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

signalling to his groundcrew to stand by, he then watched as a lone Ju 88
broke out of the cloud to the north of the aerodrome, turned slightly then
dived at high speed. David watched four bombs dropped from around 1,500
feet. A moment later there was an earth-shaking boom followed by
immense clouds of mushrooming smoke and dust.
David and the others took off immediately, but Sergeant Alan Feary,
already up in the air, swooped down and attacked the Junkers as the
German came out of his dive. Hit at close range, the aircraft crashed in
flames soon after. ‘I flew over to the crash and have never seen any
aeroplane more thoroughly wrecked,’ wrote David, ‘it was an awful mess.’
Later, both he and John Dundas chased after several Heinkels, David
damaging two and John finishing off one of them. When the crash was
subsequently investigated, two senior Luftwaffe officers were found dead
on board. John hoped to get the silver wings and swastika from the tunic of
one of the dead colonels. ‘If so,’ he asked Margaret Rawlings, ‘would you
like it?’
From their headquarters near the battle front, the Luftflotten and
Fliegercorps commanders were tearing their hair out in frustration. That
evening the forecast once again looked bad for the following day, and
although elaborate plans had been drawn up, it seemed these would have to
be postponed once again. Then orders had arrived for them to go to
Carinhall the following morning for another conference with the
Reichsmarschall.
Climbing through the early-morning haze, Kesselring, Sperrle and their
air corps commanders had flown towards Berlin. It was true that the
Reichsmarschall still maintained his other political offices of state and thus
proximity to Berlin could be more than justified. Yet it was by no means
necessary since most of his enterprises and operations were running
themselves. Rather, most of his time was now being spent art-collecting and
indulging other pastimes. Many of his directives to his commanders had so
far been quite sensible, but if he were to play a large part in the battle he
needed to be near the front, as he had been during the western campaign,
not hamming it up at Carinhall. It was a costly waste of time dragging all
his commanders to the forests north-east of Berlin every time he wanted to
talk to them, but it was a trick of Hitler’s that he liked to ape; it suited his
periodic bouts of indolence and reinforced his sense of power.