SUPPLEMENT TO The London GazetteThe London Gazette OF TUESDAY i9th OCTOBER, 1948 b? Registered as a...

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SUPPLEMENT TO

The London GazetteOF TUESDAY i9th OCTOBER, 1948

b?Registered as a newspaper

WEDNESDAY, 20 OCTOBER, 1948

AIR OPERATIONS BY AIR DEFENCE OF GREAT BRITAIN ANDFIGHTER COMMAND IN CONNECTION WITH THE GERMAN

FLYING BOMB AND ROCKET OFFENSIVES, 1944—1945.The following report ?e>as submitted to the

Secretary of State for Air on ijth April, 1948,by Air Chief Marshal SIR RODERIC HILL,K.C.B., M.C., A.F.C., Air Marshal Com-manding, Air Defence of Great Britain, RoyalAir Force, from i$th November, 1943, toi$th October, 1944, and Air Officer Com-manding-in-Chief, Fighter Command, RoyalAir Force, from i^th October, 1944, untilthe end of the war in Europe.

PART I: PRELIMINARY

(a) Command and Higher Organisation ofA.D.G.B. and Fighter Command.

1. Towards the close of 1943 the Alliedfighter, tactical reconnaissance, and tacticalbomber forces in the United Kingdom beganto assemble under the command of Air ChiefMarshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, K.C.B.,D.S.O., in readiness for the landing in north-west Europe which was to take place in thespring. The name of the Allied ExpeditionaryAir Force was given to this combination, partof which was set aside, under my command,for the defence of the British Isles.

2. The Force that I commanded was func-tionally a successor to Fighter Command. Forthe time being, however, that name was aban-doned, and the old name of Air' Defence ofGreat Britain was revived.

3. I commanded Air Defence of GreatBritain from its inception on I5th November,1943, until I5th October, 1944, when the AlliedExpeditionary Air Force was disbanded. MyCommand then became an independent oneand the name Fighter Command was restored.

Thereafter, I held the post of Air Officer Com-manding-in-Chief, Fighter Command, until theend of the war with Germany.

4. Throughout the life of Air Defence ofGreat Britain, and especially after the landingsin Europe had begun, the control over myhandling of operations which was exercised byAir Chief Marshal Leigh-Mallory in his capacityas Air Commander-in-Chief was little more thannominal. His energies were engrossed by offen-sive tasks. As the Armies in France pushedon, these tasks made it necessary for him tospend more and more of his time on theContinent. I was obliged, therefore, with theAir Commander-in-Chief's knowledge and con-sent, to deal directly with the Air Ministry, theBritish Chiefs of Staff, and governmentalbodies on many points of operational policy.On the other hand, Air Chief Marshal Leigh-Mallory continued to exercise, through his staff,a close supervision over certain aspects ofadministration, especially those affectingpersonnel.

5. On iyth November, 1943, I received fromAir Chief Marshal Leigh-Mallory a directivewhich defined the functions of my headquarters" under the general direction of the Air Com-mander-in-Chief " as follows:—

(a) To be responsible for the air defence ofGreat Britain and Northern Ireland.

(6.) To command Nos. 9, 10, n, 12, 13,60 and 70 Groups and exercise operationalcontrol of fighters in Northern Ireland.

(c) To control operationally the activitiesof A.A. Command, the Royal ObserverCorps, Balloon Command, " and other static

5586 SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, 20 OCTOBER, 1948

elements of air defence formerly controlledoperationally by Fighter Command ".

(d) To conduct " defensive and offensiveoperations which involve the use of squadronsof both A.D.G.B. and T.A.F. as heretoforeunder instructions issued to both head-quarters, until fresh instructions are issued ".

(e) To develop air interception methodsand apparatus for eventual use in A.D.G.B.and other theatres.

6. The reference in article (d) to offensiveoperations by squadrons of the Tactical AirForce was hardly more than a convenientfiction. Its purpose was not so much to placethese operations under my control, as to pre-vent them from prematurely absorbing theenergies of the Air Officer Commanding andstaff of the Tactical Air Force, to the detrimentof their more important task of preparing forthe coming events in Europe. Although theoperations were planned and their executionordered from the headquarters of No. n Group,which was part of my command, they weresupervised until the I5th March, 1944, by theAir Commander-in-Chief himself. Thereafterthey were directed by the Air Marshal Com-manding, Second Tactical Air Force (AirMarshal Sir Arthur Coningham, K.C.B.,D.S.O., M.C., D.F.C., A.F.C.). This arrange-ment was typical of a series of complex rela-tionships brought about by the special circum-stances of the time. In effect it meant that theAir Officer Commanding, No. n Group (AirVice-Marshal H. W. L. Saunders, C.B.,C.B.E., M.C., D.F.C., M.M.), while he neverceased to be constitutionally my subordinate,acted for certain purposes as the agent first ofAir Chief Marshal Leigh-Mailory and later ofAir Marshal Coningham.

7. My real task, then, was that set out inarticles (a), (&), (c) and (e) of the directive,and as much of article (d) as related to opera-tions by formations under my own command.In short, it was primarily a defensive one.Although squadrons of A.D.G.B. were to playtheir part in operations over France during theassault phase of the European operations, theOverall Air Plan issued by the Air Commander-in-Chief showed that my most significantresponsibility even in that phase would be tostand guard over the base. Obviously, wewere approaching a stage at which the needsof the offensive must have priority. The direc-tive of the iyth November emphasized the needfor economy in defence " in order to makegreater provision for offence ", and called uponme to suggest changes in organisation with thisneed in mind. My problem, in fact, was to en-sure, with limited resources, that the UnitedKingdom was securely defended from air attackas a base for the great operations by land, sea,and air which were being planned.

(b) Resources Available.8. In the circumstances some " rolling up "

of the Group and sector organisation seemedclearly justified. No. 14 Group, in the northof Scotland, had already been amalgamatedwith No. 13 Group before the time of myappointment. During the next few months Isecured approval for further reductions. By6th June, 1944 (D Day) the number of opera-tional fighter Groups had been reduced to fourand the number of active sectors from xq to 14

—less than half the number in existence at theend of 1941. Still further reductions were madelater.

9. Plans for translating the Air Commander-in-Chief's directive into practice were workedout by my staff and his in consultation. Thebasic strength of A.D.G.B. was fixed at tenday-fighter and eleven night-fighter squadrons.In addition six night-fighter squadrons ear-marked for allotment to Xo. 85 Group—aGroup formed* for the purpose of defending theoverseas base after the land forces should haveadvanced beyond the lodgment area—were tobe put under my command for the time being.So long as I retained them I should be respon-sible for the night-fighter defence of the lodg-ment area as well as the United Kingdom andthe waters between. Similarly, six day -fightersquadrons intended ultimately for No. 85Group were to be put at my disposal to enableme to keep German reconnaissance aircraft atbay, and perform a number of other tasksarising directly out of the situation created bythe coming assault. Finally, another fifteenday-fighter squadrons were to remain nominallyin A.D.G.iB., but be lent to the Second Tacti-cal Air Force for the duration of the assaultphase. Only in an emergency would thesesquadrons revert to my operational controlbefore the end of that phase. It was agreed,however, that if a serious situation shouldarise, the Air Officer Commanding, No. nGroup, would be justified in using any partof 'his uncommitted resources (other thanAmerican units) for the daylight defence ofhis Group area. A few aircraft of the RoyalNavy would also operate -under my control.

10. Thus, the maximum number of RoyalAir Force, Dominion and Allied squadrons onwhich I was expected to call—including thefifteen squadrons lent to the Second TacticalAir Force—would be 48: rather less than halfthe number that had been considered necessaryfor the defence of the United Kingdom at theend of 1941, when the main theatre was inRussia.

11. However, since 1941 much progress hadbeen made in the technique of fighter intercep-tion, especially at night. The German AirForce, on the contrary, was known to 'havelost a 'great deal of its hitting power sincethose days, and its offensive spirit 'had de-clined. Furthermore, great advances 'had beenmade in the technical methods and equipmenton which the " static " elements of the airdefence system relied. Against this I had toreckon with the psychological difficulty ofmaintaining the fighting spirit of men placedon the defensive while their opposite numberswere fighting an offensive battle. But despitethis handicap, and despite the numericallimitations of the forces under my operationalcontrol, it was my opinion that the air de-fences would give a good account of them-selves against any attack by orthodox weaponsthat the German Air Force might deliver.

(c) Appreciation of the General Situationbefore the start of the German FlyingBomb Offensive.

12. From the time of my appointment untilthe beginning of the flying-bomb offensive a

SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, 20 OCTOBER, 1948 5587

week after D Day, coming German air opera-tions against the United Kingdom were ex-pected to consist of attacks by both orthodoxbombers and " secret weapons ". The twokinds of attack might be delivered either atdifferent times or, more probably, together.

13. Numerically the capabilities of the Ger-man bomber force could be judged with afair degree of accuracy from our knowledgeof its strength and disposition. To foresee howthis potential hitting power would be used inpractice was more difficult. For planning pur-poses we assumed that orthodox opposition tothe landings in France might take the form ofminor daylight attacks along the south coastbefore D Day, and attacks on the beaches andanchorages thereafter. Night attacks on ascale of 50 long-range-bomber sorties a nightfor two or three nights a week, increasing to150 sorties a night for very short periods,seemed likely to occur during the weeks pre-ceding D Day. Ports, concentration areas, andconcentrations of shipping would be the mostprobable targets. Slightly heavier attackswould be possible if the enemy should decideto punctuate nights of maximum activity bycomparatively long intervals of quiet.

14. Whether the German bomber force wouldoperate on a major scale in daylight on D Dayor the succeeding days was problematical. Ifit did, the enemy would doubtless choose themost favourable tactical conditions by attack-ing targets on his own side of the Channel.

15. All this was theoretical. But our esti-mates were based on practical experience.While our plans were going forward, the enemycame to our assistance by disclosing part ofhis hand. Early in 1944 the German bomberforce delivered the series of night attacks onLondon and other towns which has been calledthe "baby Blitz" Thanks to the watchwhich we were able to keep on its movements,these attacks did not take us by surprise. Thedefences were ready. Although the Germansused their fastest bombers, which stayed overEngland only for brief periods, we were ableto inflict a higher rate of casualties than theGerman night defences could inflict on ourbomber forces during their long flights overEurope. Moreover, the navigation, target-marking, and •bombing of the Germans whenfaced by our defences proved to be very poor.Thus the attacks were extraordinarily ineffec-.tive. After this experience, I felt confidentthat we should be able to deal with any attemptby the German bomber force to interfere withthe concentration of the Anglo-American land,sea, and air forces in preparation for theassault.

16. The threat from "secret weapons " washarder to assess and more disturbing. By theautumn of 1943 a mass of information collectedover a long' period was beginning to convinceeven the most sceptical that the Germans werepreparing novel means of air attack. WhenI took up my appointment in the early winter,few men in responsible positions doubted thatthose means included both a long-range rocketof some kind and also some form of flying 'mis-sile, or pilotless aircraft. Evidence received afew weeks later made us virtually sure thatcertain new constructions in northern France,

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which we called " ski sites "* were meant forthe launching of missiles of the latter kindagainst this country.

PART II: THE FLYING BOMB CAMPAIGN.

(a) Appreciation of the Threat up to " D"Day and, Plans to meet it.

17. Against a flying missile launched fromthe ground two methods of defence were pos-sible. We might conduct a " defensive offen-sive " against the places where the missileswere made or stored, the constructions requiredfor then- launching, or the means of communi-cation between those places. Some or all ofthese objectives might be attacked 'eitherseparately or in combination, provided thatwe were able to locate them. Alternatively, orin addition, we might try to render the missilesharmless once they had been launched.

18. Early in December, 1943, the Chiefs ofStaff decided to pursue the first method whileexploring the possibilities of the second.Accordingly, on the 5th December the SecondTactical Air Force and the American NinthBomber Command began a series of bombingattacks on the " ski sites ". The StrategicAir Forces, in the shape of our own BomberCommand and the American Eighth BomberCommand, also contributed their quota. Bythe end of the year, 3,216 tons of bombs hadbeen dropped on the sites—about the weightthat fell on London in an average fortnightduring the night " Blitz " of 1940-41. So faras the Air Ministry could judge, the effect ofthese attacks was to " neutralize " twelvesites and seriously damage another nine. Butsince 88 " ski sites " had been located by thistime, and the existence of another 50 was sus-pected, the neutralization of all the sites withthe bombing resources that could be sparedfrom other tasks seemed likely to prove a long-drawn business.

19. Meanwhile, early in December the AirCommander-in-Chief, at the instance of theAir Ministry, had instructed me to study theproblem of defending the country againstattack by pilotless aircraft and draw up plansaccordingly. By way of assistance I was givenan " appreciation " which embodied what wasknown at the time about the missiles that theGermans were getting ready to use against us.According to this document, these missiles flewat something between 250 and 420 m.p.h. anda height which might be anything from 500to 7,000 feet. I was to assume that an attackby two missiles an hour from each of 100 sitesmight begin in February, 1944.

20. These estimates of speed and height wereso broad as to make detailed planning difficult;but on 20th December, in reply to a question-naire from my staff, the Air Ministry committedthemselves, with reservations, to the opinionthat the missiles would probably fly at an aver-age speed of 400 m.p.h. and a height of 7,500feet. Later these estimates were reduced to350 m.p.h. and 7,000 feet, and still later to330 m.p.h. and 6,000 feet. The views of the

* They were so called because on each site stooda number of buildings shaped like a ski laid on itsside. The buildings seem to have been meant toprovide blast-proof shelter for the missiles whilethey were being stored and serviced.

A 2


Chiefs of Staff as to when the attacks werelikely to begin were also modified from time totime, as our bombing offensive against the" ski sites " got under way.

21. In devising measures to deal with pilot-less aircraft, my staff and I worked in closetouch with General Sir Frederick A. Pile, Bart.,G.C.B., D.S.O., M.C., General Officer Com-manding, Anti-Aircraft Command, and hisstaff, who helped in the preparation of alldetailed plans which involved guns and search-lights as well as fighters.

22. It was clear at the outset that to pre-pare a detailed plan of defence would takeseveral weeks. I therefore decided to submita preliminary outline plan. I took as mypoint of departure the fundamental proposi-tion that a pilotless aircraft was still an aircraft,and therefore vulnerable to the same basicmethods of attack. Of course, as there wasno crew, such an aircraft could not be madeto crash by killing the pilot; on the other hand,it would be incapable of retreat or evasion,except, perhaps, to a very limited extent.*Nevertheless, if the missile should prove inpractice as fast as was believed at first, theperformance of the fighters on which we nor-mally relied would be inadequate.

23. However, on balance, and consideringthe uncertainty of our knowledge, it wouldclearly have been unjustifiable to exclude anyof the normal methods of defence which wewere accustomed to use against piloted air-craft. Accordingly, I recommended in my out-line plan, which I submitted to the Air Com-mander-in-Chief on the i6th December, thataircraft, guns, searchlights, and balloons allbe deployed against pilotless aircraft in sucha manner as to avoid causing mutual inter-ference. I pointed out, however, that the mis-siles might well prove too fast for our fighters,and in any case would make difficult targetsfor A.A. gunners. I recommended, therefore,that the bombing offensive against the instal-lations in France be continued with the utmostvigour. I also asked to be kept informed ofthe progress made by two committees whichhad been set up at the Air Ministry to investi-gate the possibility of radio and electro-mag-netic counter-measures. f

24. During the second half of DecemberGeneral Pile and I completed our detailed planon these lines. On the 2nd January I sub-mitted the plan to the Air Commander-in-Chief,who approved it and submitted it in turn tohigher authority. Meanwhile, the Allied bom-'ber offensive against the " ski sites" wasachieving good results and the likelihood ofImminent attack seemed to be receding. On•22nd January the Chiefs of Staff came to theconclusion that the date by which we mustbe ready for attacks by pilotless aircraft tobegin could safely be put back until the ist

* At that time we believed that the missile couldbe made to turn in the air. In point of fact thiseffect was limited to the first few moments of flight,during which it had to be directed on to its calculatedcourse by an adjustment of the automatic controlmechanism made beforehand.

t Later it was established that the missiles werenot controlled by radio. To divert them by meansof an electro-magnetic field was theoretically possible,but would have needed so much copper and electricpower that it was quite impracticable. Thus neither•investigation produced any positive result.

March; later they postponed it still further,until the middle of the month. Since intensivepreparations for the European operations weredue to begin on the ist April, we were thusfaced with the possibility that the first use ofpilotless aircraft by the Germans might coin-cide with these preparations; or even with theassault itself.

25. Hence, by the time the Chiefs of Staffcame to examine the detailed plan it had beenovertaken by events. Circumstances now calledfor a modified plan which would provide simul-taneously for defence against pilotless aircraftand the needs of the offensive. Early inFebruary the Chiefs of Staff asked that sucha plan should be prepared. In the meantime.General Pile and I received authority to pro-ceed with the administrative arrangementswhich would have to be made before anydeployment on the lines laid down in the exist-ing plan could be ordered.0 '

26. During the next few weeks, therefore, weoverhauled our plan and devised a modifiedversion of it which aimed at meeting the threatfrom pilotless aircraft mainly with resourcesnot directly required for the European opera-tions. We called this' modified version the" Concurrent Air Defence Plan for ' Overlord 'and ' Diver ' ", or, more briefly, the " ' Over-lord '/ ' Diver ' Plan "*. I submitted it to theAir Commander-in-Chief towards the end ofFebruary. After receiving his approval, it wasapproved in turn by the Supreme Commanderand the Chiefs of Staff. On Ath March I gaveinstructions for copies of the plan to be sentto the Commands and Groups which would bedirectly concerned if it were ever put into effect.

27. With minor amendments, this was theplan on which we acted three months later,when the attacks began. Some account of it,and of 'its relationship to the earlier detailedplan out of which it grew, must therefore begiven at this stage. Such an account may pro-vide, perhaps, an insight into the conditionsin which a major defensive operation of thiskind ha,s to be contrived. For in such cases aCommander must not only take into account anumber of factors, political as well as militaryand logistic, which are governed by the cap-abilities of his own side; he must also reckon,first and last and all the time, with what theenemy may have up his sleeve.

28. Both the " Overlord/Diver " Plan andthe earlier plan were based on the fundamentalprinciples postulated for the first outline planof the i6th December. But some of theassumptions which had been made when theoriginal outline and detailed plans were madewere modified by altered circumstances or freshintelligence by the time the second plan wasmade. For example, as I have already pointedout, estimates of the performance of the weaponwhich we had to counter differed from time totime. Again, as the bombing offensive againstthe " ski sites " began to achieve its purpose,the Air Ministry revised their estimates of theprobable scale of attack. But the broad con-cepts which determined the general nature ofour defensive measures remained substantiallyunchanged.

* " Overlord " was the code-name for the Europeanoperations and " Diver " that for pilotless aircraft.


29. Much, therefore, remained common toboth plans. Both plans, for example, relied onthe ability of our existing radar chain stationsto detect pilotless aircraft in the same way asthey detected ordinary aircraft. After takingexpert advice I had come to the conclusion thatthe stations would be able to do this, and thatwe should be able to tell pilotless from pilotedaircraft by " track behaviour "—that is to say,the characteristics of their flight as interpretedby the radar responses. Similarly, membersof the Royal Observer Corps would, pre-sumably, be able to recognise pilotless aircraftby their appearance and the noise they made.*All that was required under this head, then,was to lay down a procedure for reportingpilotless aircraft by the means already in exist-ence, and instruct all concerned in its use.For this both plans provided.

30. Again, at every stage the principal objectthat General Pile and I had in mind was thedefence of London, which was the targetthreatened by the vast majority of the " skisites ". Secondly, we.had to provide for thedefence of Bristol, which was threatened by asmaller number of " ski sites " near Cherbourg.Thirdly, we had to bear in mind the possibilitythat, as a counter-measure to our preparationsfor the European operations, pilotless aircraftmight be used against assembly areas on thesouth coast, and particularly round the Solent.

31. In each case, fighter aircraft were to bethe first line of defence. For the defence ofLondon the{ arrangement envisaged in bothplans was that whenever an attack in daylightseemed imminent, fighters of No. n Groupwould patrol at 12,000 feet on three patrol lines,20 miles oflLthe coast between Beachy Head andDover, over the coastline between Newhavenand Dover, and between Haywards Heath andAshford respectively. Once an attack hadbegun, additional aircraft would patrol theselines at 6,000 feet. At night, fighters wouldpatrol under the control of G.C.I., Type 16,and C.H.L. radar stations, and would be rein-forced, if necessary, by further aircraft underSector control.

32. At Bristol and the Solent the facts ofgeography promised a longer warning and moreroom to manoeuvre as well as a lighter scale ofattack. Consequently I did not propose to flystanding patrols for the defence of those places.Should attacks appear imminent, however,fighters would be held ready to intercept bynormal methods.

33. Under both plans, guns and searchlightswould provide the next line of defence, andwould, of course, become the first line of de-fence if at any time the state of the weatheror any other factor prevented the fighters fromoperating. For the defence of London, GeneralPile and I proposed under the first plan todeploy 400 heavy A.A. guns in folds andhollows on the southern slopes of the NorthDowns, where their radar equipment would beliable to the minimum of interference from" jamming " by the enemy. We also proposedto use 346 light A.A. guns, to be deployedlargely on searchlight sites, and 216 search-lights. Tn front of Bristol we proposed to put96 heavy A.A. guns and 216 light A.A. guns,

* All these assumptions proved correct.

with 132 searchlights. Thirty-two heavy A.A.guns, 242 light A.A. guns and a smaller numberof searchlights would defend the Solent.

34. It was here that the most importantdifferences between the two plans lay. Theoriginal plan called for the deployment of agrand total of 528 heavy and 804 light A.A.guns and more than 350 searchlights. Clearly,to muster as many guns and searchlights as thiswould not be easy. General Pile and I proposedto find half the required number of heavy A.A.guns from within Anti-Aircraft Command bydepleting the defences of places not directlythreatened by pilotless aircraft; the other halfwould have to come from the resources.of 21Army Group and Home Forces, and thus wouldconsist very largely of guns already earmarkedfor the European operations. In the case oflight A.A. guns and also of searchlights, 21Army Group would have to provide an evenhigher proportion of the total.

35. Some risk would, of course, be involvedin removing guns from places like Oxford,.Birmingham, and the Clyde to defend London,Bristol, and the Solent against flying bombs.But the risk was one that I felt we should bejustified in taking, since otherwise there was nopossibility of finding the resources required foradequate defence against the threat from pilot-less aircraft as we conceived it in December,when the plan was made.

36. By February, when we came to draw upthe revised plan, the position had changed.Virtually every gun and searchlight that couldbe spared would shortly be needed for theEuropean operations; and it was essential thatthe " Diver " defences should make thesmallest inroad on the " Overlord " resourcesthat was compatible with an adequate scale ofdefence. Fortunately, the success of the bomb-ing attacks on the " ski sites " held out thehope of achieving an adequate scale of defenceon cheaper terms than had seemed possible twomonths earlier.

37. Accordingly, General Pile and I carefullyreviewed this part of our original plan. Wecame to the conclusion that substantial savingsin both guns and searchlights could and mustbe made. We therefore proposed to reduce thenumber of heavy A.A. guns to be deployed oneach of the sites in the belt defending Londonfrom eight to four. This would save 208 guns.We hoped that by the time the attacks began128 American 90 mm. guns, using electricalpredictors and a new type of radar calledS.C.R.584, might be available to replace acorresponding number of our 3.7-inch guns withtheir mechanical predictors and G.L. Mark IIIradar; for there was every indication that theS.C.R.584 and electrical predictors would beparticularly effective against pilotless aircraft.But as this equipment had yet to arrive fromthe United States and crews be trained in itsuse, we dared not count on it: we thereforeprepared alternative plans to cover either con-tingency. We also proposed to reduce thenumber of light A.A. guns in front of Londonfrom 346 to 246.

38. No reduction in the number of heavyA.A. guns defending Bristol seemed possible,and we decided to leave this figure at 96. Inview of the great need of light A.A. guns for" Overlord " we proposed, however, to reduce


the strength of these from 216 to 36. We alsoproposed to do without searchlights in thisarea, other than those provided by the normallayout. Under the revised plan, all the Bristolguns, both heavy and light, would have to bewithdrawn by " D " Day; but we hoped thatby that date the threat to that city, never veryserious, would have been neutralized bybombing.

39. As for the Solent, fortunately that areawould, in any case, be heavily defended againstorthodox air attack during the final stages ofpreparation for " Overlord ". In these circum-stances no special " Diver " deployment wouldbe needed there, apart from a few searchlights.We visualized, however, a possible re-disposition of the " Overlord " guns to fit themfor a dual role. Here, again, there would be asubstantial saving.

40. Under the original plan, balloons wouldprovide a third line of defence for London. Forthis purpose I had originally proposed to puta permanent* barrage of 480 balloons immedi-ately behind the guns on the high groundbetween Cobham (Kent) in the east and Limps-field in the west. It so happened that I wasalready seeking authority from the Chiefs ofStaff to reduce the balloon defences of thecountry by 500 balloons: by appropriating thissaving to defence against pilotless aircraft theproblem of providing the" " Diver " barragecould be solved. As these balloons were notneeded for " Overlord " there was no needto alter these proposals in the revised plan.

41. It was, then, with the revised planready for action that we awaited the beginningof the German attacks. To say that this planrepresented a compromise between the require-ments of " Overlord " and those of " Diver "would not be strictly true; for the defence of thebase against " Diver " was itself an essential*' Overlord " requirement. But it provided atonce the largest appropriation that could bespared for the job, and the smallest that waslikely to be effective against the threat whichwas 'then foreseen. The number of guns to bedeployed, in particular, was no more than abare minimum. In the circumstances it wasimpossible for us to budget for more guns; butwe took care to frame.'the plan in such a waythat the numbers could easily be increased iffurther guns should happen to become avail-able. I also took the precaution of pointingout thjat if the pilotless aircraft should flybetween 2,000 and 3,000 feet instead of at thegreater altitude expected by the Air Ministry,the guns would have a very awkward task, forbetween those heights the targets would be toohigh for the light anti-aircraft guns and too lowfor the mobile heavy guns which at that timecould not be traversed smoothly enough toengage such speedy missiles.

42. In the event, the threat which materialisedin the summer was to prove a very different onefrom that foreseen in February when the planwas made. This was not only because theheight at which the pilotless aircraft flew hadbeen over-estimated, but also because the fore-casts of the enemy's capabilities with which theAir Ministry provided us were based on

* At that stage lack of communications and manningdifficulties were expected to make the usual systemof control impracticable

knowledge which was incomplete in one im-portant respect. Consequently, when the attackdeveloped we soori found that we needed notonly more than the 288 heavy and 282 lightA.A. guns postulated in the revised plan, butmore than the 528 and 804 respectively forwhich we had budgetted in our original, super-seded plan.*

(b) The Eve of the Attacks43. Ironically enough, the emergence of this

undiscovered factor which upset our calcula-tions was due to the very success with whichwe had bombed and neutralized the " skisites ". By the end of April most of the siteshad been rendered unfit for use. Although theGermans repaired some of them, from that timeonwards there were never at any time morethan ten " ski sites " in a state to fire.

44. Fortunately for them, the Germans soonrealised how vulnerable the " ski sites " were,and began to build other launching sites whichwere more carefully hidden and harder todestroy. By simplifying the plan of construc-tion and using pre-fabricated parts, they wereable to complete these new sites very quickly.

45. Since the armistice the Germans havetold us that they began this new programme ofconstruction in March 1944. However, it wasnot until the 27th April that the first of the" modified sites ", as we called them, was seenon a reconnaissance photograph. By the middleof May twenty such sites had been located, andby the I2th June the number had risen to 66.Forty-two were aligned on London and the reston Bristol or south-coast ports.

46. The " modified sites" made difficultbombing targets. When Typhoon bomberscarried out an experimental attack on one ofthem on the 27th May the site proved hard tofind and the results were poor. Besides beingsmall and well concealed, the sites comprisedfew buildings at which bombs could be aimed.Unlike the " ski sites ", they seemed to beintended as launching points and nothing more.The conclusion was that any stocks of pilotlessaircraft held locally would not be kept on thesites themselves, but stored elsewhere or dis-persed in the wooded country amongst which allthe sites were placed.

47. At least partly for these reasons, we madeno further attacks on the " modified sites "until after the Germans had begun to launchmissiles from them. Meanwhile, the officers atthe Air Ministry and elsewhere who wereresponsible for offensive counter-measures-weredebating whether to attack certain other con-structions, usually referred to as " supplysites ". They believed that these constructionshad something to do with the storage or main-tenance of pilotless aircraft; but they were notsure. Nevertheless, two attacks on one of thesites were made about the end of May. Fromthat time onwards, little was done to hinderthe enemy's final preparations for the offensive.

48. This state of affairs was a natural con-sequence of the awkwardness of the " modifiedsites " as bombing targets, and our uncertain

* The weapons actually deployed in the middle ofAugust, 1944, when the campaign was in full swing,comprised 800 H.A.A. and 1,100 40 mm. L.A.A.guns, over 700 rocket barrels, and some 600 lightguns (mostly 20 mm.) manned by the R.A.F. Regimentand the Royal Armoured Corps.


knowledge of the enemy's plans. I believe,however, that aligned with these causes was apsychological factor. It must be rememberedthat for many months past the chief threathad seemed to come from the " ski sites ".The use of our bomber forces against the " skisites " had therefore been felt as a necessary,but still an unwelcome, diversion of effort at atime when interest was focussed on the comingEuropean operations. To the officers responsiblefor directing offensive operations the success ofthe attacks on the " ski sites." must have comeas a great relief. In the circumstances, theywould have been hardly human if they had notbeen more reluctant than perhaps they realisedto recognise that the neutralization of the " skisites " had not averted the menace after all.

49. I think, therefore, that at the end of Mayand in the first half of June the threat from the" modified sites " was under-estimated, not inthe sense of a failure to apprehend it intel-lectually, but in the sense that it was not feltas keenly as the original threat from the " skisites " six months earlier. If it had been, I donot doubt that the " modified sites " wouldhave been attacked as vigorously then—despitetheir shortcomings as targets—as they were afew weeks later, when " Diver " had begun.

50. Whether this would have had much effecton the subsequent course of events is anothermatter. The question is one to which no finalanswer is possible. My own opinion is that awell co-ordinated series of attacks on the" modified sites" during the weeks immediatelypreceding the " Diver " campaign would havebeen worth making, but that nothing short ofthe destruction of all the sites would have pre-.vented the Germans from using their newweapon sooner, or. later. Nor does my beliefthat the menace of the " modified sites " wasunder-estimated necessarily imply that I thinkthe omission to attack the sites was wrong inthe light of the knowledge available at the time.Even if their dangerousness had been fullyrealised, there would still have been strongarguments against attacking them. And whileit is easy to be wise after the event, at the timethere was no means of knowing how imminentthe danger was. On the contrary, until some36 hours before the first pilotless aircraft waslaunched, such intelligence as was availablesuggested that the " modified sites " were notlikely to be used for several weeks.*

51. The fact remains that during the first halfof June the Germans were able to press on withtheir preparations to bombard us with pilotlessaircraft, virtually unmolested by our bomberforces.

52. At that stage, one of the tasks of myCommand was to prevent German reconnais-sance aircraft from approaching the areas whereour forces were concentrating. In this we suc-ceeded even beyond our expectations. Partly

* On the nth June, however, the Air Ministryreceived a report which stated tiiat a train loadedwith missiles had passed westwards through Belgiumtwo days earlier. On the same day photographicreconnaissance revealed unusual activity at six ofthe " modified sites". This information did notreach my headquarters until after the German offensivehad begun; but little or nothing would have beengained if I had received it earlier, for the defenceplan had been ready since March, and I should nothave ordered deployment merely on the strength ofthese two reports.

on this account, the landings in Normandyearly on the 6th June achieved complete tacticalsurprise. Even on subsequent days, when theGermans had had time to appreciate what wewere doing, air opposition was far from ener-getic. Naturally enough, the Air Commander-in-Chief and his staff were jubilant, and hadlittle time or inclination to think of pilotlessaircraft.

53. It was equally -natural that my staff andI, with our defensive preoccupations, shouldnot entirely share this optimism. It seemed tous that things were going almost too well. Somuch was at stake for the enemy that we darednot believe he would let us have everythingour own way. We could not help suspectingthat he still had something up his sleeve.

(c) The Attacks: First Phase (i^th June to i$thJuly).

54. Events were soon to substantiate ourdoubts. Shortly after midnight/on the nightof the I2th-i3th June the German long-rangeguns opened fire across the Channel. In thisthere was nothing novel; what was unusualwas that for the first and last time during thewar, a town some miles from the coast wasshelled. Eight rounds fell at Maidstone, oneat Otham, two-and-a-half miles to the south-east, and twenty-four at Folkestone. Thebombardment doubtless achieved its purpose,inasmuch as it gave some people the impressionthat a novel weapon was being used andtended to create an atmosphere of uncertaintyand rumour. At least one Me.4io flew overthe London area during this phase and wasshot down by aiiti-aircraft fire near Barking.

55. At 0400 hours the shelling stopped. Afew minutes later an observer on duty at aRoyal Observer Corps post in Kent was passedby an aircraft which made " a swishingsound " and emitted a bright glow from therear. In common with all his colleagues, hehad been briefed to recognise pilotless aircraft;and in .'accordance with his instructions heshouted " Diver ". The missile continuedover the North Downs " making a noise likea model-T Ford going up a hill " and fell toearth with a loud explosion at Swanscombe,near Gravesend, at 0418 hours. During thenext hour three more of the missiles came downat Cuckfield, Bethnal Green, and Platt (nearSevenoaks) respectively. No casualties weresuffered except at Bethnal Green, where sixpeople were killed and nine injured; in additiona railway bridge was demolished.

56. The attack then ceased for the timebeing. • I came to the conclusion that so smallan effort did not justify the major re-disposi-tion of the anti-aircraft defences required bythe " Overlord-Diver " Plan. The Chiefs ofStaff agreed. I therefore gave orders that theplan was not to be put into effect until wecould see more clearly what was going tohappen. In- the meantime the existing defenceswere authorised to engage pilotless aircraft onthe same terms as ordinary aircraft. I hadalready arranged that a visual reconnaissanceof the most likely launching areas should beflown; and at the instance of the Air Ministryseveral attacks were made on three of the so-called " supply sites " on the I3th, I4th andI5th June. These absorbed the whole of thebombing effort that could be spared from other


tasks. Accordingly the " modified sites"still went unmolested, although it is nowknown, and was strongly suspected at the time,that the missiles had been launched from sitesof this class.

57. At 2230 hours on the I5th June theattacks were resumed on a much heavier scale.During the next twenty-four hours the Germanslaunched over 200 pilotless aircraft—or, as wesoon began to call them, flying bombs or" doodle bugs "—of which 144 crossed thecoasts of Kent and Sussex and 73 reachedGreater London. Thirty-three bombs werebrought down by the defences, but eleven ofthese came down in the built-up area ofGreater London.* .

58. Clearly we were confronted on the morn-ing of the i6th June by a situation verydifferent from that of the I3th. I was of theopinion that the time to execute the " Overlord-Diver " Plan had now come; and in the courseof the day the Chiefs of Staff agreed that thisshould be done. That afternoon I attendeda " Staff Conference " over which the PrimeMinister and Minister of Defence presided.One of the decisions then reached was that, inconsultation with General Pile, I should re-distribute the gun, searchlight, and balloondefences " as necessary to counter theattacks ". Another was that for the time beingthe guns inside the London area (as well asthose outside) should continue to engage flyingbombs. We abandoned this arrangement twodays later, after experience had cast doubt onth.e assumption that most of the bombs thatwere hit exploded in the air.

59. Before going to the conference I hadgiven orders for deployment of the " Diver "defences to begin. By the early hours of theI7th June the first A.A. regiment to move hadtaken up its -new positions and the deploymentof the balloon barrage had also begun. Whendrawing up the plan we had calculated thatdeployment would take eighteen days to com-plete and that it would be wiser to allowtwenty-five days; the Air Ministry had expectedto be able to give us a month's warning. Inthe event we had received no warning at all,apart tfnom that provided 'by the Germansthemselves on the I3th June. In the circum-stances it was imperative that we should getthe job done quickly. The original time-tablewent by the board. Thanks to the adminis-trative arrangements which had already beenmade and to remarkable feats by both Anti-Aircraft Command and Balloon Command, thewhole of the planned deployment was virtu-ally complete by the 2ist June, only five daysafter-the issue of the order to deploy.

60. All this time the attacks were continuingat the rate of about 100 flying bombs a day.Our fighters were bringing down about thirtyper cent, of the bombs and the static defencessome eight to ten per cent.; but more thanhalf the bombs which crossed the coast weregetting through to Greater London. I soon

* The figures were :Brought Brought

down outside down insideLondon London

By fighters alone 7 —By guns alone ... ... 14 nBy fighters and guns jointly i —

Totals „ ... ... 22 ii

realised that a scale of static defence whichmight have been adequate against such attacksas eight or ten " ski sites" could havedelivered was not going to suffice against theeffort of which the " modified sites " wereshowing themselves capable. In consultationwith General Pile, therefore, I arranged forthe gun defences to be substantially reinforced.By mid-day on the 28th June 363 heavy and522 light A.A. guns were in action. Furtherweapons, including light guns manned by theRoyal Air Force Regiment, anti-aircraft tanksof the Royal Armoured Corps, and rocketprojectors, were either in position or on theway. I also arranged for the strength of theballoon barrage to be doubled.

61. Meanwhile Tempest V, Spitfire XIV,Spitfire XII, Spitfire IX, Typhoon, and atnight Mosquito aircraft of No. n Group hadbeen in action against flying bombs since thebeginning of the main attack. As we haveseen, their rate of success at this stage amountedto about thirty per cent, of all the bombswhich crossed or approached the coast. Onthe i6th June I had issued orders defining theirarea of patrol as the Channel and the landbetween the coast and the southern limit of thegun-belt, and prohibiting them from passingover the gun-belt except when actually pursu-ing a flying bomb. I soon found that in goodweather the fighters were much more successfulthan the guns, which were badly hamperedby the fact that the flying bombs did not flyat the height of 6,000 or 7,000 feet previouslyestimated by the Air Ministry, but at that veryheight of 2,000 to 3,000 feet which we hadalways realised would make the gunner's taskmost difficult.* On the other hand, when theweather was bad, poor visibility hampered thefighters, and hi these conditions the guns werelikely to prove the more effective weapon.Accordingly, I arranged on the igth June thatin very good weather the guns should abstainfrom firing in order to give the fighters com-plete freedom of action. Conversely, when theweather was bad, the guns would have freedomof action and no fighters would be used. Inmiddling weather fighters would operate infront of the gun belt and enter it only whenpursuing a flying bomb. When a fighter enteredthe gun belt for this purpose the guns would,of course, withhold their fire; otherwise theguns inside the belt would be free to fire up to8,000 feet. Outside the gun belt gunfire wasprohibited in these circumstances, except thatlight A.A. gunners linked to the communica-tions network might open fire on targets theycould see, provided no fighters were about.

62. These rules for engagement, which I.ordered to be codified and issued to those con-cerned on the 26th June, were intended to pre-vent mutual interference between guns andfighters. For reasons which I shall explainlater, they did not altogether achieve this aim.But before coming to this question it will beappropriate to review the progress of the Ger-man attacks and of our counter-measures up tothe date in the middle of July when the questionof an important change in our defence plancame to a head.

* Originally the Germans meant the bombs to flyhigher, doubtless so as to minimize the effect of lightA.A. fire. This proved impracticable, and withoutthe knowledge of the Air Ministry they changed theirplans.


63. The scale of attack for 'the first two weekswas, as I have said, of the order of 100 bombsa day. After a period of deliberation at theoutset, the authorities responsible for offensivecounter-measures embarked on a series of bomb-ing attacks on the "modified sites". A numberof sites were neutralized, but the number re-maining was always sufficient to have launcheda scale of attack several times greater than thatwhich we actually experienced. In other words,the factor limiting the German effort was notthe number of sites available, but somethingelse—most probably the rate at which the flyingbombs could be supplied to the sites. It wastherefore arguable that the attacks on the" modified sites " amounted to locking thestable door after the horse had been stolen, andwere a waste of effort. The authorities decidedto continue the attacks, however, in order toharass the launching crews and thereby reducetheir efficiency. I cannot say how far thatobject was achieved, since my staff were nevervable to establish any statistical relationshipbetween the bombing attacks on the " modifiedsites |f and the rate or quality of the enemy'sfire. The Germans have told us since thearmistice, however, that the bombing of the" modified sites " made little difference to them.

64. At the same time the authorities respon-sible for offensive counter-measures appreciatedthat the factor limiting the scale of attack wasprobably supply. Information from intelligencesources cast increasing doubt on the relevanceof the so-called "supply sites" and showed thatthe key-positions were probably certain under-ground storage depots situated in limestonequarries in the valley of the Oise and anabandoned railway tunnel in Champagne.Successful bombing attacks were made onseveral of these depots, and in two instanceswere followed by a noticeable decline in thescale of attack. In both cases, however, theeffect was only temporary. Apparently theGermans were able to improvise other channelsof supply. Hence, while I was much relievedby the offensive counter-measures undertakenby the Tactical and Strategic Air Forces, Irealised that they were not likely to put a stopto the German attacks. The loss or preservationof thousands of lives, much valuable property,and a substantial productive capacity, wouldturn on our ability to provide an effectivesystem of defence for London with theresources under my operational control. Atthat time our land forces in France had notadvanced beyond the lodgment area: the cap-ture of the launching sites in the imminentfuture seemed very doubtful. The flying-bomb attapks might well go on for manymonths*

65. And in fact the attacks continued at thesame rate of roughly 100 flying bombs a dayuntil the end of the first week in July, whenthe effort fell for about ten days to an averageof less than 70 a day. This decline may havebeen partly due to good weather, for the Ger-mans usually saved their biggest efforts fordays when the weather was likely to hamperthe defences. But I incline to the view thatit was largely the result of a specially successfulattack on one of the main storage depots whichwas made by Bomber Command on the nightof the 7th July. Except during this samesecond week in July, 'when both good weatherand a reduced scale of attack helped our

fighters to shoot down a higher proportion ofthe bombs than usual, about half the bombsthat crossed the English coast went on reach-ing Greater London. In sum, during the fiveweeks which ended at sunrise on the I5th July,just under 3,000 flying bombs came within thecompass of the defensive system.* Our fightersshot down rather more than a tenth of theminto the sea, and a few were brought • downinto the sea by A.A. fire or fell into it of theirown accord. Of the remaining 2,500 odd whichcrossed the coast, fighters, guns, and balloonsrespectively destroyed or brought down abouthalf over the land, fighters claiming ten andguns four casualties to every one claimed bythe balloon defences.

66. Outwardly these results were not too bad.Nevertheless, I was far from satisfied that thedefences were working properly. In the firstplace, an average of 25 bombs a day was stillreaching Greater London. The overall averagesince the beginning of the attacks amounted tonearly 40 bombs a day. London had enduredheavier bombing than this in 1940; but forvarious reasons an intermittent drizzle of malig-nant robots seemed harder to bear than thestorm and thunder of the " Blitz ". Nor werethe material results of the bombardment in-considerable. Between the I3th June and theI5th July it killed about 3,000 people, seriouslyinjured 10,000, and irreparably damaged13,000 houses. Although no objectives of vitalimportance to the war effort were hit, manypublic buildings such as churches, hospitals,and schools appeared in the casualty list.

67. Secondly, although the performance ofthe defences as a whole had improved continu-ously since the beginning of th'e attack, andalthough the fighters had done particularly wellduring the« last two weeks, I saw many signsthat the limit of improvement with our existingmethods had been reached. I was reluctantlyconvinced that unless some radical change wasmade, the future was more likely to bring aslow decline than further progress.

68. The circumstances which led me to -thisview can0 only be understood by reference tothe special problems of the various arms of thedefence. In order to gain an intimate know-ledge of those problems I had decided early inthe attack to share in the fighter operations asa pilot, using various aircraft in turn. Personalexperience convinced me that the first problemconfronting the fighters was the speed of thebombs, which was rather greater than we hadexpected before the attacks began, f Thefastest aircraft I had were a wing of TempestVs and a wing of Spitfire XIVs. These couldnot be everywhere at once. One of my firstmoves, therefore, was to obtain the Air Com-mander-in-Ohief s consent to my borrowing atfirst a flight and later a wing of Mustang Illsfrom the Second Tactical Air Force. These air-craft were very fast at the height at which thebombs flew and made a valuable contribution

* This figure does not include " abortive " bombswhich fell in France or into the sea on the French sideof the Channel. It seems that the Germans launchedfive flying bombs for every four that came withinthe compass of the defences.

•f Most of the bombs seem to have left the launchingsites at about 200 m.p.h. Their speed increasedthroughout their flight, reaching about 340 m.p.h. at'-the English coast and 400 m.p.h. or thereabouts overLondon.


to the improved results achieved by the fightersafter the first week in July. By the I5th JulyI was using a total of thirteen single-enginedand nine twin-engined (Mosquito) squadronsagainst flying bombs. Six of the Mosquitosquadrons alternated between this work andoperations over the lodgment area, two of themdoing bomber-support work as well. 1 foundthat, while some pilots took readily to the workof shooting down flying bombs, the majoritypreferred shooting down enemy aircraft • overFrance. To instil enthusiasm for the novel andimpersonal business of shooting at pilotlessmissiles, and ensure that pilots were not keptlong enough at the task to make them stale,was not the least of my anxieties.

69. In order to get as much speed as possible,I arranged that aircraft which were to be usedexclusively against flying bombs should bestripped of their armour and all unnecessary ex-ternal fittings, and that their paint should beremoved and their outer surfaces polished. Theengines were modified to use 150-octane fueland accept a higher boost than usual. In thisway we managed to increase the speed of someof the single-engined fighters by as much as30 m.p.h.

70. Even with these modifications thefighters had only a small margin of speed overthe flying bombs. Nevertheless they did havea margin. It was reported that a demonstra-tion by a German pilot with a captured Spit-fire had convinced Hitler that our fighterscould not catch the flying bomb. This wastrue of the Spitfire V, and almost true of theSpitfire IX; but it was not true of the SpitfireXIV or the Tempest. Even so, these aircraft(had no, more than a fractional superiority.Hence the problem was essentially one of timeand space. For interception over the sea weused a method of close control from radarstations on the coast, or alternatively a methodof running commentary. At best the radarchain could give about six minutes' warningbefore the flying bombs reached the coast; butin practice the time available to the fightersover the sea was always less than-this, notonly because of inevitable time-lags but be-cause we dared not risk our modified aircrafton the far side of the Channel, where theymight be surprised by German fighters. Laterthe Royal Navy were to come to our assistanceby providing a chain of small craft whichoperated at three mile intervals seven miles'"off the French coast, carrying observers whowarned our pilots by means of signal rocketsand star-shells that flying bombs were on theirway. This improvised system was in the finalstages of development about the time when themain attack came to a close.

71. Over the land we used the method ofrunning commentary from radar stations' andRoyal Observer Corps Centres, supplementedby various devices such as signal rockets, shell-bursts, and searchlight beams, for indicatingthe approach of flying bombs to patrollingpilots. The weakness of this method was thatsometimes several pilots would go after thesame flying bomb, leaving other bombs to slipthrough unmolested. However, there wasnothing else we could do, for the absence oflow-looking radar made close control over theland imoracticable.

72. The majority of the flying bombs crossedthe coast between Cuckmere Haven and St.Margaret's Bay. The distance thence to thesouthern edge of the gun belt was in mostplaces about 30 miles. The flying bombscovered this distance in five minutes. Fiveminutes, then, was the time available to thepilot of an overland fighter to select his target,get within range of it, and shoot it down, un-less- gunfire had been restricted or he tookadvantage of the rule which allowed him toenter the belt in pursuit of his quarry. In thiscase he would have an extra minute or sobefore he reached the balloon barrage. Thusthere was rarely time for a stern chase unlessthe pursuer started with a substantial advant-age in height. On the whole the most effectiveprocedure was to fly on roughly the samecourse as an approaching bomb, allow it todraw level, and fire deflection shots as itpassed, being careful not to fire when it wascloser than 200 yards lest it should explodein the air and blow up the attacker.* The hotgases emitted by a bomb immediately in frontof the fighter made a steady aim difficult, sothat short bursts and frequent aiming correc-tions were required. Usually several burstswere needed to inflict enough damage to ex-plode the *bomb or bring it down. Anothermethod useful on occasions but hardly suitablefor general adoption, was to get close besidethe target and tip it over by inserting the wingof the fighter underneath that of the bomb andthen raising it sharply.

73. Thus, in many respects the fighters hada stiff task. That which faced the guns was,if anything, more awkward still. Theoretic-ally, pilotless aircraft ought to have made idealtargets for anti-aircraft artillery, since theyflew on courses which could be accurately pre-dicted from the data on which the technicaldevices normally employed had been designed-to work. For the first time in the war, thegunners were presented with targets that couldnot dodge. In practice this advantage wasoutweighed by the speed of the missiles andthe critical height at which they flew. Theywere too high and went too fast to make goodtargets for light A.A. guns, but were too lowand crossed the field of vision of the heavyA.A. gunners too swiftly to give adequate timefor the radar and predictors to be used and theguns be laid by hand. These difficulties couldoe minimised so far as the heavy guns wereconcerned by replacing the mobile guns used inthe original " Diver " deployment by staticguns which could be electrically elevated andtraversed and were fitted with improved fusesetters and other devices which made themquicker to operate and more accurate. Unfor-tunately the static guns required concrete em-placements which took some time to instal.A steel mattress, known as the " Pile Mat-tress," which was devised by the R.E.M.E.detachment at Anti-Aircraft Command pro-vided a way out of the difficulty; and the taskof replacing the mobile guns by static gunswas started towards the end of June.

* During the first six weeks of the attacks alone,eighteen fighters were substantially damaged and fivepilots and one Navigator/Radio Operator killed inthis way. Even though the flying bomb could nothit back deliberately, " Diver " patrols were by nomeans unattended by risk.


74. Another change which General Pilelound necessary at an early stage - was theremoval to higher ground of the radar sets be-longing to the heavy guns. At the start thesewere placed in hollows because the " Over-lord/Diver " Plan had been made in anticipa-tion of attempts at " jamming " by the enemy."Successful bombing attacks during the " Over-lord " preparations had, however, virtuallydeprived the Germans of this resource, and soit was possible to move the sets to more exposed .positions in which the contours of the ground•caused less interference.

75. Another variation from the plan concernedthe light guns. Originally these were to havebeen deployed on searchlight sites, but afterthe attacks had begun, General Pile came tothe conclusion that better results would beachieved by concentrating them in front of theheavy gun belt. He also found that by linkingtroops of four guns each to a heavy-gun pre-dictor and G.L. radar set he could use the lightA.A. guns against " unseen" as well as"" visual " targets.

76. Towards the end of June we began toreceive the S.C.R. 584 radar sets and improvedpredictors which we had been eagerly expect-ing since February. These two items of equip-ment were destined to contribute very largelyto the ultimate success of the guns. An inten-sive training programme which had to beorganised with such resources as could bespared from operations was, however, indis-pensable before they could be used on anyconsiderable scale.

77. With the balloon barrage the problemwas largely the arithmetical one of achievinga sufficient density to give a reasonable chanceof success. We found, however, that in prac-tice the theoretically computed rate of successwas not always attainea: somehow morebombs slipped through the barrage than shouldhave done so according to the laws of proba-bility, if our assumptions were correct. Onedifficulty was that the " double parachutelinks"* used to arm the balloon cables in normalbarrages had not been designed to cope withaircraft travelling much faster than 300 m.p.h.For this reason we did not arm the cables ofthe balloons deployed during the first few daysof the attack. But we soon came to the con-clusion that an imperfect arming device wasbetter than none; and by the 2ist June allcables were armed. I received a large numberof suggestions for increasing the effectivenessof the barrage in other ways, such as by adding" whiskers ", nets, kites, and other forms ofdrapery. Many devices of this kind were tried,and some were of value, but as most of themincreased the physical difficulty of handlingthe balloons in one way or another, I had toadopt a somewhat cautious attitude lest thebest should prove the enemy of the good.

• 78. A slight re-disposition of the barrageproved necessary in order to prevent bombswhich penetrated to its northern edge from be-ing brought down in built-up areas. The notion

* The " double parachute link" was a devicewhereby, as soon as a balloon cable was struck, it•was automatically severed near the top and bottom,so that the aircraft which struck it^carried away thecentral portion. Parachutes then opened at eachend of this portion and exercised a drag intended tomake the aircraft stall.

of keeping the balloons up in all weathers—which was contained in the original " Over-lord/Diver " Plan but afterwards abandoned—was considered a second time after the attackhad begun, but once more found impracticable.We therefore used a system of control whichwas less flexible than that used for normalbarrages, but served its purpose adequately.In order that our pilots should not lose theirlives by colliding with the barrage we perpetra-ted a pious fraud on them by allowing them tobelieve that the balloons would fly continuously.

79. So much for the problems that con-fronted the individual arms of the defence andthe chief measures taken to solve them. Therewere, of course, many smaller problems withwhich I have not space to deal. But thebiggest problem of all .was not confined to onearm: it was of wider consequence and con-sisted in securing the right kind and degree ofco-operation between guns and fighters. Sincein a sense these were rival weapons, the taskhad always been a troublesome one from theearly days of the war; nevertheless, so far asoperations against orthodox aircraft were con-cerned, with experience a satisfactory workingsolution had been found. During the " BabyBlitz," for example, the co-operation betweenguns and fighters had been most satisfactory.I found, on the other hand, that as the Ger-mans must have intended, the novel problempresented by the flying bomb created a hostof new difficulties. For example, it was some-times hard for a pilot to realise that 'he wasapproaching the gun belt in time to avoid in-fringing the rule against entering it. Con-versely, gunners in the belt who were engaginga flying bomb did not always realise in time thata pilot was legitimately entering the belt inpursuit of this or another missile, and wouldgo on firing to the peril of the pilot's life.The crews of the guns on the coast and else-where outside the gun-belt were in a still moredifficult position, for except in bad weatherthey always bore the onus of ensuring that nofighters were about before they could open fire.In the excitement of the moment, when theattention of the gunners was concentrated ontheir targets, it was only too easy for a fightertravelling at six miles a minute to slip un-noticed into the field of fire. Consequentlynumerous infringements of the gun-belt byfighters, and many unintentional engagementsof our fighters by the guns, were reported,especially in middling weather when guns andfighters were simultaneously in operation.Charges and counter-charges mounted; andwith deep misgiving I began to sense a risingfeeling of mutual distrust between pilots andgunners.

80. I felt very strongly that this state ofaffairs could not be allowed to continue. Ifthe causes of friction were not removed, thesituation would inevitably grow worse. As thefirst four weeks of the attack went by, theoverall achievement of the defences improved.To all appearances, the machine was growingmore efficient. But this improvement broughtme scanty satisfaction. I knew that the pointwould soon be reached at which this frictionwould become the limiting factor, and no fur-ther improvement would be possible. Lookingfurther ahead, I realised that, whatever tem-porary advantages our existing practice mightbring, we eould not afford to sacrifice the spirit


of co-operation between gunners and pilotswhich had been steadily built up in the past.

81. I came to the conclusion that the onlysolution was to give guns and fighters freedomeach in their own sphere. On the loth July,therefore, I decided to prohibit fighters fromentering' the gun-belt, whatever the circum-stances, after the I7th July. At a conferenceheld to discuss this change, General Pile pointedout that an obvious corollary to it was to moveall the guns inside the belt, so as to have themall in one place and provide both guns andfighters with clearly-defined spheres of opera-tion. The logic of this argument was irre-futable; and I agreed to examine detailed pro-posals for moving all the guns into the beltexcept a few which would remain on the coastto act as " markers ".

82. The great advantage of the principle ofseparate spheres of operation for guns andfighters- was that it would lessen the chancesof misunderstanding by creating a clear-cutsituation. It would also ease the task of thegunners by giving them a free hand in theirown territory. Not the least important pointwas that when not in action they would alwaysbe free to train, whereas under the existingarrangements when gunfire was restricted andfighters were operating they were condemnedby the presence of our aircraft to an enervatinginaction. At the same time the change wouldreduce the field of action open to the fighters.In order that the necessity for making thissacrifice might be clear to pilots, I instructedmy Deputy Senior Air Staff Officer, Air Com-modore G. H. Ambler, C.B.E., A.F.C., to pre-pare an explanation which could be circulatedto lower formations At this stage no questionof changing the geographical position of thegun-belt had been raised.

(d) The Re-deployment of Ihe Guns (mid-July).

83. Nevertheless, there were strong argumentsin favour of such a move. Originally we haddeployed the guns on the North Downs largelybecause the " Overlord/Diver " Plan had beendrawn up at a time when jamming of ourradar by the Germans was a threat which couldnot be neglected. The desire to reduce thisthreat or minimise its effects if carried out haddone much to dictate this choice of situation.Now, as we have seen, by D-Day successfulbombing of German wireless and radar stationshad virtually removed tihe possibility of jam-ming. This fact and its significance had ndtbecome fully apparent until after deploymenthad begun.* Consequently we had carriedout the deployment as planned, though shortlyafterwards, as already related, General Pilehad taken advantage of the absence ofjamming to move some of the heavy-gun radarsets to better and more exposed positions withinthe original deployment area.

84. By the middle of July what had been areasonable hope a month before had becomea practical certainty. Clearly, little dangerfrom jamming need be feared. Consequently

* It is true that by D-Day at the latest we knewthat heavy damage had been done to the Germantransmitters. But until experience had shown thatin consequence the Germans were manifestly unableto jam, General Pile and I would not have beenjustified in departing from the plan on that account.

there was no need to hide the guns and theirradar sets away in folds of the Downs if abetter position could be found for them. Was>there such a better position, and where was it?

85. These questions were far from simple.The guns could not really be considered in.isolation; they were part of a defensive system,which also included fighters, searchlights, andballoons. If, nevertheless, the subject was-approached from the sole viewpoint of theoperational effectiveness of the guns, there wasmuch to be said for moving the gun-belt awayfrom the Downs and putting it on the coast.In this position the gunners would get a betterview of their targets; the hampering effect ofground echoes on their radar sets would be-reduced to a minimum; and they would beable to use shells fitted with " proximityfuses ", which were potentially more effec-tive than normally-fused shells, but could notbe used inland because they were dangerous to-life and property. Added to this was the im-portant point that if the guns were on thecoast the majority of the bombs that theybrought down would fall harmlessly into thesea.

86. From a more general aspect there wasone weighty argument against moving the gunsto the coast. To do so would split the opera-tional area of the fighters into two, and thus,to all appearances, infringe the principle ofseparate and plear-cut spheres of operation,for guns and fighters which I was anxious toestablish. Up till then the fighters had beenby far the most successful weapon against fly-ing-bombs; out of 1,192 bombs which had been,destroyed or brought down up to sunrise onthe i3th July, they had accounted for 883.No move which threatened to impair their effec-tiveness was to be undertaken lightly. Still,to a great extent interception over the sea andinterception over the land were already separateproblems. Hence in practice the disadvantageof having three spheres of operation for guns-and fighters instead of two would not be sogreat as it looked at first sight.

87. These considerations struck Air Com-modore Ambler with great force when he satdown to write the explanation of the new rulesfor engagement which I had instructed him toprepare. The correctness of the decision tobanish fighters from the gun-belt was not inquestion; nor did he dissent from the proposalto put all the guns in one place. But -he feltthat to bring this about by moving the gunsalready on the coast to the North Downs wasonly going half-way. What was wanted was to*put all the guns together in the place wherethey could function best. In his considered'view this meant adopting 'the opposite course,and sending forward the guns already on theDowns to join those on the coast. The dis-advantage of splitting the operational area ofthe fighters would, he thought, be more thanoutweighed by the increase in effectiveness ofthe guns in the latter position.

88. To clarify his mind, Air CommodoreAmbler incorporated his arguments in a formalappreciation. Armed with this document, hecame to see me on the morning of the I3th Julyand put his views before me.

intea oy some lamty tecnmcajthe tactical theory behind the


moving all the guns to the coast was sound.At the same time I learned that Sir RobertWatson-Watt, the Scientific Adviser on' Tele-communications to the Air Ministry, had madean independent study of the problem andreached substantially the same conclusions asAir Commodore Ambler. Sir Robert's opinion,coming from such a distinguished pioneer ofradar, carried all the more weight -since betterconditions for the radar equipment of the gunswas one of the main advantages claimed forthe proposed change.

90. On the other hand the matter had neces-sarily to be considered Ifrom many aspectsbesides that to which Air Commodore Ambler,as an Air Staff Officer, had properly confinedhimself. Even if I accepted the argument thatthe material and moral effect on pilots ofsplitting their sphere of operation into twowould be no worse than that of excluding themfrom the existing gun-belt, many practical andadministrative factors had still to be takeninto account. Hundreds of guns, with all theirequipment, were now in position on the Downs.Great reserves of ammunition had been col-lected there. Thousands of miles of telephonecables had been laid over a period of sixmonths. Accommodation had been found orimprovised for the gunners. The best positionsavailable for the guns themselves and theirequipment had been selected. In short, a smallcity was spread out between Redhill and theThames. The proposal was that we shouldpick up this city bodily and transport it thirtyor forty miles further south. On top of this,for the last two weeks men had been busybuilding permanent emplacements for the gunsamong the apple orchards and on the slopesof the chalk hills in Kent and Surrey. Theorganism was taking root. To transplant itmight still be possible, but would not longremain so. Air Commodore Ambler's pro-posal, with all its consequences, must be en-dorsed or rejected without delay.

91. I decided to think the matter over duringthe day and hold a conference late that after-noon, primarily for the purpose of discussingIt with General Pile. In the meantime I tooksteps to acquaint him with the proposal sothat he might be in a position to give a con-sidered opinion when the time came. Myreflections were punctuated by the intermittentclatter of the bombs, which continually re-minded me of the hourly toll of lives andproperty. The attack that day was the lightestwe had had yet; nevertheless sixteen flyingbombs crashed into Greater London.

92. General Pile came to the conference withthree of his staff. At my request, Sir RobertWatson-Watt also attended, as did the AirOfficer Commanding, No. n Group, with twoof his staff, a representative of the Air Com-mander-in-Chief, and several of my own staffofficers.

93. I opened the conference by outlining thesituation. I then asked General Pile whetherhe supported the proposal to move all theguns to the coast, leaving the balloons wherethey were, and creating two areas for fighters,one between the balloons and the new gun-belt, and the other in front of the gun-belt,over the sea. He replied that he was in fullagreement with it: and in fact, the merits ofsiting the guns along the coast had been underconsideration in A A. Command for some time.

From the gunners' point of view, such a de-ployment would present notable advantages.General Pile now proposed that the guns bedeployed between St. Margaret's Bay andBeachy Head, and asked that they be givenfreedom of /action inside a strip extending10,000 yards out to sea and 5,000 yards inland.

94. Air Vice-Marshal Saunders, the AirOfficer Commanding, No. n Group, might havebeen expected to demur, since the plan wouldthrow a barrier across the area in which hisfighters operated. On the contrary, hewelcomed the proposal, which he said was" certainly the most satisfactory plan thathad yet been produced ". Sir Robert Watson-Watt also spoke in favour of the plan, andundertook to produce improved radar equip-ment for controlling fighters over the sea.

95. On hearing these opinions, which con-firmed ihe conviction that had been growingin my mind throughout the day, I lecided toadopt the plan. This left two courses open tome. On the one hand, since the foices whichI intended to re-dispose had already beenallotted to me for the defence of London againstflying bombs, and no move of guns from onedefended area to another was involved, I mightrsgard the change as a tactical one and act atonce on my own responsibility. On the otherh:md, bearing in mind that no move involvingso many guns had ever been made on purelytactical grojnds before, I might adopt a moreprescriptive attitude and refer the matter tohigher authority first, as I should have done,for example, if I had proposed to move gunsfrom, say, Manchester to the " Diver " belt,or from Birmingham to Bristol.

96. I decided in favour of the former course.I felt that the situation had reached such apoint that no delay could be accepted. If thework on the gun-emplacements on the Downswere allowed to proceed even for another week,the opportunity to shift the guns would be lost.They must be shifted now, or anchored wherethey were. It seemed to me, rightly or wrongly,that if I were to pause and consult higherauthority at this juncture, controversialquestions of such magnitude might arise andthe further authorities who might claim to beconsulted would be so numerous, that I shouldnot reasonably be able to count on a decisionbefore it was too late. Time was running out.It was now or never.

97. I therefore gave instructions before themeeting closed for the new arrangements to beset in train forthwith. General Pile returned tohis headquarters, and within a few hours ad-vance parties were on their way to the coast.

98. During the following week vehicles ofAnti-Aircraft Command travelled an aggregatedistance of two-and-three-quarter million milesin consequence of this decision. Stores andammunition weighing as much as two battle-ships, as well as the guns themselves and 23,000men and women, were moved to the coast, andtelephone cables long enough in the aggregateto have stretched from London to New Yorkwere laid. By dawn on the I7th July all theheavy guns were in action in their newpositions, where they were joined by the lightguns two days later.

99. After the conference I acquainted the AirCommander-in-Chief with its outcome. Heasked me whether we could "not make a trial


deployment on a small stretch of the coast.I replied that half-measures would be worsethan useless, and that, taking the view that nomore than a tactical re-orientation of resourcesalready at my disposal was involved, I haddecided to order the complete move on my ownresponsibility, and in fact had done so. Inaccordance with his custom where purely de-fensive measures were concerned, he did notquestion my judgment and made no furthercomment.

100. I was greatly relieved to hear thatevening that the move had begun without ahitch, for I was convinced that, whatever therisks involved, we were now on the right track.I had made my decision in full knowledge ofthe issues at stake and the responsibilities whichI was incurring. I was aware that theimmediate effect on the performance of thefighters was bound to be adverse, and that ifimproved results from the guns did not counter-balance this loss within a few weeks, and thingswent wrong, I alone should be held to blame.

101. In the event, I did not have to wait solong. Within a few days the Air Ministry in-formed me officially that the Air Staff con-sidered that I ought not to have ordered amajor re-deployment of the guns without priorreference to themselves. The move itself wasnot explicitly disapproved, but I was left in nodoubt that thenceforward I should be heldpersonally responsible for the outcome and thatany blame or credit that might accrue wouldbe laid upon my head.

102. Despite this intimation the Air Staff con-tinued to give me full support; and I foundthat at the price of incurring a formal strictureI had purchased an appreciably greater degreeof operational freedom than I had hithertoenjoyed. This was to be invaluable in sub-sequent operations. Happily the performanceof the guns in their new positions vindicatedthe change of plan before many weeks wereout, thus proving incontestably the soundnessof the deployment which had grown out of AirCommodore Ambler's proposal. The Air Staffwere as good as their word in the matter ofresponsibility for the decision to move the guns;and the effect of the move on the operationalresults eventually obtained received notice in aletter of approbation sent by the Air Councilto my Command at the close of the mainattack.

(e) The Attacks: Second Phase (ijth Julyto ist September).

103. Nevertheless the next few weeks werean anxious time. The new system went intoeffect at dawn on the iyth July. During thefollowing six days 204 bombs reached GreaterLondon out of 473 that came within the com-pass of the defences. These figures reflected asubstantially lower rate of destruction than thatachieved during the last week under the oldsystem, although a somewhat better one thanwe had obtained during the first four weeksof the attacks, before the defences had got intotheir stride. Analysis of the week's figuresshowed that—as critics of the new plan hadpredicted—improved results from the guns andfrom an expanded and denser balloon barragehad not sufficed to outweigh a sharp declinein the achievement of the fighters.

104. Still, it was encouraging that the per-formance of the guns had improved at allduring a week which had begun witht a majorupheaval and afforded little time for the-gunners to get used to their new positions. As-for the decline in the performance of "thefighters, this was no more than I had expected.I was not disheartened. Thanks to the energyand skill of the operational and administrativestaffs of all Services concerned, the change fromthe old system to the new had been made with-out any serious setback. The machine hadbeen brought safely to its new position. Itwas in running order, as witness, for example,the bringing down of sixty bombs between sun-set on the 20th and sunset on the 2ist July.*Already the' gunners were showing that theyknew how to make good use of their opportu-nities. I felt that one of my main tasks mustnow be to ensure that the forces directly undermy command were made thoroughly familiarwith their part in the new plan.

105. I realised that this was a task 1 mustundertake myself. My own staff had theirhands full: to devise and apply measureswhich would ensure that the safety of our ownaircraft was not endangered by the " Diver ""defences was only one of many duties thatcalled for much careful staff work and pains-taking liaison. The Air Officer Commanding,.No. ii Group, and his staff were preoccupiedwith matters arising out of the operations inNormandy. Realising that this would be so,I had arranged that the Sector Headquarters-at Biggin Hill should become a co-ordinatingcentre for " Diver ". I found, however, thatthe practical, hour-to-hour supervision of opera-tions left the Sector Commander and his staffwith little time for other work; and it seemedto me that, in any case, the study and dis-semination of tactical doctrine and the pro-motion of disciplined enthusiasm amongstpilots faced with a novel weapon ought to pro-ceed, from a rather higher level than that of aSector Headquarters.

106. I daresay that, if the circumstances hadbeen slightly different, the best answer to this,problem might have been the creation of a TaskForce commanded by an officer of air rankanswerable to myself for all fighter operationsagainst flying bombs. It would have beennecessary to make such an officer responsiblefor studying tactical methods and the techniqueof improvised training under operational con-ditions, as well as for the actual conduct ofoperations. This would have meant giving hima small staff. I had not the resources to dothis, nor the smallest chance of persuading theAir Ministry to provide them. Indeed, in thecircumstances this hope would have been quiteunreasonable, and I did not entertain it. I feltthat this was a case where I must give a directlead to the Station and Squadron Commandersconcerned with flying bombs.

* This figure was made up as follows :Bombs brought down by

Guns alone ... 23Fighters alone 19Guns and fighters jointly ... IThe balloon barrage ... ... 17

60


107. Here my practice of sharing actively,and frequently in the fighter operations stoodme in good stead. Trying to shoot down a mis-sile travelling at six miles a minute while fly-ing at the same speed and a height of perhapsa thousand feet across a narrow belt of undu-lating country bounded by balloons and gunswas a business whose subtleties were not readilyappreciable from an office chair. I found thata practical acquaintance with this business hadits uses. Not only did it help me to acquirea fund of tactical knowledge that I could hardlyhave gained in any other way; above all itenabled me to talk on a basis of commonunderstanding and endeavour with the pilotswhose devotion it was my task to foster.

108. An incidental advantage of the abolitionof the inland gun-belt was that it gave thesearchlights, which remained when the gunshad gone, more scope to assist night fighters.Another unlooked-for benefit of the move wasthat it brought the headquarters of the A.A.Batteries close to the bases from which* ourfighters were operating. Immediate and per-sonal contact between Battery Commandersand Station Commanders suddenly became pos-sible and even easy. I found during my firstvisits to stations after the move that advantagewas not always being taken of this proximity.I was shown—as I had been shown for thelast five weeks—aircraft whose pilots allegedthat the guns had fired at them; I was shownmarks of damage said to have been thus in-flicted, and fragments of shell-casing whichappeared to have entered aircraft or fallen onairfields. In each case I suggested that theStation Commander concerned should pocketthe more portable of these exhibits and, armedwith this evidence, go and discuss his griev-ances, real or imaginary, with the local Battery"Commander.

109. The hint was taken. The consequenceswere profound and striking. As a result ofthese meetings between Station and BatteryCommanders, the first requisite of understand-ing between two parties whose interests mustoccasionally conflict—the realisation that theother side also has a viewpoint—was attained.The mists of suspicion whose gathering hadtroubled me so much were dispersed almostovernight. -On subsequent visits to the samestations I was again shown aircraft that hadsuffered minor damage from anti-aircraft fire.But this time, instead of having to listen togrievances against the gunners, I was told ofpilots who had flouted discipline and goodsense by venturing too near the guns. In short,pilots and gunners were beginning to under-stand one another's* problems and work to-gether. Unity was restored. The processreached its climax towards the close of themain attack. Flying towards the south coaston the 28th August, I could see over RomneyMarsh a wall of black smoke marking the posi-tion of the " Diver " barrage. From time totime a fresh salvo would be added to repairthe slow erosion of the wind. On the far sideof the barrage fighters were shooting downflying bombs into the Channel; on the nearerside more fighters waited on its fringe to pounceon the occasional bomb that got so far. Thewhole was as fine a spectacle of co-operationas any commander could wish to see.

no. That day 97 bombs approached theseshores. The defences brought down 90* andonly four reached London.

in. Some weeks before this the fact thatwe were gaining mastery over the flying bombhad become clear to ourselves and also to theGermans. During the second week after there-deployment of the guns, the defences broughtdown a higher proportion of the bombs thatcame within their compass than in any previousweek; and only a little more than a quarter ofthe total got to London.

112. In the following week there was a spellof bad weather, and the fighters did not do sowell; but the gunners, whom this factor affectedmuch less, again did better than before. Forthe first time since the beginning of the attackthey maintained a higher rate of destructionthan the fighters over a full week. About thistime the Meteor, our first jet-propelled fighter,came into service, and I decided to match jetagainst jet by trying it out against the flyingbomb. At first only a few of these aircraftwere available, and various problems, includ-ing that of limited endurance, had to be over-come before we could get the full benefit outof the Meteor's great speed.

113. As the month went by, all concerned'gained further experience and new equipmentbegan to yield results. Soon the overall per-formance of the defences, and that of the gun-ners in particular, surpassed all previousachievements. In the middle of August wereached the stage of being sure that, whatever theweather, we could bring down from one-half tothree-quarters of all the bombs that approachedthis island. Indeed, it has been calculatedthat during the last three weeks of this phaseonly one out of every seven bombs that theenemy launched actually reached London.Shortly afterwards the enemy High Commandpermitted the publication in the German pressof the significant pronouncement that the Allieshad found a counter-measure to the flyingbomb. In the last few days of August onlyan occasional bomb eluded the defences andgot through to its target. Thus it is fair toclaim that almost complete ascendancy overthis novel and ingenio'us weapon had beengained when, at the beginning of September,the capture of the launching areas by ourArmies ended the main attack.

(f) Attacks with Bombs launched by Aircraftfrom Holland (gth July to $th September).

114. Meanwhile, as early as the 8th July,flying bombs had started to approach Londonfrom a new direction, namely from the east.No launching sites were known to exist inBelgium; and after a few weeks it was estab-lished that these bombs, which came only atnight, were being launched by specially-equipped He. in aircraft operating wholly ormainly from bases in Holland.

* This figure was made up as follows :Shot down by fighters

over sea 13overland ... 10

Shot down by A.A. gunsover seaover land

Brought down by balloons

4619

652

QO


115. To meet this new threat I arrangedwith General Pile that the gun-belt should besupplemented by a gun " box " situated inthe quadrilateral Rochester- Whitstable-Clacton-Chelmsford.* By the middle of August 208heavy, 178 40 mm., and 404 20 mm. guns,besides 108 rocket barrels, were deployed in the" box ". I also took steps to extend the bal-loon barrage to Gravesend,f and fly standingpatrols over the mouth of the Thames.

116. During July and August 120 flyingbombs were seen or detected approaching thiscountry from the east: the number actuallydespatched from that direction was doubtlessmuch greater, for launching the bombs, fromaircraft was a tricky business which must haveresulted in many premature descents. Therefollowed a lull that lasted until the early hoursof the 5th September — four and a half daysafter the last bomb had come from northernFrance — when at least another nine bombsapproached London from the east. The " battleof the bomb " was not yet over; but these ninemissiles were Parthian shafts, which markedthe end of one phase rather than the beginningof another. They were a postcript to the mamattack.

(g) Attacks with Bombs launched by Aircraftfrom Germany (i6th September, 1944, to

January, 1945).117. The further lull that foUowed the

launching of the last bomb by aircraft operating .from Holland lasted the best part of a fortnight;and to many it seemed that " the battle ofthe bomb " was over. Our Armies wereadvancing rapidly. Before long they haddriven the Germans from every part of theContinent where launching ramps within theexisting range of London could be built. TheGerman flying unit responsible for launchingthe bombs from the air was known to beleaving its bases in Holland and moving north-east. Not only the uninformed, but many inpositions of authority concluded with relief thatLondon's long ordeal was ended.

"118. This belief was too sanguine. Furtherattacks with long-range weapons could not beruled out. Lacking ramps within the existingrange of the bomb, and without using theirold bases in Holland, the Germans might stillsend flying-bombs against us. They mightincrease the range of the bomb and buildramps further back. They might — andcertainly could — launch bombs from the airby using airfields in Germany. In the eventthey were to do both. Moreover, the flyingbomb was not their only long-range weapon.They were known to possess a rocket capableof covering more than 200 miles and which was

* An alternative deployment envisaging the mountingof guns on ships moored in the mouth of the Thames,as well as on land, was considered, but rejected becauseGeneral Pile preferred a deployment that would allowof continuous engagement of bombs by cross fire asthey flew up the river, and also because, in any case/not enough ships could have been found to make theplan fully effective. Nevertheless, a few guns mountedon forts and small vessels were eventually includedin the eastern " Diver " defences.

t In addition, 1,250 possible balloon-sites north ofthe Thames were reconnoitred ; but I decided not tofly any balloons in that area unless it became essentialto do so, since General Pile feared that their cables•would hamper the defence of London against orthodoxair attack by interfering with the radar sets belongingto the guns.

expected to be ready for use against us duringthe first fortnight in September. Despite somehopeful statements by men in responsible posi-tions, my staff and I felt that, so long as theGermans continued to hold the western pro-vinces of Holland, we ought to be prepared tomeet attacks by the rocket.*'

119. That the Germans might still launchflying bombs from aircraft was not disputedby the Air Ministry or the Chiefs of Staff; andI secured authority to keep the existing" Diver " defences in being.

120. By the middle of September the Germanflying-bomb air-launching unit had completedits'move and was installed at bases in westernGermany. Towards dawn on the i6thSeptember the attack was resumed. The firstbomb fell in Essex at 0549 hours. A fewminutes later another came down at Barking.During the next half-hour five more bombsapproached this country; one reached Wool-wich, one fell at Felsted, and the remainingthree were brought down by fighters, one ofthem into the sea. Two bombs not includedin these figures were destroyed at sea by theRoyal Navy.

121. After a night of inactivity the attackcontinued on the evening of the I7th September.Only three bombs came within range and twoof them were shot down—one by a fighter andone by gunfire. More bombs followed on thesucceeding nights.

122. Countering this phase of the offensivepresented special difficulties, because the enemywas no longer tied to fixed ramps. Hithertohe had exploited the mobility of the kind ofaerial launching-platform provided by an air-craft only to a limited extent: more than nine-tenths of all the bombs seen or detected up tothe beginning of September had come fromramps. Nevertheless the few bombs launchedfrom the air had sufficed to turn the left flankof the defences and compel us to extend it bycreating the eastern " box ".

123. The advance of the Allied Armies hadnow forced the enemy back on bases further tothe north and east.f Clearly, he intended tomake a virtue of necessity by attempting afurther turning movement which entailedlaunching his bombs well out over the NorthSea.

124. To meet this move General Pile and Idecided to extend the defences northwards byadding to the " Diver Belt" and " DiverBox " a " Diver Strip " extending from theleft flank of the " box " at Clacton up to GreatYarmouth. We had already taken some gunsfrom the "belt" to strengthen the "box".We now carried this process a stage further.Between the i6th and igth September orderswere issued to sixteen heavy and nine lightanti-aircraft batteries to move from the " belt "to the coast between Clacton and Harwich.As the month went on further moves were

* For an account of the rocket campaign, whichwas to start on the 8th September, 1944, see Part III.

t There were airfields in northern and centralHolland which he might still have used ; but tacticallythey would have been no more convenient than basesin Western Germany, and to supply them with bombsand fuel would have been no easy matter.


ordered; and by the middle of October no lessthan 498 heavy and 609 light guns weredeployed in the " box " and " strip ".?

125. The changed direction of attackbrought new problems. For various reasons,of which the chief /were the intermittentcharacter of the attacks and the geographicalposition of our own bomber airfields, I couldnot give the gunners the same freedom of fireas they had enjoyed in the .south-east duringthe summer. Although I was able to establishthe principle that flying over the " box " or" strip " below 6,000 feet should be prohibitedin normal circumstances during the hours ofdarkness, I was forced to defer to the needsof Bomber Command to the extent of permittingtheir aircraft to fly over the " strip " (thoughnot over the " box ") at any height theypleased provided they gave prior warning tomy headquarters. This concession entailed acorresponding restriction of gunfire; and I alsohad to reserve the right to restrict gunfire atany other time in order to safeguard friendlyaircraft which, for one reason or another, wereunable to avoid flying low over the " strip "to reach their bases.

126. Another problem for the guns arose outof the fact that, instead of maintaining a heightof 2,000 or 3,000 feet during the greater partof their flight, the bombs launched from air-craft often approached the coast as low as1,000 feet. A new type of equipment for con-trolling low-angle fire was coming into service,but only in small quantities; consequentlyGeneral Pile had to get over the difficulty bysiting the rest of his equipment so as to givethe best results against low-flying targets. Thismeant sacrificing some of its capacity to giveearly warning.

127. Despite these limitations, the perform-ance of the gunners was beyond all praise. Outof 576 bombs which approached the coastbetween the i6th September, 1944, and the I4thJanuary, 1945, without being shot down intothe sea by fighters or the Royal Navy, 321were brought down by anti-aircraft fire. Onehundred and ninety-seven of these fell into thesea and the remaining 124 on land.

128. For the fighters the chief problem aroseout of the fact that all activity was now at'night. There was a natural tendency to sup-pose that interception at night would be easierthan in daylight simply because the tongue offlame emitted by the bomb was so conspicuousin the dark. Unfortunately, seeing the bombwas not enough: pilots had also to estimateits range, and this proved extremely difficult,as anyone who has tried to judge his distancefrom a light on a dark night will understand.Sir Thomas Merton, the distinguished spectro-scopist, designed a simple range-finder whicheventually proved of great value to pilots; butindividual skill and experience remained thebiggest factor in overcoming this difficulty.Some pilots showed remarkable aptitude forthis work, so baffling to many; for example,one Tempest pilot, Squadron Leader J. Berry,shot down more than 60 bombs at night beforebeing himself shot down while on an offensivesortie.

* The permanent defences of towns like Harwichand Lowestoft were incorporated in the " strip " andare-included in these figures.

129. During this third phase of the attackwe used two types of -fighters against flying-bombs at night: Mosquito night fighters in frontof the guns, and Tempest day fighters piloted 'by specially-trained night-fighter pilots betweenthe guns and London. Although the Mosquitowas too slow to catch a flying bomb exceptin a dive, these aircraft brought down a totalof 21 bombs during this phase. The Tempests,which had been outstandingly successful dur-ing the main attack in the summer, nowoperated with the aid of a searchlight beltextending from Saffron Walden and Sudburyin the north to Southend and Brightlingsea inthe south.* They brought down 50 'bombs,most of which fell harmlessly in open country.Thus, throughout the four months of this phase,only 205 bombs eluded the defences out of608 seen or detected on their way to thecapital; and of these only 66 reached GreaterLondon.

130. To supplement these orthodox measuresof defence my staff worked out a scheme where-by Mosquito night fighters were sent to thearea from which the .He. in aircraft of theGerman air-launching 'unit despatched the•bombs, in order to shoot these aircraft down.This was not a simple undertaking. TheGerman aircraft flew low, rising to a height of2,000 feet or so for only a short time while theyreleased their bombs. Thus the night fighters,too, had to fly only a few hundred feet abovethe sea. For the fighter as for the bomberthis was a hazardous proceeding; and at suchlow altitudes the radar normally employed bynight fighters to make contact with their targetswas not at its best. Furthermore, the radarstations on land which' were used for controllingthe fighters were often unable to detect' thebombers except when the latter gained heightto launch their 'bombs.

o

131. As a step towards overcoming some of.these difficulties we modified the equipment ofseveral radar stations and also tried the ex-periment of controlling the fighters from thenaval frigate H.M.S. Caicos and from an air-craft equipped with A.S.V. Mark VI. Butthese measures bore little fruit until the air-launched attacks were nearly over. All themore credit is due, therefore, to the skill andperseverance of the night-fighter crews, whoclaimed the destruction of sixteen launchingaircraft, the probable destruction of anotherfour, and damage to four more, between thei6th September, 1944, and the I4th January,1945. There is evidence that these losses,coming on top of the natural hazards incurredby heavily laden aircraft operating almost atsea-level, imposed no little strain on the,German unit responsible for air -launching.

• 132. Nevertheless, the Germans seem to haveremained unaware how small a proportion ofthe bombs launched were reaching London, orelse to have resigned themselves to receivinga poor return for their efforts so long as somesort of offensive could be continued againstthis country. For 'they not only perseveredwith the operations, but even took steps duringthe winter to increase their scope. This fact,of which our intelligence service was aware,

* At -first these searchlights were deployed atintervals of 3,000 yards. Experience showed thatso thick a spacing tended to dazzle pilots and wealtered the interval to the normal 6,000 yards.


caused me some anxiety. Although thedefences were doing so well, the air-launchedflying bomb was still a dangerous weaponbecause of its mobility. We could not deployguns everywhere at once; and the bomb mightbe used against other targets besides London.At that time the country was being bombardedwith rockets as well as flying bombs: asimultaneous increase in the scale of attack byboth weapons was a contingency against whichI felt bound to provide.

133. On the transfer of the Air Commander-in-Chief's main headquarters to the Continentin the autumn of 1944 I had acquired at leasta nominal responsibility for directing and co-ordinating offensive as well as defensivecounter-measures against flying bombs andlong-range rockets. So many authorities whoseinterests alternately coincided and conflictedwere concerned in this matter that my respon-sibilities were inevitably somewhat indeter-minate. Moreover, I was in an even lessfavourable position than the Air Commander-in-Chief had been to discharge such a respon-sibility. Like him, I could not help knowingthat our striking forces had many tasks toperform besides that of attacking " crossbow "targets. Unlike him, I could not call at mydiscretion on the tactical, let alone the strategic,air forces for this work. The area from whichrockets were being fired against London waswithin «fighter range, and I was able to sendfighters and later fighter-bombers to intervene.But the bases of the flying-bomb air-launchingunit in north-west Germany were beyond thereach of all my aircraft except those used forlong-range " Intruder " work.

134. Thus, so far as offensive counter-measures to the flying bomb were concernedthe only thing J could do in practice vtas tomake representations. My staff kept a° closewatch on the activities of the air-launchingunit, and as soon as it was plainly seen to beexpanding I urged that its bases be attacked.That the response was not more active was per-haps an inevitable consequence of the multi-plicity of calls upon the strategic and tacticalair forces, and of the very success which thedefences had achieved against the flying bombup to that time. Even so, a number of attackson the bases were made by our own BomberCommand and the American Eighth BomberCommand.

135. As a further precaution against a pos-sible extension of the flying bomb campaignGeneral Pile and I took steps to counter anyattempt that the Germans might make to turnthe northern flank of the defences. A schemewas worked out whereby 59^ batteries of gunscould be rapidly deployed between Skegnessand iWhitby if an attack should develop inthat area.

136. This eventuality was realised, withoutany specific warning on Christmas Eve, 1944.Early on that day about 50 He. ins—almostthe entire operational strength of the air-launching unit—launched bombs in the direc-tion of Manchester from a position off thecoast, between Skegness and Bridlington.Thirty bombs came within range of the report-ing system, and all thirty crossed the coast.Only one of them reached Manchester, butsix came down within ten miles of the centre

of the city and eleven within fifteen miles.Thirty-seven people were killed and 67 seriouslyinjured.

137. This was one of the few occasions onwhich the Germans showed resource in exploit-ing the capacity lof the air-launched flyingbomb to outflank the defences. Happily forus they were seldom so enterprising; for how-ever carefully our plans were laid, we couldnot deploy the defences on every part of theEast Coast at once, and if more such attacksfrom novel directions had been tried, theywould inevitably have achieved at least afleeting success, as on this occasion.

138. Immediately after this attack I orderedthat deployment north of the Wash shouldbegin. Shortly afterwards I secured theapproval of the Chiefs of Staff to a more com-prehensive scheme for the defence of the coastas far north as Flamborough Head. I alsoarranged that plans should be worked out forthe defence of the areas Tees-Tyne and Forth-Clyde. But here again, as in the case ofManchester, I could not afford to order deploy-ment in these areas, at the expense of others,merely on the ground that the enemy mightattack them at some future date. Conse-quently, if he had followed up his attack onManchester with a series of carefully-spacedattacks at other points north and south of -theWash on succeeding nights, he would un-doubtedly have scored some success and setus something of a problem.

139. However, either -this did not occur tothe Germans, or such an enterprise was be-yond the capabilities of an organisation whosespirit was shaken and which was running shortof fuel. No more bombs came from north ofthe Wash; and three weeks later the air-launch-ing unit ceased operations. The last air-launched flying-bomb to reach this countrycame down at Hornsey at 0213 hours on theI4th January, 1945.

(h) Attacks from Ramps in Holland (yd toMarch, 1945).

140. This was not the last of the flying bomb.In the meantime the Germans had been work-ing on the problem of increasing the range of

' the weapon. Fragments of some of the bombsfired from Germany into Belgium in Februaryshowed that they were adopting methods ofconstruction which might solve this problemand enable them to attack London from rampsin south-west Holland. Reconnaissance photo-graphs of that area were taken, and showedthat two launching sites were being constructed,one at Ypenburg, near the Hague, the otherat Vlaardingen, six miles west of Rotterdam.In addition the German built a third site nearthe Delftsche Canal; but of this we were notaware till later.

. 141. To meet this new threat General Pileand I decided to reinforce the gun defencesbetween the Isle of Sheppey and Orfordness bytransferring 96 heavy guns from the northerlypart of the " strip " and adding a number ofbatteries then under training to the remainingdefences in the latter area. Instructions forthe move to begin were given on the 27th Feb-ruary and by the 6th March nine batteries outof twelve had taken up their new .positions,


In the event, owing to the modest dimensionsof the attack, only one further battery wasdeployed.

142. I also earmarked six Mustang squadronsfor operations against the bombs in. day light,and arranged that their engines should bespecially boosted. Three of them, togetherwith a squadron of Meteors which I arrangedto borrow from the Second Tactical Air Force,were to operate between the guns and Lon-don; the other three forward of the guns, overthe sea. At night two Mosquito squadronswould patrol over the sea and a squadron ofTempests behind the guns. A direct link withthe radar stations of the Second Tactical AirForce in Belgium was set up to assist in givingwarning of the approach of flying bombs fromthe general direction of the Scheldt.

143. The -attack began in the early hours ofthe 3rd March. The first bomb to reach thiscountry got through the defences and fell atBermondsey at 0301 hours. The next sixbombs were all destroyed by anti-aircraft fire:five of them exploded in the air and the sixthfell into the sea. After a lull of nine hours theattack was resumed in the afternoon of thesame day and continued intermittently untilnoon on the 4th, when there was another lull.Ten bombs came over during this second burstof fire: four of them were destroyed by theguns and only two reached London.

144. The second lull came to an end late inthe morning of the 5th March. Thereafter,until activity finally ceased on the 2O,th March,there was spasmodic activity punctuated byintervals of quiet. The performance of theguns during this phase was outstanding.

Indeed, it was so good that, in view of theunexpected lightness of the attack, I was ableto dispense with the Meteors and five of the sixMustang squadrons, which returned to theirformer duties. During the whole of this lastphase of the flying bomb campaign 125 bombsapproached this country. Eighty-six were shotdown by anti-aircraft guns alone, one by theRoyal Navy and shore guns jointly, and fourby fighters. Only thirteen bombs reachedLondon.

145. Typhoon fighter-bombers of the SecondTactical Air Force attacked the launching-siteat Vlaardingen on the 23rd March, Spitfirefighter-bombers of my Command that at Ypen-burg on the 20th and again on the 23rd March.At both sites essential components weredestroyed. Presumably the missiles launchedduring the last few days of the attack camefrom the third site, of whose existence we hadnot previously been aware.

146. The attacks ended with a bout of inter-mittent firing between half-past nine on theevening of .the 28th March and lunch-time onthe 29th. - During this period 21 bombsapproached this country: 20 were shot down,and the twenty-first came ignominously toearth at Datchworth, a village of some sevenhundred inhabitants twenty-five miles fromLondon Bridge. This was the last bomb ofthe whole campaign to fall on British soil.

(j) Summary.147. The following table

progresssummarises the

of the campaign and the resultsachieved by the defences in its various stages:

Phase i(a) 12/6- (b) 16/7-15/7/44 5/9/442,934 3,79i1,270 1,070

43-3 28-5

Phase 216/9/44-I4/I/45

6386710-5

Phase 33/3-

29/3/451251310-4

Total12/6/44-29/3/457,4882,420

32-3

(i) No. of bombs reported(ii) No. of bombs in target area

{iii) Percentage of (ii) to (i)(iv) No. of bombs brought down

(a) by fighters 924^* 847 71^ 4 1,846^(b) by guns 26iJ 1,198$ 331^ 87 1,878!(c) by balloons '55& *76£ — — 231^(d) by all arms 1,241 2,222 403 91 3,957

(v) Percentage of (iv) (d) to (i) 42-3 58-6 63-2 72-8 52-8* The fractions relate to claims shared between different arms of the defence.

PART III: THE ROCKET CAMPAIGN.

(a) Intelligence and Countermeasures, 1939to November, 1943.

148. The German long-range rocket, knownto the enemy as the A-4 and to us as " BigBen," was a rival to the flying bomb. Thereis no doubt, however, that if circumstances hadpermitted, the Germans would have conductedsimultaneous campaigns with the two weaponsfrom northern France.

149. The first hint that the enemy intendedto use a long-range rocket for military pur-poses was contained in a report received inthis country soon after the outbreak .of war.More was heard of the project towards theend of 1942, when agents reported that trialshots with such a missile had been fired shortlybeforehand on .the Baltic coast. Early in 1943a connection was established between thisactivity and the German experimental stationat Peenemunde.

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150. From that time onwards a stream ofintelligence about the rocket reached thiscountry. Not until more than a year later,however, did we receive conclusive evidenceabout the characteristics and performance ofthe weapon. During part of the interveningperiod responsibility for investigating the newthreat was taken out of the hands of the intelli-gence staffs and placed in those of a govern-mental committee created for the purpose. Anumber of distinguished scientists and ordnanceexperts were invited to speculate about thenature of the rocket, and some hypotheses wereadvanced which ultimately proved wide of themark. The prevailing impression in responsiblequarters during the earlier months of the in-vestigation was that the enemy was forging atitanic weapon which weighed seventy or eightytons and carried a warhead containing someten tons of explosive, which would descendupon London with little or no warning. Theproblem of defending the capital against so dis-obliging a projectile was naturally a source ofsome anxiety to my predecessor.

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151. Towards the end of 1943 a freshapproach to the problem was adopted. InNovember, responsibility for investigating thenature of the rocket and devising counter-measures was transferred to the Air Ministry.Thereafter, as information from intelligencesources accumulated, a conception of theweapon which was'based on reports of whatthe Germans were doing gradually replaced theearlier conception, which had leaned moretowards our own ordnance experts' ideas of asuitable rocket. We shall see that ultimately—although only a week or two before the begin-ning of the campaign—the intelligence staffswere able to show that the alarms of the pre-vious year had been exaggerated as well aspremature, and that the rocket was very muchsmaller than had been supposed.

152. Meanwhile, by the summer of 1943 theauthorities who were then responsible forcountermeasures had come to the conclusionthat, whatever the dimensions of the missile,radar would probably be able to detect itsflight. By the time I took up my appointmentin the early winter, five radar stations betweenVentnor and Dover had been modified to detectrockets fired •from northern France, andoperators had been trained to identify thecharacteristic trace which a rocket was expectedto produce. As a further precaution, artilleryunits in Kent were told to look out for visiblesigns of ascending rockets and a Survey Regi-ment of the Royal Artillery was deployed thereto take care of audible signs.*

153. These measures had a two-fold object.In the first place, if all went well, the radar,backed up by flash-spotting and sound-rangingtroops, would tell us when rockets were fired,and perhaps enable us to give the public a fewminutes' warning by firing maroons in Londonor elsewhere by remote control. Secondly,the information obtained by these means might•help us to locate the places from which therockets were coming, so that we could attackthe firing sites and the troops who mannedthem.

154. To complement these purely defensivecountermeasures, an attack, which provedsuccessful, was made by Bomber Command onthe experimental station at Peenemunde. After-wards the Germans transferred part of theiractivities to Poland. This move somewhateased the difficult task of our intelligence ser-vices in keeping a watch on the rocket trials.

155. During the summer and autumn of 1943the Germans were observed to be building anumber of extraordinary structures in northernFrance, which we called " large sites ".fAgents persistently reported that these siteshad something to do with " secret weapons ".Their impressive dimensions, taken in conjunc-tion with the exaggerated idea of the rocketwhich prevailed at the time, led to the notionthat the sites were intended for the storage andfiring of the missile. Ultimately they provedto have little direct connection with the rocket.

* These activities, which were an extension of thosenormally conducted in respect of artillery fire, wereaccordingly known as " flash spotting " and " soundranging " respectively.

t They were at Watten, Wizernes, Mimoyecques(near Marquise), Siracourt, and Lottinghem in thePas de Calais, and at Martinvast and Sottevast nearCherbourg. The constructions had few features incommon apart from their great size.

156. At this stage Bomber Command and •the American Eighth Bomber Command madea number of attacks on one of these " largesites " at Watten. Bomber Command alsoattacked, as part of their normal programme,several production centres in Germany whichwere suspected of manufacturing components ofthe rocket or fuel for it.

(b) Intelligence and Countermeasures, Novem~ \ber, 1943, to August, 1944. ./

157. Thus the situation when I assumed con- \trol of the air defences in the middle of Novem- *ber, 1943, was that the Germans were knownto be experimenting with some kind of long-range Tocket* The intelligence officers onwhom the responsibility for establishing theprecise nature of this missile would normallyhave rested had insufficient evidence on whichto base any reliable estimate of the date when itmight be used against us or the weight of theexplosive charge which it would carry. Aspecial investigation had, however, led to mucha priori speculation about these matters. Inconsequence the impression had arisen that theGermans were preparing to bombard Londonwith gigantic projectiles each capable of killinghundreds of people and flattening buildingsover a wide area. The experimental station atwhich the weapon was being developed, andwhere objects some forty feet long which wereevidently rockets had been photographed inthe summer, had been successfully bombed,as had the first of a series of mysterious con-structions in northern France and a number ofproduction centres in Germany. No firm con-nection between the rocket and the targets ineither of these latter classes had, however, beenestablished. Besides taking these offensivecountermeasures we had made dispositionswhich, we hoped, would give us a few minutes*warning of the arrival of individual rocketsand also help to tell us where the rockets camefrom.

158. Soon after I assumed command the dis-covery of the original flying-bomb launchingsites, or " ski sites ",f in northern France,taken in conjunction with other evidence, con-vinced us that the pilotless aircraft or flyingbomb was a more imminent threat than therocket. For the time being, therefore, the latterreceded into the background. Early in 1944 Ireceived authority to relax the continuous watchfor rockets which had been maintained at cer-tain radar stations since the previous summer.I arranged, however, that the operators whohad been trained for this work should remainat the stations and train others, so that thewatch could be resumed, if necessary, at shortnotice. When flying-bomb attacks began nextJune, I gave orders for the resumption of thiswatch. Two special radar stations were addedto the five whose equipment had been modified.

159. Meanwhile the Allied bomber forcescontinued to attack the " large sites" asoccasion arose and opportunity afforded.At the same time the intelligence staffs at theAir Ministry were gradually piecing togethera picture of the enemy's activities at Peene-munde and later also at Blizna, in Poland.

* There were, however, some distinguished dis-believers in the rocket, who continued long after thisto argue that the story was a hoax.| See paragraphs 16-18, above. '


Although our ordnance experts continued tobelieve that anything but an outsize long-rangerocket was out of the question, as time wentby the evidence began to point more and moreclearly to a warhead of relatively modest size.

160. Notwithstanding this evidence, theconception of a 'huge, earth-shaking pro-jectile persisted. Accordingly much effort wasspent on a vain search for the massive launch-ing devices which were believed to be neces-sary to start so large a missile on its flight.

161. Yet, as the summer of 1944 wore on,the case for the lighter rocket grew stronger.Evidence was obtained that the firing processcalled for nothing more elaborate than a slabof concrete, on which a portable stand waserected and from which the rocket rose underits own power. By the last week hi Augustall the main characteristics of the A-4 hadbeen established. We knew that it was approxi-mately forty-five feet long and that its all-upweight was less than fourteen tons. We knewthat the standard warhead weighed about aton, but were prepared for the possibility that,by reducing the maximum range from about200 to 160 miles, the Germans might be ableto fit a heavier warhead, weighing up to twotons. We knew that before being fired therocket was placed upright on the firing platformand there fuelled and serviced—a process whichwould probably take about two hours.Furthermore, we knew that the Germans hadplanned at least two methods of storing themissiles, namely in underground pits ortunnels, and in wooden bunkers dispersed inwoods. Finally, we had some reason to sus-pect that active operations would begin duringthe first half of September.

162. What we did not know was how (if atall) the rocket was externally controlled onceit had left the ground. Misleading evidenceon this point led to wasted efforts to forestall,detect and hamper non-existent radio trans-missions which were expected to be used forthis purpose. Not until some time after rocketattacks had begun was the conclusion reachedthat control of the rocket under operationalconditions was entirely internal and automatic,apart from the use of a " beam " to control theline of shoot in certain instances.*

163. The Allied Armies, during their advancethrough Normandy, discovered a number ofsites which the Germans had clearly intendedfor the firing of rockets. Far from resemblingthe " large sites ", these consisted merely ofrough concrete slabs let into the surface ofroads. We were bound to assume that similarfiring sites existed in areas still in Germanhands; but their location was unknown to us,and there was not the slightest chance of ourdetecting them on air reconnaissance photo-graphs.

(c) The Eve of the Rocket Campaign ($othAugust to Jth September, 1944).

164. Such, then, was the state of our know-ledge towards the end of August, 1944, whenwe found ourselves faced with the possibilitythat rocket attacks might begin at almost any

* In the later stages of the campaign the Germansdid, however, use radio for control of range in certaincases. They do not seem to .have perfected thistechnique, which gave less accurate results than theirusual methods.

60728

moment. For many months past a system fordetecting the firing of rockets had existed, and'a programme of bombing attacks on the " largesites " and other objectives suspected of aconnection with the rocket had been carriedout. In addition the Air Staff at the AirMinistry had devised and kept up to date anelaborate scheme of countermeasures whichwas to be put into effect as soon as the firstrocket was fired.

165. One of the provisions of this schemewas that as soon as attacks were seen to beimminent, fighter aircraft should be held readyto fly armed reconnaissance sorties over thefiring areas.* These operations were to beconducted within the " tactical area "t by theTactical Air Forces, and elsewhere by myCommand.

166. Towards the end of the month the stageof imminent attack appeared to have arrived;and the Air Staff decided that we should go alittle further ithan had been contemplated in thepaper scheme, by starting to fly the armedreconnaissance sorties without more ado.

167. I had already taken the precaution ofauthorising my operations and intelligencestaffs to issue instructions and memorandawhich would enable us to start these operationsat short notice; and on the 30th August thesorties began. Since we did not know thelocation of any firing sites in enemy territory,all we could do was to brief our pilots torecognise anything they might see, and des-patch them over the general area from whichwe expected to be attacked.

168. A few days later, on the 4th September,the rapid advance of the Allied troops into thePas de Calais and Flanders obliged us to dis-continue the sorties. Thereupon I learned thatthe Chiefs of Staff considered that, since thewhole of the Pas de Calais was or shortlywould be ours, the threat to London from therocket could be regarded as over.

169. My intelligence staff felt unable toassent to this opinion without a reservation.They pointed put that the rocket, having arange of 200 miles or more, could still be firedat London from western Holland. WesternHolland was still in German hands, and partof it would remain so if the Germans stoodon the lower Rhine and the Siegfried Line. True,we had no evidence that the Germans had pre-pared any firing sites on Dutch soil; but thesites could be so quickly built and were sohard to spot that this proved nothing. Whilerecognising that the Chiefs of Staff were betterable than ourselves to foresee the effect offuture operations, my intelligence officers felt,therefore, that as things stood at the momentwe ought to be ready to meet rocket attacksfrom western Holland within the next ten days.

170. The logic of this argument was irre-futable; and I was relieved to learn next daythat a review of the situation by the Vice-Chiefs of Staff had led to the conclusion thatthe immediate relaxation of all defensive

* " Armed reconnaissance" is defined as " airreconnaissance carried out by offensively-armed air-craft with the intention of locating and attackingsuitable enemy targets ".

f This was an area, denned from time to time by theAir Commander-in-Chief, in which the conduct ofall air operations devolved upon the Tactical AirForces.

C 2


measures would be precipitate, not because theVice-Chiefs thought that there was any threatto London, but on the ground that the Ger-mans might still tire rockets at other targets.

171. I mention this divergence of opinion,not to claim superior prescience for myself ormy staff, but because the factors involved wereso delicately balanced as to give the pointsome interest. The argument for caution wassound so far as it went, and indeed was shortlyto be justified by events; yet there was muchthat might have been urged on the other side.The disorganisation of the enemy's transportservices at this stage must have been so greatthat he might well have shrunk from the task'of diverting the rocket-firing organisation fromFrance to Holland. Again, there was a timeduring those first few days of-September whenthe possibility that Allied troops might reachGermany in one bound seemed not at allremote; if the Germans had appreciated this,would they have thought an attempt to firerockets from Holland worth their while? Yetwhen all this has been said, the fact remainsthat an area from which rockets could reachLondon was to remain in German hands formore than seven months to come, and thatduring this time over a thousand rockets wereto fall on British soil.

(d) The Attacks: First Phase (London, 8th toi8th September, 1944)

172. In the event, only a few days elapsedbefore brute fact justified the argument forcaution. At approximately twenty minutes toseven on the 8th September Londoners on theirway home from work or preparing for theirevening meal were startled by a sharp reportwhich sounded almost, but not quite, like a pealof thunder. At 1843 hours a rocket fell atChiswick, killing three people and seriouslyinjuring another ten. Sixteen seconds lateranother fell near Epping, demolishing somewooden huts but doing no other damage.

173. During the next ten days rockets con-tinued to arrive intermittently at the rate ofrather more than two a day. On the iTthSeptember the Allied airborne operation againstthe lower Rhine at Arnhem was launched.Thereupon the German High Command orderedthe rocket firing troops to move eastwards, andon the following day attacks on London ceasedfor the time being.

174. Up to that time 26 rockets had fallen inthis country or close enough to its shores to beobserved. Thirteen of them had landed withinthe London Civil Defence Region. The higherfigure does not represent the total fired duringthe period, which was certainly not less than29 and probably well over 30; for we know thata substantial proportion of the rockets des-patched habitually miscarried.

175. Early in this opening phase two thingsabout the functioning of the technical devicesdeployed to detect rockets became apparent.One was that radar stations chosen to detectrockets fired from France were not, on the whole,well placed to detect rockets fired from Holland.Accordingly .we arranged to increase the numberof stations keeping watch between Dover andLowestoft from three to six, and to deployadditional radar, sound ranging, and flash spot-ting equipment on the Continent. No. 105

Mobile Air Reporting Unit was formed withinmy Command in the middle of September anddespatched to Malines, near Brussels, to corre-late and transmit the information obtained fromtechnical sources across the Channel. In themeantime the War Cabinet decided that forthe moment the public-warning system shouldnot be put into effect. This decision was basedon a number of considerations, some of whichlay outside my province; but there is no doubtthat it was justified on operational groundsalone. If the technical devices had workedperfectly, we could at best have warned thepublic on any given occasion that the Germanshad just launched a rocket which, if it did notmiscarry and was not aimed at some othertarget, would come down somewhere insouthern or eastern England in a minute ortwo. And since at that stage the technicaldevices were far from working perfectly, ourattempts to give even so rudimentary a warn-ing as this would have led, in practice, to manyfalse alarms and the arrival of some rocketsunheralded by any warning at all.

176. The other point which emerged duringthis phase was that, even when the resultsobtained from the technical devices were good,the calculations based upon them did not, bythemselves, enable us to locate the firing pointswith the accuracy required for the effectivebriefing of pilots despatched on armed recon-naissance. At best this method told us theposition of a site within a mile or two; and untilopportunities had arisen of adjusting theassumptions on which the calculations werebased by reference to the known location ofsites, as established by other means, some ofthe estimates obtained in this way were mani-festly incorrect. Such difficulties were inevitablein the development of a new technique. Theydid not prevent the radar and sound rangingequipment from giving us useful informationfrom the start. A combination of the datafurnished by these two sources confirmed, forexample, that the first two rockets to arrivehad come from south-west Holland, as ourdeductions from first principles had led us tosuppose they would; and within a few hours" intruder " aircraft of my Command were ontheir way to that area.

177. After the first day or two, however, wedid not depend on technical devices to locatethe firing points. One of the first measurestaken by the Air Ministry when the attacksbegan was to brief the Dutch Resistance Move-ment, through the appropriate channel, to pro-vide intelligence on this subject. A speedymethod of getting this information to the AirMinistry was devised. There it was scrutinizedby intelligence officers who passed all reportsof probable value to my headquarters with theleast possible delay. The information containedin these reports was then correlated by a mem-ber of my intelligence staff with that based onthe data furnished by the technical equipment,as well as that derived from the observationsof pilots on armed reconnaissance and of themany flying personnel in the Royal Air Forceand the United States Army Air Forces whoreported seeing the trails made by ascendingrockets. Within a few days the fruits of thisprocess pointed to a number of fairly well-defined areas, all in wooded country in theneighbourhood of the Hague, from which most


of the rockets fired at London seemed to becoming.* By keeping a close watch on theinformation pointing to these " suspectedareas " and ensuring that it was passed to theFighter Groups concerned by means of frequentand full reports from my intelligence staff, Iwas able to satisfy myself that our armed recon-naissance effort was employed to the bestadvantage. During the ten days which thisphase lasted, pilots of my Command carriedout approximately 1,000 sorties of this kind.They attacked a variety of targets, includingroad, rail, and water transport vehicles andinstallations, suspicious constructions, andGerman troops. On one occasion when Tempestsattacked a suspected firing point an explosionoccurred so violent as to wreck the leadingaircraft. Afterwards a large, shallow craterwas seen, such as might have been caused bythe detonation of a rocket in the firing position.

178. At this stage I was made responsible fordirecting and co-ordinating all operations byair forces based in the United Kingdom againstthe rocket-firing area as well as the bases of theGerman flying bomb air-launching unit.f Thismeant that besides using my own aircraft forsuch tasks as were within their power, I couldask Bomber Command or No. 2 Group, SecondTactical Air Force, to bomb any objectiveswhich seemed to me to call for attack by heavy,medium, or light bombers. But there wasnothing mandatory about these requests, and Ihad no means of ensuring that they were carriedout, save that of making representations tohigher authority if direct appeals should proveunavailing. My relations with Bomber Com-mand and No. 2 Group left nothing to bedesired; but since both had many calls on theirresources, mere reiteration on my part andgoodwill on theirs were not enough to ensurethat my demands should always receive neithermore nor less than their due. These difficultiesbecome more intelligible if the requirements forrocket counter measures which preoccupied myattention are fitted into the vast perspective ofair operations at that time. In the circum-stances it would have been too much to expecta series of firm and favourable decisions on thepart of a well-informed and competent higherauthority, by means of which alone detailedand adequate response to my special needscould have been ensured. As it was, the AirCommander-in-Chief was busy with the offen-sive battle, and in any case had no power todirect Bomber Command in matters of thisnature; while the Air Staff at the Air Ministrywere naturally reluctant to give other than verybroad directions to operational commanders. .

179. Soon after the rocket attacks had begun,intelligence was received which suggested thatthe Germans had made preparations to storerockets on three properties situated at Wasse-naar, just outside the Hague, and named re-spectively Terhorst, Eikenhorst, and Raap-horst. At the first two there were compara-tively small wooded areas, which for variousreasons seemed eminently suitable for the pur-pose; Raaphorst was a rather extensive pro-perty, and we were not sure which part of itwas meant. In any case we had no proof thatany of the storage shelters which were said

*• During the first phase a few rockets were fired atLondon from the Island of Walcheren as well,

f See paras. 133-134, above.

to have ibeeri constructed on the three proper-ties were actually in use. Nevertheless, I con-cluded that the Germans must be storing theirequipment somewhere, and presumably alsosupplies of fuel and rockets, unless they wereliving entirely from hand to mouth. Accord-ingly, after weighing the probabilities care-fully, I invited Bomber Command to bomb'given aiming-points at Terhorst and Eikenhorst.Meanwhile, as early as the I4th September,and before receiving my request, they had senta small force to attack Raaphorst. An aimingpoint close to the main road bordering theproperty was chosen. A few days later freshintelligence gave us the probable location ofthree supposed storage areas on the Raaphorstestate, one of them close to this aiming point.

180. The first attack carried out by BomberCommand in response to my request was madeon the I7th September, when a small forceattacked Eikenhorst, dropping 172 tons ofbombs. Tihe bombing was well concentrated^and a large explosion was seen to occur in thecourse of it. No further attacks were madeduring the first phase of the rocket offensive,which ended on the i8th September.

(e) The Lull (iqth to 2$th September, 1944).181. During the next week no rockets

arrived in this country. Towards the end ofthat period secret informants reported that thefiring, troops had received orders on the after-noon of the I7th September to leave the Hague,and been seen departing with their equipmenttowards Utrecht. We know now that this in-formation was correct; but the arrival of arocket at 'Lambeth on the evening of the i8th,coupled with a report that rockets ihad beenfired from Wassenaar on that day and the next,made us a trifle disinclined to give it credenceat the time.* J decided that for the presentarmed reconnaissance sorties over the Hagueand its neighbourhood should be continued,and the suspected storage sites at Wassenaarbe left on the list of "Crossbow" targetswhich J wished to see attacked by BomberCommand. If no more rockets should comefrom the Hague or Wassenaar within the nextfew days, the sites would lose their value astargets and be taken off the list.

182. Accordingly, aircraft of my Commandcontinued to fly armed reconnaissance and" intruder " sorties over the Hague and itsenvirons during the period from the igth tothe 25th September, so far as the weather andthe demands of the Arnhem operation allowed.On the igth, three whole squadrons from No.12 Group—to which I had delegated responsi-bility for supervising the conduct of air opera-tions a few days previously—were sent to attackobjectives in an area south-east of the race-course at the Hague, from which we believedthe Germans had been firing rockets. Troops,transport vehicles, and buildings there wereall attacked. On the previous night (as ontwo other nights about this time) " intruder "aircraft bombed a railway station at Woerdenwhich an agent had mentioned in connectionwith the supply of rockets to the Hague.

* The rocket fired on the i8th must have been aparting shot from a rear detachment of the departingtroops. The report that firing occurred on the igthwas doubtless a mistaken one ; or perhaps the messagewas misconstrued.


Neither Bomber Command nor No. 2 Groupattacked any rocket targets during the week.Indeed, the latter were not asked to attackany, for up to this time none suitable for themethod of precise bombing in which No. 2Group specialised had been discovered.

183. All this time aircraft of No. 100 Group,Bomber Command, were flying special patrolswith a view to intercepting and jamming anyradio transmissions which might appear to beused to control the rocket. Aircraft of myCommand provided fighter escort for thesemissions both at this stage and subsequently.In addition, thousands ' of reconnaissancephotographs were being taken and interpreted.This procedure was in accordance with thescheme which the Air Staff had prepared beforethe attacks began.* One of the provisions ofthat scheme was that every area indicated ibythe radar, sound-ranging, and flash-spottingcomplex as a suspected firing-point should bephotographed as soon as possible. My staffpointed out, however, that since many of theestimates based on these data were manifestlyincorrect, f and since experience had quicklyshown that the firing-points could not be seenon reconnaissance photographs,^ the procedureserved no useful purpose. At our suggestionthe Au: Ministry agreed to a modification whichsaved much effort on the part of skilled pilotsand interpreters: henceforward only areas inwhich we expected reconnaissance to revealsomething of interest were photographed. Wealso took advantage of the lull to perfectarrangements for the rapid provision of the" target material " which was used in briefingbomber crews, and to discuss our problems withBomber Command.

(f) The Attacks: Second Phase (Norwich, 2,$thSeptember to I2th October, 1944).

184. On the evening of the 25th Septemberthe lull came to an end. At 1910 hours a rocketfell near Diss, in Suffolk. Neither the flash-spotting nor the sound-ranging troops couldgive us any useful data about its origin, andat first the radar stations were equally reticent.Even the objective which the Germans hadmeant to hit remained unknown. Hence therocket might have come from any area in Ger-man hands which was within 230 miles of thepoint of impact—for this, as we had reason tobelieve, was the maximum range of the A-4.Thus we were reduced to this hypothesis: thatif the rocket had been aimed at London, thenit must have come from the Hague or some-where near it; but if at some other target, thenit could have come from another part of Hol-land, from the Frisians, or even from a partof Germany near Cleves.

185. On the following afternoon anotherrocket landed in East Anglia—this time abouteight miles from Norwich, which subsequentlyproved to be the target. Once again the tech-nical devices were silent; but five minutesbefore the rocket fell, chance observers flyingover a point about fourteen miles west

* See paragraph 165, above.| On several occasions areas under water or other-

vise unsuitable for rocket-firing were indicated.J During the previous few weeks nearly 100,000

photographs of western Holland had been examinedby interpreters. Not a single firing point had beenfound.

of Arnhem saw a trail rise, as theysupposed, from a wood some twentymiles away, called the Speulder Boschand adjoining the village of Garderen.Immediately afterwards the wood appeared tocatch fire over an area of perhaps two acresand remain alight for about five minutes. Thetrail, or one like it, was also seen by chanceobservers who were flying well north of theFrisians, and thought it came from Amelandor Schieflmonnikoog.

186. Now, Garderen lies between Amers-foort and Apeldoorn, in the direction which thefiring troops were said to have taken whenthey left the Hague. Moreover, a secret infor-mant had mentioned Apeldoorn as the ap-parent destination of a trainload of rocketsand fuel which he claimed to have seen a weekbefore. That the rocket which had fallen nearNorwich originated from the Speulder Boschwas thus a plausible hypothesis, especially asa trail ascending from that area might welllook to observers over the North Sea as if itcame from the Frisians.

187. Meanwhile the films which should haverecorded any data obtained by the radar sta-tions about the rocket that fell near Diss hadbeen scrutinized without success. They werescrutinized again; and this time faint traceswere found on them. These traces showed thatthe missile had come from a point more remotefrom the stations than had the rockets'observedduring the earlier phase of the attacks. Armedwith this evidence, the specialist whose task itwas to calculate the location of firing pointsfrom such data went to work. After some delayhe gave an " estimated position " which co-incided with the village of Garderen.

188. Superficially the case for Garderen asthe new firing area now looked stronger than,perhaps, it really was. The specialist, who wasfrankly giving an estimate and not the resultof a pureiy objective calculation, may havebeen influenced by the knowledge that the nextrocket was supposed to have come from theSpeulder Bosch. If so, the whole case reallyrested on a'single item of positive evidence—the trail seen from a distance of twenty miles.Yet one thing was certain from the impartialtestimony of the radar traces: the Suffolkrocket had not come from the Hague orWassenaar but from some more distant spot.Accordingly I authorised the removal of thesuspected storage sites at Terhorst, Eikenhorst,and Raaphorst from the list of " Crossbow "targets which we had furnished to BomberCommand.

(189. On the 27th September No. 12 Groupsent four Tempest pilots to make an armedreconnaissance of the area between Amersfoortand Apeldoorn. They saw signs of militaryactivity at two points in and adjoining theSpeulder Bosch and a third point just south ofthe neighbouring. railway; but there was noproof that this activity had anything to do withrockets. However, on the same day and thetwo following days six more rockets fell nearNorwich and one off the Norfolk coast. Infour of these seven cases the information fur-nished by radar suggested or was consistentwith firing from the area between Amersfoortand Apeldoorn. Whether our suspicions of theSpeulder Bosch were justified or not evidently


the rockets were coming from an area so remotethat armed reconnaissance of it could not beperformed with maximum efficiency by fightersoperating from this country. Unfortunately theairfields on the Continent which had falleninto Allied hands were already so congestedthat facilities for my aircraft to operate fromthem could not be provided. I could not resistthe conclusion that the task must now be doneby a force based on the Continent. Accord-ingly, at the end o? September the Second Tac-tical Air Force assumed responsibility forarmed reconnaissance of the firing areas. AirMarshal Coningham's headquarters in Brusselswas not well placed, however, for the detailedwork of collating intelligence on this subject,which came from a variety of sources; and wearranged that this should continue to be done atmy headquarters, where good communicationsexisted. From the ist October onwards, there-fore, my intelligence staff transmitted toBrussels a daily signal—for which we coinedthe name " Benrep "—containing a briefappreciation of the most recent information anda note of the areas in which armed reconnais-sance seemed most likely to be fruitful.

190. Rockets continued to fall near Norwichduring the first half of October, but on the 3rdOctober, as we shall see, London also becamea target once again. Thereafter little evidenceof firing from Garderen was forthcoming, andmost of the rockets apparently aimed at Nor-wich seemed to come from northern Holland.The evidence of the radar pointed to the shoresof the Zuyder Zee and the islands of Vlielandand Terschelling; and secret informants con-firmed the presence of firing points hi woodedcountry near Rijs, in the former area.

191. Altogether, from the 25th Septemberonwards, some 36 rockets apparently aimed atNorwich fell on land or close enough to theshore to be reported. Not one fell inside thecity, although the enemy's shooting againstNorwich was actually somewhat better thanthat against London, inasmuch as the rounds•that reached this country were more closelygrouped. The last round of this phase fell ona farm hi Norfolk soon after half-past seven onthe morning of the I2th October.

192. Meanwhile fighters of the Second Tac-tical Air Force visited a number of suspectedfiring areas in the course of the operations ofwider scope which they were conducting insupport of the campaign on land. Apart froma few trails, however, their pilots saw nothingthat threw much light on the activities of thefiring troops. But by the end of the attack onNorwich- a number of fresh factors had com-bined to produce a new situation, which ulti-mately led to a further change in the allocationof responsibility for armed reconnaissance.

(g) The Attacks: Third Phase (London, ydOctober to i&th November, 1944).

193. Among the most important of thesefactors was the resumption of attacks on Lon-don. On the 3rd October an agent reportedthat the firing troops might be in the process ofreturning to the Hague. Sure enough, late thatevening a rocket fell at Leytonstone—the firstin Greater London for a fortnight. Morefollowed on the 4th and 7th. By the middle ofthe month—when attacks on Norwich ceased—the new phase of activity against the capitalseemed to be settling down to a rather unsteady

average of two or three rounds a day. Thedegree of concentration achieved was about thesame as in September, but the mean point ofimpact was further east.

194. So far as we could judge, the Germanswere now firing at London from some half-dozen wooded parks and open spaces withinthe built-up area of the Hague and on itssouthern outskirts. Possibly a few sites else-where were being used as well. The firingtroops were said to have taken over a lunaticasylum in the suburb of Bloemendaal and to bestoring rockets and equipment in .the groundsand neighbouring woods. In addition, inform-ants who had usually proved reliable in thepast reported that vehicles and equipment werestored in a wooded park adjoining the HotelPromenade, in the centre of the town. Wewere told that supplies were reaching the Hagueby way of the goods station at Leiden, and thatladen railway trucks were often parked at themain railway station in that town.

195. All this information, and much morebesides, we passed to the headquarters of theSecond Tactical Air Force by means of thedaily " Benreps ". Officers from my head-quarters visited Brussels to give Air MarshalConingham's staff the benefit of such experi-ence as we had gamed in the first three weeksof the campaign. Both in the " Benreps " andverbally we stressed the desirability of confirm-ing by visual reconnaissance the intelligenceobtained from other sources. More than thiswe could not do. The responsibility for con-ducting the armed reconnaissance sorties whichalone enabled visual observations to be madenow rested solely on the Second Tactical AirForce; and according to a recent decision of theAir Commander-in-Chief, this situation was un-affected by the resumption of firing from theHague.

196. .Whatever the merits of this decision, asfar as I was concerned the situation to whichit led had one grave disadvantage: Air MarshalConingham, with his many commitments in thebattle area, could spare few aircraft for sub-sidiary tasks. Instead of making sorties overthe Hague expressly for the purpose of observ-ing and harassing the firing troops, as my forceshad been able to do, the Second Tactical AirForce was obliged to rely on its general pro-gramme of armed reconnaissance over theenemy's lines of communication. This methodof tackling the problem was probably right inthe circumstances; but from my point of viewit had several shortcomings. It left us withoutany means of judging the effect of so indirecta counter-measure; nor did it throw any lighton what the enemy was doing at the Hagueor meet our demand for visual reconnaissanceof suspected areas. Indeed, from the date whenthe Second Tactical Air Force assumed respon-sibility for armed reconnaissance up to thei7th October—when this issue came to a head—we were without any report to say that pilotsof that Command, while engaged on theseduties, had seen or attacked anything on theground which could be associated with long-range rockets.

197. Another factor which helped to give anew aspect to the problem created by the A-4was an increasing scale of attack on Continentalcities. By the middle of October well over100 rockets were known to have fallen on theContinent; and with the capture of Antwerp,


whose potential value to the Allies was great,the problem of defending such objectivesagainst both flying bombs and rockets wasbeginning to exercise the minds of the SupremeCommander and his staff. The likelihood thatAntwerp and Brussels would become the maintargets for the rocket during the coming winter—possibly to the exclusion of London andNorwich—doubtless contributed to the AirCommander-in-Chief's decision to leave the re-sponsibility for armed reconnaissance with theSecond Tactical Air Force even after attackson London had been resumed.

198. As a result of this quickening of interestin " Crossbow " weapons at Supreme Head-quarters, the Supreme Commander directed onthe nth October that the Chief of the AirDefence Division of Supreme Headquarters,who was responsible for co-ordinating terres-trial air defence measures in the north-westEuropean theatre, should also assume respon-sibility for coordinating countermeasuresagainst flying-bombs and rockets in thattheatre.

199. The decision to entrust this task to astaff division of Supreme Headquarters itself,and not to the Allied Expeditionary Air Force,foreshadowed the imminent demise of the sub-sidiary formation. Now that the Allied Armieswere firmly established on the Continent, thatbody, which had been formed primarily toplan and supervise air operations in support ofthe assault and build-up, was considered tohave fulfilled its purpose. On the I5th October,therefore, the Allied Expeditionary Air Forcewas formally disbanded. Consequently myCommand—re-named Fighter Command—andthe Second Tactical Air Force became inde-pendent formations. Thereupon the constitu-tional responsibility for the air defence of theUnited Kingdom which had hitherto rested onAir Chief Marshal Leigh-Mallory devolved uponme, with this difference: I had no control overthe Second Tactical Air Force. A situation inwhich I was responsible for defending thecountry against long-range rockets while re-sponsibility for conducting the only counter-measure open to a fighter force was exercisedby another Command, not under my control,was no longer merely inconvenient; it wasclearly untenable.

200. I therefore negotiated with Air MarshalConingham and with the Deputy SupremeCommander and the Air Ministry a newarrangement, whereby Fighter Command re-sumed responsibility for the armed reconnais-sance of all known or suspected rocket-firingor storage areas in Holland west of a line run-ning north and south through a point approxi-mately 45 miles east of the Hague. At thesame time steps were taken to assist the AirDefence Division of Supreme Headquarters indischarging their responsibility in respect ofrockets fired against Continental cities. TheSupreme Commander had already asked thatthe loth Survey Regiment, Royal Artillery,which had been deployed on the Continent inSeptember to undertake sound-ranging andflash-spotting on my behalf, should return toits normal duties in the field. Meanwhile, ex-perience had suggested the possibility of doingwithout a Survey Regiment in Kent, where thenth Survey Regiment, Royal Artillery, wasdeployed. Accordingly arrangements were nowmade to move the nth Survey Regiment to

the Continent and place it at the disposal ofSupreme Headquarters. No. 105 Mobile AirReporting Unit, too, was likely to be moreuseful to Supreme Headquarters than it was tome; and we agreed that this, too, should behanded over. Since the accurate detection andreporting of rockets aimed at Continental tar-gets was of direct as well as indirect benefit tomy Command—for without this information wecould not be sure of distinguishing the reportsthat related to rockets aimed at the UnitedKingdom or assessing their reliability—I readilyassented to these changes. I also agreed tolend a number of officers to Supreme Head-quarters to assist in setting up the organisationon the Continent.

201. Under the terms of these' new arrange-ments, during the third week in October No. 12Group once more assumed the responsibility foroperations over the Hague with which I hadcharged them in September. From the i8thOctober onwards, No. 12 Group, instead ofthe Second Tactical Air Force, were the primaryrecipients of the daily " Benrep "; but we con-tinued to keep in close touch with Air MarshalConingham's headquarters, and reached anunderstanding whereby the Second Tactical AirForce undertook to do its best to reconnoitrethe Hague on my behalf on any day when theweather made flying possible from Continentalairfields but impossible from airfields in thiscountry.

202. -In the meantime my staff had beenmaking a close study of the intelligence bear-ing on the disposition of the rocket-firing com-plex, and had selected five objectives at ornear the Hague which seemed worth bombing.Three—the goods station and the railway yardof the main station at Leiden, and the suspectedstore near the Hotel Promenade at the Hague—were small targets situated close to built-upareas in places whose inhabitants were well-disposed to us and were, indeed, our Allies.On the information I had at the time, thesetargets seemed eminently suited to the kind ofprecise attack in which the Mosquito bombersof No. 2 Group specialised. Accordingly weasked that Group to attack them.* The other"two—the first consisting of living quarters andstorage areas at Bloemendaal, and the secondof the storage site at Raaphorst, which wascredibly reported to be in use again—werelarger and stood in more open situations. Wetherefore suggested them to Bomber Commandas targets for a less precise form of attack.Further enquiry cast some doubt on the validityof our most recent information aboutRaaphorst, and on the igth October we with-drew that target from Bomber Command's list,thus leaving them with Bloemendaal as theirsole " Big Ben " objective, f

* Air Marshal Coningham, of whose CommandNo. 2 Group formed part, had agreed to my makingsuch requests direct to the headquarters of the Groupin England.

f Strictly speaking, there were two objectives atBloemendaal, with separate target names and numbers.The storage area round Bloemendaal church wasknown as " The Hague/Bloemendaal" ; the neigh-bouring lunatic asylum in which firing troops werequartered and whose grounds were said to be used forstoring and possibly for firing rockets was knownas " The Hague/Ockenburg Klinier ". Our suggestionwas that the two should be regarded as a singlecomplex, whose internal and external communicationscould be disrupted at the same time as the livingquarters and equipment were destroyed, by bombingtwo given aiming points.


203. Urgent as these requests were, the en-tire attention of Bomber Command at the timewas being absorbed by tasks to which greaterimportance was attached. The proposed tar-gets at Bloemendaal were, therefore, notattacked, and after further discussion withNo. 2 Group, the goods station and railwayyard at Leiden and the storage site near theHotel Promenade at the Hague were ruled outas not being suitable as precision targets forlow level Mosquito attacks. Consequently theGermans were able to develop their offensive,"unhampered save by such punishment asfighter-pilots could inflict in the course of armedreconnaissance sorties over an area heavilydefended by anti-aircraft weapons.

204. And in fact, as October gave way toNovember the scale of the German attack rosesharply.. During the first three weeks inOctober an average of two-and-a-half roundsa day reached this country. The averageover the next three weeks was four a day; andthe week after that it rose to six a day. Sixrockets a day was not an intolerable weight ofattack, for an individual rocket was not appre-ciably more destructive than a flying bomb.Yet I became uneasy about the fact that thescale of attack was rising and that compara-tively little was being done to check it.

205. On the I7th November I expressed myconcern to the Air Ministry in a formal letter.I pointed out that armed reconnaissance wasclearly not an adequate method of limiting theGerman offensive unless supplemented by othermeasures. Yet no bombing attack on anyrocket target at the Hague had been made fortwo months. Since the Tactical and StrategicAir Forces were not, at the moment, in a posi-tion to undertake such tasks, I should have torely on my own resources. Now, the Spitfireaircraft which I was using for armed recon-naissance had recently begun to carry bombs;but their pilots were precluded from droppingtheir bombs in circumstances which involvedany risk at all to Dutch civilian life or property.I suggested that this injunction should be re-laxed to the extent of permitting pilots to bombsuch targets as could be accurately locatedand were situated in areas from which the in-habitants were known to have been removed.In these circumstances the risk to civilian life,at least, would be small; and what we had todo was to balance the off chance of injury tolife and property at the Hague against itscertainty in London. I asked that this questionshould be carefully considered, in consultationwith the Dutch civil authorities if this werethought fit. Such a concession would alsoapply, of course, to any attacks that theMosquito aircraft of No. 2 Group might make.

206. Finally, I asked that considerationshould also be given to the desirability ofallotting a higher degree of priority to 'thebombing of rocket targets by Bomber Com-mand. At that time an increase in the scale ofattack by air-launched flying bombs was alsocausing me concern; and I took the opportunityof asking that the bases of the air-launchingunit should be attacked as well.*

207. This letter, as I have said, was signedon the I7th November. On that day fourrockets fell in London, killing 14 and seriously

* See paragraph 134, above.

injuring 36 people. A gas-holder was set onfire and nine factories were damaged. Onlytwo days earlier ten rockets had landed inthis country within 24 hours—six of them inLondon. Altogether, since the start of thecampaign on the 8th September some 200rockets had arrived in the United Kingdom—an average of three a day.

(h) The Attacks: Fourth Phase (London, igthNovember to $ist December, 1944).

208. The suggestion made in my letter of theI7th November that the Dutch authorities beconsulted was adopted; and on the 2ist of themonth this point and others raised in my letterwere discussed at one of the Deputy SupremeCommander's conferences at Supreme Head-quarters. Thereupon, with the concurrence otthe Air Staff, I was authorised to undertakefighter-bomber operations on the lines I hadlaid down. On the other hand, I was givenclearly to understand that for some time to comeany assistance I could expect to receive fromthe Second Tactical Air Force would bevirtually limited to that provided by theircurrent rail interdiction programme.* I wasalso informed that, unless the enemy increasedhis scale of attack considerably, the CombinedChiefs of Staff would not be likely to counten-ance the diversion of any part of the strategicbomber effort from the attack of the Germanpetroleum industry and communications to thatof rocket targets. The Air Staff assured me,however, that if the scale of attack by" Crossbow " weapons did increase, the matterwould be reconsidered.

209. No time was lost in taking advantageof the concession regarding fighter-bomberoperations. My staff drew up a list of storagesites and similar objectives all situated at least250 yards from the nearest built up area; andfrom the 2ist November onwards the foursquadrons in No. 12 Group which were assignedto this dutyf took every opportunity of attack-ing them with bombs and machine-gun andcannon fire. The general prevalence of badweather made these opportunities few, especi-ally in November and the latter half- ofDecember. As a result, these squadrons hadplenty of time for intensive .training in pmpoint dive-bombing, of which they took fulladvantage, and during the first half ofDecember, when the weather temporarily im-proved, more frequent attacks were made.Altogether, between the 2ist November andthe end of the year No. 12 Group made 470fighter-bomber sorties against rocket targets

* This programme included attacks on railway-bridges at Deventer, Zwolle, and Zutphen, whichsome competent judges considered the most promising1

form of countermeasure to the rocket offensive fromwestern Holland.

•f The squadrons were :No. 453 Squadron Spitfire XVINo. 229 Squadron Spitfire XVINo. 602 Squadron Spitfire XVINo. 303 Squadron Spitfire IX

The Spitfires XVT were each capable of carryingtwo 250 Ib. bombs and an overload tank whichenabled them to fly to and from then- bases in Englandwithout refuelling on the Continent. By refuellingin Belgium—which became possible on a strictlylimited scale at the end of November—they coulddispense with the tank and carry twice the load ofbombs. The Spitfire IX could carry at most one-500 Ib. bomb and that only by refuelling in Belgium.At this stage, therefore, we did not normally use>No. 303 Squadron to carry bombs.


and dropped 54 tons of bombs in the cd&rseof them. In these operations no effort wasspared to ensure that the bombs were droppedwith a skill and precision rivalling that dis-played by the picked crews of No. 2 Group iiisome of their spectacular attacks on buildingsused as headquarters by the Germans. Acharacteristic attack delivered during this phasewas one made by Nos. 453, 229 and 602Squadrons, on Christmas Eve, on a block offlats near the centre of the Hague, which theGermans were using to "house the firing troopsin that district. The building was so badlydamaged that the Germans had to leave it.

210. To all appearances the influence of theseoperations on the rate and quality of theenemy's fire was considerable. The scale ofattack declined from an average of nearly sevenrockets a day at the end of November to foura day in the middle of December and three-and-a-half at the end of the month. Moreover, theenemy took to doing most of his firing at night,and the apparent accuracy of the shooting de-creased. A statistical analysis of the rocketeffort and our counter-measures led to the be-lief that sustained attacks on the firing areasby day and night would exercise a cumulativeeffect on the enemy and hence on the number ofrockets that reached London.

211. At the time I was not altogether pre-pared to accept this conclusion. In the lightof subsequent experience I feel quite sure thatto do so would have been to claim too muchfor our efforts. The chief factor in limitingthe scale of attack was almost certainly the rateat which supplies could be brought to the firingareas; and this in turn must have been mainlydetermined by the frequency and success of thearmed reconnaissance and rail interdictionsorties flown by the Second Tactical Air Forceover the enemy's lines of communication. Pre-parations for the German offensive in theArdennes—which was accompanied by an in-creased scale of rocket attack on Antwerp—may also have helped to diminish the attackon London towards the end of 1944. Thesimultaneous decline in accuracy is not soeasily accounted for; and its significance in viewof the comparative smallness of the figuresanalysed is open to question.

212. On the other hand the enemy's newtendency to fire most of his shots at night wasdefinite and unmistakable. For this change ofhabit by the Germans our fighter-bombers mayperhaps claim the credit, since it cannot readilybe explained on any other grounds than adesire to evade their attention. Admittedlythe gain was an indirect one, seeing that fireat night was no more inaccurate than by day;in fact, as a general rule a higher proportionof the rounds 'fired in darkness ihit the targetthan of those fired by day; but casualties weregenerally lower after dark, when most peoplewere at home, than in the daytime, whenthey were massed together in factories andoffices and in the streets. Thus, from our pointof view the preponderance of night firing wasdefinitely favourable.

(j) The Attacks: Fifth Phase (Ldpidon, istJanuary to zyth March, 1945).

213. However, the respite was short-lived.In the New Year the scale of attack went upagain. During the first half of January an

average of more than eight rockets a dayreached this country. Thereafter the rate offire declined a little, only to rise again earlyin February, until an average of ten rockets aday was attained in the middle of the month.Moreover, the Germans again took ^ to doingmore than 'half their firing in daylight, andtheir accuracy improved. In an average weekin January and the first half of February,twice as many people were killed or seriouslyinjured by rockets as in a corresponding periodin December.

214. Clearly, our fighter-bomber programmewas not such an effective deterrent as we hadhoped. This was not to say that our methodswere wrong: without the fighter-bomber attacks,the rate of fire might have risen still moresharply. But evidently something more wasneeded if the German offensive was to bekept down.

215. (What form that something more shouldtake was not so obvious. In December theAir Ministry had asked the Foreign Office andthe Ministry of Economic Warfare to investi-gate the possibility of curtailing supplies offuel for the A-4 by attacking factories whereliquid oxygen was made. The experts reportedthat there was no means of knowing whichof the many factories in German hands or underGerman control were supplying liquid oxygenfor that particular purpose. There were, how-ever, eight factories in Holland, five in westernGermany, and five elsewhere in Germany whichmight fill the bill. As a sequel to this investi-gation, the Air Ministry invited me to considerattacking three factories in (Holland. One ofthem, at Alblasserdam, near Dordrecht, wassuccessfully attacked by the Second TacticalAir Force on the 22nd January. Another, atIjmuiden, consisted of two buildings so closelysurrounded by other factories that the prospectof a successful attack with the means at mydisposal was remote. The third, at Loosduinen,on the outskirts of the 'Hague, was adjoined•on three sides by Dutch civilian property.Hence I was reluctant to attack it, especiallyas there was no certainty that its destructionwould cause the Germans to fire even one lessrocket at this country. However, in view ofthe Air Ministry's request and my desire toleave nothing undone which offered a chanceof hampering the enemy, I agreed to do so.In order to reduce the risk to civilian propertyto a minimum, the pilots chosen for the jobwere instructed to use methods which can bestbe described as " trickling their bombs towardsthe target ". This technique necessitated fiveseparate attacks of which all but one were madefrom the direction in which there were nohouses adjoining the factory. Two attackswere made on the 3rd February, two on the9th February, and one on the 8th. Afterthe last attack on the 9th we judged that thetarget had suffered enough damage to 'be leftalone in future.

216. In January bad weather limited thenumber of fighter-bomber sorties that we couldmake to a little more than half the numbermade in December. In February the weatherwas better and during the first half of themonth we made more fighter-bomber sortiesthan in the whole of January. Besides de-livering the five attacks on the oxygen factoryat Loosduinen to which I have alluded, wemade six attacks on the Haagsche Bosch, a


wooded area in which rockets had been seenon reconnaissance photographs taken inDecember. The Hotel Promenade was attackedxm three occasions, and attacks were also madeon other suspected storage areas at the Hague,Wassenaar, and the Hook of Holland, as wellas on railway targets. The Second TacticalAir Force continued to attack communications,-as hitherto, in the course of their armed recon-naissance and rail interdiction programmes.

217. Meanwhile, in consequence of the risein the scale of rocket attack, towards the end•of January the Air Ministry had begun topress me to intensify my efforts against thefiring and storage areas. Nevertheless theywere still unwilling to see any part of BomberCommand's effort diverted to the attack ofsuch targets. On the 26th of the month, how-ever, the Defence Committee agreed to invitethe Air Ministry to ask Supreme Headquarters-to sanction the. precise attacks on selectedtargets by the light bombers of No. 2 Group,which I had been urging since the previousautumn. Shortly before this I had arranged toraise the strength of the force earmarked 'forexclusive use against rocket targets from foursquadrons to six, and to equip and use allsix squadrons regularly as fighter-bombersquadrons.* I now negotiated a new agree-ment with the Second Tactical Air Force where-by my area of responsibility was extended asfar east as Amersfoort. On days when theweather was unsuitable for precise attack onobjectives at the Hague, our fighter-bomberswere now attacking rail targets; and the in-clusion of Amersfoort in our area would enable

, us to bomb the railway junction there—a bottle-neck through which all traffic from Germanyto the firing areas in western Holland passed.Under the terms of the new agreement theSecond Tactical Air Force would use any lightor medium bombers that they could spare fromthe battle on land to attack rocket targetschosen from lists provided by my staff.

218. The full effect of the expansion of the" Big Ben " fighter-bomber force was seen inthe second half of February, when FighterCommand made 548 sorties'and dropped 108tons of bombs—precisely the same weight hitwo weeks as in the previous six. At thesuggestion of my Chief Intelligence Officer, whorecommended that we should try the effect ofconcentrating our efforts on a single target forat least a week, nearly three-quarters of this•bomb tonnage was aimed at the HaagscheBosch,- where severe damage was done, par-ticularly on the 22nd February, when a filmstudio which the Germans used for storagewas gutted. An almost complete cessation ofrocket fire over a period of more than sixtyhours followed this attack; and7 on the 24thFebruary photographic reconnaissance failed toreveal a single rocket anywhere in the squaremile or so of wooded parkland that theHaagsche Bosch comprised. Other evidencestrengthened the inference that the Germanshad been driven from the Haagsche Bosch,at least for the time being, and suggested thatthey had been forced to improvise facilities inthe racecourse area at Duindigt, further to thenorth.

* The additional squadrons selected were Nos. 451(Spitfire XVI) and 124 (Spitfire IX, modified forbombing).

219. So far as they went, these results ofour new policy of concentrating on one areawere encouraging; but events soon showed thatno lasting effect on the Germans had beenachieved. When firing was resumed(apparently from Duindigt) on the 26th, noappreciable decline in its quality or quantitywas apparent. Nor did the 'first of No. 2Group's long-awaited bombing attacks, whichwas delivered on the 3rd March, have anybetter effect. The attack was delivered by 56Mitchells, and the target chosen—not withoutsome misgivings since the continued presenceof the Germans and their gear was doubtful—was the Haagsche Bosch. Unfortunately thebombing was not sufficiently accurate, in con-sequence of which casualties occurred amongDutch civilians and their property wasdamaged. After this unhappy experience, AirMarshal Coningham decided to make no moreattacks on targets at the Hague.

220. Another counter-measure considered 'atthis stage was the use of anti-aircraft artilleryto fire at approaching rockets and explode themin the air. If only because the rocketstravelled many times faster than the fastestbomber and completed their parabolic flightfrom Holland in less than five minutes, theproblems involved seemed formidable. In-deed, proposals in this sense had been care-fully considered before the attacks began andfound impracticable. General Pile raised thesubject again in December, 1944, when heasked permission to make an operational trialof a scheme designed to ensure that the rocketswould pass through a curtain of shell-frag-ments as they approached the earth. Anessential requirement of the plan was accurateand timely warning that a rocket was on itsway. Although there were still difficulties inthe way of disseminating such warnings to thepublic, for operational purposes reliable in-formation of this kind was now available.There were some obvious drawbacks to thescheme: for example, the expenditure ofrounds required to explode even one rocket waslikely to be extravagant and possibly alarmingto the public. Nevertheless, I was satisfiedthat it contained the germ of a successfulcountermeasure, which might -become importantin the future, and that on purely operationalgrounds a practical trial was desirable. I maderecommendations to this effect when submittingGeneral Pile's proposal to higher authority.The committee before whom the scheme waslaid, after taking the opinion of eminent menof science, one of whom put the chances of asuccessful engagement at one in a hundred andanother at one in a thousand, decided that anoperational trial would be premature. Theyinvited those concerned to seek ways of improv-ing the scheme, and promised to consider itagain in March.

221. Accordingly General Pile repeated hisrequest for an operational trial towards theend of that month. He pointed out that timewas clearly running out: the opportunity oftesting the scheme in practice would soon havepassed. In response, on the 26th March apanel of scientists were asked to prepare atheoretical estimate of success. They reportedon the same day that if 400 rounds were firedagainst a-ny one rocket the chance of scoringa hit would, at best, be one in thirty. Aftera further statement by General Pile, who said


that he would endeavour to increase the chanceof success by trebling the rate of fire, the pro-posal went before the Chiefs of Staff, whodecided on the 30th March that the likelihoodof success was too small to outweigh the objec:tions to the scheme. But in any case, by thattime the campaign was over.

222. Meanwhile we had been continuing ourfighter-bomber offensive against the rocket-firing organisation and its communications.After the 3rd March we made no furtherattacks on the Haagsche Bosch, but turned ourattention to the adjoining racecourse area atDuindigt, along with other storage and firingareas and a group of buildings belonging tothe Bataafsche Petroleum Company, whichapparently the Germans were using as billetsand offices. ' As before, we selected railwaytargets for attack when conditions were unsuit-able for attacking our primary objectives.During the second week of March alone wedropped some 70 tons of bombs at Duindigt.By the middle of the month we had evidencethat the Germans had abandoned the area,which was by that time so pitted with cratersthat, in the words of a contemporary report," it looked as if Bomber Command, notFighter Command, had been attacking it ".This success was accompanied by anothertemporary decrease in the scale of rocketattack on London; and what was, perhaps,more significant was that about this time theGermans took to doing more and more of theirfiring in the early hours before dawn. Weconcluded that our efforts had spoilt theirarrangements for storing rockets in the forwardarea and that they were being forced to bringthe missiles up at night and fire them off assoon as possible. Accordingly, during thesecond half of March we paid little attention tostorage areas and devoted most of our fighter-bomber effort to communications. Altogetherwe made more fighter-bomber sorties in Marchthan in the previous four months put together,and dropped more than three times the weightof bombs dropped in February.

223. The German offensive came to an endat 1645 hours on the 27th March, when theone thousand, one hundred and fifteenthrocket to fall in this country or within sightof shore fell to earth at Orpington, in Kent.The campaign had lasted seven months. Duringthat time the Germans had fired at least 1,300rockets at London and some 40 or more atNorwich. Of these 518 had fallen within theLondon Civil Defence Region and none atall within the boundaries of the latter city.Altogether, 2,511 people had been killed and5,869 seriously injured in London, and 213killed and 598 seriously injured elsewhere.These figures would have been substantiallysmaller but for a number of unlucky incidents,in which rockets chanced to hit crowdedbuildings. Among the worst of these incidentswere three which occurred at New Cross Road,Deptford, on the 25th November, 1944, andat Smithfield Market and Hughes Mansions,Stepney, on the 8th and 27th March respec-tively. Deplorable as these occurrences were,thek rarity is a measure of the randomquality of the long-range rocket in the stageto which the Germans had developed it.

224. Yet the A-4 rocket cannot be dismissedas a mere freak. Practically, it was a newweapon, which brought new hazards to the

lives of millions, and set new problems ofdefence. Its significance, and that of theflying-bomb, when posed against the widerbackground of the war as a whole, remain tobe considered.

PART IV: A SUMMING UP.225. In describing our countermeasures to

the flying bomb and A-4 rocket, I have beenat pains to point out that these measures wereonly a part of operations of much wider scope,ultimately extending over the greater part ofEurope. Perhaps a balanced view is bestpreserved by remembering that althoughdefence against these two weapons formed themain task of the air defences during a periodof nearly ten months, operations directly con-cerned with the bomb and rocket absorbedonly a fraction of the total Allied air effort,offensive and defensive. From the time whenattacks on " Crossbow" targets began, inAugust, 1943, until the end of the war withGermany, these operations accounted for abouteight per cent, of the total weight of bombsdropped by the tactical and strategic air forcesin the western theatre. On -the other hand, thenumber of guns and balloons concentrated insouth-east England that summer as part ofour defences against the flying bomb wascertainly the greatest ever assembled in a com-parable area for the purpose of air defence.The fighter squadrons deployed hi this rolewere limited in number by geographical condi-tions; but they included some of our fastestaircraft, which had to be withheld from opera-tions in the tactical area.

226. This leads naturally to the question:to what extent did this expenditure of effortprevent the Germans from doing what theyset out to do? An answer calls for a few com-ments on what the German intentions seem to•have been. When accelerated development ofthe A-4 rocket began in 1942, the Germanscannot have known very clearly what theymeant to do with it. Not only had the capabili-ties of the weapon yet to be established, butin any case the formulation of precise strategicaims does not seem to have been the enemy'sstrong suit. • In the OKW* the Germanspossessed what the Allies sometimes accusedthemselves of lacking—namely, a permanentand fully equipped organ for the supreme direc-tion of the war. In practice, however, it failedto come up to expectations. For this thereseem to have been two reasons. For one thing,Keitel, the head of the OKW, lacked a forcefulpersonality. For another,'the selection of hisstaff was entrusted to the General Staff of theArmy, who were not so innocent as to put arod for their own backs into the hands of menremarkable for their vigour. Hence the OKWworked less as an authoritative body than asa kind of secretariat to the Fuehrer. Hitlerwas thus the only man in Germany really ina position to settle problems of overall strategy.

227. Hitler, we are told, had little taste oraptitude for long-term planning, though his-intuitive judgment of immediate issues wasphenomenal. Such qualities as this were notenough to ensure a consistent aim or policy.When firm direction from above was lacking,the three fighting services pursued separate and

* Oberkommando der Wehnnacht, or Supreme Com-mand of the Armed Forces.


sometimes divergent courses. " Because of theimpotence of the OKW," says Albert Speer,the former Reichsminister of Armaments andWar Production, " I had to negotiate andmake decisions separately with the threeServices."

228. According to the same authority, thedevelopment of the flying bomb was beguntowards the end of 1942 because the GermanAir Staff grew jealous of the success achievedby the Army in developing their own long-range missile, the A~4 rocket. Thus, from theoutset the two weapons seem to have beencompetitors. An attempt to co-ordinate theiruse at the operational level was, however, madein December, 1943, when a military formationcalled LXV Army Korps was given overridingcontrol over both weapons. The • efficacy ofthis measure is doubtful, since the staff ofLXV Army Korps seem to have had an imper-fect understanding of the flying bomb, and weresometimes, at loggerheads with Flakregiment155 (W), the Luftwaffe formation immediatelyresponsible for its operation. I daresay therewas something to be said on both sides.

229.. Despite these disagreements and un-certainties, by the spring of 1944 the notion ofusing the two long-range weapons to remedythe shortcomings of the bomber force seemsto have been generally accepted. 'Outwardlythe odds against a German victory had becomeso great that those in the know could hardlyhave found the will to go on fighting if theybad not been sustained by the mysterious pro-mise of new scientific marvels, reinforced by.the hope of driving a wedge between the Allies.Koller, the last Chief of the German Air Staff,has said that " the final role of the flyingbomb and the A-4 rocket was to replace thebomber arm of the Luftwaffe entirely." Hitlerexpressed a similar intention when addressingrepresentatives of Flakregiment 155 (W) atBerchtesgaden soon after the flying bomb cam-paign had begun. Yet even at that stage incon-sistencies of aim and viewpoint were evident.Only a few months earlier the aircraft industryhad been directed to continue the productionof bomber types; while LXV Army Korps, trueto its tradition of conflict with Flakregiment 155(W), envisaged the simultaneous use of flyingbombs and bombers. Finally, Goering, whoas head of the Air Ministry and Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe was ultimatelyresponsible for the decision to adopt the flyingbomb, is said to have had little faith in theweapon; while Speer, who was ultimatelyresponsible for its production, was certainlynot unaware of its defects.

230. On one further point, at least, .the Ger-mans were agreed: the time to use the- long-range weapons was before the Allies could setfoot in north-west Europe, in order to postponethe day and gain time for dissension to springup between the United Kingdom, America andRussia. The A-4 rocket was an ill-favouredmonster, slow to reach maturity; but tests ofthe flying bomb in the summer of 1943 were sopromising that the commencement of activeoperations1 before (the end of .the year wasordered. Whether attacking London withflying bombs was a good way of upsettingAllied plans for the assault is arguable; butvery likely the Germans clung to the hope thatopposing views about the diversion of our

resources to the defence of the capital wouldsplit the western Allies, and the consequent delayin opening the new front detach us both fromRussia.

231. The bombing of the " ski sites " andother factors led to a postponement of thisprogramme. The landings in Normandy on the6th June, 1944, took the Germans tacticallyby surprise and found them still not ready touse the flying bomb. Thereupon LXV ArmyKorps, apparently on Hitler's instructions,peremptorily ordered Flakregiment 155 (W) tobegin operations on the I2th June. The precisegrounds of this decision are never likely to beknown. The opportunity to use the long-rangeweapons to delay the Allied assault had gone,if indeed it had ever existed. But the Germansmay still have hoped to gain time by exploitingthe harassing effect of the bomb and hamper-ing the flow of reinforcements and supplies.Moreover, it is improbable that we need lookvery far for the motive that prompted such anatural reaction to events. At moments ofcrisis the impulse to retaliate against an Englandwhich had upset all Hitler's plans by perverselyrefusing its allotted role was never far belowthe surface. The Germans quickly publicisedthe flying bomb as " -revenge weapon No. i " :and their propaganda may well have containeda hint of their real purpose. With the " westwall " in jeopardy and defeat on the horizon,Hitler may have seen no more than the needto strike back .and hope for a miracle.

232. In any .case such hopes as the Germansmay have entertained were bound to be dis-appointed. During the next ten months theywere to launch well over 10,000 flying bombsat London, thereby squandering about amillion and a half gaUoiUs of sorely-neededpetrol and a productive effort which, accordingto Speer, would have been better employed inturning out 3,000 fighters. Whether Germanywould have gamed anything decisive if everyone of those peevish darts had found its markis open to question. But for us the effectswould certainly have been embarrassing. Asit was, our casualties in the two V-weapon cam-paigns included 8,938 persons killed and 24,504seriously injured, while over 200,000 houseswere destroyed or severely damaged and overa million more suffered less important damage.We may therefore be thankful that the numberof bombs which reached the London CivilDefence Region was not 10,000 but 2,419.

233. I fancy that Londoners in particular willreadily acknowledge their debt to the gunners,fighter crews, balloon crews', and a host ofothers whose skill, devotion, and unfailing toilbrought about the premature descent of farmore bombs than reached the target. Nor willthey forget the involuntary but cheerful con-tribution of their neighbours in Kent, Sussex,Surrey, and other counties surrounding Lon-don, whose fields and gardens were graveyardsfor buzz-bombs stricken by the way. Despitethe care that we took to bring the bombs downaway (from houses whenever we could, thepath of damaged or defective bombs was some-times unpredictable. Like their neighbours inLondon, some of the dwellers in " bomballey " met their deaths in the front line. Itis right that I should record, however, that ourefforts were so far successful that the casual-ties caused by the bombs which failed to reachthe target were only a fraction of the total.


234. In this battle the part played bygunners and fighters was so conspicuous andimportant that it tends to monopolize atten-tion, perhaps unduly. I am conscious that inwriting the foregoing account of the flying bombcampaign I have not resisted the natural ten-dency to bring out those features which makefor easy narrative and positive statement. Iwish, therefore, in this summing up, to empha-size that victory over the flying bomb wasgained by the joint efforts of thousands of menand women of the different Services, workingin every variety of unit and at all levels ofresponsibility. As an example of this co-operation I may cite the mutual trust and unityof purpose that always existed between GeneralPile's staff and mine. So far as the work ofthe gunners and fighter crews is concerned,the bare chronicle of their achievements re-quires no embellishment. Nothing need beadded, therefore, except perhaps a word oftribute to those whose work was done outside;ftie limelight. The contribution of Balloonfcommand, too, speaks for itself, although per-haps in too modest a tone for its true valueto be apparent. Every one of the 232 bombsbrought down by the balloons was one whichhad eluded the other defences and would almostinevitably have hit the target if it had beenallowed to continue on its way. To theadministrative skill and practical efficiencywhich enabled the deployment of the initialbarrage to be completed in less than a third oftthe time originally forecast, I dan give nohigher praise than by comparing this feat withthose performed by Anti-Aircraft Command atthe same time and in July. The part playedby the Royal Observer Corps—the Silent Ser-vice of the air defences—was an epic in itself.Together Anti-Aircraft Command, FighterCommand, Balloon Command and the RoyalObserver Corps made up a team in whose playI am proud to have had a share. .

235. Of the helping hand extended by manywho were not members of the team, limitationsof space forbid that I should say much. A hinthas already been given of the technical adviceand assistance rendered by distinguished menof science. Acknowledgement must also bemade of the important part played by the RoyalNavy and the Admiralty, especially in con-nection with the problems of obtaining andutilising early warning of the approach of fly-ing bombs over the sea, and also that of help-ing pilots to " pinpoint " their position off thecoast. In particular, the heroism of those whosailed in the small craft which operated off theFrench coast, under the noses of the Germansand exposed to attack by land, sea, -and air,deserves to be remembered.

236. Teamwork, aided by such help as this,won the " battle of the bomb ". Indeed, itis not too much to claim that the flying bombwas prevented from achieving even a second-ary purpose; for although we suffered casualtiesand damage, the flow of supplies to the AlliedArmies across the Channel went on unim-peded by the worst the flying bomb could do.

237. Such, then is the answer to our ques-tion, so far as it concerns the flying bomb.

238. I turn now to the A-4 rocket. Thiswas hi some ways a more disturbing menacethan the flying bomb. Not that it was moredestructive; but it was difficult to counter, and

fore-shadowed further developments which stilTloom ahead of us. Albert Speer, one of theablest and most far-seeing of our enemies,remarked soon after the German surrenderthat, whereas the flying bomb had had its day,the rocket must be considered the long-rangeweapon of the future. On the other side ofthe scale must be set the complication and.high cost of such missiles. Delivering approxi-mately the same explosive charge as a flyingbomb, the A-4 rocket required twenty times-the productive effort, or as much as six orseven fighters.

239. That the German rocket attacks of 1944and 1945 were conceived with a well-definedmilitary object in view is open to doubt. Ifancy that if the situation had been less des-perate the Germans might have postponed ac-tive operations until further trials enabled themto attain a higher standard of accuracy. Theirplight was such, however, that in September,1944, they found themselves constrained to im-provise a rocket offensive from Holland inorder to cushion the shock resulting from theobvious failure of the flying bomb. This doesnot mean that if northern France had remainedin their hands, and our countermeasures to theflying bomb been less successful, they wouldnot have used both weapons together; but thatin such circumstances the use of the rocketwould have been equally premature. Thestandard of accuracy attained, the many mis-fires, and the inconsistency of method adoptedby different firing units, all point in the samedirection.

240. To an even greater extent than the fly-ing bomb campaign, then, the rocket offensivemust be regarded merely as a harassing attack.In the outcome it was not particularly success-ful in that capacity. Why was this? Thecontribution of the defences, as I have related,was practically limited to tracking the missiles,trying to locate the firing, points, and attackingthese and other targets more or less frequentlyand more or less effectively with fighters andfighter-bombers. As I urged at the time,these measures were not, by themselves, enoughto interfere seriously with the rate or qualityof -the enemy's fire. The ineffectiveness of theA-4 rocket was due rather to the inaccuracyof the weapon and to the restricted scale ofattack, reduced as it was by the enemy's in-sistence on dividing his efforts between Ant-werp and London, probably from propagandistmotives. But to say this does not iniply thatno effective countermeasure to the rocket wouldhave been possible in any circumstances. Inone sense its very lack of weight was whatmade the attack so hard to counter. For if theenemy had begun to fire at a much greaterrate, he could no longer have lived from handto mouth. He would have been obliged tostore rockets and fuel in bulk near the firingarea. Valuable bombing targets would thenhave been offered to us; and hi such a casethe Chiefs of Staff would doubtless have con-sidered lifting their virtual ban on the use ofthe strategic bomber forces against rocket tar-gets. I have little doubt that if this had beendone and the diversion of part of our bombereffort been accepted, we should soon havebeen able to restore the scale of rocket attackto its original proportions.

241. Accordingly, so far as the rocket wasconcerned the answer to our question is that,although in the circumstances the effect of the


defences was small, potentially we had themeans of keeping -the situation in hand if thescale of attack had risen.

242. On the broader issue of the extent towhich the Germans were right, in the militarysense, to develop their two long-range weaponsand put them into operation, a number ofquestions naturally arise. Would severalthousand fighters have been worth more to theenemy than the 20,000 flying bombs and 3,000rockets, or thereabouts, which he aimed atEngland and Continental cities? Put thus, theissue is misleadingly simple; the fighters wouldhave been no use without pilots, ground crews,bases, and supplies of aviation spirit greaterthan the Germans could command. If this•effort had been put into the production ofbombers instead, the Germans would still havebeen no better off: the crews and the aviationspirit would not have been forthcoming. Andindeed, since by the time the most 'importantdecisions were taken the Luftwaffe had lostmuch of its striking power, the devotion of somuch skill and manpower to the flying bomband the A-4 is at least understandable. Theformer was an ingenious weapon, which wemight not have overcome if we had been lesswell prepared; the latter a notable advance onanything that had gone before, and a sourceof problems with which the nations are stillgrappling. The sponsors of these engines ofdestruction may be pardoned for a certainlack of judgment if they fancied themselves onthe brink of changes comparable to those whichfollowed the rifled barrel and the machine-gun.

243. Whatever the pros and cons of the Ger-man policy which lay behind the operation ofthe flying bomb and the A-4 rocket, it is prob-able that, as the end approached, the Germanmeasures to stave off general defeat became lesswell co-ordinated and more involuntary. Ihave tried to show why I think it more thandoubtful whether Hitler could have developeda decisive attack with the flying bomb and therocket in 1944, whatever targets had beenchosen. I have suggested that in fact he wasconfronted with the peremptory need of a signwhich would show his followers that Englandwas being attacked, and so mitigate to somedegree the terror that was coming upon them.Where action is taken under forces of over-whelming compulsion there can hardly be aquestion of fastidious strategic judgment.None "the less, hi the complex and oftentangled web of German strategy one importantthread was missing. Though hidden at firstby reason of the great number of aircraftdeployed to lead off the German land cam-paigns, its absence became more obvious asoperations went on. I refer to the Germanfailure to think consistently in terms of airpower. The Luftwaffe was allowed to rundown, and no big enough measures were set

in train for its continuous (replenishment, es-pecially in respect of competent bomber crews.The result of this neglect was a progressiveloss of ak superiority, at first over the occupiedterritories and finally over the " living space "

*of Germany.

244. If, as Roller had said, the flying bomband the A-4 rocket were to be regarded as asubstitute for the strategic bomber force, thecardinal mistake was to suppose that thesenovel weapons could be used effectively in theabsence of air superiority, which alone couldhave provided reasonable immunity from airattack. Only air superiority could ensure thatthe places where the missiles were stored, ser-viced, and fired, the crews who fired them, andthe vehicles which carried them by road andrail would not be subject to systematic inter-ference.

245. By the time the flying bomb and rocketcampaigns were got under way, the Allies hadgamed a high degree of air superiority overall the areas from which the weapons couldbe fired. Hence we were in a position to con-duct a counter-offensive at will, and withoutserious hindrance from enemy aircraft, where-ever targets might present themselves andwhenever the scale of attack by the Germanswas sufficient to warrant the diversion ofAllied bombers from their main task. Some-times—as with the rail interdiction programmeof the tactical air forces—operations conceivedwith the main task in view served a dual pur-pose, and no diversion was involved.

246. Moreover, this vital condition of air>superiority, for which we had fought withoutrespite since the Battle of Britain, enabled usconstantly to improve the system of airdefence whose application to new threats Ihave endeavoured to describe. Because we hadair superiority we found ourselves free to adaptthe system to novel circumstances and keep itin action day and night, with scarcely a rapfrom the German bombers not an hour's flyingaway.

247. The problems of air defence which havebeen described will not remain static. Theymay recur in new forms in the future. Thescientific advances which the Germans used sospectacularly, if unsuccessfully, gave us a fore-taste of nazards against which it is our busi-ness to provide. As science goes forward, andfresh discoveries lead to changes in theapparatus and methods of ak defence, fertilityin research and skill in engineering will providebetter tools and weapons; but these are onlyraw materials of progress. What we need todo, above all, is to give rein to the qualitiesof mind and imagination which can take thegrowing mass of technical knowledge andmould what it brings forth to fit the shape ofthings to come.

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