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

42
Breaking Point
IN CHURCHILL’S SPEECH to the House of Commons on 20 August, he
repeated the line he had muttered to Ismay a few days earlier about how
much was owed to ‘the few’, although he was careful to include all those in
Bomber Command. ‘On no part of the Royal Air Force,’ he added, ‘does
the weight of the war fall more heavily than on the daylight bombers.’
Certainly their losses were proportionally the highest, as Arthur Hughes
was uncomfortably aware. Since 10 May, Bomber Command alone had lost
693 aircraft, and that included 191 since the fall of France. Just in August,
235 men had been lost, 150 of whom had been killed, with the rest either
wounded or now POWs. The Prime Minister also pointed out that the
current battle against Germany was different from the 1914–18 war in other
ways. ‘The whole of the warring nations are engaged,’ he said, ‘not only
soldiers, but the entire population, men, women and children. The fronts are
everywhere. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. Every village is
fortified. Every road is barred. The front line runs through the factories. The
workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same courage.’
Yet there were also many risking their lives at sea. There were men like
Joe Steele on board Darthema and Andrew Begg on Icarus still carrying
out anti-invasion patrols and sweeping for, and laying, mines. There were
the men still manning the colliers that were hacking their way around the
British Isles. And there were also the many men daring to cross the Atlantic
to bring vital food, supplies and armaments to Britain. Now even neutral
shipping was no longer safe; on 17 August, Hitler had declared a total
blockade of Britain. From now on any ship steaming in the direction of the
British Isles was liable to be attacked and sunk by the U-boats.
With the Western Approaches still largely undefended, the U-boats were
continuing to have a field day. Thirty-eight ships and 195,825 tons of
shipping were lost in July to German submarines, while in August that
figure rose to fifty-six ships and 267,618 tons. These were crippling losses,
and on top of that the Germans now had a few precious four-engine longrange
reconnaissance aircraft – not the ill-fated He 177, but the Focke-Wulf