16.0
September 15, 1940. The crux of the problem for the Luftwaffe in Seelöwe was how to distribute its limited assets to cover all the numerous and difficult tasks it had to carry out.
The first and most important job was to protect the landing areas and the invasion armada as it unloaded. A weighty standing force of fighters was needed here, at all times during daylight. Kesselring reckoned that in order to be sure he could keep 80 fighters out there at all times, he had to set aside some 250 of them. They would fly in relays and make extensive use of the remaining drop tanks. Even so, this meant no more than 20 fighters on patrol over each of the four landing areas, while these pilots would need to fly 4 or 5 sorties per day, depending upon the intensity of the enemy attacks.
The fighters assigned to this task but not currently airborne could be, of course, scrambled on alarm; this could be done if the defenders of the beachheads signaled they were being overwhelmed, or in order to intercept British attacks against French or Dutch ports. Of course, if this happened, the sorties would pile up, and anyway, it would take some time to reach the English coast, even from bases in the Pas de Calais.
The second but no less critical task was to keep the Royal Navy at bay. Wever had been told countless times by now by his Kriegsmarine colleagues that the fleet had no chance of survival, unless the Luftwaffe did what the German warships simply could not do. So, for the first day of Seelöwe, 250 of the some 300 operational Ju 87 were to be assigned to this task. Obviously these lame ducks couldn't be sent out alone, but Kesselring reckoned he could assign just 200 Bf 109s to escort them. It was a paltry ratio, but these missions would take place over the sea; Kesselring thought the British fighters would have other things to do than to interfere out there. Besides, there were much less British fighters by then, and their operational bases were farther from the Channel – or so he believed.
This left just some 100 Bf 109s for other tasks. Which was a problem when it came to the level bomber force available; the Germans had almost 900 of them, but if they kept sticking to the ratios used until then (at least 2 escort fighters per bomber), they could use only 50 of them! Kesselring decided he could use a 1:1 ratio for 50 Heinkels and 50 Bf 109s, which he was going to keep as his reserve and for other tasks. Additionally, he would use a sizable part of his level bombers (some 400 of them) for the initial ground support missions over the beachheads; after all, numbers counted for something, and these areas would be patrolled by the above-mentioned CAPs. To these 400 level bombers he added the remaining 50 Stukas for pinpoint direct support missions.
Some 450 level bombers remained unused! So they were slated to go out for a final night bombing assault before dawn, and then remain available. These night attacks would be aimed at naval bases, army barracks, railroad marshalling yards and, once more, Fighter Command airfields.
At this point, Kesselring was left with some 90 Bf 110s and the last 50 Bf 109s. 40 of the two-engined aircraft would integrate the direct support to the ground forces, as fighter/bombers. The remaining 50, together with the Bf 109s, would provide a 100-strong mixed escort for the last but not least Luftwaffe effort: the parachute airdrops.
Coastal, long-range and some of the short-range recon aircraft would serve as the eyes of the anti-shipping details; those Royal Navy ships had to be found first. The obsolescent seaplanes would also have a go with their ineffective torpedoes. Other minor units would be, as customary, directly attached to the Heer; they were intended to serve in their primary role of recon, but also, four of them would be used for calling down CAS missions. They were redundant, because the same role would be carried out by Luftwaffe FAC teams having their own radios and light vehicles, assigned to the four landing areas. These wouldn't be able to call down level bomber raids; only the Bf 110s and, to a lesser extent, the Stukas, would have short enough response times to be useful in this role.
This was the Luftwaffe plan for the first day of Seelöwe. However, the first casualties of that day had nothing to do with the air combat. At about 00:40, the Naiad's flotilla, coming down from Rosyth, lost a destroyer to a mine. They were hugging the coast exactly in order to stay in a cleared corridor out of the German minefields, maybe it was a floating mine. The Admiralty had finally decided to keep this force out of the Channel, at the height of Harwich, almost out of Stuka range. They would probably not be committed during the daylight hours of the first day. They were, however, joined by the 6 destroyers of Harwich.
The Brandeburgers' attack at Dover was an abysmal failure; its only chance was surprise, and it was no surprise at all, of course, the garrison fully expecting something like this. They were first intercepted by a patrol boat well out at sea; their motorboats came under fire from coastal guns while lit up by illuminating rounds; and only a handful of survivors made it to the vicinity of the port, where they would do no more harm than a few nuisance skirmishes. The Dover port authorities started their demolition programs at about 03:00, and they would be even too thorough.
The German barge formations were also incurring their first losses, having nothing to do with enemy action. Indeed, their minesweepers had done a good job opening the way out of the roadsteads. But the barges were prone to accidents. In the night, collisions happened, engines malfunctioned, water came in over the low boards, passengers or loads moved, unbalancing the vessels. Given the pitiful seaworthiness of these things, and the desperate shortage of experienced sailors aboard them, a minor accident easily left a barge in a very dangerous situation, and several of them ended up capsizing. Apart from the losses, these accidents delayed the other barges and disrupted the formations.
Enemy action, on the other hand, also began taking its toll when two British torpedo boats on aggressive patrolling stumbled across Geleitzug 4 from Le Havre. This convoy was escorted by converted, armed fishing boats and minesweepers, but speed won over firepower in this confused night action, and a trawler and an escort were sunk. Unfortunately for the Germans, tracers, explosions and fires drew the attention of two British destroyers, Volunteer and Wolverine, coming from Southampton, and this fight was much more one-sided; a minesweeper, two small steamers and some twenty barges were lost, for light damages incurred by the two destroyers, which then withdrew. There was a further domino effect, no longer involving British units. The continued gunfire in the vicinity was too much for a nervous gunner on one of the motorized sailboats of Schleppverbande 5; in the moonlight, he spotted some dark shape looming close. A full friendly-fire battle erupted within this formation. When the commodore finally managed to stops it, plenty of vessels were badly shot up, the convoy was in disarray and it was going to be late on the beach.
While all of this did not bode well for the Westernmost landings, the Royal Navy's smorgasbord of press-ganged ex-civilian fishing boats, yachts, motorboats, cutters and launches scored some points on the other end of the invasion area; the British had hundreds of these boats, they were by now used to night patrolling in the Channel, and some two hundred of them were out that night. They got a contact off Dover with Geleitzug 2, from Rotterdam. This time the Germans dished out more than they took, but the fact was that the British had a large edge even in this lowest-end class; they would barely notice the loss of three of those boats, while the loss of even one gun-carrying minesweeper would be significant for this convoy in the hours to come.
About two hours before dawn, two of the Costal Command flights spotted the Calais and the Antwerp flotillas in the moonlight as they had almost reached their final turning point. The bombing, unfortunately, was rather inaccurate. That didn't mean the attack was fruitless, because a few barges were damaged, and two collided and quickly sank. Furthermore, AA tracers and incendiary bombs once again acted as beacons, and there was another fight between light-weights, a squadron of British cutters exchanging blows with the armed fishing boats. The convoys were both badly damaged, disrupted and delayed.
In the grey light just before dawn, finally, another naval engagement took place. One of the German submarines, laying in ambush West of the landing areas, was lucky enough to find itself exactly astride one of the zigzags the Revenge's flotilla was taking from Plymouth (this being the almost only way to have a good firing opportunity against these warships, way faster than the usual targets for U-Boote). But as it often happened with German torpedoes in this time frame, the Revenge's keel was just scratched by a dud, and the U-62 had to run away, chased by two destroyers (the contact would be broken later in the morning, with no losses on either side).
Meanwhile, the German bombers carried out their final night runs. Attacks on naval bases and Fighter Command Southern airfields were totally useless, given that by now they were empty; some damage was taken by the main communication lines between London and Dover.
But morning has broken, and the Seelöwe armada was in sight of the English coastline.
From East to West, landing zone B had two beaches between Folkestone and New Romney. The soldiers of the first echelon of the 17. Infanteriedivision started out unlucky, since Geleitzug 1 from Ostend had about half the planned tonnage; they were going to be short on everything. Landing zone C covered an area between Rye and Hastings, and the mountain troopers wouldn't find it amusing that their beach was bisected by a river mouth, with stuff ending up on both sides; the other Kampfgruppe's barges were spread out all over the sea due to the engagements and accidents during the crossing. The tow formation from Boulogne headed towards two beaches between Bexhill and Eastbourne (landing zone D), and, although not attacked, it had been disrupted by a false alarm in the night. This force also had no cargos, trawlers, nothing moving fast and arriving early. Finally, the landing zone E went from Beachy Head to Brighton. This was a substantial effort, with three beaches and three first echelons. Two of them had been disrupted by the night actions and lost cohesion; they were going to find remarkable fortifications, a seawall hard to cross with vehicles, and plenty of bottlenecks to fight through (what with cliffs, rivers and lagoons just behind their beaches). On the plus side, they had the benefit of some local early-morning mist.
During the final two course changes needed to line up with the beaches and then head towards them, the first carried out still in darkness and the second with limited visibility, several barges more collided with each other, or lost control and capsized, or fell out of formation. But the bulk of them pushed ahead, now preceded by the faster units.
The Germans weren't just coming by sea. The first relay of CAP fighters was already high up over the beaches. The first support mission was flown by 27 of the some 50 Stukas set aside for this task, and by 18 Bf 110s; they had no FAC direction for the time being, but many of the British fortifications were clearly visible on the German recon photos, and this attack was a softening. Of course these weren't thin-skinned hangars; they were RC pillboxes or thick brick and stone fortifications, and a direct hit was needed. Many of the strongpoints survived. There were two more "raids" just at this time: the Ju 52s carrying two battalion-strength parachute Kampfgruppen, with a mixed escort of almost 100 between Bf 109s and Bf 110s in the fighter role.
Switching now to the RAF's perspective, heated arguments had been going on over the last few days and even hours as to how to use its assets. Nobody could deny that the Royal Navy's task forces would be going to need air cover, so Dowding had grudgingly conceded some of that, especially from the peripheral Squadrons, those of #10 and #12 Groups (by now, he had also taken care to deploy all of his most experienced Squadrons to #11 Group, so that the veteran pilots could fight for the true air superiority contest). On the other hand, he adamantly refused to employ fighters as escorts to bomber attacks, at least not immediately. He pointed out that if the air-to-air battle was won, then nobody would molest the British bombers, and in order to defeat the German fighters, he had to have his hands free. The Air Staff could have easily overruled him, were it not for the fact that Bomber Command eggheads were still convinced that their theory that the bomber would always get through might still be proved true. The compromise that was reached in a final Air Ministry meeting was that in the afternoon of invasion day, Fighter Command would try to swamp the German fighter defenses over the beachheads, and if Bomber Command was able to time a strike surge correctly, they should find them unprotected. Bomber Command was not ruling out snap raids by Battles and Blenheims, without fighter escort. The Hampdens would keep hitting the invasion ports in France and Holland, at night.
Coastal Command was going to carry out its usual tasks, apart from trying to harass the invasion fleet at night.
On September 14, Dowding also gave his final activation order to his own little trick. All through the so called "combat zone" close to the coast, #11 Group had redeployed several Squadrons. Only, they were not based in Fighter Command airfields. #32 Squadron was hidden in the hangars of Detling, among the trainers of the FAA; the abandoned strip of Andover still looked abandoned, but #152 Squadron had just set up shop there; West Malling hosted the Poles of #303 Squadron, the Royal Aircraft Establishment airstrips of Farnborough were now home to #605 Squadron. Other units were stabled with Bomber Command (whence the accidental destruction of a handful of Hurricanes during one of the raids against it) or Coastal Command. A few experimental top-secret emergency strips also existed: nothing more than fields along the edge of wooded areas, with the trees and camouflage netting hiding the dispersal places from enemy recon; critical stages of the work on these were carried out in rainy days. Dowding played a Judo move on Kesselring, turning his opponent's strength against him; the concentration on Fighter Command airfields, in itself a correct choice, would turn out to be a drawback. Park had plenty of forward-deployed fighters to send up quickly, and the Germans did not even know where they were.
So, when the various German missions mentioned above showed up at dawn, their arrival did not go unnoticed (with the exception of the fighter/bomber Bf 110s, which flew low as usual). The radar network was dented, but still good enough to see them coming. Park, with Dowding's approval, reacted conservatively as always, even if he knew this was the day. Pairs of Squadrons got scrambled, and intercepted most of the raids (not all of them, because the radar network's weakness, and because of a local mistake by a new Squadron Leader). The Bf 109s on CAP fought back, and were high enough not to get bounced; the ground missions mostly went ahead unopposed. However, after an almost equal fight (6 British fighters downed for 7 German ones, and a Stuka that did not come out of the dive), it was already time for the CAP to be replaced.
Meanwhile, over Hythe and Lyminge, I. and II./JG 52 and I./ZG 26 fought hard against #64 and #32, with the Hurricanes of the latter trying to get through to the vulnerable Ju 52s. The Germans were largely successful, at the price of 3 Bf 110s and two Ju 52s. The British lost two fighters, and some of the other Ju 52s did get sprayed with .303 rounds, which incapacitated many of their passengers. Several other transports were damaged, and their paras wounded, by the Royal Navy's AA in Folkestone. What was worse, the drops were spread over quite a wider area than planned, due to this attack.
As the first canopies dotted the sky over the Paddlesworth high ground, the assault boats were fighting against the undertow, while under fire from many MG positions. As the dust from the altogether few aircraft bombs had settled, the German vessels tasked with fire support opened up – and the coastal guns, especially in the vicinity of Folkestone and Brighton, and from the Dymchurch and Eastbourne redoubts, did the same. Now, a makeshift mount onto an unarmored civilian vessel, with no fire direction, bobbing up and down, was no match for a proper and fortified shore battery. The only bad things about the latter were that the British did not provide every beach with one, and that they did not provide most of them with plenty of ammo. Where they did, several boats were hit and sunk or greviously damaged.
And the Germans were slaughtered by the hundred in their flimsy assault boats and as they came ashore, mainly by MG fire. The bad thing (for the British), again, was that there wasn't a lot of MGs. Indeed, at Cuckmere Haven the Germans managed to make a lodging beyond the water mark only after a frantic green gunner jammed his Bren and an ancient Vickers MG ate through all the scanty ammo it came with.
Nevertheless, after the assault boats and other small boats that unloaded men from the trawlers and fishing vessels, the barges began coming ashore. Some were blown up by mines, but only a few, given that the British minefields were definitely too thin. Several were beached on their side, having lost control in the final run; both unloading them, and moving them back to the sea to use them more than once would thus be very difficult. Many more landed on the wrong beach, on the wrong side of a river, at the wrong time, their formation having hopelessly spread out.
Things went from bad to worse at landing zone B, because a swarm of 14 MTBs from Harwich, London and Dover itself showed up just as the Germans finished landing the assault boats and the barges were approaching the beach. The main force had come down from Harwich, and had passed beyond the German S-Boote screen in darkness, without spotting each other. Now a battle erupted in daylight between these boats and the minesweepers, Vorpostenboote and armed trawlers. The action was fast and furious, and the British lost three torpedo boats, with several more badly damaged, then withdrawing towards the Thames with their tubes empty. But before leaving, they sank four of the escorts and seven small steamers, one of which, in the panic, trampled over a barge too.
Even so, by about 08:00, already late on schedule, the Germans had a foothold on all the beaches. Patrols of the 26. Infanteriedivision's vanguard were climbing the dunes West of Bexhill, having hit a weak spot; conversely, on two beaches of the landing zone D, most of the men ashore were dazed survivors, still pinned down by enemy fire. The other missions of the Brandeburgers (apart from the Dover disaster) were having mixed results. The attack against the British battery at Beachy Head was in progress, being delayed by defenses around it. The dash towards Folkestone and Dover was far from being carried out, as the Brandeburgers would only be the spearhead of it, and there's little to send along behind them. Elsewhere, they met with the Home Guard roadblocks. These would be a ridiculous obstacle to a tank, or even to anybody being able to call down artillery on them; but the Brandeburgers were commandos on light motorcycles, armed with their own small arms. They had to fight out classic light infantry actions to get rid of the problem. The Home Guard men were no match for the Brandeburgers at that, yet defeating them took time.
Meanwhile, plenty of barges were still milling around, and lots of them were aground, but not being unloaded yet. Loaded steamers were at anchor in front of the beaches. The faster-moving fishing boats and motorboats, that carried the very first assault teams, began their journey back.
At about this time, the paras of Kampfgruppe Stentzler fought out the usual skirmishes for gathering their armament canisters, and the more they got organized, the higher the losses for the Home Guard squads challenging their control of the hills. Kampfgruppe Meindl, on the other hand, was unable to secure the bridges over the Royal Military Canal because, well, they had been destroyed. In the area, patrols of paratroopers linked up with Brandeburger teams – in the sense that they could wave at each other over 20 meters of canal waters and the ruins of the bridges. A small but spirited fight was going on just out of Hythe, where part of a bridge did not fall due to faulty demolition.
A see-sawing aeronaval action was going on to the West of the Westernmost landing areas, and would go on for some time more. First, just after dawn, a couple of He 115s had spotted the Cardiff's flotilla (that light cruiser and 8 destroyers; other destroyers and torpedo boats had split away), tried to pin their torpedos in it, and got downed, but not without reporting the sighting. Then this force was engaged by part of the Western Stuka strike group, 34 Ju 87s escorted by 21 Bf 109s; the paltry flight of 6 Blenheims from #10 Group being unable to stop them. Luckily for the destroyers, it's harder to hit a fast warship taking evasive maneuvers at flank speed and firing its AA, than to hit a slow, unarmed and undefended coaler; but on the other hand, the Stukas were carrying some of the limited stock of new AP bombs Wever specifically requested for this very situation, and they concentrated on the Cardiff. So the first round ended with that light cruiser sinking after having taken six hits, and the old Branlebas limping towards home (and it would later be dispatched by a submarine before reaching a port), 3 Blenheims and 3 Stukas downed. But the remaining 7 destroyers were undeterred and pushed on, now some 30 minutes away from the first landing beach, so that the Kriegsmarine had to chip in. The force ratio was rather typical: the Germans had to make a brave attempt with 2 destroyers and 2 torpedo boats, so the Riedel and Lody, 20% of the total destroyer force available to Germany right now, were mortally wounded and would sink in a short while, together with the T2; the other torpedo boat turned tail. The Havelock was heavily damaged, but it would make it back to port. At this point, another German submarine tried at least to delay the threat to the highly vulnerable invasion armada, and the action was drifting South–West. Another German destroyer squadron was moving North-East to plug the gap.
Unfortunately for the Germans, this was only one of the three British flotillas moving West into the Channel at this time. Some more destroyers had maneuvered away from the Cardiff, and slightly behind there was the Revenge's real punch coming. Back in Plymouth, a reserve of five more destroyers was being prepared; two had a lower readiness, one had just had a minor failure, and two were just back from an escort mission.
The consequence of the Cardiff's sinking was that the Admiralty would soon stop asking politely for some fighter cover. They were now going to demand it, in quantity. The Revenge, anyway, being the one battleship in the Channel, already had a way more substantial CAP.
When the new German CAP arrived over the beaches, Park called Dowding. He was fairly sure these were only fighters, so the standing policy would be not to engage them; but they were temptingly few, so this could be a good occasion to give the Germans another bloody nose. Dowding, however, still was for the conservation of force. He only allowed two Squadrons to be scrambled from Northern bases and be kept ready, in case bombers arrived.
Bombers did arrive. Kesselring had correctly decided, a few days before, that the second and main parachute drop had to be accompanied by bomber raids, in order to draw defenses away. Only two of the Luftwaffe's forward "eyes" are currently operational. A ground FAC team was asking for support against an attack that is developing out of Brighton (a jumble of Home Guard platoons and elements of the 1st MMG Brigade); and a Hs 126 observer plane was desperately requesting the Dymchurch redoubt, which had already been pounded both by air attracks and naval bombardment, to be silenced. Another recon flight had been asking for support against the enemy resistance at Hythe, but was no longer transmitting. The Brighton tentative counterattack had to be dealt with by means of an on-call sortie, something the level bombers were basically unable of, so the Bf 110s were sent; the fortifications seemed to be targets already earmarked, so level bombers could do. Further level-bomber raids would be carried out against pre-selected targets to the North of the positions the landed troops have gained, and over Hythe. At the same time, the huge mission of some 300 Ju 52s, with close escort by some 100 Bf 109s and 110s, was to go in. They wouldn't be getting very far from the beaches, so the CAP shoul also have helped.
Unsurprisingly, the Germans failed at coordinating this grand effort. The sorties were flown, but over about an hour and a half. Park was free to react according to his true and tested staggered-parry tactics, and he committed, over this time, almost 200 between Hurricanes and Spitfires. From the North, Leigh-Mallory also sent in four Hurricane Squadrons and a dozen of Defiants, with the latter ignoring the enemy fighters and simply wading in through to the Ju 52s. When the first sighting confirmed the largest raid was made of the paratroop carriers, the British concentrated their efforts against it.
The end result was 14 Hurricanes, 7 Spitfires and 5 Defiants downed, on the one side; the other side lost 7 Bf 109s, 9 Bf 110s, 14 bombers and 29 Ju 52, with many more bombers and paratroop transports shot up and unusable until after repaired. It was worth observing that the German fighters were locally overwhelmed, even with the CAP adding up to the direct escort provided to individual missions.
On the ground, the first British counterattack was stymied; the Dymchurch fortifications were damaged again but not entirely silenced. Hythe was heavily damaged, but the resistance seemed to be going on and the German units in the area (mostly paratroopers in platoon strength, plus a Brandeburger platoon) began developing an outflanking move to the North of the town. Other target areas got hit, more or less accurately; on one occasion, even though the German bombers flew longitudinally along the coast, they managed to hurt a couple dozen of their own soldiers. As to the paradrop, it was badly disrupted. Those Fallschirmjäger who weren't killed in their seats got dropped just about anywhere. At least, several battalions were now on the ground, behind the enemy defenses; but, to be more accurate, several battalions' worth of dispersed men were on the ground. It would take them some time for them to be effective.
But the immediate problem the Germans faced was another. The naval engagements described above screened the 9 destroyers and 5 torpedo boats from Portsmouth that had not stayed with the Cardiff's flotilla. These skirted along the coast, slipped past the battle, and were by that time coming in sight of the smoke rising from the Rottingdean area, the Westernmost beach of landing zone E.
