Night: Offensive Operations: A Havoc failed to return from an intruder sortie to Gilze-Rijn. Defensive Operations: A Do17 was claimed destroyed over the Thames estuary by a Beaufighter crew.

   Each month is summarized with totals of "Air Combat Claims" and "Missing/destroyed aircraft". Here is an example of the latter for August 1941:

   110 Spitfires, 20 Hurricanes, 2 Havocs and 2 Beaufighters lost. 108 pilots and six aircrew missing, six pilots killed, 18 pilots wounded (one died of wounds later).

   A monthly summary is also provided noting the formation, relocation, disbandment, and re-equipping of Fighter Command squadrons.
   As in the first volume, Foreman sprinkles his pages with photos and sidebars about assorted aircraft, pilots, tactics, missions, and so on. One of the more interesting sidebars concerns RAF pilot overclaims, actual Luftwaffe losses, what the leaders of the RAF knew about the discrepancy between the two, and how they knew about it.

The Overclaim Problem
   The month of June had witnessed the heaviest fighting since the summer of 1940 and the RAF fighter claims had reflected this. However, the picture was not quite as it seemed. Some 250 claims for Bf109s 'destroyed' and 'probably destroyed' had been submitted by the bomber escort squadrons and these figures had been released to the press for public consumption, yet less than fifty German fighters had been lost to direct RAF fighter action, a ratio of five claims to one loss. Certainly, the claims had been made in good faith, but were generally inaccurate. Why? The black smoke emitted by the full-power DB601 engine was one factor, causing a pilot to assume hits when his fire had actually missed. Another factor was undoubtedly the inexperience of many pilots manning newly formed squadrons; many of the experienced pilots had been 'burned out' during 1940 and were resting at OTUs. Another factor may well have been the psychological disadvantage of fighting over enemy territory following a sea-crossing, with another sea-crossing to follow; the liquid-cooled Merlin needed just one bullet to cause disaster over enemy territory, whereas over England it would mean, at worst, a bale-out or a forced landing and 'home by tea-time'. This was not so over France. A pilot had to concentrate on his tail rather than the events occurring in front of him, for trouble always came from behind. The next question must be, 'did the Air Ministry know?', to which the answer must be an unqualified 'yes'. The author has had access to a day-by-day listing, made at the time, which gives very accurate daily figures for enemy aircraft lost. When this listing was shown to him he was told that it could not be attributed, since the 'provenance was unknown'. However, later events have thrown more light upon this. It seems clear that the figures were a direct result of the Ultra code-breaking transcripts—at that time (1974) still secret. So the highest powers knew, but could the Air Ministry have published the correct figures at the time? This answer must be 'no'. Firstly, to have done so would have compromised Ultra completely and forced the Germans to adopt a different code/decode method. Also, had the public known the truth, morale would have suffered and so would that of the RAF fighter pilots themselves. Some suspected the truth anyway. As one young Flight Lieutenant said, 'I don't see the point of driving over there twice a day just to get shot at.' Had the truth come out, the whole offensive strategy would have come under close scrutiny and the Circus concept would probably have been scrapped. It really didn't work—but no one told the fighter pilots!

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Reviewed 26 January 1999
Copyright © 1999 by Bill Stone
May not be reproduced in any form without written permission of Stone & Stone