If Milch was looking for complaints, there was every reason to think that his inspection visit to KG 30, the Adler-Geschwader, at Gilze-Rijen and Eindhoven airfields in the Netherlands, delighted him.

Dowding's policy of seeking out the bombers and avoiding the fighters was eating into the confidence of the bomber crews. This Junkers Ju 88 unit had suffered terrible losses during the 15 August raid from Denmark across the North Sea. Now the men blamed the equipment, the tactics, the aircraft itself, and even their bombsights and defensive machine guns. Oberleulnant Werner Baumbach said, "Milch seemed grateful for our frank statement and said he would immediately seek a remedy.

"He did produce a remedy," added Baumbach. "One Gruppe which had borne the heat and burden… was broken up "as punishment for mutiny and defeatism". The officers were transferred and reduced in rank."

This Friday saw a change in tactics and the beginning of the battles that were to take the RAF fighters to the brink of defeat.

Sniffing the dawn air and the state of the defences, Kesselring's Dornier Do 17s went as far as the Thames Estuary to attack ships of a north-bound convoy. Their escorts were Bf 110s of III/ZG 76. By an outside chance, nine Hurricanes were already on an interception course, having been scrambled by a false alarm. The Hurricanes' "Tally-Ho!" over the radio brought three Spitfires of 54 Squadron into the fight.

But the battle over the Estuary was designed to attract attention away from the main assaults of the day. A first wave of sixty Bf 109s crossed the south coast at 10:30 a.m. It was ignored by Park's Controller, who simply warned his squadrons to expect bombers as the second wave. Thirty minutes later he was proved exactly right when forty Heinkel He 111s and thirty Dornier Do 17s crossed the coast, escorted by nearly a hundred fighters. A cloud layer at about 7,000 feet made it impossible to see the raiders, and the Observer Corps posts could do no better than phone to report the sound of aircraft overhead.

By noon all of Park's fighter aircraft were in the air and most of them saw action. Park asked Leigh-Mallory 12 Group Air Operations Commander to send air cover south to protect Kenley and Biggin Hill airfields. But the 12 Group fighters sent to Biggin let a Staffel of Junkers Ju 88s, from a third wave of attacks, get through. The airfield and its neighbourhood suffered. This failure further inflamed the bad feeling between the two men.

A second German raid followed immediately. Again the attacks were directed upon fighter airfields: Kenley, Biggin Hill, Tangmere, and Shoreham. While the sounds of guns and aero-engines were heard from the cloudy sky, seven stations of the radar chain whimpered as the cathode-ray tubes went blank. The main electricity supply had been hit. Now there was no radar protection for the south-east coast.

A third attack was coming in waves over Dover before the second had withdrawn. Like the others, it was directed at the vital Fighter Command airfields. Ten raiders made a detour that brought them to the Thames Estuary and then south to Biggin Hill. It was a low-level attack pressed skilfully. It did considerable damage to hangars, armoury, workshops, stores, and WAAF quarters. It killed thirty-nine and injured twenty-six people and also severed water mains and gas, power, and telephone links.

In the middle of all this activity, a newsreel camera crew visiting Gravesend airfield asked for a squadron scramble. Obligingly the 501 Squadron pilots pretended to answer the phone at dispersal, and then raced out to the Hurricanes. The waiting ground crews helped their pilots into harness, fastened the straps, started the engines, and removed the chocks so that the fighters could lumber across the flattened grass and climb steeply into the air, tucking their wheels up the instant they were airborne a favourite fighter pilot's conceit.

What the delighted camera crew didn't know was that the pilots had plugged in their helmet phones just in time to hear the Controller's voice giving them a genuine scramble, and vectoring them on the Thames Estuary.

The squadron met the raiders in a head-on attack. Keeping in formation, the whole squadron pressed their gun buttons together, as ordered by their commander. None of the enemy fell before the massed gunfire but the formation of Heinkels was broken.

By now RAF intelligence were giving great importance to the scattering of German formations. Intelligence Summary No. 166 noted that the Luftwaffe was flying higher, pattern-bombing from 20,000 feet. This tactic all aircraft bomb when their leader bombs was interpreted by the RAF as a sign of the Luftwaffe's shortage of trained personnel. The scattering of formations before they bombed was henceforward given high priority.

But 501 Squadron had no time to spare for self-congratulation. Sergeant pilot Lacey was one of the men who scattered the Heinkels, but no sooner had he come round for a second attack than he saw bullets hammering into his wings and engine. The cockpit cover went black as oil sprayed over it. He kicked his way into a steep turn but bullets continued to hit him: "Whoever was doing the shooting was either very lucky or knew a lot about deflection, because it had been constantly changing."

Unable to see what was happening, Lacey jettisoned his oily hood but was discouraged from the idea of bailing out by the grey water of the Thames Estuary that he saw beneath. He had considerable altitude and decided to glide as far as land. When he reached the Isle of Sheppey he decided to try to get all the way home in a shallow glide. As he neared Gravesend he pumped his undercarriage into the down position, and did the same for his flaps. With engine lifeless he made a perfect landing, and rolled to a stop almost exactly at the place from which he had taken off. The camera crew were delighted, and filmed the whole landing. There were eighty-seven holes in the Hurricane, not counting the exit ones.

Lacey was rather pleased with himself but the Engineering Officer wiped the smile off his face when he said, "Why the hell didn't you bail out?… I'd have got a new aircraft tomorrow morning! Now I've got to set to work and mend it."

Earlier that morning, over Maidstone, there had taken place one of the most sudden episodes of carnage of 1940, and in fact of the whole air war. Wing Commander Tom Gleave was one of the most senior officers flying in combat at this time. Born in Liverpool in 1908 he had founded a flying club while still in his teens and gone on to get a pilot's licence before joining the RAF in 1930. He started the war as Bomber Liaison Officer at Fighter Command HQ but talked his way into getting command of 253 Squadron in spite of being 32 years old. This was completely against Dowding's order that no Squadron Commander could remain in the job after becoming 26 years old. And in July Tom Gleave was promoted to Wing Commander, which meant he was both too old and too senior for the job. Desperate to continue flying his Hurricane, he asked the newly appointed Squadron Commander if he could remain in the squadron as 'an ordinary bloke," but was generously invited to 'share the squadron' with the new Commanding Officer.

This day provided Wing Commander Tom Gleave with his first taste of combat. Detached from the rest of the squadron, his vee of three aircraft was vectored on to an enemy formation. Ahead of him and about 500 feet above Gleave saw line-astern formations of Bf 109s riding above the haze, well spaced out and stretching as far as the eye could see. It was the culmination of all Gleave's ambitions. Unhesitating, he flew right through the enemy fighters. He remembered the scene clearly, and described the smell of the cordite, the hiss of the pneumatics, and the way the Hurricane's nose dipped as the guns recoiled.