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

been held there over the ensuing days, as well as a co-ordinated map
exercise, until by 6 August it seemed everything was at last agreed.
As Göring had breakfasted that morning, listening to jaunty opera
excerpts by Daniel Auber, he believed he had every reason to feel
optimistic. It was true that he had continued to hope Britain might yet be
brought to the peace table, and behind Hitler’s back had sent out further
peace feelers through a Dutch businessman, Albert Plesman. These had
come to nothing, dead-batted by London as had been all other appeals. So,
an air assault it would have to be, and yet all the signs were that the
Luftwaffe would be as successful in this as in all its other campaigns.
Oberst Beppo Schmid had reassured him about the state of Fighter
Command, having put the figure of British aircraft destroyed at more than
350 since the beginning of July. He believed there were only around 500
British fighters left. Schmid was equally reassuring about the state of
British aircraft production, reporting that between 1 and 25 July just 240
aircraft of all types had been produced, of which a mere 133 were Spitfires,
Hurricanes and Defiants. This meant, he told Göring, that his boys were
already shooting them down faster than they were being built.
Milch, Jeschonnek, Udet, Kesselring et al. arrived later that morning, by
which time Göring was fresh and changed into his new duck-egg blue
uniform. The opening day of the Adlerangriff – the ‘Eagle Attack’ – would
be called Adlertag – ‘Eagle Day’. The July fighting had shown that the
RAF had an organized defence system, but the Luftwaffe was still not quite
sure precisely what it was or how it worked. Part of the battle plan,
however, was to destroy the ‘DeTe devices’ – the large numbers of pylons
along the coast – as quickly as possible. Göring now even suggested that
Stumpff send one of his Luftflotte 5 bombers over as a nuisance raider to
destroy the VHF net protecting Scotland and the north of England.
‘Everything depends on using all possible means to defeat the enemy’s
air force,’ Göring told them. A tactical plan to support SEALION would
come later. ‘To achieve this,’ he continued, ‘our first aim is to destroy his
fighters. If they avoid combat in the air, we shall attack them on the ground
or force them to accept a fight by using bombers to attack targets within the
range of our fighters. Moreover, we must constantly intensify the battle
against enemy bomber units by attacking their ground support. When the
enemy air force has been defeated,’ he concluded, ‘the Luftwaffe will
continue its attacks on vital targets to be specified then.’