Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain

Fighter is a serviceable account of the Battle of Britain, written by a novelist rather than a historian. Deighton devotes roughly half the book to background, and another half to a day-by-day diary of the action.

Against a rising tide of fascism in Europe, Dowding and Goring would put the airpower theories of the interwar period to the test in a wholly new kind of defensive battle. Goring’s Luftwaffe was experienced, but its Bf-109 fighters lacked the range to escort strikes over England for more than a few minutes, and were hampered by notably inefficient and unanalytic command structures. Britain had the advantage of defense, and the sophisticated radar command-and-control network of Chain Home, but its pilots were basically untested. The Luftwaffe’s aims were more incoherent, ranging from creating the conditions for Operation Sea Lion, to independently bringing about British defeat via morale collapse. Whatever the details, the one objective was the neutralization of the RAF. The goal for the RAF was simply to survive until summer ended and cross-channel invasion became unfeasible.

Deighton has an eye for the scandalous. The Nazis had plenty of scandal, ranging from Goring’s deep-rooted mommy issues (his mother kept a Jewish lover in their house), his scheming subordinate Milch’s weirder mommy issues (Milch’s biological father was his uncle), or third Air Marshall Udet’s better aptitude as a caricaturist than strategist, before his post-battle suicide. The British had their own issues. Air Marshall Dowding never got the support he needed from above or below, and he and Section 11 Leader Park, whose area bore the brunt of the attacks, were unceremoniously dismissed after their victory. Section 12 leader Leigh-Mallory and ace Douglas Bader (notable for losing his legs in a plane crash, and returning to service as an excellent pilot) sabotaged their commander over tactical arguments about the ‘Big Wing’ versus Dowding’s careful Fabian commitment of fighters to the battle, which grew into personal arguments that saw Sector 12 planes refusing to cover Sector 11 airbases.

Britain’s defense was perilously thin, based around the soft targets of radar stations, plotting huts, and aircraft factories. Faulty Nazi intelligence prevented them from focusing on these targets, and so the Luftwaffe never gained air dominance of the kind the Allies held after 1944. While British aircraft production was a miracle, pilot training was a mess that saw rookies with 10 hours in Spitfires who’d never fired their guns tossed into brutal dogfights with Nazi experten. Both sides consistently overclaimed kills, which is more ridiculous for the British since a daily kill count five or six times larger than airframes recovered is clearly in error. Yet, propaganda meant that records were not important.

Deighton tosses in some neat technical facts about the aircraft involved, such as the Bf-109’s weak wings, or the last-minute addition of constant speed propellers to the British fighters, which brought them to parity, and has some pilot accounts. Yet the historical analysis is far behind Korda’s With Wings Like Eagles, and if you wanted a novelistic flair to the reporting, this is not it.

A fine book, but definitely the least of the four books I’ve read recently on the Battle of Britain.