The Battle of Britain - 7 September 1940: Some historians feel that today - "Black Saturday" in the East End - was the day the Germans lost the Battle of Britain. The pressure was taken off the RAF airfields and a vast attack on London was launched. To attribute this change of plan solely to a Nazi wish for revenge after Bomber Command had attacked Berlin is simplistic. There were clearly additional reasons, including the flawed German intelligence which led the High Command to believe that the state of Fighter Command was even more parlous than it was. The Germans reasoned that if London were attacked, Dowding would have to throw all his remaining reserves into the fight to save the capital. Pride was a major factor, but it was not the only consideration. There was fine weather, which caused puzzlement on the British side that things were so quiet. In the Observer Corps operations room at Maidstone, the quiet ended at 4.16 pm with a report that "many hundreds" of enemy aircraft were approaching the Kent coast between Deal and North Foreland. The first inkling of great events came to the Sergeant pilots of No 501 Squadron in a cinema in Gravesend, when the manager passed on an urgent message to return to the airfield. Squadron Leader Hogan had previously sent them off to relax. The Hurricanes and Spitfires fought to defend London, with a major confrontation taking place over the Isle of Sheppey, but that night enormous fires (the worst of them "conflagrations" out of control in fire service terminology) burned north and south of the Thames. Auxiliary fire fighters had over the previous year sometimes been treated with contempt by the public, with accusations that they were "war dodgers" or taking part in the "Sitzkrieg". Now these auxiliaries were in the front line, fighting the fires amongst boxes of live ammunition and explosives at the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, molten tar flowing through the docks, blazing stacks of timber in the Surrey Docks and flaming streams of rum and other products flooding out of warehouses. The superstructures of ships burned and barrels exploded like the bombs that kept on falling. From as far away as Birmingham fire crews were racing to help. In a splendid show of defiance, the Woolwich Free Ferry operated all through that terrible night, the crew ignoring the bombs and the burning oil on the river to carry many East Enders in search of some safety.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 07:01:09 +0000
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