Eagle Days

The title of this book, 'Eagle Days', relates to the chosen time period of 8 August to 13 August 1940. This period is after the early convoy battles and attacks on coastal targets which dominated July and the first few days of August. On 8 August, another convoy attack was made but with a difference; a single convoy was repeatedly attacked as it sailed westwards down the Channel, a determined effort to destroy this one convoy and shut the Channel. Hitler’s Führer Directive No. 17 of 1 August 1940 had loosened the reins off the Luftwaffe in its attacks against the United Kingdom; Adlertag was to open the great offensive after the warm-up of July.

This widespread set of attacks also included for the first time, raids on inland Fighter Command sector stations as targets, which would continue for much of the rest of the month. Having recently overwhelmed Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France, having sent the British Army back across the Channel from Dunkirk, and having beaten all their opposing air forces other than the RAF, the Germans and the Luftwaffe in particular were dangerously over-confident.

The strategic vision and the subtle and functional integrated aerial defence system set up under Air Chief Marshal Dowding’s leadership, and tactically mastered by the 11 Group commander, Air Vice Marshal Park, his 10 Group colleague Air Vice Marshal Sir Quintin Brand and their sector commanders, stands in very stark contrast to the bombast of Reichsmarshall Göring of the Luftwaffe. This week also marks a strangely specialised yet intense struggle involving only part of the forces available to a single Fliegerkorps in Kesselring’s Luftflotte 2 (but all his fighters); Sperrle, his Luftflotte 3 counterpart, along the Channel coast, almost immediately wasted his best bombers in his Ju 88 units in the firm belief that a few days of combat would suffice. He was wrong.