(6 of 11)
Operation Sea Lion, it was called, a military feat that nobody had accomplished since William the Conqueror in 1066. The army's plan called for 90,000 men to storm ashore on a front extending 200 miles from Ramsgate to Lyme Bay, to be followed by 170,000 more troops within two days. But the navy balked. It did not have enough ships for such a broad front, and those it did have would be overwhelmed by the stronger British fleet. And who had control of the skies? If there was any doubt, said Goring, his Luftwaffe could smash the Royal Air Force within a few weeks. Hitler thereupon ordered the Luftwaffe "to overcome the British air force with all means at its disposal," so that the invasion could begin Sept. 15.
Adlertag (Eagle Day) was Goring's name for the first massive bombing raids on Aug. 13. Some 1,500 Luftwaffe warplanes swept across R.A.F. airfields in southeast England, badly damaging five of them and knocking out one. R.A.F. fighters downed 47 of the attackers. The next day the Luftwaffe was back, then the day after, and so began the Battle of Britain, the first ever to be fought entirely in the skies, anxiously watched by ordinary citizens below. Goring had roughly 1,400 bombers and nearly 1,000 fighters, the R.A.F. defenders fewer than 900 fighters. The opposing planes were roughly equal, the German Messerschmitts with a slightly faster rate of climb, the British Spitfires and Hurricanes more maneuverable. (The British also had some secret weapons: a radar warning system that the Germans greatly underestimated, and the Operation Ultra computer that broke most German military codes, particularly those of the Luftwaffe.) The outnumbered British fought with a kind of desperation that inspired Churchill to say of them, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
Here is one of them, Richard Hillary, remembering his first kill: "We ran into them at 18,000 ft., 20 yellow-nosed Messerschmitt 109s, about 500 ft. above us . . . Brian Carbury, who was leading the section . . . let go a burst of fire at the leading plane. ((I)) saw the pilot put his machine into a half roll and knew that he was mine. Automatically, I kicked the rudder to the left to get him at right angles, turned the gun-button to FIRE and let go in a 4- sec. burst . . . He seemed to hang motionless; then a jet of red flame shot upward, and he spun out of sight . . . My first emotion was one of satisfaction . . . He was dead, and I was alive; it could so easily have been the other way around."
The essential German goal was to knock out the R.A.F., and though the Luftwaffe was taking heavy losses, so were the defenders and their bases. Then there occurred another one of those almost accidental twists. Two German bombers on their way to attack aircraft factories at Rochester strayed over central London and dropped their bombs on the hitherto unattacked capital. Churchill promptly ordered several retaliatory raids on Berlin. Hitler, unaware of his increasing success against the R.A.F. installations, made the mistake of ordering further retaliations against London. And so, while the R.A.F. won a vital reprieve, the citizens of London had to undergo the blitz, the greatest bombardment any city until then had ever suffered.