The smoke that Townsend had seen rising in a black cloud from Biggin Hill was the result of a formation of Heinkel He 111s bombing from about 12,000 feet. They turned away south-east and were intercepted by 253 Squadron. That morning Tom Gleave had inherited the squadron again when the new commander (with whom he was 'sharing') died after bailing out of his Hurricane. The squadron pilots were convinced that he had been deliberately shot up by the Germans while descending, but such incidents were rare simply because the combatants seldom had the time for such dangerous activities. As the brief combats ended, the fighters tried to re-form and/or gain height, rather than circle round parachutists expending valuable ammunition.

Now, with Tom Gleave in command, 253 Squadron found the homeward-bound Heinkels. Gleave's Hurricane took a direct hit from a Bf 109 that came up into the blind spot under his tail. Flames roared over him as he tried to tear himself loose of his radio and oxygen connections. He saw his skin bubble and crisp, and felt pain from his burning clothes as he undid the harness and slid back his hood. An explosion threw him out of the cockpit, and he managed to pull the ripcord of his parachute. By the time he landed in a farm, his burned flesh had swollen to close his eyes to thin slits. Put to bed in the farmhouse, Gleave politely objected because he would mark the clean linen.

The Heinkels that bombed Biggin Hill were part of a two-pronged attack of which the second half went for Hornchurch airfield. These Dorniers, hidden by a heat haze, bombed from 15,000 feet. Their bombs came down just as 54 Squadron were scrambled. Eight Spitfires escaped unhurt, but the final section of three was destroyed at the moment they became airborne. One was tilted far enough for a wing to touch the ground; it cartwheeled across two fields, and the pilot went into a river. The second was hammered back to earth minus a wing, and the leading Spitfire flown by Flight Lieutenant Al Deere — was flipped onto its back and slid 100 yards across the airfield upside down. Deere remembered the violent impact 'and a terrifying period of ploughing along the airfield upside down, still firmly strapped in the cockpit. Stones and dirt were thrown into my face and my helmet was torn by the stony ground against which my head was firmly pressed." The wrecked Spitfire with engine and one wing missing came to rest with Deere in complete darkness inside. Petrol fumes were almost overpowering him but, showing amazing agility, he crawled out through the tiny flap door. Incredibly, all three pilots were back flying again next day.

That afternoon, ErprGr 210 returned to the task of bombing the radar stations. Beachy Head, Whitstable, Foreness, Rye, Dunkirk, and Pevensey were attacked, but as soon as the raiders disappeared the technicians started to repair the damage. By nightfall all the stations were working again.

At teatime the indefatigable ErprGr 210 crossed the English coast yet again. This time they went to Hornchurch and Biggin Hill, escorting Junkers Ju 88s. Two Spitfires were destroyed on the ground but the squadrons were in the air. No doubt the raiders were heartened to see the chaos of wreckage that the previous raids had caused, but German intelligence were convinced that all RAF Operations Rooms were deep underground (they were not; they were on the surface and very vulnerable, as were the communication links that emerged from them). And in the summer months Spitfires and Hurricanes did not need runways few fighter airfields had them they could take off across any stretch of firm grass. But by now Biggin Hill was in bad shape. Two of its squadrons were withdrawn and its Operations Room was now a converted shop in the village.

Thirty-nine RAF fighters had been lost, with thirteen of the pilots killed. Luftwaffe losses were also thirty-nine aircraft. By any measure Kesselring's new tactics were paying off handsomely. But Dowding's greatest worry was not to be measured simply by the loss in numbers. The danger came from the lowering quality of his squadrons, as pilots were rushed through a few hours of operational training or converted from their duties with Bomber Command, Coastal Command, or the Fleet Air Arm. These, men were diluting effectiveness of the defence. For instance, 616 Squadron had gone to Kenley in mid-August. In only fifteen days of fighting, four pilots were killed, five were wounded, and one became a POW. Additionally the commission of one officer was terminated and another was posted away from the squadron. There was no alternative but to withdraw it from the Battle.

It was not only newcomers who faced a terrible strain, The veterans were flying more sorties, and nursing inexperienced pilots too. At one squadron a Spitfire taxied to a standstill but no one got out. The ground staff climbed up on its wing expecting to find the pilot dead or wounded, but he was slumped over his controls, fast asleep. The pilots were tired, and so were the ground crews. Often men sat down to eat and fell asleep before even picking up a knife and fork.

The Germans had every reason to be more tired. They were not rotated as the RAF flyers were, and the need for fighter escorts sometimes two relays for one raid gave them little rest.

The fighting was hard and yet there was surprisingly little bitterness between the two sides. Erich Rudorffer, of the Griinherz Geschwader, JG 54 (who ended the war as one of the top German aces, with 222 victories), remembers the Battle of Britain as a time when no one fired upon men descending by parachute. He added:

Once I think it was 31 August 1940 — I was in a fight with four Hurricanes over Dover. I was back over the Channel when I saw another Hurricane coming from Calais, trailing white smoke, obviously in a bad way. I flew up alongside him and escorted him all the way to England and then waved goodbye. A few weeks later the same thing happened to me. That would never have happened in Russia never.

Oberleutnant Hans von Hahn, a Bf 109 pilot of I/JG 3 the Udet Geschwader remembered the ever-present obstacle of the Channel. He said, "There were only a few of us who had not yet had to ditch in the Channel with a shot-up aircraft or a stationary propeller."

Running out of fuel was a constant hazard for the Bf 109 pilots. It needed only a careless error to stretch the narrow Strait of Dover to the 70 miles of sea between the English coast and Abbeville. One Bf 109 pilot, his red fuel warning light glowing, watched seven of his Gruppe ditch in the ocean, and then saw another five make belly landings on the French beaches.

Forced landings and parachute descents had become commonplace. Of 85 Squadron's eighteen pilots at Croydon during this two-week period, fourteen were shot down, two of them twice. On 31 August its commander Peter Townsend added another Hurricane to the total. No. 56 Squadron had also suffered so badly that it was withdrawn from the Battle.

Brought to interceptions at a lower altitude than their enemies, the RAF fighters were at a serious disadvantage. Yet the Controllers had no option. The radar showed the German formations assembling over Calais, but the fighters' short endurance prevented them being scrambled until the raid was on its way. In the 20 minutes it took a Spitfire to climb to 25,000 feet, even the slower German bombers could travel 80 miles. Added to this was the imperfection of the radar, which was now suffering regular jamming. Few Controllers committed the bulk of their forces if the weather was good enough to wait for a confirmed visual report.

1 September

By Sunday 1 September, Dowding realized that he could no longer rotate his squadrons because he had no adequately rested and refitted ones to bring south into 1 Group. Forced to what he later admitted was 'a desperate expedient," he classified the squadrons into three types, A, B, and C. The squadrons in 11 Group and Duxford an Middle Wallop were classified as A squadrons. The squadrons (most of those in 10 and 12 Groups) were to be kept up to strength, so that they could be sent to relieve A squadrons. But the C squadrons, in the quieter parts of Britain, were now to be used like training units, preparing pilots for posting to A squadrons.