229: Familiar Failures

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In Episode 229 of The Battle of Britain, listeners dive into the intense, attritional final phase of the aerial campaign as the Luftwaffe shifts focus to dismantle RAF Fighter Command’s defenses with precision raids on key airfields. From the devastating bombing of Manston to the failed, costly attempt on Portsmouth, each raid reveals a clash of strategy and resilience—where German pilots claim massive victories but reality shows only half the damage. The episode uncovers how British squadrons fought back through clever tactics, early warning systems, and bold leadership, while highlighting the Luftwaffe’s growing losses despite their relentless attacks. Amid shifting targets, tactical adjustments, and a battle of attrition, one truth emerges: the air war was turning—and the tide was clearly beginning to turn against Germany. This is history at its most gripping—where courage, technology, and sheer willpower determine the fate of nations. Don’t miss this pivotal moment in the Battle of Britain. Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 229: The Battle of Britain Pt. 4: Familiar Failures. This week a big thank you goes out to Mike, David, Dallas, and Harshbadger 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. After the Luftwaffe staff conferences on August 19th the decision was made to focus shift the focus of Luftwaffe attacks, with the daylight efforts more directly focused on southeast England which were the areas covered by 11 Group. This would eventually lead to a very rough 2 weeks for Fighter Command, with Churchill later describing the weeks as: “During these crucial days the Germans had continuously applied powerful forces against the airfields of South and South-east England. Their object was to break down the day fighter defence of the capital, which they were impatient to attack.”. This could be considered the third phase in the Battle of Britain, after the weeks of the Channel War, then the opening 10 days of broad attacks on the RAF, and then the focus on the elimination of Fighter Command by attacks on 11 Group. There would be some time involved in the shift though, all of Luftflotte 3’s fighter groups had to be transitioned over to Luftflotte 2 and then the undefeated enemy of weather got involved and delayed the start of the new effort for a further 4 days. These delays meant that the new attacks would begin on August 24th.

The new German plans showed a real sense of purpose for the first time in the campaign, and were in retrospect probably what they should have been doing from the beginning. With so many of the Bf-109s given to Kesselring and Luftflotte 2, and thenew more narrow target selection, the focus would be almost exclusively on 11 Group of RAF Fighter Command, commanded by Air Vice-Marshal Park . But the RAF was still prepared, or as prepared as they could be. The middle of August were a time for squadron rotations, as those that were spent due to their efforts of the previous 2 weeks were replaced by fresher squadrons from other fighter Groups. For example 64 squadron was replaced by 615 squadron and 226 squadron was replaced by 264. This allowed for fresher men and machines to be brought into the heaviest fighting, but was also not something that Fighter Command could do indefinitely. There simply were not enough squadrons to allow each one to fully recover from their period of greatest action before being rotated back in. In fact, on August 19th 264 was one of the few squadrons that was available, and it was equipped with the much maligned Defiant turret fighter. The Defiant traded speed and maneuverability for the ability to engage enemies from a powered turret located behind the cockpit and had proven to have serious challenges when faced with German single engine fighters. These problems were known, but as more and more Hurricane and Spitfire squadrons were worn down and needed to be rotated out, there were only so many options.

The 24th was a day of heavy operations for Luftflotte 2, with a total of 150 bombing sorties targeting a variety of airfields throughout the day. Ramsgate, Manston, North Weald, Bekesbourne, and Hornchurch were among the airfields that were targeted by the German bombers. The results of these bombing attacks were mixed. Bekesbourne had already been abandoned as an active base by the 24th, and so the bombs that fell there, almost 37 tons of them, were wasted. At Hornchurch 24 tons of bombs were dropped but only the only damage they caused was some craters on an outer taxi way, which meant pretty much nothing. These were both disappointing results, from a German perspective, but more success was achieved in the raids against Manston. Manston was an airfield very close to the coast, and during the day it would get hit hard by 20 Ju-88s. The best description of the damage that was caused comes from Flying Officer William Fraser who was at the airfield: “this was the worst attack yet and seven men were killed, the landing ground being covered with craters. Unexploded bombs were everywhere, building and aircraft were burning fiercely, communications had been cut and the station was completely isolated.”. Along with the damage mentioned by Fraser, many of the living quarters were destroyed, and the ammunition storage was hit by a German bomb that resulted in multiple secondary explosions. The damage at Manston was so bad that it would be officially abandoned and the aircraft that were based there were moved to other airfields, primarily Hornchurch. The results at Manston are interesting because it was one of the few areas were the Luftwaffe would achieve their exact goal. Looking back at the plans for the Luftwaffe before Eagle Day, the plan had been to pound the airfields into destruction, pushing back the RAF further and further away from the coast. They were almost always unsuccessful because the Luftwaffe underestimated how many bombs would be required to accomplish their goals, but there were moments when they were successful like at Manston. While all of this bombing was happening, most of the German fighters would spend the day near the coast, feinting attacks over land to try and draw out the British fighters into engagements were the German fighters were not encumbered by the need to protect formations of bombers. They would have mixed success.

The shift in focus to Kesselring’s Luftflotte 2 did not mean that Sperrle’s Luftflotte 3 was completely inactive on the 24th, and even though most of its Bf-109s had been shifted over to Luftflotte 2 it would still execute a major raid on Portsmouth on the 24th. The target was the Royal Dockyards and associated infrastructure, and for the purpose 46 Ju-88s would be used. In this case the German raiders were lucky because the new radar receiver at Ventnor, which had replaced the one that was damaged in an earlier German raid, was having issues and did not detect the raid until it was too late. This meant that the German bombers were able to drop their bombs unmolested, although the vast majority of the bombs that they dropped did not hit their targets and instead fell on the civilian districts of Porstmouth. This would result in 104 civilians killed and 237 injured. Here again you can see one of the ways in which the German campaign was having some success, with the degradation of the Chain Home system allowing their bombers to reach targets without facing any resistance. The issue for the Luftwaffe was that even these successes were often balanced against losses that made the entire adventure unsustainable. On the 24th, the Germans actually lost more fighters than the British, with 23 British aircraft being shot down, including 4 Defiants, and the Germans losing 24 Me-109s. The numbers got worse when considered the 8-10 German bombers that were shot down. It seemed that no matter what the Luftwaffe did, and what targets they focused on, what was really happening was that the Battle of Britain was turning into a battle of attrition, and it was not going in their favor.

August 25th would be a successful day for the Luftwaffe though, with one of the major efforts for the day being a raid on the airfield at Warmwell. 30 Ju-88s would be sent on the attack, escorted by large formations of both Bf-110s and Bf-109s. Unlike the day before at Portsmouth the Chain Home system performed perfectly in detecting the raid at very long range which allowed multiple squadrons of Hurricanes and Spitfires to be brought into to intercept the German formations well before they reached their targets. The multiple squadron melee would see 10 German aircraft and 7 British fighters shot down as the German bombers continued on their way to the airfield where they would manage to drop their bombs with much better accuracy than normal. 30 bombs in total would hit the airfield. As the German formations turned for home, another squadron of Hurricanes arrived to try and cause additional damage, but two were lost in exchange for 2 Bf-109s. For all of this effort, and for all of the losses on both sides, Warmwell was out of operation for a grand total of 18 hours. The focus of large numbers of German aircraft resulted in very little in terms of real infrastructure damage. The aircraft numbers were at least better on the day, with the RAF losing a total of 27 aircraft while the Luftwaffe only lost 21.

The attack on Warmwell had been led by bombers from Sperrle’s Luftflotte 3, and the next day on the 26th they would once again be in action for their last daylight raid of the campaign when they would once again target Portsmouth in an effort to seriously damage the port facilities. One of the challenges with these episodes is the podcast is that while there is a finite number of raids that can be covered in each episode, often when one raid was happening there were many other engagements happening along the entire front of the coast. The 26th is a good example because while the main effort was going to be made against Portsmouth, i twas supported by multiple different fighter squadrons all along the front. The goal of these other engagements was to try and pull the RAF fighters away from the bombers, and so while the 48 He-111s were forming up and moving on their way there were multiple groups of German fighters and bombers moving in to the attack further to the east. These fighter and bomber raids had to be answered by Fighter Command Squadrons, with 245, 234, and 609 squadron all being sent up to attack. This effectively remove them from the board as an answer to the raid on Portsmouth due simply to the cycle time between when they were in the air, landing a refueling, and then getting back into action. These distractions were not free though, and in fact 3 109s were shot down in exchange for just damage on 2 Spitfires. But it did accomplish the goal of pulling fighters away from possibly answering the Portsmouth bombing raid. Unfortunately for the men onboard the He-111s, Fighter Command was really good at bringing in squadrons from elsewhere when required. This meant that 43, 602, and 615 Squadrons, and this was a major problem for the German bombers because it was anticipated that most of the British fighters would be distracted and so the German fighters were out of position. One of the interesting challenges for the German bombers at the moment that the British fighters were moving into attack, and throughout the Battle of Britain, is that there was actually no radio communication between the bomber and fighter formations. The only way that the bombers had to communicate with the fighters was through the use of flares. For the Portsmouth raid the German fighters would not arrive from their top cover positions in time, and the Hurricanes of 615 Squadron would cause major problems just as the He-111s were getting ready to drop their bombs. Most of the bombs would end up falling in the harbor, which was completely useless. To make matters worse, 4 He-111s and 7 Bf-109s were lost in exchange for just 4 Hurricanes and a single Spitfire. What was planned to be the final culminating raid on Portsmouth proved to be a disaster.

After three days of pretty heavy operations the 27th was another rest day. On the German side the continued topic of discussion was how the German fighters could best support and protect the German bombers with bomber leaders demanding that they be brought in closer to the bomber formations, within visual range, just so that they felt more secure. The fighter commanders fought against this, mostly because they were finding it very difficult to deal with Spitfires when they were traveling at the speed of the bombers. By entering combat at a lower speed they were just ceding too much of an advantage to the British fighters, and the only option was to fly higher and faster so that they entered into combat with an advantage. But as often happened, the result was a compromise, more fighters would fly close to the bombers, but the rest would continue their more typical flight path above and in front of the bomber formations. While these instances of discussion and adjustment were important, there were also always small changes to German tactics happening throughout the campaign. They were not just doing the same thing day after day and expecting different results. For example, throughout the month of August they realized that the British early warning system was really good at vectoring fighter squadrons onto raids. But this was largely thanks to its ability to detect the Germans squadrons out over the channel, and then meet them at or near the coast. To try and reduce the effectiveness the Luftwaffe would shift their tactics, and instead of forming up individual raids over France they would instead fly as one big group over to England and only after they were over the coast they would split into their own individual raids. As long as the split happened before British fighters arrived, it meant that at least some of the day’s raids would be safer because the RAF planes would be in the wrong place. It is almost impossible to track all of the small adjustments like this throughout the campaign, but they were happening all the time. On the British side, the 27th was another day of squadron rotations, with multiple different squadrons rotating out of 11 Group to rest and rebuild after damage they suffered over the previous days.

The 28th would be another day of raids on airfields, but the day would actually start with some interesting headlines from a few different British newspapers. Over the previous week the Germans had increased the size of their night bomber raids, as Sperrle’s Luftflotte 3 shifted almost entirely to night time operations. For example of August 26th 200 bombers had scattered around to a variety of different targets, including targets close to London. The same would happen on the 27th. The Yorkshire Post would run an editorial to try and explain why the size of these night time raids was increasing “One prime reason and a very encouraging reason for us is the failure of their big daylight offensive a fortnight ago.”. This was not too far from the truth, the day time raids were not accomplishing their goals, and the shift to night time raids was done to try and use the bombers while allowing for a greater concentration of daytime fighter escort. The increased number of available 109s would be used on the 28th to escort two different raids, and then to fly a series of fighter sweeps independent of bombing raids. The first raid of the day would target the airfield at Eastchurch. Five RAF squadrons were sent to meet it, but they were unable to get through the fighter protection and the bombers would reach Eastchurch. Once again the damage would be somewhat disappointing, and while there would be damage the only real outcome is that Eastchurch could only be used during the day to avoid some of that damage. The second raid of the day was against the Rochford airfield, again bombs were dropped on the airfield and damage was caused, but the airfield was not put out of action. Then in the afternoon the fighter sweeps would occur over the course of 3 hours. These fighter sweeps were what the German fighters actually wanted to be doing throughout the campaign, but their opportunities were limited. In this case they would have three hours of sweeps, and Fighter command would rise to the challenge with Park sending seven 11 Group squadrons to meet the German fighters. At the end of the day these fighter sweeps seemed successful, with the German pilots reporting the destruction of 16 Hurricanes, 14 Spitfires, and 4 Defiants. The actual losses were actually just 6 Hurricanes, 5 Spitfires, and 3 Defiants, half of the claimed number. This was balanced against 15 109s and 3 bombers on the German side.

The 29th was a day full of more German fighter sweeps with massive numbers of German fighters with only a few German bombers sprinkled in. The challenge for the Germans in this case was that instead of sending out the fighter squadrons to meet all of these sweeps Park at 11 Group headquarters ordered that squadrons would stay on the ground unless there were bombers to attack. This was important because it points to the two very different goals that were happening on both sides that continued to make it difficult for the German to achieve the levels of British losses they were looking for. The Germans wanted to destroy fighter squadrons, whether in the air or on their airfields, that was their primary goal. On the British side, their primary target was the bombers, victories over German fighters was all well and good, but really the goal was to reduce the number of bombs that could be dropped through downing the bombers. This meant that often the only real way for the Luftwaffe to get the RAF fighter squadrons in the air was to dangle bombers as bait, but that almost always resulted in heavy bomber losses. On the 29th the hope was that the fighters alone would be enough to get the Spitfires and Hurricanes in the air, and the results were disappointing. Only 4 Spitfires and 6 Hurricanes were shot down, which was more than the 8 109s that would also be destroyed. Of course the German claimed almost double that number, 16 Spitfires and 3 Hurricanes.

The original plan for the Luftwaffe’s air campaign had been to attack the RAF airfields in a specific order, moving from further away from London to closer to London over the course of three stages. Stage 3, targeting the airfields closet to London would begin on August 30th. The 4 primary targets were the four sector stations around London: Kenley, Biggin Hill, Hornchurch, and North Weald however, there is no evidence that the Germans knew just how important these airfields were, and that they contained the operations rooms for the various sectors. It was more that they were just important airfields, which is also why the RAF chose them for sector stations. The operations rooms were very well protected, but the weakness in both the sector stations and also for that matter in the radar stations, was electricity. The number one reason that either went offline during a bombing raid was not because of blast damage to the structures themselves but instead because of power being cut which would happen on multiple different occasions throughout August. In another subtle shift in operating procedure the bombing would be slightly different for these airfields and instead of launching one big raid on an airfield instead the German bombers would be structured as a continuous stream with smaller raids all spaced between 20 to 30 minutes apart. The goal of this change was to try and overwhelm the British squadrons not with one big bang but instead over time. This was not a bad move, and it would spread out the RAF Fighter response, but it did not solve the biggest problem with the airfield raids that were were happening: they just were not causing enough damage. The damages done to the actual landing strips was easily repaired, and there were just so many that the RAF could use scattered around England. Buildings around the airfields were constantly being damaged, but this only moderately impacted operations, especially in the case of barracks buildings, because that really just pushed RAF personnel into nearby villages where billeting could always be found.

Just because the Luftwaffe was not putting airfields out of action did not mean that they were not causing issues for Fighter Command though, and August 30th would be a day of major issues and major fighting. The first raid of the day would target Biggin Hill with multiple large formations of bombers detected by the Chain Home radar stations. A total of 9 RAF squadrons would be sent out to meet these various formations, including 85 Squadron which was led by Peter Townsend. Townsend was at the head of 11 Hurricanes, and while his primary goal was to move his squadron into position to attack, he had an almost more important job, and that was to use his radio . Once German bombers were over England, the available radar coverage was far less, and the RAF relied heavily on observers on the ground. But on cloudy days, even partly cloudy days, the ability of individuals on the ground to spot and track the German bomber groups was greatly decreased. This was a problem if there were no British aircraft in the area, but as long as a single squadron could locate the German bombers then they could provide a tremendous amount of information back to sector stations . Townsend was able to relay the size of the German formations, their altitude, course, and a position estimate that could be used for all of the other squadrons that were on their way in. The end result in this case is that the first squadrons of German bombers were set upon by 45 total fighters from 4 different squadrons and the bombing raid had to be abandoned. This did provide an opening for the following squadrons who were following close behind, but cloud cover made it difficult for them to find Biggin Hill and those that did only managed to get a small percentage of their bombs actually on the airfield, more of them landed on nearby villages. The response to the raid against Biggin Hill represented a major Fighter Command success, but the commitment of so many resources made it more difficult to respond to the second major raid of the day, with this one targeting the Vauxhall Motors factories northwest of London. With just under 30 German bombers three Luftwaffe fighter groups provided escort, and Fighter Command was less prepared, and would not respond as well as earlier in the day. The best way for Fighter command to respond to a German raid, particularly one escorted by fighters was to arrive with multiple squadrons at once, to overwhelm the fighter escort so that they could make their way to the bombers. That did not happen against this raid, and instead multiple squadrons would arrive and move into attack by themselves. The Spitfires of 222 squadron, then the Hurricanes of 151 Squadron both tried to get through the fighter escort but would not be able to and the bombers were able to drop their bombs on the Vauxhall factory in perfect formation. 39 employees were killed, 20 civilians in the nearby village were also killed, and 141 were injured. The challenges for the German bombers began when they turned for home. Over the course of their return flight they would pay for their easy flight in, with 6 RAF Squadrons arriving, downing 6 of the 30 German bombers, along the 3 Bf-110s. The third major raid of the day would take advantage of the same situation that had made the Vauxhall raid so successful, the fact that so many squadrons had been sent against the previous raid and then needed to return to base to rearm and refuel. In this case the 20 Dorniet bombers, with their fighter escort, would only have to deal with a single Fighter Command squadron on their way to the airfield at Detling, with over 40 bombs actually hitting the airfield and facilities putting it out of action until the next day. Unlike the earlier raid, the RAF would be unable to extract a toll on their return journey, and in fact all of the German bombers from this raid returned safely to base. The final raid of the day would see 6 Bf-109 and 10 Bf-110s set up as bombers on a raid against Biggin Hill, which they would also reach without a real incident, dropping their bombs and killing 39 base personnel. During all of these raids there was constant fighter sweeps happening throughout the day. Overall, while the German bombing damage throughout the day was very good, and most of the bombers arrived over their targets successfully, the numbers in the air were once again disappointing, even if the Germans did not know it. While the Luftwaffe pilots of course overclaimed, the actual losses for the RAF were 12 Hurricanes and 9 Spitfires while the Germans lost 12 109s and 6 Bf-110s along with 11 bombers. To give a fair count, the British also lost 7 bombers on various missions and on the ground throughout the day, but still the Luftwaffe losses were higher. By the end of the 30th, while the Germans did not fully understand it due to faulty intelligence and information from their pilots, the Luftwaffe was losing the Battle of Britain. But because they did not know that, their airfield attacks would continue throughout the first week of September, before they would make their very important decision that would change the course of the air battles over England, a decision we will discuss next episode