LITMIR.BIZ

       Taedet caeli convexa tueri

      (It becomes dispiriting constantly to watch the arch of heaven)

      VIRGIL, AENEID, Book IV

       Preface to the 2014 Edition

      I remember the daylight raids in the summer of 1940. Sometimes whole formations of German bombers slipped between the radar beams and evaded the RAF fighter squadrons. One such daytime air raid remains a vivid memory. There must have been fifty bombers and they were flying in a box formation. I was in Marylebone Road (my father was in charge of an air-raid medical post situated temporarily in the Western Ophthalmic Hospital). Everyone was looking up at the planes and much of the motor traffic had stopped. No one ran for cover but that may have been due to the shock of seeing the enemy so near, so resolute, so seemingly fearless. Their formation so perfect, like the ones my father had taken me to see at the Hendon air displays before the war.

      Steadily the formation passed over to bomb north London. The motor traffic around me started up again, and life continued as if on a normal peacetime day. That’s how the war was during those early days after Hitler’s armies had smashed their way through Allied defences to occupy Belgium, France and Holland. Our morale was high. Winston Churchill was in Downing Street and there was a consensus that it was better to be without Continental obligations.

      The daylight air battles of 1940 ended when September arrived. As the days shortened the German bomber fleets attacked at night. At daybreak each morning we emerged from the air-raid shelter and walked home past shattered buildings. On one such dreadful morning in Crawford Street, Marylebone, Mr Stabler’s newsagents corner shop from which I did my paper-round was just a tall pile of broken bricks. Mr Stabler was under them and dead. There would be no paper-round that morning or for any mornings to come. My parents hurried me along lest I was late for school. The night bombers came again and again; they came every night for three months. And for civilians in England the war had only just begun.

      The Battle of Britain was undeniably a turning point in world history. I say ‘undeniably’, but there are quite a number of people who continue to debate that fact. Simplistic reasoning encourages such people to say that in the summer of 1940 the German Navy was in no shape to support an invasion, and that in any case the Germans had none of the specialist landing craft and weaponry that proved vital for the Anglo-American armies landing in Normandy four years later.

      All that is true; but if the Germans had defeated Fighter Command the German Luftwaffe would have ranged over England with impunity. With command of the air the Germans could have come across the English Channel without hindrance. Britain’s army, shattered after the Dunkirk evacuation, bereft of its heavy equipment and still re-forming its regiments, would have been no match for the battle-hardened German armies that were now brimming with the self-confidence of victory after victory and raring to complete their conquest of Europe. As the old saying goes: ‘Without Trafalgar there would have been no Waterloo.’ The Battle of Britain was Trafalgar.

      Writing this book was a project very dear to my heart. There was a time when I believed that history is self-rectifying. I believed that, no matter how distorted the accounts of news and current events, in the course of time a more truthful and useful consensus would emerge. Now I know better. In fact it is the myths and fabrications that endure and become each nation’s historical reference. With this in mind I was determined to write an account of the Battle that was as accurate as I could make it.

      I had served in the RAF and, as a photographer, flown in Lancaster bombers and Mosquito fighters. Many of my friends were RAF men. I had written Bomber, a fictional but realistic account of an RAF air raid on Germany. During the research for Bomber the Royal Netherlands Air Force had most kindly let me spend time on their airfield at Deelen, which was little changed from when the Luftwaffe was there. By the kindness of good friends I was able to be one of the crew of a Heinkel He 111 that was flown to Germany. The gleaming black bomber was due to go into a museum and, for that reason, special permission had been granted for it to keep its Luftwaffe livery, even including the strenglich verboten swastika on the tail fin.

      There were few pilots qualified and checked-out to fly an ancient Heinkel bomber from England to Germany. Our pilot let no one think that this task gave him any pleasure. Along with me the third member of the crew was a cheerful American. After a brief hello we climbed aboard to start our flight to Siegen, a tiny hill-top airfield about 50 miles east of Cologne. We were airborne, heading east at about 4,000 feet (no pressurized cabin so this was high enough), when the pilot asked if anyone had brought a map. Luckily I had a couple of maps that were given free to customers at Esso petrol stations. Dedicated to the needs of motorists, they were updated frequently. This was a time when in Belgium the autoroutes were still being built, starting with the clover-leaf interchanges. It was their bright concrete patterns that made it reasonably easy to see where we were. To do this comfortably I spread myself out in the bomb-aimer’s position. It was soon after settling in there that I heard the pilot call to the American and say that we were running out of fuel and would have to land somewhere soon. From my map reading I could see we were now nearing Antwerp, and any remaining doubts were removed as we approached the airport and saw ANTWERP painted in giant letters across the roof of a hanger.

      I have no idea what flight plan had been prepared, but subsequent events showed clearly that the Belgians in the

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