Those three targets would have been worth almost any sacrifice to destroy before Adlertag. But in the event, none of the attacks selected for Eagle Day could possibly have resulted in a mortal blow to Fighter Command.
13 August
Adlerangriff began with an unbelievable series of staff blunders. First the 'weather-frogs' got their forecast wrong, and there was mixed weather that included cloud, mist, and drizzle. Göring personally issued a postponement order. But this order failed to reach Oberst Fink's KG 2 headquarters at Arras.
The 50-year-old Fink had been in the forefront of the battle ever since being made Kanalkampf-führer in July. He was the oldest Commodore flying on operations. Just after five o'clock that morning he climbed up into his bomber and again led the Holzhammer Geschwader on its mission.
During July the tired old Dornier Do 17s had suffered losses out of proportion to their sortie rate. Many had been destroyed while flying solitary photo-reconnaissance missions over Britain. (For this reason some of the reconnaissance units were now receiving the faster Messerschmitt Bf 110, a twin-engine fighter modified for cameras.)
Even for Adlertag, the entire Holzhammer Geschwader could put only seventy-four Do 17s into the air. And so the crews, in their obsolescent bombers, took heart as they crossed the cloudy coastline of France and saw fighter escorts climbing to join formation with them. They too failed to get the postponement order. The fighters were Bf 110s of ZG 26 the Horst Wessel Geschwader led by their one-legged Kommodore who, like Fink, was a veteran of the First World War. This man—Oberstleutnant Huth — now flew his Bf 110 in a series of jinking turns across the path of Fink's Dornier. Fink, who had previously been the chief accident investigator of the Luftwaffe, no doubt disapproved of what he later described as 'high spirits' but soon the clouds hid the fighter escort from view.
In fact, the Luftwaffe Signals Service had failed to provide the Dorniers with the correct crystals for their radio wavelengths. The Bf 110s had received their recall while in the air. Huth's jinking 'high spirits' was his attempt to tell Fink to turn round and take his bombers home again. But Huth was no more successful in communicating the recall to the bombers than were the radio operators on the ground. Unaware that the rest of the Air Fleets were grounded, Fink flew on. The clouds that had caused the postponement now made it difficult for the RAF fighters to find them. By luck or by judgment, or a combination of both, Fink emerged from the clouds very close to his target.
Fink's III Gruppe were over the Isle of Sheppey, in the Thames Estuary, before they were found by 74 Squadron, led by, 'Sailor' Malan. There was a running fight. They bombed from 1,500 feet. In the distance they saw the London balloon barrage. As they turned away, Fink's Staff Flight, leading the formation, ran into 111 Squadron. This had been the first RAF unit to get monoplane fighters, and their accumulated experience stood them in good stead throughout the battle. Of the five Do 17s that KG 2 lost that morning, four were destroyed by 111 Squadron. The other Dornier had the bad luck to run into one of the very few cannon-armed RAF fighters in service: a Hurricane flown by Pilot Officer I. S. Smith of 151 Squadron.
Of the rest of Fink's Holzhammer Geschwader, another five Dorniers returned to their airfields too badly shot up to fly. Fink climbed out of his pilot seat in a terrible fury. He phoned Kesselring at Blanc Nez and made an angry complaint about the confusion. At Kesselring's underground HQ — unofficially called Heiliger Berg (Holy Mountain) — it had been a busy morning. Not only was 'Robinson', the railway train of the Luftwaffe's Chief of Staff, in France, but 'Asia', the private train of Göring, meant that the Commander in Chief was heading his way too. In spite of these other claims for his time and attention, Kesselring made a journey to Fink at Arras to apologize in person. Fink's losses confirmed the High Command's fears; whatever sort of radio control the RAF were using, it had not been put out of action by the previous day's pinpoint attacks.
The muddles continued. A free sweep by I/JG 2 (the Richthofen Geschwader) to provide protection for the Ju 88s of KG 54 went wrong when the bombers found the weather so bad that they turned back soon after crossing the coast. At least this Totenkopf Geschwader had only one casualty: an engineer who bailed out from an aircraft (marked B3 + TP of the sixth Staffel) when it was attacked by fighters near the Isle of Wight. This airman landed safely in Britain by parachute but his Junkers 88 recovered and got home safely. He was found on a country road in flying suit and uniform but since no aircraft had crashed nearby his presence was a mystery at the time. He was on his first operational trip.
Another Gruppe of KG 54 was briefed for a feint attack at Portland, to draw the fighters. They were grounded by the postponement order but their Bf 110 fighter escort — the whole first Gruppe of ZG 2— had not received the order, even though it was, by now, midday. They flew off without the bombers. Over Portland they found Hurricanes of 238 Squadron waiting for them. For although the radar at Ventnor was still out of action, the rest of the chain was working. The homeless airmen and air women were coaxing signals from damaged aerials and mobile generators.
By mid-afternoon, the weather had improved. The Air Fleet teleprinter clattered with new orders, and the aircraft took off for the official Adlerangriff. The plan was for heavy bombing raids on military targets over the whole of southern England, concentrating upon Fighter Command airfields. The major flaw in the plan was the fact that the Luftwaffe had no idea which airfields were Fighter Command airfields. Fink's unescorted Dorniers had, that morning, delivered an accurate blow at Eastchurch airfield, where air reconnaissance photos had shown Spitfires. But it was a Coastal Command airfield and the Spitfires were there only temporarily. Other airfields attacked were similarly irrelevant to the Battle: the RAF research centre at Farnborough and Odiham near to it.
Long-range Stuka units were in the forefront of the assault. A Gruppe of the elite LG 1, commanded by Hauptmann Berndt von Brauchitsch the son of the army's Commander in Chief made a dive-bombing attack upon Detling airfield, near Maidstone.
The way had already been cleared for IV (Stuka)/LG 1 by the crack fighter unit JG 26. This was the Schlageter Geschwader of Galland and Priller, led this day by Major Gotthardt Handrick, the 1936 Olympic Pentathlon champion. They engaged Spitfires of 65 Squadron, and lured them into the upper air, while von Brauchitsch's Ju 87s dived upon Detling. It was a few minutes after five o'clock in the afternoon, just as the mess halls were filling with airmen. Sixty-seven of them were killed. The Operations Block was devastated, and twenty-two RAF aircraft were destroyed on the ground. All of IV (Stuka)/LG 1 got back safely. It was a well-planned operation, completed with textbook-like perfection. Twenty-two aircraft destroyed on the ground in one attack represents a telling blow to any air force, and so does the loss of so many trained men. But RAF Detling was not a part of Fighter Command and its fate could have no effect upon the outcome of the air battles.
The RAF Sector Controllers were learning the tricks, too, and when a fighter sweep by JG 53—the Pik As Geschwader—tried to draw the fighters away west of the Isle of Wight, they did not go. In fact, the tactic worsened matters for the bombers that followed. The RAF, drawn into the air by the fighter sweep, now had altitude enough to attack the bombers. Nine Ju 87Rs — a Staffel of II/SK 2— were spotted over Lyme Regis by Spitfires of 60 Squadron. Only three Stukas escaped destruction, and one of those was damaged.