Yet, if the British looked for salvation, most looked not to the east, but west to the USA.

"Wild Bill' Donovan's brief trip to Britain had convinced him that Britain would survive and should be supported in every way possible. This report ran counter to everything that Ambassador Kennedy had been telling Washington, and it did not please the ambassador. Early in September, Kennedy's car had been damaged by blast as he was driving through an air raid. He said he would endure a month of bombing, and did exactly that. In October he went home to resign, angry at the British for being bombed, at the Germans for dropping bombs, at Donovan for contradicting his reports, and at Roosevelt for allowing it all. The British were polite. The King and Queen gave him lunch at Buckingham Palace. The Evening News wrote, "It is Mr. Kennedy single-handed who has strengthened Anglo-American friendship in London." Even less restrained was the socialist Daily Herald: "Goodbye, Joe! Heaven bless you!" He let everyone know that he was going to denounce the Roosevelt administration, and intended to time his statement for maximum effect on the 5 November elections. He took with him a British air-raid siren. Asked if it was a souvenir, he said he wanted it for his Cape Cod mansion to call the Kennedy children home from their boats. Once back in Boston, Kennedy told the Globe, "Democracy is finished in England."

When the election came, Kennedy gave Roosevelt all the support he needed to win. The mystery of his turn-round has never been satisfactorily explained. On the matter of Britain's imminent defeat, Kennedy also changed his mind, but now Britain no longer cared. Robert Vansittart Halifax's Chief Diplomatic Adviser wrote, "Mr. Kennedy is a very foul specimen of double-crosser and defeatist. He thinks of nothing but his own pocket. I hope that this war will at least sec the elimination of this type."

Already many Americans were realizing that the USA had little option but to enter the war. The German successes in Europe had weakened the colonial powers in the Pacific. Raw materials not the least of which was oil in Dutch possessions would alter the balance of power, and bring Japan into confrontation with the USA.

In 1940 Roosevelt asked for 50,000 warplanes. It makes the combats of 1940 seem puny by comparison. Asked for a time limit, Roosevelt blandly said that it was the number he wanted each year. Inevitably the war grew larger and larger. Before it ended, the Luftwaffe was to lose, in one day's combat, the same number of planes that it lost in the whole summer of 1940.

In 1940 the Royal Navy had brought its destroyers back to British ports to be ready for the German invasion. Deprived of such protection, Britain's Atlantic convoys suffered grievous losses, and the German U-boat crews were ever after to know this period as 'the happy time."

RAF Bomber Command had devoted a great deal of

The Results effort to bombing the barges in the Channel ports but with accuracy no better than in their attacks against other German targets. In the autumn of 1940, according to the official history, Bomber Command decided that hitting German civilians, hospitals, churches, and cultural monuments, hitherto a by-product of the intention to hit military targets, 'should become an end-product… the time had come to launch a direct attack upon the German people themselves."

And now it was time to write history. The men at the Air Ministry issued the official account of "The Battle of Britain." A 32-page booklet recounted the story without once mentioning the name of either Park or Dowding.

In RAF Fighter Command, the men who had humiliated, judged, and sentenced Dowding and Park turned their attentions to a war game that was intended to vindicate their big-wing theories.

They used historical data to re-create one of the big air battles of September. Umpires were appointed to watch the way the battle went. Leigh-Mallory, now Commander of Park's old Group, reacted to the German threat with exactly the kind of large formations that he and Bader had argued were best.

The exercise was a fiasco. The Umpires decreed that the vital Fighter Command airfields of Biggin Hill and Kenley were bombed before the big wings were even airborne. This did not affect Leigh-Mallory's career. He stayed in Park's job and then took over Dowding's.

Göring's influence declined. Even by the beginning of October the "Iron Man' had lost interest in his Air Fleets and their struggle. When Galland went to see the Reichs-marschall after getting the oak leaves (a new award for flyers with forty aerial victories), he met Molders coming out of the hunting estate. Molders said, "Fatty promised he would detain you at least as long as he did me," and hurried off to get more victories.

Galland described the 'log cabin made of huge tree trunks, with a thatched roof jutting far over the eaves.

Göring came out of the house to meet me, wearing a green suede hunting jacket over a silk blouse with long, puffed sleeves, high hunting boots, and in his belt a hunting knife in the shape of an old Germanic sword… That night no mention was made either of the war in general or the Battle of Britain in particular."

"I myself have taken command of the Luftwaffe's battle for Britain," Göring had told a radio audience in September. In spite of this, the Luftwaffe commanders now denied that there had ever been any such battle. Kesselring blandly argued that the Air Fleets had changed their tactics many times during the summer of 1940. In September the tactic of night bombing was employed. That did not mean, he insisted, that the Luftwaffe was defeated any more than had the previous changes.

But the men who had flown over England knew differently. The Luftwaffe's failure generated a mood of discontent. Complaints about the equipment some of them generated by Milch but many of them genuine reflected upon the inadequacies of Udet, Director of Air Armament. Called to account before Göring, Udet usually managed to turn the conversation round to old times, and nothing was done.

Well aware of the campaign against him Udet was never sure who was behind it. During the final stages of the Battle of Britain it was the urbane Milch who had taken Udet on a shopping spree in Paris, ending in Cartier's. And when Milch went back to Berlin, he resumed his dinner parties at Horcher's restaurant and included Udet as a regular guest. And yet Udet was depressed and the outcome of the Battle of Britain made him worse. He was drinking too much; he also chain-smoked and used the pep pills that were available to front-line units for men under stress. Abuse of these pills made Udet moody and irritable. Finally Udet was persuaded to get medical attention. Milch sent him to his own personal physician.

Udet's Chief of Staff might have helped him sort out the chaos of the department and salvage his career, but he was also in trouble. During the summer he had visited Deauvillc with Milch and Sperrle and spent all his money gambling with them. Now he owed far more than he could repay, and was under considerable pressure from both his creditors.

And Göring, too, realized that the Luftwaffe had suffered a set-back, and was reminded of it when Hitler showed him the reaction of the foreign press. Soon Göring gave Milch the sort of power that would be needed for the onslaught against the USSR in the following summer. Milch immediately started an ambitious programme to expand the Luftwaffe to four times its strength. Delighted with his new power, the wily Milch named his plan "The Göring Programme." One of his most important decisions was to keep the Bf 109 in full production no matter how superior the Focke-Wulf FW 190 proved to be. As always the Luftwaffe went for quantity at the expense of quality. In the same cause, Milch forbade Messerschmitt to do any work on his jet fighter and told him to get on with his Bf 109 production.