Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ German Air Force dropping leaflets telling the citizens of Namur, Soissons, Châlons and Troyes that their cities are to be obliterated, and that Paris and Brussels will go the same way unless they sue for peace. The tale ends when those towns are obliterated, and the governments do sue for peace. It was the pressure that civilians under air bombardment would put upon their own government that formed the basis of Douhet’s theories. At the end of his story he writes:

      Impressed by the terrible effects of the bombings and the sight of the enemy planes flying freely and unopposed in their own sky, though they cursed the barbarous methods of the enemy, they could not help feeling bitter against their own aeronautical authorities who had not taken enough protective measures against such an eventuality.

      Douhet believed that any nation devoting a large part of its air force to air defence, was risking conquest by a nation that spent everything on bombing fleets. Totally disregarding all the advantages that the defence enjoys in any form of warfare, Douhet smoothly concluded that ‘No one can command his own sky if he does not command his adversary’s sky.’

      The German Army Air Service’s tactics in the First World War had already proved that this was nonsense, but Douhet provided abundant quotes for ambitious bomber theorists. Such men, in Germany, France, Britain and the USA, had long since decided that in war the importance of an air force (and its commanders) would be judged by the amount of damage done to the enemy, not by skill in defence. Douhet was important because he reinforced illusions about the effectiveness of the bomber and reduced still further the influence of the fighter pilots.

      Although he had been a fighter pilot, Hermann Göring found Douhet’s ideas easy to accept. He was not sympathetic to the complex technical devices which had converted air warfare from armed barnstorming to crude science. Like many of his contemporaries, he found it convenient to stick to von Richthofen’s simplistic dictum that shooting down enemy planes was ‘the only important thing’ and that ‘everything else is nonsense’. And Göring’s Luftwaffe was dedicated to the offensive, designed for close co-operation with the invading German armies. It lacked long-range bombers, but – argued its leaders – what did that matter if the invasions were so successful that you could leap-frog forward with your medium-range machines from each new lot of captured airfields. It seemed to make sense.

      By 1940, some were already claiming that Göring had proved Douhet right. The capitulation of Poland and the Netherlands had followed quickly after the bombing of Warsaw and Rotterdam respectively. Even sceptics were beginning to believe that this was cause and effect. Certainly it seemed to provide Göring with a trump card. If his overall programme of air attacks against military targets in southern England failed, he had only to switch his whole attack to London itself and the British government would seek terms. Douhet said so, and history proved it.

      Unfortunately for Göring there were, in Britain, some young flyers who had never read Douhet, and an elderly disbeliever named Dowding.

* The world’s first passenger-carrying airline service was operated by Zeppelin airships before the First World War.

* The Messerschmitt 109 and 110 designs were started when the company was named Bayerische Flugzeugwerke and thus were abbreviated Bf 109 and Bf 110. In July 1938 the company became Messerschmitt AG, so that the abbreviations for the later designs were Me 210, Me 410, Me 163, etc.

PART TWO

      ‘A difficult man, a self-opinionated man, a most determined man, and a man who knew, more than anybody, about all aspects of aerial warfare.’

      – GEN. SIR FREDERICK PILE, GCB, DSO, MC (General Officer Commander in Chief Anti-Aircraft Command, 1939–45), of Dowding

      It is difficult to imagine a man less like Hermann Göring than was Hugh Dowding. In 1914, already 32 years old, Dowding qualified as a pilot. His father heard about it and forbade him to fly because it was too dangerous. Hugh Dowding obeyed his father.

      Both his parents came from the sort of upper-middle-class families that supplied senior men to the Church, India and the armed forces. His father, a kind and conscientious man, had founded a successful preparatory school in Scotland. There were four children, three boys and a girl.

      As the eldest child of the school’s head-master, Hugh Dowding was expected to set an example of duty, manners, patriotism and industry. Like his father, he went to Winchester, a public school reputed to produce inscrutable intellectuals. Dowding’s subsequent career did little to change the Wykehamist reputation.

      At Winchester he found that joining the Army Class was a way to avoid Greek verbs. Later Dowding said that he went into the army rather than learn Greek, but in 1899 – when he entered the Royal Military Academy – Queen Victoria’s scarlet-coated soldiers were just about to fight the Boers in South Africa. The British, after many years of widespread contempt for men and matters military, were undergoing a bout of hysterical jingoism.

      In response to the crisis, the army shortened its Royal Military Academy course to one year. Dowding’s family could not have afforded the private income that their son would have needed in a smart regiment. Instead Hugh Dowding went to Woolwich but failed to get the exam results necessary for a commission in the Royal Engineers. He had to be content with gunnery. Second Lieutenant Dowding, of the Garrison Artillery, graduated but never fought the Boers. Instead he served in Gibraltar, Ceylon, Hong Kong, and with the Mountain Artillery in India.

      By the time he returned to England the world had fundamentally changed: the Wright brothers had built their flying machine, and a Frenchman, Louis Blériot, had flown the Channel. The idea of learning how to fly attracted Dowding, in the same way that polo and skiing did. By getting up in the early hours he was able to have flying tuition at Brooklands before arriving at the Camberley Staff College each morning. The Royal Flying Corps had been formed the previous year, and anyone who could fly and was accepted by it could get the cost of his flying tuition refunded. Dowding persuaded the flying school to teach him on credit until he got the refund. It was on this ‘fly now, pay later’ arrangement that Dowding was able to afford his Royal Aero Club certificate. The school assigned a mechanic to be his instructor and he got his ‘ticket’ after a total of one hour and forty minutes in the air.

      After a further three months’ instruction at the Central Flying School, Upavon, Dowding received his wings. Until then he had considered flying as a sport, or at best a help to his army career. But his short time with the men of the Royal Flying Corps – still a part of the army – made him think that he would like to stay with them. His father’s veto did no more than delay matters. It was 1914. Within weeks of getting his wings, war with Germany began. Dowding’s qualification as a pilot required him to serve with the RFC.

      Dowding went to France. By 1915 he was a squadron commander. Dowding was considerably older than the average wartime pilot – ten years older than von Richthofen, for instance – and, as the RFC expanded and became the RAF, his military background brought him rapid promotion. By the time the war ended, Dowding was a Brigadier-General. Many rungs lower on the promotion ladder were three young squadron commanders. They were all to play vital roles in the Battle of Britain almost a quarter of a century later.

      Commanding an army-cooperation squadron, there was Major Leigh-Mallory, who was to continue with this speciality in the peacetime air force. Leigh-Mallory, who later became Dowding’s severest critic, was ten years younger than Dowding. He had taken an honours history degree at Cambridge before becoming a soldier and, in 1916, an airman. Trafford Leigh-Mallory was a thick-set man with heavy jowls and a small, carefully trimmed moustache.

      Major СКАЧАТЬ