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

had been a major disaster. As of now, they were withdrawn from the battle
entirely. The part of the Luftwaffe in which Udet, Jeschonnek and even
Göring had placed so much faith, the terror of the world in 1939 and early
1940, was no longer fit for battle. It was a catastrophe, because it showed
that much of their tactical and strategical thinking in the mid- to late 1930s
had been fundamentally flawed.
Blaming the fighters was not the answer. Nor were the new measures
going to miraculously turn things around – far from it. There were fewer
Me 109s and 110s than bombers, but Göring now expected three fighters to
protect every bomber. That meant the pilots would have to fly three times as
much as the bombers during daylight operations, and to make matters
worse, often at speeds that cancelled out their operational advantage. It
smacked of panic. After all, it was he, the most senior officer in the world,
who a month before had been insisting fighters should be allowed to
operate to their strengths.
At his latest conference, Göring had also given new instructions for attacks
on the enemy aircraft industry. During the day, he announced, these should
be carried out by lone raiders making the most of cloud enabling them to
carry out surprise attacks. How they were then to navigate their way to the
target was not explained. Opportunistic attacks meant bombers could not
really use Knickebein or X-Gerät, which needed to be fixed beforehand.
Further attacks, Göring told his commanders, should be carried out at night.
So far, his night-bombing raids had scarcely been more successful than
those of Bomber Command. For example, between 14 and 23 August, the
Bristol Aeroplane Company’s factory at Filton had been selected for attack
eight times, but bombs fell on it only twice. In the same period, the
Westland, Rolls-Royce and Gloster works had also been picked out nine
times but only twice had bombs landed within five miles of their target. In
all this time only one night bomber claimed to have successfully hit the
Rolls-Royce works at Crewe – and he had been mistaken.
The reason so few targets were being hit was that night bombers were
coming over only in very small numbers, often even singly. Sophisticated
navigational aids significantly helped a bomber get to roughly the right
neck of the woods but it was still very difficult to drop bombs accurately.
Hajo Herrmann’s bombs meant for the Vickers works were very close – but
they were still between 50 and 500 yards off their marker. One of the most