The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

One answer was to expand the fixed anti-aircraft defences. The balloon barrage was extended and balloons were painted black. Plans were made to arm balloon cables with an explosive device, but production was slow and success unpredictable.¹⁴⁴ In September the anti-aircraft artillery was reorganized into three regional commands (Southern, Midland and Northern) to give it greater flexibility, but the supply of guns was still far short of what was regarded as adequate to defend all vital targets in the three areas. Out of 100 designated priority zones only 60 were defended and some of those with only a handful of guns.¹⁴⁵ Although the importance of radar-controlled gun-laying was recognized, the GL MkI apparatus introduced in increasing numbers during the bombing campaign was not capable of accurate height prediction and proved difficult to use. There were still only 10 per cent of the required sets available by February 1941. Nor were the searchlight batteries served with effective radar equipment as they were later in the war; even by June 1941, when the bombing was almost over, Sir Frederick Pile, commander-in-chief of Anti-Aircraft Command, still had only 54 out of the promised 2,000 Search Light Control sets (known as ‘Elsie’) available.¹⁴⁶ A more sophisticated gun-laying equipment, GL MkII, arrived in small quantities from January but was difficult to operate except by highly skilled personnel. It came into its own only in 1942. Many of the anti-aircraft gun sites were not easily accessible and conditions for the crews amounted in many cases in 1940 to little more than a bunker dug out of the ground, prone to flooding and poor protection from the deafening sound of the guns. Anti-aircraft troops were low priority during the period of invasion scare, and many of those who manned guns against German raiders had come straight from training camp. So short of personnel was the Command that in 1941 Pile insisted on recruiting women to work at gun sites, but enrolment did not start until after the end of the bombing, in August 1941. The women, Churchill was assured, would have to be educated and ‘preferably golf and tennis players’.¹⁴⁷

Over the course of the bombing from July 1940 to June 1941, anti-aircraft artillery was relatively ineffective. It was claimed that 170 aircraft were shot down at night over the whole course of the campaign and perhaps 118 damaged, but precise verification was difficult and the temptation to claim success in a gruelling and noisy battle hard to resist. For this result it proved necessary to fire prodigious quantities of ammunition. Scientists brought in to advise the Air Ministry found that in autumn 1940 more than 6,000 shells were fired for every aircraft claimed, and even by April 1941 the number had only been reduced to 3,195. They regarded the idea of a ‘barrage’ as an illusion, since only ‘aimed fire’ had any chance of success, as with all artillery.¹⁴⁸ Yet in response to criticism that there was too little anti-aircraft fire during the first great raids on London, Pile ordered the 92 guns in the Inner Artillery Zone on 7 September 1940 increased to 203 in 48 hours and asked every unit to fire everything it could, regardless of results. In September 260,000 shells were fired. Although it was discovered that civilian morale was boosted by the noisy activity, civilians were exposed to a rain of shrapnel and the danger of unexploded shells, while gun barrels wore out faster than they could be replaced from new production. In November guns were shifted away from London towards the Midlands, to meet demands from industry for more effective protection, but the game of musical chairs simply exposed the fact that there was not enough artillery to go round. The Command was forced to cut back on firing and ordered searchlights to be extinguished, despite popular protest, because it was realized that with too few guns and lights, the target areas were easily distinguishable for enemy pilots as the ones defended. The blackout proved more effective than the lights in confusing the raiders but was in the end no substitute for an extensive belt across the country of radar-guided searchlights and guns. Fixed anti-aircraft defences, in the absence of effective radar equipment, were, as Pile later admitted in his memoirs, deficient.