Parry, Simon W. Battle of Britain Combat Archive. Volume 18: 12 October - 21 October 1940

Part 19 of a detailed chronology of the Battle of Britain in the summer/autumn of 1940. Day by day, practically hour by hour, the work describes the individual attack and defence operations of the German Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force in the period from 12 October to 21 October 1940. For each mission, there are combat reports from participating pilots, detailed lists of aircraft losses on both sides, and official reports on the course of the respective mission. By October, it was clear that the classic phase of the Battle of Britain was over. The long, hot summer gave way to a dreary autumn, the deteriorating weather would make a large-scale invasion impossible, and the concentrated bombing of cities had developed into night-time blitz attacks. Although the massive air battles of August and September were a thing of the past, there were still plenty of problems for the pilots of Fighter Command. Bad weather and poor visibility were obvious problems and claimed their first victims in terms of aircraft and human lives. A bigger problem was the tactics of the Luftwaffe. Me 109s were located by RDF over the English Channel and approached the English coast almost all day long. Many plots turned back or flew right across the English Channel, so Fighter Command could only guess which ones posed a threat. Typically, four or five attacks crossed the coast during the course of a day at an altitude of about 30,000 feet (approx. 5 ½ miles), mostly between Dungeness and Dover, heading towards Maidstone, then to the Thames, before dispersing. Among the 109s were a few bomb-laden Jabos (fighter-bombers) attempting to drop their bombs over south-east London. An average attack took 12 to 15 minutes to fly from the coast to the outskirts of London, but 27 minutes for a Spitfire to reach an altitude of 30,000 feet! It is no exaggeration to say that by mid-October, the Luftwaffe pilots had gained air superiority over south-east England, although they had little use for it until then. With the usual mix of eyewitness accounts and original research using contemporary documents from both sides, author Simon Parry and his team of experts have gone beyond what most books on the Battle of Britain achieve.