Blitz for Germany

(See Cover)

The Battle of Germany is one that Adolf Hitler didn't plan. All the rest were his--Poland, Norway, France, the Atlantic, the Balkans, Russia; he had studied the maps and doped the strategy. But the Battle of Germany was not his idea at all. The Battle of Germany, which was growing noisy last week, was forced on him.

Hitler and his aides had thought it unthinkable that Germany should ever be scarred by enemy attack. Hermann Goering promised on Aug. 9, 1939: "As Reich Minister for Air, I have convinced myself personally of the measures taken to protect the Ruhr against air attack. In future I will look after every battery, for we will not expose the Ruhr to a single bomb dropped by enemy aircraft." Every night last week 80 tons of bombs were dropped on the Ruhr.

Those destructive broken promises, and thousands more like them, were dropped by the R.A.F.--sole proprietor so far of the Battle of Germany. The R.A.F., which last September pulled the tight little isle out of a very dark corner, was now striking the first concerted offensive blow at Germany. It was no haymaker, but it was a blow that would be felt.

The British know that all Adolf Hitler had to do to finish them is win the Battle of the Atlantic. They also know that in order to finish him, they have first to win the Battle of the Atlantic and then go on to the offensive and win the Battle of Germany. Last week, with the Battle of the Atlantic going a little better (see p. 16), and with the Battle of Germany begun, the British had their first healthy hope in months.

The British knew that this was not all their doing. In a way, Adolf Hitler had brought the Battle of Germany upon himself--by sending 75% of his Air Force to Russia. But the boys of the R.A.F. are a breezy bunch. They think they can keep the offensive. They think, very brashly, that the beginning of the Battle of Germany is the beginning of the end of Germany. This week, with the Luftwaffe coming back hard from Russia, their confidence may be put to the test.

Afternoon's Work. One day last week R.A.F. reconnaissance craft brought in some very interesting pictures. They showed the harbor of Rotterdam ripe with an unprecedented crop of ships. The pictures were so interesting that they went straight to Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Frederick Algernon Portal, K.C.B., D.S.O., M.C., known as Peter. Peter Portal looked and took them straight to the War Cabinet, for the special perusal of Winston Churchill and Secretary of State for Air Sir Archibald Sinclair. All agreed--give these ships the business.

The pictures were rushed to a big port-complexioned Briton, Sir Richard Peirse, Chief of the Bomber Command. Knocking out his pipe and shutting off his notoriously favorite pipe dream--a dreadnought bomber with high enough ceiling, great enough speed and sure enough armament to make any fighter useless--Air Marshal Peirse set "interpretive experts" to work plotting the exact location of ships, number of planes necessary for a thorough job, other mechanical details. Then Sir Richard sat down with his staff and Fighter and Coastal Command liaison officers to discuss tactics: time and place of rendezvous, level of attack, number of squadrons, types of planes, nature of escort.

After a check-back by direct telephone wire to Chief of Staff Portal, orders and photographs went out to selected groups who rolled out several squadrons of Blenheims. The planes spanned the Channel and came in low across the Dutch coast--so low that the Netherlander on the ground waved hats to them and cheered their V-for-Victory (see p. 20) formations. Approaching Rotterdam, bombardiers and pilots picked out their particular assignments, the ships circled in red on their respective maps.

They flew in, skimming the roof tops. One pilot found that the only way to reach his target was between a high radio mast on the quay and the ship's mast. "I had to bank to port to get between them and while still at an angle of 45DEG we threw bombs at the ship's side, one at least hitting the ship with a smack." Still hedgehopping, the attackers fled, leaving growing clouds of smoke rising from the ships at the wharves (see cut).

Four of the attackers did not return, but two of the four had hit their targets before they were brought down. Pilots' reports were uniformly certain: slap-bang in the middle . . . colossal explosion, followed by flames and smoke . . . enveloped in black smoke. . . .

When the score was added up, the R.A.F. claimed having wrecked--"either permanently or for a long time to come" --17 ships of about 90,000 tons, including the 17,000-ton Balocran. As is almost always the case with air attacks, this claim was doubtless super-sanguine; but if it was anywhere near the truth, the R.A.F. had in one afternoon put almost as much tonnage out of action as the Nazis do in an average week of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Since June 15. "We are working on Jerry as one boxer does on another in the ring--getting in licks where they hurt the most." Thus a British air authority on the R.A.F. plan in the Battle of Germany. The battle was joined on June 15. For five weeks since then the R.A.F. has pummeled four Nazi sore spots (for the geographical distribution of these raids see map p. 19):

> The first is oil. Ever since the beginning of the war, natural oil refineries and stocks and synthetic fuel plants have been the primary R.A.F. target. The results were not too encouraging; the Nazis still seemed to have plenty of fuel to roll their tanks and lift their planes. But after the British had, at least for the time being, sewed up Iraq's oil, after the Germans had attacked one of their oil suppliers, Russia, after the Russians had done some damage in the Ploesti fields of Rumania, the oil barrage took on more point and more fury. Last week a roundabout hint of the growing Axis oil squeeze came out of Italy, where it was announced that after Oct. 1 private auto owners would be allowed no gasoline at all.

> The second bruise is communications. The campaign in the east has required so much of German rolling stock that increasing amounts of traffic have had to sneak by sea. The Rotterdam raid was one answer. Fortnight ago the R.A.F. claimed 21 ships of 81,000 tons. Continued raids on German convoys along the invasion coast have added to the toll. In five months it claims to have sunk 300,000 tons of German shipping (not counting an equal tonnage seriously damaged). This is nearly 40% of the German shipping losses for the period, and the biggest R.A.F. raids in shipping have been in the last few weeks. Meanwhile, rail centers and port facilities were also pounded--though damage there was less calculable and more reparable.

> The third target is war production, power plants and industry in general. During the German Blitz on British industries, the British maintained that the enemy had negligible success; when they did manage to hit factories, the British got them working again in a jiffy. But the R.A.F. believes it has done a little better, because its pilots have been trained in night flying and precision bombing, whereas the Germans rode in on a beam and dropped bombs near where the leader set fires.

> Finally, the R.A.F. went for the Luftwaffe. The air force which Adolf Hitler left in the west was spread thin. Day raids by between 100 and 300 British fighters and bombers at first had easy pickings. In the first month of the Battle of Germany, Hurricanes and Spitfires flew 2,000,000 plane-miles in offensive sweeps and patrols, and destroyed 301 old Messerschmitt 109s, while losing only 118 of their own fighter planes (the British lost 112 bombers in the same period).

Wind Up. By last week the R.A.F. began to lose about as many planes as it bagged, for the Luftwaffe was returning in force from Russia. Among the new opposition which the R.A.F. met was a souped-up model of the old single-seater Messerschmitt 109. The new job, Me 109F, called "Meph" by the British, had been sighted several times, flying on ultra-high reconnaissance. But not until last fortnight, when one pancaked in Kent nearly undamaged, had the British a chance to examine a "Meph" carefully. It had the markings of Hermann Goring's Yellow Nose Squadron, and 22 red stripes on its yellow rudder, denoting victories. But what got the British wind up was its engine: a 3,000-h.p. monster capable of lifting the fighter nearly to 40,000 feet. Since in air battle the plane on top always has an advantage, the "Meph" is a formidable opponent. The British talked vaguely about a super-high-flier of their own, but did not say that it was yet ready for action.

The R.A.F. also has other, older worries. Its large number of plane types has not been eased by a score of new U.S. types now swinging into action; this diversity caused many bottlenecks in spare parts. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in Canada, which so far has turned out 50,000 partly-trained pilots, was now up to original quotas, but those quotas had been outdated because of increased plane production. Besides, the R.A.F. was appallingly weak to start with: at the war's start it could muster only 124 first-line squadrons (about 1,500 planes). It was now almost three times as strong (about 4,200 first-line planes), but had a very long way to go in order definitely to overhaul the Luftwaffe (six air fleets of 1,700 operative planes each, before the Russian war).

Furthermore, the offensive was expensive. The London Daily Mail recently estimated the cost of a single night raid of 300 bombers over the Ruhr as follows: gasoline and oil, $13,280; losses, allowing three planes shot down, $240,000; bombs, $720,000; maintenance on planes, $210,000 Total: $1,183,280.

Thumbs Up. Whether or not the offensive could continue, the R.A.F. had, in the Battle of Germany, restored the British offensive spirit. That incredible spirit had flagged after Greece and Crete. Parliament had begun to carp at Winston Churchill. The Battle of the Atlantic had had the whole people depressed. Bombings had grown hard to take.

But the R.A.F. gave the British new hope. As the exploits grew in number, everyone from hod carrier to princess followed the heroes. As King George VI last week presented brilliant Squadron Leader Roland Tuck the second bar to his Distinguished Flying Cross--the first time this honor had been bestowed--His Majesty said: "I will be able to tell my daughters that I have seen you and talked to you today, and they will be very thrilled. They are always asking me questions about how you are getting on." The British began to follow air-raid box scores as they used to follow soccer and cricket news. They considered the return of the German Air Force to the west as a triumph for the R.A.F., though it meant trouble. They stopped worrying about being invaded, resting on the hope that after the Russian battle Adolf Hitler could not give his troops rest, move them, regroup them, re-equip them and send them across the Channel before another spring.

Singeing Adolf's Whiskers. As the Battles of Germany and Russia strung on, the British even began talking seriously of invading the Continent. Tom Wintringham, Spain-trained guerrilla artist who recently resigned his instructorship in the Home Guard because he considered the War Office too stodgy, wrote: "The British Army wants action. . . . We should hit Hitler now that he is busy." The News Chronicle headlined: TOO QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. The careful New Statesman and Nation editorialized: "If the invasion of the Continent is ever to be possible, today, when Germany's best fighters and bombers are fully engaged in the east, would seem to be the supremely suitable moment." The British censor released several photographs of British invasion barges, big enough to hold Bren gun-carriers.

If the British took the offensive on land, it could hardly take the form of a full-scale invasion--they have not now the equipment to tackle the Germans successfully on the Continent--but rather a series of raids at widely scattered points from Norway to Spain. The British remember well Sir Francis Drake's audacious dash into Cadiz the year before the Armada sailed. He destroyed 10,000 tons of enemy sail that day, and later bragged of "singeing the King of Spain's beard."

Need for Speed. At 9:30 every morning last week a black, chauffeur-driven Humber, sporting London's R.A.F. pennant at its radiator cap, drew away from a Mayfair hotel and whizzed to the Air Ministry in Whitehall. Peter Portal hopped out and literally ran upstairs to his big, high-ceilinged office on the second floor. There he rushes all day--reading reports at his neat walnut desk, drafting concise memos for the War Cabinet, gulping down a chop and an apple for lunch, talking with aides and prodding them with his pipe stem, phoning, planning, dining at one of his clubs, scurrying back to his office and driving himself until small hours.

Peter Portal is a worrier and a hurrier. He knows he has a tremendous job to do and not much time. His job--as he sees it --is not only to defend Britain but to crush Germany. One of his first acts when he became Chief of Staff was to issue a strong recommendation that all Air Ministry officers work six ten-hour days a week.

A tall, huge-nosed Huguenot, Peter Portal has always been a driving man. His first hobby was speed on two wheels, and his first job in World War I was as a motorcycle dispatch rider. He still bears a scar over his left eye because one night he ran his motorcycle right into the back of a truck. Later he took up flying, which was faster. His promotions in the R.A.F. were rapid.

Besides being a hurrier, Peter Portal is studious, thorough, meticulous. As a boy he became interested in falconry; by 16 he was writing learned articles on the ancient sport. At 41, while commander of the post at Aden, he took up sailing; and read every book he could get until he had mastered every salty trick of luff and leech. Also at Aden, he became interested in photography; and cared so much for detail that he went into micro-pictures, snapping miniature plants and shells.

Peter Portal will stand in need of all his talents as the Battle of Russia wanes. He wants to keep the offensive in the west; his boys and his people want him to. But it will not be easy.

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