Even more tribute to Kesselring's tactics and the courageous determination of his crews was the price that Fighter Command was now paying for every victory in the air. The RAF were no longer destroying substantially more raiders than their losses in fighters. Sometimes losses were a parity. At least once, the Germans led. In the two weeks of the critical period, Fighter Command lost 200 more Spitfires and Hurricanes than they received.1 Worse, of total complement of about 1,000 RAF pilots, 231 had been killed, wounded, or were missing. Six out of seven sector airfields were badly damaged, and so were five forward airfields.

The Luftwaffe's morale was high. On 1 September a captured German pilot, under armed escort, looked out of the window when his train stopped at Chatham station. A waitress ran out of the buffet rattling a "Mayor of Chatham's Spitfire Fund' collecting box. She shook it under the prisoner's nose. He asked the guard for his wallet, smiled, and put a five-mark note into the box before the train pulled out.

If what Göring wanted was air superiority over south east England for the invasion, then by 1 September it was almost-his.

Milch received Osterkamp's long, pessimistic report about the way the Battle was going and what would be the consequence of losing so many of the Luftwaffe's finest flyers. Milch reacted immediately. He ensured that ‘Onkel Theo’ was disciplined and reduced in rank. The old man was told that if in the future he expressed such defeatist views, either in writing or in conversation, he would be court-martialed

However the tide of battle flowed, it wasn't all work and no play for Milch. He tasted some of the pleasures that were only offer to Generals of the victorious army in a conquered land. Accompanied by Hugo Sperrle and Udet's Chief of Staff, he visited the gambling casinos of Deauville, and enjoyed some winnings.

Soon he was to have his own train too. It was cobbled together by the French railways in the Gare St. Lazare, Paris, and included Marshal Petain's First World War dining car (complete with a bathroom and corduroy and green baize furnishings) and a dining car of President Lebrun, with two of his chefs in attendance, as well as ordinary coaches and locomotives.

2 September

Kesselring kept up his attacks against the airfields. Early that morning he sent a Gruppe of KG 3 Dorniers, escorted by Bf 109s from JG 51, to bomb the south-east airfields. By now 11 Group Controllers knew the dangers of leaving their airfields without some sort of air cover, and this meant a reluctance to send the fighters forward to meet the raiders. (Leigh-Mallory in 12 Group must bear much of the responsibility for these inadequate tactics.)

Significantly it was 603 Squadron Spitfires, out of Hornchurch, not threatened by the raid, which went forward to intercept. It was about 8 a.m. as they chased the Bf 109s over Kent and out to sea. Four* of the Messerschmitts were shot down, the last two crashing in the Channel. One of these pilots was Heinz "Pritzl' Bar, the NCO ace based at Wissant with the first Staffel of JG 51. He was nursing his damaged Messerschmitt over what the German pilots called "der Bach' (the stream) when a Spitfire gave him a last long burst. He hit the water, climbed out, and started swimming. It took him two hours before he found one of the brightly painted Channel rafts that the Luftwaffe had anchored for such emergencies. As it got dark, a German patrol boat found him there. Next day he was back on flying operations.

One of the four Messerschmitts downed in that breakfast-time action was claimed by Pilot Officer Richard Hillary, a skilful fighter pilot who had by now shot down three Bf 109s in five days. Hillary was later to become famous as the author of a book about the air fighting, The Last Enemy. In it he wrote:

I wondered idly what he was like, this man I would kill. Was he young, was he fat, would he die with the Führer's name on his lips, or would he die alone, in that last moment conscious of himself as a man? I would never know. Then I was being strapped in, my mind automatically checking the controls, and we were off.

The next day, 3 September, at about the same time, Hillary himself was shot down into the sea near the North Foreland and rescued by the Margate lifeboat. But he was not as lucky as "Pritzl' Bar. Richard Hillary's Spitfire burst into flames. He was hideously disfigured by burns.

Fire was the ever-present nightmare of many flyers. The RAF fighters had the fuel tank immediately in front of the pilot, and there was not always a fire-wall. The Bf 109's fuel was in a huge L-shaped container upon which the pilot sat. The rival merits and dangers of these designs were a favoured topic of discussion, and grim jokes, among fighter pilots on both sides of the Channel. Some pilots were so nervous about fire that they covered themselves with gloves, goggles, and scarf to be sure there was no exposed skin. Others preferred the precaution of flying always with the hood locked back, ready to bail out. It was freezing cold in the open cockpit but it reassured them. Tom Gleave was one of many who carried a loaded pistol, determined to shoot themselves at the first sign of flames. But Gleave, shot down in flames, had not used the pistol.

This was what was later called 'the critical period." Since 24 August the Air Fleets had focused their assault upon 11 Group's airfields. The tactic had worked well. By now the defence depended upon the only two surviving sector airfields: Tangmere and Kenley.

Had the Luftwaffe commanders pursued these targets to the exclusion of everything else, they might well have gained command of the air over south-east England. But they did not do so. They added aircraft factories to the objectives, and so gave the sector stations a chance to patch up the damage. On 30 August, Fighter Command had flown 1,000 sorties for the first time. It was a great worry to Dowding and Park but the presence of so many Spitfires and Hurricanes must have been a blow to the morale of any German who still believed the figures about RAF losses that Luftwaffe intelligence were providing. Especially since the Luftwaffe's losses 800 aircraft in two months — were now influencing the scale of the fighting. On 1 September, the Luftwaffe had flown only 640 sorties, and it failed to reach 1,000 sorties on any of the five days that followed. The Air Fleets' total fighter strength now concentrated in the Pas de Calais was less than 600 machines. This was reducing the effectiveness of the attacks, because Kesselring was insisting that the formations must be about 75 per cent fighters.

And yet this preponderance of fighters provided a grim prospect for the RAF squadrons that were sent to intercept the attacks. In recognition of this, whole squadrons deliberately disobeyed orders, if the orders were too dangerous. At Kenley, the Sector Controller repeatedly vectored 605 Squadron to fly due east, while watching the pip-squeak signals that showed them going west away from the enemy. It was the same story with some of the Hornchurch squadrons, which refused to cross the Thames on an interception course unless they had climbed to at least 18,000 feet. Everywhere the pilots were learning that to intercept from below was suicidal. Sometimes this meant that the bombers got through unscathed. On 2 September, the commander of ZG 76 the once so vulnerable Bf 110s reported after returning from a mission, "There's not much doing over there anymore."

3 September

The Germans continued the attacks on Fighter Command airfields. This time the fighters and bombers were flying at the same level, and were mixed together to prevent the RAF getting to the bombers.

This seemed to work in the case of the thirty Do 17s that bombed North Weald, and in spite of the new instructions, these Dorniers had only Bf 110s escorting them. In the event, they sufficed. Hangars and the new Operations Block were hit and the airfield communications went out of action, including the high-frequency radio contact with its aircraft.