“I believe that,
if an adequate fighter force is kept in this country, if the fleet remains in
being, and if Home Forces are suitably organised to resist invasion, we should
be able to carry on the war for some time, if not indefinitely”.
Air Chief Marshal,
Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Sir Hugh Dowding. May 15th, 1940
Weather:
Heavy overnight cloud and rain clearing. Fine with patchy cloud in the morning
giving way to strata-cumulus clouds at 5,000 feet providing 8/10ths cover.
September 15th,
1940:
0900 hours: Prime
Minister Winston Churchill arrives at HQ Royal Air Force 11 Group, Fighter
Command at Uxbridge and is greeted by Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, Air Officer
Commanding.
1030 hours: Radar (radio
direction finding or RDF) stations of Chain Home at Beachy Head, Dover, Dunkirk
(Kent), Pevensey, St Lawrence, Ventnor, and Westcliffe situated along the Kent
coast and on the Isle of Wight, the personnel of which were mainly women of the
Woman’s Royal Air Force (WRAF), detect two formations of 150 plus Luftwaffe
aircraft forming up between Boulogne and Calais. 11 Group RAF fighter squadrons
are placed on standby.
1100 hours: 200
plus Heinkel 111 and Dornier Do-17 and Do-215 bombers from 111/Kampfgruppe76
and KG73, escorted by Me-Bf109 and Me-110 fighters, are tracked flying NNW
towards the English coast at Dungeness at heights of between 15,000 and 26,000
feet (‘Angels’ 15 and 26 in the parlance of the RAF ground controllers of the
day).
1105-1120 hours: 144
RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires of (in sequence) 72, 92, 229, 303, 253, 501, 17,
73, 504, 257, 603 and 609 Squadrons ‘scramble’ and are ‘vectored’ by their
Sector Controllers to meet the incoming Luftwaffe attack.
1130-1145
hours: RAF commanders confirm the target
is London. AVM Park calls upon 12 Group (AVM Trafford Leigh Mallory) based to
the north of London to cover the capital. These include the so-called ‘Duxford
Wing’ of massed Hurricanes and Spitfires. 12 Group scrambles some 100 fighters of (in
sequence) 41, 242, 302, 310, 19, 611, 249, 46, 1(RCAF), 605 and 66 Squadrons.
1200 hours: The
first massed RAF attack of the day begins.
The slow progress of the Luftwaffe bomber formation enables 12 Group
fighters to join 11 Group and intercept the enemy with 11 squadrons above
Maidstone and Ashford. The RAF’s strength comes as a shock to Luftwaffe aircrew
and, whilst the Spitfire squadrons engage the fighter escort, the Hurricanes
attack the bomber formation which begins to break up. Stragglers are attacked and several are shot
down.
1215 hours: The
Spitfires succeed in separating the Bf109 fighters from the bombers. The
longer-range, twin-engined Me-110s are no match for the British fighters and
are effectively forced out of much of the battle, in spite of courageous
efforts by many of their crews to protect the bombers. Under intense RAF pressure the bomber force
begins to drop its bombs randomly, whilst many turn prematurely short of London
and seek to make their escape. Many of those that have survived are damaged,
whilst those German pilots who bravely press on towards London are then confronted
by 12 Group’s Spitfires and Hurricanes which ambush the bombers from a height
of between 25,000 and 26,000 feet, some 3000 feet above the upper most layer of
the bomber force. The weight of the attack is decisive and the Luftwaffe force
is quickly broken up. There is no respite for the hard-pressed Luftwaffe
crews. The RAF maintains the pressure on
the enemy by continuously and repeatedly attacking the bomber force from all
sides as it makes its now disorganised way back towards the English coast. Many
of the survivors head first west of London before turning for home over
Weybridge, whilst some 80 bombers take a more direct route, first down the
Thames Estuary and then over Kent, harassed all the way by the RAF.
1230 hours: The
first massed battle of what would eventually prove to be the decisive day of
the Battle of Britain is over. The RAF has gained a vital victory. What was
meant to be the Luftwaffe’s final destruction of Fighter Command is decisively
defeated. However, September 15th, 1940 is far from over. As RAF
squadrons land, re-fuel and re-arm the Luftwaffe prepares to launch the second
major attack of the day.
1300 hours: Radar
stations along the Kent coast again begin to detect another massed Luftwaffe
force forming west of the Boulogne-Calais area, many of the aircraft involved
have taken off from airfields in the Antwerp and Brussels region. AVM Park
confirms the available strength of 11 Group’s fighters, but orders no action to
be taken…yet.
1330 hours: Radar
confirms the massing German force is larger than the morning attack and as yet
the Luftwaffe’s targets are not clear to the RAF. 11 Group and 12 Group
fighters are placed at ‘readiness’, together with squadrons from 10 Group (AVM
Quintin Brand) which covers the West of England.
1400 hours: The
Luftwaffe force approaches the Kent coast ((KG2, KG53, KG76 plus some elements
of KG1, KG4 and KG26). This time the Luftwaffe gains a tactical edge by
reducing the time it takes to mass the attacking formation. Moreover, the sheer
intensity of the morning’s action has disrupted Fighter Command’s battle
rhythm. Some RAF squadrons are still refuelling and re-arming whilst many of
the pilots who had survived being shot down in the morning are not yet back
with their squadrons.
1410 hours: RAF
Sector Controllers place all 11 Group squadrons on standby and request ‘maximum
assistance’ from 10 and 12 Groups. Five squadrons of the Duxford Wing (49
aircraft) from 16, 242, 302, 310 and 611 squadrons are scrambled. Crucially, AVM
Park adjusts his tactics from the morning. He orders the bulk of the squadrons
to hold back and patrol east, south and west of London. However, he also orders
his forward deployed squadrons at Hawkinge, Lympne, Manston and Tangmere and Manston
to engage the Luftwaffe fighter escort early in an attempt to force the Bf-109s
to ‘dogfight’ and use up much of their limited reserves of fuel. This renders
the bomber fleet exceptionally vulnerable to massed RAF attack.
1415 hours: The
first bomber formations cross the Kent coast. Two other formations follow at
1430 and 1445 hours. The bomber fleet is again made up of He111, Do-17 and
D-215 aircraft. The British estimate the
strength to be between 150 and 200 bombers plus some 400 Bf109s and Me-110s as
escorts. In fact, the strength is 170 bombers and some 300 plus fighters.
1415 hours: The
first engagement takes place south of Canterbury. Other formations are attacked
south of Maidstone and west of Dartford as RAF squadrons begin to harass the
attacking force. The closer the Luftwaffe gets to London the more Spitfires and
Hurricanes attack them. Bereft of an
effective fighter escort the bomber force is quickly and badly mauled by 11 Group
as (in sequence) 73, 66, 72, 249, 504, 253, 213 and 607 Squadrons repeatedly
attack.
1450 hours: AVM
Park’s decision to hold squadrons back, most notably the Duxford Wing, now
proves decisive, even if many of the RAF fighters had been scrambled too
slowly. 150 RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires attack the bomber fleet over the south
and south-west of London. As in the morning the Spitfires attack the Bf109s and
Me-110 fighters, whilst the Hurricanes attack the bomber force. Critically, the
Bf109s are now at the limits of their range.
1500 hours: 303
(Polish) Squadron returns to its base at Northholt. In just over an hour of
action they destroy 3 Do-17s, 2 Me-110’s and 1 Bf109 for a cost of 2 Hurricanes
lost and 1 pilot killed. By the time Luftwaffe bombers reach London they are
out-numbered by defending Hurricanes and Spitfires. They break off the attack
and turn for the Channel and escape.
1600 hours: The
last of the Luftwaffe bomber force is attacked as it makes its way across the
English coast. Another small incoming raid of 10 He-111s is detected heading
towards Portland for an attack on the Supermarine Spitfire factory at Woolston.
It is engaged by 10 Group’s 152 (Spitfires), 607 (Hurricanes) and 609
(Spitfires) Squadrons. Several aircraft of the attacking force are destroyed
and not one bomb is dropped on the factory.
September 15th,
1940, Battle of Britain Day, is over.
Analysis
September 15th,
1940 was a turning point not just of the Battle of Britain, but of World War
Two and the fight against Nazism. The RAF had won a decisive victory over the
Luftwaffe and whilst they did not know it at the time, the victory effectively ended
any chance Britain could be invaded. Without complete control of the air
Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of Britain, was effectively dead in
the water. At least it would have been. Any attempt to cross the Channel with
two Army Groups comprised of the best Wehrmacht units would have been suicide
in the face of constant attacks by the RAF and the Royal Navy, which in 1940 was
still the world’s largest. Britain would
fight on and the RAF would begin the long and slow shift from the defensive to
the offensive and the regular 1000 heavy bomber attacks on German cities. These attacks were hugely popular with a
British people determined to ‘give it back to em’, but came at an appalling
cost to RAF aircrew, German and other civilians.
To some extent
‘The Day’ has become shrouded in myth. The RAF claimed to have shot down some
185 Luftwaffe aircraft on September 15th. In fact, the number was 61, with twenty
aircraft badly-damaged, whilst the RAF lost 32 fighters. By the standards of
contemporary warfare the casualties were relatively light. The RAF lost 16
pilots killed in action and 14 wounded, whilst the Luftwaffe lost 81 aircrew
killed with 31 wounded, although 63 aircrew were also captured by the
British. Many were experienced men. Moreover,
by September 1940 Britain was out-producing Germany in the construction of
advanced fighters. Therefore, whilst the Luftwaffe was by no means a spent
force on the evening of September 15th, 1940, the defeat came at the
end of what had been a gruelling summer for the Luftwaffe. However, perhaps the greatest impact of the
RAF’s decisive victory was psychological.
For the first time in World War Two the Luftwaffe had faced a force
equipped with advanced technology, excellent air defence fighters and very
capable pilots and had been badly beaten.
The Battle of
Britain had effectively begun on June 18th, 1940 when Churchill said
to the House of Commons, “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is
now over, I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin”. The RAF’s total strength at the outset of the
Battle of Britain was 1,963 aircraft whilst the Luftwaffe had some 2,550
aircraft. Not all British aircraft, of course, were front-line fighters.
However, by the end of the campaign the RAF had lost 1,744 aircraft destroyed
to the Luftwaffe’s 1,977 aircraft destroyed. Crucially, the Luftwaffe’s head of
intelligence, Oberst Joseph Beppo Schmidt, repeatedly over-estimated Luftwaffe
strength whilst chronically under-estimating both the fighting power of the RAF
and the remarkable capability of the world’s first advanced air defence system.
Indeed, Luftwaffe aircrew, who were repeatedly briefed that the RAF were down
to their last few fighters, shared a grim standing joke each time they saw
British fighters moving to attack: “Here come those last 50 British fighters…again”.
On the morning of
September 15th Air Chief Marshal Dowding had 726 fighters at
readiness, whilst the Luftwaffe had 620 fighters and 500 light-to-medium
bombers, the bomb capacity of which was simply too ‘light’ given the strategic
objectives. By comparison, in June 1942 RAF Bomber Command attacked Cologne
with 1000 far heavier bombers, such as the Stirling, Halifax, Lancaster and
Wellington types. The Germans also had no organised espionage network in
Britain so they could not accurately know what damage they were doing, the
state of either the RAF or the morale of the British people. They thought they
had but most German spies were quickly captured by the British and forced to
work for British Intelligence.
Luftwaffe High
Command’s over-confidence also led them to make catastrophic mistakes. On
August 15th, 1940, dubbed “Black Thursday” (Schwarzer Donnerstag) by
Luftwaffe aircrew, Luftflotte V based in Norway was ordered to attack the north
of England. The assumption was that all the RAF’s reserves had been moved south
to cover Kent and London. They had not. Chain
Home picked up a force of some 200 attacking aircraft early in its mission which
was then badly-mauled by Spitfires from 13 Group (AVM Richard Maul) which
covered the north of England. It was forced to turn and flee over the sea
losing 23 aircraft for no downed RAF fighters.
The escorting Me-110s even abandoned the bombers and formed so-called
‘wagon wheels’ for self-protection. The so-called Dowding System had prevailed
again.
The Dowding System
was critical to Britain’s victory. It used
the ‘eyes’ of radar to rapidly inform a robust command chain of the strength,
speed, direction and height of an attacking force. This enabled HQ Fighter
Command based at Bentley Priory to quickly assess the size and likely targets
of the force before giving each Group the information they needed to deploy its
squadrons efficiently and effectively. Group HQ then passed on the information
to Sector Controllers who scrambled the various squadrons. Crucially, the
entire system was ‘hardened’ when it was built in 1937 to ensure it was both
resilient and enjoyed redundancy of communications and was thus very hard to
knock-out. That the system existed at all was due to decisions taken in the
1930s by the oft-berated Baldwin and Chamberlain governments. Such was its
success that the Dowding System was to form the basis of many of the world’s ground-controlled
air defence systems up until, and in some case even beyond, the year 2000.
The Luftwaffe was
defeated because it failed to secure either of its primary strategic aims: to force
the British to the negotiating table on German terms; or secure uncontested air
superiority over the English Channel as a prelude to invasion. It also suffered
a massive materiel loss over the three month course of the battle from which it
never fully recovered, undermining its future effectiveness in Russia. The
fault lay not with the mainly young Luftwaffe aircrews who showed great
bravery, but with their commanders, most notably Luftwaffe Chief Reichmarschall
Hermann Goering. He failed to understand
the importance of radar to the British and also failed to exploit the RAF’s
greatest vulnerability – 11 Group’s vital front-line air bases. They were often
attacked but then allowed to recover because the Luftwaffe never fully understood
the battle rhythm of the RAF and thus failed to exploit its vulnerabilities. Luftwaffe high command also failed to
understand that the true test for the RAF was not the number of fighters it
could shoot down, Britain was replacing them at a faster rate, but the attrition
rate of the pilots who flew them. Dowding’s main concern was the rate of loss
of his 2,353 British pilots. Thankfully, Britain had a golden reserve in some
574 foreign pilots from Poland (141 pilots), New Zealand (135), Canada (112),
Czechoslovakia (88). Australia (36), South Africa (25), Free French (14) US
(11), Ireland 10, and some 10 pilots from what is today Zimbabwe, the Caribbean
and Israel.
One of the most
important consequences of the RAF’s victory was the damage it did to both the
prestige of Goering and the trust Adolf Hitler had in him. The first seeds of
doubt that Nazism would prevail were sown in the mind of Hitler and his Nazi
cronies by the RAF’s brave pilots. As dawn broke on September 15th,
1940 Goering and his Luftwaffe commanders had confidently expected they would,
indeed, inflict the final, fatal blow on what they really believed to be the RAF’s
few remaining Spitfires and Hurricanes.
The sight of massed RAF air power waiting to ambush the attacks rapidly
disabused already cynical Luftwaffe aircrews of their commanders’ folly. As
Hans Zonderlind, an air gunner on a Luftwaffe Do-17 said of September 15th,
“We saw the Hurricanes coming towards us and it seemed the whole of the RAF was
there. We had never seen so many British fighters coming at us at once”.
Much of this
complacency was driven by Nazi ideology and the German superiority it espoused.
During the Polish campaign of September 1939, and the attacks on the Low
Countries and France in May and June 1940, such arrogance was reinforced by
success. The RAF punctured this arrogance. Much of it was down to one aircraft,
R.J. Mitchell’s superb Mark V Spitfire and its Rolls Royce Merlin engine. There
is no question the Spitfire got into the heads of Luftwaffe aircrew. The aerial
scourge, and in many ways signature sound of the Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg
campaigns had been the ‘flying artillery’ that was the Juncker Ju-87 ‘Stuka’
dive bomber. However, between August 15th (Adler Tag) and August 18th
the Stuka’s suffered such heavy losses to both Spitfires and Hurricanes that they
had to be withdrawn from the fight. As
battle fatigue set in Luftwaffe aircrew constantly reported being attacked by
‘Spitfires’, when in fact the RAF had more Hurricanes.
It is still a
matter of conjecture whether or not Luftwaffe ace Adolf Galland asked Goering for
a squadron (staffeln) of Spitfires. In some respects, the Me Bf-109 was a
superior fighter. It could climb faster and due to its fuel-injected engine also
climb higher than a Spitfire. The mix of cannon and machine guns also gave it
more devastating firepower than the eight Browning 303 calibre machines guns with
which both Hurricanes and Spitfires were equipped. However, the Spitfire
enjoyed two critical advantages in air combat both of which were due to its two
elliptical wings which could bear far more weight than the Me Bf-109. This
enabled the Spitfire to dive and turn faster, as well as turn very tightly at
lower speeds. And, of course, both
Hurricanes and Spitfires were operating close to their own bases, whereas the
Me Bf-109 was not, which negated many of its advantages as a hunter. Interestingly, by the time the last Spitfire
was built in 1948 some 22,000 had been manufactured in 22 variants, including a
navalised version, the Seafire. 12,129 of them were produced at the enormous
Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory near Birmingham which began production in May
1940, albeit mired in very British managerial and industrial relations
challenges. Critically, preparations had been made to massively increase
British military aircraft production in the event of war with the 1935 Shadow
Factory Plan.
The lessons for
today? First, whilst the building of modern free Europe did not begin that day,
it took a great stride forward. Democracy fought back and won. Second, even if
distracted by as deep an economic crisis as faced by the Baldwin and
Chamberlain governments during the 1930s a democracy must never abandon a sound
defence or properly prepare to mount it. Third, that equivalency of military
materiel and personnel is vital. Preparedness, readiness and robustness.
In tribute to the
RAF pilots of many nations who defended Britain and a free Europe on a fateful
day, and the many young women who made that defence work. In respectful memory
of ALL the brave young men who lost their lives on September 15th,
1940, Battle of Britain Day. As Churchill famously said on August 20th,
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”.
Requiesce in Pace.
Per Ardua ad Astra!
(With thanks to
the Battle of Britain Historical Society)
Julian
Lindley-French, September 15th, 2025
