In previous attacks the Luftwaffe had sent fresh Bf 109s to escort their bombers home. Park was prepared for this too. When more Bf 109s were seen heading west over Beachy Head, he placed a dozen Hurricanes of 615 Squadron between them and the battles over the Isle of Wight.

It was a measure of the skill and importance of Rubensdorffer's Gruppe that they were put back into the Battle so soon after returning from the morning's attacks on the radar stations. Again they crossed the narrow Straits of Dover. It was still not one o'clock as the Messerschmitts bombed and machine-gunned the coastal airfield at Manston. They arrived just as Spitfires of 65 Squadron were taking off for a patrol.

Behind the fighter-bomber Jabos there were eighteen Dornier Do 17s of KG 2. Like the Junkers Ju 88s of the Portsmouth attack, these bombers were led by their Geschwaderkommodore. In the case of the Holzhammer this was the Kanalkampf-führer himself: Oberst Fink.

Manston airfield disappeared under a great cloud of smoke and flame as 150 bombs hit workshops, hangars, and a Blenheim twin-engined night fighter. Perched on cliffs overlooking the sea, Manston provided a chance for Fink to turn out to sea and disappear before any fighters could be scrambled to the airfield's defence. For many of the RAF men at Manston, this attack was more than they could take. 'Hundreds' of airmen went down into the bomb shelters and stayed there for days in spite of threats, orders, and entreaties by their officers.

Even the bravest patriots at Manston found it difficult to understand why the airfield was not evacuated. The installations were damaged so badly that flying operations were difficult and no pilot attempting either landing or take-off did it without apprehensively searching the sky for German prowlers.

And yet Fighter Command refused to withdraw from Manston, believing probably that such a move would be made into a propaganda victory by the Germans. But even this can hardly account for the way in which 600 (City of London) Squadron was kept at Manston during the long, grim, summer days of August.

This Auxiliary squadron flew Bristol Blenheims, twin-engined bombers ordered by the RAF at a time when their performance was superior to the current fighters. But when monoplane fighters replaced the biplanes, the Blenheims became obsolete. Far too vulnerable for daylight operations as bombers, or to be adapted to fighter configuration, the Blenheims were, in 1940, all too often mistaken for Junkers Ju 88s, with fatal results.

Now the Blenheims had been fitted with an amazing new device: the world's first radar set small enough to be carried inside an aircraft. At night the Blenheims chased lone German bombers around the home counties, but the slow Blenheim needed too large a measure of luck to prove effective in the night-fighter role either.

Of all the people at Manston, the air crew of 600 Squadron had more reason to complain than any. And yet their resilience and cheerfulness were a notable contrast to the breakdown of morale that was evident all round them. And when the ground staff went into the shelters and refused to come out, it was the air crews of 600 Squadron who could be seen day after day in August helping to refuel and rearm the Spitfires. As Al Deere of 54 Squadron pointed out, "More often than not this was done under fire from the enemy and despite the fact that the 600 Squadron pilots should have been resting from the previous night's operations."

But in the sky, too, men were discovering that mental and physical exhaustion prepares the way for fear. One of the Spitfires which landed at Manston that afternoon was piloted by a young Sergeant pilot who had been flying on operations continuously since Dunkirk was evacuated. Now he simply avoided combat and had been doing so for several days. He left the formation at the first sight of the enemy, fired his guns, and turned for home. "He's not just tired, he's yellow," complained one of the 54 Squadron officers. Sadly, the others agreed with him. Afraid that the Sergeant's fears would communicate themselves to the new pilots, he was left off the next day's flying orders, and sent immediately on leave, pending posting.

It was a day of remarkable triumphs for the German Air Fleets: a perfect preparation for a major offensive. And yet, when Kesselring sent his Dornier bombers to attack the Kent coast that evening, they found that the RD1 stations had already been patched up to continue operation. Only Ventnor had been damaged badly enough to make a hole in the chain, and to disguise that deficiency its signals were being transmitted by another station.

The German radio-intercept service regretfully reported that none of the British stations had ceased its signals. None of the returning crews had been able to report a demolished mast. The 350-foot-high lattice construction masts were difficult to hit from straight and level flight and difficult to damage by blast, while their very height inhibited the dive attack. The Germans took it for granted that any control rooms and electronic gear would be deep underground and invulnerable to bombing.

Göring's Adlerangriff was launched without any cogent strategy, as Der Eiserner gave his bombing fleets long lists of objectives. Ships and installations were to be destroyed as were commercial ports and harbours, coastal shipping and a long schedule of 'blockade targets'. RAF units of all kinds must be bombed, as well as factories producing aircraft, aircraft components, or aircraft armament. The Royal Navy was also to be attacked from Dover to Scapa Flow. This was particularly difficult as the Luftwaffe had no armour-piercing bombs, which were necessary to sink big warships.

Göring assigned no priorities to this plethora of targets, and no one was quite sure whether it was intended to destroy Fighter Command by bombing or by bringing its fighters to battle in the air. Oberst Paul Diechmann, Fliegerkorps II Chief of Staff, said that if the 'special radio stations' were bringing the RAF fighters into battle, wouldn't it be better to let them do so, and destroy them in the air? There was no official answer.

If the strategy was indecisive, the tactics were equally so, for the Luftwaffe intelligence service had only the vaguest understanding of the RAF's defensive system. For instance, the Portsmouth/Ventnor raid had been planned so that the attackers came in parallel with the English coast. This would be a good way to avoid radar surveillance during the approach (for it was the flatness of the sea that provided a clear picture). But this route overlooked the way in which the radar station at Poling would see approaching planes beautifully, and it ignored countless Observer Corps posts which were sited along the coast, as well as inland, and were all connected by telephone to the fighter control system.

It was due to poor intelligence that the Luftwaffe's operational maps did not correctly distinguish between airfields used by Fighter Command, those used by other air force units, and those unused. After the war, some Luftwaffe commanders explained that this was thought unimportant, because they believed the RAF Squadrons to be as mobile as the Air Fleets. As an error, it reveals a profound misunderstanding of the fighter control organization, which depended upon an elaborate network of Operations Rooms, sector airfields, Observer Corps posts, and D/F rooms: all of them linked by telephone cables and depending upon electricity.

The Luftwaffe's intelligence specialists showed no better understanding of Britain's aircraft industry. Most British schoolboys knew that the Spitfires and Hurricanes were powered by Rolls-Royce Merlins. There were only two factories making them and one of these was the world-famous home of Rolls-Royce at Derby. The Spitfire was even more vulnerable, for there was only one factory in full-scale airframe production, and that was the well-known Supermarine factory at Southampton, dangerously close to the Luftwaffe's bomber bases. With astounding ineptitude the Luftwaffe's intelligence experts had this site marked as belonging to A. V. Roe, a company making bombers.