To mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, Osprey has just published a voluminous book of some 400 pages on the 'Few'. The work of Doug Dildy (veteran F-15 pilot) and Paul Crickmore (SR-71 specialist), it is a curious mixture of texts. There is evidence of some decent research but also plenty of remarks that seem to come straight out of the 1960s or even earlier. The 'scene-setting' two pages on AH's life and political career are hardly necessary for anyone vaguely informed about WWII. A similar length assessment of the Me 109 a nos 'short-range front-line interceptor' and the contradictions inherent in the strategic bomber escort role is rather more interesting and on point. In the chapter on the Phoney War, the authors reduce the French Air Force to 'an unequal assortment ranging from the obsolete MS 406 to the modern H-75'. To 'make up for this deficiency', the RAF deployed the optimistically named 'Advanced Air Striking Force' to the Continent. However, it is questionable whether the Gladiator, Battle and Blenheim were better than the 'old French cuckoo clocks'. The authors add that 'no squadron of modern Spitfires could be diverted to France', and there is thus no discussion of the refusal of the British authorities to commit a fighter reserved for the defence of Great Britain alone. During the campaign in the West anything between 650 and 1,000 Luftwaffe aircraft were lost. Losses on the opening day of the invasion –May 10 – exceeded the biggest daily loss during the fighting over England later that summer. Included in the total losses were around 165 Bf 109s shot down and a further 50 or so lost in accidents. Messerschmitt Regensburg was only producing around 25 new Bf 109s per month during this period. Even today some French authors maintain that the French ‘contribution’ to victory in the Battle of Britain was decisive. Dildy and Crickmore do not.
Whereas various 'directives' set out at the start of the Battle sought to cut Britain off from the rest of the world through attacks on shipping and ports, the UK's southern ports were soon excluded from target lists as they would be required for invasion. In Chapter IV (p.85), the authors cite the impossibility of a German landing on English coasts because of the power of the Royal Navy, which a Luftwaffe (barely six years old) could not hope to destroy or even neutralize for lack of resources. At least one commander - JG 51's Theo Osterkamp- calculated that in order to protect the invasion beaches he would need two complete Geschwader (almost 150 aircraft) over the beach head at all times. The total amount of aircraft required for such an operation was more than the Luftwaffe started the Battle with, implying zero net losses. At a meeting convened by Goering at the Hague on August 1, the different Luftwaffe commands put forward their various and disparate plans. Bungay has described the results of this meeting as 'a confusion of banalities' - there was no 'unified' planning process and all sorts of targets - the ports, the merchant navy, infrastructure, factories - were determined and then dropped or modified.
Once again in a text on the Battle there is no discussion of the role ‘ULTRA’ played in the ‘early warning system’. ULTRA intelligence was used in the form of briefs to relevant commands. Such 'briefs' must have come into their own in early September with the major Luftwaffe strike operations which evidently required a certain amount of pre-planning coordination and thus communications and which ultimately played right into the hands of the British. While never identified as ULTRA as such - it was 'a reliable source' or some similar wording- it did provide tactically useful intelligence on impending raids and significantly did reveal German intentions. The 'Battle of Britain Then and Now' includes some examples of these briefs. Nor do the authors discuss in any depth the German's lack of knowledge of the Chain Home defence - not only could CH detect an incoming raid but it could also vector an interception. With their limited resources the Luftwaffe should have been used, to quote Sebastien Cox, " first, to destroy the Chain Home radar towers, a simple task because only nine, all flimsy and highly conspicuous, guarded the coast between Southampton and Dover. The blinded RAF fighter airfields should then have been overwhelmed by round-the-clock bombing..."
. This was indeed attempted to a certain degree - on August 18, Ju 87s attacked RADAR and airfield targets and 15 were lost. That brought Ju 87 losses to 59 lost and 33 damaged. The RADAR station (Poling) attacked was severely damaged and the Chain Home RADAR was out of action until the end of August, but the Chain Home Low system was not and with this redundancy built into the system Luftwaffe losses would reach unmanageable proportions in putting it out of commission.
The authors conclusion is classic 'Mason' - 'by preventing the invasion, the 'Few' enabled Britain to continue the struggle'. Sound the trumpets, bang the drums! In short, a dense - and often confusing - work, which sometimes gives the impression of any number of texts from the '60s, an era when there was no publicly available information about ULTRA, but where radar was the 'revolutionary invention that saved freedom'. There is little or anything 'new' here. The book is ultimately a hefty compilation of 'old' news into which the authors have thrown just about everything that might seem relevant in order to make an impression.
And a "reader's review" from Martyn Chapman on amazon that highlights some of the authors' more egregious errors- I particularly "like" the Bekesbourne one, having regularly walked my dogs there!
" Don't bother with this book, the authors make more errors than Göring.
I started out thinking this was quite a good read but then alarm bells began to ring. A number of factual errors crept in: There is a reference ( these are all from the Kindle edition). Page 309 refers to an attack on what I assume is Martlesham Heath airfield by ErprGr210 consisting of 16 Bf110 and eight Bf109 Jabos. Now this is way out of the range of a Bf 109 and even more so with a 250kg bomb slung underneath it. The authors do not question their sourced material, particularly when they go on to state that "North Weald" was outside ME109 range."North Weald" is way closer to London. The best range for the Bf 109 was south London and then with only 5-8 minutes of fuel for combat, certainly not capable of going any further north along the Essex coast.
Then on page 325 and I quote "Luftflotte 2 had eliminated Bekesbourne". Bekesbourne was a WW1 airfield and was not used by the RAF except for one brief visit by a Lysander squadron earlier in the war. It was never bombed and never attacked and not once in any book have I come across such a bizarre statement.
Then there is a statement about RAF Lympne being knocked out and not put back into use until 1941. It was back in use in September 1940.
The final item that has now made me give up totally is the statement concerning the "Battle of Biggin Hill" (page 400 Kindle) and I quote " the Sector Ops Room was moved to a vacant shop in the Pantiles, a village half a mile south of the airfield". For those who don't know, "The Pantiles" are in Tunbridge Wells" around 15 miles south of Biggin Hill. A simple search on Google Maps would have revealed this error.
How can I trust all the information in this book with so many errors? The authors are obviously unfamiliar with Kent which is odd seeing a large percentage of the "Battle of Britain" took place over it.
I am proud to say that at least the authors "alternative" history, have made the hamlet of Bekesbourne ( I don't live that far away for this place) the subject of Hitler's wrath.."
Martyn Chapman