The Battle of Britain: 60th Anniversary

To Mark the 60th anniversary of the "Battle of Britain", I'll be posting a day by day summary of the battle.   The main part of the battle ran from August to October 1940.  In those few weeks, the fate of not only Britain, but of Western Europe rested on the "Few", who battled the onslaught of Luftwaffe bombers and fighters and refused to be defeated. *

September 15, 1940:  Known as "Battle of Britain Day", the RAF beat off a determined daylight attack on London, shooting down 60 German planes and losing 26.   The Luftwaffe finally abandoned daylight bombing raids in the face of the consistent losses.  They turned to night bombing of London, bringing the "London Blitz" into full swing.  Even though, for the sake of history, the official end of The Battle of Britain was October 31, 1940, when the Luftwaffe abandoned daylight bombing, The Battle of Britain was truly over.   This ends my Battle of Britain historical chronology.  I hope you enjoyed and perhaps learned something about this important epic battle.

September 7, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 41;  RAF - 28.

Lack of replacement aircraft, shortage of pilots and airfields taking a beating were severely straining Fighter Command.  If the Luftwaffe had continued with their strategy, they might well have beaten the fading British defenses, but miraculously, they switched their strategy at this critical moment and began attacking London.  Though the official Battle of Britain was to continue for several more weeks, this was, in effect, the end of the threat of invasion.  It took Hitler until October 12 to shelve the invasion plans until the spring of 1941, by which time it was practically an impossible objective.

September 6, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 35;  RAF - 23.

Biggin Hill hit again, as well as other airfields and aircraft factories.  The British prepare for invasion, having spotted (and having begun to attack) buildups of landing craft in Dutch, Belgian and French ports.

September 5, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 23;  RAF - 20.

Several large raids were directed at the airfields at Biggin Hill and Detling.

September 4, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 25;  RAF - 17.

The Luftwaffe strategy on this day was to bomb the aircraft factories.  Bombers hit the Vickers machine shops and more than 700 people were killed, the worse incident in terms of human life to date.  The raids on airfields continued with Lympne and East Church getting plastered again.  Hitler made a speech in which he threatened the British with invasion and vowed to retaliate for the British bombing of Germany.

September 3, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 16;  RAF - 16.

On this day, Hitler decided to postpone the invasion from September 15 to September 21.  With the approach of winter weather, the Luftwaffe felt that they needed to force the issue and eliminate the RAF quickly.  Meanwhile, the RAF was in dire straights.  They were able to field roughly 700 fighters but the lack of experienced pilots shifted the balance to the Luftwaffe.  

September 2, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 35;  RAF - 31.

The Luftwaffe began to target aircraft factories, as well as continuing their attacks on Fighter Command airfields.

September 1, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 14;  RAF - 15.

Fighter Command was ready to snap.  In the past two weeks, they had lost 200 more fighters than had been produced.  More importantly, almost a quarter of their pilots had been killed.  Most of the critical airfields had suffered extensive damage.  Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe again began to express confidence, even with their own large pilot losses.

August 31, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 41;  RAF - 39.

The Luftwaffe finally hit upon an effective strategy.  By combining their raids and timing them perfectly, they were able to catch the British pilots still on the ground, refueling or taking off.  Great losses were paid by both sides.

August 30, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 36;  RAF - 26.

Attack after attack was launched by the Luftwaffe in an attempt to wipe out Fighter Command once and for all.  Fighter Command finally gave official approval to "head-on" attacks on the enemy bombers in an effort to breakup their formations.  Due to the high closing speeds, there were many collisions.

August 29, 1940:  Weather: Clear but clearing.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 17;  RAF - 9.

The luftwaffe sends out massive fighter sweeps while baiting Fighter Command with small formations of Do 17's and He 111's but the RAF does not bite, recalling the scrambled fighters.

August 28, 1940:  Weather: Clear but clouds over  the channel.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 30;  RAF - 20.

Churchill toured the southeast, able to witness some of the air battles.  The last of the "Defiants", the modified Hurricanes with a turret installed behind the pilot and manned by a gunner, was pulled from the battle after suffering continual losses.  German night attacks increase as the Luftwaffe realize that their losses are negligible and the RAF has no solution in sight.

August 27, 1940:  Weather: Cloudy and rainy.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 9;  RAF - 1.

Bad weather limited the air action.  There were no big raids.

August 26, 1940:  Weather: Cloudy but clearing.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 41;  RAF - 31.

Large Luftwaffe raids continued their attack, taking hard losses as well as inflicting damage.  Both sides were definitely feeling the losses of experienced pilots, with the Luftwaffe hurting worse, as it's pilots that bailed out over Britain were lost for the duration of the war, while the RAF pilots landed on their own soil and quickly were back in the fight.

August 25, 1940:  Weather: Clear but turning cloudy.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 20;  RAF - 16.

A lone German bomber lost it's way and dropped his bombload on London.  The British reacted furiously, launching an 81 bomber attack that night, hitting Berlin.  Up until this point, both sides had mutually not attacked the other's capitol cities.  

August 24, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 38;  RAF - 22.

This new phase of the battle saw the renewal of the fighting and an increase in intensity.  The RAF airfields took a massive pounding.

August 23, 1940:  Weather: Rainy.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 2;  RAF - 0.

Little activity during the day but the night attacks continued.

August 22, 1940:  Weather: Cloudy.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 3;  RAF - 5.

Scattered attacks were made but nothing major.  Night bombings began to increase.

August 21, 1940:  Weather: Rainy.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 14;  RAF - 1.

The engagements were light due to the weather but they favored the RAF.

August 20, 1940:  Weather: Poor.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 7;  RAF - 2.

Weather was too poor for any major engagements. On this date, Winston Churchill delivered his famous "The Few" speech.  You can download the most famous lines of his speech HERE.

August 19, 1940:  Weather: Cloudy.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 6;  RAF - 3.

Goring regrouped his forces, making several major changes while lambasting his pilots.  Galland and Molders were given command of their own Jagdgeschwader but handcuffing them to close escort of the bombers.  The Stukas were withdrawn from the front lines.  Finally, the decision to stop the attacks on the radar stations was given, allowing the RAF to monitor the incoming raids unimpeded.  The RAF fighters were ordered to concentrate on the bombers and not get into fighter vs. fighter air-battles.  The fighters on both sides were not happy with the orders coming from above.  While the Luftwaffe had considerable losses up to this point, the RAF was severely undermanned and stretched to their limits.  Many believed that continued pressure as previously experienced would soon breakdown the defense.

August 18, 1940:  Weather: Clear but turning sour.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 71;  RAF - 27.

The Luftwaffe decided to concentrate their attacks on the airbases Kenley and Biggin Hill.  But the British introduced new defensive measures in the form of "cable and parachutes".  These cables were shot into the air infront of the low flying bombers, causing them to entangle themselves and hopefully crash to the ground.  Latter in the day, another attack was launched, this time directed at Hornchurch and North Weald.  Daring attacks by the defenders as well as worsening weather caused most of the bombers to jettison their loads, unfortunately over civilian areas.  Many civilian lives were lost  because of this. 

August 17, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 3;  RAF - 0.

Although the weather was clear, both sides took a rest from the intense fighting from the previous days.

August 16, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 45;  RAF - 21.

Despite the losses of Black Thursday, Goring stuck to his strategy of knocking out the forward RAF airfields.  Attrition was thinning out the British strength.  One of the slickest raids by the Luftwaffe involved two Ju 88's that came in to a training field at Brize Northon (near Oxford) with wheels down, hoping to be mistaken for returning Blenheim bombers. The tactic worked, as they laid their bombs perfectly, destroying 46 planes and damaging 11 Hurricanes before making  their uncontested escape.

August 15, 1940:  Weather: Clear.  Official Losses:  Luftwaffe - 75;  RAF - 34.

As this day dawned, few could have anticipated how important it was to be, in the outcome of the Battle.  Up until now, the north of England had been ignored. Due in part to the range limitations of the two-engine bombers and the fighters (particularly the Me 109s), the most reachable targets had all been in the south. Luftflotte 5 had not seen any significant action over England up to now.  The losses to Luftflotte 5 were devastating and their successes marginal.  However in the south, new raids were having rather more success. This day became known to the Luftwaffe as "der schwarze Donnerstag" or Black Thursday, due to the disproportionate losses to successes.  But Fighter Command losses were also felt dramatically by the defenders.

August 14, 1940:  Weather: Intermittent Clouds.  Official losses: Luftwaffe - 19; RAF - 8.  

Kesselring sent many small raids over England in order to harass the British fighters in preparation for a big day the next day.  Middle Wallop, one of the prime targets of the previous day which had been missed in the clouds and confusion, was finally hit, though some of the raiders were also shot down by fighter defenses.  Dowding had reason to believe that the next day would witness a heavy German attack, and so he moved some of his more weary squadrons up north while replacing them with experienced, but more rested forces.

August 13, 1940:  Weather: Cloudy, then clear.  Official losses: Luftwaffe - 45; RAF - 13.  

Adlertag (Eagle Day) proved a fiasco for the Luftwaffe.  Though one successful raid destroyed 22 aircraft on the ground at Detling, a Coastal Command airfield.  As terrible as the loss was, it had no effect on the outcome of the battle, as it was not a blow to Fighter Command.  That night, bombing raids did some damage to a Spitfire "shadow" factory at Birmingham and destroyed some four-engine Stirling bombers.

*I began the day by day entries on August 13th.  (AxA)