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Spy Hunter. Faces of war. In , he began a political career as Liberal MP for Caithness and Sutherland, a constituency he represented until In , he was appointed air minister by Churchill and became an enthusiast for the strategic bombing of Germany, a policy that he defended against all criticism in parliament.
He was defeated in the election, and was created Viscount Thurso in , acting as leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords. He retired from public life in His judgement about the possibility of effective defence, and his strenuous efforts to strengthen his force and reorganize its operational practice were vital elements in the outcome of the Battle of Britain. In the s, he became a popular air stuntman and film star until he was recruited by Goering to join the German air force.
He joined the National Socialist Party and in became head of the air force Technical Office where he advocated dive-bombing as the most effective form of bomb attack. In , he was created General Quartermaster of the Air Force in charge of all procurement and technical development. A bon viveur and womanizer, Udet was completely inadequate for his job. When it was evident that German aircraft production and development had stagnated due to his failures, he committed suicide in November and was given a state funeral.
Although unschooled in either strategy or aviation technology, Goering took a very active part in shaping the German air force in the s. After the war, he became a commercial traveller who flew occasional air show stunts.
In he met Adolf Hitler and his future was transformed. He returned in and threw himself into politics. He became one of the first National Socialist parliamentary deputies and by was president of the German parliament. In , he entered the Hitler cabinet and remained a minister until In , he was appointed commander-in-chief of the German air force, a post he held until almost the end of the war, when Hitler stripped him of office in the belief that Goering was trying to supplant him.
Unlike Dowding, Goering had no administrative or command experience. He was a gaudy, ambitious and ruthless individual who used his many offices to create a sumptuous, almost regal lifestyle. He relied on others to undertake much of the routine work of high office, but was always quick to take the credit for their achievements.
He contributed little to the air battles of except to bully and exhort his subordinates. In , he was given the opportunity to show what the air force could achieve on its own in the Battle of Britain. He sits on the far left, second row in this courtroom photograph taken during the trial. She later complained that Dowding never stopped talking. He could seem reserved, but on issues which interested him was notoriously voluble.
When German forces launched their attack on the Western states on 10 May , there was no certainty that a quick victory would be the result. Yet so effective was the German battle plan, Operation Sickle Cut, that the combined forces of the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Britain were unable to prevent a swift and comprehensive defeat.
The Dutch army surrendered on 14 May, and the Belgian army on 28 May. The British Expeditionary Force was forced to retreat back to Britain from Dunkirk, undefeated but without its equipment. On 17 June, France sued for an armistice and the war on Continental Europe ended after just six weeks of fighting. German leaders thought that with the French defeated, Britain would now sue for peace since there no longer seemed any sense in continuing the war.
Nevertheless, the German armed forces had already begun to plan for possible action against England. Later in June, the German army also began preliminary research into an invasion of southern England. Hitler still counted on Britain seeking a political solution.
Various hints from British sources suggested that a peaceful settlement might be possible and on 19 July in a session of the German parliament, Hitler gave a speech designed to open the way for a possible negotiated settlement. The British government rejected the proposal formally on 22 July, since Churchill and his cabinet had no reason to trust German good faith. There were strong doubts expressed through July about its feasibility, from Hitler downwards.
It was evident that only the elimination of the RAF and the bombing of British military targets would create conditions to give an invasion any chance of success. There has been much speculation about whether Hitler was ever serious about invading Britain. The loss of almost all British equipment in France persuaded Hitler that an invasion of England might be possible. The victory opened the way to German domination of Continental Europe. He had ambitions to become an architect, but lacked sufficient talent.
On becoming ruler of Germany in , he launched large-scale rearmament. In , he attacked Poland in the belief that Britain and France would back down.
During the world war that resulted he tried to conquer most of Europe and Western Asia in order to establish a German empire. In , with Allied armies closing on Berlin, he committed suicide in his underground bunker. Hitler turns to Britain BELOW: An aerial reconnaissance photograph of barges collected by German forces in the harbour at Dunkirk ready for the planned invasion of southern England in mid-September The handbook covered the main areas of public life, including the masons, the churches and the British intelligence services.
Appended to the survey was a list of those who might be subject to arrest and imprisonment once the Germans had arrived. An SS colonel Dr Franz Six, later tried for war crimes, was to have been the commander of the Einsatzkommandos Action Commands carrying out the arrests.
Some 20, copies of the handbook were made, but were destroyed in Berlin during a bombing raid in On 31 July, Hitler announced for the first time the possibility of an invasion in the east as a means of removing any prospect Britain might have of continuing the war by relying on Soviet assistance.
There is, nonetheless, little doubt that Hitler looked for a possible cheap victory in the West as long as the RAF could be eliminated and Britain, as a result, frightened into submission. Behind Hitler sits Hermann Goering, who was also president of the Reichstag. Proposal for a new dividing line between A. C Take-over of command is to take place as soon as possible.
The preparations will take place on the principle: That one Calais A. One Le Havre A. One Cherbourg A. The units will fall under the command of the appropriate army once they arrive at their new army section. It lists the transport unit, where and at what time loading should begin and end, where they should unload and where higher staff should join to immediately load.
The idea of blockading Britain was approved by Hitler and it remained an important element in German strategy throughout the period of the Battle of Britain and the subsequent Blitz. Between June and the end of the year, more than three million tons of merchant shipping was sunk, of which around , tons was accounted for by air attack.
The quantity of goods imported into Britain fell by one-fifth during the period. During June and July, the German air force, operating from its new bases spread across northern France and the Low Countries, began a series of probing attacks against targets in southern England to test the defences there and to help in developing effective tactics for attack. Since the German side had not expected to wage a war of this kind, the preparatory attacks were useful in giving pilots experience of what to expect when the full air battle was joined.
They attacked in small formations, but the targets selected were so random that British commanders could make little sense of them. One attack on 31 July left bombs scattered from eastern Cornwall to Monmouth, on the Welsh border, most of which fell in open country or on small villages and towns. By the end of July, civilians had been killed but only limited damage done to military facilities.
The early attacks also gave Fighter Command the opportunity to refine its operations and discuss tactics. The protective fighter belt was spread further to the west with the creation of 10 Group and some additional radar stations were built.
Both sides waited for the real battle to begin. German air commanders only finalized the operational plans for the elimination of the RAF late in July The German side was confident that the RAF could be defeated quickly. The army chief of staff, General Franz Halder, was told that the operation to secure air superiority would take at most between two weeks and a month.
German air intelligence assumed that the RAF was already weakened by the battle in France and estimated British aircraft production at only half its true figure.
The difficulty faced by the German air force was the uncertainty about whether an invasion would actually take place and the wide range of different targets they were ordered to ABOVE: Life in an English country pub continues almost as normal following a bombing raid in July Small hit-and-run raids were carried out all through the summer as the German air force probed the defences and refined their tactics.
Born in the port city of Hamburg, Raeder joined the navy in and rose rapidly through the ranks. He was not an enthusiast for Hitler, but recognized that in the Third Reich he could fulfil his dream of rebuilding a powerful German navy.
He realized how weak his force was in when faced with the British and French fleets, but hoped that a successful sea-air blockade might force Britain out of the war. After a series of naval disasters, he was finally relieved of office in He was tried at the Nuremberg trials in —46 and sentenced to life imprisonment, but served only nine years before his release. The battle begins attack. In the end, Eagle Day was launched only on 13 August. The two air forces that faced each other for the battle in August were more evenly matched than the popular view of the battle suggests.
By 9 August, Fighter Command had 1, fighter aircraft with a further in reserve for immediate use. The German single-engine fighter force on 10 August numbered 1, Fighter Command had on average 1, fighter pilots available during the weeks of August, the German fighter force only 1,—1,, with — regularly available for operations.
In addition the German Air Fleets 2 and 3 in northern France and the Low Countries, and Air Fleet 5 in Norway, mustered around twinengined fighters, dive-bombers and 1, serviceable bombers. British Bomber Command had around bombers by August. These were the forces that fought out the Battle of Britain when the German onslaught was finally launched. Portsmouth was one of a handful of ports hit heavily over the summer months, and long before the onset of the Blitz on London and other cities.
Its role was to provide a dedicated air force for attacks on enemy shipping in the seas around Britain, for protection of British convoys, and for reconnaissance over sea and coastal areas. On the outbreak of war, it was commanded by Air Chief Marshal Frederick Bowhill with three Group headquarters at Plymouth, Chatham and Rosyth, where the airmen worked side-by-side with naval staff. Coastal Command had 19 squadrons of largely obsolescent aircraft on the outbreak of war but expanded rapidly as the war at sea became a greater threat in From May onwards, Coastal Command had to undertake dangerous long-range reconnaissance missions over the North Sea and the Channel, and losses of its slow and vulnerable aircraft were high.
Over a sixthmonth period, the command lost aircraft and crew out of an August strength of only planes. In the war at sea, the command could contribute little with old-fashioned or ineffective equipment. It became a more modern and effective fighting force only from onwards. German aircraft attacked port cities as part of a broad plan to blockade Britain into surrender and to disrupt the British war economy.
The reports were collected from local informers and sent to the Ministry of Information where they were used to draw up daily assessments of morale. Despite the onset of bombing, the London report noted the widespread return of evacuated children.
They were both developed in the mids during the period when the RAF was searching for a high-performance modern monoplane fighter. Both depended on the simultaneous development of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, without which the high performance of the two fighters would not have been possible. The Hurricane and Spitfire were very different aircraft but were created at almost exactly the same time.
They are seen here flying over Thaxted in Essex. Mitchell began his engineering career helping to design high-performance locomotives. He learned aeronautics in his spare time, and became an aeronautical engineer for the Vickers Supermarine works in Southampton, where he was appointed chief designer in He designed some 24 aircraft, but is best known as the designer of the Spitfire, which he began working on in summer He based its high performance on his designs for the Schneider Trophy-winning S6B racing aircraft and another fighter project, the Type , which the RAF rejected.
He was a shy but single-minded personality, who struggled against ill health in the last years of his life while completing the Spitfire.
He died of cancer in June , and his design was taken over and improved by his successor, Joseph Smith. It was nevertheless a very sturdy aircraft, with a tight turning circle. It was easy to fly and easily repaired. By December , it was in service with the RAF and had been delivered by the outbreak of war.
Mitchell adopted a number of new advances, many drawn from the United States aviation industry, including a retractable undercarriage, light thin wings with a characteristic elliptical shape, and a closed cockpit. It was modern monoplane design with an all-metal fuselage, light, easy to handle and capable of regular modification and upgrading. It had a top speed during the Battle of Britain of at least kph mph compared with around kph mph for the Hurricane.
A liquid-cooled V12 piston engine, the Merlin, first designated the PV, was developed in — It suffered a great many teething problems until the war, by which time Rolls-Royce had produced an engine of high reliability, capable of regular modification and upgrading. Mitchell to produce a prototype in January and the first Spitfire flew on 5 March , four months after the first Hurricane. It proved so successful that in June the Ministry ordered over aircraft, but production hold-ups led to the proposed cancellation of the model in Vickers succeeded in persuading the RAF to persevere with it and within three years the Spitfire had become the backbone of the British wartime fighter force.
The first Spitfires entered service on 4 August with 19 Squadron stationed at Duxford, near Cambridge. The last Spitfire flight with the RAF took place in Spitfire production took some time to get going during and , and during the Battle of Britain there were more Hurricane than Spitfire squadrons. The Spitfire also took higher losses, partly because they were detailed to attack the German Me fighters while the Hurricanes mainly engaged the slower-flying bombers. At the end of the battle there were still 33 Hurricane squadrons against 20 Spitfire squadrons.
The Hurricanes had some disadvantages in combat but the decision to replace the two-blade propeller with the standard Rotol constant-speed propeller, which became standard during the battle, improved performance a good deal. So too did the decision to replace fabric wings with metal-covered wings.
The biggest disadvantage was the position of the fuel tank in front of the pilot, which resulted in severe burns for pilots when their tanks were hit by enemy fire. The Merlin-powered Spitfire was a successful design except for the inability to dive sharply without losing fuel supply to the engine or placing undue stress on the pilot.
In all, some 14, Hurricanes were built during its combat lifespan, including modified designs such as the Sea Hurricane, which operated from aircraft carriers. There were 20, Spitfires built, the most of any wartime Allied fighter, and there were 24 variants. There was also a version for use at sea, the Seafire. Over the years it is the Spitfire that has become the iconic aircraft of the Battle of Britain, but the sturdy workhorse Hurricane also contributed a great deal to the success of the RAF in Production was decentralized to avoid the risk of bomb damage and a large factory set up by the Morris car manufacturer, Lord Nuffield, at Castle Bromwich.
Here the crank case assembly bay can be seen, with cylinder studs in the process of being fitted. It was produced by the Air Ministry for distribution to all pilots. The notes give the pilots useful information and advice about a wide range of subjects, including the problems that may be encountered when undertaking aerobatics.
The annotated diagrams of the plane's port and starboard sides of the cockpit are particularly fascinating, and would have been vital knowledge to have. Female civil defence workers were vital to rescue and rehabilitation.
At its first meeting it was decided to ask the superintendent of the Radio Department at the National Physical Laboratory, Robert Watson-Watt, to supply advice on the possibility of using radio waves either to disable aircraft or to detect them in flight. WatsonWatt rejected the first, but suggested that radio pulses could indeed be reflected from aircraft and the results recorded, so allowing enemy aircraft to be tracked. On 26 February , a first experiment was carried out at Weedon in Northamptonshire which clearly demonstrated that an aircraft reflected electro-magnetic energy and that those reflections could be detected by the use of a cathode-ray apparatus.
The information from radar detection could be sent immediately by telephone to Fighter Command headquarters. Radar research was not confined to Britain. In the mids research and development work was also carried out in Germany, Japan, France, Italy, the United States, the Netherlands and the Soviet Union, though the most significant use of radar was to be found by the outbreak of war only in Britain and Germany.
The first British radar sets for detecting aircraft were operational by the end of The possibilities of radar were regarded in Britain as so important that plans were laid down as early as the autumn of for a protective string of radar stations around the British coast.
By this time Watson-Watt and his team had developed effective transmitting and detecting equipment. When war came in September , there were 18 Home Chain stations operational around the English coast and two in Scotland. The importance of radar lay in the system designed to transmit the information seen on the radar screen quickly to the operations rooms of Fighter Command.
Radar could generally detect incoming aircraft at around kilometres 80 miles distance and the development of an Identification Friend or Foe IFF system meant that it was possible to distinguish enemy from friendly aircraft.
A number of Home Chain Low stations were also developed to cope with aircraft flying at lower than metres 1, feet , but could detect aircraft at a distance of only 50 kilometres 30 miles. Here he began work on predicting thunderstorms by the use of radio signals.
His work attracted the attention of the Air Ministry in the s and he led the team that pioneered the first true radio detection of aircraft in After the war he became an engineering consultant in Canada and the United States. The radar chain towers are clearly visible and in the background smoke can be seen from a bombing raid on Canterbury. The German air forces failed to attack the radar stations heavily or consistently.
Detecting the enemy effectively inland, so that Fighter Command was forced to rely on ground observation of aircraft once they had crossed the coast. This was the job of the 30, members of the Observer Corps whose posts were supplied with grid maps, a height estimator and a telephone linked directly to the Fighter Command communications network. Although ground observation could supply estimates of height that were widely inaccurate, the general direction of attack could be observed and aircraft scrambled to intercept.
Radar was an important element of the air defence system but it was not entirely reliable. It was possible for height estimations to be wrong, and the time between a sighting and the order to scramble could take a minimum of four minutes while the detected aircraft could be across the English Channel in only six.
Improvements in radar technology, important though they were, left some radar stations temporarily inoperable while the new equipment was being installed. The German side never guessed the extent to which radar was integrated into the whole fighter control system and failed to press home attacks on radar stations when these were ordered in mid-August As a result, the Home Chain continued to supply radar intelligence throughout the battle.
Books were sold in thousands so that ordinary people could tell friend from foe, but it was easy even for skilled pilots to mistake their own aircraft for the enemy.
The 30, observers were a vital link in the web of detection and communication. After studying chemistry and mathematics at Oxford, he began a study of aeronautics. He returned to Oxford but then took a post in the government Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.
In , he became rector of Imperial College, London, a post he held until Between and , he was chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, where he pioneered the serious scientific study of UFOs. In Tizard became chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee and was a pioneer of operational radar. The German air force staff decided to wait until 10 August, but poor weather reports brought postponement for a further day.
The decision was finally taken to begin the campaign, despite unreliable weather, on 13 August. This was to be Adlertag, Eagle Day. Following operations against the radar network the previous day, the first wave of attacks began early in the morning. Some German bombers and fighters of Air Fleets 2 and 3 approached on a broad front from bases around Amiens, Dieppe and Cherbourg. They were met in the first instance by fighters, already alerted by radar to the approaching threat.
The bombers failed to attack any Fighter Command station, while the inability to supply an effective fighter escort exposed many of them to repeated attacks by British fighters. After the war he trained as an engineer and returned to the army in , where he worked in the secret preparation of a new German air force.
In he became chief of the Development Division in the newly formed German Air Ministry, and was promoted in to lieutenant colonel. He also led the German air force unit that attacked Poland first, early on the morning of 1 September. He was promoted to field marshal in , but the following year was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The force was mauled by squadrons of 10 Group scrambled from Warmwell and Exeter, and a squadron of 11 Group from Tangmere. Five German planes were shot down. London was defended by a mixture of balloons, anti-aircraft guns and a network of fighter stations on the fringes of the capital.
German aircraft flew a total of 1, sorties that day and lost 47 aircraft. Like Napoleon, this was as far as the German armed forces were to get. On 13 July , a third squadron was activated. Using four radio beams from different directions, the force was able to arrive over the target with a high level of accuracy. On the night of 13 August, the group first attacked the large Spitfire factory at Castle Bromwich in Birmingham with 11 bombs, doing little serious damage.
Later Kampfgruppe led the major raids against British cities during the Blitz. Warned well in advance, there were squadrons from 10 and 11 Group waiting for the new incursions. The attack on the Southampton area was met by a vigorous counterattack, but this time the bombers were escorted by a large element of Me s and fierce dogfights broke out. The bombers failed to find the Middle Wallop station and scattered their bombs widely over the southern counties in their path.
The aircraft from Air Fleet 2 took advantage of cloud cover over Kent, but the bombers only succeeded in attacking a Coastal Command base while others dropped their bombs blind. Over the whole of Eagle Day, no damage was done to Fighter Command stations or to radar installations. The balance of losses on the first official day of the campaign strongly favoured the defence. The German air force lost 47 aircraft, while Fighter Command lost only 13, with seven pilots saved.
The greatest failure exposed that day was the Ju 87 dive-bomber, which was too slow in combat with British fighters. Over the first few days of Eagle Attack some dive-bomber units had 50 per cent losses. On 18 August, they were withdrawn from combat. In the days following Eagle Day, except for 15 August, the weather prevented heavy attacks, but the air fleets continued to probe the British defences. Air Fleet 3 sent over small numbers of unescorted bombers aimed at particular targets, but they faced heavy opposition and found it difficult to locate targets.
On 15 August, it was possible to send over a heavy force again and the fighting that day was fiercer than it had been on Eagle Day. That day bombers were also sent against targets in northern England from bases in Norway. The German forces lost 75 aircraft, Fighter Command some A repeat of heavy raids on 18 August produced the fiercest fighting of the battle, with German aircraft lost, for the loss of 74 British fighters.
Eagle Day was a disappointment to the German commanders. Both air fleets failed to identify a clear pattern of targets and difficulties encountered in the battle meant that even those targets selected were either subjected to minor damage or not hit at all.
Over the following days an effort was made to co-ordinate attacks more effectively and to identify targets that might really undermine the capacity of Fighter Command to maintain its concerted and deadly resistance. Careful aerial reconnaissance enabled German aircraft to pinpoint their attacks on individual air stations.
Murrow at work in London during the battle and the Blitz. He stayed throughout the bombing that followed the air battle and returned to the United States in late , shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The bombers were no match for the new fast interceptor fighters. This report covers German air activity in the North Sea area. The attacks on RAF airfields, radar stations and communications began on 12 August and went on with differing levels of intensity until early September, long after the four days originally assigned to the campaign. Between 12 August and 6 September, there were 53 main attacks against RAF airfields, though only 32 targeted fighter stations.
The scale of the attacks was at times limited by the weather, but also by the degree of resistance shown by Fighter Command in the endless dogfights that developed between the two sides over the three weeks of the campaign. The assault began on 12 August with six major raids against radar stations. These achieved very little, partly because Fighter Command had organized subsidiary facilities in case a Home Chain station was temporarily out of operation.
Here pilots run towards their waiting Hurricanes. The dive-bombers were used to attack convoys and shipping as well as RAF installations but they took such high casualties that they were withdrawn from the battle. From 13 August, the fighter stations and subsidiary airfields became the main battleground. Lowflying German aircraft attempted to destroy British aircraft on the ground, as they had done in Poland and France, but although 56 were destroyed in total, this occurred mainly at the start of the battle.
Fighter bases were ordered to disperse and camouflage all aircraft, and a network of subsidiary airfields made it possible to avoid easy detection and to continue flying if a major air station was briefly made inoperable. By 20 August, it was evident that the order to eliminate the RAF in four days had failed. Every few days, German air intelligence assured Goering that the battle was almost won. At the end of the month he was told that Fighter Command had lost aircraft against a German loss of only After serving on the Western Front, he commanded one of the first night-fighter squadrons in Britain in He became commander of 10 Group, Fighter Command, when it was activated in and played an important part in the defence of southern England in The reports produced by his staff about the strength, deployment and operation of Fighter Command, and about the levels of British aircraft production played an important part in encouraging wildly exaggerated expectations about the defeat of the RAF.
On 7 August, Air Intelligence reported that the radar stations would tie British squadrons closely to their local airfields and prevent any concentration of effort. Schmid failed to grasp the nature of the link between radar, observation and operations and so underestimated the capacity of Fighter Command to intercept German attacks.
In early September, Schmid relayed to Goering the news that Fighter Command had been reduced at one point to only serviceable aircraft when the true figure was six times as great.
Total German losses for that period amounted to a little under aircraft of all types. By the end of August, the cumulative strain on both air forces from three weeks of continuous attritional warfare was profound. The success of Fighter Command in withstanding the assault on its organization was due to a number of factors. Much of the German effort was devoted to air bases near the Kent and Sussex coasts, particularly Lympne, Manston and Hawkinge, each of which was out of commission for only a few days during the battle.
These were regarded by Park and Dowding as emergency fields, while vulnerable aircraft could be pulled back to airfields further inland. Because of the early warning system, the withdrawal of aircraft made little difference to the ability to intercept bombers. BELOW: A view looking down on the filter room at Fighter Command headquarters where the information was collected from radar and observers, and then fed back to the frontline squadrons.
Park ordered standing patrovls at low level to prevent a surprise bombing attack while Hurricanes were ordered to concentrate on destroying the bombers, since they were responsible for the damage on the ground. Meanwhile, the higher performance Spitfires engaged enemy fighters. The German force reacted to these tactical changes by withdrawing the vulnerable Ju 87 dive-bombers and the Me twin-engined fighters, both of which had suffered high casualties, and by trying to lure Fighter Command aircraft into unequal battles further out over the English Channel.
But there was little that the German side could do to undermine the British communications system, while the high toll on both fighters and bombers led to a sharp decline in the number of serviceable aircraft and to a shortage of skilled pilots.
By early September, despite the largely exaggerated estimates of British losses made on the German side, it was evident to all that the Eagle Day campaign had failed to achieve its objectives.
He kept a record in pictures of his experience during the war. Women were also well represented in the workforce of the rapidly expanding armaments and aviation industries.
They were not allowed to fly in combat, but they ran all the risks that servicemen did if they were based at airfields or in operations rooms. During the bombing, women helpers were exposed to the same dangers faced by the male civil defence personnel. In September , there were 1, members, but by , after conscription had been introduced, there were , A table of ranks was introduced in December equivalent to male ranks, but women were paid only two-thirds of the amount paid to men. In , she played a key part in organizing the support role of women in the RAF, rising to the rank of air chief commandant by October , when she was succeeded by Mary Welsh.
In , she married Robert Watson-Watt, the pioneer of British radar. Their most famous role was during the Battle of Britain when WAAFs could be found at radar stations and in operations rooms helping to plot attacking aircraft and direct the fighters to intercept them.
But they also had an important role in interpreting aerial reconnaissance photographs and in other areas of air intelligence. Later in the war, German women performed many of the same duties as auxiliaries in the German air force. In June , a second all-female organization was established to cope with the expected threat of air attack. Its members, recruited countrywide, had a distinctive uniform of green tweed jackets and matching hats.
With the onset of heavy bombing, the WVS helped to collect clothes and equipment to help bombed-out families and to provide temporary accommodation for those whose homes had been destroyed. They also manned rest centres in or near air raid shelters, and organized mobile canteens for men posted to distant air stations and observation points.
Women were to be found providing direct support to the main civil defence branches: air raid precaution ARP , the fire service, the ambulance service and public transport.
Not all women accepted that war was necessary or that bombing could not be resisted by different means. The pacifist writer Vera Brittain, who had also been a nurse during the First World War, became a spokesman in for the pacifist Peace Pledge Union and during could be found at demonstrations against war in general and against bombing as an instrument of war in particular. In , during the Blitz, she helped to found a Bombing Restrictions Committee which campaigned for the RAF not to retaliate in kind for German attacks.
Though always a small minority, women pacifists helped to give voice to many of the anxieties felt by other women as they came to terms with the demands of total war. Women civil defence workers played a large part in the rescue and rehabilitation of bomb victims. Women began ferrying aircraft in and eventually served with the ATA, 15 of them losing their lives. Even before the war, around a quarter of the British workforce was female, but it proved necessary to move many of them from inessential industries to work with armaments.
The proportion of women workers in the motor and aircraft industries rose from nine per cent in to 23 per cent two years later, and eventually to over 36 per cent in — Women were generally paid at a much lower rate than men, and their work often classified as unskilled even when they performed similar functions to men.
In , new wage rates were negotiated but they were still well below male levels, and led to considerable complaint among the growing army of women employed in armaments, who were essential for keeping British war production going. He suggested here that Germany make a "peace offer" to Britain. Behind Hitler sits Herman Goering, president of the Reichstag. Antony Peel. Software languages. Author Atomic Jelly. Updated Over a year ago.
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