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

particularly successful trip to attack the barges massed at Antwerp. The
following day, Konteradmiral Fricke’s planning team reported that the
RAF’s raid had resulted in six naval vessels being damaged, three tugs and
fifteen barges sunk, and three steamers sunk or put out of action. The report
added that bomber and torpedo attacks on barges, trains, shipping and
harbours had already caused severe delays to their plans, as had the amount
of mines sown along the coastal route from the north German ports and the
effects of long-range British naval shells being fired into ‘excessively
crowded harbours and roadsteads’.
German naval planners had worked out that, in all, 1,133 barges were
needed for the first crossing. There were 1,491 by 21 September, but these
were not all in the right ports. By this time, 214 had already been lost or
damaged – which was not in itself disastrous, but the uneven distribution
combined with losses meant, for example, that there was a 30 per cent
deficit in Boulogne. And that was a problem, because there was no way the
invasion could start with such a large shortfall at one of the key invasion
ports.
Bomber Command was also continuing to bomb Germany. Larry
Donnelly had made a number of trips to hit the invasion barges, but on the
night of 24/25 September he and his Whitley crew were sent to bomb
Berlin. It was the second night in a row after nearly a fortnight’s break, and
the target for Larry’s crew was once again Tempelhof. Over the city, they
found broken cloud but were unable to spot the aerodrome. They did,
however, see the main railway station clearly enough so dropped their
bombs on that instead. With flak coming up thick and fast, they climbed
into the cloud and finally got home at around 5.20 a.m. They had been
airborne ten hours and forty minutes.
Still in Berlin, William Shirer noticed that most Berliners were quite
shocked by the renewed attacks. Goebbels once again whipped the press
into a new frenzy. ‘NEW NIGHT ACT OF THE PIRATES’ announced the
Nachtausgabe. The Börsen Zeitung reported that ‘last night Churchill
continued the series of his criminal blows against the German civilian
population. Frankly, Churchill belongs to that category of criminals who in
their stupid brutality are unteachable.’
The German press response was quite different to that of the British;
rather than shouting defiance, it merely raged against British criminality. ‘It
does indicate,’ noted William, ‘that the Germans can’t take night bombing