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

Across the Channel, the pilots had celebrated and so had the media, with
radio news bulletins quick to gleefully announce record numbers of downed
German aircraft. A photograph of a Dornier plunging vertically near
Victoria Station, its fuselage severed, was printed in many papers. ‘175
SHOT DOWN’ ran the headline in the following morning’s Daily Express.
Later the official figure was given as 185 destroyed for the loss of only
twenty-five aircraft and eleven pilots. In fact, the RAF lost thirty-one
aircraft and sixteen pilots.
Out in the Channel, HMT Darthema and the 29th Minesweeping
Flotilla had been clearing the German flank minefield near Eastbourne and
continuing their invasion watch at night. That evening, after the fighting
died down, they picked up a downed German pilot and told him that 185
Luftwaffe aircraft had been shot down that day. ‘This fellow spoke good
English,’ says Joe Steele, ‘and he looked at me and said, “Half that!”’ In
fact, it was a third of the claimed figure – just sixty-one, and ninety-three
pilots and aircrew and a further sixty-three taken prisoner. It was still a lot
for the Luftwaffe to lose, the worst day’s tally over England since 18
August, and the second-highest losses they had suffered since 11 May. In
addition, there were another twenty aircraft that made it back but were
either badly damaged or had to be written off. Unlike the RAF, the
Luftwaffe could not make good these losses.
Not everyone was pleased with Fighter Command’s effort, however.
Park had admitted to Churchill that his men had not intercepted as many
raiders as he would have liked, and knew perfectly well that the high claims
were nonsense. The following day, he had made the most of yet another lull
in Luftwaffe attacks by issuing another set of instructions to his controllers.
Park was not being an over-zealous taskmaster; he was quite rightly trying
to hone and improve a system that was proving not as effective as it might
be. He was annoyed that squadrons were not rendezvousing correctly, and
were being patrolled too far forward, at too low a height, and too late. From
now on, he wanted the Spitfires from Hornchurch and Biggin to be sent as
high as 25,000–30,000 feet to attack the highest enemy fighter screen. He
also wanted to improve controllers’ ability to make the correct response to
the size and make-up of an incoming raid, by sending up squadrons on
shorter patrol lines at higher altitudes. Getting squadrons operating higher
was, he believed, key. It meant they could maintain the height advantage