A regular force of 6 Hampdens was sent minelaying on every night during this period except 22/23 June. 54 sorties were dispatched, 42 laid mines successfully, 1 Hampden was lost on the night of 23/24 June.
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GERMANY
48 aircraft - 24 Hampdens, 12 Wellingtons, 12 Whitleys - dispatched and 21 different targets in Germany and Holland bombed. No losses.
The armistice which the French Government had agreed with the Germans on 21 June came into effect on 25 June.
Operational Statistics, 10 May to
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(47 days/nights)
Number of days with operations: 41
Number of nights with operations: 46
Number of daylight sorties: 1,601, from which 92 aircraft (5.7 percent) were lost
Number of night sorties: 3,484, from which 53 aircraft (1.5 percent) were lost
Total sorties: 5,085, from which 145 aircraft (2.9 percent) were lost
Approximate bomb tonnage in period: 3,492 tons
Averages per 24-hour period: 108.2 sorties, 3.1 aircraft lost, 74.3 tons of bombs dropped
Most of the Hamburg reports quoted are from Feuersturm ber Hamburg by Hans Brunswig, Stuttgart, Motorbuch, 1978. Brunswig was a senior fire officer in Hamburg during the war and his book, which includes as an appendix casualty figures from Hamburg's civil records, is a very useful reference work.
The fall of France and Norway left German forces in control of the coast of Europe from Norway to the Spanish border. Hitler's plan now was either to persuade England to make peace or to launch an invasion across the narrow English Channel or the North Sea and defeat the weakened British Army before winter. Great Britain stood nearly alone against what was seen at that time as the almost unbeatable victor of Europe. Her only allies were the members of the Empire, although Britain's forces would also be reinforced by the men who had fled the countries defeated by Germany. Replacement of lost equipment and time to reorganize the Army which had returned from France were Britain's main problems. The Royal Navy, although having lost many small ships at Dunkirk, was still powerful. Much of the R.A.F.'s strength had been carefully conserved and it was at least as strong, and certainly more experienced, than at the outbreak of war.
Led and inspired by her new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, Britain had no intention of settling for peace with Germany. The Battle of Britain would have to be fought to its conclusion. On 16 July, three weeks after the fall of France, Hitler ordered his commanders to prepare Unternehmung Seelwe (Operation Sea Lion) - the invasion of Southern England - preceded by the destruction of R.A.F. Fighter Command on its airfields or in the air. The first, probing, German air attacks soon followed, and they increased in intensity through August and into September, when the climax came. The outcome is well known. The R.A.F. was not destroyed; the invasion did not come. The Germans then turned their bombing operations to night, thus submitting to the same tactical rules which had forced most of the R.A.F. bomber force to abandon daylight operations when faced by determined fighter opposition. London and many other British cities had to endure a sustained offensive by German bombers.
The victory of the Battle of Britain belonged mainly to Fighter Command; the bomber squadrons were able to play no more than a supporting role. Six major directives were issued in rapid succession to Bomber Command during the period under review here. The Air Ministry was torn between maintaining the long-term strategic offensive against selective parts of German industry and the need to devote effort to targets which could bring immediate relief in the front line. Such diversions from the main aim to more immediate problems would plague Bomber Command operations for years to come. So - although some of the available bombers were sent to Germany night after night to attack industrial targets (oil was still the first priority), to bomb the German communications system and to attempt the burning of forests and even autumn crops according to those old pre-war plans - an increasing amount of effort had to be devoted to attacking the airfields from which the Luftwaffe was operating, and German aircraft factories, even though these factories were often distant and hard to find. There was also a prolonged series of raids on any form of German shipping, especially the concentrations of barges which the Germans brought from Europe's inland-waterway system and gathered in the ports along the Channel and North Sea coasts. The destruction of many of these barges was probably Bomber Command's greatest contribution to the Battle of Britain. The result of all these calls upon the bomber strength meant that there was no concentration of effort on any one system. This is not intended as a criticism; the needs of that historic period demanded that Bomber Command play a supporting role whenever it was required.
Bomber Command had lost 145 aircraft during the Battle of France, plus the further number which had crashed in England or been seriously damaged in action. These casualties were equivalent to at least half the front-line strength which had been available at the opening of the German offensive less than two months earlier. But there had been some increase in the number of squadrons available. Three squadrons created by Czech and Polish airmen were formed in September: 311 (Czech) Squadron, with Wellingtons, was the first to fly on operations on 10/11 September and was closely followed by 300 and 301 (Polish) Squadrons flying old Fairey Battles three nights later. The bomber squadrons of the Advanced Air Striking Force returned from France and were nominally available for operations but they had taken a severe mauling and the first of them - 103 and 150 Squadrons - would not fly for nearly a month. Most of the Battle squadrons would help to re-form the original No. 1 Group and would soon be given a more effective aircraft, the Wellington; 1 Group would eventually become one of the most powerful in Bomber Command. The other groups had to replace their recent losses and many aircraft required extensive repair or were retired to training units. The Blenheim losses in the Battle of France were replaced with particular speed and more squadrons were added; there were eleven Blenheim squadrons with 180 aircraft available for operations by the end of July.
There was still no significant increase in bombing accuracy. Nearly all night raids were carried out by small numbers of aircraft sent to numerous targets. Each crew was required to find its own way and navigation was always a more severe problem than any defence the Germans could present. Visual sightings of the ground could be useful on moonlit nights but, when such sightings were not possible, navigation was almost all by 'dead reckoning' - the theoretical working out of an aircraft's position using forecast winds. Any improvement on this system by the use of radio bearings, astro navigation or the detection of wind changes was a chancy business. Major navigational errors were frequent. If a crew did find the city which housed its designated target - the city itself was not yet the target - the bomber had to fly around for some time, at various heights depending on the determination of the crew, trying to establish the exact location of the target by means of map-reading and by the light of the moon or the single flares which aircraft released; there was never an attempt to concentrate the flares into a short period of the night. The darkness and the effective German black-out often concealed the target, and increasingly dense and effective Flak and searchlights forced the bombers to higher altitudes and made any waiting in the target area more hazardous. A few aircraft were now fitted with 'bombing cameras' which would take a flashlit photograph of the ground at the approximate moment of bomb impact. These were usually given to the most experienced crews and, if the results had been interpreted properly, would have shown glaring discrepancies between the claims of crews and the actual results of the bombing. But optimism usually prevailed.
A study of civil records from three German cities - Hamburg, Wilhelmshaven and Mnster - gives some indication both of the small scale of the raids and of their lack of effectiveness during this period. The targets in Wilhelmshaven were the docks - home of the pre-war German navy - in Hamburg oil-storage depots and the docks, and in Mnster the railway and canal system. Mnster was bombed on fourteen nights in the three-and-a-half-month period covered by this part of the diary but on only one night did more than ten bombs fall in the city and that night was the only one when there were fatal casualties, two people being killed. Hamburg had raids on thirty-six nights, with fatal casualties - nineteen people killed - on only ten of those nights, and with 'large fires' occurring on only five nights. (Two day raids on Hamburg are described under their individual diary entries.) Wilhelmshaven was bombed twenty-one times. Houses were destroyed on one night, seriously damaged on two nights and slightly damaged on four nights. The only other buildings mentioned are a crematorium destroyed and a school and a water-pumping station damaged. Bombs fell in the dock area frequently but only caused 'trifling damage' ('geringer Schaden') on two occasions. Four people were killed in Wilhelmshaven, three of them in the dock area. Again, it is not claimed that such records are comprehensive and it is possible that some of the more serious damage which might have occurred in such places as the naval dockyard at Wilhelmshaven would not be included in the basically civil records available, but the overall picture is one of dozens of small raids having only a very slight effect upon the German war effort.
The German defences were hardly more effective. The Luftwaffe was as unprepared for a night-bombing war over their own country as the R.A.F. had been to wage such a war. The total German night-fighter force at this period numbered no more than forty aircraft, mostly Messerschmitt 110s. The night-fighter crews had no radar aids and had to find the British bombers by moonlight or in searchlight beams, although the searchlights were stationed near cities at this period of the war and the German fighters were thus likely to be shot at by their own Flak. The general story is of a very late and slow start by the German night-fighter force.
The Blenheims continued to operate mostly by day, either escorted to short-range targets by fighters or being sent to fly singly to Germany on 'cloud-cover' raids. A few of the Blenheims operated by night, their speciality becoming the bombing of Luftwaffe airfields in France, Belgium and Holland.
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GERMANY
14 Blenheims - 12 bombing, 1 reconnaissance - but only 3 bombed various targets. 1 aircraft lost.
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GERMANY, HOLLAND, BELGIUM
107 Hampdens, Wellingtons and Whitleys to multiple targets and minelaying. 3 Hampdens lost from the operations of this night, 1 of them being from the minelaying force.
4. Hampden and a Wellington of an early wartime period. These particular aircraft belonged to training units, not to front-line squadrons. Bomber Command Wellingtons flew 47,409 operational sorties during the war and Hampdens 16,541 sorties.
