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

39
The Hardest Day
ON 14 AUGUST, Generaloberst Halder had received a report from Luftwaffe
headquarters on the air fighting to date. It all seemed to be going well as far
as he could see. Fighter losses were 1:5 in the Luftwaffe’s favour; eight
major air bases had been virtually destroyed. ‘We have no difficulty in
making good our losses,’ he noted. ‘British will probably not be able to
replace theirs.’ The only concern really was the weather, which continued to
look unpredictable.
It is hard to know whether whoever wrote this report for OKH was
aware that it was a load of rubbish or whether the Luftwaffe truly did
believe these wildly inaccurate figures. Certainly, Oberst Beppo Schmid
claimed with confidence on the morning of 16 August in his daily situation
report that Fighter Command now had just 430 aircraft left, of which only
300 could be considered serviceable. In fact, the RAF had 653 ready and
waiting to fly that morning. Only three airfields were out of action. Of
these, Martlesham, which Walter Rubensdörffer had reported as being little
more than a smoking pile of rubble the day before, was already nearly
operational again. By the end of the day, 99 per cent of its telephone system
was working once more, and all water and electricity had been reconnected
and bomb craters filled in. Elsewhere, such as Hawkinge, the station staff
merely moved to a previously prepared house half a mile from the airfield.
West Malling was unserviceable for five days, and it took forty-eight hours
to get Lympne up and running once more. At the moment, however, there
were still plenty of airfields that were fully operational. German bombing
was certainly taking its toll, but not decisively so as yet.
The British were just as bad at over-claiming. The previous day had
certainly been a good one for Fighter Command, but to say it was one of the
greatest in Britain’s history might have been overstating the case just a
little, even if they had shot down 180 German aircraft as had been claimed;
in fact, the figure was seventy-six. Many more, however, were damaged to
varying degrees. German mechanics could repair minor damage at airfields,
while more seriously damaged aircraft had to be taken away to workshops