It's over?

One hundred and fourteen days of continuous blogging on a single subject, the Battle of Britain. And now that is over. The Battle officially ended on 31 October 1940 and today is the 70th anniversary of that ending. With it should come to an end an interesting experiment in what is called "post blogging".

With some prescience, however, the headline of the Daily Mirror for 1 November 1940 warns after a relatively quiet night, "Don't think air war is over".

Of course, it was far from over. Coventry was still to come, in December London was to take its worst bombing to date – with worse to come - and the tragedy of Liverpool was yet to be played out. Bristol, Hull, Glasgow and many more towns and cities were to experience their own nights of terror.

And for me it is far from over. The experiment has spawned a book – still in the writing - to be published in September by Continuum. It will be called "The Many", reflecting the fact that the Battle of Britain currently celebrated is an artificial construct. The true Battle for Britain lasted much longer and was fought by the many, not the few.

The task is now to add to the existing 114 blog pages, layering in more detail, honing and refining the narrative until it is clean enough to be able to "lift" and shape into a book structure. But it leaves me with a conundrum. Should I continue the narrative on the blog, or leave it here? I would welcome observations.

BATTLE OF BRITAIN THREAD

Why it matters today

To complete yesterday's piece, before getting back to work, it is worth noting that as of yesterday seventy years ago, the capital city has suffered nine days of continuous bombing. Perhaps 4,000 Londoners were dead, getting on for 10,000 had been injured and over 100,000 were homeless. No one actually knows the true numbers because any semblance of record-keeping had broken down.

In the most heavily affected areas, local authority services had all but ceased to function. Rest centres, set up to deal with bombing victims, were not even scratching the surface. Public shelters were grossly overcrowded, woefully lacking in facilities and insanitary. One shelter, intended for 3,000 people, had four toilets – and it was accommodating 15,000 people.

Public transport was erratic, and in large parts of London had stopped working completely. Abandoned by the government system, families were trekking out to Epping Forest, to the hop fields of Kent and even as far as Oxford, by the tens of thousands, in an attempt to reach safety and relief. Chislehurst Caves in Kent were converted to accommodate nearly 10,000 – by the people themselves.

Yet, coming into the tenth day, the official government policy on using the Underground as bomb shelters was still prohibition. Even as the sirens sounded, women and children were being turned away, while the likes of Lord Halifax enjoyed the safety of their luxury shelters in the deep basements of the Dorchester Hotel.

After the tube trains have finished running for the night, it remains policy to lock the stations and mount police guards to keep people out. And the police did as they were told by their bosses.

In a few stations, though, there were people sheltering overnight. This is so unusual that a Guardian columnist actually writes about it in his paper – he is one of the lucky ones. But it is only because the people turned up en masse with crowbars and swept the police aside. They broke into the stations and secured shelter, in defiance of the authorities and their prohibitions. The people decided and, shortly afterwards, the government caved in and lifted the prohibition.

It was the same elsewhere on other issues. Shelter management and organisation was set up not by the government but by volunteers. When the government decided to put its own people in, they were swept aside. Local vicars, WVS volunteers, and many others, started making sense of the rest centres, and gradually order – and humanity – prevailed. And, in each case, the government fell into line.

In other words, the collapse of society was averted – and the safety of the people assured – more or less, not by a beneficent government but by people power. It was their endurance, their good sense, their organisational skills and perseverance that saved the day – not the dead hand of a corrupt, inefficient, lethargic public bureaucracy.

As for the government's war, its legend is a sham. For weeks, the Home Intelligence unit had been telling the government that there was virtually no belief that the supposed invasion was a threat. That the RAF was saving the people from the invasion was not credible.

Furthermore, the invasion was never going to happen and the government knew it. Right up to the last, daily reconnaissance flights over the massed barges showed no signs whatsoever of them being loaded with troops. It was all a gigantic bluff - Hitler's bluff and Churchill's bluff.

The RAF thus never saved us from an invasion. It was hugely popular, but only when it shot down Nazi aeroplanes. That was because Nazi aeroplanes were bombing people – and people were not awfully fond of being bombed. But that was all.

Thus, the idea that on 15 September, now celebrated as "Battle of Britain day", back in 1940 brought any sense of relief is a total fiction. By then, the real war was the war against the people – the relentless bombing that was to go on for 76 days and spread to the rest of the country, killing tens of thousands.

Far from the fighting on the 15th bringing any relief, therefore, conditions were to get worse – much worse, with the RAF as much use as a chocolate fireguard as the Luftwaffe bombed through the nights.

As the people suffered, the government and its Brylcream Boys in their shiny new Spitfires were powerless. So the people held it together and proved that people-power is what makes things work. They lasted out until Hitler had finally had enough and turned east to invade Soviet Russia.

No wonder, therefore, the government prefers its own, carefully crafted myth, where a small, government-directed élite - the "few" - in a top-down war, saved the proles from a mythical invasion during the daylight war. Sooner that than accept the reality that the people saved the day while the government stood by, wringing its hands, while its topmost officials reserved their places in luxury bunkers.

That is why the Battle of Britain still matters now. The carefully crafted official myth perpetuates and sustains the political status quo, a centralist, statist, top-down myth that suits both the left and the right wing of British politics. It is the myth that government is a force for good, that it works and that it has the interests of the people at heart.

So, when you see all those happy pictures of people sheltering in underground stations, and hear all the guff on the BBC about the "Blitz Spirit", just remember the whole thing is a government-inspired myth. As for the BBC, it was so bad at times that more people were listening to the German radio stations for their news than the official broadcasts.

Most of all though, ditch the BBC guff about the "people's war" as if it was something separate and different from the rest. What the invention of the bomber had done was allow belligerent governments to bypass the field armies of their opponents and attack the people of the warring nations in order to force a decision.

By this means, the battleground had become the streets of London, joined by the other towns and cities. That's where the real Battle of Britain was fought and won - not in the skies above. I wasn't a question of the Battle of Britain and then the Blitz. The Blitz was the Battle of Britain, the decisive battle.

The people were not part of the war, therefore - passively enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. They were the war, the front line. The military, the bosses and the politicians - they were spectators. If the people had folded, many of them would have been dead meat.

The real message, therefore, is the one that needs to be taken up and replicated – because it is totally relevant to today's conditions. And that is stark: no one is going to come to our rescue and save us from the messes the government has created – any more than they did in 1940. We are going to have to do it ourselves. When the going gets tough, the only thing that matters is people power.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Didn't we do well!

The Heritage Industry is in full spate today, celebrating "Battle of Britain day", and in particular the 70th anniversary of the battle.

As always – seen from the picture above – the politicians are getting in on the act (give them an "act" and they'll climb into it, with not a scintilla of shame), but in so doing they perpetrate a pernicious myth that hands credit for what actually amounts to a famous victory to a self-serving élite, and completely distorts an important part of our history.

At the core of all this, of course is the myth of the "Battle of Britain", with the "battle" capitalised. At the time, it did not exist, was not recognised as such and only came formally into being in April 1941 when the Air Ministry published a pamphlet with that title. Even then, the start point was 8 August and it was not until later that it was revised to the arbitrary date of 10 July.

The "self-serving élite" at the time was, of course, RAF Fighter Command – not "the few", who were just the expendable pilots, the cannon fodder, but the institution. At that time it was locked in mortal combat with the real enemy, Bomber Command, which was threatening to achieve what the Luftwaffe had failed to do, the abolition of Fighter Command.

It was the "invention" of the Battle of Britain which made this a political impossibility, and that involved branding a very limited part of the overall battle, and vesting the ownership with Fighter Command. Thus pilots who flew with Bomber or Coastal Commands during the period chosen do not qualify for membership of the "few" because the "brand" is exclusive to Fighter Command.

The more important issue, though, is that the real Battle of Britain lasted much longer than the very short period claimed by Fighter Command. Furthermore, it actually comprised three phases. The first started on the first day of the war – the "blockade" phase - which continued through until 1942 when we finally achieved a victory.

The second phase, running contiguously, is the classic "air superiority" phase, but it actually lasts from about 8 August until 6 September 1940, the next day being the day the Luftwaffe bombs the Port of London and the start of phase 3. In the general hagiographies of the battle, bombing London is seen as the great mistake by Hitler, and the one that saved the RAF and therefore Britain. Without German air superiority, the threatened invasion could not go ahead.

But actually, the mistake was going for the RAF in the first place. This perhaps reflected the hubris of the moment and the half-formed but totally unrealistic plan for an invasion of Britain, which was never a practical proposition. Thus, while the battle for air superiority raged, wiser heads prevailed, affirming that the invasion was a non-starter. A more certain way of taking Britain out of the war - it was thought - was to attack the people in the cities.

At this time, the prevailing theory of air warfare was that nations could be brought down by strategic bombing, the main effect being to erode public morale to such a great extent that that functioning of the cities would collapse and the governments would be forced to sue for peace.

Hitler and those around him reasoned that Britain – and the British Empire – was a corrupt, decadent, class-ridden society on the verge of collapse. It only needed a small push (in the form of the Blitz) to make that happen.  In fact, he was wrong – but not far wrong. British society was torn by huge stresses and, under the weight of the bombing and the blockade, it very nearly did collapse. It was a very close-run thing, far closer than people want to admit.

The reason Britain did not collapse was, in small part due to the PR genius of Winston Churchill. But in the main part it was due to the perseverance and endurance of all those organisations which kept the fabric of society functioning, from the civil service, local authorities, the fire services, civil defence, hospitals, the nursing service, the Womens' Volunteer Service, and many, many more – plus, of course, the people themselves.

What is so often called the Blitz was the main part of the Battle of Britain - it was phase 3. It was the battle for the hearts and minds of the British nation, fought by the entire British nation, which endured until May 1941. It was then that Hitler turned his attention eastwards and withdrew the bulk of his forces in preparation for the invasion of Russia.  The phase two of the battle was an irrelevance, a strategic impasse. The "few" and their counterparts in the Luftwaffe were fighting a meaningless battle.

Seen in this context, the Great Churchillian Soundbite – "never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few" is exactly the opposite of reality. Given that those most at risk were the privileged élites, it would be far more accurate to say that never had so few owed so much to so many – a debt they were never to repay.

That is not in any way to disparage the actions of the fighter pilots, or to take anything from their raw courage and heroism. It is simply to put their endeavour in perspective. The battle as a whole, the real battle of Britain, was a battle fought and won by the people – the many. In truth, it was won more in spite of, rather than because of the actions of the government.

It was our battle, our victory. And didn't we do well!

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Day 61 - Battle of Britain

"When the residents of East London emerged from their shelters this morning - those that had access to them - Churchill must have been profoundly relieved that the prevailing mood was one of stoicism and weary resignation. With rescue workers still clawing away at the wreckage, the mood could have been so much uglier."

Thus reads the first paragraph of my latest post on the Battle of Britain. This is the 61st post of my daily account - which has to be a personal record for one subject - with over 200 photographs posted. Only 53 more posts to do.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

The Blitz remembered

It is rather ironic that there should be a tube strike in London today, leading to the inevitable headlines describing Londoner's "misery". The irony, of course, is that today is the 70th anniversary of the start of the Blitz in London, when Londoners truly had something to be miserable about.

The MSM is offering a variety of fare, but much of it is "stream of consciousness" stuff that does not help the reader understand the great events of that time. One of the more interesting pieces is this one in The Guardian, while this treatment of the pictures has a certain draw. But it is The Guardian which seems to be doing the better job, offering an interactive timeline on events.

I will be giving the day full treatment on The Days of Glory, although I have to say that it is very hard going trying to separate the myth from reality. The BBC, of course, majors on how the Blitz "brought us all together", which is only one part of the story.

In fact, while the reporting of the war was supposed to be the BBC's finest hour, coverage was so dire and "tedious" that listeners were deserting in droves to German stations, to find out what was really going on.

But the darker side of the London Blitz is hinted at by The Guardian which gives us the bare statistics, but then tells us that 5,000 Londoners slept in Epping Forest that night.

These were the trekkers, the existence of which is barely recognised in the literature and represents the tip of the iceberg, a huge "self-help" movement by the population, responding to some enormous incompetencies and inefficiencies of local authorities and central government.

Many things were done extremely well, other things not so, and yet others were done very badly indeed - details of which have been suppressed. The full story, therefore, has not even begun to be told. It is going to take some telling!

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

North talks

It's funny, I can't stand the sound of my own voice, but fortunately that feeling is not universally shared ... hence some may care to listen to North on the Battle of Britain, discussed on the Beeb this morning. Thomas Harding also gave me a good outing in The Daily Telegraph recently - far more generous about my role than it warrants - but it is really good to have.

The project is generating huge interest. Of all the things I've done, I've never known anything like it!

COMMENT THREAD

Above the line

Expanding my collection of Battle of Britain books, I made the mistake recently of buying the highly regarded "With Wings of Eagles" by Michael Korda.

He is your classic "above the line" author, former editor-in-chief of Simon and Schuster US, a Brit living in New York with a host of titles to his name. And, in the acknowledgements to this one, he thanks his assistant, the "invaluable Mike Hall for his dedicated research skills" and Kevin Kwan "for photo research".

I think, in this context, the general rule is that you should never trust an author who does not do his own research. This would certainly stand up here. In the centre of the book is a two-page full-colour version of the above photograph, with the following caption:

A Hurricane Mk 1 (foreground) and two Spitfire Mk I's in the sky over England, summer of 1940.

To anyone with a little knowledge of the Battle, they will know this to be false. The pale blue band round the tails of the aircraft was a marking that was not introduced until the spring of 1941. No Battle of Britain aircraft carried this marking, so the photograph cannot have been taken in the summer of 1940. In fact, it was taken by Charles E. Brown in September 1942. And the Spitfires are not Mk Is, but Mk IIs.

Now, you would not expect the ordinary person to know this, but you would expect someone writing a book on the Battle of Britain, with his own research team, to be aware of such detail – and to get it right.

Given such an egregious error, what confidence can you have in the rest of the book?

But, actually, there is a broader issue here. One can almost advance the thesis that it is a characteristic of the "above the line" fraternity - be they politicians, broadcasters, journalists, celebs, writers, historians, academics, or whatever - that they will always get it wrong. The more famous they are, the more highly-regarded they are, the more celebrated they are, the more likely this is to be true.

UPDATE: the joys of having a forum. One of our readers reports on having found the photograph with its original caption:

"A Hawker Sea Hurricane IB in formation with two Supermarine Seafire IICs of 760 Squadron based at Yeovilton. This fine study was taken on 18th November 1942."

Is it possible for Korda to have got it more wrong? And is it possible that so many get it wrong? This blogger here seems to have the definitive answer ... August 1942 it is, a Hurricane and Spitfires from the Empire Central Flying School based at RAF Hullavington. The nose art is the "Red Pelican" (right).

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Stiched up

The film segment above is from the Why We Fight series, the fourth part which deals with the Battle of Britain.

Produced by the US Army Special Service Division, and directed by Frank Capra "Why We Fight" is a seven part propaganda/documentary series that traces the earliest beginnings of the second world war starting with Japan's invasion of China in 1931, to the Nazi's march across Europe.

And it is classic propaganda, stitching together unrelated clips of film to support a narrative which is fictional.

Crucially, when you watch the clip, 15 seconds in you will see a parachute. We know the date of this ... it is from the famous BBC Gardner report of 14 July 1940. It shows P/O Michael Mudie parachuting into the Dover Straits. He is eventually picked up from the sea by a Royal Navy vessel and transferred to Dover Hospital where, sadly, he dies from his wounds.

Further on, about 34 seconds into the clip, we see a Walrus flying boat roaring to the rescue, to pick up the smiling airman. But the Walrus was not issued to the RAF until late 1941 and that sequence was shot in the summer of 1942.

The time elapsed between the two sequences of the film is less than 20 seconds but in real life it is about two years. The impression presented is false. Yet such is the power of the imagery that many people, even to this day, believe it represents the truth.

When it comes towards the end of the clip, the claims made about the Germans are the exact opposite of the truth. With their air sea rescue service, it is the Luftwaffe pilot who is more likely to be rescued.

The camera cannot lie, of course. But people do, and here you see a particularly egregious example. Seeing is not (or should not be) believing.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

Lest we forget

Booker has done a short piece on The Battle of Britain today, reminding people (those who need it) that it was a battle of the whole of Britain, and not just London and the Home Counties – with a "walk-on part" for the people of Coventry.

The piece is not as I would have preferred it but we had to cobble it together at the very last minute – literally in the wee small hours – after Booker had been told by the lawyers that the paper could not publish his piece on the "missing children".

Nevertheless, the point is made and will be made more forcibly in times to come. Over the last weeks I have been in touch with several regional authors, historians and publishers who have been involved in some way or another with charting the parts their localities had to play in the battle. And they are all of a mind that the account of the battle is far too London-centric.

Part of that is understandable. As I have remarked, very often the censor refused to allow the names of places outside London, hit by bombs, to be named. Further, given the rationing of newsprint and the limited avenues for publicity, many incidents were not centrally recorded. Until very much later when they were unearthed by local researchers, many simply do not exist on the record.

And then, of course, there is the propaganda element – nowadays it is called lying. For instance, officially, it was policy to talk down the effects of bombing raids. The Pembroke raid is a good example. Researchers unaware of this, and who take contemporary news accounts at face value, are likely to be gravely misled.

Then, in propaganda films and newsreels (if there is a difference) it became common to build clips out of several completely unrelated sequences, so much so that I have a clip purporting to be a single sequence, but is in fact a composite where the events shown are more than two years apart.

What is so very different now is that, with the growth and ease of self-publishing and of the internet (the two very much related), information which would have been inaccessible – or take inordinate time to research – is now increasingly there for the asking.

My problem is that, if you start collecting these data centrally – which does not seem to have been done – you start to get a completely different picture from the one painted by some of the classic textbooks.

By now, as you might imagine, I have built up a considerable library of standard texts on the battle – to add to my already fairly extensive library. But far from making things easier, some of the accounts make you really wonder. At times you being to think that they are describing not only a different battle as a different war. Then, cross-referencing different accounts, and you wonder whether the different authors were in the same war.

Add to that, some of the material and the detail is just plain wrong. I thought by now that some of the detail would be settled and could be taken as read, but at you get in deeper, you discover where the short-cuts have been made. A lot of the records, even on our own side, do not exist, and there has been reliance on second-hand accounts from witnesses, and some guesses, which are simply fiction.

Thus, although thousands of books have been written about the subject (Amazon lists over 5,000 which cover some or other aspects), the definitive textbook has yet to be written. Probably, it cannot be.

But of one thing I am certain, it was not how it is currently painted, not least because no one at the time actually knew it was the battle of Britain. The Battle of Britain as a "brand" was not, in fact, invented until the following year, based partly on deliberately constructed myths that have persevered to this day. And, while we need our myths, we also owe ourselves the truth. Booker made a small start today.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

The joys of research

I have just spent the best part of two days tracking down a piece of information that will, at best, form one paragraph in the forthcoming book.

I was originally alerted to the story by an online book, with minimal details. The search took me to New Zealand (by e-mail) with additional information, which turned out to be wrong in detail, but provided enough for me to find out what really happened.

That is why people take short-cuts. Unless you are prepared to spend years researching, for which no one is going to pay, you have to rely for much of the detail on the work of others. But that is also how the historical record gets so distorted.

There has to be an answer, but I'm not sure what it is. However, one thing for sure, the internet is turning out to be a partial remedy - the speed with which one can do research now is phenomenal.

COMMENT: Battle of Britain thread

The story so far

With the new parliament now in place, I am no longer earning most of my living as a parliamentary researcher and must find new sources of income. But I have been fortunate in gaining a commission from my publisher to write a new history of the Battle of Britain, and am planning other ventures based on this project ... hence the focus also on The Tales of Glory blog and the fall-off in writing on this blog.

The fall-off will only be temporary. It is "silly season" and there is a certain ennui in the air, so I am taking the opportunity to get ahead of the game in what will be a long and difficult project. At this point, I must repeat my appreciation for all those who have commented on the forum – everything is read and stored, and there is some incredibly useful stuff there.

Crucially, at the moment, I am working on the air-sea rescue issue, and have made significant advances. And one of the sources to which I was directed to on the forum was this:

One problem area which did arise was the Air Ministry's fault, and a lot of people got killed as a result. I refer to the non-existent air-sea rescue service; the system should have had one but it didn't. ... [A] lot of pilots were killed, either through shock or burns or just being dragged away by their parachutes and drowned, never to be seen again through lack of co-ordination.

Later in the war, in 1941, we formed the Air Sea Rescue (ASR) Service, and if anybody came down there was somebody on the spot almost before they had landed in the sea. But this didn't happen in 1940, and this is a black mark which the system had to endure right the way through the battle.

These are the thoughts of Derek Wood (or some of them), co-author of the seminal text on the Battle of Britain, The Narrow Margin, articulated at a symposium in Bracknall in 1990, sponsored jointly by the RAF Historical Society and the RAF Staff College Bracknall.

What I now have to do is set out the case for why the failure to provide an adequate (or any) ASR Service is still relevant 70 years later. And the most obvious point is that similar failures are happening in the here and now in Afghanistan, were happening five years earlier in Iraq and most certainly have been happening earlier elsewhere.

My feeling is that, had even the background of what I already know about the 1940s failures been part of the public domain when I started arguing in 2006 for the replacement of Snatch Land Rovers, it would have been much easier to get the message across that the military was, through neglect and other diverse reasons, allowing their troops to be killed.

What makes the Battle of Britain experience so valuable are the many different facets which put the current experience in context. Firstly, we see established a failure of the "system" to take measures to safeguard the safety and lives of military personnel, and not just any personnel – those who were the key to the whole battle and from which shortage the battle could have been lost.

This demonstrates that, even when the whole campaign and even – as is asserted to be the case here – the whole nation depends on preserving the lives of a few men, the "system" failed to step up to the plate. And if it could do it then, it most certainly could do it in the context of operations where the survival of the nation was not at stake.

Secondly, we see that it is a "system", not a political failure. Although the problems were known at high level within the RAF – and therefore within the Air Ministry – not one of the critics even begins to suggest that prime minister Winston Churchill might have been responsible, or bore any responsibility at all for the resultant deaths. I am still doing the arithmetic but, over the whole period the system failed, we are talking thousands rather than hundreds of deaths.

The point here, of course, is the contrast with modern times, where the prime minister Gordon Brown has been blamed for equipment failures and the military high command effectively absolved from any responsibility – by the popular press, at least.

Thirdly, we see the effect of censorship, secrecy and lack of scrutiny. The combination ensured that, even when the problems were known, very little timely action was taken other than, to ensure the guilty persons were not censured, an extensive, multi-layered cover-up was embarked upon, which survives to this day.

So pervasive is this that Wood believes that Dowding managed to "pinch" twelve Lysanders and base them around the coast so that they could drop dinghies to anybody they could find. But, while this is supposed to have happened in the July 1940, it seems more likely that the aircraft were available from late September only, and in smaller numbers.

But, what is also fascinating is that the use of amphibious aircraft in the form of the Walrus (pictured above) was proven on a small scale during the months of July and August 1940, the lessons were not applied until late 1941 and amphibians were not fully integrated into the system until 1942 – when the Germans had been using dedicated seaplanes for ASR since 1935.

The story is far too long to tell in the framework of one post, and although I have already told some of it, there still much more to research. But I will build the story gradually on the other blog and keep you appraised of developments as they materialise.

Perversely - but rather predictably - some of the most useful starting points for learning about the inadequacies of the system come not British sources, but from New Zealand and the United States. This report here, for instance, gives a good overview. Originally "confidential", it has now been declassified, and even the fairly anodyne language makes it clear how hugely inadequate the system was.

What is so important though is that the British military establishment went to quite considerable pains to conceal its neglect and paint an entirely false picture of what was actually provided and its effectiveness. It really does tell us something about an establishment which is keen to applaud the exploits of "the few" for its own purposes, while allowing airmen to die needlessly in their hundreds and thousands.

Anyhow, I'll get back to near normal on this blog shortly, and thanks for bearing with me.

Comment: Battle of Britain thread

Day 46 - Battle of Britain

The weather finally cleared, sufficient to permit a relatively high level of air operations, although a morning haze delayed flying in some areas. It did not stop an early raid on Great Yarmouth, though. Missed by radar, it was picked up by the Observer Corps but too late for any effective interception. The force dumped about 20 HE bombs west of the harbour, affecting public services for a while. By the time a section of No. 66 Sqn Spitfires got there from Coltishall, the raiders were long gone.

Shortly afterwards, two forces of some strength were detected building up behind Cap Gris Nez. Squadrons were acrambled to protect the forward airfields. By 08:15hrs the forces were being tacked as they crossed the Channel, by which time more forces were building up, although these showed no indications that they were about to follow. Nevertheless, more RAF squadrons were sent aloft, building the defending force to six squadrons and two flights.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

Day 45 - Battle of Britain

Explosive and incendiary bombs, it is claimed, are dropped for the first time in the London area. There is some confusion about this, as claims are also made for the previous day. Furthermore, there is some argument about whether the area bombed was technically in London as it fell outside the capital's administrative area.

The fact of a raid, however, was reported in the late city edition of the New York Times and the newspaper is unequivocal about the bombs falling in a residential area.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

Day 42 - Battle of Britain

The afternoon saw the prime minister deliver a speech to the House of Commons, to which he referred to the "great air battle which has been in progress over this Island for the last few weeks" which, he said, "has recently attained a high intensity.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

Day 41 - Battle of Britain

A frontal system is moving in from the Atlantic, across the British Isles and into Europe. The bad weather that closed down operations in the early evening yesterday is going to dominate for some days. There is going to be no serious flying for a while. Stocktaking and retrenchment was in order while the civilians clear up the mess on the battlefield.

The picture above is interesting in this context. An HE 111 from KG55, it was shot down on 16 August during the attack on Feltham, near London. Gunfire from Sqn Ldr Pemberton's No. 1 Sqn Hurricane damaged the oil cooling system causing failure of the engines. The pilot, Ob Wilhelm Wieland, brought the Heinkel down to a good landing at Annington Farm in Bramber, Sussex.

Gordon James took this photo at Oakhill, Bursledon, Hampshire, as the remains were transported to a scrapyard. It was against the law to take such photos, so Mr James kept his camera hidden until after the war, when he finally had the film developed.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

Day 40 - Battle of Britain

Having been given the day off, Fighter Command was back in harness, confronting the godless Nazis who did not seem to believe in the concept of Sunday as a day of rest. After a few morning reconnaissance flights, one of which Spitfires from No. 54 Sqn managed to shoot down, it was a day of massed formations. But on this day, such was the intensity of attacks that at one time every serviceable Spitfire and Hurricane was either flying or at readiness.

As before, the principal targets were airfields and the first wave of attacks was focused on Biggin Hill and Kenley. German tactics were challenging, comprising simultaneous high and low-level attacks, the former escorted by Me 109s to draw away the RAF fighters.

Read more on THE DAYS OF GLORY

Day 38 - Battle of Britain

Mason, in his Battle over Britain, writes of this day that the scale and frequency of the German assaults - including the increasing use of the nerve-racking Stuka - engender "a new grimness in the character of the British".

The growing toll of enemy aircraft which fell over the English countryside, the increasing number of German airman bailing out amongst a population keyed up to meet an imminent invasion, the disruption of long-established amenities by enemy raids - all these pressures upon the English "now quite suddenly give birth to a startling and perhaps frightening atmosphere of hatred for the German people as a whole," he declares.

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Day 37 - Battle of Britain

This was the day the RAF lost 48 aircraft, with many damaged, and claimed an outstanding victory. But then, everything is relative. The Germans lost 71 aircraft, and they also had a number of damaged aircraft to deal with.  In fact, it was a victory and the RAF had no need to exaggerate.  It did, of course, claiming 182 "kills". The Germans also exaggerated, tagging up 101 aircraft, including five Curtiss Hawks, a type which the RAF did not even operate.

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Day 35 - Battle of Britain

RAF Hornchurch and other RAF stations are on the menu for this day Adler Tag (Eagle Day) - supposedly the first day of the great offensive. One of the crew of this Dornier, shot down two miles SW of Eastchurch, does not see its end. The other two crew are to spend the rest of the war as prisoners.

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Back in sync

I won't bore you with the details, and there are an awful lot of "cheats" that need to be fixed, but I've more or less caught up with myself. You can read Day 34 here. Some heavy re-writing here as well, covering 25 July, with entertaining detail about the bonking destroyer!

Battle of Britain thread