thought otherwise). Now, returning from Lille with their Blenheims loaded with looted champagne, they landed to be ordered to report at once to the CO’s office. There was a groan at the prospect of trouble from Shoreham Customs about their cargo. They walked into Paddy Bandon’s office to find him sitting at his desk, the sparkle of his eyes for once quite dead. ‘Well, chaps,’ he said. ‘We’re now 82 Squadron. Yes, just us.’ The formation of Blenheims had missed their rendezvous with a hastily organized fighter escort, and pressed on alone. They were opened up to face the flak approaching Gembloux when they were attacked by fifteen Me109s from the vast air umbrella covering the German advance. Sergeant Morrison was the only pilot to bring his aircraft home. Before lunch that day orders came from Group to disband the squadron. It was only after a fierce struggle by Paddy Bandon that the order was rescinded, and they began to rebuild the wreckage of 82.
In the days that followed, as the German armies swept across France, and Britain entered her season of unbroken disaster, half-trained crews were sent to them from the Operational Training Units with 200 or 300 hours’ flying experience against the 600 that would become a minimum later in the war. Atkinson began to teach them the rudiments of formation flying. A few survivors of Gembloux trickled back from France, among them Miles Delap, who had distinguished himself in March by sinking Bomber Command’s first U-boat. Paddy Bandon was touched when hisown navigator and two others returned from London with the promise of their commissions, but at once offered to forgo officer training to stay at Watton and keep 82 Squadron alive. An Irish gunner who had gone to the glasshouse for desertion was released at the end of his sentence and asked to be allowed to return to flying duties. He too came back, to be killed like so many others in the weeks that followed.
The so-called heavy aircraft with which the RAF entered the war – the Hampden, Whitley and Wellington – were adequate night-bombers of their generation, chiefly deficient in navigation equipment and crew comfort. But the ‘mediums’ – the Battle and the Blenheim – were suicidally ill-fitted for their role as daylight tactical bombers. Cruising at 180 mph, the Blenheim was almost 200 mph slower than the fighters which it must inevitably encounter. Armed with a single .303 in its rear turret, a fixed rearward-firing gun in the port engine nacelle designed solely as a ‘frightener’ and a clumsy rear-firing gun under the cockpit, it was quite incapable of surviving an efficient fighter attack. Lightly built, it could stand little punishment. It packed a negligible 1,000-lb punch in its bomb bay, and could achieve less than half the rate of climb of a German fighter. Under attack, a Blenheim’s only chance of survival was to find cloud or to attempt a hedge-level escape. Quite unknown to the survivors of 82 Squadron and the bewildered young trainees who arrived at Watton to fill the vacuum after Gembloux, Portal as C-in-C of Bomber Command had been fighting a losing battle with the Air Ministry, since the day before the German invasion of the west began, about the employment of the Blenheims.
I am convinced [he wrote on 8 May] that the proposed use of these units is fundamentally unsound, and that if it is persisted in, it is likely to have disastrous consequences on the future of the war in the air . . . It can scarcely be disputed that at the enemy’s chosen moment for advance the area concerned will be literally swarming with enemy fighters, and we shall be lucky if we see again as many as half the aircraft we send out each time. Really accurate bombing under the conditions I visualize is not to be expected, and I feel justified in expressing serious doubts whether the attacks of 50 Blenheims based on information necessarily some hours out of date are likely to make as much difference to the ultimate
In the days that followed, as the German armies swept across France, and Britain entered her season of unbroken disaster, half-trained crews were sent to them from the Operational Training Units with 200 or 300 hours’ flying experience against the 600 that would become a minimum later in the war. Atkinson began to teach them the rudiments of formation flying. A few survivors of Gembloux trickled back from France, among them Miles Delap, who had distinguished himself in March by sinking Bomber Command’s first U-boat. Paddy Bandon was touched when hisown navigator and two others returned from London with the promise of their commissions, but at once offered to forgo officer training to stay at Watton and keep 82 Squadron alive. An Irish gunner who had gone to the glasshouse for desertion was released at the end of his sentence and asked to be allowed to return to flying duties. He too came back, to be killed like so many others in the weeks that followed.
The so-called heavy aircraft with which the RAF entered the war – the Hampden, Whitley and Wellington – were adequate night-bombers of their generation, chiefly deficient in navigation equipment and crew comfort. But the ‘mediums’ – the Battle and the Blenheim – were suicidally ill-fitted for their role as daylight tactical bombers. Cruising at 180 mph, the Blenheim was almost 200 mph slower than the fighters which it must inevitably encounter. Armed with a single .303 in its rear turret, a fixed rearward-firing gun in the port engine nacelle designed solely as a ‘frightener’ and a clumsy rear-firing gun under the cockpit, it was quite incapable of surviving an efficient fighter attack. Lightly built, it could stand little punishment. It packed a negligible 1,000-lb punch in its bomb bay, and could achieve less than half the rate of climb of a German fighter. Under attack, a Blenheim’s only chance of survival was to find cloud or to attempt a hedge-level escape. Quite unknown to the survivors of 82 Squadron and the bewildered young trainees who arrived at Watton to fill the vacuum after Gembloux, Portal as C-in-C of Bomber Command had been fighting a losing battle with the Air Ministry, since the day before the German invasion of the west began, about the employment of the Blenheims.
I am convinced [he wrote on 8 May] that the proposed use of these units is fundamentally unsound, and that if it is persisted in, it is likely to have disastrous consequences on the future of the war in the air . . . It can scarcely be disputed that at the enemy’s chosen moment for advance the area concerned will be literally swarming with enemy fighters, and we shall be lucky if we see again as many as half the aircraft we send out each time. Really accurate bombing under the conditions I visualize is not to be expected, and I feel justified in expressing serious doubts whether the attacks of 50 Blenheims based on information necessarily some hours out of date are likely to make as much difference to the ultimate
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