The bombs dropped by the two Ju 88s hit hangars containing fuelled-up aircraft. The resulting fires and explosions destroyed forty-six aircraft and damaged seven others. As well as these lost aircraft, which were mostly trainers, eleven Hurricanes were damaged when bombs hit the Maintenance Unit that shared the airfield. The Germans escaped without interception.
This attack pointed up the ever-present dilemma of the defences. Aircraft left on the airfields during these heavy attacks were lost by bombing and strafing. Yet if all the aircraft were sent into the air, they would all need rearming and refuelling at the same time. This would mean undefended sky, and more fighters on the ground vulnerable to follow-up attacks.
Returning from the air fighting on this day the pilots filed combat reports that showed a change in German formations. German fighter escorts were no longer flying higher than the bombers but keeping to the same level, usually ahead and alongside. In response to this, Fighter Command Controllers modified the practice of sending a Spitfire squadron after the high-flying fighters while a Hurricane squadron went after the bombers. Now all RAF fighters were ordered to seek out the bombers. Most of this fighting took place between 12,000 and 20,000 feet. It was a height where the RAF fighters were at their best. This was another reason why the German fighter pilots did not like flying as close escort.
The Bf 109E was superior to the British fighters at the higher altitudes. The previous November, during the 'phoney war', or what the Germans called 'Sitzkrieg', a Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3 of II/JG 54 had landed on the French side of the Rhine. Not until May had this machine gone for evaluation at the RAF Experimental Establishment. The RAF were so sure that the air war would take place at low altitude that no oxygen was provided for any of the test flights. This was soon to be paid for. The Bf 109 with its excellent super-charger was able to cross the coast at 34,000 feet, having discovered that the Spitfires despite their textbook ceiling of 37,400 feet could not get above 30,000 without leaving a trail of straggling aircraft unable to keep formation. Height was everything to the fighters. And the Messerschmitts could open fire from a superior height (for their cannons far out-ranged the Spitfire's machine guns) and remain above the RAF formations.
Speed was often the difference between life and death. The unit workshops were spending a lot of their time adding extra machine guns to the German bombers; the Dornier Do 17s now had as many as eight of them.
And the Dorniers had evolved a technique of approaching their target in a long shallow dive. This enabled them to add 100 mph to their top speed, and at 370 mph they were difficult to catch, even in a Spitfire.
18 August
Speed was the primary limitation of the Hurricane, too. Adequate when vectored directly to the enemy formation, it was not much good for chasing a distant enemy. Against enemy fighters it was positively dangerous. This was the situation that the Hurricanes of 615 Squadron faced about lunchtime on Sunday 18 August. They were scrambled from Hawkinge to meet an estimated 150 bandits approaching from the south-east. They were still climbing when the Controller changed his orders. He told them that they would have to go after the German fighters at 25,000 feet. It was a job for which the Spitfire with better speed and rate of climb was far more suited.
Pilot Officer D. J. Looker in KW-Z was at an even greater disadvantage than the rest of 615 Squadron, for his usual aircraft was damaged, forcing him to fly in a Hurricane I, from reserve. It had fabric-covered wings and its fuel tanks were not self-sealing. Worse, from a handling point of view, it had a de Havilland variable-pitch (two-pitch) airscrew instead of a Rotol constant-speed propeller. This meant inferior performance and more work for the pilot.
No. 615 Squadron were still using the old formation (four vees) and were flying tightly together in the pre-war style. Undoubtedly this made them easier to spot. They were bounced out of the sun by the Bf 109s they were looking for, and the tail of KW-Z was hit by cannon shells. The Hurricane went into a spin, but Looker was experienced enough to regain control of it. He was reluctant to bail out, having just spent a month in hospital with leg injuries after a dog-fight during the battles in France. He dodged through the balloon barrage cables that were there expressly to inhibit such flying, and then put the Hurricane down at the first landing field he saw. It was the pre-war London airport at Croydon. As he came in, he ran the gauntlet of the anti-aircraft guns who thought he was a German bomber.
Pilot Officer Looker survived, but incredibly one of the airport officials at Croydon made a written complaint about his airport being used as an emergency landing field. Looker's Hurricane also survived, to become an exhibit at London's Science Museum.
The obsolete vee formation used by 615 Squadron this day — called by the Luftwaffe the 'bunch of bananas'—had proved dangerous, but this was not the only cause of Fighter Command's rumbles of complaint. The fact that the fighting formations and tactics were so obviously wrong encouraged the pilots to question the whole concept of radar-linked ground control. The fighter pilots could not see the overall picture, nor could they calculate the strain that standing patrols would have caused Fighter Command. In fact, it would have been impossible to patrol the southeast coast with the resources available.
And although the fighter pilots saw only their own, very small formations being sent against large numbers of Germans, there were often other RAF fighters being fed into the Battle before and after them. These Fabian tactics were a necessary way to preserve Fighter Command and ensure that the fighter force was not all on the ground to refuel and rearm at the same time.
But many of the complaints were a symptom of fatigue. For a fighter pilot, survival can depend upon peak physical condition, but alerts at first-light meant being on call at 3 a.m. At Biggin Hill, 32 Squadron slept under their Hurricanes, using their parachute packs as pillows. At Rochford, 151 Squadron's pilots simply slept in the cockpits. Any pilot who got a full night's sleep three nights in a row was lucky.
The fighter squadrons were moved from airfield to airfield as Dowding's strategy, and squadron casualties and fatigue, demanded. Some of the airfields were pre-war RAF establishments with brick built accommodation, hangars, workshops, and reasonable comfort. Others were more ramshackle. In each case a lot depended upon the man who ruled it; the Station Commander was senior in rank to the Squadron Commanders and decided everything except the operational flying.
Some 'station masters' devoted their whole energies to making the flyers comfortable. But at Warmwell, Dorset, the accommodation provided for the pilots of 609 Squadron was so bad that many of them preferred to sleep under filthy blankets in the dispersal tent, in spite of dirt, dust, a lack of toilets, washing facilities, or even running water.
The Station Commander showed no urgent desire to remedy this situation but he did complain to the fighter pilots that they were not getting to the Officers' Mess promptly for meals. As an incentive, he ordered that the dining room should be locked except at the prescribed meal times.
Squadron Leader George Darley later recalled, "All our efforts to get the Luftwaffe to respect… meal times having failed, deadlock occurred." The fighter pilots went hungry.
The civilian cooks at Warmwell enthusiastically endorsed the Station Commander's decision, and announced that they were not going to get up to provide breakfast for the fighter pilots (who had to be with their aircraft very early). So Darley, commanding the fighter squadron, went himself to the Warmwell kitchen and prepared eggs, bacon, and tea for his men, but when the cooks complained of the dirty dishes he'd left, the Station Commander sent for Darley and told him never to use the kitchen again.