The Battle of Britain, 1945–1965 : the Air Ministry and the Few / Garry Campion

Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 © Garry Campion 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–28454–8 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Campion, Garry, 1963– author. The Battle of Britain, 1945–1965 : the Air Ministry and the Few / Garry Campion. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–28454–8 1. Britain, Battle of, Great Britain, 1940. 2. World War, 1939–1945— Propaganda. 3. Collective memory—Great Britain. I. Title. D756.5.B7C36 2015 940.54'211—dc23 2015020303 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 Contents List of Figures ix List of Plates x List of Tables xii Acknowledgements xiii List of Abbreviations xv Chronology xvii Introduction 1 Part I Air War, Media War 1 Seelöwe und Bomben Auf Engeland: The German Perspective, 1940 13 2 Britain’s Fighter Boys: Projecting the Battle of Britain, 1940 37 3 The Battle of the Barges: ‘Blackpool Front’ Propaganda, 1940–1945 65 Part II Valorising and Thanksgiving 4 ‘The Greatest Day’: Shaping the Battle of Britain, 1941 91 5 ‘Immortal Few’: Heroising the Fighter Boys, 1942–1945 116 6 ‘Air Trafalgar Day’: Official Commemorations, 1942–1945 141 Part III Commemoration and Popular Memory 7 ‘The Fight at Odds’: Revelation, Memorialisation, 1945–1965 175 8 ‘Angels One Five’: Historical and Cultural Consolidation, 1946–1965 198 Conclusion 226 Appendix 1 Chronology of German-focused Events, 1939–1941 229 Appendix 2 Nazi Battle of Britain-related Propaganda 237 Appendix 3 Radio and Audio Coverage of the Battle of Britain, 1940–1965 240 Appendix 4 Printed Coverage of the Battle of Britain, 1940–1965 243 vii Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 viii Contents Appendix 5 Newsreel, Film and TV Coverage of the Battle of Britain, 1940–1965 245 Appendix 6 War Artists 249 Appendix 7 Books and Printed Literature, 1940–1965 251 Appendix 8 Chronology of Political and World Events, 1945–1965 255 Notes 257 Bibliography 304 Index 321 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 Introduction Valorising or mythicising the Battle of Britain? With its seventy-fifth anniversary falling in September 2015 the Battle of Britain continues to resonate powerfully in British popular national memory, the roots of its valorisation firmly planted early in 1941. Why valorisation, in the sense of raising the value of the Battle as an event, rather than its mythicisation, as some historians have suggested? Usually, when one thinks of a myth the sense is of a largely fictitious event, so embroidered that it is no longer possible to untangle the facts from the subsequent layering of fiction, the primacy of supernatural deities central to the narrative. In con- temporary usage describing an event as mythical is generally pejorative, to mythicise it, a further distortion. Revisionists have claimed that the Battle of Britain was deliberately mythicised both during wartime and thereafter, and certainly beyond what the actual facts of the air battles could bear. Challenging this, historian Basil Collier suggested in 1962 that ‘in military matters, legend usually has ten years’ start over truth. Legend is not neces- sarily myth. There is nothing mythical about the skill and courage of the young fighter pilots who gained an undying reputation as “the Few”.’1 When one studies the propaganda projected during the air battles of the latter part of 1940 it is obvious that the grit and determination of Fighter Command’s pilots – including Blenheim and Defiant aircrews – was its main focus, and especially their dogged prowess in bringing down Luftwaffe aircraft. Their claims – made in the stress and confusion of battle – were only later revealed to have been inaccurate. In this sense, Fighter Command’s successes in blunting air attacks were valorised by the British Air Ministry principally for the purposes of providing a running commentary for the news media, and thereby raising morale at a difficult moment, but there was no wider attempt to mythicise their success beyond this. In fact, it was not obvious during late 1940 or indeed in very early 1941 that Britain had just won a major battle, many observers not otherwise struck by the strategic significance of a seemingly endless series of small- and large-scale daylight air 1 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 2 The Battle of Britain, 1945–1965 skirmishes and attacks beginning in late June and continuing into 1941. To this extent it can be argued that the British Air Ministry’s air communiqués – upon which subsequent propaganda was based – were not in fact seeking to make more of the events than was justified. Although censored, the material about Fighter Command was intended for rapid broadcast by the BBC, thence as newspaper print, this developing as ‘hot’ news and propaganda on a daily basis. There was certainly no overarching propaganda plan to catapult the pilots of Fighter Command to a warrior-god status in late 1940. This is most clearly demonstrated by comparing British propaganda with that projected by Germany during the same period, the latter – against its will because it lost the propaganda initiative – given no choice other than to parry British aircraft claims and counterclaims broadcast by the BBC. Their collective propaganda output represented two sides of one coin, neither working to a grander plan; from 1941, in the RAF’s case it was possible to develop this, but from the Luftwaffe’s perspective it was decided to focus on new campaigns, the fruits of which provided significant propaganda benefits. Insofar as the yet to be formally named ‘Battle of Britain’ appeared as a coherent event in late 1940, most observers would then have conceded that the air attacks were intense and sustained, but might have struggled to invest them with deeper significance. It was in fact an Air Ministry inter- pretation offered in its Battle of Britain pamphlet which provided a clearer shape to the disparate air battles of the previous year, this released in March 1941 and impressing even Goebbels.2 But did the pamphlet mythicise the Battle of Britain rather than simply valorise it? As far as Nazi war aims were concerned it was possible for all to agree that the Luftwaffe had made a significant attempt to end the war through a sustained series of air attacks, the strategic context of which was hazily discernible through speeches by Hitler and Goering, and wider Nazi propaganda; thus it had some shape and could be delineated as a series of shifting target priorities. The air battles had also been linked to the threat of invasion, this as much by Britain as Germany, the former increasingly shrill on the threat into September; the latter, by contrast, progressively lukewarm. Beyond this linkage it was less easy to make a convincing argument about the wider importance of the late 1940 period, simply because it was difficult to strategically contextualise the air battles at such an early point in the war. Several interpretations could, after all, be placed on the German air campaign: first, that its Blitz phase was an attempt to bomb Britain into sub- mission by invoking the air power doctrinal theories of Douhet et al. and quickly undermining civilian morale; second, that it was the initial phase of a campaign to destroy the RAF in order to launch an invasion; and third, that it was aimed at destroying Britain’s economic potential, a peace deal inevitable. Added to these might have been a combined air and sea block- ade but other than convoy attacks in the Channel it is hard to argue that Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–28454–8 Introduction 3 this was ever seriously attempted by the Luftwaffe; and although much of its late-1940 propaganda proclaimed the success of its attacks on merchant and naval shipping, the results were modest. Indeed, one of the arguments offered by invasion sceptics is that Goering was simply not interested in diverting his attention to Royal Navy bases and warships as part of his air campaign, a move which was in fact strategically vital to give the invasion armada its best chance of success.

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