More than one pilot was less than enthusiastic about the AAF squadrons. Skilled RAFVR Sergeant pilots, such as ‘Ginger’ Lacey, posted to an AAF squadron, sometimes found them ‘a rather snobbish preserve of the rich’. ‘Johnnie’ Johnson, another of the RAF’s top fighter aces, remained convinced that he had failed to get into an AAF squadron when the interviewing officer discovered that he was not a fox-hunting man. On another AAF squadron there was always ‘a social test’ in which a prospective officer candidate would be given Sunday lunch, and ‘several glasses of sherry’ to discover ‘if his parlance was no longer that of a gentleman’. Said one of them, ‘Auxiliaries are gentlemen trying to be officers, Regulars are officers trying to be gentlemen, VRs are neither trying to be both.’
Many AAF recruits had sports flying experience before joining but there were service instructors for these squadrons. These included men to teach recruits to become spare-time ground tradesmen: fitters, riggers, armourers, etc. ‘There was no shortage of recruits,’ said the Commanding Officer of 609 (West Riding) Squadron, after they received three Avro Tutor trainers and three Hawker Harts, ‘the difficulty was choosing them.’
When war began, the AAF squadrons were incorporated into the RAF. They became full-time units and each was attached to a parent RAF squadron. Many of the AAF bombing and army-cooperation squadrons became fighter units as – in the second half of 1939 – the Hawker Hurricanes arrived. The AAF pilots were almost all well-educated, intelligent young men with a high morale and peak physical fitness. They adapted almost effortlessly to the new fast monoplanes but many hours of flying experience were needed to make these part-time pilots into professionals. And they did not have many flying hours to go before facing the battle-hardened veterans of the German Air Fleets. It was also true that many Auxiliary flyers were far older than their adversaries, and older than RAF Regular pilots too. One AAF squadron had pilots on average five years older than the RAF Regulars with whom they shared the airfield.
Dowding was concerned about the flow of trained pilots from the flying schools. Even after war began, the intakes were still based upon peacetime establishments. Dowding reminded all concerned of the suddenness with which war inflicted casualties, and the long training that was needed to produce a skilled fighter pilot.
It took a year to complete basic pilot training, followed by another year of squadron service to get flying experience. So how long would it take to get the additional instructors they would need to increase the flow of fighter pilots? The outbreak of war not only underlined the shortage of trained pilots but it caused RAF fighter squadrons to be taken away from defence duties and sent to France. Dowding objected.
The Air Ministry chose to ignore Dowding’s suggestions and so was directly responsible for the shortage of skilled fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain. This, more than any other factor, brought the Luftwaffe close to air mastery.
The war began, but it did not begin with the great air attacks upon London and the two million casualties that the theorists had predicted. In fact air-raid casualties for Great Britain in the whole war totalled under 300,000 and about half of them were ‘slight injuries’. But the experts could not believe they were wrong. On 3 September 1939 air-raid warnings were sounded only a few minutes after the declaration of war – the ‘attack’ proved to be a small liaison aircraft carrying the Assistant French Military Attaché and an interpreter. In the early hours of the next day, a hoaxer caused the central London air-raid sirens to be sounded, simply by telephoning Scotland Yard from Guildford and saying that a large bomber formation had just passed over him, heading for London.
If, when war began, anyone in Britain’s air defences believed that the system was functioning well, the events of 6 September should have changed their mind. According to Dowding it all began when a ‘refugee aircraft from Holland’ was reported. Since there had been no notification of this incoming flight, RAF fighters were sent to intercept.
Like the aerial of any cheap transistor radio, the radar aerials produced a strong signal when at right angles to the aircraft (or radio station). Only by electrical screening could the radar distinguish seaward aircraft from those behind the aerials. On 6 September the screening failed, said Dowding, and the fighters sent up from British airfields to intercept appeared on the screens as blips out to sea. More RAF fighters took to the air, and each one looked like another incoming raider.
How the fighting began is still unknown but as the Spitfires from Hornchurch met the Hurricanes from North Weald, a battle began and two Hurricanes were shot down. One pilot died.
At Dowding’s HQ the movements of the coloured counters were being watched by King George VI, who had chosen that day to pay a visit. ‘I fear I was a most distrait host,’ said Dowding, who realised that something had gone terribly wrong.
The ‘sense-finding screen’ at Canewdon was checked and found to be working perfectly. Afterwards Watson-Watt insisted that all the fighters had been seawards of the aerials and the radar had reported accurately.
The rights and wrongs were never settled but there began an urgent reassessment of the radar and reporting network. Electronic sets that would enable RAF aircraft to identify themselves were ordered immediately. These IFF sets were crude and imperfect devices but, in September, 500 of them were put together by hand, so that the fighters could have them. And from the fiasco came an instruction that enemy raids should be confirmed by a visual sighting by the Observer Corps, before the fighters went in. As we shall see, this rule brought new difficulties.
Meanwhile the Luftwaffe were busy elsewhere, providing intensive air bombardment for the German army invading Poland. There was little air fighting, for the Polish air force had been almost destroyed by attacks upon the airfields. While the fighting continued, the governments of Britain and France worked hard at the task of convincing themselves that the Luftwaffe would not attack western cities unless provoked to it. The Anglo-French air forces were forbidden to drop anything more lethal than propaganda leaflets over German towns. RAF Bomber Command was allowed across the North Sea with bombs but only to attack German warships. Trying this in daylight, without fighter escort, they suffered heavy casualties. As 1939 came to an end RAF Bomber Command’s operations had proved disastrous. The raids had suffered a loss rate of 9.5 per cent (never again, in any year of the war, did losses reach even half this rate). Instead of adding fighter escort to their raids, they simply abandoned daylight bombing, which had been the basis of all their pre-war planning.
At night, the RAF contented themselves with leaflet dropping, and few of the attacking airmen ever found the designated targets. Replying to a proposal that the German forests could be set afire with incendiary bombs, Sir Kingsley Wood, Britain’s Air Minister, a one-time insurance consultant, revealed the official attitude: ‘Are you aware it is private property? Why, you will be asking me to bomb Essen next.’
Dowding and the 15 May Cabinet Meeting
On 10 May 1940, lacking such respect for property, panzer groups crossed the frontier without customs formalities. They were heading for the Meuse. The great blitzkrieg of 1940 had begun. The French asked the British to employ their heavy bomber force against the German columns. By 15 May panzer forces had bridged the Meuse. At a meeting of the War Cabinet on that day it was agreed that RAF Bomber Command should be authorised to attack.
In accord with the same theories that so impressed Göring, the RAF mounted the largest air bombardment the world had yet seen, and sent it off that same night. It was not sent to attack the bridges on the Meuse. Complex reasonings of strategy and the influence of Douhet selected oil industry targets in the densely populated Ruhr, and under cover of darkness 100 Whitley, Hampden and Wellington bombers tried to find them.
The French had argued desperately that air attacks upon the Ruhr could have no effect upon Guderian’s armoured invasion of France. The French were entirely right. The RAF official history admits that the bombers ‘achieved none of their objects. Industrial damage was negligible,’ and goes on to explain that the greatest benefit expected from this opening shot of the strategic bombing of Germany was ‘an informal invitation to the Luftwaffe