History Daily - Saturday Matinee: History of the Second World War

Episode Date: May 30, 2026

On today’s Saturday Matinee, we delve into the pivotal moments of the Battle of Britain- the war in the skies that kept Nazi Germany from invading the UK by sea. Link to History of the Second World War: https://historyofthesecondworldwar.com/  Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.

Several years back, I think, I was asked in an interview what my dream project might be. Who would I collaborate with? What topic would I cover? I didn't have a ready answer then, so I just mused aloud that it would be very fulfilling to work with someone like Tom Hanks, who's not only a revered actor, but has also demonstrated a deep love of history, especially World War II history. And while this got me thinking, so I emailed Tom Hanks' agent, and the result is someone else working with him on a new World War II documentary series that came out this week. I never even got a reply from that agent.

And that's how things go sometimes. But I still can't present to you some great World War II history. So on today's Saturday matinee, we're sharing an episode from the podcast, History of the Second World War, focusing on the Battle of Britain, the War in the skies that kept Nazi Germany from invading the UK by sea. I hope you enjoy it. While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow History of the Second World War. We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to History of the Second World War, episode 226, the Battle of Britain Part 1, Adler Tag. This week, a big thank you goes out to John and E. Heminger, I guess, for supporting the podcast by becoming members. Members get access to ad-free versions of all of the podcast episodes, plus special member-only episodes released roughly once a month. Head on over to History of the Second World War.com slash members to find out more. Over the course of the last 17 episodes, this podcast has tracked the evolution of German plans for an invasion of Britain, and the efforts made in Britain to prevent that invasion from being successful. For the Luftwaffe, everything was going to come down to

one moment, the one day when they would begin their operations specifically designed to destroy the RAF, to prevent them from being an effective tool against the invasion. Well, on the 2nd of August, Goring would publish his preparations and directives for the operation, and they would include the goals of the neutralization of the RAF fighter command through aerial attrition and attacks on airfields in southern England, the destruction of the RAF resources that could be used against the invasion fleet, the neutralization of Royal Navy units in ports along the southern coast of England, and the night bombing of communications, logistics, and aircraft manufacturing targets throughout Britain.

The day on which this operation would begin would be given a code name. Adler Tag, which, when translated into English, means Eagle Day. After a few delays, the date for Adler Tag would be set for August 13th, the beginning of the third phase of the Battle of Britain. This would be the critical phase, during which the RAF was fighting for its life, quite literally, and it would continue to do so with a few weather-related breaks until September 15th. This episode will cover the final days of preparations for Eagle Day, then the first two days

of escalated activity, which were August 12th and the 13th. August 12th would be a day of escalated activity as they tried to prepare for the next day, for Eagle Day, and the 13th would be the first day of maximum effort for the Luftwaffe, after weeks of smaller-scale attacks on a variety of targets. They would also be critical days for the Luftwaffe, because if they wanted to achieve their goals, tempo was critical. Sea lion had to take place before the end of September, and so the Luftwaffe would only have a month, less than a month, really. But the Luftwaffe leaders believed that they had plenty of time. As with many other operations during the Second World War, the final stages of the Luftwaffe plans for their air attack against RAF came together

actually quite late. There had been discussions and planning meetings during June and July, but final decisions were not made until the first week of August, when Gurring, the Luftwaffe staff, and the commanders of the three Luflatin that would be involved, came together in a multi-day planning conference to iron out the final details. The staffs from the Luftwaffe units at the front had different ideas about the best course of action when compared with the Luftwaffe staff back in Germany, and so most of the days during this conference were spent on just trying to bring together all of the available plans and ideas into a cohesive whole. The end result of this was a basic outline of what

the Luftwaffe would be doing over the following weeks. And at this time, the Luftwaffe Dwarfa leaders believed that they could greatly reduce the combat capabilities of the RAF and RAF fighter command in just three days of hard operations. A major reason for this very optimistic timeline was the fact that the German estimates for British fighter numbers were only around 500, while the actual number of British fighter aircraft was actually more like 700. When this underestimation of their opponent was combined with an overestimation of German capabilities, particularly, the belief that the ME-110 would be able to contribute meaningfully to the fighting ahead,

well, the result was simply a very optimistic view of how quickly the RIA fighter groups could be suppressed. The final date for the attack, August 13th, would not be decided on for a few more days due to how critical weather would be in the final decision of when the starting day would be. With air operations being totally dependent on the weather, the goal of the Germans was to find a period of weather that was predicted to last at least four days. This would give them time to achieve their goals against the RAF with a day to spare. Weather reporting was available via German submarines and supply ships that were positioned in the Atlantic, and their reports pointed to a good high-pressure system moving through the Azores after August 10th. And in fact,

the 10th was originally set as the date for Eagle Day, before it was pushed three additional days due to weather that occurred on August 10th. As the start date of the operation continued to get pushed, preparations at the front continued, with bomber and fighter group commanders running a lengthy series of map exercises to make sure everybody, from air crew up to group commanders, knew what was expected of them during the opening period of the attacks. Because while the best plans could be laid, what mattered was the performance of the German squadrons,

which would actually execute the attacks. They would pilot the almost 2,500 aircraft available for the operation, which included almost 950 bombers, 325 dive bombers, over 250 M.E.10 Heavy fighters, and over 850 M.E.109 fighters. Each aircraft squadron, regardless of what they were flying, would have important tasks during the three days of fighting that were planned to begin on August 13th. While the Luftwaffe leaders were doing their planning, the fighting at the front never really ended. And throughout the first two weeks of August, on any day where good weather presented itself over the English Channel, you could almost guarantee that there would be some

classes between the REF and the Luftwaffe. This included attacks on coastal shipping, as well as shore facilities, much like the Luftwaffe had been doing for the previous six weeks. Some of these were quite heavy attacks, actually. For example, on August 11th, theoretically the rest day for the Luftwaffe before their big operations, fighting over Dover, would see the RAF fighter command lose 31 aircraft, along with five bombers on other missions. And on that same day, the Luftwaffe lost 36. That's a lot for arrest day. This is noteworthy because it is clear that Eagle Day, when it would occur, was not unique because it was the start of the fighting, simply that it represented a major increase in the

scale of the number of total aircraft involved. On the British side, there was some confusion as to why the Germans had not launched a major air campaign before the middle of August. This ties partially back to the pre-war estimates of how an air campaign might occur, with a major emphasis on major bombing efforts to start a war. On August 6th, these questions even made it into the Daily Mirror, a newspaper, which ran the headline, Why Hitler has waited so long. The article would also include a prediction that, when it happened, the Germans would include night raids in their operations, saying, quote,

This must be remembered. Neither the Germans nor ourselves had yet solved the problem of intercepting bombers at night, and any raid and number of planes are sure to get through the defenses, end quote. Which was honestly a solid bit of military analysis from the Daily Mirror. While the smaller aerial fighting was occurring in early August, propaganda efforts on both sides were also in full force. The British Ministry of Information was trying to get as much information as possible about the mindset of the British people during this period. Meanwhile, the Germans were trying to influence that mindset as much as possible. I feel it's my duty as a podcaster, after how derisively I talked about the British leaflet dropping campaigns of 1939, to mention that the Germans also dropped some leaflets over Britain during the summer of 1940 as part of their propaganda operations.

In particular, these were copies of Hitler's last appeal to reason speech that had been given in July. Most of these just fell on the empty countryside, and, most of them were gathered up and destroyed, but I thought it was important to point out that the Germans were just as likely to fall into delusions of an easily swayed enemy, just as the British had been earlier in the war. While Eagle Day would be designated for August 13th, the 12th would end up being very busy as well.

The British actually knew that the big Luftwaffe effort would begin on the 13th, due to the decryption of Luftwaffe messages that used the Enigma system. The cracking of Enigma and the resulting information that was under the codename of Ultra is a very popular story from the Second World War. However, most of the emphasis of the famous work done by Turing and the others at Bletchley Park was for the naval version of Enigma. You see, each arm of the German military used the same type of Enigma machines, but they each had their own settings and their own procedures for using them, and the naval procedures were much more secure. this resulted in the Luftwaffe messages being some of the easiest to break and decrypt for the British, which meant they were reading Luftwaffe messages far before they were reading naval messages. For example, they would intercept and decrypt Gurring's orders of the day,

which would be sent to all the squadrons of Luft Flots 3 and 2, which included, quote, you will proceed to smash the British Air Force out of the sky, end quote. This allowed doubting at Fighter Command and other RAF leaders to know that August 12th was not the start of the main German effort, but it would have looked like it if they would not have known. The primary focus of these early attacks were on radio direction finding stations, Portsmouth Harbor facilities, and then chain home radar stations. The attacks on the radio direction finding stations and the radar stations are a textbook example of what would today be called a suppression of enemy air defenses or SCAD mission. The goal was to hamper the early

warning systems of the enemy to make the following days of attacks more successful. For some of the attacks on these radar and RDF stations, the Germans would use what they would consider to be precision bombers, or at least as precise as bombers got during the early parts of the war, other than dive bombers, which couldn't really be used because of their slow speed. These bombers were specifically fitted BF109s that had been set up as bombers to carry 250 kilos of bombs. The squadrons of these fighters were highly skilled and they were hand-picked for their abilities. They were some of the best of the best. The hope was that they could be used to have their speed and maneuverability sort of as a benefit over other bombers, and they could drop their

bombs with more precision through low-altitude bombing runs executed at a shallow dive, which when targeting the air defense towers were an important factor. The theory was that they could drop their bombs and then get out very quickly because they would be fighters again once their bombs had been dropped. The theory had already been tested in mid-July in some air raids on July 13th, but on August 12th, they would be used in much greater numbers. Their targets would be the stations at Dover, Ventnor, Pevency, Rye, and Dunkirk, which was just west of Canterbury. In all cases, they were able to drop some bombs on their targets and disable them at least temporarily, knocking the stations offline created a gap in the coverage of the radar, which was exactly what the Luftwaffe was

aiming for. Even the short period of disruption would allow 63 JU88s that were already on their way to bomb the naval dockyards at Portsmouth, which did serious damage to the railway system, the pier, in several nearby buildings, although fortunately for the British, no ships were hit by the attack. Other chain home stations would pick up the Portsmouth raid before it reached its target, but it was too late. These raids were initially seen as a success. They had knocked back the British early warning, and then the bombers had executed their bombing run without being intercepted.

But there was a problem for the Luftwaffe, and it became apparent in the middle of the afternoon on the 12th. The Germans began picking up new radio signals from all the targets they had attacked earlier in the day. All but one of the targets were actually back online within a few hours, after repairing the largely superficial damage that they all suffered. The only station that would stay offline for a longer period was Ventnor, and even there, the British brought a mobile radio transmitter

to make it seem like the station was back online. The rapid repair of the radar and direction-finding stations would have an important impact on the Germans, and this would be a trend every time they made an effort to attack those targets. The stations would prove to be very difficult, not to take offline. That was usually possible, but to keep offline for any meaningful period of time. This meant that a lot of effort had to be expended on a very temporary benefit. The theory behind the fighter bombers was fully proven, though,

and their ability to fly in at high speed and low altitude and then drop their bombs with reasonable precision would be an important ability for the Luftwaffe in the weeks ahead. Another target for the Luftwaffe on August 12th, just like it would be over the following weeks, would be attacks on airfields. One raid of Donnier bombers would attack the Limpney airfield, dropping 90-50-kilob bombs on the airfield itself, most of which would fall on airfield support facilities. And that would just be one of several raids on airfields throughout the day.

Often the British fighters would be in the air to meet them, like was the case with 610 squadron from Biggin Hill, which attacked the German formations over Limpney, but they were set upon by BF109s, which limited the ability to prevent the German bombers from actually dropping their bombs on the targets. One of the challenges that the R.A.F. would also face throughout this day and in many later days,

is the fact that many aircraft would be destroyed on the ground. For example, in a raid on Manston on the 12th, two Blenheims would be destroyed. While all the different airfield raids on the 12th would cause damage, they would destroy aircraft. None of them caused the kind of long-term damage that the Germans were hoping for, and in all cases, the runways were repaired by the end of the day. Damage to support facilities would take a bit more time to repair, though, a time that they would often not have

before they were visited by bombing raids the next few days, but that did not prevent them from being used as airfields by ARIA fighter command. It just may have slightly reduced their efficiency. Even though it was before Eagle Day, on August 12th, there were a few important themes that you can already see happening in the actions that would take place over England, that would play out over the following weeks. The first was the general inability of the Luftwaffe to cause permanent damage to the targets that they were bombing.

The two most important would be airfields and radar stations, both of which would prove to be far more difficult to cause serious damage to than the Germans expected. The second theme would be the problems that the fighters of fighter command would cause for the Luftwaffe formations during their bombing rates. This would be an insolvable problem for the German bombers and fighters, because the fighters wanted to be away from the bombers. They were most effective at engaging and destroying spitfires when they had as much freedom as possible. This would allow them to position and attack in ways that gave them the greatest possible advantage. But this also required them to not be

tightly tied to the bomber formations. And when they were not, the bombers were very vulnerable to attacks by those same RAF fighters. The tension between these two priorities, destroying the RAF and protecting the bombers, would be a major point of discussion on the Lutswaffe side for the rest of the campaign. The third major theme would be the ability of the RAF to bounce back from damage quite quickly. If they wanted to be successful in the campaign, the RAF had to be able to take the German attacks and then be prepared for the ones the next day. And this meant being prepared to repair damage to infrastructure.

as well as to aircraft and pilots. The most difficult problem to solve was the shortage of pilots. And even before Eagle Day, the chief of fighter command, doubting, was deeply concerned about the ability and availability of pilots, with major concerns that the pipeline of pilots coming out of training schools was simply insufficient to the task. However, there would be a group that would step forward to fill in, at least in the immediate future. And these would be all of the non-British pilots that had made their way to Britain,

up to this point in the war. These were the Czech and Pol and Belgian and French pilots, and pilots of other nationalities as well. More aircraft were arriving, and so having this pool of pilots was very important. And then at the airfields and at their radar stations, the best possible preparations were being made to make sure that they could repair any damage that might occur, but it was not yet known on August 12th or August 13th if their preparations would be sufficient. When Eagle Day had been delayed until August 13th, the plan had been to start the major air raids as early in the day as possible. The original plans would have seen the first bomber formations crossing over the channel before 6.30 in the morning. But then, when the crew and pilots begin to

wake up in the morning, there was a problem. A cold, wet fog was covering most of the German airfields, and on both sides of the channel, there was a low, thick cloud cover that would make any ground attacks very difficult. After some discussion, the decision was made to delay the initial raids until later in the day. But there was a problem. Because of the time it took to officially delay the start of the day, some squadrons had already taken off. Without orders to the contrary, many squadrons have taken off at their scheduled time under the assumption that they were still flying the planned raids and that maybe the weather would just get better as they went along. And then some of these early squadrons did not get the order to turn around or to abort their missions.

And this meant that instead of a feeling of one massive raid early in the day, throughout the entire day the Luftwaffe's efforts were mostly disjointed, with a few squadrons from Luftflot 2 still going forward with their missions, while Luftflot 3 did not even receive the delay order at all in time to delay their forces. It was not a great start to what was supposed to be a highly orchestrated maximum effort, series of missions. In Kessel Rings, Lutflot 2, one of the squadrons that would not receive their radio messages to turn back would be KG2. And even though their BF 110 escorts did actually receive the radio messages and did actually turn around and go back to base, the bombers just kept on

going. They were targeting the East Church airfield, and so on they went on their mission. The good news for the German bomber crews was that they actually caught the British quite unprepared, and due to some mistakes made on the British side when it came to getting squadrons airborne and in the right place to intercept them, they were actually already over the airfield before being engaged by British fighters. Overall, they would be able to drop almost 500 bombs from around 500 meters in altitude, causing serious damage to the airfield support buildings, including a large ammunition storage building and five Blenheims of Coastal Command which were destroyed.

Three squadrons of British fighters would then intercept the German bombers on their way, away from the target, a downing five of them. Spurals Luftflot 3, which was stationed further west than Luftflot 2, would not receive the postponement order at all, and so its early morning raids would go forward as planned. Their primary target was the Portland Naval Base, with a combination of JU88s and Stuccas, ordered to bomb the naval facilities while being protected by almost 175 BF.

109s and 60 BF110s. During this raid, the plan was for the BF10s to go ahead of the raid to sweep any fighters that they ran into, while the BF110s were stationed closer into the bomber formations. The raid would end up being quite disappointing for the exact reasons that Lufflot 2's actions had been postponed. Because when the Stuccas were out over the channel, it was clear that the clouds beneath them were solid and unbroken, and so very shortly after they arrived over Portland, they just kind of turned around and returned to their airfields. It was not exactly safe to try dive-bombing through clouds. The JU88s stuck around a little bit longer in hopes that there would be some breaks in the clouds, but these breaks never developed, and

eventually they also turned around for home, having dropped none of their payloads. To make the aborted mission even worse, on the way back to France, they were intercepted by hurricanes, and four JU-88s were shot down. So they had accomplished nothing, and then the they lost several of the German bombers. After many hours of delays due to the weather, Luftflot 3's afternoon raids began to form up over land before striking out over the channel for their targets. Fifty-eight JU88s were designated to attack three different R-AF airfields, while 52 Stuccas attacked two others. There was also a bit of a game foot with these raids, because before they were detected by British radar, there was another group of aircraft sent forward,

23 BF110s, which were designed to be basically baked for the R-AF fighters. The BF 110s were headed to Portland, and due to the fuzziness of radar at this time and the size of the BF-110 aircraft, their formation was mistaken for a bombing raid. The good news is that this caused the distraction to work, and the RAF moved to intercept. The bad news is that this also meant that the BF110s would be met by three squadrons of hurricanes. While this achieved the goal of the flight, they were really good bait, it also meant that suddenly the BF110s had to deal with three squadrons of hurricanes, who were very prepared to meet them. It was something of a disaster for the German heavy fighters,

and it would be an early example of many of the problems that the BF110s would have in the skies over Britain. They did manage to shoot down one hurricane and damage a few more, but in return seven of the German heavy fighters were shot down, and another seven were damaged. So that's 14 out of 23. To make matters even worse, after this sacrifice was made, the JU88s were not even able to bomb their actual targets, the airfields. Instead, the bombers once again encountered heavy cloud cover,

and so they diverted the raid to Southampton, where the target was a bit larger than just an airfield. Due to this late change in direction, the German bombers avoided all attempts to intercept them, and they were able to drop their bombs on a secondary target of military value and head back across the channel without incident. But it also meant they didn't drop their bombs on an airfield. And those were the priority targets at this point in the operation.

While the BF110s would experience some challenges, similar issues would be experienced by the Stuccas on Eagle Day. Their raids would be against a few RIF airfields, and in these afternoon raids, their weather was actually good enough for the bombing to actually occur on the targets they were supposed to occur on. As would happen from time to time, some of the British fighter pilots that moved into intercept this raid found themselves hearing a series

of strange voices, with the two groups of aircraft having, by pure coincidence, selected similar radio frequencies. This made for some interesting experiences by pilots on both sides. The fighting that ensued over the airfield had the same character as many of the mailes during these August days. The German bombers, in this case Stuccas, were desperately trying to just get to the point where they could drop their bombs and go home. The German fighters, both the 109s and 110s, were trying to protect the bombers were also attacking the arriving Spitfires and hurricanes. In the resulting fighting, about one-third of the Stuccas would be lost, along with, of course,

all of their crews. Other Stuka squadrons would have similar experiences during the day. But then in some other raids, the Stuccas actually performed quite well, because if a Stucca raid could reach its target without being intercepted, it would be. would prove, the aircraft would prove, why it had been so feared during the land campaigns in Poland and France. Bombs could be delivered exactly on target to cause maximum damage. It was just a matter of being allowed to get them there and then getting out before British fighters arrived. During the raids on various airfields, one of the interesting new features that caught the British

somewhat off guard was the use of airdropped mines. These came in the form of SC 250 bombs, which were dropped with a type 17 fuse. These fuses were designed in both a short and long delay variant, so that they would land, not explode, and then they were set to go off any time, up to 96 hours after they were dropped. These mines were often more of a problem than the actual bombs that were dropped

because there were always staff ready and waiting to repair bomb damage. That was actually relatively easy. But dealing with an explosive that had not yet exploded, was a much more challenging task. What was worse, the bombs proved to be very difficult to disarm, to the point where at least one bomb disposal unit was killed, trying to disable one of these bombs in the early days of the Battle of Britain. In fact, for several weeks, all that could really be done was to mark the position of the unexploded mines, and then wait until it was determined how they could be disabled, or just wait for them to explode. Within weeks, there were unexploded bombs all

over the place, including 62 within the perimeter of just the Biggin Hill airfield. Even before proper disposal techniques were determined for the first wave of unexploded mines, the Germans further complicated their disposal by adding tumbler fuses so that they would also detonate if they were in any way moved. The number of these bombs that were on British airfields, essentially functioning as landmines, would continue to grow for the rest of 1940, and it would eventually get into the thousands. But just looking at the events of August 13th, in total, on the first day of their big offensive, the Luftwaffe had sent 1,484 sorties, which seems like a lot, but many of them did not actually

achieve anything due to the weather and the cloud cover, as we've discussed earlier. What was worse was what impact they did have was heavily exaggerated with the Luftwaffe's intelligence, estimating that they had hit nine different airfields, with five of them being considered to be put out of action. This could not have been further from the truth, and in fact, all of the airfields that actually had bombs dropped on them during August 12th and 13th, well, none of them were out of action for more than a day. This would be a continuing issue for the Luftwaffe in its attempts, both to plan further operations and to properly parse where it was in terms of accomplishing its goal of greatly diminishing the combat capabilities of the R.A.F.

They would, by and large, completely underestimate the resilience of the entire R.E.F. Fighter Command structure, from the airfield repairmen to the output of the British aircraft factories and everything in between. The tendency of airmen to overcount victories just made everything worse, with the estimates for Eagle Day being a total of 70 spitfires and hurricanes and 18 Blenheim's destroyed. This balanced acceptably against the Luftwaffe's own losses that they knew for sure, which was 47, and it provided them with an almost a 2-1 kill ratio, which was not perfect, but was within the acceptable limits. The problem was that the real number of REF losses was 50 total aircraft,

not 70 fighters and 18 bombers, 50 total. That meant that the Luftwaffe was maintaining only a one-to-one kill ratio. This was a much greater problem because even with the Germans' underestimating total British strength, a one-to-one ratio would make it almost impossible to both suppress the REF and have enough aircraft left over to support the invasion. It's worth remembering that the optimistic German estimates for total fighter command strength were between 300 and 400. And if 70 of those had already been destroyed in one day, well, That three-day estimate for destroying Fighter Command was looking pretty good with those numbers. As reports began to come back from the pilots who'd actually flown the Saudis over Britain,

the Luftflot and staffs were beginning to plan the next day of operations. But there was a problem. The weather forecast for the 14th were not good, and so operations would probably be hampered for the second day in a row. But now that the major effort had started, all they could do was continue forward, and so they would. I hope you will join me next episode as we cover that next day, August 14th, all the way up to August 18th, which is also known as the hardest day.