75 years ago, Operation Sea Lion could have been carried out, the purpose of which was to capture the British Isles by the Nazis.Wir fühlen in Horsten und Höhen
Des Adlers verwegenes Gluck!
Wir steigen zum Tor
Der Sonne empor,
Wir lassen die Erde zurück.
Refrain:

Refrain:
Kamerad! Kamerad!
Alle Mädels müssen warten!
Kamerad! Kamerad!
Der Befehl ist da, wir starten!
Kamerad! Kamerad!
Die Losung ist bekannt:
Ran an den Feind!
Ran an den Feind!
Bomben auf Engelland!

2.
Wir stellen den british Löwen
Zum letzten entscheidenden Schlag.
Wirhalten Gericht.
Ein Weltreich zerbricht.
Das wird unser stolzester Tag!
Refrain:

|: Hort ihr die Motoren singen:
Ran an den Feind!
Hort ihr "s in den Ohren klingen:
Ran an den Feind!
Bomb! Bomb!
Bomben auf Engelland! :|

“The final victory of Germany over England is now only a matter of time,” General Jodl, chief of staff of the Wehrmacht’s operational leadership, wrote on June 30, 1940. “Enemy offensive operations on a large scale are no longer possible.” Hitler's favorite strategist was in a smug mood.

France had capitulated the week before, leaving an apparently helpless England alone. On June 15, Hitler informed the generals that he was going to carry out a partial demobilization - leaving only 120 out of 160 divisions. fulfilled our task and that we can calmly carry out this restructuring on enemy territory, which will be the basis for further organization in peacetime. The task falls on the Air Force and Navy - to wage war with England alone. "

In truth, the army did not show much interest in this matter. And the Fuhrer himself was not very worried about this problem. On June 17, Colonel Walter Warlimont, Jodl's deputy, informed the naval authorities that "regarding the landing in Great Britain, the Führer ... has not yet expressed such an intention ... Therefore, even at the present time, the OKB is not carrying out any preparatory measures." Four days later, on 21 June, at the very moment that Hitler was entering the saloon car at Compiègne to humiliate the French, the navy was informed that the General Staff of the Land Forces was not concerned with the invasion of England, as it considered its implementation impossible.

None of the talented leaders of any of the three branches of the German armed forces knew how to organize an invasion of the British Isles, although, naturally, the fleet first began to think about this problem. As early as November 15, 1939, when Hitler was futilely urging his generals to launch an offensive in the West, Admiral Raeder instructed the Naval Staff to study "the possibility of an invasion of England under certain conditions caused by the further course of the war." For the first time in history, the German military staff was ordered to consider such an action. Raeder seems to have taken this step mainly to forestall any unexpected mental confusion of his unpredictable leader. There is no evidence to indicate that Hitler was informed of this. All his thoughts were directed at that time to the capture of airfields and naval bases in Holland, Belgium and France in order to strengthen the blockade of the British Isles.

By December 1939, the command of the ground forces and the Luftwaffe began to express their views on the invasion of England. The three branches of the armed forces exchanged rather vague proposals and, of course, did not make much progress on this issue. In January 1940, the Navy and Air Force rejected the Army plan as unrealistic. The sailors claimed that this plan did not take into account the power of the British navy at all, and the Luftwaffe believed that it underestimated the capabilities of the British Royal Air Force. In the conclusion of the memorandum of the Luftwaffe General Staff, addressed to the High Command of the Ground Forces, it was said: "The combined operation with a landing in England as its goal must be rejected." Later, as we shall see, Goering and his assistants took a completely opposite position.

The first mention in the German archives that Hitler considered the possibility of an invasion of England is on May 21 (the second day after the Wehrmacht tank units went to sea in the Abbeville area). Raeder privately discussed with the Führer "the possibility of a landing in England at a later stage." The source of such information is the commander of the fleet himself, who has not gained fame from the outstanding victories of the army and air force in the West and who, no doubt, was looking for ways and means to bring his type of armed forces to the fore. However, all Hitler's thoughts were occupied with the battle in the north and on the Somme, so he did not bother his generals with questions that went directly beyond the scope of these tasks.

Naval officers, unencumbered by worries, nevertheless continued to study the problem of the invasion, and by May 27 Rear Admiral Kurt Fricke, Chief of Operations at Naval Headquarters, submitted a new plan to the authorities under the title "Investigation of England". Preliminary work was also begun on the collection of appropriate vessels and the creation of landing craft, which the German navy did not have at all. In this regard, Dr. Gottfried Feder, the economic wizard who helped Hitler draw up the party program in the days of Munich, and now was Secretary of State in the Ministry of Economics, where his crazy ideas were quickly dealt with, developed plans for the preparation of landing craft, calling them " military crocodiles.

It was a kind of self-propelled barge made of concrete. She could carry a company of 200 people with full combat gear, several tanks or artillery pieces, roll out to the shore and provide cover for the landing soldiers and combat vehicles. This idea was taken seriously by the command of the naval forces and even by Halder, who mentions it in his diary, and was discussed at length by Hitler and Raeder on 20 June. But in the end, nothing came of it.

June was drawing to a close, and the admirals had not presented a sensible plan for the invasion of the British Isles. After appearing in the Forest of Compiègne on June 21, Hitler, accompanied by several bosom friends, went to inspect Paris (Hitler also intended to stare at the tomb of Napoleon in the Les Invalides. At the same time, he said to his faithful photographer Heinrich Hoffmann: "It was the greatest and happiest minute of my life." — Note auth.), then the battlefields, but not this, but the first world war, when he served as a liaison. He was accompanied by Max Amann, a senior non-commissioned officer in those early years, and now a millionaire Nazi publisher. The future course of the war, especially the continuation of the battle against England, seemed to be of the least interest to him now, or he simply believed that this insignificant issue was actually settled, since the British would now come to their senses and agree to a peace settlement.

Hitler did not return to his new headquarters at Tannenberg, west of Freudenstadt in the Black Forest, until 29 June. The day after his return, descending from the clouds to earth, he thought about the report presented by Yodl regarding plans for the further conduct of the war. The report was entitled: "Continuation of the war against England." Although Jodl was second only to Keitel in his fanatical belief in the genius of the Führer in the OKW, he nevertheless showed caution in dealing with strategic issues. However, he now shared the general opinion that prevailed in the headquarters of the supreme commander that the war was practically won and almost completed. If England did not understand this, then force would have to be used again to remind her of this. The report proposed to carry out the siege of England in three stages: the intensification of air and sea warfare against English shipping, warehouses, factories and British military aviation; "terrorist" raids on densely populated centers; landing troops to occupy England.

Jodl recognized that "the struggle against the British air force must be given paramount importance." However, in general, in his opinion, this, like other aspects of the strike, can be carried out without much difficulty.

Along with propaganda efforts and periodic terror raids, qualified as retribution, a sharp deterioration in the food base will paralyze and ultimately undermine the will of the people to resist and thereby force the government to capitulate (Yodl also envisaged the possibility of "transferring hostilities to the periphery", that is on the British Empire not only with the help of Italy, but also with the support of Japan, Spain and Russia. - Approx.

As for the landing of troops on the islands, this can be considered in detail only after air supremacy has been secured. Therefore, the landing of troops should not pursue the military conquest of England; this task must be entrusted to the air force and navy. The purpose of an amphibious landing is rather to deliver a mortal blow to England, already economically paralyzed and no longer able to fight in the air, if the need for it still persists.

However, according to Jodl, this may not be necessary.

Since England can no longer hope to win, but can only fight for the sake of maintaining her possessions and her prestige, she will be forced to show an inclination, judging by the forecasts, to conclude peace, when she realizes that she can still get all this at a relatively low price. .
It was the same line of reasoning as Hitler's, and the Fuehrer immediately set about preparing his peaceful speech to the Reichstag. Meanwhile, as we have already seen, on July 2 he ordered the preliminary planning of a landing in England and on July 16, when there was no “sensible” assessment of the situation from London, he issued Directive E 16 on the preparation of Operation Sea Lion. Finally, after more than six weeks of hesitation, it was decided "if the need arose" to carry out an invasion of the British Isles. Hitler and his generals, albeit belatedly, began to realize that this was a major and rather risky military operation, since its success would depend on whether the Luftwaffe and the Navy could clear the way to the island for infantry, despite the opposition of the much more powerful British navy and the far from weak Royal Air Force.

Was the Sea Lion a serious plan? And were there serious intentions to carry it out?

Doubts are still expressed about this, and such views were confirmed after the war by many German generals. Rundstedt, who was entrusted with the leadership of the invasion forces, told the Allied investigating authorities in 1945:

“The proposal to carry out an invasion of England was absurd, since there were not the necessary number of ships for this ... We looked at all this as a kind of game, for it was clear that no invasion was feasible, since our navy was not in a position to guarantee a safe crossing the English Channel by landing ships or delivering reinforcements to the islands... And the German aviation could not have taken on these functions if the fleet had not succeeded ... I was always skeptical about this whole undertaking ... I had the feeling that the Fuhrer would never did not seriously intend to carry out the invasion plan. He would never have had the courage for this ... He definitely hoped that the British would agree to a peaceful settlement ... "
Blumentritt, Chief of Operations at Rundstedt's headquarters, made a similar point to Liddell Harth after the war, claiming that among themselves they talked about it (Operation Sea Lion) as a bluff. "

I myself, in the middle of August, spent several days on the English Channel, in the section from Antwerp to Boulogne, for traces of the presence of an invading army. On August 15, near Calais and at Cape Gris-Nez, we saw a German bomber armada, escorted by fighters, head across the English Channel towards England, which later turned out to be the first massive raid on England. And although it was obvious that the Luftwaffe would fall with all its might, the absence of ships and especially landing craft in ports, canals and rivers reinforced my opinion that the Germans were bluffing. As far as I could see, they simply did not have landing craft to overcome such a water barrier as the English Channel.

Of course, very little can be seen by one reporter, but we now know that until September 1st the Germans did not begin mustering their invasion ships. As for the generals, those who read their testimony during interrogation or listened to them during cross-examination during the Nuremberg trials learned to treat their post-war testimony with more than skepticism (Even such an astute military critic as Liddell Hart, not always adhered to this rule, and this affected the content of his book "German Generals Speak". They spoke, but either their memory betrayed them, or they sinned against the truth. - Approx. auth.). Human memory is an imperfect instrument, and the memory of German generals is no exception. general rule. In addition, they pursued their own personal goals, first of all, they sought to discredit Hitler's military leadership. Indeed, in their boring and long memoirs, in their testimonies during interrogations, in their testimonies at trials, the thought runs through the thread that if they had the freedom to make decisions, then Hitler would never have led the Third Reich to defeat.

Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for later generations and the truth, the mountains of German secret military documents leave no doubt that Hitler's plan to carry out an invasion of England in the early autumn of 1940 was absolutely impossible and that, despite hesitation, the Nazi dictator would have dared to carry out Operation Sea Lion, if there were any chance of success. Ultimately, this plan had to be abandoned, not because of lack of determination or sufficient effort, but because of fortune, which for the first time began to betray him.

On July 17, one day after the issuance of Directive No. 16 on the operation to land troops in England and two days before the Führer's "peace" proposals appeared in the Reichstag, the High Command of the Ground Forces allocated troops for the operation "Sea Lion" and ordered 13 selected for this divisions to take their starting positions on the English Channel coast as part of the first wave of invasion forces. On the same day, the command completed the detailed development of a plan for the landing of troops on the south coast of England.

Here, as in France, Field Marshal von Rundstedt (he received this title on July 19) as commander of Army Group A was to deliver the main blow. Six infantry divisions from General Ernst Busch's 16th Army, boarding ships in the Pas de Calais area, were to land on the English coast between Ramsgate and Bexhill. Four divisions from the 9th Army of General Adolf Strauss were to cross the English Channel from the Le Havre area and land between Brighton and the Isle of Wight. Further west, three divisions from Field Marshal von Reichenau's 6th Army (from Field Marshal von Bock's Army Group B) were to leave the Cherbourg area and land in Lyme Bay between Weymouth and Lyme Regis. The first wave, therefore, consisted of 90 thousand people; by the third day, the high command planned to deliver a total of up to 260 thousand people to the English coast. This was to be assisted by the airborne units deployed in Lyme Bay and other areas. An armored force of at least six armored divisions, reinforced by three motorized divisions, would follow in a second wave of landing forces a few days later to have a total of 39 divisions plus two airborne divisions on the islands. Their mission was as follows. After gaining footholds on the English coast, the divisions from Army Group A would advance southeast to their first objective, the Gravesend, Southampton line. Reichenau's 6th Army would advance north into Bristol, cutting off Devon and Cornwall. The second goal is to capture the line from Maldon on the east coast to the area north of the Thames Estuary, blocking Wales. It was expected that upon the withdrawal of German troops to the first line "heavy battles would unfold with large British forces", but they would be quickly defeated, London was surrounded and the offensive in the north direction would resume. On July 17, Brauchitsch told Raeder that the entire operation would be completed within one month and would be relatively easy.

However, Raeder and the command of the Navy were rather skeptical. An operation of this magnitude and on such a wide front - over 200 miles from Ramsgate to Lyme Bay - was beyond the strength of the German fleet. Two days later, Raeder informed the OKB so; he later (21 June) raised the issue when Hitler summoned him, Brauchitsch, and General Hans Eschoneck, Chief of the Luftwaffe General Staff, to a meeting in Berlin. The Führer still had a very vague idea of ​​"what is going on in England." He was sympathetic to the difficulties of the navy, but at the same time emphasized the importance of ending the war as soon as possible. The Führer assured that forty divisions would be required to carry out the invasion and that the main operation should be completed by September 15 (German intelligence believed that the ground forces of England in July, August and September amounted to about eight divisions. In early July, the German General Staff of the ground forces estimated the British forces as 15-20 combat-ready divisions.In fact, at that time in England there were 29 divisions, but combat-ready - no more than half a dozen, since the rest had practically no tanks or artillery.However, contrary to the widespread belief that exists today, in the middle September, the British army would have been a worthy opponent for the German divisions included in the first wave of invasion.By this time the British had 16 well-trained divisions ready to meet the enemy on the south coast of England, of which three were armored; and the east coast from the Thames to the Wash covered by four infantry divisions plus a tank brigade, which meant that the British had recovered from the collapse at Dunkirk, which left the country virtually defenseless on land in June.

British intelligence had the wrong idea about the German invasion plans, and during the first three months, when the threat of invasion became real, they were completely wrong. Throughout the summer, Churchill and his military advisers were convinced that the Germans would make the main landing effort on the east coast, and so it was there that the British kept their main forces until September. — Approx. ed. ). In general, the chief Nazi boss was in high spirits, despite Churchill's refusal at that very moment to agree to a peace agreement.

"England's position is hopeless," said Hitler, according to Halder. "The war has been won by us. The prospects for success cannot take a turn for the worse."
However, the navy, faced with the enormous task of transporting an entire army across the turbulent English Channel in front of the far superior British fleet and still active air force, was not so sure of the outcome of the operation. On July 29, the Naval Headquarters presented a memorandum prepared by him, in which he spoke out against the operation this year and proposed "to consider it in May 1941 or even later."

Hitler, on the other hand, insisted on considering the plan on July 31, 1940, and again convened his military leaders - this time in Obersalzberg. In addition to Raeder, Keitel, Jodl from the OKW, Brauchitsch and Halder from the OKH were present. "

Grand Admiral—that was how Raeder's military rank now sounded—had spoken more than the others at the conference, although the future seemed little hopeful to him.

In his opinion, September 15 is the earliest date for the start of Operation Sea Lion, and then only if "unforeseen circumstances related to weather conditions or enemy actions" do not arise. When Hitler asked about the weather, Raeder responded by giving a whole lecture on the subject, painting a colorful but not encouraging picture.

Except for the first two weeks, the grand admiral reported, the weather in October in the English Channel and in the North Sea was generally bad; in the middle of the month, light fogs creep in, which thicken strongly by the end of the month. But this is only part of the problem. "The operation," he declared, "can be carried out only if the sea is calm." With a strong wave, the barges will sink and even large ships will be useless, since they will not be able to unload. In the course of his report, the grand admiral became more and more gloomy, as the issues that he touched on became more and more complicated.

“Even if the first landing party manages to cross the English Channel under favorable weather conditions,” the admiral continued, “then there is no guarantee that the same favorable conditions will accompany the transfer of the second and third landing parties. ... The reality is that we must remember: there can be no question of transferring significant reinforcements across the English Channel for several days until it becomes possible to use certain harbors.

And this can put an army, landed on the coast and found itself without supplies and reinforcements, in an extremely difficult situation. Raeder went on to touch on the main differences between the army and the navy. The army wanted a broad front from Dover to Lyme Bay. However, the navy was simply unable to provide the number of ships needed for such an operation in the face of the expected heavy opposition from the British navy and air force. Therefore, Raeder convincingly insisted on the reduction of the front from the Pas de Calais to Eastbourne. The admiral saved the decisive argument for the end of his report.

“Taking into account all of the above,” he said, “the best time for the operation would be May 1941.”

But Hitler did not want to wait that long. He admitted that the weather did not depend on them. However, they must also take into account all the consequences of lost time. The German navy will not be stronger than the British by spring. The English army is currently in a sorry state. But give it another eight to ten months, and it will number from 30 to 35 divisions, a significant force on a limited sector of the proposed invasion front. Therefore, his decision, judging by the confidential notes made by both Raeder and Halder, amounted to the following:

"... This distracting maneuver (in Africa) should be considered ... A decisive victory can only be achieved by influencing England. Therefore, it is necessary to try to prepare the operation for September 15, 1940 ... The decision whether the operation will take place in September or be postponed until May 1941, to be taken after the Air Force has carried out concentrated raids on South England for a week, If the effect of these air raids should be such that enemy aircraft, ports and harbours, naval forces, etc., suffer heavy losses, Operation Sea Lion will be carried out in 1940. Otherwise, it should be postponed until May 1941."

And now everything depended on the Luftwaffe.

The next day, August 1, as a result of this meeting, Hitler issued two OKB directives, one with his own signature, the other with Keitel's.

Fuhrer's Headquarters
August 1, 1940
Top secret
For command only

Directive No. 17 on the conduct of air and sea war against England
In order to create the prerequisites for the final defeat. England, I intend to wage air and sea war against England in a more acute form than hitherto.

For this I order:
1. The German air force, with all the means at their disposal, to defeat the British aviation as soon as possible ...
2. After achieving temporary or local air superiority, continue aviation operations against harbors, especially against structures intended for storing food supplies ... * Raids on the ports of the southern coast should be carried out, taking into account the planned operation, on the smallest possible scale ...
4. To conduct an intensified air war in such a way that aviation could at any time be involved in supporting the operations of the navy ... In addition, it must maintain its combat capability for Operation Sea Lion.
5. Terror raids in retaliation remain within my purview.
6. Intensification of air warfare can be started from 5. 8... The military navy is simultaneously allowed to intensify warfare at sea as envisaged.

Adolf Gitler


The directive signed by Keitel on behalf of Hitler on the same day read, in part:

Top secret
For command only

1) to continue preparations for the operation "Sea Lion", to extend them until 15. 9 both in the ground forces and in the air force;

2) after 8, at the latest 14 days from the beginning of the massive air raids on England, which will begin around 5.8, the Führer will decide, depending on the results of these raids, whether Operation Sea Lion can be undertaken as early as this year or No...

The last paragraph served only to kindle enmity between the army and navy over the width of the landing front. A couple of weeks earlier, Naval Headquarters had calculated that it would take 1,722 barges, 1,161 motor boats, 471 tugboats and 155 transports to land 100,000 soldiers with equipment and supplies on the 200-mile stretch of coast from Ramsgate to Lyme Bay. Even if such a large number of ships could be assembled, Raeder told Hitler on July 25, it would undermine the German economy, since the seizure of such a number of barges and tugs would upset the entire system of transportation by inland waters, on the work of which economic life largely depends. In any case, Raeder made it clear that the security of such an armada, trying to supply such a wide front under the inevitable attacks of the British fleet and aircraft, was beyond the capabilities of the German naval forces. When discussing one of the points of the plan, the Naval Headquarters warned representatives of the command of the ground forces that if they insisted on a wide front, the fleet could lose all the ships.

However, the army continued to insist on its proposal. Overestimating the possibilities of the British defense, she argued that when landing on a narrow sector of the front, the advancing troops would encounter superior British ground forces. On August 7, an open skirmish broke out between the two branches of the armed forces, when Halder met with his equal in position, Admiral Schniewind, chief of the main staff of the Navy. There was a sharp, even dramatic skirmish.

“I completely reject the proposal of the navy,” General Halder, the chief of the general staff of the ground forces, said indignantly, usually very restrained. “From the point of view of the army, I consider the option proposed by the navy a real suicide. put through a meat grinder!"

According to the minutes of this meeting, which is available in the archives of the fleet, Schniewind replied that it would be "tantamount to suicide" to try to transport troops on such a wide front as the army suggests, "in the presence of English naval superiority" (In his diary entries made on the same evening, Halder does not cite this quote, but says that "the meeting only led to the identification of irreconcilable differences on a number of points." The Navy, he said, "rejects the possibility of landing in more western areas for fear of Portsmouth and the British surface fleet The decisive elimination of this threat with the help of aviation is considered impossible by the OKM. "Apparently, by this time the German fleet, if not the army, no longer had any special illusions about the strike power of Goering's aviation. - Approx. Aut.).

It was a severe dilemma. If you try to land troops on a wide front and on a large scale, then the entire expedition may be sunk by the British during the crossing. If landing on a narrow section of the English coast and, consequently, with fewer landing troops, then the British will be able to throw those who landed into the sea. On August 10, Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Land Forces, informed the OKW that he could not accept the option of a landing between Folkestone and Eastbourne. However, he expressed his readiness, although not very willingly, to abandon the landing in the Lyme Bay area in order to shorten the front and at least half satisfy the demand of the fleet.

But this was not enough for the die-hard admirals, and their caution and stubbornness were already beginning to have an effect on the OKB. On August 13, Jodl sketched out an assessment of the situation, basing the success of Operation Sea Lion on five conditions that the generals and admirals would have perceived as ridiculous if the dilemma had not been so serious. First, he said, it would be necessary to exclude the participation of the British naval forces in the events off the south coast, England and, secondly, the Royal Air Force would have to be removed from the airspace over England.Other conditions regarding the landing of troops, their numbers and the rate of landing, obviously, are beyond the powers of the navy If these conditions are not met, then, in his opinion, the landing will be "an act of recklessness, which will have to be carried out in an extremely hopeless situation, but we have no reason to put it into practice right now."

If the fears of the leadership of the navy began to affect Jodl, then the doubts of the latter began to influence the Fuhrer. Throughout the war, the Führer relied more and more on Jodl for his decisions than on the OKW Chief of Staff, the spineless, dull-witted, unwieldy Keitel. It is therefore not surprising that on August 13, when Raeder met with the Supreme Commander in Berlin and asked him to reconsider in favor of a narrower landing front, Hitler was inclined to agree with the leadership of the fleet to carry out the landing on a smaller scale. He promised to bring final clarity to this issue the next day, after he had a talk with the commander-in-chief of the ground forces. After listening to Brauchitsch's opinion on this issue on August 14, Hitler came to a final decision, and on August 16, by a directive of the OKB signed by Keitel, it was announced that the Fuhrer had decided to abandon the landing in the Lime Bay area, where divisions of the 6th Reichenau Army were to land. Preparations for landings on a narrower sector of the front, scheduled for September 15, must continue; but now, for the first time in a secret directive, the doubts of the Führer himself were heard. "Final orders will follow only after the situation clears up," the directive concluded. This new order was something of a compromise solution. For in the next directive, issued on the same day, the sector of the front expanded again.

The main crossing across the English Channel should be carried out on a narrow section of the front. At the same time landings are made at Brighton from four to five thousand soldiers in motor boats and a number of airborne troops land in the area of ​​Deal, Ramsgate. In addition, on the eve of D-Day, the Luftwaffe will carry out a powerful raid on London, which will cause the population to flee the city, as a result of which the roads will be blocked.

Although on 23 August Halder hastily stenographed in his diary that "under such circumstances, the landing operation this year has no chance of success", the directive of 27 August, signed by Keitel, set out the final plans for landing in four main areas on the south coast between Folkestone and Selsey Bill and east of Portsmouth with the aim, as originally determined, to capture the line of Portsmouth, Thames, east of London at Gravesend; it was necessary to reach this line immediately, as soon as the bridgeheads connected and the troops could strike north. At the same time, an order was received to be ready for false maneuvers, in which the main action was code-named "Autumn Journey". This action called for a large-scale show of force against the east coast of England, where, as already noted, Churchill and his military advisers were still expecting an invasion by the main body of the Germans. To this end, four large liners, including Europa and Bremen, as well as ten other transport ships, escorted by four cruisers, were to leave the southern Norwegian ports and Helgoland Bay on D-Day and head for the English coast between Aberdeen and Newcastle . The transports, of course, would be empty, and the whole expedition would take the return course at nightfall in order to repeat the maneuver the next day.

On August 30, Brauchitsch issued lengthy instructions for the upcoming landing, but the generals who received these instructions must have been surprised at how much soul he put into this enterprise. The document, entitled "Instructions for the preparation of Operation Sea Lion", was belated, given that the start of the operation was scheduled for September 15. "The order for execution depends on the development of the political situation," Brauchitsch added, apparently puzzled by apolitical generals. September 1 movement has begun Vehicle from the German ports in the North Sea towards the harbors on the French coast of the English Channel, where it was supposed to load troops and invasion equipment onto ships, but two days later, that is, on September 3, another OKB directive was received.

1. Most early term For:

A) exit of the transport fleet - 20. 9 1940

B) day "D" (day of landing) - 21. 9 1940

2. The order to start the operation will be given on D-Day minus 10 days, that is, presumably 11.9 1940.

3. The final establishment of D-Day (the beginning of the first landing) will follow at the latest on D-Day minus 3 days at noon.

4. All measures must be taken in such a way that the operation can still be canceled 24 hours before the hour "H".

Chief of Staff of the Supreme High Command of the Armed Forces Keitel

It sounded businesslike, but it was all a hoax. On September 6, Grand Admiral Raeder once again had a long conference with Hitler. "The Fuhrer's intention to land in England," wrote the admiral in the Fleet Headquarters' diary of operations that same evening, "has by no means acquired the character of a final decision, since he is firmly convinced that the defeat of Britain can be achieved even without a landing." As is clear from the admiral's detailed transcript of this conversation, the Fuhrer talked about everything except Operation Sea Lion: about Norway, Gibraltar, Suez, the United States, about the treatment of the French colonies and about fantastic plans for creating some kind of "Northern German Union".

If Churchill and his military leaders had found out at least something about this remarkable meeting, then on the evening of September 7, the Cromwell code signal would not have sounded on London radio, which meant "Invasion is imminent" and caused chaos, the incessant ringing of church bells, which began at the initiative of the troops local defense, blowing up a number of important bridges by army sappers and casualties among those who ran into hastily laid minefields (Churchill claimed that neither he nor the Chiefs of Staff knew that the Cromwell code signal was transmitted on all services. Signal (Churchill W. Their finest hour, p. 312) However, four days later, on September 11, in his speech on the radio, the Prime Minister warned that if the invasion was to take place, then it could not "be long postponed ". "Therefore, - he said, - it is necessary to consider the coming days as very important in our history. These days can only be compared with those days when the Spanish armada approached the English Channel, and Drake completed his round-the-world trip, or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon's great army at Boulogne." — Approx. ed. ).

But at the end of September 7, the Germans undertook the first massive bombardment of London - 625 bombers, accompanied by 648 fighters. It was the most devastating air raid ever carried out on a city—the bombardment of Warsaw and Rotterdam compared to this pinprick raid—and by evening the whole area adjacent to the docks of the great city was hidden in raging flames, and the railway line, leading south, so important for providing defense against invasion, was blocked. In this situation, many Londoners perceived the monstrous raid as a prelude to the German invasion of the British Isles, and it was mainly for this reason that a code signal was sounded throughout the country warning: "Invasion is imminent." As it soon turned out, the barbaric bombardment of London on September 7, although it served as a warning to the British, causing great damage, it marked a turning point in the battle for England. After this largest air battle the planet has ever known, the battle for England quickly reached its climax.

The time was approaching when Hitler had to make a final decision: to start or not to start an invasion of the British Isles? The directive of 3 September stipulated that such a decision should be taken no later than 11 September, in order to give all branches of the armed forces time to implement preliminary measures. But on September 10, Hitler delayed the final decision until September 14. It appears that at least two reasons prompted him to delay the decision for a few days. The first was that among the leaders of the OKB there was an opinion that the bombing of London would cause such damage to England both materially and morally that an invasion might simply be unnecessary (The Germans were greatly impressed by the reports from the German embassy in Washington, based on information received from London and then embellished at the embassy. It was reported that the American General Staff believed that England could not hold out for long. According to the statements of the representative of the ground forces in the Design Bureau, Lieutenant Colonel von Lossberg (On the headquarters of the Wehrmacht leadership, p. 9), Hitler seriously hoped that a revolution will break out in England. - Approx. auth.).

The second reason stemmed from the difficulties experienced by the German navy, which needed to recruit the required number of ships, boats and other means of transporting people and military equipment by sea. Not to mention the weather conditions, which, according to the forecasts of the relevant specialists of the navy on September 10, as "completely abnormal and unstable", the British aircraft, which Goering promised to destroy, and the British navy more and more persistently prevented the Germans from concentrating watercraft, to cross the English Channel and carry out an invasion. On the same day that the headquarters of the German fleet warned of the likely danger from the British, British aircraft and ships of the British fleet launched several raids on German sea transports, which, according to the same headquarters, were successful. Two days later, on September 12, the headquarters of the Naval Task Force West sent an ominous dispatch to Berlin:

"The interference caused by enemy aircraft, long-range artillery and light warships is of serious importance. The harbors at Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne cannot be used as night anchorages for ships due to the threat of air raids and long-range artillery shelling. Parts of the English "Navy fleets are already operating almost unhindered in the English Channel. Due to the difficulties outlined above, further delays are expected in the concentration of sea transports necessary to transport invasion troops across the channel."

The next day, the situation worsened even more. The light ships of the British fleet bombarded the main ports of loading for the invasion troops on the English Channel - Ostend, Calais, Boulogne and Cherbourg, while British aircraft sank 80 barges in the harbor of Ostend. On this day in Berlin, Hitler was conferring at breakfast with his commanders of the branches of the armed forces. He believed that the air war was going in Germany's favor and declared that he was not going to risk an invasion. On the basis of this remark, Jodl got the impression that the Fuhrer "obviously decided to completely abandon the operation" Sea Lion "- an impression that at that time corresponded to reality, which Hitler himself confirmed the next day, once again changing his opinion and returning to the plan of operation "Sea Lion".

Both Raeder and Halder left confidential notes in their diaries about this meeting of the Fuhrer with his commanders, which took place in Berlin on September 14th. The Grand Admiral took the opportunity and, before the start of the general discussion, handed Hitler a memorandum outlining the fleet's point of view: the current aviation situation does not provide conditions for the implementation of the operation ("Sea Lion"), since the risk is still too great.

At the beginning of the meeting, the Nazi arbiter of destinies was negatively disposed, his thoughts were confused, contradicting each other. He declared that he would not order an invasion, but he would not cancel it either. As Raeder noted in the Fleet Operations Diary, "He obviously hoped to do it on September 13th."

What are the reasons that prompted the Fuhrer to change his views? Halder dwells on some of them in some detail: “A successful landing followed by the occupation of England will lead to a quick end to the war. England will starve to death. conduct ... A long war is associated with an aggravation of the situation, especially in the field of politics ... At any moment, surprises are possible ... " Further, Hitler said that Britain's hopes for Russia and America were not justified. Russia is not going to shed blood for the British.

"The military potential of America can fully make itself felt only in 1945. A long war is undesirable for us ..."

The fastest way to end the war would be to land troops in England. The preliminary conditions for this, which the navy was supposed to create, have been created (praise to the navy!) ... The actions of aviation deserve all praise. It takes four or five days of good weather to move on to decisive action ... The chances that it will be possible to carry out the total defeat of England are very high ... "

What then is the reason for the delay? What makes you hesitate and not start an invasion?

“It has not yet been possible to completely eliminate enemy fighter aircraft,” the Fuhrer admitted, “our reports of losses inflicted on the enemy do not create a reliable picture. But, undoubtedly, the enemy suffered heavy losses. However, despite all the successes, the prerequisites for Operation Naval lion" not created yet".

Hitler concludes from the above:

"1. A successful landing means victory, but it requires complete air supremacy.
2. Unfavorable weather conditions hitherto have prevented the achievement of air superiority.
3. All other factors are favorable.

Therefore, the decision: At the moment we are not yet refusing to carry out the operation.

Having come to this conclusion, Hitler still harbored fantastic hopes that the Luftwaffe would achieve a victory that was so tantalizingly close. “Our air raids,” he said, “had a very strong impact, although perhaps mainly psychological. To this is also the fear of landings. The threat of landings must not disappear. Even if we continue continuous air raids only for ten to twelve days, there could be a mass panic in England."

To facilitate this, Jeshonek, Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe, stubbornly asked for permission to bomb residential areas of London, since, according to him, there were no signs of "mass panic" in the city so far. Admiral Raeder enthusiastically supported the idea of ​​such bombardments in order to intimidate the British and cause panic among them. However, Hitler considered it more important to concentrate bombing attacks on military targets. "Mass panic is the very last goal ... - he said. - The terrible threat of dropping bombs on a mass of civilians should remain the last trump card in our hands."

Admiral Raeder's enthusiasm for terrorizing air raids is evidently due to his indifference to the idea of ​​an invasion. Now he has again begun to emphasize the "great risk" associated with Operation Sea Lion. He pointed out that the air situation was unlikely to improve before the scheduled landing date - September 24-27, so the landing should be postponed until October 8.

But in practice, this meant, according to Hitler, the cancellation of the operation, and he determined that he would refrain from carrying out his decision only until September 17 (three more days). Thus, the landing can be undertaken in ten days - on September 27th. If that proves impossible, he will set a date for the invasion in October. After that, a directive from the Supreme High Command was sent to the troops on this issue.

... The Fuhrer made the following decisions:
... The start of the operation is postponed for a new date. The corresponding order ... will be given on September 17, 1940. All preparations will continue ...
... Air raids on London will continue to be carried out mainly on targets that are militarily important and vital for a large city (including railway stations), as long as such targets still exist ...
Massive terror attacks exclusively on residential areas should be maintained as the last possible means of pressure ...

Thus, although Hitler delayed the final decision for three days, he did not abandon the invasion plan at all. Give the Luftwaffe a few days of good flying weather for the final defeat of the British air force and the demoralization of London, and the landing could take place. She would bring the final victory. Thus, once again everything depended on Goering's vaunted aviation. Indeed, the very next day she made every effort.

However, the Navy's view of the Luftwaffe was deteriorating by the hour. That evening, when the decisive meeting took place in Berlin, the Naval Headquarters reported on the fierce bombing attacks that British aircraft had subjected to the ports from Antwerp to Boulogne, where the forces and means of the invasion were to be assembled.

"... In Antwerp ... the bombing caused serious damage to vehicles - five transport ships were badly damaged, one barge was sunk, two cranes were damaged, a train with ammunition was blown up, several depots were engulfed in fire." The next night was even worse. According to the headquarters of the Navy, the enemy subjected "heavy air raids to objects on the entire coast between Le Havre and Antwerp." The sailors sent SOS signals, asking for protection from enemy aircraft in ports intended for the concentration of invasion forces. On September 17, the fleet headquarters reported:

"British aviation has not yet been defeated, on the contrary, it is showing ever-increasing activity, raiding ports in the English Channel and creating more and more obstacles to our efforts to concentrate forces and means for the invasion." (According to one German source, on September 16, British bombers disrupted a major landing exercise in a surprise raid, inflicting heavy losses in men and landing craft. This gave rise to rumors, both in the Reich and in other countries on the continent, that German troops had taken an attempt to land on the coast of England, but were repulsed by the British (see Fuchter G. History of the Air War, p. 176). I heard about this message on the evening of September 16 in Geneva, where I was on vacation. September 18, and then on September 19 I saw two long hospital trains from which wounded soldiers were unloaded in the suburbs of Berlin. From the bandages, I determined that the wounds were mostly burns, because there had been no fighting anywhere on land for more than three months. - Approx. auth.)

There was a full moon that night, and the British night bombers took full advantage of this. The headquarters of the German fleet reported "very significant losses" in the ships intended to load the invasion army (on September 21, a secret document of the headquarters of the German Navy noted that 21 transports and 214 barges, which amounted to about 12 percent of the total number of floating craft concentrated for the purpose of the invasion, were lost or damaged. - Approx. Aut.), with which all ports were clogged. At Dunkirk, 84 barges were sunk or damaged, and from Cherbourg to Den Helder, among other losses, there were: a warehouse where 500 tons of ammunition were stored was blown up; food warehouses burned down; sunk various transports and torpedo boats; significant loss of personnel. This fierce bombardment and strafing of heavy long-range artillery across the English Channel made it necessary, Fleet Headquarters reported, to disperse the warships and transport vessels already assembled along the Channel coast and stop further transfer of ships and landing craft to ports intended to load the invading army. Otherwise, the memorandum said, the enemy's energetic actions would eventually lead to such losses that the very implementation of the operation on the planned scale would be problematic.

It has already become so.

Therefore, a laconic entry dated September 17 appears in the journal of the German fleet's combat operations, stating that the Fuhrer decided to postpone Operation Sea Lion for an indefinite period.

After so many dizzying successes, Adolf Hitler finally failed. For another month, the appearance was maintained that the invasion was not removed from the agenda, that it could take place that same autumn, but this was just ostentatious optimism. On September 19, the Fuhrer officially gave the order to stop further concentration of funds and the invasion fleet, and to disperse the ships assembled in the ports of loading of the invasion army "in order to avoid unnecessary losses from enemy air raids."

It was impossible, however, to keep up the dispersed armada and all the troops, guns, tanks and supplies that had been mustered on the French Channel coast for the invasion, now postponed indefinitely. "... The prolonged indefinite situation is becoming unbearable," Halder resents the "Sea Lion" in his diary entry dated September 28. After Ciano and Mussolini's meeting with Hitler at Brenner's on October 4, the Italian Foreign Minister wrote in his diary: "... There was no more talk of landing on the British Isles." Hitler's failure made his partner Mussolini extremely happy. "Rarely have I seen a Duce in such a good mood ... as today at the Brenner Pass," Ciano wrote.

Now both the navy and the army were putting pressure on the Fuhrer to make a decision to cancel Operation Sea Lion altogether. The General Staff of the Ground Forces reported to him that the preservation of troops on the French coast of the English Channel "under continuous raids by British aviation leads to unjustified losses."

Finally, on October 12, the Nazi ruler officially acknowledged the failure and called off the invasion, just in case, until spring.

... The Führer decided that the preparations for the landing in England should be maintained from now until spring only as a means of political and military pressure on England.
If in the spring or early summer of 1941 the intention to carry out a landing in England reappears, then the order will be given in time for the necessary degree of combat readiness ...

The army was instructed to disband the formations allocated to the invasion forces and send them to other tasks or to be used on other fronts. The navy was instructed to take all measures to release personnel and disperse ships and ships.
Both branches of the armed forces were required to operate with maximum secrecy. "The British must be given the impression that we are continuing to prepare for a landing on a broad front," Hitler demanded.

What finally made Adolf Hitler give in? There are two reasons for this: the fatal course of the battle for England in the air and the desire to once again turn their aspirations in an eastern direction, to Russia.

Battle for England

The Luftwaffe Göring's large-scale offensive against England (Operation Eagle) was launched on August 15 with the aim of destroying the British air force and thereby creating the conditions for a German invasion of the British Isles. The obese Reichsmarschall, as he was now called, had no doubts about his victory. In mid-July, he became firmly convinced that the British fighter force in southern England could be defeated within four days by a massive attack. To completely destroy the British air force, according to Goering, it took a little more time: from two to four weeks. The decorated chief of the Luftwaffe believed that they would be able to bring England to its knees on their own and then, probably, there would be no need for an invasion by ground forces.

To achieve such a strategically important goal, he had three air fleets: the 2nd, under the command of Field Marshal Kesselring, operating from air bases in the Netherlands and Northern France; 3rd - under the command of Field Marshal Sperrle, based in Northern France; 5th - under the command of General Stumpf, based in Denmark and Norway. The first two air fleets had a total of 929 fighters, 875 bombers and 315 dive bombers; The 5th Air Fleet was significantly inferior in numbers to them - it had 123 bombers and 34 Me-PO twin-engine fighters. The British Air Force in the air defense system in early August could counter this huge force with 700-800 fighters.

During July, Goering's aviation gradually increased its attacks on British ships plowing the waters of the English Channel and based in the ports of the southern coast of the British Isles. In essence, the Luftwaffe was probing the possibilities of British aviation. Although it was necessary to clear the narrow English Channel of British ships before undertaking an invasion of the British Isles, the main task of the German air force in these preliminary raids was to draw the British fighters into an air battle. However, they did not succeed. The command of the British Air Force, being prudent, evaded the introduction of a large number of fighters into battle, as a result of which British shipping, as well as some ports, suffered significant damage. The Germans managed to sink four destroyers, eighteen merchant ships, while losing 296 aircraft. In addition, 135 aircraft were damaged. The British Air Force lost 148 fighters.

On August 12, Goering gave the order to start Operation Eagle the next day, but already on the 12th powerful raids were made on enemy radar stations. Five radar stations were damaged, one was completely disabled, but at this stage the Germans had not yet realized how important these stations were for British air defense, and did not resume raids on them. On August 13 and 14, the Germans launched about 1,500 aircraft into the air, directing bombing attacks mainly on British fighter airfields, and although they later claimed that five airfields were completely destroyed, in fact the damage was completely insignificant, and the Luftwaffe lost 47 aircraft against 13 English (The leaders of the Luftwaffe claimed that 143 British aircraft and 34 German aircraft were destroyed in these two days. From that moment on, both sides greatly exaggerated the damage inflicted on the enemy. - Approx. Aut.).

The first major air battle took place on 15 August. The Germans threw into battle the bulk of the aircraft of all three air fleets, with bombers making 801 sorties and fighters 1149. The 5th Air Fleet, operating from airfields in Scandinavia, suffered an unprecedented disaster that day. Having launched a massive raid on the south coast of England with about 800 aircraft, the Germans expected that the northeast coast would be left without protection. However, on approach to the Tyneside area, a detachment of 100 bombers, escorted by 34 twin-engine Me-110 fighters, was unexpectedly met by seven squadrons of Hurricanes and Spitfires and suffered heavy losses. Thirty German aircraft, mostly bombers, were shot down, while the British did not lose a single aircraft. Thus ended the participation of the 5th air fleet in the battle for England. He was no longer connected to her.

The Germans were more successful that day in the south of England. They launched four massive raids, one on London. Four aircraft factories in Croydon were bombed and five fighter airfields were damaged. In total, the Germans lost 75 aircraft against 34 British (In London that evening, an official report appeared: 182 German aircraft were shot down and another 43, probably damaged. This dramatically increased the morale of the British, especially fighter pilots, who were hard pressed by their losses. - Approx. auth. ). With this ratio, despite the numerical superiority, the Germans could hardly hope that they would be able to clear the sky of British aircraft.

And here Goering made his first tactical mistake. The ability of the British Fighter Command to bring their aircraft into combat with a numerically superior attacking enemy was based on the ingenious use of radar. As soon as German planes took off from airfields in Western Europe, they were detected and the flight path was determined with such accuracy that the British Fighter Command knew where and when it was best to attack. This novelty of the air war put the Germans, far behind the British in the development and use of electronics, to a standstill.

“We understood that the British fighter squadrons must be controlled from the ground in some new way,” he said, giving witness's testimonies, Adolf Galland, the famous German ace fighter - because we heard commands that skillfully and accurately directed the Spitfires and Hurricanes against German aircraft in flight ... For us, this radar and control of fighters from the ground was a surprise, a very bitter surprise " .

Nevertheless, there were no further attacks on the British radar stations, which suffered such significant damage on September 12, and on August 15, the day the German aircraft received a heavy retaliatory strike, Goering canceled the raids on the radar stations altogether, stating: "I doubt very much whether it makes sense to continue raids on radar stations, since not a single one of the stations has been disabled so far.

The second key to a successful defense in the skies over southern England was the so-called sector station. It was an underground control center from where Hurricanes and Spitfires were guided by radiotelephone based on the latest intelligence received from radar installations, from ground air observation posts and from pilots in the air. The Germans, as Galland noted, must have heard the constant radio conversations between sector stations and pilots in the sky and eventually began to realize the importance of these ground control centers. On August 24, they switched to the destruction of sector stations, seven of which played an extremely important role in the air defense of the southern regions of England and the capital itself. It was a blow to vital targets in the British air defense system.

Until that day, it seemed that the outcome of the air battle was not in favor of the Luftwaffe. On August 17, the Germans lost 71 aircraft against 27 British. The low-speed dive-bombers that had helped pave the way for the victorious German army in Poland and the West proved to be easy prey for the British fighters, and on August 17, by order of Goering, they were withdrawn from the battle, reducing the number of bomber aircraft by one third. Between 19 and 23 August, the skies over England were calm due to bad weather. After analyzing the situation, Göring, from his luxurious country estate Karinhalle, located near Berlin, gave the order on August 19: after the weather improved, the Luftwaffe should aim its strikes exclusively at the British air force.

“We have come to a decisive moment in the air war against England,” he said. “The most important task is to defeat the enemy air force. Our first task is to destroy enemy fighters.”

From August 24 to September 6, the Germans daily sent up to a thousand aircraft into the sky over England in order to achieve their goal. Here the Reichsmarschall was right. The battle for England has entered a decisive phase. Although the British pilots were exhausted after a month of continuous air battles, sometimes making several sorties a day, they fought courageously, but the numerical superiority of the Germans began to affect. Five forward fighter airfields in the south of England were thoroughly destroyed, worse, six of the seven key sector stations were bombed so fiercely that the entire communications system was on the verge of collapse. And this already threatened England with a catastrophe.

The growth of losses began to affect the fighter aircraft of the British air defense. In those decisive two weeks - between August 23 and September 6 - the British lost 466 fighters, including seriously damaged ones, while the Germans lost 385 aircraft, of which 214 fighters. Moreover, the loss of British pilots amounted to 103 killed and 128 seriously wounded, that is, almost a quarter of the staff. "The scales tipped against Fighter Command," Churchill later wrote. "This caused great concern." A few more weeks like this and England would have had no organized air defense. Under such conditions, the invasion would certainly have been successful.

But at this moment Goering unexpectedly made a second tactical error, which in consequences can be compared with Hitler's order to stop the advance of tanks at Dunkirk on May 24th. Goering's mistake saved the exhausted, bloodless British air force and became one of the turning points in the history of the largest air battle.

At a time when British fighter aircraft were suffering irreplaceable losses in the air and on the ground, German aircraft on September 7 switched to conducting massive night raids on London. British fighter aircraft received a respite.
What happened in the camp of the enemy, if this led to a change in tactics and proved fatal to the ambitious plans of Hitler and Goering? The answer to this question is filled with dark irony.

It began with the fact that the pilots of about ten German bombers on the night of August 23 made a small navigational error. Having the task of dropping bomb cargo on aircraft factories and oil storage facilities on the outskirts of London, the pilots made a mistake in their calculations and dropped bombs on the center of the English capital, blowing up several houses and killing a number of civilians. The British decided that this was a deliberate bombardment of the densely populated quarters of the capital, and the next evening British aircraft raided Berlin as a retaliatory measure.

From a military point of view, the raid was ineffective. Berlin that night was covered by a dense veil of clouds, so only half of the 81 bombers sent reached their targets. The material damage was negligible, but the moral damage was huge, because for the first time bombs fell on Berlin.

“The Berliners are in a daze,” I wrote in my diary the next day, August 26. “They did not think that this could ever happen. When the war began, Goering assured them that this would not happen ... And the Germans believed him. their disappointment is stronger today. You had to see their faces to understand it."

Berlin was well guarded by two powerful belts of anti-aircraft weapons, and for three hours, while the British bombers hovered over the clouds that closed the city to the pilots, but also did not allow the searchlights to detect them, the anti-aircraft guns fired the most intense fire that I had ever seen. However, not a single aircraft was shot down. The British also dropped leaflets saying that "the war that Hitler started will continue as long as Hitler himself lives." It was good propaganda, but bomb blasts are even better.

On the night of August 29, British aviation appeared over Berlin in a more powerful composition, and I noted in my diary: "For the first time in the capital of the Reich there are dead." It was officially reported that ten people were killed and twenty-nine wounded as a result of the raid. The Nazi bosses were furious. Goebbels, who had at first ordered the press to publish only a few lines about the first air raid, now gave instructions to shout with might and main about the atrocities of the British pilots who bombed defenseless children and women in Berlin. Most of the dailies came out with the same sold-out title: "The dastardly attack of the English." After the third night raid, the headlines read: "English air pirates over Berlin."

“The main effect of the continuous night raids on Berlin,” I noted in my diary on September 1, “is the strongest disappointment of the people and the doubts that arose in the minds of the Germans ... Actually, the bombing did not cause heavy damage to the city.”

September 1 was the first anniversary of the start of the war. Making an entry in my diary, I dwelled on the mood of people suffering from nervous tension, which was caused by anxious sleepless nights, unexpected raids and the terrible roar of anti-aircraft guns.

"This year, the German arms achieved such victories, which were not equal even in the brilliant military history of this warlike people. And yet the war is not yet over and not won. And it is on this that all the thoughts of people today are concentrated. want peace to come before winter."

Hitler considered it necessary to address the people at the Sportpalast on 4 September on the occasion of the opening of the winter relief campaign. His speech was kept secret until the very last moment, apparently out of fear that enemy planes might take advantage of the cloud cover and disrupt the meeting, although it was held an hour before dusk.
I rarely saw a Nazi dictator in such a sarcastic mood and make jokes that the Germans thought were funny, although Hitler had almost no sense of humor. He called Churchill only "the notorious war correspondent", and said about Duff Cooper: "There is not even a suitable word in German to accurately characterize him. Only the Bavarians have it. The word can be translated as" old hysterical chicken ".

"The chatter of Mr. Churchill or Mr. Eden," continued Hitler, "respect for old age does not allow me to mention Mr. Chamberlain - means absolutely nothing to the German people. At best, it makes them laugh."

And Hitler continued to amuse the audience, which consisted mainly of women, causing them first to laugh, and then to hysterical applause. He was forced to answer the two most important questions that worried every German: when will the invasion of England be carried out? What will be done in connection with the night bombing of Berlin and other German cities? Regarding the first question:

“In England, everyone is full of curiosity and constantly asks: “Why doesn’t he come? "Be calm. Be calm. He's coming! He's coming!"

The listeners found the joke quite amusing, but they also took it as an unequivocal commitment. As for the bombings, he began with the usual falsification, and ended with an ominous threat:

"Well now ... Mr. Churchill is demonstrating a new creation of his mind - night air raids. Churchill carries out these raids not because they promise to bring significant effect, but because his aircraft does not dare to fly over Germany during daylight hours ... while the German planes fly over English soil every day ... As soon as he sees the lights on the ground, the Englishman drops a bomb ... on residential areas, farms and villages.

And then came the threat:

“For three months I did not answer, because I believed that such madness would come to an end. But Mr. Churchill took this as a sign of our weakness. Now we will respond with raid upon raid.
If British aviation drops two, three or four thousand kilograms of bombs, then we will drop 150, 230, 300 or 400 thousand kilograms on them in one night.".

At this point, according to my notes, Hitler was forced to pause as hysterical applause erupted.

"If they claim Hitler continued, that intensify the raids on our cities, we will wipe their cities from the face of the earth.

"We will finish these night air pirates. God help us!"

Judging by my notes, when they heard these words, "the young German women jumped to their feet, their chests heaving high, and they began to express their approval with fury."

"The hour will come- Hitler finished his speech, - when one of us collapses, but it won't be National Socialist Germany! "

At these words, the raging maidens let out wild cries of joy and began to chant: "Never! Never!"

Hours later, Hitler's speech was broadcast on the radio, and Italian Foreign Minister Ciano, who was listening to the broadcast in Rome, was puzzled by it. "Hitler must be nervous," he made a note in his diary in connection with this.
The Fuhrer's nervousness was a significant factor in the fatal decision to switch the Luftwaffe from successful daylight raids against the RAF to a massive nighttime bombardment of London. This decision was of both military and political importance and was partly taken in revenge for the bombing of Berlin and other German cities, which seem like pinpricks in comparison with the acts of Goering's air force in English cities, undertaken with the aim of undermining the will of the British with these devastating raids on the capital. to further resistance. If this succeeds (and Hitler and Goebbels did not doubt it), then the need for an invasion will probably disappear.

So, at the end of September 7, the strongest air raid on London began. The Germans threw on the British capital, as we have already seen, 625 bombers and 648 fighters. At about 5 pm the first wave of 320 bombers under fighter cover appeared over the Thames and aircraft began dropping bombs on Woolwich, oil refineries, power plants, warehouses and docks. Soon the entire vast area was engulfed in flames. The population of Silvertown was in a ring of fire, and people had to be urgently evacuated by water. At nightfall, at 0810 hours, a second wave of 250 bombers appeared. And so on until 4.30 Sunday morning, wave after wave of German planes brought down their deadly cargo on London. At 7:30 p.m. the raids resumed with 200 bombers and continued throughout the night. According to official data cited by British historians, during this time 842 people died in the city and 2347 were injured, huge destruction was caused. Throughout the next week, raids on England were made every night (At this time, the means of night air defense had not yet been improved and the Germans suffered negligible losses. - Approx. Aut.).

And then, inspired by success or the result that they took for success, the Germans decided to carry out a powerful daylight raid on the crippled, fire-engulfed English capital. This raid took place on Sunday 15 September and went down in history as one of the decisive battles of the war.

About 200 German bombers under cover of 600 fighters appeared over the English Channel around noon, heading for London. However, the command of the British Air Force was ready to meet this armada and monitored it on the radar screens. German planes were intercepted on the way to the capital. Some of them, however, managed to break through to the city, but basically they were scattered, and some of the bombers were shot down before they could drop their bomb load. Two hours later, an even more powerful wave of German aircraft rolled in, but the result was the same. Although the British then stated that they shot down 185 Luftwaffe aircraft, but, as it turned out after the war from German archival documents, in reality there were much fewer losses - 56 German aircraft, of which 34 were bombers. The British lost only 26 aircraft.

This day showed that the Luftwaffe was not yet in a position to carry out large daylight raids on England. And this meant that the prospects for a landing across the English Channel were still very vague. Therefore, September 15 was the turning point - the "crossroads", in the words of Churchill - in the battle for England. The next day, Goering ordered a change in tactics and the use of bombers not for bombing, but as a decoy for British fighters; at the same time, he boastfully declared that the enemy fighters "will be finished within four to five days." Hitler and the commanders of the army and navy understood the situation better and two days after the decisive air battle - September 17 - the Fuhrer postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely.
During this gloomy period (from September 7 to November 3) London had to endure continuous night raids, which involved an average of 200 bombers, so that sometimes, as Churchill later admitted, there was a fear that the whole city would soon turn into a heap of ruins. At the same time, most of the cities of England, especially Coventry, suffered terrible destruction, and yet the morale of the British was not undermined, and the level of military production did not fall, contrary to Hitler's hopes. On the contrary, the British aircraft factories - the main targets for the Luftwaffe bombers - overtook Germany in 1940: the British produced 9924 aircraft, and the Germans only 8070. German losses in bombers turned out to be so serious that they were replenished later, according to German secret documents , never succeeded, and the Luftwaffe never fully recovered from the blows received at the time in the skies over England.

The German naval forces, weakened by the losses suffered off the coast of Norway in early spring, were unable, as the command recognized, to ensure the landing of troops and their cover by the combat assets of the fleet. Without a powerful navy and without air supremacy, the German army was powerless to cross the waters of the English Channel. For the first time in the course of the war, Hitler's plans for further conquest were frustrated, and just at the very moment when, as we have seen, he was sure that the final victory had been achieved.

He never imagined, and no one still imagined, that the decisive battle would take place in the air. Perhaps it never occurred to him that, as the winter twilight was gathering over Europe, a dozen English pilots, having thwarted the German invasion plans, kept England as a huge springboard for the future liberation of the continent. Willy-nilly, his thoughts turned in the other direction, and in fact, as we shall see, they have already turned.

England was saved. For almost a millennium, she successfully defended herself with her sea power. Its leaders, though very few, having overcome their delusions, which have been so much talked about in the pages of the book, realized in the pre-war years that air power in the middle of the twentieth century is the decisive factor in defense, and the small fighter aircraft, driven by the pilot, is its main shield. As Churchill put it in the House of Commons on August 20, when the outcome of the air confrontation was still uncertain, "in the realm of human conflict, never before have people owed so much to very little."

If the invasion succeeded

The occupation of England by the German Nazis would hardly have been a humane action. The captured German documents leave no doubt about this. On September 9, Army Commander Brauchitsch signed a directive stating that "the entire healthy male population of England between the ages of 17 and 45 should be interned and, if the situation on the ground does not require any exception, sent to the Continent." In pursuance of this directive, orders from the Quartermaster General Service of the High Command of the Ground Forces (OKH) in the 9th and 16th armies, concentrated for the invasion, followed a few days later. For no occupied country, not even for Poland, did the Germans plan such draconian measures. Brauchitsch's instructions were formalized as "Ordinances Concerning the Organization and Functions of the Military Administration in England" and were set out in some detail. As can be seen from the content of these instructions, they were designed to systematically plunder the British Isles and intimidate the local population. On July 27, a special "military economic headquarters of England" was created to solve urgent problems. All food, except for the minimum household supplies, was subject to immediate requisition. Hostages were to be taken. Any Englishman caught putting up banners against the Germans will be subject to immediate execution; a similar penalty was provided for those who did not surrender their firearms or radio within 24 hours.

However, the real regime of terror was to be carried out by Himmler's SS. For this purpose, the so-called main department of imperial security, headed by Heydrich, was created at one time (RSHA - the main department of imperial security, which, since 1939, controlled the Gestapo, the criminal police and the security service (SD). - Approx. Aut.). The man who was to direct the activities of the local security service from London was a certain SS colonel, professor, Dr. Franz Six, one of those intellectual gangsters who, during the Nazi era, were recruited to serve in Himmler's secret police. Professor Six left the post of dean of the faculty of the University of Berlin to enter the secret service in Heydrich's department, where he specialized in "scientific questions", the hidden side of which so attracted the bloody Heinrich Himmler and his thugs. What the British did not have to experience, since Dr. Six did not have a chance to manage on English soil, can be judged by his subsequent career in Russia. He operated as part of the SS Einsatz teams, which distinguished themselves in carrying out mass executions, and one of Six's duties was to identify commissars among Soviet prisoners in order to eliminate them (Doctor Six was convicted in 1948 in Nuremberg as a war criminal for 20 years in prison , but released in 1952. - Approx. auth.).

On August 1, as is clear from German archival documents, Goering called on Heydrich to get down to business. The Security Police (SS) and Security Service (SD) were to begin their activities at the same time as the military invasion of the British Isles in order to capture and effectively disable the numerous important organizations and societies in England that were hostile to Germany.

On September 17, Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely, and on the same day, Professor Six, ironically, was officially appointed to this new post by Heydrich, who gave him the following parting word:
"Your task is to use all necessary means to fight against all anti-German organizations, institutions, opposition groups that can be captured in England, to prevent the concealment of cash assets, to concentrate them in certain places, to ensure their safety for future use. I appoint London as the seat of your headquarters ... and authorize you to form small Einsatz teams in various parts of Great Britain, as the situation tells you and when the need arises ".

In fact, back in August, Heydrich organized six Einsatzkommandos for England, with centers in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh or Glasgow. They were supposed to carry out Nazi terror: to begin with, arrest everyone who was on the "special search list" for Great Britain, which, due to haste, was compiled rather casually by the apparatus of Walter Schellenberg, another intellectual who graduated from the university and worked for Himmler at the head of the IVE department (counterintelligence of the main department of imperial security). So, at least, Schellenberg later claimed, although then he spent more time in Lisbon, busy preparing a dizzying adventure related to the kidnapping of the Duke of Windsor.

The "Special Search List for Great Britain" is one of the most amusing documents connected with the preparation of the invasion and, of course, accidentally discovered among the documents of Himmler's apparatus. The list contained the names of some 2,300 prominent British figures, not all of whom were British, whom the Gestapo considered necessary to imprison immediately. Naturally, Churchill and members of the Cabinet were on this list, as were the leading politicians other parties. In the same list were leading editors, publishers, reporters, including two former correspondents of the Times newspaper in Berlin - Norman Abbutt and Douglas Reed, whose reporting did not cause much pleasure for the Nazis. English writers received the closest attention. Bernard Shaw's name was not on the list, but H. G. Wells was listed along with such writers as Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, John Priestley, Stephen Spender, C. P. Snow, Noel Coward, Rebecca West, Philip Gibbs and Norman Angell. Scientists were not deprived of attention: Gilbert Murray, Bertrand Russell, Harold Lasky, Beatrice Webb and J. B. S. Haldane.

The Gestapo also intended, taking advantage of their stay in England, to catch all foreign and German emigrants there. The lists of the Gestapo included Paderewski, Freud (Famous psychoanalyst. Died in London in 1939. - Approx. Aut.), C. Weisman; President Beneš and Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Czechoslovak government in exile Jan Masaryk. The list of German emigrants included two former close friends of Hitler who later turned their backs on him: Hermann Rauschning and Putzi Hanfstaengl. Many English names were so distorted that they were almost unrecognisable. After each name there was a stamp of the Bureau of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security, which meant: this department would deal with this person. Churchill was planned to be handed over to Section VI (foreign intelligence), but the majority was to be handed over to the Gestapo (A number of Americans are also on these lists, including Bernard Baruch, John Gunther, Paul Robeson, Louis Fisher, Daniel de Lys, correspondent for the Associated Press ", B. Fodor, correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, well known for his anti-Nazi publications. - Approx. Aut.).

This Nazi "Black Book" was apparently an addition to a top secret book - a reference book called Informationsheft (Information Notebook. - Approx. ed.), which, according to Schellenberg, was compiled by himself as a manual on robbing England and destroying it there all anti-German institutions. It's even more fun than the search list. Among the dangerous institutions here are, in addition to the Masonic lodge, Jewish organizations that attracted the special attention of the imperial security service, public schools (in England - private schools), the Church of England, which is characterized as "a powerful tool in the hands of British imperial politicians", and the organization of the Boy Scouts. , listed as "an excellent source of information for the British Intelligence Service". The highly respected founder and leader of this children's organization, Lord Baden-Powell, was subject to immediate arrest.

If the Germans had tried to invade England, they would not have received a gentleman's welcome there. Subsequently, Churchill admitted that he often thought about what would happen in such a case. He was sure of one thing: "on both sides, a terrible and merciless massacre would begin, without compassion and pity. They would resort to terror, and we were ready for anything."

Churchill does not reveal what is meant by the expression "were ready for anything." However, Peter Fleming, in his book on Operation Sea Lion, mentions that the British decided, as a last resort, if all other conventional defenses failed, to launch a gas attack against the German bridgeheads by spreading mustard gas from low-flying aircraft. This is a decision taken on highest level after much mental anguish, according to Fleming, both then and now shrouded in mystery.

The massacre that Churchill speaks of, and the terror that the Gestapo was about to unleash, did not come at that time for the reasons set forth in this chapter. But less than a year later, in another part of Europe, the Germans unleashed such terror and on such a scale as the world had never known before.

Even before abandoning the invasion of England, Adolf Hitler came to a new decision: in the spring of next year he would turn his weapons against Russia.

Nazi plot to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

The story of the Nazi plot to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in order to force the former king of Great Britain to cooperate with Hitler in the name of a peaceful settlement of the conflict with England is rather a funny episode, testifying to the ridiculous efforts of the leaders of the Third Reich, who achieved the biggest success on the battlefield. The evolution of this fantastic plan is described in detail in the captured documents of the German Foreign Office. In his memoirs, young Walter Schellenberg, head of the counterintelligence department of the imperial security headquarters, who was entrusted with the implementation of the plan, also touches on this issue.

The very idea of ​​such a plan, as Ribbentrop told Schellenberg, belonged to Hitler. The Nazi Foreign Minister seized on it with great enthusiasm, with which he always covered up his deepest ignorance, and now the German Foreign Office with its diplomatic representatives in Spain and Portugal were forced to spend enormous efforts and time during the summer of 1940.

After the fall of France in June 1940, the duke, who was part of the British military mission to the French high command of the army, moved with the duchess to Spain in order not to be captured by the Germans. On June 23, the German ambassador in Madrid, Eberhard von Storer, a professional diplomat, telegraphed to Berlin:

"The Spanish Foreign Minister has asked for advice on how to deal with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Today they are expected to arrive in Madrid, apparently on their way to England via Lisbon. The Foreign Minister thinks that we may be interested in detain the duke here, and perhaps make contact with him. I ask for your instructions."

Ribbentrop telegraphed the instructions the next day. He offered to detain the ducal couple for a couple of weeks in Spain, but he warned that such a proposal should not seem to come from Germany. The next day, June 25, Storer replied to Berlin: "The Minister of Foreign Affairs (of Spain) promised to do everything possible to detain the duke here for a while." The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Colonel Juan Beigbeder Atienza, met with the Duke and reported the conversation to the German Ambassador, who in turn informed Berlin by a top secret telegram dated 2 July that the Duke would not return to England until his wife was recognized as a member of the royal family, and he himself will not be given a solid post. Otherwise, he will settle in Spain in one of the castles promised to him by the Franco government.

"The Duke of Windsor expressed to the Foreign Minister and other acquaintances his negative attitude towards Churchill and the war," the ambassador added in his report.
In early July, the duke and his wife left for Lisbon, and on July 11 the German envoy reported to Ribbentrop from there that the duke had been appointed governor of the Bahamas, but that he “intends to delay his departure there as long as possible ... in the hope of a turn of events favorable to him.”
“He expressed his conviction,” the envoy reported, “that if he had remained on the throne, then this war could have been avoided, and described himself as a firm supporter of a peaceful settlement of relations with Germany. The Duke believes that prolonged fierce bombing will make England malleable to peace ".

This information prompted the haughty German Foreign Minister to send an extra urgent and top secret telegram to the German embassy in Madrid late on the evening of July 11th. He wanted the duke, preferably with the help of his Spanish friends, to be persuaded not to go to the Bahamas and return back to Spain. "After their return to Spain," Ribbentrop further recommended, "the duke and his wife must be persuaded or forced to remain on Spanish territory." If required, Spain could interne him as a British officer and treat him like a war refugee.

“At the right moment,” Ribbentrop further instructed, “the duke should be informed that Germany is striving for peace with the English people, but that the Churchill clique is standing in the way and that it would be good if the duke prepared for subsequent events. Germany is determined to force England to make peace by all means, and when peace is achieved, will readily satisfy any of his wishes, especially those related to the intention of the duke and duchess to return to the British throne.If the duke has other plans, but he is ready to cooperate in establishing good relations between Germany and England, we are ready to provide him and his wife with such material support as would allow him ... to lead a life befitting a king" (Ribbentrop informed Schellenberg that 50 million Swiss francs were deposited in a Swiss bank, adding that "the Führer agrees to raise this figure ". - Approx. auth.).

The far from intelligent Nazi minister, who during his time in London as the German ambassador had never learned to understand the British, added that he had information about the intention of the British secret service to remove the duke as soon as he appeared in the Bahamas.

On July 12, the German ambassador in Madrid met with the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Roman Serrano Sunier, brother-in-law of General Franco, who promised to involve the Generalissimo in this conspiracy and carry out the next plan. The Spanish government will send to Lisbon an old friend of Duke Miguel Primo de Rivera, leader of the phalanx in Madrid and son of the former Spanish dictator. Rivera will invite the duke to Spain to hunt, and also to discuss with the government some questions of Anglo-Spanish relations. Sunyer will inform the Duke of a plot by the British secret services to remove him from the political scene. Then, as the German ambassador reported to Berlin, “the minister will advise the duke and duchess to take advantage of Spanish hospitality, as well as financial support ... Perhaps there is some other way to prevent the departure of the duke. In this whole matter, we remain completely on the sidelines.”

According to German archival documents, Rivera returned to Madrid from Lisbon after his first visit to the ducal couple on July 16 and brought a report to the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, who forwarded it further to the German ambassador, who in turn telegraphed its content to Berlin. Churchill, the report said, appointed the Duke Governor of the Bahamas in a "very restrained and categorical tone letter" and ordered him to immediately proceed to his destination. In case of failure to comply with the instructions, "Churchill threatens the Duke of Windsor with a military tribunal." The Spanish government agreed, as was added in a report to Berlin, to once again most urgently "warn the duke against taking this post."

Rivera returned from his second trip to Lisbon on July 22, and the next day the German ambassador in Madrid reported to Ribbentrop in Berlin by telegraph "very urgently" and "top secret":
“He had two long conversations with the Duke of Windsor; the Duchess was present at the second conversation. The Duke expressed himself very freely ... Politically, he is increasingly moving away from the King and the current English government. The Duke and Duchess are less afraid of the King, who is stupid, than the treacherous Queen, who is skillful intrigues against the duke, and in particular against the duchess. The duke is going to come forward ... with disapproval of the current course of English policy and with the intention of breaking with his brother ... The duke and duchess said that they very much wanted to return to Spain. "

In order to expedite their return, the ambassador arranged with Sunier, as stated later in the telegram, that he would send another Spanish emissary to Lisbon "to persuade the duke to leave Lisbon on the pretext of a long excursion by car, and then cross the border at a designated place where the Spanish secret police making sure everything goes smoothly."

Two days later, the ambassador announced Additional information received from Rivera in an "urgent, top secret" telegram:

"When he advised the Duke not to go to the Bahamas, but to return to Spain, as the Duke was likely to be asked to play an important role in the politics of England and attempted to enthrone the English throne, both Duke and Duchess could not hide their astonishment. Both ... replied, that, according to the English constitution, this is impossible after the abdication. When the emissary confidentially explained to them that the course of the war could even lead to changes in the 3rd English constitution, the Duchess thought deeply. In this report, the German ambassador reminded Ribbentrop that Rivera knew nothing of "any German interest in the matter." The young Spaniard probably believed that he was acting in the interests of his government.

By the end of July, the plan for the Nazi kidnapping of the Duke of Windsor had basically been drawn up. Hitler put Walter Schellenberg personally in charge of this operation. To this end, he flew from Berlin to Madrid, conferred there with the German ambassador, moved to Portugal and set to work. On July 26, the ambassador was already able to detail the essence of the plan to Ribbentrop:

"... It can be assumed that the Duke and Duchess make a firm decision to return to Spain. To reinforce this intention, a second secret emissary leaves there today with a letter to the Duke, drawn up very skillfully. As an addition to the letter, a carefully developed plan for crossing the border is attached.

According to this plan, the duke and his wife, according to the official version, should go on summer holidays to the mountains near the Spanish border in order to cross it exactly at the appointed place and at a specific time during the hunt. Since the duke does not have a passport, he will have to obtain the consent of the Portuguese border official in this area.

At the same time, according to the plan, the first secret emissary (Primo de Rivera) should be at the border with the Spanish detachment, located so that the safety of the Duke of Windsor was guaranteed. Schellenberg with his group operates from Lisbon in the interests of the operation. To this end, during the trip to the summer holiday destination, as well as during the holiday itself, the couple will be under the unremitting supervision of the trustworthy chief of the Portuguese police ... "

The plan envisaged that at the moment of crossing the border, the Schellenberg group would take over security on the Portuguese side and carry out this task on Spanish territory as an escort, which would periodically change imperceptibly.

In order to ensure the security of the whole plan, the minister (Spanish) selected another secret agent - a woman who, if necessary, could establish contact with the second secret agent and deliver information to the Schellenberg group.

In the event of any unforeseen emergency as a result of the actions of the British Intelligence Service, it was planned to transfer the Duke and Duchess to Spain by plane. In this case, as in the first version, the main condition was the consent of the duke to leave, which was supposed to be achieved by a skillful psychological impact on his typically English way of thinking, without creating in him the impression of flight due to the actions of the English Intelligence Service and attracting him free political activity from Spanish territory.
If necessary, in addition to the security measures in Lisbon, it was envisaged to conduct an "operation of intimidation" to convince the duke to leave Portugal.

Such was the Nazi plan to kidnap the Duke of Windsor and his wife. It was distinguished by typical German clumsiness, and its implementation was complicated by the inability of the Germans to understand the "English way of thinking" of the duke.

The "operation of intimidation" was to be carried out by the Schellenberg group. One night, he organized a group of people who threw stones at the windows of the villa where the duke and his wife lived, and then spread rumors among the servants that agents of the British secret service had done it. The Duchess was delivered a bouquet of flowers with a note: "Be careful, the British secret service is on the alert. From a Portuguese friend who is deeply interested in your well-being." And in an official report to Berlin, Schellenberg reported: "... The opening of fire on the windows (safe for the duchess breaking the window in the bedroom), planned on the night of July 30, was postponed, since the psychological effect of this on the duchess would rather increase her desire to quickly go to the Bahamas."

There was little time left. On July 30, Schellenberg reported on the arrival in Lisbon of Sir Walter Monckton, a high-ranking official of the English government and an old friend of the duke. His task, apparently, was to send the duke and his wife to the Bahamas as soon as possible. On the same day, the German ambassador in Madrid urgently cabled Ribbentrop in cipher that his German agent in Lisbon had just informed him that the Duke and Duchess were going to leave Portugal on August 1, that is, in two days. In connection with this information, he asked Ribbentrop whether they should "come out of the shadows." According to German intelligence reports, the ambassador continued, the duke, in the presence of his master, the Portuguese banker Ricardo do Espirito Santo Silva, expressed "a desire to make contact with the Fuhrer." Why not arrange a meeting between the Duke of Windsor and the Fuhrer?

The next day, July 31, the ambassador again wrote "very urgently, top secret", recounting what he had just heard from the Spanish emissary, who had returned from Lisbon after meeting with the duke: the ducal couple, "being under the strongest impression of reports of English intrigues against them and fearing for his safety" apparently plans to sail on 1 August, although the duke tries to conceal the true date of departure. In his report, the ambassador added that the Spanish Minister of the Interior intended to make "a last effort to prevent the departure of the Duke and Duchess."

The news that the duke was about to leave Portugal soon alarmed Ribbentrop, and on July 31, late in the evening, from his special train in Fuschla, he sent a "very urgent, top secret" telegram to the German ambassador in Lisbon, in which he asked to bring to the attention Duke through his banker friend the following:

“Essentially, Germany wants peace with the English people. The Churchill clique is on the way to this peace. After the Fuhrer’s last appeal to common sense has been rejected, Germany is determined to force England to conclude peace, using all available means for this. it would be good if the duke were ready to soberly perceive the further course of events.In this case, Germany would be ready to work closely with the duke and fulfill any desire of the duke and duchess ... If the duke and duchess have other intentions, but they are ready to establish good relations between Germany and England, Germany is also ready to cooperate with the duke and agree on the future of the ducal couple in accordance with their wishes.The Portuguese trustee, with whom the duke and his wife are currently living, should make the most sincere efforts to prevent the duke's departure tomorrow, since we We have reliable information that Churchill intends to take the Duke into his hands and keep him in the Bahamas permanently, and also since it will be extremely difficult for us to establish contact with the Duke in the Bahamas if this becomes necessary ... "

Urgent instructions from the German Foreign Minister reached the embassy in Lisbon around midnight. At the same time, the German ambassador met with Espirito Santo Silva and persuaded him to convey the essence of the above telegram to the eminent guest. The banker did this on the morning of 1 August, and according to a dispatch sent from the embassy to Berlin, the information made a strong impression on the duke.

"The Duke paid tribute to the Fuhrer's desire to make peace, since it coincided with his own point of view. He was firmly convinced that if he had been king, it would never have come to war. He accepted the call addressed to him to cooperate in establishing peace, he accepted with joy "However, for the present he is obliged to follow the official orders of his government. Disobedience may reveal his intentions prematurely, cause scandal and undermine his authority in England. He is also convinced that it is premature for him to come to the fore for the time being, since there are not yet signs that England is ready for a rapprochement with Germany, however, as soon as the mood in the country changes, he will be glad to return immediately ... Either England will turn to him, which he considers quite probable, or Germany will express a desire to enter into negotiations with him. In another case, he is ready for any personal sacrifice and will leave himself at the disposal of circumstances, neglecting the slightest personal ambitions.

He is ready to maintain constant contact with his hospitable host and even agreed with him on the password, having received which he will immediately return.

To the surprise of the Germans, the Duke and Duchess set sail for the Bahamas on the evening of August 1 on the American liner Excalibur. In a report to Foreign Minister Ribbentrop testifying to the failure of the mission, Schellenberg reported the next day that he took every measure to the last moment to prevent the departure. Franco's brother, who was the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon, was persuaded to make one last attempt to dissuade the duke from leaving Lisbon. The car with the duke's personal belongings was detained and, according to Schellenberg, arrived at the liner very late. The Germans spread rumors that a time bomb had been planted in the liner. The Portuguese authorities delayed the departure of the liner until they had inspected the entire ship from top to bottom in search of this mythical bomb.

Nevertheless, the Duke of Windsor and his wife set sail the same evening. The Nazi plot failed. Schellenberg, in his last report to Ribbentrop, wrote that the disruption of the plan occurred as a result of influence on the Duke of Monckton, "the collapse of the Spanish version" and "the mentality of the Duke himself."

The seized dossiers of the German Foreign Office contain another document on this case. On August 15, the German ambassador in Lisbon telegraphed to Berlin: "A trustee has just received a telegram from the duke of the Bahamas, in which he asks for the password, as soon as circumstances favorable for taking the necessary actions arise. Should we give an answer?"

No answer has been found on the Wilhelmstrasse. By mid-August, Hitler had decided to conquer England by force of arms. And there was no need to look for a new king for England. The island, like all other conquered territories, will be administered from Berlin. So or so thought Hitler.

Such is the curious story, told in secret German documents, and supplemented by Schellenberg, the least trustworthy man, although he would hardly invent for himself such an absurd, as he admits, role.

In a statement through a London lawyer on August 1, 1957, following the release of the captured German documents, the Duke branded correspondence between Ribbentrop and the German ambassadors in Spain and Portugal as "a deliberate falsification and distortion of the truth." The Duke of Windsor explained that when he was waiting in Lisbon in 1940 to sail to the Bahamas, "certain people", whom he considered Nazi sympathizers, made efforts to persuade him to return to Spain and not accept the governorship. “I was even warned that personally I and the Duchess would put ourselves at risk if we went to the Bahamas,” he said. “But I never even thought of accepting such an offer. I met him with the contempt that he deserved.”

Simultaneously with the battles described above at sea near the western borders of the Reich, there were decisive battles on land. Belgium, the Netherlands and northern France were occupied by the Germans during a powerful offensive that began on May 10, 1940 during the French campaign. On June 4, 1940, Dunkirk fell, and the British Expeditionary Force was driven back across the English Channel, suffering heavy losses in manpower and equipment. The evacuation of the British, which was favored by good weather, took place with the active support of the air force and the navy. A total of 861 ships participated in it, from the largest to the smallest, of which 243 were sunk, including 34 warships (the largest of which were destroyers). A total of 339,000 British and French were evacuated from Dunkirk. Another 136,000 British and 20,000 Poles were transported from other ports in Northern France. Thanks to the relocation of several fleets of torpedo boats to the ports of the coast captured by the German troops, it was possible to sink 6 destroyers, 2 submarines, an auxiliary cruiser and 2 enemy transports. The limited participation of the German fleet in these events is primarily due to the fact that a large number of German warships at that time were in the waters of Norway, where they suffered significant losses in battles with the enemy.

Even today, the question is often raised about the possibility of an immediate landing on the British Isles after Dunkirk, to which it should be answered with confidence that the Germans did not have such an opportunity. Despite the creation of the headquarters of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht, pre-training landing was not carried out. When a practical need arose to organize the interaction of all three types of armed forces, as was the case, for example, during the capture of Norway, each time it was necessary to create a special headquarters, which, having done some work, ceased to exist.

In addition, the Germans did not have enough vehicles for the immediate transfer of their divisions to England, along with military equipment. To carry out such an operation, the German Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine had to establish their dominance not only off the coast of Germany, but also in most of the North Sea, over the English Channel and over the southern part of England, which, despite the great successes of the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, failed to do so. . Landing ports on the coast of England had to be captured by the forces of the fleet, parachute and landing troops. These three necessary elements were, however, in clearly insufficient quantities, and besides, both German battleships participating in the Norwegian operation received heavy damage and were forced to go into repair for several months. But even if these ships were in full combat readiness, they still could not do anything against the overwhelming superiority of the British at sea. We must not forget the following: any fleeting successes that one of the belligerents has the good fortune to achieve as a result of using the moment of surprise are still far from securing the conquest of supremacy at sea or in the air, and without these prerequisites, talk of landing operations on a large scale remains an empty phrase. It is nothing more than a utopia to count on the unloading of heavy equipment from ordinary ships to an unequipped shore.

In other words, it was necessary first to prepare for the landing on the territory of England. The order to start planning for Operation Seeleve (Sea Lion) was given on July 2, 1940. Both in Germany and in the areas occupied by it, all suitable sea and river vessels were requisitioned, which were equipped for small passages on calm seas, equipped with landing ladders and concentrated in the ports of Belgium and Northern France. The shipbuilding industry was ordered to build self-propelled landing barges, but until mid-October, only a few of them were made.

In the military units intended for landing, exercises were organized for boarding ships. A significant number of mines were prepared to fence off the area of ​​operation in the English Channel from the east and west. Several formations of minesweepers and patrol ships were formed, and strongholds for submarines and torpedo boats were organized. All of these time-consuming activities were planned to be completed by mid-August. In this regard, one cannot fail to recall the subsequent experience of landing operations. After all, it took the much more powerful industry of the USA and England two whole years to prepare for a landing in Normandy, and having the sad experience of a failed landing in the Dieppe area, which demonstrated all the difficulties of landing modern divisions on a coast occupied by the enemy.

By the appointed date, August 15, the preparation was not completed! The beginning of the invasion had to be postponed, first to September 21, and then to a later autumn time, especially since the Luftwaffe had not won the air supremacy necessary for success. In the end, the time of year and the weather itself called into question the feasibility of the German plan. To this was added another important circumstance. The dominance of the enemy at sea was further strengthened. An attempt to make up for the lack of dominance at sea with dominance in the air failed, and Goering's willfulness played a big role in this, who concentrated his planes not to strike at objects in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe landing craft and in the landing area, but sent them to England, in general intending to persuade her to the world. German aviation during the Battle of England suffered heavy losses, and the British managed to overcome their backlog in terms of the number of aircraft and the combat skills of the crews. Air supremacy, even over the English Channel, was out of the question. In accordance with the prevailing situation, in mid-October 1940, Operation Seelewe was canceled. It is often said that an invasion of England could still have been successful. Such a statement seems highly doubtful, especially since while the Germans were preparing for the operation, the British also did not sit idly by.

In the difficult summer of 1940 for England, full of trials and bitterness of defeat, the Nazi command, intoxicated by military successes, carried out the practical development of plans for the capture of the British Isles, which went down in history under the code name "Seelöwe" (Sea Lion).

As it became known from the captured German archives, shortly after the attack on Poland, the German Naval Ministry began to study the problem of the invasion of England. On November 29, 1939, Grand Admiral Raeder, who commanded the fascist fleet, presented the first draft of the plan for the invasion of the fascist armies into the British Isles 1 .

He considered the establishment of full control over the ports and estuaries of the French, Belgian and Dutch coasts and the establishment of appropriate bases here as preconditions for the invasion of England. Therefore, for the time being, the project of invading the British Isles was only theoretical.

After Dunkirk and the completion of the defeat of France, all these conditions were met, and Admiral Raeder could propose such a plan to Hitler. He, indeed, hastened to do this when it became clear that the defeat of the British and French armies was essentially a foregone conclusion.

As early as May 21, Raeder, in a conversation with Hitler held in Charleville, raised the question of a landing in England. At a secret meeting with Hitler on June 20, 1940, with the participation of Keitel, who was responsible for the highest strategic planning of fascist wars, Brauchitsch, Halder, Heusinger, Raeder and other Nazi leaders, they decided to invade England 3 .

The landing, at the suggestion of Raeder, was to be preceded by an energetic air offensive with the main attack directed against the British navy. Another important condition for the offensive was the conquest of air supremacy by German aviation.

10 days after the meeting of the fascist leaders, the chief of staff of the operational leadership of the OKB Jodl presented Hitler with a memorandum stating that if it was not possible to end the war with England by political means, then it must be brought to its knees by force.

For a landing in England, Jodl pointed out, at least 30 divisions should be fielded, against which the British could not field more than 20 formations. Jodl's note was the basis of all further plans for preparing for a war with England.

IN last week June and early July, the German military command came to grips with the plan to conquer the British Isles. On July 1, 1940, the chief of the general staff of the ground forces, Colonel General Halder, discussed in Berlin the question of the war against England with the chief of staff of the naval forces, Admiral Schniewind.

1 Wheatley R. Op.cit., p.3-4.

2 Klee K. Das Unternehmen "Seelöwe". Gottingen, 1958, p.57.

3 Reeder E. Mein Leben. Tubingen, 1957, pp. 228-229.

Thus, Operation Catapult, as its critics feared, was at least - from a purely naval point of view - only half a success. Disgusted by this, in his words, “dirty business,” Admiral Sommerville wrote in a letter to his wife: “I’m afraid that I’ll get a healthy smack from the Admiralty for letting the battlecruiser slip away ... I won’t be surprised if they remove me from command after that . I won’t mind, because it was a completely unnecessary and bloody undertaking ... To tell the truth, I didn’t like it. ” He also called the attack "the biggest political mistake of our time", confident that it would turn the whole world against England. Captain Holland was so shocked by what had happened that he asked to be relieved of command of the aircraft carrier Ark Royal.

In London, Winston Churchill recounted this "deplorable episode" to the silent House of Commons. He paid tribute to the courage of the French sailors, but stubbornly defended the inevitability of this "death blow". When he ended his speech by re-emphasizing Britain's determination to "fight the war with the greatest vigor", all the members of the House jumped to their feet with long and boisterous expressions of their approval. Tears rolled down Churchill's cheeks as he returned to his seat.

In Mers-el-Kebir, Admiral Jansul buried more than 1,200 officers and sailors, of whom 210 died on his flagship. Of the leading characters in this tragedy, Jansul was forgotten and was not rehabilitated either by the Vichy government or by post-war France. Admiral Darlan was killed in Algiers in December 1942 by a young French royalist.

Of the ships that participated in this battle, the mighty "Hood" exploded and died with almost all of its crew in a battle with the German battleship "Bismarck" in May 1941 - a shell hit the powder magazine. The aircraft carrier Ark Royal was sunk by a German submarine in November 1941. The proud Strasbourg, like almost all other French ships that escaped from Mers-el-Kébir, was scuttled by her crew at Toulon when German troops invaded the "hitherto unoccupied" zone of France in November 1942.

From any point of view, the "mortal blow" at Mers-el-Kebir darkened Anglo-French relations for a long time. Could it have been avoided? Was it necessary?

Historically, the most important consequence of Operation Catapult was its impact on Franklin Roosevelt and public opinion in the United States. In July 1940, Churchill's appeals to the Americans had a tangible effect on them, but the Americans doubted that Britain would be willing or able to continue the fight alone. One of the most influential (and eloquent) skeptics who took a negative view of England's ability was the Anglophobe American ambassador to London, Joseph P. Kennedy. Therefore, in deciding to sink the fleet of his former ally, Churchill undoubtedly took into account the impact of his step on America. Not without reason, in his memoirs, speaking of Mers-el-Kebir, he pointed out: "It became clear that the British military cabinet was not afraid of anything and would stop at nothing."

A few months later, Harry Hopkins, who enjoyed the full confidence of the American President, would report that this dramatic attack on the French fleet was what convinced Roosevelt of Churchill's (and Britain's) determination to continue the war.

Len Dayton

Any war is full of surprises and sudden events. Second World War they abounded, from the fall of France to the two nuclear bombs dropped on Japanese cities in August 1945. However, no event was more unforeseen than the air battles between the British Air Force and the Luftwaffe that broke out over England in the summer of 1940.

Operation Sea Lion

Undoubtedly, after the fall of France, Hitler - and most of his advisers - would have preferred peace negotiations with England. Mussolini's son-in-law, Count Ciano, noted in his diary: "Hitler now looks like a gambler who, having hit a big jackpot, would like to leave the gambling table without taking any more risks."

Hitler was so convinced that the game was over and England had lost that he disbanded 15 of his divisions and transferred 25 divisions to peacetime states. But the British also turned out to be gamblers, they wanted to take risks and recoup.

In mid-July 1940, Hitler issued Directive No. 16. It began with the following phrase: “Since England, despite her hopeless military situation, does not show signs of readiness to compromise, I decided to prepare a landing operation against England and, if necessary, carry it out” . The operation was given the code name "Sea Lion". Many historians argue that the above phrase indicates that Hitler was not seriously going to carry out this operation. A more convincing confirmation of the unreality of Directive No. 16 is the timing of readiness for its implementation: "All preparations must be completed by mid-August."

Having received this directive, the Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces, Grand Admiral Raeder, reacted to it immediately. The admirals agreed with her, pointing out, however, that no date for action could be fixed until the Luftwaffe had gained air supremacy over the Strait of Dover (English Channel). At the same time, they presented their draft of the operation, and on July 28 the command of the ground forces carefully studied it. Naval operators proposed an amphibious landing area near Dover. Using the narrowest part of the strait, they could lay minefields on the flanks of the corridor along which the ships of the invasion force would move. Despite the difficulties of operations in the shallow waters of the English Channel, they would have a group of submarines, while another group would cover the flank facing the North Sea. According to calculations, the navy needed 10 days to deliver the first landing shock wave to the English coast. The command of the ground forces was horrified by these calculations.

The army told the fleet about the need to land troops on the southern coast of England from Folkestone to Brighton (the main direction) and on the direction of Cherbourg - Plymouth (distracting landing force). The ground forces needed tanks and vehicles, which meant using all the ferries to transport vehicles, as well as the means of crossing the strait. The first echelon of the landing force was supposed to land on the coast in three days. The primary objects of capture were the vast areas of southern England, stretching almost to London itself. If we take all this seriously, the first echelon was supposed to include 280 thousand people, 30 thousand units of vehicles and tanks and 60 thousand horses! After reviewing the proposals of the fleet, the commander-in-chief of the ground forces of the Wehrmacht Brauchitsch and his chief of staff Halder firmly stated: "We cannot carry out our part of this operation with the funds provided by the navy."

On July 31, Hitler summoned the commanders-in-chief of the land and naval forces to his dacha in the Bavarian Alps, near Berchtesgaden. Raeder was the first to report his point of view. Preparations are proceeding as quickly as circumstances permit. The navies have searched all the ports of occupied Europe for suitable vehicles, but their military conversion and delivery to the ports of Dover Bay cannot be completed before September 15th. In view of the requirement of the army command for landings on a wider front, and in connection with the prospect of autumn storms, it would be better to plan the landing for May 1941, Raeder said.

Hitler was not angry at this suggestion, but pointed out that the British army would be better prepared to repel an invasion next year, and remarked that the weather in May was hardly much better than in September.

After sending Raeder home, Hitler continued to review the plan for Operation Sea Lion with the command of the ground forces. On one point he went so far as to express doubts about the "technical feasibility" of the entire operation. However, no doubts of this kind were reflected in the directive issued the next day. It was signed by General Field Marshal Keitel and came from the Wehrmacht High Command, personally controlled by Hitler. Preparations were to be completed by September 15th. Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe had to launch an offensive with large forces. Depending on the results of the air raids at the end of August, Hitler would have to decide whether to invade.

Undoubtedly, after the fall of France, Hitler - and most of his advisers - would have preferred peace negotiations with England. Mussolini's son-in-law, Count Ciano, noted in his diary: "Hitler now looks like a gambler who, having hit a big jackpot, would like to leave the gambling table without taking any more risks."

Hitler was so convinced that the game was over and England had lost that he disbanded 15 of his divisions and transferred 25 divisions to peacetime states. But the British also turned out to be gamblers, they wanted to take risks and recoup.

In mid-July 1940, Hitler issued Directive No. 16. It began with the following phrase: “Since England, despite her hopeless military situation, does not show signs of readiness to compromise, I decided to prepare a landing operation against England and, if necessary, carry it out” . The operation was given the code name "Sea Lion". Many historians argue that the above phrase indicates that Hitler was not seriously going to carry out this operation. A more convincing confirmation of the unreality of Directive No. 16 is the timing of readiness for its implementation: "All preparations must be completed by mid-August."

Having received this directive, the Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces, Grand Admiral Raeder, reacted to it immediately. The admirals agreed with her, pointing out, however, that no date for action could be fixed until the Luftwaffe had gained air supremacy over the Strait of Dover (English Channel). At the same time, they presented their draft of the operation, and on July 28 the command of the ground forces carefully studied it. Naval operators proposed an amphibious landing area near Dover. Using the narrowest part of the strait, they could lay minefields on the flanks of the corridor along which the ships of the invasion force would move. Despite the difficulties of operations in the shallow waters of the English Channel, they would have a group of submarines, while another group would cover the flank facing the North Sea. According to calculations, the navy needed 10 days to deliver the first landing shock wave to the English coast. The command of the ground forces was horrified by these calculations.

The army told the fleet about the need to land troops on the southern coast of England from Folkestone to Brighton (the main direction) and on the direction of Cherbourg - Plymouth (distracting landing force). The ground forces needed tanks and vehicles, which meant using all the ferries to transport vehicles, as well as the means of crossing the strait. The first echelon of the landing force was supposed to land on the coast in three days. The primary objects of capture were the vast areas of southern England, stretching almost to London itself. If we take all this seriously, the first echelon was supposed to include 280 thousand people, 30 thousand units of vehicles and tanks and 60 thousand horses! After reviewing the proposals of the fleet, the commander-in-chief of the ground forces of the Wehrmacht Brauchitsch and his chief of staff Halder firmly stated: "We cannot carry out our part of this operation with the funds provided by the navy."

On July 31, Hitler summoned the commanders-in-chief of the land and naval forces to his dacha in the Bavarian Alps, near Berchtesgaden. Raeder was the first to report his point of view. Preparations are proceeding as quickly as circumstances permit. The navies have searched all the ports of occupied Europe for suitable vehicles, but their military conversion and delivery to the ports of Dover Bay cannot be completed before September 15th. In view of the requirement of the army command for landings on a wider front, and in connection with the prospect of autumn storms, it would be better to plan the landing for May 1941, Raeder said.

Hitler was not angry at this suggestion, but pointed out that the British army would be better prepared to repel an invasion next year, and remarked that the weather in May was hardly much better than in September.

After sending Raeder home, Hitler continued to review the plan for Operation Sea Lion with the command of the ground forces. On one point he went so far as to express doubts about the "technical feasibility" of the entire operation. However, no doubts of this kind were reflected in the directive issued the next day. It was signed by General Field Marshal Keitel and came from the Wehrmacht High Command, personally controlled by Hitler. Preparations were to be completed by September 15th. Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe had to launch an offensive with large forces. Depending on the results of the air raids at the end of August, Hitler would have to decide whether to invade.

The initial composition of the groupings of all branches of the Luftwaffe, allocated to participate in the landing operation at the beginning of the battle for England, was as follows:

Grouping based on airfields in northern France:

Grouping based on the airfields of the west of Norway and Denmark:

British aviation included 609 (531) fighters.

Having shifted the solution of the immediate task to Goering and his subordinate forces, the army command conducted a series of landing exercises, and the naval forces began to concentrate in ports numerous vehicles drawn from many rivers and canals of occupied Europe. Everywhere work was in full swing on the conversion of vehicles for the needs of the landing forces.

Churchill did not take the threat of invasion seriously. On July 10, he urged the war cabinet to ignore Operation Sea Lion: "...it would be an extremely risky and suicidal operation," he said. In this light, one can appreciate Churchill's bold decision to send tank units to Egypt in the spring of 1940. This may also explain his support for Beaverbrook, the new Air Minister, who mobilized labor and commandeered private enterprises to increase fighter production at the expense of other weapons.

At this stage of the war, any invasion of England - by sea or air - would have met with a powerful rebuff. The experiments carried out by the British - covering the surface of the sea with a burning film in coastal areas - promised amazing results; Bomber Command was secretly preparing its squadrons for use chemical weapons.

All this leads some to suggest that in 1940 there was no real threat of invasion, and to conclude that the fighting of the Fighter Air Command was not the decisive battle for England. But this is a misleading statement. If the Luftwaffe had destroyed the British fighter aircraft, the fascist bombers would have been able to discount all the other obstacles to the invasion one by one. With the kind of air superiority that the Luftwaffe achieved in Poland in just three days, German DF bombers would be able to destroy everything from Whitehall to the main body of the Home Fleet. There would be no insurmountable obstacles left for the invasion forces and strike aircraft if the sky over England were in the power of the Germans.

Battle for England. Tactics

In the past, the duration of battles was determined by the amount of ammunition available, as well as the fatigue of the warriors and the onset of darkness. It was not until the armies began to receive supplies and ammunition on the battlefield that the term "battle" ceased to mean a short clash in daylight. By the 20th century, the duration of the battles had become unlimited. The battle for England lasted not for hours, but for months. It can be divided into four stages. Each of them is characterized by a change in the tactics of the Germans and the goals they pursue, but the time limits of these stages are not clearly defined. Different tactics were sometimes used simultaneously, and different types of targets were often hit on the same day.

First stage. Starting in July, it lasted about a month and consisted of attacks on British coastal convoys and air battles over the Strait of Dover.

Second phase. Since August 12, called the "Day of the Eagle" by the Germans, when the main blows began to be delivered. They went on for more than a week.

Third stage. The leaders of the British air force called it a "critical period". The main objects of strikes were the airfields of the British fighter aviation in the south-east of England. It lasted from August 24 to September 6.

Fourth stage. From September 7th. Air strikes are concentrated on London, first during the day and then at night.

At the first stage, in the area of ​​​​the Strait of Dover, the Luftwaffe formed a group of 80 dive bombers and 120 fighters. The task is to close the strait for English shipping. In July and early August the Germans had reasonable grounds for cutting off English shipping in the area. It was decided that the Luftwaffe would deploy all aviation operations in this theater of operations only after Hitler's order. It was assumed that the Supreme Commander would coordinate the actions of all forces participating in the operation, timing the air attack in such a way that the invading army would find the British defense forces stunned and paralyzed by air strikes, as happened in Poland and France.

Meanwhile, attacks on convoys in the strait were carried out by the German command according to the saying: "The nose was pulled out - the tail got stuck." When the British sent their fighters to close cover of the convoy, the German fighters would draw them into annihilation and force them to expend their resources before the German bombers could come up to hit the ships. If the command of the British fighters shied away from drawing them into battle, the Luftwaffe bombers sank ships without hindrance.

The commander of the British fighter aviation, Dowding, in his original plans did not provide for shipping cover at all and, finding himself in such an unexpected situation, was forced to report to the headquarters of the air force and the Admiralty that he could solve the problem of covering ships at sea only by bringing dangerously most of them into battle. of their strength. Therefore, convoys can receive only minimal air cover.

At this stage, the British radar surveillance system was not very effective, so German fighters and bombers could gain altitude and form battle formations beyond the "visibility" of British radars. It took German aircraft only five minutes to cross the strait, while a Spitfire fighter needed 15 minutes to climb to engage the enemy that appeared.

With the increase in losses in the courts, the pressure from above on Dowding intensified. He was required to relocate fighters to coastal airfields so that the planes could be lifted into the air with the advent of the enemy. A number of fighters were relocated, but it was extremely dangerous for them to be so close to the enemy battle formations.

Using relatively small forces, the German commanders acted tactically competently: having previously reconnoitered the British defense system, having determined the time required for the British to discover the German forces, they attacked numerous coastal convoys. Usually the fighters kept in close cover of the bombers, periodically separating from them to reconnoiter the approaching British fighters.

Dowding's response was indecisive. The German commander-in-chief Kesselring discovered that with the simultaneous attack of two convoys, the British defense was forced to divide forces into two directions. This technique worked well at 8 o'clock on July 24, when two coordinated strikes were launched: one against a convoy located in the Dover area, the other against a convoy that was entering the Thames Estuary. The cover of the convoy - 54 Squadron from Rochford - sent against one group of aircraft, found a second group of enemy aircraft, and he had to split his forces to attack both groups. The bombers that attacked the convoys suffered no losses, but they themselves did not cause any damage to the ships. At about 11 o'clock, two strike groups of 10-12 bombers each appeared at the mouth of the Thames to attack the convoy again. The English chief Park, who was in charge of the defense, sent the 54th squadron to cover the convoy and, knowing that the German fighters accompanying the bombers would soon run out of fuel, also raised the 610th squadron into the air with the task of intercepting the retreating enemy fighters. In reality, the 610th squadron stumbled upon the 52nd German fighter division, sent to cover the retreating Messerschmitts. A fight ensued. Both sides lost three fighters.

July 25th. A typical day of fighting in the Straits of Dover. The German aviation commander in the Kesselring straits started a game of cat and mouse with convoy 3\L/-8 (21 coal miners and coasters), which was heading westward through the Dover Strait. Only 11 of them passed Dungeness Point, and only two ships reached their destination undamaged. Shortly after noon, a strafing group of Messerschmitt fighters headed for Dover. Their goal is to divert English fighters to low altitudes and clear the way for dive bombers. The British 65th Squadron rushed into the battle, which began at such low altitudes that one German crashed into the water on a turn. Two more squadrons of British fighters entered the battle against forty Messerschmitts. As soon as all the British fighter aircraft in the area of ​​the convoy were pinned down by battle, the convoy was attacked without hindrance by three divisions of dive bombers (300-380 aircraft), which approached at medium altitudes.

The ships guarding the convoy opened fire on them with anti-aircraft artillery and requested the urgent sending of cover fighters. Nine Spitfire fighters rushed to the rescue. When they arrived, they saw that Kesselring had sent an outnumbered group of Messerschmitts to intercept them. Among the downed Spitfires was the plane of the commander of the English group.

The commander of the air defense sector who controlled the battle realized that by sending an equal number of his aircraft to the attacking German forces, he would soon be left without fighters. Therefore, in the afternoon, when another group of 50 Yu-88 bombers approached to strike at the convoy, he sent only eight fighters of the 64th squadron to intercept. They were met by bomber cover. The British fighters undauntedly went on the attack. The remaining planes of the 64th squadron took off to help them. The latter went on a frontal attack on the bombers. The Junkers lost formation and turned back. The Messerschmitts of the cover also retreated.

When the convoy came abeam Folkestone, the Messerschmitts began to spray the convoy ships with machine-gun fire from low altitudes in order to divert the attention of ship gunners from 60 Ju-87 dive bombers that had attacked from the direction of the midday sun. This attack was skillfully timed to coincide with a break in air cover, and the Junkers managed to sink five ships in the convoy. Simultaneously with the bombers, the convoy was also attacked by fascist torpedo boats. By nightfall, two damaged English destroyers from the guards of the convoy had taken refuge in the harbor of Dover. After that day, the Admiralty decided to abandon the passage of convoys through the Strait of Dover during the daytime.

On August 8, another characteristic battle took place in the strait. By this day, the loss of the British amounted to 18 ships and four destroyers. During daylight hours, the strait became so dangerous that the destroyers were withdrawn from it. The Admiralty began to plan for the passage of convoys through the Straits of Dover at nightfall. The first such SW-9 convoy of 24 vessels was formed in Southend. Not only economic necessity, but also questions of prestige pushed the British authorities to escort convoys through this dangerous strait, which became so as a result of German air strikes. German propaganda claimed that the Strait of Dover was closed by the Germans. On the evening of August 7, leaving the mouth of the Thames, guarded by eight escort ships, including two destroyers, the convoy headed west along the coast.

On the French coast opposite Folkestone, in the narrowest part of the strait, the Germans set up a radar station that made it possible to observe the passage of convoys. At dawn, their torpedo boats attacked the convoy and sank three ships, causing damage to three more ships.

To destroy the convoy, the German command allocated an air corps under the command of Richthofen, a specialist in dive bombing. The height of the clouds that day was about 700 meters, which made it difficult for dive bombers to operate. Their attacks were also hampered by barrage balloons towed by convoy ships. The British allocated about five squadrons (about 80 fighters) to cover the convoy. Despite the escort of fighters, the Yu-87 dive bombers, which arrived in the area where the convoy was located in small groups, were almost unable to carry out targeted bombing of the ships.

At noon, Richthofen adopted a different tactic. More than 30 Me-109 and Me-110 fighters escorted three Yu-87 divisions (about 300 bombers), marching in close combat formations. The British radar surveillance network detected the approach of a large air target in a timely manner. Therefore, the British managed to send more than 30 Spitfire and Hurricane fighters to cover the convoy. Arriving in the area of ​​the convoy, the Messerschmitts skillfully tied up the British planes in battle, providing the Junkers with the opportunity to bombard the convoy ships without hindrance. In 10 minutes, four merchant ships were sunk, and the other seven were heavily damaged. During the attack, the convoy broke up, the surviving ships dispersed in different directions, which weakened the protection of the balloons.

Deciding to destroy the convoy to the last ship, Richthofen by the end of the day organized another strike on the remnants of the convoy, trying to gather in the area of ​​the Isle of Wight. 82 Yu-87s and almost the same number of fighters took part in this attack. British planes, guided by radar stations, managed to arrive in the battle area, but the ensuing fight in the air ended to no avail. By the end of the day the convoy was destroyed; stormy weather was in the battle area, so many ships, having received heavy damage, quickly sank. At the end of the attack, only six ships were still moving in the direction of the nearest ports. Of these, only four ships reached. In the stormy sea, none of the survivors of the sunken ships survived. The rescue of British pilots from planes shot down over the sea was not organized either. But the Germans had an effective water rescue service and all the pilots were equipped with personal rescue equipment.

In August, such "prestigious" convoys no longer appeared in the Strait of Dover. If their escort had been abandoned a few weeks earlier, there would not have been such heavy losses in the British fighter aviation: in the three weeks of July, she lost at least 220 pilots over the sea. There was also one bright “window” on this bleak day. The British Ministry of Aviation, taking the reports of their pilots on faith, announced the destruction of 60 German aircraft (actual losses on that day were: the Germans had 31 aircraft, the British had shot down 19 fighters).

In the meantime, the second stage of action began - the "Day of the Eagle". Back in July, radio intelligence of the Luftwaffe and the German post office established their radio interception points along the coast of the Strait of Dover. The operators of these points discovered an intense radio traffic of the British in the 12-meter frequency band. A number of experts have suggested that 100-meter masts of unknown purpose, placed along the English coast of the strait, are related to this radio exchange. Subsequently, German radio intelligence officers discovered other facts that deserved attention. The excited radio conversations of the fighter pilots were answered by calmer voices on the high-frequency radiotelephone. The constant intensity and area of ​​radio exchange were linked with the direction of the actions of the aircraft of the British Air Force and informing them of the number of formations of German aircraft in the air, their location, courses and altitudes of their flights.

German intelligence, having analyzed all these reports, on August 7 sent the following intelligence report to the operational command: “Since the British fighters are controlled from the ground by radiotelephone, their forces are tied to the appropriate ground radio stations and, therefore, are limited in mobility, even taking into account the likelihood that that some ground stations can be mobile. Consequently, the concentration of large forces of fighter aircraft at certain points in a short time cannot be expected.

This was a fatal mistake in assessing the situation. Considering that the control of British aviation is carried out in a primitive way by radiotelephone from ground control posts of squadrons, each tied to its own local post, the Luftwaffe command came to the conclusion that strikes inflicted by large air forces would only be repelled by locally based forces. At the same time, the Germans did not even take into account the existence of radar stations (RLS) among the British.

In order to test this assumption and reveal the possibility of interaction between British fighters with the above stations, it was decided to devote one day before Eagle Day to strike at the indicated stations and airfields of fighter aircraft located off the south coast of England.

Taking into account the data of meteorological reconnaissance carried out by German reconnaissance aircraft in the Atlantic, the start of the operation was scheduled for August 13, and preparatory strikes should be carried out the day before. British intelligence during this period also achieved good results by listening to the radio networks of the Luftwaffe. The German staffs asked the weather reconnaissance planes for the state of the weather not in general, but in the probable areas of the planned strikes. Responses to such requests were transmitted from the air. An important role in determining the intentions of the Germans was the fact that every German aircraft preparing for a combat sortie checked its radio station with going on the air. Observation of such signals made it possible to establish quite accurately the number of aircraft that would be used in the next 24 hours. As the day of the operation approached, the British commander had a fairly clear idea that he was being attacked by an enemy force far superior to what he had previously dealt with.

On August 12, at 8.40, 16 Me-109s took off from the Calais airfield. Their task was to carry out pinpoint bombing of British radar stations. By this time, the Me-109 aircraft of the 52nd Air Division had already crossed the Strait of Dover and were approaching Kent. Spitfires of 610 Squadron were sent from the nearest airfield to intercept them. In the ensuing air battle, the Germans deliberately shifted the battle area to the east in order to clear the way for the Me-109 strike group. The latter reached the strait at an altitude of 5500 meters and headed for Dover. The first four "Messerschmitts" went out of action and dived into the 100-meter masts of the Dover radar station. Accurately dropped bombs shook the pylons and destroyed technical buildings. The next four headed north towards Kent, where another radar station was located. The dropped bomb fell so close to the building containing the radio transmitter that the concrete structure moved off its foundation. In Paradise, bombs hit almost all the station's facilities. The last four Messerschmitts fired eight 500-kilogram bombs at Pevensey, near Brighton, where the entire station was blown up. Of the four attacked radar stations, only one survived - in Kent.

In the 160-kilometer hole in the radar surveillance system formed as a result of the raid, not a single fighter could be directed at the air formations that rushed into this hole to attack the airfields of fighter aircraft at Lipmn and Hawking. Particularly heavy damage was done to the airfield and aviation, based in Hawking.

Around noon, the surviving radar station detected a large group of aircraft approaching Brighton from the sea. It was a bomber air division - about 100 Yu-88s, in direct escort of 120 Me-109s. From above they were covered by another 25 Me-110 fighters. Before reaching Brighton, the entire formation changed course to the west and followed the coast towards the Isle of Wight. Approaching Cape Spithead, the Germans turned sharply to the north and, through a gap in the chain of barrage balloons, rushed to attack the piers and docks of the naval base and the city of Portsmouth. 15 "Ju-88" followed further to the west.

The 213th Hurricanes Squadron, which flew out to intercept, could not enter the zone over Portsmouth: the entire sky there was covered with anti-aircraft shells from ships in the base and coastal air defense batteries. The battleship Queen Elizabeth was attacked especially hard, but both she and other ships managed to avoid serious damage. Shore structures were badly damaged by the bombing. Three Yu-87s were shot down. When leaving the battle zone, German aircraft were attacked by Hurricanes. In the last skirmish, the plane of the commander of the German unit was shot down.

Meanwhile, 15 Yu-88s, which did not participate in the attack of the main forces, reached the Isle of Wight and bombed the radar station in Ventnor, one of the most powerful on the entire coast of England. The station was destroyed.

During the withdrawal of this group, it was overtaken by two squadrons of Spitfires, late noticed by covering Messerschmitts, which were kept at too high a height. As a result, 10 Yu-88s were shot down before the fighters covering them came to the rescue.

At this time, a fresh group of Messerschmitts from among those participating in the morning raid on radar stations was sent to strike at the Menston coastal airfield. This blow came at a time when the fighters covering the English airfield left for the base. Explosions of more than 150 bombs and machine-gun fire destroyed the workshops, hangars and twin-engine Blenheim night fighters that were on the field. The battle for England, which began in July, continued continuously for a month and a half, therefore, along with the great fatigue of the flight crew, the raid had a strong effect on the morale of the English pilots. Hundreds of pilots and technical personnel took refuge in bomb shelters and remained in them for several days, despite the threats, orders and exhortations of their officers.

But even in the air, the British pilots showed signs of moral and physical exhaustion. One of the Spitfires that landed at Menston airfield that day was flown by a young Sergeant Pilot who had been on a regular mission since the Dunkirk evacuation. Now he simply avoided engaging in combat and behaved like this for several days. He left the formation at the first appearance of the enemy, wasted the entire combat reserve and went to his airfield. "He's not just tired, he's just chickened out," complained one of the squadron officers. Fearing that the sergeant's cowardice might spread to other pilots, he was suspended from flying and sent on leave pending transfer to another unit.

For the Germans, this was a day of clear triumph for the Luftwaffe: excellent preparation for a general offensive. And yet, when 2nd Air Fleet Commander Kesselring sent out a group of Dornier reconnaissance bombers that evening to strike targets on the coast of Kent, they found that the radar stations hit in the morning were being repaired and would soon begin work. Only Ventnor station was so damaged that it could not be restored.

German intelligence reported with regret that not a single British radar station had stopped radio traffic. None of the returning crews could report that they had succeeded in destroying the British radio masts.

Goering's operation "Day of the Eagle" did not have a sufficiently convincing design. Setting too many goals and objectives caused dispersion of forces. Ships and land facilities, commercial ports and harbors, and coastal shipping were to be destroyed. The bases of all branches of aviation, as well as factories producing aircraft, components and weapons were subject to bombardment. Navy ships were also to be attacked all the way from Dover to Scapa Flow. The latter was especially difficult, since the Luftwaffe did not have the armor-piercing bombs needed to sink large warships.

Among this multitude of goals and objectives, Goering did not identify priority ones, and no one knew how they intended to destroy the British fighter aircraft: by bombing attacks on their bases or in the air, involving them in air battles.

If the strategy was uncertain, then the tactics were no better, because Luftwaffe intelligence had only a vague idea of ​​​​the British defense system with fighter aircraft. For example, the raid on Portsmouth and Ventnor was planned in such a way that the attacking force ran parallel to the coast of England for part of the route. This would be good when approaching from the sea, as approaching aircraft would merge with the surface of the sea on the radar screens. However, it was overlooked that the Pauling radar station, located to the east, perfectly scanned the approaching aircraft, not to mention the countless visual observation posts scattered along the coast and with telephone communication with the fighter guidance system.

The Luftwaffe intelligence omission was also the fact that the maps used by the German headquarters did not indicate which airfields fighter aircraft used, which other types of aviation, and which airfields were not used. In general, the actions of the Germans testified to a deep misunderstanding of the British fighter aircraft control system.

Luftwaffe intelligence showed no less lack of information regarding the location and comparative value aircraft industry in England. Most English schoolchildren knew that Spitfires and Hurricanes were powered by Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. Only two factories produced these engines, and one of them was in Derby - the world-famous location of the Rolls-Royce company. The production of Spitfire fighters was even more vulnerable, since only one factory produced these aircraft, and that was the well-known Supermarine plant, located in Southampton, perilously close to German bomber bases.

These three targets deserved any sacrifice to destroy them, but prior to the date of Eagle Day, no strike was envisaged that would prove fatal to Fighter Command.

August 13 "Day of the Eagle" began with a series of incredible mistakes by the German headquarters. To begin with, the weather scouts gave the wrong forecast, and the Germans had to start in conditions of low cloud cover, haze and drizzle. Goering had to personally postpone the operation. However, not all connections received the clear signal. One of them was the 2nd bomber air division, which flew out as part of 70 Dornier aircraft. When crossing the coast of France, they were joined by a fighter air division - about a hundred Me-110s, which also did not receive a signal to cancel the flight. Following in dense clouds, the German bombers were not noticed by the British fighters until they reached the target, which was near the mouth of the Thames, where they bombed, simultaneously fighting with the British fighters who came to the rescue. On the withdrawal of the Germans, the 111th squadron attacked, shooting down five enemy bombers.

Meanwhile, the confusion among the Germans continued. The 2nd Fighter Air Division, flying to cover the 54th Bomber Air Division Yu-88, lost its wards in conditions of poor visibility, when the bombers, having barely left the coast, turned back due to bad weather.

Another group of bombers from the 54th Air Division, flying to bombard Portland with the task of diverting British fighters from the main forces, was recalled to the base, but the Me-110 fighters covering them did not receive this order and continued to fly on their own. On the approach to Portland, they were intercepted by fighters of the English 238 squadron. Although the radar station at Ventnor has not yet become operational, the rest of the radar monitoring and guidance network is already operational.

By noon the weather improved. Teletypes blared from Luftwaffe headquarters, relaying new orders, and strike group planes began to take to the air, this time signaling the official start of the operation. The plan called for a massive bombing attack on military installations throughout southern England, with special attention to fighter airfields. The main drawback of this plan was that the Luftwaffe had no idea on which airfields the British fighters were based. It so happened that all the airfields attacked by the Germans had nothing to do with Fighter Command.

A group of Yu-87 dive bombers followed at the point of impact, bombing the Detling airfield near Maidstone. The path for this group was cleared by a select group of fighters from the 26th Air Division. This group entered into battle with the Spitfires covering the airfield and diverted them to high altitudes, thus opening the way for the Junkers. The latter were bombed without interference, as in an exercise. The British lost 22 aircraft and 76 aircrew killed at the airfield.

The British command quickly learned its lesson, and when aircraft from the 53rd Fighter Air Division tried to divert the British fighters west of the Isle of Wight, the latter no longer succumbed to this trick. In fact, this maneuver worsened the position of the German bombers approaching the battle area. Nine Ju-88s were spotted by the Spitfires of 609 Squadron, and six of them were shot down.

In fact, on this day, the Germans lost six aircraft, the British - 13 fighters. At least 47 British aircraft were destroyed on the ground.

German night bombers were also active that day, striking major cities in England, Scotland and Wales. Of these attacks, two scored exceptionally accurate hits on aircraft factories in Belfast and Birmingham.

On that day, Luftwaffe planes made 1,485 sorties. British fighters responded with 700 sorties. The next day there were considerably fewer sorties on both sides, but now the opponents were engaged in combat, and as the summer days were getting much shorter, the Luftwaffe had to exert every effort to bring about a quick, decisive conclusion to the battle.

Both sides continued to exaggerate the damage inflicted on the enemy. This did little harm to the British, as their strategy was simply to conserve Fighter Command until the weather got too bad to attempt an invasion. They never hoped to destroy the German air force.

The Germans, on the other hand, had to destroy the British fighter aircraft in order to then transfer strikes to objects, the defeat of which would ensure the invasion. Therefore, it was vital for the strategy of the Luftwaffe to have a current picture of the state of the enemy forces at all times. However, they did not take this into account. The Luftwaffe relied too much on the report of the headquarters on the results of sorties and did not single out in the first place the targets that were most important from the point of view of maintaining the combat capability of the British fighter aircraft. Even when the targets were chosen correctly, the Germans had a tendency to dismiss them after sorties as no longer existing.

German intelligence accurately assessed the combat composition of enemy fighter aircraft as of July. However, she made a mistake in calculating the replenishment of the material part coming from industry. The Germans made an even bigger mistake in calculating the possibility of replenishment by repairing aircraft.

The same mistakes were made in assessing the possibility of replenishing fighter aircraft with flight crews. The situation in this area was difficult, but not the same as Luftwaffe intelligence believed.

In order to test the combat capabilities of the fighter air command, it was decided to attack the enemy simultaneously from all directions. The 5th Air Fleet, based at airfields in Norway and Denmark, gained significant experience in delivering isolated strikes and aerial reconnaissance in areas of Scotland and the north of England. Now this fleet was to participate, together with the main forces, in the planned private one-day operation. It began on August 15 and, as it happened, was accompanied by another confusion in the headquarters of the Luftwaffe. Forecasters predicted bad weather for the day, with low dense clouds. Based on this forecast, Goering decided not to start the main forces on that day. Instead, he decided to conduct a review of previous fights associated with the Day of the Eagle. With his characteristic penchant for pomposity, Goering called a meeting at his Karinhol Palace in the Berlin area, where the entire high command of the aviation forces participating in the operation was supposed to arrive.

By noon the clouds had dissipated, the sky was clear and the wind had almost died down. Reconnaissance planes reported that such clear weather is observed all the way from Central France to most of England.

Detailed plans for planned massive strikes by large aviation forces were sent long ago to all air fleets. The 2nd Air Corps, which consisted of three divisions of bombers of various types, was allocated to the lead echelon of the attacking forces. The corps commander, along with others, flew to a meeting with Goering. The chief of staff of the corps, Colonel Dikman, looking at the clear sky, decided to take the initiative and gave the order to take off according to the plan of operation.

According to this plan, the bomber air divisions of the corps were to strike at four airfields in southern England: Hawking, Lympne, Rochester and Eastchurch. Over the departed air divisions, an "umbrella" of fighters appeared, which took off later to save fuel. With the 2nd Air Corps activated, Diekmann set other formations in motion, from Lannion in Brittany to Stavanger in Norway, resulting in a battle more intense in the air than on any day of the operation. The 5th Air Fleet sent a unit of Heinkel-115C reconnaissance aircraft into battle for diversion operations off the coast of Scotland, in order to pull the aircraft of the 13th Fighter Group north from the main strike area. The main force included 72 Heinkel 111 bombers, a unit specialized in the use of torpedoes against merchant ships. They were accompanied by 21 Me-110 fighters.

For these distant raiders, the day started off badly. A navigational error had brought the main body so close to the diverting unit's area of ​​operation that the British radar operators mistook them for one large group. On alarm, the 72nd squadron on duty was raised into the air, which gained a height of 6 thousand meters and found about a hundred enemy aircraft under it. The British were divided into two groups: one attacked the escort fighters, the second attacked the bombers. The director of fighter aviation operations in this sector showed courage by pulling squadrons on duty from the north and from the south: from Scotland to Yorkshire into the battle area. This bold tactical move made it possible to defeat the German group: the British shot down 15 German aircraft, losing one fighter.

The southern group of aircraft of the 5th Air Fleet, consisting of Yu-88 bombers, took off without fighter cover. This group, attacked by two squadrons, broke through to their intended target, bombing the airfield at Driffield and destroying nine bombers at the airfield. However, seven Yu-88s were shot down.

Even with the British bombers destroyed on the airfields, the Germans paid a heavy price. Of the aircraft of the 5th Air Fleet, 20 percent of the participating forces were lost. This disappointed the Luftwaffe command. It became clear that the northern groups of British fighters were not bled dry by sending planes to make up for the losses of the southern group - the 11th. It was also proved that German bomber formations could not operate without an escort of single-engine fighters.

After that day of fighting, the single-engine fighter assumed paramount importance. Gone are the theories that a high-speed bomber could evade fighter pursuit. From that day on, it became obvious that any raid must be provided by aircraft that are not inferior to those used by the defending side.

Now the Luftwaffe could use large bomber forces only within the range of their Me-109 fighters. In turn, this allowed the command of the British fighter aviation to base all its forces on airfields outside the flight radius of the same Me-109s. From now on, if need be, they will still be able to fight the German raiders from airfields that are not under bombardment.

Another circumstance emerged from the loss statistics. Luftwaffe bomber formations could only avoid morale-damaging losses by providing two escort fighters for each bomber following in combat formation.

On this day, for example, German aviation made 786 sorties, of which only 520 sorties were made by bombers. Therefore, almost half of the bomber fleet of the air armies remained inactive on the ground due to the lack of escort fighters. In the south, the 2nd and 3rd Air Fleets used the Me-109 fighters as usual, but they could not prevent serious losses in aircraft of more vulnerable types, such as the Yu-87 and Me-110. German aviation inflicted great damage on the airfields that were subjected to its strikes, but very often it hit objects not related to the provision of fighter aircraft.

In the air battles that ensued that day all the way from Scotland to Devonshire, the British lost 34 fighters shot down and 16 destroyed on the airfields. The Luftwaffe lost about 75 aircraft. No wonder the Germans began to call this day "Black Thursday" ...

This was one of the greatest mistakes made by the Germans in the war. The day of August 16 is characterized by continued pressure on the British. After 1,786 sorties made by the Germans on Black Thursday, their planes made 1,700 sorties the next day.

Despite Goering's orders, the Ventnor radar station was attacked a second time. Dive bombers put her out of action for seven days. On the evening of that day, the Luftwaffe pilots demonstrated their tactical skills when two Ju-88s penetrated the Brize Norton airfield, near Oxford. Their route of approach and the time of the raid were chosen in such a way as to be over the airfield at the moment when the British fighters, having left the battle, returned to base for refueling. The German bombers made a circle over the airfield, as if landing, and even extended their landing gear to look like British Blenheim bombers.

Bombs dropped on the hangars in which the refueling aircraft were located destroyed 47 vehicles; in addition to this, 11 fighters in repair shops were damaged. The Germans slipped away without meeting resistance. This attack demonstrated the dilemma that constantly confronted the defense - the aircraft left during such powerful attacks on the airfields were destroyed by bombs and enemy machine-gun fire. At the same time, if all aircraft are lifted into the air, then they will all have to return to base at the same time to land for refueling and armament. This would mean open skies and more aircraft vulnerable to further attacks.

On this day, the British pilots drew attention to the change in the battle formations of German aircraft. The Luftwaffe fighters no longer kept at high altitude above the battle formations of the bombers, but walked at the same height with them in the head and on the sides of the formation.

By August 18, the symptoms of deep fatigue, the consequences of many days of continuous participation in air battles or readiness duty, began to affect the British aviation pilots even more clearly. In some squadrons, pilots slept under planes or right in the cockpits, rarely anyone managed to get two or three nights of sleep in a row. Fighter squadrons, according to the plan of the fighter aviation command, were systematically redeployed from one airfield to another in order to reduce losses on the ground, and this also added to the fatigue of the flight crew. Endless sorties on alert, flights at high altitudes, lack of sleep, loss of comrades and physical stress began to affect morale. Many pilots, after the battle, answered the questions of intelligence officers that they could not remember anything.

On August 19, the British introduced some changes in the tactics of their fighters. The priority task was the defense of their airfields. The fighter units were ordered to avoid air battles with enemy bomber escort fighters, to divert them at any cost from the battle formations they were covering, and above all to strive to destroy the bombers. This simple tactical plan established the nature of the fighting to be carried out by the fighter units. To protect the base airfields, it was necessary to intercept German forces as early as possible in order to prevent them from reorganizing into battle formations for bombing. It also meant that some squadrons would be assigned to barrage around their own airfields instead of flying towards the enemy.

It could be argued that since the Luftwaffe had reduced the number of sorties due to a lack of fighters, therefore, the best tactic would be to shoot down enemy fighters. However, this is a deceptively simple conclusion. The destruction of the bombers meant that the German bomber crews would demand even more fighter escorts and insist that they kept at the same altitude as the bombers, which would mean that the German fighters were becoming vulnerable to British aircraft.

Day after day, fierce battles were fought, but this did not bring decisive results to either side. Goering held a meeting of senior officers. Without identifying particularly important objects of strikes, he suggested that the air forces themselves choose the targets of their attacks (excluding London) and intensify strikes on the airfields of British bombers in order to prevent counterattacks from their side.

The losses suffered by the Ju-87 dive bombers and the insufficient success of their attacks under the pressure of the decisive defensive actions of the British fighters led to the decision to stop their operations.

Goering began to lean towards admitting that units armed with Me-110 twin-engine fighters were not having the success he had predicted for them. He suggested that they be accompanied by Me-109 fighters: the fighters cover the fighters!

From the point of view of combat planning, the exclusion of the Me-110 aircraft from the fighter class would lead to an immediate reduction in the fighter fleet by hundreds of aircraft. And yet it was an acknowledgment of what was already obvious: the elite crews were destroyed, and the survivors were demoralized. Being attacked, the Me-110 fighter was not able to instantly pick up speed in order to evade the fire of the attacking enemy fighter.

When deciding how to help the air armies, Goering took a different path. He appealed to the fighter pilots' sense of responsibility for covering the aircraft they were escorting. He ordered that bomber crews and fighter pilots should be able to meet each other on the ground, and that each crew should always be accompanied by the same fighters. Bombers should follow in tighter formation, he demanded, and threatened to prosecute fighter pilots who turned back because of bad weather.

One way or another, it became clear that a single-engine fighter was the key to victory in the ongoing air battles. Therefore, a regrouping of fighter aviation forces was carried out and units armed with Me-109 fighters were concentrated in the main directions.

According to Luftwaffe intelligence, as of August 16, British losses in fighters since July amounted to 574 vehicles and about 200 fighters were lost on the ground for various reasons. Assuming that industry could deliver no more than 300 fighters over the same period, German intelligence believed that the British had no more than 430 fighters, of which about 300 were in service. In fact, the British had over 700 fighters, and by the end of August this figure was supposed to grow to 1081 machines, and another 500 fighters were under repair.

Replenishment of pilots - that was the main weakness of the British. In the week since Eagle Day, nearly 80 percent of squadron commanders have been out of action. Their places were taken by officers, who often had no combat experience.

But if the squadron commanders lacked combat experience, then the pilots they led often had no more than 10 hours of flight time on a single-seat fighter. And at the same time, the command was forced to further reduce the training time. Now pilots were trained to fly in just two weeks, after which they were sent into battle. Until July, the same course took six months.

The third stage, characteristic of strikes against British airfields, is the time interval between August 24 and September 6. German air raids concentrated on the airfields of the 11th Fighter Group, located in the coastal zone, stretching from the mouth of the Thames west to Portland.

In the first days of this critical period, the Germans redeployed parts of their Me-109 fighters from the Cherbourg region to the Calais region, thus creating a large fighter aviation grouping.

The command of the air fleets carried out Goering's order to carry out air raids around the clock. Groups of bombers of various composition, up to single bombers, raided all parts of England day and night.

During the day, German aircraft continuously appeared off the French coast in the Calais region, confusing British radar operators and preventing them from determining the moment a large group of Luftwaffe aircraft was forming and ensuring that their fighters were airlifted in a timely manner. This technique often allowed large German formations to attack coastal targets and get away unpunished. Now the German battle formations were accompanied by a large number of fighters, marching in close formation with the bombers above and below the latter. The new tactics made it possible to reduce the losses of bombers, but the number of German fighters shot down increased.

From the point of view of the Luftwaffe command, such tactics proved to be effective. Close battle formations fought their way to the targeted targets of bomb attacks and sometimes devastated them.

In order to break through to the airfields of the 11th British fighter group, located around London, the German command often sent one group of bombers in a direct course to the targets of bombing attacks, masking the second group, which was going around the mouth of the Thames. On August 25, in the pre-dawn hours, a similar night raid was carried out by a circuitous route to bomb oil tanks at Thameshaven. One of the bombers of the strike group went off course and bombed the residential areas of London. This fact threw the English military cabinet and the headquarters of the German 2nd Air Fleet into disarray, only the Londoners did not pay attention to it: the suburbs of the English capital were already being bombarded, everyone was already expecting raids. Nevertheless, this single bomber was a harbinger of the beginning of all-out bombing.

Churchill immediately ordered a retaliatory raid on Berlin. The following night, 81 British bombers took part in a raid on the fascist capital, which did not expect such a surprise. The Nazi leadership, which promised that not a single bomb would fall on the heads of the Berliners, vowed to avenge this "atrocity".

Subsequently, the combat formations of the German fighters returned to the previous tactics of covering the bombers from high altitudes, keeping above them. The intelligence of the British Fighter Command reported that the German fighters kept at altitudes of 6 to 8 thousand meters, and the bombers usually followed at an altitude of 4 thousand meters, with some orders dropping to 1200 meters for bombing.

In the summer of 1940, the second battle for England also began: night fighters began to fly out every night in search - most often unsuccessfully - of single night bombers robbing the skies of southern England. The British command had no illusions about the possibility of a successful fight against the numerous night bombers of the Germans. The search for the necessary means and tactics of defense against them eventually made it possible to come to the desired result. The desired solution turned out to be the creation of radio interference to guide German night bombers on targets. But it didn't come right away.

So, a series of night raids were made on Liverpool. For four nights in a row, this city and port were attacked by groups of up to 150 bombers. The strongest damage was inflicted on docks and industrial facilities.

Meanwhile, daylight raids continued. On August 26, cloudy weather provided sufficient cover to allow air fleets to attack fighter airfields in Kent and Essex, and one group of bombers on the eastern suburbs of London. Fearing a massive attack on London, the British raised seven squadrons into the air. The connection of the Dornier-17 bombers approaching from the south turned out to be deprived of the cover of the Me-109 fighters, which, having come to the limit of their flight range, were forced to turn back. The bombers also turned back but suffered heavy casualties.

The weather continued to stabilize, but in the first half of the day on August 29, the British radar screens remained empty. Only at about 15 o'clock did small groups of Heinkel-111 and Dornier-17 bombers head towards the English coast. Since larger air targets were visible behind them, the British raised 13 squadrons of fighters into the air. Somewhat later, these targets were identified as a large group of fighters. These were five hundred Me-109s, concentrated from all air fleets. They were followed by a large group of Me-110s. The German fighters flew significantly higher than the bombers.

Fearing that the trap would close behind the British squadrons that flew out to intercept the bombers, the English aviation commander who controlled their actions promptly recalled these squadrons before they entered the battle. In doing so, he was guided by recently received instructions not to engage in combat with German fighters in the skies of England.

This British tactic, which required shooting down bombers and avoiding combat with enemy fighters, significantly contributed to undermining the morale of the German bomber crews, who began to suffer serious losses.

The day of August 30 was marked by a change in German aviation tactics and the beginning of the fighting, which put the British on the brink of defeat. At dawn, at the mouth of the Thames, a group of Dornier-17 bombers, under the cover of Me-110 fighters, attacked a convoy heading north. By chance, a squadron of "Hurricanes" appeared in this area, starting a battle with the "Me-110".

The battle over the mouth of the Thames was planned by the Germans to distract the attention of the enemy from their main forces. The first echelon of sixty Me-109s crossed the south coast of England at 10.30. The officer directing the actions of the British fighters ignored them, only informing his squadrons of the possible imminent appearance of enemy bombers. After 30 minutes, the second echelon invaded the sky over the English coast: 40 Heinkel-111 and 30 Dornier-17 bombers, accompanied by a hundred fighters. By 12 o'clock all the fighters of the English 11th group were lifted into the air and almost all went into battle.

A second German raid followed immediately. Again their attacks were aimed at airfields. It was followed by a third wave, approaching Dover in several echelons before the second wave left. Like the previous ones, it was aimed at fighter airfields. Nine bombers made a detour across the Thames Estuary and, attacking from low altitudes, inflicted exceptionally heavy destruction on objects. In these raids, the Germans for the first time used the tactic of simultaneous area bombing.

Losses that day amounted to 36 aircraft among the Germans, and 25 fighters among the British. However, the Germans were able to inflict devastating blows on airfields and, most importantly, found a way to break through the enemy defenses. Now the British did not have time to refuel their fighters in order to meet the next echelons of enemy aircraft.

Especially successful for the Germans was the day of 31 August. On this day, the Germans succeeded in everything. To cover 150 bombers, German fighters made at least 1,300 sorties. The first wave of fighters shot down three Hurricanes at dawn. It was followed by a bombing raid. Attacks were again aimed at airfields. The blows were delivered skillfully and decisively. Without suffering losses, the Germans shot down four fighters. Many fighters were destroyed on the ground. Before the end of the day, two more raids were made.

Results of the day: 33 fighters - the loss of the British, the loss of the Luftwaffe - 39 aircraft. However, not only losses in fighters worried the British command. Even more threatening were the low training and overwork of the flight crew. So, for example, in two weeks of fighting in August, the 616th squadron lost four pilots killed, five wounded, one pilot was captured and two were expelled for refusing to fly. Entire squadrons refused to obey combat orders. Fatigue began to affect the morale of the German units: one squadron was disbanded for refusing to fly into battle. Many German Me-109 fighters were lost during emergency landings on water or on land as a result of a lack of fuel.

During the same two weeks, the British lost 466 fighters, and the replenishment amounted to only 269 aircraft. Of the thousand pilots, 231 were lost killed, wounded and missing. Six of the seven airfields of the 11th Fighter Group were put out of action.

In the following days, German aircraft continued to strike at airfields. On September 2, a group of Dornier-17 bombers, escorted by Me-109 fighters, bombed airfields in southern England. Only one squadron flew to intercept from the last airfield remaining in service. Air supremacy over Southern England was nearly achieved. This was what would later be called the "critical period". If the Luftwaffe command had continued to strike at the airfields until they were completely destroyed, it would have achieved complete air supremacy in this area. However, this was not done. The air formations were given the task of destroying the enterprises of the aviation industry, which made it possible for the British to begin restoring fighter aviation airfields.

For two months, the loss of the Germans amounted to 800 aircraft, which affected the intensity of hostilities; the fighter fleet was reduced to 600 vehicles; On September 1, the number of Luftwaffe sorties was only 640 and in the next five days never reached a thousand.

By order of the operational headquarters of the Luftwaffe, dated September 1, attacks by formations of all air armies were aimed at 30 aviation industry enterprises. On the first day, the Vickers-Armstrong aircraft factory was bombed, killing 700 workers.

The fourth phase of the Luftwaffe began with the transition to daylight raids on central London. Prior to this, Hitler forbade raids on London, but after a night raid on Berlin on August 25, British aircraft continued to bomb the capital of Nazi Germany, and the Fuhrer gave the command to start terrorist raids on London.

On September 7, the first such raid involved a huge formation, numbering up to a thousand aircraft. Of these, about one-third were bombers. From the ground, it looked like a black storm cloud hovering at an altitude of about 3,200 meters and covering an area of ​​about 2,100 square kilometers.

Apparently, the British did not expect this raid. Therefore, the first reaction upon the discovery of the German air armada was to cover the airfields of fighter aircraft and lift all aircraft capable of flying from them.

The 2nd Bomber Air Division, which was in the forefront, had released its escort fighters that had used up fuel before entering the battle, attacked targets in east London. Other waves of bombers following her struck at the docks and industrial enterprises located on the banks of the Thames. Only after the main German forces were bombed did the officers in charge of the British fighter aviation realize that this time London was the main target of the raid, and they redirected all the fighters in the air to the retreating enemy.

In the ensuing battle, the British suffered an unprecedented defeat. German escort fighters used a number of new countermaneuvers that fended off British tactics. For example, an attack on one of the flanks of the bomber battle formation, which was intended to divert the escort fighters, no longer led to the desired result, because the German fighters, covering the battle formation from above, moved to the exposed flank attacked by the British, and the fighters that were on the non-attacked flank moved on upper tier cover. Especially on that day, the battle formations of the Germans were at a much higher altitude - 7 thousand meters instead of the usual 5 thousand meters, which also made it difficult for the British fighters.

In addition to the confusion caused by the bombing of London, during which the Germans tested their new high-explosive bomb weighing 1630 kilograms, British intelligence decided that an invasion from the sea was imminent, and therefore plans were set in motion to repel the invasion, which led to panic and confusion in the whole country. In fact, the Nazis had nothing ready for the landing.

In the afternoon, several more raids followed, lasting all night. All of London was on fire.

Day bombing proved to be much more accurate than night bombing, so the commander of fighter aircraft in the London Park sector decided to prevent another devastating German air raid on London during the day. On 8 September, in order to repel the next raid, he redeployed his fighter squadrons to forward airfields to intercept attack forces flying into London from the Dover direction. On September 9, this plan bore fruit: two groups of German bombers, which were going to bombard the docks and central London, were driven back by British fighters and dropped bombs on other parts of the city and suburbs.

By this time the summer was over and the weather was rapidly deteriorating. Several times during the daytime, German air strike groups managed to reach London unnoticed and just as covertly return to their bases.

By September 13, the strength of the British fighter aviation had reached an extremely low limit: only 80 Hurricanes and 47 Spitfires remained in the ranks of combat-ready fighters. However, reserves were on the way.

In a week of fighting over London by September 15, both sides had already learned a lot. The Germans finally figured out that radar stations can be disabled by creating radio interference. The British, after analyzing the data of all types of intelligence, determined that on September 15 the enemy plans to make two bomber raids on London in the daytime. In accordance with this conclusion, the actions and deployment of fighters were planned.

A fierce dogfight on 15 September, involving large forces on both sides - celebrated as Battle of England Day - gave Londoners the opportunity to see nearly 200 British fighters in the skies over the city. The Germans that day sent 400 fighters to cover no more than 100 bombers. This time the German fighters were in the forefront of the bombers, exceeding the latter in height.

In the battles over London, British aviation did not achieve air supremacy. At night and during the day, German air fleets continued to raid England for a long time. Air supremacy over the Straits of Dover and South England was still contested, and meanwhile only German air supremacy could ensure their invasion by sea.

Having retained combat-ready forces to the end, the British Fighter Command won the battle for England. On September 17, it became known about the official decision to postpone Operation Sea Lion until further notice. In the summer battles over England, the Luftwaffe was significantly exhausted. Now Hitler began to study the maps of Russia.

results

On September 7, fierce air battles over London began long after noon, however, despite this, more and more waves of bombers continued to appear in the sky of the capital of England. The bomber squadrons that had been bombed earlier made repeated bombing sorties in the evening hours, and this continued all night until the morning.

On that night there was no need for the bombers to point to targets by radio bearings or to designate targets: the whole of east London was engulfed in fires and the pilots found their assigned targets for many kilometers.

The next night the German bombers returned. They returned nightly for 76 days (excluding November 2, when the weather was too bad).

Night bombing had little effect on the course of the war. These raids did not damage commerce, industry, or morale enough to bring England closer to capitulation.

Although the British considered the situation desperately dangerous, Hitler assessed it differently: since the security of the rear in Western Europe was ensured, this provided an opportunity and enough time to prepare for a "blitzkrieg" against Russia.

What was the plan of action for the Luftwaffe when entering into this all-out attempt to crush the will of England to further resistance? Apparently, it was as follows:

1. Suppress England through aerial bombing alone.

2. To deprive British aircraft of air supremacy in order to ensure the invasion forces from air strikes. In fact, this meant the destruction of British fighter and bomber aircraft.

3. Establish your own air supremacy to enable air strikes against the British army and navy. This would mean the destruction of British fighter aircraft and the possibility of withdrawing German fighter aircraft for the defense of Germany.

4. Prepare the conditions for an invasion of England from the sea. This would mean neutralizing the British bomber force and navy while keeping the British ports and harbors intact so that the invading German forces could use them. In this regard, the laying of minefields from the air was almost not envisaged.

In general, the Luftwaffe had the ability to solve these problems. However, Goering's desire to achieve above all the first of these goals from the very beginning doomed this campaign to failure.

The involvement and rallying of scientists, the command of the armed forces and industry in England in order to implement measures for the conduct of the war was something that the Germans did not think of doing. For this they were punished. By this time, many prominent German scientists had already fled the country or ended up in concentration camps. Of course, few people now doubt that if the Nazi regime had abandoned the policy of anti-Semitism, it would have outstripped everyone else in creating long-range missiles with nuclear warheads and won the war.

Instead of economically and purposefully using the remaining German scientific forces, the fascist military department drafted them into the army along with laborers and clerks. The strange political system of Nazi Germany allowed manufacturers to spend effort and money on duplicating scientific research and development under the same contract, thus causing unnecessary time and effort to improve equipment that was already quite perfect.

British scientists often hurriedly created not particularly successful weapons, but - unlike many types of weapons created by the Germans - these weapons could be easily modified by improvised means and modified.

German scientists had a higher status than their English counterparts, but they did not have access to all military institutions - from the sergeant's canteen to the cabinet, which English scientists used. It is hard to imagine civilian shtafirok pointing out to polished Nazi staff officers that the latter made certain mistakes or miscalculations. And British scientists quite often did this and therefore had the opportunity with amazing speed to bring to combat units everything they had done in the laboratories.

This was a consequence of the trust that the British military, businessmen and politicians had in scientists. One result of this trust was the great role played by radar in the Battle of England.

Germany did nothing, or very little, to reconsider the role of science in war. In 1940, the German General Staff issued a directive forbidding research and development unless it produced results that could be used for military purposes within four months. As a result of this draconian demand, the development of the magnificent jet-powered fighter, the Me-262, was discontinued. The creation of such a fighter was delayed for two years.

The failure to understand the importance of building such a fighter was only a component of a larger misunderstanding of the importance of fighters in modern warfare. Even after the fighting in 1940, the Luftwaffe did not take measures to ensure that the production of this much-needed type of weapon was given priority. Only at the end of 1943, the Germans began to produce fighters in large numbers, but even then they were mostly the last modifications of the Me-109 fighter, which was outdated by that time.

Many of the failures of the Germans were the result of the fact that the country's leaders pinned all their hopes on a "blitzkrieg". Even during the lull in hostilities following the Battle of England, Germany still had no long-term plans for the war. Hitler decided that Britain's reluctance to make peace was due to the assumption that sooner or later the Soviet Union would go to war with Germany. To cut this Gordian knot, Hitler decided to launch a "blitzkrieg" against Russia. After that, he said, England would make peace. While the air battles of 1940 continued and the German army was waiting for developments, Hitler gradually introduced his generals to his ideas related to the Barbarossa plan.

And yet, if the British were looking for salvation, most of them looked not to the east, but to the west: to the USA.

Notes:

From William Shearer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. History of Nazi Germany (New York, 1963).

Shirer W. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. A History of Nazi Germany. New York, 1963. p. 569–577.

Shearer, William- American historian and journalist, author of many books on the history of Germany and World War II.

From Len Deighton's book "Fighter. The True Story of the Battle of England (New York, 1977).

Delton L. Fighter. The try history battle of Britain. New York, 1977. p. XII, 31, 38, 140, 145, 146, 156, 159, 160, 163, 164 220, 224, 226, 227, 229, 231, 236, 237, 241, 245, 248, 250, 252, 255-259, 261, 262, 267, 268, 272-274, 288, 289.

Dayton, Len- English journalist.

The first digit is the number of aircraft on the list, the second digit is the number of aircraft in service.