Of all the Sergeants engaged in the air battles, none was more remarkable than Josef Frantisek, a Czech Regular airman who had taken an aeroplane and left his country after the German occupation. He joined the Polish air force and fought against the Luftwaffe for three weeks until escaping to Rumania. He escaped from an internment camp and travelled through the Balkans. When he got to the Middle East he persuaded the French to send him to France. He flew with the French air force until June 1940, scoring several victories and winning the Croix de Guerre. Again he escaped the advancing Germans, and this time he joined the RAF. After a conversion course he was posted to 303 (Polish) Squadron.

Sergeant Frantisek had flying and air-fighting skills in abundance but he lacked any kind of air discipline. Once in the air, he simply chased Germans. More than once this conduct endangered the men who flew with him. He was repeatedly reprimanded until finally the Poles decided to let him be a "guest of the Squadron." This gave him the unique privilege of fighting his own war, in his own way, and his own time. It proved a wise decision. Modern research suggests that he was the most successful fighter pilot serving with the RAF.[13]

The Luftwaffe also had NCO pilots making reputations as air fighters. One of the most famous was Siegfried Schnell of II/JG 2, the Richthofen Geschwader (where his name was being mentioned even in comparison with Hauptmann Helmut Wick, a fast rising star of the fighter force and soon to lead the Geschwader). Both the Hauptmann and the young NCO were on their way to getting the twenty confirmed kills that almost automatically brought the Knight's Cross. And that decoration, conspicuously worn at the collar, granted the holder the sort of respect and adulation that pop stars and footballers win. It meant the best seat in restaurants, a place at the head of the line, deference from even the most senior officers, pictures in the newspapers, and hugs from the girls.

Kurt Bьhligen was also in the Richthofen Geschwader: a young NCO who was eventually to get the very highest awards for valour and become one of the few aces to shoot down over 100 machines while fighting on the western front. There was another such NCO flying alongside the famous Molders in JG 51 (a unit that was in later years to bear the name Molders, just as JG 2 was named Richthofen); this was Heinz ‘Pritz’ Bar.

Born near Leipzig in 1913, the son of a farmer, Bar had flown gliders, and then powered gliders, to get his pilot's licence in 1930. But no matter how he tried, he could not get a job flying for Lufthansa. In 1937 he joined the Luftwaffe. He scored his first aerial victory in France within a month of the start of the war. During the Battle of Britain period, Bar was credited with seventeen victories and was soon commissioned. By the end of the war Bar was to become one of the top German aces, having fought on every front, won the Knight's Cross with oak leaves, swords, and diamonds, flown the Me 262 jets, and been credited with 220 victories. He was the highest scoring ace of the fighting in the west, and the most successful ace with jets (sixteen victories).

At this stage of the war it was hard to predict which of the fighter pilots would become top aces. Some pilots such as Georg-Peter Eder (who ended the war with seventy-eight victories) went through the summer of 1940 without scoring even one victory.

There were other examples in which outstanding pilots of 1940 were afterwards assigned to jobs that gave them few chances of combat flying. At the end of July, 48-year-old 'Onkel Theo' Osterkamp was officially ordered to cease combat flying. Since forming JG 51 in 1939, he had flown constantly and had now added six victims to his First World War total. In August he was awarded the Knight's Cross and appointed to take over Jafь 2 (commanding all Kesselring's fighters). But Molders's fight with Malan, and the injuries he had suffered, meant that Osterkamp was now trying to do both jobs. Luckily for him, the staff of both Jafu 2 and of JG 51 were at Wissant airfield at the extreme tip of the Pas de Calais.

And 'Onkel Theo' was by no means the only First World War veteran to fly in the Battle of Britain on the German side. JG 2's Kommodore, Harry von Bьlow-Bothkamp, was credited with no less than eighteen victories, to add to the six he had earned in the First World War. He was 45 years old. Commanding his III Gruppe there was 41-year-old Erich Mix. He had shot down three Allied planes in the First World War and was now on his way to the thirteen more that he downed in the Second World War.

Added to these must be several veterans who flew in the bomber units. The amazing Oberstleutnant Joachim Huth had lost a leg in the First World War but now led the Bf 110s of ZG 76. Oldest of all was Eduard Ritter von Schleich, who'd won thirty-five victories in the previous war when his all-black Albatros DV 2 earned him the nickname "Black Knight." He'd flown in Spain and had only recently been ordered off combat flying with JG 26, at the age of 51.

Remarkable in another way were the Americans who'd decided to make the war their own. The trio serving with 609 Squadron were particularly colourful. Andy Mamedoff, from Miami, had spent the pre-war years barnstorming his own plane round the USA. 'Shorty' Keough, a Brooklyn-born professional parachutist, was under five feet tall and needed two air-cushions under his parachute pack in order to see out of the cockpit. The third member of the trio was 'Red' Tobin, the son of a Los Angeles real-estate man. Obsessed with aircraft, he'd flown 200 hours on light planes while working as a studio messenger with MGM. Tobin signed up to fly in Finland, against the invading Russians, but the war ended and he went to France instead. The Americans escaped on the last boat to leave, on the day that the armistice was signed. After four weeks at an RAF Operational Training Unit they were posted to a Spitfire squadron. All saw combat; Tobin scored a victory during the Battle and Keough was credited with a half-share in a shot-down Dornier. In October 1940 they went to help form the first Eagle Squadron of American flyers. All three pilots were killed over Britain in 1941.

Phase Two: Adlerangriff (Eagle Attack)

During July, the Luftwaffe monitoring service and the German Post Office established listening units along the Channel coast. The operators found a maze of radio activity on the 12-metre band. Some experts guessed these signals were connected with the mysterious 350-foot-tall masts along the English coast.

As the Kanalkampf developed, the German monitors found other things to puzzle over. Replying to the excited slang of the fighter pilots came other calmer voices on the high-frequency radio-telephones. Of unvarying volume, and fixed position, the god-like voices steered the RAF formations and informed them of the German strengths, tracks, and altitudes.

German intelligence studied all the reports of these voices, and on 7 August issued this secret report to the operational commands:

As the British fighters are controlled from the ground by radio-telephone, their forces are tied to their respective ground stations and are thereby restricted in mobility, even taking into consideration the probability that the ground stations are partly mobile. Consequently the assembly of strong fighter forces at determined points and at short notice is not to be expected.

It was a disastrous error of judgment. German intelligence's failure to understand those strange voices on the air was even worse than not knowing about them. Believing that the RAF had this primitive sort of radio control, with squadrons tied to their local station, led the Luftwaffe to think that mass attacks would encounter only the local fighters.[14] And it did not even take radar into account.