230: Shifting Focus

Description

In this pivotal episode of the Battle of Britain series, we explore the mounting pressures faced by both British and German forces as September 1940 unfolds. While the RAF continues its desperate defense against daily Luftwaffe raids, behind the scenes both nations are dealing with critical resource challenges and strategic dilemmas. The British struggle with pilot shortages and factory production disruptions caused by constant air raid warnings, leading to new policies that increase worker risk but maintain essential aircraft production. Meanwhile, German intelligence faces a mathematical crisis as their estimates of British fighter strength prove wildly inaccurate, with the RAF continuing to field strong resistance despite German claims of destroying over 1,100 fighters. As Hitler’s September 10th deadline for Operation Sea Lion approaches, the Luftwaffe shifts focus from airfields to London itself, culminating in the massive September 7th bombing raid that marks the beginning of the London Blitz - a devastating new phase that would see the city bombed for 57 consecutive days and nights, forever changing the character of the Battle of Britain.

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Summary

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 230 - The Battle of Britain Pt. 5 - Shifting Focus. This week a big thank you goes out to Chris, Maximilian, Patrick, and Erich 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. While the focus on the podcast has been on the air battles over Britain during the second half of August, this was far from the only topic of discussion among the British and German leaders. It was not even the only topic of discussion among the British public, with the wider war at times making headlines, for example on September 6, still at the height of the fighting, the Daily Express would run a headline story not about the ongoing air battle, but instead naval actions in the Mediterranean. For the British they were also preparing for a longer war, which they believed would require greater cooperation from the United States. This meant that while the heaviest of the fighting was occurring over Southern England there were also discussions occurring between British officials and manufacturers in America. One of the advancements that was made was the seemingly very important order for more merchant ships to try and offset some of the tonnage being lost to U-boats during the first year of the war. Importantly, instead of having to pay gold for these new ships, instead the British worked out an agreement where several important pieces of technology were shared with the American military. This resulted in information about radio direction finding, aerial depth charges, power-driven gun turrets, and the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine being sent to America. On the German side they were still preparing for an invasion, with thousands of watercraft of many different types being gathered to make up the invasion flotilla. These varied unpowered barges to larger motorboats, and the goal was to get them all ready by the middle of September. At the same time continued conversations were occurring between the German military leaders as they refined and finalized the plans for Operation Sea Lion. There were disagreements at the highest level about how the invasion should be structured, how large it should be, and where the invasion beaches should be. We covered these disagreements back in episode 222, but it is worth reiterating just how unsettled the Sea Lion plans were at the beginning of September. This was important because on August 30th Hitler informed everyone that he would make a final decision on Sea Lion on September 10th. With the requirement of 10 days of lead time between when the order was given and when the invasion would begin that meant that the invasion would occur on September 20th at the earliest, but more likely on the 21st. But the fact that the decision would be made on September 10th meant that the Luftwaffe did not have 20 days to complete their objectives, they only had 10 days. And after 17 days of efforts, starting on August 13th, by August 30th they had still not destroyed Fighter Command, and they were still being met in the air by large groups of British fighters. But all was not perfect for the RAF, and even though they were still able to meet the raids being sent against them the resources of Fighter Command, and the energy of the pilots, was a finite resource.

One of the major challenges faced by the RAF during the Battle of Britain was that the Luftwaffe always had the initiative. The Germans were always able to pick where and when they wanted to attack and the British were strictly reactive to those decisions. This was not a completely negative situation, for example it let the British engage in combat over British soil which increased the number of pilots that were able to bail out of their aircraft and reach the ground safely. But in many ways it was a negative, particularly for the pilots and squadrons of 11 Group where the majority of the Luftwaffe strength was concentrated against. At RAF Fighter Command there was a balancing act that the head of fighter command, Dowding, and the group leaders had to keep in mind when it came to trying to keep 11 Group up to strength. At the height of the battle the RAF was losing around 120 pilots per week, which was an unsustainable level everyone knew that. But just feeding more pilots into the grinder was not going to fix anything, particularly due to the differences that experience made for pilot survival. This had become a major problem for Fighter Command and their losses had mounted and new pilots replaced more experienced pilots. There was also the issue of squadron cohesion, because it was tempting to just take the most experienced pilots out of the squadrons based outside of 11 group and add them to the 11 Group squadrons that were coming up short. But that would slow the development of new pilots in those squadrons, because they did not have the experience of those other pilots to draw upon. This is one of the main reason Fighter Command preferred to move squadrons in and out of 11 Group all at once, to help preserve some level of experience within each unit. Up until the end of August the balancing act had been played quite well, but as the all important resource of experienced fighter pilots was drawn down a more formal system of balancing needed to occur. Therefore, squadrons would be categorized into three different categories, Class A Squadrons were the most experienced, most of them were already in 11 Group, and then there were a few in 10 and 12 Groups as well. While they were the most experienced they were also the ones being most worn down by German action. Below Class A were Class B and Class C squadrons which different only in their ratio of combat ready and non-combat ready pilots. The idea was that as Class C squadrons got more training, and then maybe some easier combat operations, they would promote themselves to Class B, and Class B would promote themselves into Class A so that they could relieve one of the worn down Class A squadrons. That Class A squadron, probably far short of its establishment of 16 pilots, would be re-categorized and begin training up the new replacements. If everything went well, there would be enough pilots, and low enough attrition to make this all work in harmony. By making a concerted effort to hold back inexperienced pilots the RAF leaders were knowingly leaving understrength squadrons in 11 Group, under the belief that it was better to have for example 7 really experienced pilots rather than 5 experienced and 7 inexperienced pilots. This would also cause the Germans to misinterpret the situation, because when German aircraft reported that they were being let by understrength squadrons Luftwaffe leaders believed that the RAF was reaching the end of its strength, why else would they not be sending up full squadrons?.

Balancing the musical chairs in the various fighter groups was not the only issue that the British were facing at the end of August. Last episode covered some of the challenges that the Germans were having when it came to causing serious long term damage to British airfields and factories with their bombers. And this was true, but due to the importance of aircraft production specifically there were problems that were being caused even if the bombs never even hit the factories. The standard practice for factories was that when an air raid warning went out, even if it was not know if the factory was the target, the workers would put down their tools and move to air raid shelters just to be safe. If air raids were infrequent this was not too much of a problem, maybe a few missed hours of production here and there. But the Germans were launching air raids every day and every night, and that caused the hours and hours that British workers spent in air shelters to add up and to seriously reduce production numbers. This topic was considered important enough that it eventually bubbled all the way up to the British Cabinet, where they debated and discussed new policies for workers in military production. The eventual guidelines changed the point at which it was acceptable for workers to stop working and move to shelters, which only be when the factory received a red warning. These would only be given when it seemed likely that the Germans were going to target the specific factory in question. This change increased the risk of injury and death for the workers, but the risk was deemed acceptable. This change would be announced during the first week of September, with the that same September 6th edition of the Daily Express that ran the story about the naval conflict in the Mediterranean having a front page article about adjustments being made to the air warnings to reduce the area that was warned. Reducing the need to move into bomb shelters was important outside of just factory workers as well, due to the number of people taking shelter in larger cities the shelters were overwhelmed, with one report saying: “many complaints . . . that they are cold, draughty and smelly (some have no doors, so that cats have free access), there are no seats for children and old people, and seldom lavatory accommodation . . . Public shelters at present hold a mixed bag of children and old people who want to go to sleep, people who want to sing and talk, crying babies, people who want to smoke. This leads to much extra strain and considerable trouble.”. The challenges of providing bomb shelters for the number of people required in places like London would be an ongoing problem for the British government, and it would only get worse later in September as the Luftwaffe’s focus shifted to night time terror bombing raids.

The first week of September would see almost daily raids of many of the important Figther Command Airfields around London. The results were just as varied as they had been over the previous weeks. On some occasions groups of German bombers would be able to drop their bombs mostly unmolested by British fighters because of the protection provided by the 109s. In other instances they would be intercepted and their attack was disrupted. But during this period the important part for both sides is that it would be raid after raid, with multiple different groups of German bombers hitting multiple different airfields throughout the day. On August 31 one of the major targets was the Biggin Hill airfield, with 100 bombs impacting the airfield and its surrounding infrastructure. It is also worth noting that on some of these days the Luftwaffe was flying more sorties than at any time before, with August 31st for example seeing 1,450 total sorties, with the vast majority of them being fighter flights put in place to protect a much smaller number of bombers. Every day there would be continued losses on both sides, with both sides getting the advantage on various days. Both air forces were trading punches, wearing each other down, and it was unclear how long things would continue. On the British side by September 5, Park was concerned that the constant grind that had occurred every day between August 28 and September 5 was wearing down his forces to a dangerous point. He would write “he damage to sector stations and our ground organization was having a serious effect on the fighting efficiency of the fighter squadrons.”. On the German side, they knew they were launching major raids, on September 5th the largest single formation of German aircraft would fly out over the channel with 300 bombers and 600 fighters all on their way to a variety of targets. And yet somehow they were still being met by RAF Fighter resistance, with that raid in particularly being met by strong resistance at the cost of 25 Hurricanes and Spitfires, while the Luftwaffe lost a staggering 41. Back at Luftwaffe command, the Intelligence groups, with Schmid at their head, had to contend with a major problem. None of their numbers were adding up, and every day that went on and every day that the British fighters rose from their airfields was another day where the German math was more incoherent. At the start of the campaign the German estimates were that the RAF only had 600 fighters, and yet in the last three weeks of August the estimates were that the Germans had shot down over 1,100 of them. Schmid had to keep adjusting his estimates of British fighter strength higher and higher just to account for their continued active defense. It would be situations like this where the poor quality of German intelligence of the situation in Britain would cause them issues. It seemed like no matter how many times they hit RAF airfields they were not causing damage that was worth the cost, because they had estimated that they had destroyed or heavily damaged many of the important airfields multiple times over the previous weeks and yet they were still being used. This made it appear that there would be more efficient uses for their bombs on other targets, while unknown to them their constant trickle of attacks against the airfields was finally having the effect they thought they had been able to accomplish much earlier in the campaign, it was wearing the RAF down. Some Luftwaffe leaders believed that the attacks should continue, but others, including Goering began to turn their eyes to other targets that seemed more lucrative. And most of those targets were in and around London.

September 7th would be an important day for the citizens of London because it is widely considered to be the first day of The Blitz. Over the next 57 days and nights Luftwaffe bombers would visit at least some part of the city, but at least with this early raid there was a specific target in mind, the various port facilities of the city. Late in the afternoon about 325 bombers and 630 fighters would make their way towards London, with that many planes being spotted from a considerable distance. The challenge was that, even if they were detected it did not mean that it was clear exactly where they were heading, and it had for some time been the habit of the Luftwaffe to move across the channel in large groups before breaking up for other targets. There were also small mistakes made in how the available fighter squadrons should be directed, with almost a dozen squadrons having been sent against an earlier smaller raid which meant that they were unavailable to meet the main German effort as it moved up the Thames estuary and closed in on London. This would be another area of difficult decisions for Fighter Command as they had a limited number of squadrons, and then a specific cycle time on those squadrons between when they were committed and when they would be available for another mission. It can be very easy to criticize the decisions made in this area because of our past omniscience, we know now that there was a second more important raid that the Luftwaffe was executing, but that was not always clear at the time. The end result was that as the largest group of German bomber closed in on their targets they would be met by just 5 British fighter squadrons. And those 5 squadrons were heavily outnumbered by the available German fighter protection. The end result was that, at about 6PM 350 tons of bombers would be dropped on the East End, by far the largest raid on London up to that point in time. Some would hit legitimate military targets like the docks at Silvertown and Millwall, or important oil storage at Purfleet and Thameshaven. But of course many of the bombs also just fell on residential areas, which were impossible to miss in a city as large as London, with the Barking, Rotherhithe, and Limehouse districts of East London hit particularly hard. While more RAF squadrons would be able to catch up with the raid as they retreated back towards their bases, the bomb damage had already been done. Throughout the course of the entire raid 22 Hurricanes and Spitfires would be lost, but the same number of 109s and 110s were also lost. Along with the German fighters 7 German bombers would also either be shot down or damaged to the point where they crashed on their way back to France. The German estimates were that they had destroyed 93 British Fighters, over 4 times more than they actually destroyed. While the bombs did cause damage, the overall destruction of meaningful assets was limited, and almost more important for the the future of London and the Battle of Britain, another major raid would visit the city just 6 hours later. This was made up of over 250 bombers that would drop over 350 tons of bombs on the East End, causing fires that would not be fully extinguished for three days. The civilian losses from September 7th, and then early in the morning on the 8th, were very high 300 killed 1,300 injured. One of the causes for these high casualty numbers was that at least one air raid shelter had suffered a direct hit from the German bomb. It would be the first of many days and nights of bombing, and many more deaths among the people of London as a new brutal phase of the Battle of Britain had begun.