WESTERN THEATRE: A Date for Tea

Aug. 15 was the date set by Adolf Hitler for the completion of his conquest of Great Britain. Last week, as that date approached, Britain’s Over-Seas League planned a monster Aug. 15 tea party in London for His Majesty’s forces from overseas. Before the week was out Britons were certain that Adolf Hitler had decided to crash the party. Huge German air assaults lasting from dawn to dusk began; 400 or 500 Nazi raiders came over Britain every day; no hour was without its dogfight. Finally, after holding it back for several hours, the British censor released a dispatch reporting that heavy explosions, believed to be caused by shells, not bombs, had occurred on the southeast coast—presumably the work of Nazi guns across the Channel.

First big Nazi air attack began on Aug. 8 near Dover. Before daybreak a flotilla of Nazi motor torpedo boats darted into a Channel convoy of 20 small coastal ships, sank three. The convoy continued westward down the Channel. About 9 a.m., 50 Junkers dive bombers, with Messerschmitt fighters swarming above them, swooped out of the morning sun. Some of the ships were towing barrage balloons which the Germans had to shoot down before they could dive-bomb. Anti-aircraft fire and squadrons of angry British Spitfires and Hurricanes hurtled up from the British coast. The sky spun crazily with dogfights, plummeting wrecks, cripples smoking off for home. At noon an even larger formation of Germans struck again at the convoy, and between 4 and 5 p.m. yet another. Not less than 400 planes of the Luftwaffe were counted during the successive attacks. When R. A. F. added up its score it claimed 61 sure kills (a record) to only 16 British planes lost. The Admiralty said only two of the convoyed ships were lost by bombing, in addition to the three torpedoed. Germany’s claim for all seas that day (probably unreliable*) was 28 ships sunk or struck, 49 British planes shot down, twelve German planes lost. German pilots said they wrecked Dover’s balloon barrage.

Willard Garfield Weston, wealthy Canadian baker now an English M. P., got so excited reading the news ticker at the House of Commons that he promised £100,000 ($400,000) to Lord Beaverbrook’s Ministry for Aircraft Production, to replace that day’s plane losses. Prime Minister Churchill conveyed the War Cabinet’s special compliments to R. A. F.

For two days afterwards German planes ranged widely over the British Isles on scattered raids in small formations. They said they smashed the runway at the Bristol airport, the Pobjoy airplane-engine works at Rochester, an explosives factory at Faversham, docks and shipyards at Newcastle, Sheerness, Chatham. On the third day they staged another big show, beginning at 7:30 a.m., on Dover’s repaired balloon barrage.

The fat sausages, flown on steel cables strong enough to smash the wings of any plane striking them, looked like a herd of docile elephants high in the sky, protecting the home of the famed Dover Patrol. A squadron of 50 or 60 dive bombers circled at 30,000 ft., coming down singly in steep power dives out of the sun’s eye to pot at the elephants with 37-mm. cannon. Observers saw two bags fall before anti-aircraft fire got the raiders’ range and drove them off. British fighters “ambushed” the Stukas on their way home, when their ammunition was spent.

Later that morning, the day’s main attack developed at Britain’s naval base on Portland Isle, off Weymouth. First about 30 Stukas came, heavily escorted overhead by Messerschmitt fighters, to draw off and engage as many British fighters as possible. Then in waves came 150 more Nazis, mostly dive bombers, trying to plaster everything in sight: oil tanks, wharves, drydocks, boiler-repair shops, warships in harbor, the causeway connecting the island with the mainland. For two hours, sending civilians scurrying underground from Sun day school and church, the attackers dived, unloaded and zoomed through red-hot anti-aircraft barrages. As the defenders counterattacked, smashed and burning planes spun down out of the sky by the dozen. German reconnaissance planes reporting the action by radio announced enormous damage to the naval base and the sinking of virtually all the warships in harbor. British observers on the ground reported differently. They said 40 German planes were sacrificed over Portland, that the only military damage was the firing of an oil tank on the causeway, splinter wounds to two warships, minor damage to naval buildings, a hospital, two churches, a Sunday school. Inland, at Weymouth, the British admitted 40 houses were demolished and 140 others damaged in one 15-minute bomb shower.

That afternoon the Nazis went after Dover again and swooped on what they described as a convoy of 70 merchantmen escorted by 14 warships, entering the Thames Estuary between Margate and Harwich. The Germans claimed three ships sunk, a destroyer and three merchantmen damaged. For the day’s total the British reported 26 of their own planes lost in combat against 400 of the Luftwaffe, of which they and the ground batteries destroyed 65. (German claim: 93 British planes downed, 21 of their own.)

All that night under the half-moon and all next day German planes swarmed over England. The number of bombers sent was nowhere near what might be expected from Luftwaffe in a full-out attack, but its fighter fleets were disproportionately heavy. They attacked Dover again but concentrated on Portsmouth, the Isle of Wight, Southampton and the important fighter air base at Manston, inland from Weymouth. They accused the R. A. F. fighters of refusing to accept battle with them, of running away—perhaps to make R. A. F. get mad, take foolish chances.

Some of the pilots shot down from the German air armada proved to be Italians, suggesting severe inroads on Germany’s trained personnel. R. A. F. continued pouring explosives back across the Channel, on the enemy’s air bases in France, on his new air field in the Channel Islands, on his oil tanks and refineries. Neither side gave the other rest. Britain, a nation of tough people, was convinced that “The Finals” had begun.

* Poor observation and wishful thinking probably have at times padded R. A. F. reports of Germans downed. Probably the British also withheld part of their own losses (planes destroyed on the ground, etc.). But German reports day after day of lopsided air victories seemed incredible in the face of agreement among neutral military observers that the British planes were better, British pilots better trained.