The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

done what the CO had asked of them and the next night were determined to
go into Ripon and make the most of being alive.
In fact, the raid was nothing like as successful as Larry and his fellow
squadron members had thought it had been. Six fires had been started, the
largest of which was in two warehouses full of furniture confiscated from
Jews. Thirteen people were killed and fifty-five injured. But the oil depot
remained untouched.
On the 19th, the American journalist William Shirer was at Aachen, on
his way, courtesy of Goebbels’s propaganda department, to a visit to the
front. Aachen, lying on the German–Dutch border, was one of the gateways
to the Ruhr and Shirer had been expecting to see Germany’s industrial
heartland already rocked by RAF bombing. ‘So far as I can see,’ he jotted
in his diary, ‘the night bombings of the British have done very little
damage.’ He had also expected the attacks to have had an effect on the
morale of the German people. ‘But all afternoon,’ he added, ‘driving
through the Ruhr, we saw them – especially the womenfolk – standing on
the bridges over the main roads cheering the troops setting off for Belgium
and France.’ Bomber Command did not realize it yet, but it was far harder
to accurately hit a target at night than they had supposed.
Even so, the strategic bombing war had begun.
In France, the pilots and aircrew of the RAF Air Component and Advanced
Air Striking Force were still battling their way through the mayhem and
confusion that had barely let up, except for a few precious hours of
darkness each night, from the moment the offensive had begun.
At Méharicourt, Pilot Officer Arthur Hughes had finally flown his first
recce, on 14 May. ‘Oddly, I was no longer scared,’ he noted, ‘but relieved
that action was at last imminent.’ And he was lucky, first, because he was
given a fighter escort of 57 Squadron Hurricanes, and, second, because his
recce area was covered by cloud, giving them natural cover from enemy
aircraft. He made it back unscathed.
Two days later, news arrived that the Germans were only thirty miles to
the east. The squadron was given fifteen minutes to move, but having
loaded all their gear into trucks and seen them drive away, they were then
not given the order to actually fly out themselves. Later in the day, Sergeant
Thomas was sent on a recce and got a bullet through his neck which passed
out through his jaw on the other side, while his observer was hit in the arm.