Defending the Heart - a visit to RAF Uxbridge

Gate Guardian at RAF Uxbridge is this replica Hurricane in 303 Polish Squadron colours (author's photo)

Early in November, I was lucky enough to pay a visit to the RAF 11 Group Ops Room, more popularly known as the Battle of Britain Bunker at RAF Uxbridge in Middlesex, which was responsible for the air defence of London and the Southeast of England and as such carried the motto 'Tutela Cordis' which translates to 'Defence of the Heart.'

No. 11 Group was part of RAF Fighter Command and was an integral part of what became known as the 'Dowding System', named after Fighter Command's first Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief and the man who, with a committee led by Henry Tizard, developed what was the first interlocking command, control and communication network. This comprised of a system of Fighter Groups, Squadrons and Sector Stations, linked to the radar, observer posts, anti-aircraft guns, balloon control all controlled from Fighter Command HQ at Bentley Priory, near Stanmore in Middlesex.

It was a work of genius, which was a cornerstone of British victory during the Battle of Britain and of which the Luftwaffe were never fully aware and who never understood its significance.

The Memorial at RAF Uxbridge (author's photo)

The Groups were the second link in the communication chain and filtered down all of the information received through to the individual sector stations within their respective groups, whilst passing the information up to Command HQ at Stanmore. Today, the 11 Group Ops Room is open to the public, currently by appointment only and has been recreated to appear exactly as it did during the Battle of Britain, more specifically for around 11:30 on Sunday 15 September 1940, the day we now commemorate as Battle of Britain Day.

Appointments are necessary because the nature of the bunker makes space restricted and therefore limits the size of the groups that can be accommodated. My appointment made, I arrived a little before 14:00 having made the short walk from Uxbridge Underground Station through the former RAF Station, much of which is currently being developed into a new housing estate. On formation in 1936, the 11 Group Ops Room was located within Hillingdon House but this was a temporary measure as it was realised from the outset that any such nerve centre would need to remain impervious to enemy air attack.

The bunker was constructed by the well known construction company Sir Robert McAlpine under conditions of strict secrecy between February and August 1939 and was thus available in the nick of time for war. The bunker is sixty feet beneath the ground and was designed to be immune to the heaviest bombs of the period. It was also designed with attack by poison gas in mind and contains a gas filtration system (which is still functioning to this day) which ensures that breathable air is available at all times to those working within the complex.

On the afternoon of my visit, we had a small group of three people booked, one of whom was a 'no show' and thus, our small party of two, led by Bob, our enthusiastic and knowlegeable guide, began the descent of the first flight of 87 steps down to the Ops Room.

The first of 87 steps down - and back up! (author's photo)

As we were a small group on the day, Bob was first able to show us the gas filtration room, which after 78 years still functions perfectly well. Our next port of call was the checkpoint, which today is recreated by an RAF Regiment Guard in mannequin form, together with a rack of 0.303 rifles and a secure grill to prevent unauthorised entry. Understandably, given the secret nature of this site in 1940, entry was strictly governed by pass only. Bob explained that it was here that the Ops Room suffered its only fatal casualty of the Second World War when a WRAF was killed by a rifle which fired as it was being cleaned by one of the duty guards, killing her instantly.

The Check Point entrance to the Ops Room (author's photo)

With this sobering thought in mind, we descended further down two more flights of stairs until at last, we reached the bottom level. Bob explained that the bunker has always had a problem with flooding, although during the years that it was operational, the space was manned around the clock and could be adequately controlled. This is not always the case today and Bob showed us the mark left by a summer thunderstorm in July 2015 which left the complex shoulder deep in water.

Bob shows us the 2015 flood level marked on the door frame (author's photo)

Having reached the Ops Room proper, although I had never visited before, it was a strangely familiar sight. This was because I had seen it (so I thought) in many films, perhaps most notably in the 1969 classic Battle of Britain and I asked Bob about this filming. It transpired that the film hadn't been shot in the Bunker, because at this time RAF Uxbridge was still an operational station and in any case, the Ops Room in its 1940 form was non-existent at that time. A team from the production company visited, took meticulous measurements and aided by photographs of the complex taken during the war, faithfully recreated the complex at Pinewood Studios - and so myths are demolished!

The 'Tote Board' and Plot Table (author's photo)

The Gallery - VIPs were accomodated on the far left (author's photo)

The main Ops Room is dominated on one side by the vast 'Tote Board' which fills one wall and by the elevated desks and the curved glass of the gallery on the other. The desks were occupied by the 'Tellers' who were in constant contact with the Sector Stations, Radar Stations etc. and the Gallery was home to the Duty Controller and the AOC, who during the Battle of Britain was Air Vice Marshal Keith Park. The glass protection was a must, as the main Ops Room, with it's legion of Tellers, WRAF 'croupiers' on the Plot and the constant ringing of telephones, was a noisy place and the Controllers up above needed a modicum of quiet in order to take the momentous decisions needed to control the battle.

Bob immediately set about explaining the Tote Board and its complexities. It was designed to display all of the relevant information at a glance. The place names displayed prominently across the top and bottom of the board - TANGMERE, NORTH WEALD, HORNCHURCH, KENLEY, BIGGIN HILL, DEBDEN and NORTHOLT - are the Sector Stations for 11 Group. The numbers displayed beneath each Sector Station are the squadrons assigned to each sector, for example for Northolt we see 1 (Canadian), 303 (Polish), 229, 504 and 264 B Flight, which was a night-fighter squadron at this period of the Battle and is thus shown as 'Released' on the Tote Board, as it is set for 11:30 on 15 September 1940. The descriptions beneath each squadron, such as 'Available in 30 minutes' etc., show the readiness state of each of those squadrons. The meaning of the coloured lights relates to the colours shown on the clock face, so for example with the clock at 11:30, the minute hand has just passed the 'blue' section on the clock face, so if the light is illuminated in blue, the controllers know at a glance that this is up to date information, if in yellow then ten minute old information, red fifteen minutes and so on, with the lights being lit in sequence. At the bottom of the status list, we then see the words 'State of Squadrons' - this is simple with 'P' equating to pilots and 'A' for aircraft, so again we can see at a glance that 1 (Canadian) Squadron at this precise point had 23 pilots but only 13 aircraft, 303 (Polish) 21 pilots and 17 aircraft and so on across the squadrons.

Weather and Balloon Status was also shown (author's photo)

Nothing was left to chance and the lower part of the Tote Board displayed the weather and visibility across all Fighter Command airfields and so apart from the Sector Stations, we now saw other familiar names from the Battle of Britain such as Hendon, Croydon and Martlesham Heath on display. For example, the cloud status was 8/10 cloud cover at 18,000 feet above Biggin Hill and visibility of three miles. The green disks told at a glance that the airfield was open - a red would indicated a temporary closure and a red/green would indicate usable with care. The status of the balloon barrage was shown, with the heights of the barrages at Dover, Gravesend, Tilbury and London all shown.

The Plot Table set for 11:30 on Sunday 15 September 1940 (author's photo)

Moving to the Plot Table, the same principal of showing at a glance the age and therefore the validity of the information to hand applied. Looking at the photograph immediately above, three raids can be seen heading across the Channel; these are marked 'H' for Hostile and the number '04' for example, signifies that it is the fourth hostile raid detected so far that day. The figure in red below indicates the number of aircraft in the raid, either based on the radar operator's judgement, or as observed by a member of the Royal Observer Corps. The arrows behind the raids are coloured according to the clock face, so in this instance a blue arrow represents the most up-to-date and therefore accurate information available and by looking at the progression of arrows, it is possible to plot the course of the raids as they head towards the English coast. The RAF fighter squadrons being deployed in response to the raid are shown in similar fashion, with the squadron numbers displayed on yellow flags atop the  wooden blocks, so we see that the first squadrons likely to intercept are 92 and 72 Squadrons, which comprise of twenty aircraft and which are patrolling at a height of 25,000 feet, in other words, with the advantage of height. Other squadrons are shown at various points, either patrolling over airfields, or ready to intercept before the raiders reached London. In the distance, just over the demarcation line between 11 and 12 Groups is a formation marked 'W' which shows fifty five aircraft patrolling at 20,000 feet. This is the Duxford Wing, or the "Big Wing" of 12 Group, which although it had let down Park in 11 Group earlier in the battle by appearing too late to be effective, on this day it was to have a devastating psychological effect on the Luftwaffe by appearing in large numbers, just at a time when the German pilots had been led to believe that the RAF was on its last legs.

From the Plot Room, we moved upstairs to the gallery area behind the curved glass. Part of this is still laid out with the desk for the Duty Controller, which during the Battle of Britain was Air Commodore Baron Willoughby de Broke, who during the Battle of Britain always ensured that he was available and never missed a single day's action. An interesting fact relayed by Bob our guide, was that contrary to popular belief, no RAF personnel slept in the bunker at any point during the war, the only person being allowed to do so was the duty GPO telephone engineer, so vital was it to maintain communications with the outside world and the 11 Group airfields in particular. Another interesting point of interest is that the map on display is the original dating from 1940, which when the Ops Room was restored to it's original Battle of Britain configuration in the mid-1980s, was found rolled up in a storeroom, gathering dust!

The view down from the Gallery (author's photo)

The remainder of the Gallery, along with many of the adjoining former offices, has been converted into a most attractive and interesting museum, housing models, uniforms, medals and memorabilia from the RAF's Second World War history and beyond. This was largely the work of Warrant Officer 'Chris' Wren MBE, who whilst stationed at RAF Uxbridge for the final nine years of his RAF career, took it upon himself to restore the Ops Room to it's former glory and made it a personal mission to achieve this end. Chris is now retired from the RAF and from overseeing the Ops Room but he can be extremely proud of the end result.

During the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill was a frequent visitor and would sit in the VIP area of the Gallery watching the day's events unfold and indeed, it was following a visit on 16 August 1940 that he was so moved by what he seen, that he began to pen the speech that would include the now immortal phrase "Never in the field of human conflict, was so much owed, by so many to so few."
Churchill was again present on 15 September 1940, the day we see frozen in time at the Ops Room today but the Bunker was visited by many other VIPs during the war, including Field Marshal Montgomery and General Dwight D Eisenhower.

Air Raid Siren formerly mounted on the roof of Hillingdon House (author's photo)

Babys' Gas Mask (author's photo)

Other parts of the Museum are dedicated to the Royal Observer Corps, Bomber Command and to RAF Uxbridge. A slick looking new Visitor Centre is currently under construction outside in the grounds which is due to open in February 2018 and it is to be hoped that this new facility doesn't detract from the charm of the current arrangements too much. There is also a Lecture Theatre, and whilst we were undertaking our visit, watched a fascinating film made especially for the RAF in 1990 which highlighted the work of 11 Group. Bob mentioned that for school groups, who are also catered for here, he frequently shows the classic documentary "London Can Take It!" which dates from 1940.

Of course, the 11 Group Ops Room was at the centre of events other than the Battle of Britain, although this was undoubtedly it's 'Finest Hour' to coin a phrase. The subsequent fighter sweeps, known as 'Rhubarbs', a costly strategy envisioned by Keith Park's successor Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who had intrigued for the 11 Group AOC's post, were all controlled from here, as were the air operations for another ill-advised mission, the Dieppe Raid in 1942. The culminating moment came in 1944, when the air operations for Operation Overlord, the D-Day Landings were all controlled from the 11 Group Bunker and today a replica Spitfire Mk IX in "Invasion Stripes" acts as the joint gate guardian with the Hurricane to represent the two pinnacles in the Ops Room's history.

Replica Spitfire Mk IX gate guardian (author's photo)

The Battle of Britain Bunker in it's present format is open by appointment only until Friday 22 December 2017, after which point it will close until the new Visitor Centre opens in February next year. I highly recommend paying a visit and details as to how to book can be made by checking out the Museum Website as per this link. If you can, visit before the closure so that you can see the current arrangements before it is too late!

Operation Gambit: Preparing for D-Day.

Gambit: Chess opening in which player sacrifices pawn or piece to secure advantage (Concise Oxford Dictionary)

HMS X-23 (with George Honour amidships) returns after D-Day (www.dday7.channel4.com)

Following on from yesterday's immensely moving commemorations for the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, perhaps today is a good time to remember one of the lesser known but vitally important aspects of the operation; that of marking the beaches and clearly defining the extreme limits of the assault zone for the British and Canadian forces.

The task was given to the Royal Navy's midget submarines, the underwater answer to the British propensity for 'messing around' in small boats, although the missions for the X-Craft, as these cramped vessels were officially known, consisted of anything but messing around. Six months previously, six of these tiny vessels, powered by the same diesel engines normally used to propel London buses, had attacked the German battleship, Tirpitz, at her Norwegian fjord anchorage. The attack was a brilliant success with the giant battleship being crippled until the following April, but the cost was high. Out of the six craft sent into the attack, four had been lost or scuttled by their crews and those that had survived were to spend the remainder of the war in German POW camps. In April 1944, another submarine, X-24, attacked the Laksevag floating dock in Bergen, Norway but mistakenly placed her charges beneath a German merchant vessel, the Barenfels, which was alongside the dock at the time. The charges sank the merchant ship but only caused minor damage to the floating dock, which was capable of docking the Tirpitz and other large German warships. The operation was repeated in September 1944, again by X-24 but with a fresh crew. This time the operation was an unqualified success and the floating dock was sunk. X-24 returned safely, having been undetected by the enemy and survives to this day.

HMS X-24 preserved at Gosport (Geni)

When it came to the meticulous planning for Operation Overlord, as the Normandy invasions were officially named, it was almost inevitable that the X-Craft would be involved in those preparations. Starting in January 1944, X-20, under the commanded by Lieut. KR Hudspeth RANVR, together with Sub Lieut. Enzer RNVR and the Combined Operations Pilotage Party comprising of Lt. Cmdr. Nigel Willmott RN along with two divers, Major Logan and Sergeant Ogden-Smith of the Royal Marines, was tasked with providing sand samples in order to gauge the suitability of the various beaches for landing troops, tanks and the myriad of vehicles required to make a successful invasion. Each night, for four nights, the divers went ashore on what were to become Omaha and Sword beaches to conduct their surveys, literally under the noses of the Germans. The soil and sand samples were meticulously logged, so as to record which part of the beaches they were removed from, placed into condoms and returned to the submarine. X-20 returned with the booty on January 21st 1944 and from the samples obtained and the surveys conducted, two scale models of the beaches were constructed as well as a partial full scale reproduction so as to test the suitability of the beaches. The operation was a hugely risky one; discovery would have compromised the whole Allied plan but it's success was to assist in making Overlord arguably the best planned Allied operation of the entire war. For his actions in gathering this invaluable intelligence, Lieut. Hudspeth was awarded a bar to his already awarded DSC.

When the time came for the invasion proper, Hudspeth and the X-20 was to return to Normandy along with one of her sister vessels, X-23 way ahead of the main invasion fleet in the early hours of June 4th 1944, as part of the ominously named (for those taking part) Operation Gambit, the marking of the extremities of the British and Canadian landing areas. At the time of their sailing, D-Day was planned for June 5th and the prospect of spending the best part of two days submerged in the incredibly cramped and foetid conditions unique to a midget submarine was bad enough, but when X-23 surfaced at 01:00 on June 5th expecting to prepare for her marking duties, her commanding officer, Lieutenant George Honour RNVR, was dismayed to receive a coded radio message informing them that the invasion had been postponed for 24 hours and that he and his four man crew would have to submerge to spend a further day waiting for their task to begin, hoping that they would not be discovered in the meantime. In case of disaster, those manning the two X-Craft were all equipped with falsified French identity papers that would hopefully allow them to get ashore undetected by the Germans, evade capture and link up with the French Resistance.

All this was furthest from Honour's and Hudspeth's minds when they received their orders to wait. Once the word came that the invasion was on, their task was to surface, erect an 18 feet tall telescopic mast to which was attached a flashing searchlight shining seawards to the invasion fleet. If the approaching ships saw a green light, it meant that they were on target, if red, then they were not. Each submarine also carried a radio beacon that would be switched on the moment they surfaced as well as a sonar signal that could be homed onto by the approaching fleet. Furthermore, each submarine was to launch dinghies, each with a man in it which would mark the individual assault beaches. As a final visual aid, each X-Craft was to fly a large yellow flag, which would make them highly visible to the enemy as well as to the Allies!

George Honour was prepared for all of this but in addition to being a target for the enemy, he did not want to become an unwitting target for friendly vessels, so in addition to the yellow flag, he planned that X-23 would fly an extra-large White Ensign, of the size more usually flown by battleships or cruisers.

Aboard X-23, the delay was an opportunity to check and double-check that they were indeed in the correct position. The navigator, Lieut. 'Thin' Lynne took a series of bearings and quickly identified several local landmarks including Ouistreham Lighthouse, the local parish church, as well as the spires of two other churches in Langrune and St. Aubin sur Mer. Lynne's navigation had been faultless and X-23 was almost spot on her allotted position.

After what must have seemed an interminable wait throughout the long daylight hours of June 5th in conditions that were becoming steadily more uncomfortable, the two X-Craft surfaced in the early hours of June 6th to learn that the invasion was on and at 04:30, X-23 erected her mast and prepared to begin sending out her signals to the soon to be approaching armada. At 05:00, her ship's log recorded 'Commenced flashing green light.'

Later that morning, with the invasion successfully under way, the mines swept, bombardment ships in their allotted anchorages and with all manner of craft busily going about their business, the duties of the X-Craft were done. Off Sword Beach, as Lieutenant Honour conned his midget submarine through lines of landing craft streaming inshore in the heavy seas, all that could be discerned from passing vessels was the bizarre sight of what appeared to be two large flags flying apparently unsupported but moving steadily through the water. Honour took the X-23 out to the headquarters ship HMS Largs, there to await a tow back to Portsmouth and after 64 hours submerged off the French coast, no doubt for some breakfast as well as a very welcome shower followed by some equally welcome sleep!

George Honour was awarded the DSC for his part in the operation and after the war, returned to civilian life in Bristol, passing away in 2002 at the age of 84.

The X-Craft were to have one further brilliant success in the Far East, when two further craft, XE1 and XE3 successfully attacked the Japanese heavy cruiser Takao in Singapore Harbour in August 1945. This feat of arms earned Victoria Crosses for Lieutenant Ian Fraser RNR and Leading Seaman James Magennis into the process.

The two midget submarine stars of this story, X-20 and X-23 had a short life; built in late 1943, both were ignominiously scrapped in 1945 and after some brief experimental work, the remaining midget submarines, being essentially a wartime expedient, at least as far as the Royal Navy was concerned, passed into history.

Today, two wartime midget submarines are preserved; XE-8 forms part of the display at Chatham Historic Dockyard in Kent, whilst the battle honoured X-24 is on display at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport. These survivors are testament to the brave men who fought aboard these vessels, which were once described by the Royal Navy's official wartime historian, Captain Stephen Roskill as being the "direct descendent of the Elizabethan fireship."

Published Sources:

D-Day - Anthony Beevor, Viking 2009
The Longest Day - Cornelius Ryan, Simon & Schuster 1959
The War at Sea - edited by John Winton, Hutchinson 1974
Warships of World War II - HT Lenton & JJ Colledge, Ian Allan 1973

 

July during the Second World War

As we 'enjoy' our current wet summer, perhaps now is a good time to look back in history to see what was happening during the corresponding weeks during the Second World War. The month of July has always been one when the British civilian population at least, even in wartime, looked forward to some warmer weather and perhaps even a few precious days off. For those in the fighting services, wartime whether in July or December presented the same fears, trials and tribulations.

July 1940

Field Marshal Alanbrooke (courtesy IWM)

The first July of the War saw Britain at bay; her army, defeated in France had withdrawn across the Channel, culminating in the evacuation from Dunkirk which completed in early June and with further withdrawals from the Channel and Atlantic ports up until the middle of that month when France capitulated on the 18th June. The British Army, licking it's wounds was beginning the process of rebuilding and re-equipping following defeat in France. At this time, a then little known Lieutenant General by the name of Alan Brooke was the recently appointed Commander in Chief of Southern Command, the area likely to bear the brunt of the expected German invasion. Brooke was somewhat daunted by what he found; his diary entry for 2nd July, following a visit to the 50th Division in the West Country read "The more I see the nakedness of our defences, the more appalled I am! Untrained men, no arms, no transport and no equipment........The ghastly part of it is that I feel certain that we only have a few more weeks before the Boche attacks!"

Brooke, supported by his subordinate commanders including a certain Major General Bernard Montgomery was a superb trainer of men and as the weeks and months passed, he was to prove instrumental in rebuilding the Army and can indeed be justly described as one of the founders of the recovery of the British Army which was to return to Europe in triumph a little under four years later.

At sea, the Royal Navy continued with it's routine tasks around the globe. North Atlantic convoys to be marshalled and escorted across the 'pond', the Mediterranean to police and an as yet peaceful Far East to patrol. Often employed on unglamorous duties, the Royal Navy was solid and dependable.

In the air, this week saw the opening of what we now describe as The Battle of Britain, a conflict that was to last until the end of October 1940 and which saw the beginning of the Blitz against London and other British towns and cities but which was to ultimately represent the first meaningful of the Third Reich in battle and which was to ultimately avert any threat of invasion to this country due to the inability of the Luftwaffe to wrest command of the skies from the RAF. Without such air supremacy, any invasion fleet would have been blown out of the water by the Royal Navy. 

July 10th 1940 saw the opening skirmishes in the Battle; Channel convoys were attacked and seventy German bombers attacked Swansea and Falmouth, killing thirty people and causing damage to shipping, railways and a power station. A train was also strafed near Newhaven in Sussex, killing the driver and severely injuring the Guard. The losses on each side reflected what was to become the pattern of the Battle; thirteen German bombers were lost for the loss of six British fighters. We shall return to this epic battle in the weeks ahead.

July 1941

One year later saw Britain in a much stronger position, although still standing alone. Brooke was still GOC Southern Command. Although the threat of invasion had largely passed, Brooke was still determined to get the Army trained to the peak of it's abilities. He was also beginning to have his first encounters with Winston Churchill, something which was to become all too familiar for him in the coming years following his promotion to Chief of the Imperial General Staff or CIGS - the professional head of the British Army. In North Africa, the Army had enjoyed it's only true successes against the Axis but had already fallen back following the dilution of it's forces into the Greek and Crete campaigns and had fallen back to Sollum leaving Tobruk beseiged and beginning the British association with those place names from the North African desert which were to become so familiar with both public and military alike over the next couple of years - Sollum, Tobruk, Sidi Barani, Bardia and of course, El Alamein amongst others. 

HMS Hood

The Royal Navy had fought another major action in May of 1941 when the German battleship Bismarck had made it's brief foray into the North Atlantic, sinking the pride of the Navy, HMS Hood but herself being overwhelmed by the Home Fleet a few days later. In the North Atlantic, the convoy battles continued unabated, although July 1941 saw the British enjoying the fruits of the 'Ultra' decrypts of the German 'Enigma' code traffic and at this time were able to successfully re-route convoys around Donitz's Wolf Packs and keep merchant ship losses to a minimum.

The RAF, with the Battle of Britain safely won and with the commanders of that battle, Dowding and Park scandalously dismissed, were embarking on the disastrous policy of 'leaning towards the enemy' with huge fighter sweeps over occupied France, resulting in heavy losses and proving that the new commanders Sholto-Douglas and Leigh-Mallory had learned nothing from the experiences of the Luftwaffe only a year previously. Fighters flying over enemy territory which were lost meant almost certainly losing the highly trained aircrew as well as the aircraft. Aircraft could easily be replaced but replacing the men was a different matter. RAF Bomber Command was not yet really able to truly go onto the offensive; in July 1941, it's main operations were still mining German ports and attacking German shipping, usually with unimpressive results. It's day was still to come.

July 1942

Britain was no longer fighting alone and the Second World War had become a truly global conflict. Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbour on 7th December 1941 had brought the USA into the war. The subsequent loss of Singapore and Hong Kong as well as Britain's other possessions in the Far East had brought Great Britain into conflict with a new and even more unpleasant enemy than Nazi Germany. Somewhat bizarrely, Hitler declared war on the United States, thus ensuring ultimate Allied victory in the longer term. As with the beginning of the German war, this conflict also began disastrously for the Allies. When Singapore fell on 15th February 1942, the British and Commonwealth Armies lost 130,000 men as prisoners to the Japanese - the biggest disaster in British military history. The Americans had also suffered similar humiliating reverses in the Philippines, losing some 75,000 prisoners to Japanese captivity and with all the privations and brutality that went with it. 

The ruins of Cologne in 1945 (US Dept of Defense)

Russia had also been attacked by the Germans. Operation Barbarossa had commenced on 22nd June 1941 with the intention of invading Russia and taking them out of the war. Had this succeeded, the brief respite enjoyed by the British would have quickly ended, with the entire might and fury of the Nazis once again turned towards the west. It was therefore vital to keep the Soviet Union in the war and this meant keeping the Russians supplied. The Russian Convoys became a millstone around the necks of the Royal Navy as well as the merchant navies of the Free World. Convoy PQ17 was to become an infamous bloodbath, when the British Admiralty under the nit-picking direction of Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, ordered the convoy to scatter on 4th July 1942 due to faulty intelligence that German heavy units were at sea. This information was nonsense and the scattering of this convoy merely served up the vast majority of the convoy into the arms of the Luftwaffe and waiting U-Boats. Of the thirty six merchant ships that sailed from Reykjavik, Iceland on 27th June 1942, twenty three were sunk by U-Boat and air attack. Two more returned to Iceland, which meant that a mere eleven made it through to Russia. It was difficult enough to operate convoys through this part of the World when the daylight was permanent as it was at this time of the year but Pound's interference and faulty dispositions made this a shameful event in Allied naval history. As a result of this fiasco, the Russian convoys were to be suspended until the onset of darkness and it was not until September 1942 that the next Artic convoy was to set out. Future convoys were to be much more heavily escorted and the advent of the Escort Aircraft Carrier was also to help tip the scales in favour of the Allies.

By July 1942, RAF Bomber Command had a new chief. Sir Arthur Travers Harris, known to his aircrew as 'Butch' (short for Butcher) and to the public as 'Bomber' had assumed command in February 1942. He immediately changed the mindset of the Command by going onto the offensive and targetting German cities with the express aim of undermining the morale of the German civilian population. Lubeck had been the first German city to feel the Harris touch, when on 28th March 1942, the historic city centre perished in a firestorm. By 30th/31st May 1942, Harris had upped the stakes by unleashing the first 1,000 bomber raid on the city of Cologne. Germany was indeed beginning to reap the whirlwind and much worse was to follow for the German public in the months and years to come.

July 1943

By now, the Allies were firmly on the front foot in Europe at least. By the summer of 1943, the Axis forces had been cleared from North Africa and were looking forward to the invasion of Sicily. To try and throw the Germans off their guard, an ingenious if somewhat macabre scheme was hatched, which was called Operation Mincemeat, or perhaps better known as immortalised in the film 'The Man Who Never Was' in which the corpse of a fictitious 'Major Martin' was floated ashore in Spain from a British submarine. The body was loaded with fake documents which all pointed towards an Allied invasion of Sardinia, rather than the obvious choice of Sicily. It was a huge gamble but knowing that the Spanish regime was basically friendly towards the Nazis, it was a gamble worth taking. The Germans swallowed 'Mincemeat' and diverted vital Army units to face a non-existent invasion of Sardinia and whilst the invasion of Sicily was no picnic, many Allied lives were saved and the Allies had their foothold on mainland Europe.

The RAF's bombing offensive continued. The famous Dambusters raid had occurred in May 1943 but for the rest of Bomber Command, German cities remained the main target. In July 1943, 115,021 tons of bombs were dropped by the RAF alone on German cities. The USAAF added to the weight of bombs by daylight.

On the Eastern Front, the Battle of Kursk started on 5th July 1943 and was to ebb and flow until 23rd August by which stage both sides had fought themselves to a standstill. Kursk was to see the largest tank battle in history, with each side employing in the region of 3,000 tanks.

July 1944

The Normandy landings had taken place on 6th June 1944. Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious invasion in history. By July 1944, the Allied armies were still building up their strength and were in danger in becoming bogged down in the bocage country around Caen. Whilst ultimate Allied victory was probably never in doubt, the fear of the warfare becoming a static affair was always at the back of Allied minds. The ground commander, General Montgomery was coming under pressure for his perceived over-cautious approach. This pressure was not only forthcoming from some of his American colleagues but also from those on the British side who should have known better, some of whom like the airmen Tedder and Coningham were driven by an intense personal dislike of Montgomery. The British General was never an easy person to understand or to get along with and was by this stage of his career a hugely conceited character, although undoubtedly 'a winner'. It is to the immense credit of the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower that he allowed Monty to continue in command, although his relationship with the British General was never an easy one. 

On the Home Front, the first V-1 Flying Bomb had fallen on the Capital on 13th June 1944. By July, despite improved countermeasures, they were still falling regularly on London. On 18th June, the Guards Chapel had fallen victim with the loss of 121 lives in the worst single incident involving these weapons. On 30th June another of these weapons had fallen in the Aldwych between Adastral House, home of the Air Ministry and Bush House with the loss of some 46 lives. It was clear that whilst the conventional Blitz was long over, London was being subjected to a new terror of 'robots' as these bombs became known. The capture of the Pas de Calais launch sites put paid to this threat in September 1944 but it had been extremely unpleasant while it lasted, with some 6,000 becoming victims to these weapons. Worse was to follow later in the year when the first of the V-2 rockets was to fall on London and this particular weapon was to blight London almost until the end of the war in Europe. On the Eastern Front, the Russian advance continued relentlessly, with the German Army Groups Centre and South being destroyed in the Lvov and Belorussian offensives.

At sea, the focus of the war in Europe remained the convoys across the Atlantic and to Russia and the U-Boats, although on the back foot, were far from defeated. The fleet facing the Japanese started to build and on 17th July, the submarine HMS Telemachus destroyed the Japanese submarine I-166 in the Malacca Straits. The submarine war in this theatre was the prelude to much wider ranging operations both in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

July 1945

The European War was over; Germany had unconditionally surrendered in May 1945 and the Allies were now faced with administering a ruined country and with the first murmurings of distrust within the great alliance with the Russians which was to culminate in the distrust and the eventual start of the Cold War.

On July 5th 1945, the first General Election was held in Great Britain for almost ten years. Winston Churchill, who had led the country to victory in the wartime coalition government was widely expected to be returned to power. The counting of the votes was an unusually protracted affair since the hundreds of thousands of servicemen's votes had to be returned to the UK for counting. However, when the count was complete and the result was announced on 26th July, Churchill had been voted out and the Labour Party under Clement Attlee had been voted into power in a landslide victory. The British people wanted change and no return to the social injustices of the 1930's and they saw Attlee rather than Churchill as the man most likely to introduce these changes and to bring Britain into the modern age.

Churchill had been attending the Potsdam Conference, the final meeting of the so called "Big Three" and had returned home for the result, no doubt expecting to return to the conference shortly afterwards. It was not to be and Mr Attlee was to take his place as Prime Minister alongside Harry Truman, himself newly installed as American President following the passing of Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet leader Josef Stalin. This Conference was to shape postwar Europe and the administration of Germany for the next 45 years.

In the Far East, the war against the Japanese continued and was expected to continue for possibly another two years, culminating in a conventional land invasion of mainland Japan, which had it occurred, would have cost the lives of many hundreds of thousands of Allied servicemen. The Atomic Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were to dramatically shorten the war by avoiding the need for an invasion. The 240,000 civilian casualties as a direct result of the bombs as well as the many thousands of subsequent deaths from radiation burns and other related illnesses are the subject of another debate.

Rangoon had fallen to the British Fourteenth Army in May and the remainder of Burma was liberated by the end of July. The final campaign in the Tenasserim Province cost the Japanese ten thousand troops at minimal cost for the British. The next stage of the campaign was to have been an amphibious assault to re-take Malaya but once again, the Atomic Bombs forestalled this, although the operation, codenamed 'Zipper' was still undertaken post-war as the quickest method of occupying Malaya.

At sea, the East Indies and British Pacific Fleets were in the thick of the action and although the latter fleet tended to be overshadowed by the vast American effort in this theatre, it was nevertheless the largest fleet ever put together by the Royal Navy and acquitted itself was great distinction. On 17th July, the British Pacific Fleet, aka Task Force 37 was operating as part of the US Third Fleet, attacking airfields and shipping north of Tokyo and would be at the forefront of the action right up until the Japanese surrender on August 15th and beyond.

So, as we can see the month of July throughout the Second World War was often the backdrop for momentous events in history. Obviously a blog such as this can merely scratch the surface in describing the events mentioned above. To study them in more detail, the following source reading is recommended.

Printed Sources:

The Black Bull: From Normandy to The Baltic with 11th Armoured Division - Patrick Delaforce, Alan Sutton Publishing, 1993
Bomber Command 1939-45 - Richard Overy, Harper Collins, 1997
Decision in Normandy - Carlo D'Este, Penguin,  2001
The Forgotten Fleet - John Winton, Douglas-Boyd, 1989
Hitler's U-Boat War - Clay Blair, Cassell, 2000
The Narrow Margin - Derek Wood with Derek Dempster, Tri-Service Press, 1990
War Diaries 1939-45 Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke - Alex Danchev & Daniel Todman (ed.), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001
The War at Sea - John Winton (ed.) - Hutchinson, 1967

War and The Weather

The recent and regular deluges of rain have forced Neil and I to cancel a couple of our scheduled Sunday walks and it is fair to say that we have been thinking of renaming our business 'Blitzwaders', so bad have things become. However, the recent interventions of the weather are a ready reminder of how easily the best planned operations of war can fall foul of the elements and also how good or bad fortune with forecasting of the weather could easily spell the difference between an operation running smoothly or going catastrophically wrong, with all of the associated implications.

Group Captain JM Stagg RAF

Perhaps the best known example of weather forecasting affecting an operation of war was during the run-up to 'Operation Overlord' - the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. So important was the impact of the weather on this monumental operation, that General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, had a meteorological department attached to his staff. The man chosen to be at the head of this organisation was Group Captain JM Stagg RAF, a somewhat dour Scotsman, upon whose shoulders the success or failure of the mission rested, surely just as much initially as the military prowess of Eisenhower, his planners at SHAEF and any of his field commanders. The operation was originally scheduled for June 5th but on this day, the winds were at hurricane force, with low cloud making flying operations impossible and seas too rough to ensure that the vast naval convoys would reach the other side of the Channel in the right order, or at all. It was therefore, an easy decision to postpone the operation but not so easy to decide how long to postpone for. This is where Stagg's expertise came in. At 4 a.m. on the morning of the 5th June, the planners met again; it was still blowing a gale outside and the rain was lashing against the windows, yet Stagg was able to predict a break in the weather the following day, allowing a brief period of acceptable weather for the invasion to proceed. The alternative was to wait another fortnight until the 19th June, which was the next time that the tides would be favourable enough to repeat the operation. It was a huge risk - the weather on the 6th June that Stagg was forecasting was barely acceptable - but to wait another fortnight was unthinkable and so with the simple words "OK, we'll go", Eisenhower gave the go ahead for the operation. The rest, as they say, is history. The Allies got ashore, established a bridgehead and gave themselves a springboard to liberate occupied Europe and cleanse Germany of the Nazis.

What is perhaps not so well known is what happened on the alternative date of the invasion. On the 19th June, the most violent storm for over 40 years swept up the Channel and combined with the spring tide, created a tempest that the locals had never seen the like of before. The temperatures were the equivalent of November - a cold one at that - and the storm ripped apart the American 'Mulbery' temporary harbour and severely damaged the British one, thus causing major disruption to the Allied supply lines. The storm raged for three days and had the invasion been attempted during this period, it would surely have ended in disaster. Had Group Captain Stagg got his weather forecast wrong and had Overlord failed as a result, the implications for Western civilisation do not bear thinking about.

Four years earlier, the weather was also generally kind to the Allies during 'Operation Dynamo', the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and their French allies from Dunkirk in late May and early June 1940. Despite the success of this operation, a huge number of British, French and Polish troops remained to be evacuated from France and so 'Operation Cycle' was put into effect. From the port of Le Havre, a further 15,500 British and French troops were successfully brought back to Britain but at the small fishing port of St Valery en Caux, the weather intervened and demonstrated just how much operations of war, as well as anything man-made, was at the mercy of the elements. It had been hoped to bring out the 51st Highland Division from this port but this crack division had been delayed in falling back and by the time the reached the port, some twenty four hours later than scheduled, patchy fog and reduced visibility ensured that the vessels sent to rescue the soldiers lost contact with each other and the shore. The delay caused by the weather and also by the late arrival of the troops at the port meant that the Germans captured the high ground overlooking the port and evacuation proved impossible. Fewer than 2,500 soldiers were evacuated, mainly wounded and other troops but the bulk of the 51st Highland Division were forced to surrender, the majority of whom were to spend five long years in German captivity.

Another famous example of the weather intervening to destroy an operation of war was during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, although it is fair to say that this was only the final nail in the coffin for the ultimately ill-fated 'Operation Barbarossa' as the invasion was officially known. Indeed, it could be argued that the weather became a factor precisely because the wheels were already coming off the German advance. Hitler had been confident, indeed over-confident of a quick success, so much so that he had discounted the need for his soldiers to be equipped with clothing suitable to withstand the severe Russian winter weather. The harsh weather also affected machinery as well as men; weapons malfunctioned, engines froze and the whole operation ground to a halt. The casualties on both sides were enormous but the Soviets prevailed and the 'Battle of the Century' was slowly but relentlessly won by the Red Army.

At sea, poor weather could sometimes ironically be a help. Many an Allied convoy prayed for rough seas to keep the U-Boats away. Relying on their surface speed during daylight hours to shadow the convoys and pounce at night, rough seas meant that the submarines had to remain submerged and fall out of contact with their prey. Poor weather, especially in the days before radar and full air cover, meant that ships could 'hide' in the vast expanse of the North Atlantic whilst their hunters searched fruitlessly for them. This could cut both ways though; the chances of survival in an open boat following a torpedoeing in a North Atlantic gale were slim. On the Arctic convoys, the weather could be ferocious in the extreme. Convoy RA64 in February 1945 sailed in the most appalling weather throughout and was scattered by hurricane-force winds. In such conditions, it was not unknown for ships to simply break apart. In such conditions, the chances of being picked up were remote and the chances of survival in the boiling seas were even slimmer.

In the air war, operations were equally at the mercy of the elements. Bombing, especially at the start of the war, was not an exact science. Poor visibility meant that bombs would miss their targets, although when bombing a large target such as London or Berlin, this was not especially important, as bombs dropped over an urban area would invariably find a target of sorts. When the weather did intervene, it could sometimes mean the salvation of a target and saving of lives on the ground. On the 29th December 1940, the Luftwaffe set the City of London ablaze in a great fire raid that became known as the Second Great Fire of London. The damage wreaked was enormous but a planned second wave of bombing mercifully did not materialise due to poor weather back in France that prevented the aircraft from flying. The weather again intervened in the summer of 1943 during the so-called Battle of Hamburg. The bombing of this great Hanseatic port city has been covered many times, including this blog and was given the macabre title of 'Operation Gomorrah' by Sir Arthur Harris, C in C of RAF Bomber Command. From an Allied point of view, the raids were largely a successful operation. The human cost was appalling but on the night of 2nd August 1943 - the fourth and final British raid of the operation - the elements combined with the RAF bombers to produce a truly apocalyptic scene. The RAF bombers appeared over the city in the midst of a huge thunderstorm, and to the beleagured citizens of Hamburg, the combination of bombs falling, lightning flashing and thunder echoing amid the explosions of the bombs, produced scenes more hellish than ever. 

Apart from Group Captain Stagg mentioned above, meteorologists played a prominent part in the Second World War on both sides. The Germans had U-Boats stationed in the North Atlantic on weather ship duties, passing on the prevailing conditions to the Wolf Packs. They also had a weather station on Spitsbergen until it's capture by the British in 1941. The British weather station there was subsequently shelled by the German battleship Tirpitz in 1943 thus demonstrating the importance attached to these low-key but vital outposts. As would be expected, RAF Bomber Command also had it's own meteorological staff, headed by Group Captain Magnus Spence, another seemingly dour Scotsman. Appearances were deceptive however, as when questioned about his christian name by Bomber Harris, Spence merely replied that at the time of his birth, Spence's father had been suffering "from a severe attack of Norse mythology!"

In the early days of the Third Reich, the sun shone regularly at the great Nazi rallies, so much so that the German people used to call warm sunshine 'Fuhrer Weather.' Although the elements themselves favoured neither side, we have huge reason to be thankful for the likes of Group Captain Spence and all of the Allied meteorologists during the Second World War. Their works, largely unsung and behind the scenes laid the path for the ultimate victory.

Printed Sources:

The Battle of The Atlantic - John Costello & Terry Hughes, Collins 1977

BEF Ships, before, at and after Dunkirk - John de S Winser, World Ship Society 1999

Bomber Harris: His Life and Times - Air Commodore Henry Probert, Greenhill Books 2001

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy - Anthony Beevor, Viking 2009

Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind - Sean Longden, Constable 2008

Inferno: The Devastation of Hamburg 1943 - Keith Lowe, Viking 2007

The Lonely Leader: Monty 1944-1945 - Alistair Horne with David Montgomery - Pan 1995