| August 11, 1940
The squadron took part in no less than four separate combats from dawn to 2 p.m. and accounted for a number of German aircraft with the loss of only two pilots. The first operational order was received at 7.49 a.m. to intercept a hostile raid approaching Dover. The squadron with twelve aircraft, led by Squadron Leader Malan, climbed to 20,000 feet, and surprised approximately eighteen Me 109's flying towards Dover. Pilot Officer Stevenson?s aircraft was hit by enemy fire and he baled out and came down in the sea. He attracted the attention of a motor torpedo-boat by firing his revolver.
The second combat took place between 9.50 and 10.45 when twelve aircraft again took off to intercept enemy fighters approaching Dover. Several small groups of Me 109's were sighted in mid-Channel. Owing to R/T difficulties, part of the squadron did not engage.
The third combat started at 11.45 when eleven aircraft took off to patrol the convoy ?Booty? about twelve miles east of Clacton. Forty Me 109's were sighted approaching the convoy from east in close formation just below cloud base. Enemy aircraft formed a defensive circle on sighting the fighters, but Pilot Officer Freeborne led the squadron in a dive into the middle of the circle. Aircraft landed back at Manston at 12.45. The squadron took off for the fourth time at 1.56 with eight aircraft, to patrol Hawkinge at 1,5000 feet and subsequently north-east of Margate where enemy raids were reported.
Ten Ju 87s were sighted passing through cloud at 6,000 feet and twenty Me 109's at 10,000 feet. Fighters attacked the 109's, who dived for cloud and a dog-fight ensued.
I climbed up to him. He must have thought I was an Me 109 but when he suddenly dived away I followed him and gave him a two-second deflection burst.
The enemy aircraft lurched slightly and went into a vertical dive. I kept my height at 15,000 feet and watched. I saw the enemy aircraft dive straight into the sea fifteen miles south-east of Dover and disappear in a big splash of water.
I then climbed to 23,000 feet up-sun and saw a formation of twelve Me 109s 2,000 feet beneath me, proceeding north of Dover. It was my intention to attach myself to the back of this formation from out of the sun, and spray the whole formation. As I was diving for them, a really large volume of cannon and machine-gun fire came from behind. There were about twelve Me 109s diving at me from the sun and at least half of them must have been firing deflection shots at me. There was a popping noise and my control column became useless. I found myself doing a vertical dive, getting faster and faster.
I pulled the hood back. I got my head out of the cockpit, and the slipstream tore the rest of me clean out of the machine. My trouser leg and both shoes were torn off. I saw my machine crash into the sea a mile off Deal. It took me twenty minutes to come down. I had been drifting eleven miles out to sea.
One string of my parachute did not come undone, and I was dragged along by my left leg at ten miles an hour with my head underneath the water. After three minutes I was almost unconscious; then the string came undone. I got my breath back and started swimming. There was a heavy sea running.
After one-and-a-half hours, an MTB came to look for me. I fired my revolver at it. It went out of sight, but came back. I changed magazines and fired all my shots over it. It heard my shots and I kicked up a foam in the water, and it saw me. It then picked me up and took me to Dover.
During August, our squadron was suffering casualties at a rapid rate. At one stage our squadron strength was down to nine pilots. We were sent replacement pilots, young and straight from Operational Training Units and most had had very limited training on Hurricanes or Spitfires. It was normal for us to give new pilots a form of simulated combat training, something they really should have got at OTU, but all they got there was how to fly the aircraft, combat training was left to us fellows at the operational squadron that they had been posted to.
In most cases, especially when operations were at their height there was no time for this, and many a time new pilots would arrive in the morning only to be thrown into combat at midday. Needless to say, quite a few of them did not return from that first combat experience. It was sickening and disheartening and sometimes you get to wonder what chance do these young recruits have of survival.
Now Erpro 210 broke up into its four sections, and Rubensdoerffer himself set course for a more inland CH station, Dunkirk, north-west of Dover. Hauptmann Martin Lutz had been assigned the first and easiest target, Pevensey CH, right at the start of their run and dead ahead as they raced towards land. Oberleutnant Wilhelm-Richard Roessiger had been ordered to follow the coast east to the towering masts just beyond Rye, while Oberleutnant Otto Hintze with his four fighter bombers was deputed to knock down those provocative towers above Dover.
Lutz's fighter-bombers dropped their eight 500Kg bombs dead on their Pevensey target at the end of a 300+ mph glide. They could scarcely miss. There was no opposition on the ground or in the air. Concrete buildings collapsed and spread their fragments widely, as if made of paperboard. Telephone lines were torn apart, airmen and WAAFs were killed and injured, smoke and dust rose from the craters. The noise was stupefying, and the awful silence and darkness that followed seconds later told of severed power lines - in fact, the main supply cable had gone.
At Rye along the coast, Roessiger's foursome destroyed every hut, but as at Pevensey the reinforced transmitting and receiving blocks and the watch office survived though the personnel were severely shaken. The damage at Dunkirk, too, proved the success of Rubensdoerffer's training: every bomb bang on target.
The Bf109 and 110 formation was flying directly for Dover, then, as soon as they flew over the coast they suddenly turned and immediately attacked the tall towers of the radar installations. In a swift and precise move Dover CH was damaged and put off the air. The formation continued on to Pevensey, then Rye and then Dunkirk. Then Rye radar station also reported the sighting and reported it to Fighter Command. Immediately it was given an "X" code, a code that was used if a sighting was of doubtful origin or could not be properly ascertained. Later, when Fighter Command wanted to know what was happening down there, the radio operator radioed Pevensey and asked the question, to which a gentlemanly voice said "...your bloody unknown origin is kicking the shit out of us, that's what". The same question was put to Rye, where the WAAF telephone operator in a rather pleasant tone of voice simply said "....actually, your "X" code is bombing us "All these radar stations suffered considerable damage and were put out of action. (Dunkirk suffered minor damage but the other three were back on the air after just a few hours).
There was less doubt on the coast. Behind Daphne Griffith's, the station adjutant, Flying Officer Smith, one of several officers who had drifted in to watch, recalled that the Ops hut was protected only by a small rampart of sandbags. He told Corporal Sydney Hempson, the NCO in charge: 'I think it would be a good idea if we had our tin hats.' At that moment the voice of Troop Sergeant Major Johnny Mason, whose Bofor guns defended the six acre site, seemed to explode in their headsets: 'Three dive-bombers coming out of the sun - duck!'
It was split second timing. Along the coast, Test Group 210, split now into squadrons of four, came hurtling from the watery sunlight - Oberleutnant Wilhelm Roessiger's pilots making for the aerials at Rye, Oberleutnant Martin Lutz and his men streaking for Pevensey, by Eastbourne, Oberleutnant Otto Hintze barely a thousand meters above the Dover radar station, flying for the tall steel masts head-on in a vain effort to pinpoint them, Rubensdorffer himself going full throttle for the masts at Dunkirk, near Canterbury.
Suddenly the Ops hut at Rye shuddered, and glass and wooden shutters were toppling; clods of earth founted 400 feet high to splatter the steel aerials. Prone beneath the table, the WAAF crews saw chairs and tables spiral in the air like a jugglers fast flying balls - everywhere the sites were under fire. At Pevensey, tons of gravel swamped the office of the C.O, Flight Lieutenant Marcus Scrogie, only minutes after he left it; at Dover, a bomb sheared past recumbent operators to bury itself six feet beneath the sick quarters. At Dunkirk, one of Rubensdorfer's thousand pounder's literally shifted the concrete transmitting block by inches. All along the coast the tall towers trembled, and black smoke rose to blot out the sun.
But by mid afternoon, General Wolfgang Martini, Luftwaffe signals chief, knew bitter disappointment. Operating with stand-by diesels, every station except Ventnor - a write off for three long weeks - was reported back on the air. To Martini, it seemed now as if radar stations could not be silenced for more than a few hours at a time.
The radar stations dotted all along the southern English coastline, easily picked out by the Luftwaffe pilots as the tall lattice-work towers stand out predominately along the coast, so visible, yet at the same time, so vulnerable, but they seemed almost immune to the high explosive. Although considerable damage was done, and the attack played havoc with the communications, but again, the Luftwaffe onslaught did not attain the success that it had anticipated. Dunkirk continued to transmit as did Pevensey and Dover, after only a brief interruption to communications. This was due to emergency stand by systems that had been included in the design of the radar stations. Standby diesel engines were started up to provide the power, while after any line breakage's had been repaired all stations were soon back on the air again. But with the downed towers, the advance warning system had lost a considerable amount of effectiveness, with the Observer Corps doing most of the work.
Then came something very different, it was at Dover, suddenly the silence was broken by a dull whistle getting louder and louder, then a big bang with bricks, framework, dirt and dust going everywhere, military personnel as well as locals in the town nearby were stunned, there was not an aircraft to be seen.....anywhere. These were the first rounds of Germany's long-range artillery fire. These big guns, located on the coast of France, projected their shells twenty-one miles across the Channel and landed right on target.
1145hrs: Rubensdoerffer reported that the mission was seventy-five percent successful, and Kesselring, to make sure that the RAF radar network was in chaos, sent out Ju87 Stukas to attack several small convoy's in the Thames Estuary. Although Fighter Command communications were stretched to the limit, Foreland CHL for some reason escaped the early morning attack by Rubensdoerffer and reported back to HQ that 50+ enemy aircraft had been picked up, with another force of 12+ that although separate from the main force were possibly intending to link up and attack the convoys of "Agent" and Arena" that were cruising in the Estuary. Hornchurch dispatched their 65 Spitfire squadron and Biggin Hill sent out the Hurricanes of 501 Squadron to intercept. It was not a good day for Fighter Command. Convoy "Agent" was attacked by the Ju87s, and the Hurricanes that were trying to stave them off paid a high price. Four of them were shot down and two RAF pilots were killed.
Poling radar detected a large force of raiders over the Channel south of Brighton. This turned out to be a bomber force of Ju88s of KG 51, escorted by Bf110s of ZG 2 and ZG 76. Cover for the formation was provided by twenty-four Bf109s of JG 53. In all, a total of 200+ aircraft. They kept to their westerly course following the coastline of Sussex until they were south of the triangular shape of the Isle of Wight, then the Kommodore of KG51 Oberst Dr Fisser kept his formation on a heading for Portland giving the RAF the impression that he was going to repeat the bombing of the Dorset town as he had done the previous day. But as the balloon defences of Portsmouth came into view on his starboard side, he turned his formation northwards.
But there was still other radar stations operating, notably the important one at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, and this was to become the next target for the Luftwaffe, and at the same time, because of the major towns of Portsmouth and Southampton were nearby, attacks could be made on these at the same time. Richard Hough and Denis Richards continue:
Almost simultaneously with these convoy attacks off the Kent coast, Kesselring and Sperrle launched a ferocious attack on the centre of England's south coast, comprising - amongst much else - the naval bases of Portsmouth and Portland, the industries of Portsmouth and Southampton, including the Supermarine Spitfire works at Woolston, and the key radar station at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight.
The heart of this force comprised 100 Ju88s of the Eidelweissgeshwader, KG51, based at Etampes, Orly and Melun-Villaroche. This force had taken off shortly before 11am. and made a rendezvous with its fighter escort half an hour later. One hundred and twenty Bf110s of Zerstoerergeschwader 76 and 2, from other French airfields, accompanied the bombers north from the Normandy coast. Another twenty-five fighters, 109s of JG53, were then despatched direct, in order to save fuel, to the target area where they were ordered to give top cover. These pilots, especially, found the long sea crossing a taxing exercise, knowing that they would have little more than ten minutes combat time to spare at their extreme limit of range before having to return, or ditch in the Channel........
.........Electronic magic gave way to to the human eye, therefore, and the admirable, steady Observer Corps posts at Shoreham, Worthing and Middleton, west of Brighton, sent in long range sightings of the 200+ hostiles proceeding like a distant cloud of locusts down-Channel.
The Warning signal was flashed to the Observer Corps centre at Horsham, and thence to 11 Group at Uxbridge and 10 Group at Box. Within minutes more than fifty Spitfires and Hurricanes were airborne and heading for the obvious target of Portsmouth, anxious as always not to make contact with a height disadvantage.......
Dowding, with Keith Park and Leigh-Mallory were on the mezzanine level of the operations room at Fighter Command HQ at Uxbridge, and were looking down on the huge map below. They looked eagerly at the situation and watched intensely as the WAAFs slowly moved the enemy markers towards the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth. Dowding remarked that '.....it's obvious that they are trying to knock out our radar and communications', no one acknowledged, they just kept their eyes glued to the map below. The action continues as KG51's Kommodore Oberst Dr Fisser led his Geschwader west, some fifteen miles off the flat west Sussex coast with the triangular configuration of the Isle of Wight dead ahead:
........... Then he ordered his armada sharply to starboard, just as a man o'war might do, in order to enter Portsmouth harbour through a gap in the balloons. Fisser and fourteen of his crack crews had other plans, though, and as he circled he watched his bombers going in like a huge serpent in line-astern .
The anti-aircraft fire, from every ship in the harbour, firing for once from a steady gun platform, and from the Army's guns ashore, was in its intensity like nothing Fisser, or any of his crews, had seen before - 4?7 and 4.5 inch, 3 inch, 2 pound pom-poms, Bofors and even 20mm filled the sky with black puffs and criss-crossing tracer. Now Fisser himself turned south-west, losing height and gaining speed rapidly as he raced at 300 mph and at 5,000 feet over Foreland, the eastern tip of the Isle of Wight, heading for the little seaside resort of Ventnor.
There, on a strip of high-level ground close to the town, were sited the tall towers of the CH station which covered the whole mid-Channel area, and whose screens were now scarred with the blips from Fisser's main force and, more ominously, the detachment coming directly for the Station . Fisser wasted no time. Like Rubensdoerffer, he wanted to get in and out as fast as possible, and he aimed the nose of his Ju 88 at the towers and the buildings, all connected by a criss-cross pattern of white concrete paths which would have given away the target in much less favourable visibility. Like most 88 commanders, he favoured the shallow dive approach which gave his bomb-aimer the best visibility and more time to make last split-second adjustments than in the 45 degree or steeper approach. Fisser saw no anti-aircraft fire, and it was almost impossible to miss with the four 250 kg, delayed-action, high-explosives they all carried.
Lighter by a ton, he pulled up steeply above the scattered boarding- houses and small hotels of the seaside resort, over the chalk cliffs and the breakers on the shore, and watched the bombs explode. Fisser was a veteran of the Polish and French campaigns, had dropped bombs across half of Europe (or so it sometimes seemed), but he could never have seen such concentrated devastation. The whole target was engulfed by white-and-black clouds, with more exuding from the inferno as he turned away and ordered his planes to close in, climbing at full throttle, to escape the avenging wrath of the British. But already the first reports were coming in from behind that still distant Hurricanes were diving towards them. And, belatedly, the Bofors anti-aircraft fire had burst into action - or perhaps it had been firing when they were all too preoccupied with their run-in. It was accurate firing, too, and as Fisser continued his turn overland north of Ventnor, he suddenly realised that his whole detached force was in a dangerous position, with a height disadvantage and only a scattering of Bf 110s to give them any support before they could clear the area.
McGregor's Hurricanes were first on the Ventnor scene, as he had predicted, but 152 Squadron's Spitfires came in seconds later, and a whirling fight ensued before Fisser could get his 88s away. McGregor himself got on the tail of a 110, ignoring the rear-gunner's fire, and despatched it with a single burst. Then two more of his squadron began harassing Fisser's 88 and were joined by two more of 152's Spitfires. The Kommodore was killed at the controls. The Junkers, trailing flames, dived towards the ground, was pulled up violently, presumably by one of the crew, and headed towards Godshill Park, yawing and only partly under control. It struck the ground heavily, sending up a cloud of pale earth, and slid to a halt, its back broken but the fire self-extinguished. Leutnant Schad and Oberleutnant Luederitz, both wounded, staggered from the wreckage, and their captors succeeded in extricating the fourth crewman, badly burned, a few minutes later. Most of Fisser's Geschwader were still attacking Portsmouth at 12.25 p.m. as he lay dead in this pleasant park on the Isle of Wight a few miles away. The anti-aircraft fire remained intense and accurate throughout the Portsmouth attack. Ten more 88s fell to the RAF fighters' guns, or the ground gunners (most likely both) besides McGregor's 110 victim, which went into the sea off Foreland. By a curious freak of the tides in these uncertain waters, the body of Fritz Budig was washed ashore near Gosport, while his pilot's body was found on the beach near Boulogne five weeks later. [3]
Portsmouth was hit hard in this battle, shops, buildings and factories were destroyed, fires broke out in many parts of the city and falling walls and masonry became a hazard. This was the first major attack on an English populated area, and to the British, it was a sign of things to come. 100 civilians died, but as far as the air war was concerned, the British were still losing less than the Luftwaffe.
But Ventor radar was a shambles, it was now completely out of action. Dunkirk, Pevensey, Rye and Dover radar stations had suffered damage enough to put them out of action temporally, and this was a plus for the enemy, as both Kesselring and Sperrle were convinced that now the radar station attacks had achieved their purpose and that the RAF was now 'without it's eyes'. The Luftwaffe could now impose the next phase of the battle, and that was the destruction of the RAF airfields in southern England. The first three on the list was, Lympne, Hawkinge and Manston.
1325hrs: The airfield at Manston was the first to be hit. Rubensdoerffer's Erpro210 was back again after the earlier damage it had done to Dover and Dunkirk radar stations. This time dropping bombs and machine gunning the satellite airfield just as 65 Squadron (Spitfires) were taking off on a routine patrol.
?We had just settled down to the inevitable game of cards in our dispersal hut at Manston (pontoon was the normal relaxation between operations) when the telephone shrilled warningly. How we hated the dispersal telephone; its very note was abnormal and the unexpectedness with which it rang had the immediate effect of producing an awful sick feeling in the pit of one?s tummy. A pin could have been heard to drop as, with cards poised and eyes turned expectantly towards the orderly as he reached for the receiver, we strained to hear the message from the now faintly urgent voice which came over the wire.
?Hornet squadron scramble?.
Table, cards and money shot into the air as the pilots dived headlong for the door.?
Manston, or 'Charlie 3' as this airfield was known, was the real prime target, it was the most easterly of all the airfields in the south, and another of the all grass airfields which allowed entire squadrons to take off together thus they were in the air and reaching the enemy quicker than if they had to take off in single file on any of the concrete runways.
"We were just formed up on the ground and waiting Sam's signal to start rolling. I was therefore looking out to my left towards the leading section when I became aware of, rather than actually hearing, a sort of reverberating "crump" behind and to my right. I looked quickly over my right shoulder to see one of the hangar roofs close behind us ascending heavenwards......I caught a glimpse through smoke of what looked like a Bf110 pulling sharply out of a dive and immediately concluded that it was high time for Quill to be airborne"
54 Squadron Hornchurch (Spitfires) witnessed the whole of the attack from the air. The telephone rang outside dispersal at Hornchurch. "Okay fellas 'scramble'....angels one-five Manston". The same was to happen at Rochford, a satellite station of Hornchurch. A flight from 54 Squadron were lazily sleeping, reading or chatting outside dispersal when the telephone rang. 'Jumbo' Gracie turned and made a grab for the receiver, there was a silence as he listened, then at the same time as he banged the handset down he yelled "Scamble....seventy plus bandits approaching Manston...angels one five." In those few short words of pilots jargon, it painted a vivid picture to the scrambling pilots as to what to do and what to expect. Angels, in pilots language was thousands of feet, bandits was enemy aircraft and scramble was 'drop everything and get to your waiting aircraft'. So the message was clear, get to your aircraft as quickly as possible, start engines, take off, and head in the direction of Manston in Kent where anything between seventy and eighty German aircraft were approaching at fifteen thousand feet.
Flight Lieutenant Al Deere who had been leading a flight out of Manston, a New Zealander was flying at about 20,000 feet when he spotted the attack. He immediately broke radio silence and called Pilot Officer Colin Gray, another New Zealander who was Blue Section leader, 'Do you see them', Gray was looking earthwards 'Too bloody right,' they were preparing to go in. Then, just as 54 Squadron was within striking distance of the mixture of Bf109s and 110s, Deere saw that Blue leader was no longer with them. Gray had sighted a second formation that was approaching Dover and had already engaged them. Deere yelled over his radio, '...where the hell are you?' Then he saw plumes of white smoke that was spiraling upwards from the aerodrome, he thought that the whole airfield was on fire, where instead it was only the white chalk dust from the many craters that were appearing all over the Manston airfield.
54 Squadron had managed to get off safely before the Erpro210 Bf110s and Bf 109's arrived and began an interception of the German formation, but 65 Squadron had an hair raising experience taking off as bombs exploded around them. Only P/O K.G.Hart in Spitfire R6712 was injured and his aircraft damaged in the attack. No sooner had 54 and 65 Squadrons pushed the Bf110s and Bf 109's back over the Channel, a formation of Dorniers from KG2 led by Oberst Fink came in over the Straits of Dover and headed for Manston. The airfield was now a shambles. It is estimated that 150 high explosive bombs fell, destroying hangars, workshops and damaging two Blenheims and the airfield finished up with more holes in the ground than an eighteen hole golf course.
Hawkinge suffered a similar fate with hangars and huts destroyed and twenty five large, and numerous small craters appearing all over the airfield, enough to put Hawkinge out of action for three days. Lympne also suffered in the attack.
Dowding and Keith Park again were in the operations room at Fighter Command HQ watching with great concern as the battle unfolded, they saw the WAAFs move the 'enemy indicators' from the Channel and in the Estuary across the coast and towards the airfields. Park complained that 501 Squadron that had just been 'scrambled' and that 64 Squadron who had already taken off were not yet in a position to attack them '....they're not getting up quick enough, they'll have to do better than that' he said, 'at least we know now what he's after - my bloody airfields'. Dowding took the news on a more serious note, '...gentlemen, I think the battle has begun'.
1350hrs: What happened next in the life of a pilot, was typical of a scramble that could have taken place at any of Fighter Commands airfields, this is how Pilot Officer Geoffrey Page of 56 Squadron attacked the situation:
After the call of "Scramble", there was no time for further reflection. As he pelted the fifty yards to his waiting Hurricane, the suspense was banished and Page's mind was clear and alert, with only physical action to preoccupy him. Right foot in the stirrup step, left foot on the port wing, one short step along, right foot on the step inset in the fuselage, into the cockpit. Deftly his rigger, was passing parachute straps across his shoulders, then the Sutton harness straps....pin through and tighten the adjusting pieces....mask clipped across and oxygen on. He had primed the engine, adjusting the switches, and now his thumb went up in signal to the mechanics. The chocks slipped away, the Rolls Royce Merlin engine roared into life, flattening the dancing grass with their slipstream, and Page was taxi-ing out behind 'Jumbo' Gracie.
The Hurricanes climbed steeply, gaining height at more that 2,000 feet per minute, and the voice of Wing Commander John Cherry, North Weald Controller, filled their earphones, calling 'Jumbo' Gracie: 'Hullo Yorker Blue Leader, Lumber Calling. Seventy plus bandits approaching Charlie Three, angels one-five.' Then Gracie's high pitched voice acknowledged: 'Hullo Lumber, Yorker Blue Leader answering. Your message received and understood. Over.' One of the squadron's pilots chipped in: lack of oil pressure was sending him home. Again Gracie acknowledged, and now ten Hurricanes swept on to intercept seventy German aircraft. Page thought idly, odds are seven to one - no better nor worse than usual. As they followed the serrated coastline of north Kent his altimeter showed 10,000 feet. From "Eagle Day - Battle of Britain"
56 Squadron started to close in on the departing bombers, as Geoffrey Page later put it, like "an express train overtaking a freight train" and they started to attack. Unfortunately, Page's Hurricane was hit and his aircraft exploded in a ball of flame. He managed to bale out, but badly burned was rescued by the Margate lifeboat.
Geoffrey Page was one of Fighter Command's experienced pilots, that was to be out of the battle for a long time, like many others who had sufferred burns, he was to have a long, long road to recovery. But, survival from severe burns is never going to be an easy one. But it is through such pilots as Geoffrey Page that we can learn what it is really like to experience what every pilot fears most, the thought of being trapped inside a burning aircraft.
BURNiNG INFERNO
This was the first major attack on a British airfield. For two solid hours Manston had been under constant bombardment. Len Deighton outlines the attack:
When Erprobungsgruppe 210's precision specialists, on their second sortie of the day, hit Manston: 150 bombs hit workshops, hangars and aircraft, enveloping the coastal airfield in smoke. Henceforth, Manston was under continual strafing, and was of limited value to Fighter Command. Some officers believed that it should have been evacuated, but Dowding declined to give the order for propaganda reasons. Manston's handful of exceptionally courageous Blenheim night fighter pilots of 600 Squadron worked day after day helping to refuel and rearm fighters that landed there. Most of the ground crews that should have been doing the job were hopelessly shaken by the events of 12th August and after. They went into the shelters and stayed there, defying all pleas to come out.
Further to the attack on Manston, Mike Spick in Richard Townshend Bickers book Battle of Britain, mentioned that after the Bf110s attacked Manston, it was followed by an attack by Dorniers of KG 2 which done considerable damage. These were recorded in the station diary as being as being wrongly identified as Heinkel's.
It had been a busy day for both the Luftwaffe and the RAF, and maybe it was a sign of things to come. After the bombing of Manston, the Luftwaffe diverted their attacks on the airfield of Lympe and Hawkinge where they were bombed by Ju88s of II/KG76. All the airfields bombed that day were classed as heavy, but was not recorded as officially being critical. The days events were finalized with some heavy bombing raids on a few coastal towns of Kent.
It now seemed that the stage had been set. The Luftwaffe knew of the importance of the British radar, but they knew little about the basic fundamentals of how it was working for Fighter Command. They knew that the radar was the 'eyes' of the RAF, and that before making any attempt at engineering raids on RAF installations and facilities this radar had to be knocked out. They had tried, but only to find out that within hours, the radar stations were back in operational status once more. Even Ventor, where they thought had been totally destroyed, it was much to their surprise that Britain had it back in operation within four weeks.
The early warning Radar chain was, in the main, so arranged that each stations area of detection was overseen by its adjoining stations, and so to cripple the system satisfactorily it was necessary to reduce the efficiency of two or three together. Much depended on how close the stations were to each other, e.g. in the south and southwest they were more widely spaced, making the cover less concentrated. There were mobile reserve units on call to plug gaps where enemy action had put Radar stations out of order or if cover suddenly became necessary in a hitherto unprotected area, but they were less effective than the original.
The Interservices RDF Committee decided at their meeting on 25 April 1940 to have a pool of MB2 equipment's on call for such emergencies. They were fitted into suitable vehicles and provided with their own power generators. Goering?s decision to stop attacks on the stations was fortuitous for the British. It is often said they were difficult targets, the masts supporting the aerials providing protection against low level raids, but the buildings, their land-line telephone communications and power supply were vulnerable.
So, the plan was, that on August 12th they would knock out the radar installations at the key points of Dover, Pevensey, Rye, Dunkirk and Ventor so that the RAF would not be able to see that the next move was to destroy the RAF on the ground by bombing the airfields. With no radar to detect their approach, the way was was clear for them send formations across the Channel, and the only way that they could be detected was by visual sightings, which by the time that this was made, it would be too late for the RAF to muster the aircraft needed to stop them before they had reached their targets.
Thirty-one German aircraft on this day were shot down, but it was not a day that favoured the RAF as twenty-two fighter planes were destroyed and eleven pilots were killed. |
