for a few hours. The survival of these sector stations, and the failure of the Luftwaffe to truly strike a blow against Fighter Command’s infrastructure meant that as long as pilots and aircraft were available then the fight would continue. In the area of aircraft, even in mid August things were actually beginning to tilt in the favor of the RAF. During August the Luftwaffe would receive 184 new Me-109s and 125 of the less useful Me-110s, 309 in total. During that same time the RAF would receive 476 new fighters of a variety of types. In both cases they were doing barely enough to keep pace with losses, but that meant victory for the RAF, all they had to do was continue to survive and they were doing that.

While most of the emphasis was being placed on the daytime fighting over southern England, throughout August another important aspect of the campaign would receive more resources and focus and that was the night bombing campaign . The Luftwaffe believed that its daytime raids would be what destroyed the RAF, but that did not prevent them from investing time and effort into preparing for night time bombing raids before the start of the war. A key problem that they had to solve was how to ensure that the bombers dropped their bombs anywhere close to where they were actually targeting. Earlier episodes of this podcast series discussed this problem and how it was solved, but just briefly, during the Second World War, at a time before the availability of GPS it was remarkably hard for aircraft to know exactly where they were located. Sure they could try and keep track manually with course, speed, and time, but there was always some flimsiness in air speed indication which could compound greatly during a long flight. The solution to this problem for the Germans was through the use of radio waves, creating a series of radio signals that, when combined with radio receivers, would give the bombers information about whether they were heading the correct direction and then when they were over the target. This system, with various refinements and various names would be a critical piece of the German plan for the Battle of Britain. This then kicked off a bit of an arms race between the Germans and their radio signals and the British intelligence groups and their goal of disrupting the radio navigation in some way, events that were covered back in episode 202. But even when the Germans were able to get their bombers over the target, and they did that quite frequently they ran into the other major problem that would be the number one theme of strategic bombing campaigns throughout the course of the war. It was actually hard, like really hard, like shockingly hard, to actually accomplish anything through the aerial bombardment of strategic targets, things like factories which were a frequent target. These problems were made worse during the night because, even though the radio navigation was accurate it was not perfect, which meant that some factories, particularly ones focused on supplying aircraft, might be targeted multiple times and only a few bombs would actually hit the factories. This was nowhere close to enough to cause real damage that drastically reduced the output from those factories. The allies, with far greater resources, would experience this same problem later in the war. The Luftwaffe leaders might say that they were directly targeting the ability of the RAF to produce aircraft, and there were a few examples of real damage being caused on factories, like the one against the Short Stirling factory discussed last episode, those were the exception and not the norm.

There were also important mistakes made during the night time bombing raids that would completely change the course of the Battle of Britain. One of the greatest mistakes would be the one made on the night of 24/25 August by a group of He-111s that were trying to bomb well, something. This is one of those instances where you see different information in different sources. They were either trying to bomb an aircraft factory at Rochester and mistook the Thames for the Medway as Tom Holland said in The Battle of Britain or they were trying to bomb the Thameshaven oil terminal which was close to London as described by Stephen Bungay in The Most Dangerous Enemy or the Hawker Aircraft factory at Kingston-on-Thames according to To Defeat the Few by Douglas C. Dildy and Paul F. Crickmore. Or it was some combination of those targets, things seem very confused. The result of the raid is well known though, some of the bombs, for whatever reason and based on whatever mistake was made, would fall on the East End of London. The critical part is that the bombs falling on London was not the intended result and was simply caused by the German bombers losing their way and dropping their bombs on the wrong target. But the places where the 2 tons of high explosive bombs were damaged regardless of why there were dropped. The damage was not critical, but it was more the concept that the Germans had now bombed a major city in a night time raid. Churchill and the War Cabinet believed that it was essential that a response be given, the attack on a purely civilian target, which the Germans had mostly avoided up to that point in the Battle of Britain, had to be answered. And so it would be, with a raid on Berlin the very next night. This raid would target the Tempelhof airfield and the Siemens factory nearby and it would be executed by a combined force of Hampdens and Wellingtons. Somewhere between 50 and 81 of the twin engine bombers would take part in the raid, again the numbers vary. Only 10 of the bombers even found Berlin, and when they arrived there was cloud cover which resulted in very few bombs actually finding any real targets of consequence. The most heavily damaged area was a farm, which was not exactly an ideal target.

The night night another bombing raid was sent out, with various German cities as their targets. The on the night of 28/29 August Berlin would be the target again, and they would actually drop their bombs within the city center. A number of people were killed and even more were wounded. This would have an important ramification on the Battle of Britain and really the war itself. The raid was something of a shock to those who lived in Berlin, with William Shirer recording that it was the first that the war had really been brought home to the people of Berlin. Up until that point the war had been somewhat distant. Hilter would return to Berlin as soon as the news reached him at the Berghof, and he would order that the air defenses of the city were drastically improved which would result in the construction of several flak towers, which were just the first of what would turn into many that would dot the landscape around the city. They would feature a wide array of anti-aircraft guns as well as hardened bomb shelters for 18,000 people . The other important change was that Hitler, would had previously resisted the suggestions from some within the Luftwaffe that they begin bombing civilian targets in Britain, now he removed those limitations. He would tell Goring that London was now a target that could be bombed and that the should prepare a reprisal attack against London to hit back against the British. With this decision the Luftwaffe took the first steps down the road to The Blitz. This would not be the first time that the Luftwaffe would bomb a strictly civilian target for the purpose of killing civilians. Just like the RAF raids on Berlin and other German cities during the summer of 1940 the bombing raids over London were about sending a message, damaging civilian infrastructure, and causing the British public to give up. It would be an absolute disaster for the Luftwaffe goals of preparing for Sea Lion. There were only so many German bombers, and so many targets they could hit, and now many of them would be reassigned to night time raids instead of the daytime targets they had previously been occupied with. The head of Fighter Command believed that it was the decision to shift the focus of bombing to London that would cause the German defeat, because it gave Fighter Command the only thing it really needed to survive and thrive, it gave them time, time to recover, time to bring in new pilots and aircraft. But before the final shift of all of the Luftwaffe’s effort over to London was made, there were still a few more weeks where the Luftwaffe still believed it was possible to defeat RAF Fighter Command, and the last week of August and the first few weeks of September would be a brutal time to be a pilot over England, no matter what side you were on