Göring selected his two most outstanding fighter pilots Molders and Galland for the award of a special gold pilot's badge, with jewels. And then he humiliated them with a lecture about the lack of aggression that their fighter pilots had shown. He demanded tighter and tighter escorts for the bomber formations. He wanted the bomber crews to see the protection they were getting, rather than just hope that it was a few thousand feet above them.

So that his new orders would be obeyed to the letter, Göring had selected his most outstanding fighter pilots, and given to each of them the command of a Jagdgeschwader.[15]

But no experienced fighter pilot was likely to show enthusiasm for flying close escort on bombers. The fighter pilots treasured altitude even more than speed (into which altitude could be transmuted at will). Now they were being asked to sacrifice both. Tying the fighters to the bombers would enable the British to choose their moment of attack and to break off combat at will. In any case, argued the Luftwaffe fighter pilots, they had already shown that they inflicted maximum damage on Fighter Command when left to their own tactics. And this was true.

Galland says, "Constantly changing orders betraying lack of purpose and obvious misjudgment of the situation by the Command and unjustified accusations had a most demoralizing effect on us fighter pilots.”

And by now the Bf 109 pilots were realizing that their fighters had certain disadvantages when in combat against Spitfires. When Göring asked the two fighter pilots if they had any requests, Molders asked for a more powerful engine in the Bf 109, and Galland (in one of the most misquoted remarks of the war) asked for "an outfit of Spitfires for my Group."

The Messerschmitt's weak wings were providing its pilots with a new problem. The Spitfire pilots had discovered how to make use of the superior strength of the Spitfire wings. Faster in the dive, the Messerschmitts were being overtaken because they pulled out in a shallow curve, nervous that they might rip their wings off. The care with which the German pilots applied G force to their own machines prompted them to invent tactics such as Negative-G diving turns with bottom rudder. And it was the same caution, about the wing roots, that gave rise to the still widely held belief that the Bf 109 could not turn as tightly as a Spitfire. In theory its turn was tighter, but few pilots were prepared to test it to its limit.

The Luftwaffe intelligence report dated 16 August estimated RAF fighter losses at 574 since July, and added another couple of hundred fighters lost on the ground and by accidents, etc. Believing that the British factories had not supplied Dowding with more than 300 fighters, they now calculated that his total resources would be 431 fighters, of which 300 were probably serviceable. The airmen at Göring's conference were sceptical. These figures were difficult to reconcile with the mauling their missions were still getting at the hands of Fighter Command. They were right to be sceptical. In that same week when Göring thought the RAF had about 300 fighters serviceable, the true figure was over 700.

The Spitfire had proved itself an excellent all-round weapon, with faults but no inherent weaknesses. And the energies of Lord Beaverbrook were providing Hurricanes and Spitfires in ever-increasing numbers. By the end of August he would be able to report that 1,081 fighters were immediately available, and another 500 were undergoing repair.

It was the supply of pilots that was Dowding's headache. In the week since Adlertag he had lost nearly 80 percent of his squadron commanders (dead, wounded, or withdrawn from battle). The men now leading the interceptions were often without any combat experience whatsoever. One squadron commander took over without ever having flown a Hurricane: he did three circuits and landings before leading his squadron into battle.

And if the commanders lacked experience of battle, the pilots following them had often logged no more than ten hours' flying in single-seat fighters. For such men, it was a brave feat to land a high-speed fighter, let alone to do battle in one. And on 10 August, Dowding agreed to cut the Operational Training period still further. Now the pilots would have only two weeks between learning to fly and coming into combat. Until July, this same course had lasted six months.

Dowding had already approved a secret plan for putting the OTUs into the fighting. A sequence of fighter squadron numbers 551 onwards had been set aside for this purpose. History records that the OTUs were never put into combat. But in fact, slashing the training period from six months to two weeks meant that the men who should have been students at the OTUs were already in combat.

In strategic terms such expedience was perhaps justified. By November the battle would be over, for better or for worse. The men arriving from OTUs after that would not affect the result. And yet, in human terms, it was a tragic decision. In wartime the OTU becomes a vital link between the theories of training and the hard facts of operations. The OTUs should have been telling their pupils about the new German tactics, and how to counter them. But the sad truth was that squadrons brought into the Battle for the first time seldom knew anything of modern air combat. Some had never fired their guns. And they were still flying the tight vee formations and were not even properly alerted to the dangers of 'the Hun in the sun'.

Neither were the squadrons in the north getting any practice or instruction about the fighting — some were not even flying. At Usworth in Durham, 607 Squadron had to pretend they were doing engine tests in order to fly their Hurricanes. The official excuse was a shortage of spare parts.

However exemplary the feeding of the fighter squadrons into battle, the preparation of the squadrons for battle was a scandal — for there was no preparation! In spite of the generous supply of aircraft, and the availability of battle-weary veterans withdrawn from the south, there was no attempt to combine these assets in such a way that the rotated squadrons went into battle with some idea of what they faced. Possibly the RAF had doubts about the morale of their battle-weary veterans, and feared the effect the experienced pilots might have had upon the morale of the untried units.

The Air Fleets complied with Göring's demand for a round-the-clock offensive. They sent raiders — sometimes no more than a single bomber — to all parts of the United Kingdom by day and by night.

During daylight, Kesselring continued ceaseless air activity over his coastline, so that the British radar operators were unable to distinguish which aircraft were raiding formations forming up. This often enabled the real raids to attack coastal targets and get away intact. Hurriedly the fighters of Air Fleet 3 were moved to the Pas de Calais so that by 24 August they were all together. Now the German formations had large numbers of fighters flying tightly above them, and often there were more below them too. Neither side liked these tactics. Ten RAF fighters, climbing to meet ten German bombers escorted by ten fighters, saw it as a battle in which they were outnumbered two to one. The German fighter pilots saw as a battle in which the odds were against them, for they faced an equal number of fighters, while trying at the same time to protect the bombers.

The fighter aircraft was designed with forward-facing armament, expressly for an attacking role. To be used, it had to fly towards an enemy. Keeping close to the bomber prevented the German fighter pilots from attacking in this way. No longer could the fighters dive out of the sun upon an unsuspecting enemy. The new tactics resulted in fewer losses in the bomber fleets, but German fighter casualties went up.