Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (22 page)

Early on the morning of June 5, 1940, the day after the evacuation of Dunkirk ended, Erhard Milch walked along the beach near the city with Maj. Gen. Otto Hoffmann von Waldau, the caustic but extremely capable chief of the Operations Branch of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe. Waldau was in an expansive mood. Waving his arm across the horizon, Waldau exclaimed: “Here is the grave of the British hopes in this war!” Then, prodding a bottle with the toe of his boot, he contemptuously added: “And these are the grave stones!”

General Milch was more thoughtful. “They are not buried yet,” he muttered. He was hatching a plan in his mind. “We have no time to waste!” he said suddenly. Later that day the state secretary showed up at a command conference held aboard Goering’s armored train
Asia
, his temporary command post. The jubilant Goering told Milch, Kesselring, Sperrle, Stumpff, and Jeschonnek that the British army had been “wiped out” at Dunkirk. Milch corrected him. He had been to Dunkirk and had not seen more than twenty or thirty dead British soldiers. He strongly advised that the Luftwaffe launch the invasion of Britain “
without delay
.” “I warn you, Herr Field Marshal,” the deputy commander of the Luftwaffe concluded, “if you give the English three or four weeks to recoup, it will be too late.”

Momentarily crestfallen, Goering’s initial reaction was negative. “It can’t be done,” he said, tersely.
⁴
But, as the conversation continued, he was won over to Milch’s point of view. The state secretary presented a compelling argument. He proposed an immediate invasion of Great Britain, supported by the 2nd and 3rd Air Fleets, even before France was finished off. The para-troopers could seize a few critical airfields in southern England, and then army units could be ferried over by the air transports. At the moment the R.A.F. and British army—which had lost all of its heavy equipment at Dunkirk—were too weak to intervene successfully.
⁵
As the conversation continued, Goering became convinced that Milch was right. The next day, the “Iron One” went to the village of Bruly-le-Peche, Belgium, and presented a plan to the Fuehrer for the invasion of Britain.
⁶

The plan was a good one: even Adolf Hitler appreciated its merits. However, he did not think it was necessary. Surely, the Fuehrer had decided, even the stubborn British prime minister Churchill would recognize that the war was lost and would conclude a negotiated peace, rather than subject his homeland to the ravages of a hopeless war. His orders to Goering were simple: “Do nothing.”
⁷
When Milch heard the order, he was furious. Couldn’t the Fuehrer see that this plan might be the only chance Germany would have to defeat Britain and win the war?

Hitler was not the only one blinded by the intoxicating conquest of France. Hans Jeschonnek, the chief of the General Staff, shared the optimism. Three weeks later, after the French surrendered, he was sitting in the dining car of Goering’s special train with the Reichsmarschall and Dr. Christian von Hammerstein, the senior legal officer of the Luftwaffe, and other officers. They were discussing the forthcoming air attacks against England. Goering turned to his chief of staff and asked him if he believed these attacks would be successful.

“Yes, of course I do,” Jeschonnek replied. Later he affirmed to Goering: “I don’t think it will take over six weeks at the most!” Goering doubted this and pointed out that the British ought not be considered softer than the Germans. If it was assumed that the Germans would continue to fight even if Berlin were destroyed, then they should not assume that the British would stop fighting just because London was destroyed.
⁸

As the summer of 1940 wore on, British diplomats stalled, and Hitler, still hopeful of a negotiated settlement, refused to unleash the Wehrmacht. The men of the Luftwaffe played cards, drank wine, sunbathed, visited the cafés, and generally enjoyed the delights of France. (The French resistance to the Nazi occupation had not yet begun.) While Goering’s men idled away their time, England feverishly tried to rebuild her shattered war machine. Factories worked night and day to produce every conceivable type of war material—especially fighter planes. Under the dynamic leadership of the highly efficient Lord Beaverbrook, a Canadian-born newspaper publisher, British aircraft factories worked without stopping. In the month after Dunkirk they turned out 446 new fighters—about one hundred more than the Germans produced. The Luftwaffe was well on its way to losing the quantitative lead it had established over the R.A.F. prior to the start of the war. They had already been surpassed qualitatively, although they did not yet realize it. The British Spitfire was faster and more maneuverable than the Me-109 (although it could not outclimb it), and the British Hurricane was nearly the equal of the best German fighter. Both had a much greater range than the Me-109—a decisive factor in the battle ahead. As the Battle of Britain progressed, the R.A.F. developed the tactic of sending the heavily armed Hurricanes against the German bombers, while the Spitfires dealt with the more formidable Me-109s. As a result, Hurricane pilots scored more “kills” than any other group in the Battle of Britain.
⁹

Although Hitler still hesitated to allow an all-out aerial offensive, he did allow the Luftwaffe to attack British shipping in the English Channel, beginning in early July. In these encounters, the R.A.F. definitely came out second-best. Despite their technological inferiority, the more experienced German fighter pilots were still tactically superior to their R.A.F. counterparts. They flew loose formations at different altitudes, while British fighters flew tight, wingtip to wingtip formations. Consequently, British pilots were too busy trying to maintain formations to keep a proper lookout for Messerschmitts, which usually spotted them and attacked first: a major and usually decisive advantage in aerial combat. From early July to August 12, in the so-called “Battle of the Channel,” Luftwaffe bombers flew about 7,000 sorties and dropped nearly 2,000 tons of bombs, sinking 70,000 tons of British shipping. True, the R.A.F. shot down 279 German aircraft, but they lost 142 of their precious fighters. Only eighty-five Me-109s were shot down.
¹⁰

Meanwhile, Hitler finally ordered the OKW to prepare for a seaborne invasion of Great Britain, should it prove necessary. The German Army was generally against such an operation, as were Grand Admiral Raeder and the German Navy. Only Goering and the Luftwaffe greeted the idea with enthusiasm. At the end of July, Jeschonnek told Rear Adm. Wilhelm Moessel, the naval liaison officer to OKL, that the navy would not be needed for the defeat of Britain. “The Luftwaffe [alone] will conquer England in a matter of months!” he said.
¹¹

The Luftwaffe’s plan of operations for the Battle of Britain called for an operation of two phases. First, British fighter and other antiaircraft defenses in southeastern England would be annihilated. Then, daylight operations would continue to roll northward until complete air superiority was established. Simultaneously, the British aircraft industry would be annihilated by the
Kampfgeschwadern
.

Three air fleets were to participate in the Battle of Britain. From north to south, they were Stumpff’s 5th, Kesselring’s 2nd, and Sperrle’s 3rd. Stumpff’s fleet in Norway had only Geisler’s X Air Corps, which had only four wings. One of these was equipped with Me-109s, whose range was insufficient to reach the British coast, so it could be used for defensive purposes only. In all, Stumpff had only 138 He-111 and Ju-88 bombers (124 serviceable) and 37 twin-engine fighters (34 serviceable) to send against Scotland and northern England.
¹²

The bulk of the Luftwaffe’s combat strength was concentrated in France and Belgium. Hugo Sperrle’s 3d Air Fleet, headquartered in Paris, included four Stuka wings, five bomber wings, three Me-109 fighter wings, and a “destroyer” wing equipped with twin-engine Me-110s. Most of his fighters were placed under the direction of Col. Wemer Junck’s 3rd Fighter Command (
Jagdfliegerfuehrer 3
), a temporary formation designed to close with and destroy the Spitfires and Hurricanes as they tried to intercept the German bombers. Sperrle’s remaining aircraft came under the control of Richthofen’s VIII, Greim’s V, and Kurt Pflugbeil’s IV Air Corps.

The strongest of the Luftwaffe’s air fleets was Albert Kesselring’s 2nd. Headquartered in Brussels, it controlled Ulrich Grauert’s I Air Corps, Loerzer’s II Air Corps, Coeler’s 9th Air Division, and the weak and recently formed 1st Night Fighter Division, commanded by Col. Joseph Kammhuber. Most of Kesselring’s fighters were under the 2nd Fighter Command, which was led by Col. Kurt von Doering, a veteran of the Richthofen wing who had scored eleven kills in World War I.
¹³
Between them, Sperrle and Kesselring controlled 1,232 He-111, Ju-88, and Do-17 bombers; 406 Stuka dive-bombers; 282 Me-110 twin-engine fighters; and 813 Me-109 single-engine fighters. Of these, 875 bombers, 316 Stukas, 227 Me-110s, and 702 Me-109s were operational on August 13, 1940. Table
8
shows the Luftwaffe’s order of battle on August 13.

Goering set “Eagle Day” (
Adler Tag
), the start of the Battle of Britain, for August 10. His plan called for German bombers to attack British shipping, radar sites, the R.A.F. ground organization, aircraft factories, plus a number of other targets. The bombers were thus to serve as bait for the R.A.F. fighters, which would be destroyed by the escorting Me-109s and Me-110s as they attacked the German bombers. Both Kesselring and Sperrle opposed these tactics. They wanted to first destroy the R.A.F. ground organization (airfields, supply depots, radar stations, etc.) by continuous nighttime bombing.
¹⁴
Goering refused to modify the plan, however. Because of the lateness of the season, September 15 had been set as the last possible date to begin Operation “Sealion,” the code name for the invasion of Britain. The Luftwaffe had to achieve air superiority by that date. Even as it was, Eagle Day had to be postponed until August 13 because of bad weather.

The German tactics placed the Me-109 pilots at a severe disadvantage. Already they were limited to ninety minutes’ flying time by their fuel tanks. This would give them only a maximum of thirty minutes’ flight time over Great Britain. Now, under Goering’s plan, they would have to fly zigzag patterns to keep up with the slower speeds of their bombers. Also, tied to the bombers, they could not dictate the timing of the fighter battles, nor take advantage of altitude or of the sun. The mistakes of the Spanish civil war were now becoming apparent. The bombers could not protect themselves against enemy fighters, as the Luftwaffe High Command had assumed. There had been no training in cooperation between fighters and bombers, and there would be no time for it now. Meanwhile, R.A.F. Fighter Command, led by Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh C. T. Dowding, had assembled 749 fighters (mainly Hurricanes and Spitfires, plus a few obsolete Bleinheims, Defiants, and Gladiators) to meet the onslaught.
¹⁵
Dowding divided his fifty-nine squadrons among four fighter groups, the most important of which was Air Vice Marshal Keith Park’s 11th Group in southeastern England. Park had 40 percent of Fighter Command’s operational aircraft on August 13.

In addition to the initially poor fighter tactics used by the Luftwaffe, the R.A.F. possessed a number of other advantages. First, they were operating over their own territory. This minimized losses of damaged aircraft and maximized their flight time over combat areas. Also, it minimized aircrew losses, as pilots who bailed out were quickly returned to their units, while downed Luftwaffe airmen were promptly captured and spent the rest of the war in POW camps. Second, the R.A.F. had a chain of twenty-nine radar stations (known as Radio Direction Finders, or RDFs), posted along the southern and eastern coasts of England. Since they knew where the Germans were heading, the R.A.F. pilots did not have to fly standing fighter patrols, and they were thus able to extend their resources to the limit. Since it had yet to develop a truly effective radar, the Luftwaffe had to hold fighters in reserve to protect its bases. It also had to keep a fighter wing in Norway (to protect the bases there) and had to keep 300 fighters in Germany, to protect the Reich against possible raids by the R.A.F. Bomber Command.