Both sides learned from each other. The loose formations that were, according to Galland, evolved by Molders became standard for both air forces. Armour plate, which the RAF had adopted in spite of Air Ministry objections, was put into the Bf 109 fighters. It became vital to the pilot's safety as cannon fire was used more and more. Self-sealing fuel tanks (in 1940 only in bombers) were also used by both sides. German night-bombing techniques were later copied by the RAF, and British counter-measures such as jamming and decoy fires were borrowed by the Germans.

The Battle of Britain saw the end of the Luftwaffe's reputation as an invincible force. The 'yellow-nosed Abbeville boys," a unit of Bf 109 fighters with yellow-painted cowlings that had achieved an awesome reputation during the summer of 1940, proved no more than a reflection of Fighter Command's state of mind. There were no "Abbeville boys': many Bf 109 units had painted their cowling with a yellow patch so that friend and foe could be easily distinguished in battle.

For the RAF, the quantity and quality of pilots had come nearest to bringing disaster. Bravery was no substitute for training, skill, and experience, and as the Battle progressed, Fighter Command put into combat squadrons of men who should not have been asked to meet the Germans on equal terms. There were fifty-eight naval pilots, an American parachutist with virtually no experience of military flying, and Polish pilots who had had only a brief experience of the British high-speed monoplanes and even less of the English language. As the fighting progressed, and the men leading the formations suffered unduly heavy casualties, too many of them were replaced by outside officers without combat experience. This extraordinary procedure had a doubly bad effect upon the other pilots, for it deprived them of promotion and sent them into battle with inadequate leaders. Worst of all was the way in which pilots 'went operational' before they had properly mastered their machines ten hours on fighters was not unusual and without any realistic operational training.

This desperate shortage of trained pilots becomes even more incomprehensible when read in conjunction with a memo from Winston Churchill to Archibald Sinclair (Britain's Air Minister, well remembered by the pilots of 64 Squadron for a brief visit he had paid to them in 11 Group during the Battle; he'd walked round their Spitfires while addressing them as Hurricane pilots, and kept referring to them as a part of 12 Group):

PRIME MINISTER TO SECRETARY OF STATE FOR AIR

3 June 1940

The Cabinet were distressed to hear from you that you were now running short of pilots for fighters, and that they had now become the limiting factor.

This is the first time that this particular admission of failure has been made by the Air Ministry. We know that immense masses of aircraft are devoted to the making of pilots, far beyond the proportion adopted by the Germans. We heard some months ago of many thousands of pilots for whom the Air Ministry declared they had no machines, and who consequently had to be 're-mustered': as many as seven thousand were mentioned, all of whom had done many more hours of flying than those done by German pilots now frequently captured. How then therefore is this new shortage to be explained?

Lord Beaverbrook has made a surprising improvement in the supply and repair of aeroplanes, and in clearing up the muddle and scandal of the aircraft production branch. I greatly hope that you will be able to do as much on the personnel side, for it will indeed be lamentable if we have machines standing idle for want of pilots to fly them.

But Churchill himself was not entirely blameless in respect to the quality of the fighter pilots. Professor Frederick Lindemann (later Lord Cherwell), the man Churchill had made his scientific adviser, in July pressed for the shortening of the operational training. It was a reckless expedient, for, in spite of Lindemann's contention that 'the final polish should be given in the squadrons," it was the six months at OTU that made a pilot into a fighter pilot. At Lindemann's suggestion, the time had been reduced to a mere four weeks and the training was to become more and more perfunctory.

Lindemann exerted powerful influence upon Britain's progress in the war.1 However controversial Lindemann's contribution to victory, the way the British were able to bring scientists, generals, and businessmen together, to help the war effort, was something the Germans failed to do and suffered because of it.

Already many great names of German science had fled the country, or gone into concentration camps. Surely by now few can doubt that a Nazi regime without anti

' Millions of pounds were spent, in six years of experiments, in the absurd idea of sowing aerial minefields through which the enemy bombers would have to fly. Another Lindemann obsession was infrared. As late as 1939, Lindemann was still writing to Churchill telling him that radar would never fulfill its expectations.

Semitism would have produced long-distance rockets with nuclear war heads and won the war.

Instead of husbanding the remainder of their scientists, the German armed forces conscripted them into the army, along with manual labourers and clerks. The curious political system of Nazi Germany had manufacturers pursuing parallel research, in pursuit of the same contract, so too much scientific time and effort were spent in perfecting equipment that was already good enough.

British scientific weaponry was often hastily lashed together and imperfect but unlike so much German equipment in beautiful cases it could be modified with a can-opener and soldering iron and was.

The German scientists enjoyed a higher status than their British counterparts, but they did not enjoy the right to roam through military establishments, from Sergeants' Messes to War Cabinet, as the British did. And it is hard to imagine scruffy German civilians, in ill-fitting suits, telling German staff officers where they were going wrong. This the British scientists did, and so were able to bring science from laboratory to battlefield at surprising speed.

All this was a result of the confidence that Britain's soldiers, businessmen, and politicians had in science. A large measure of this confidence was due to the part that radar played in the Battle of Britain.

Germany did little or nothing to revise the role of science in the war. In 1940 the German General Staff had decreed that no research or development should be pursued unless it promised military results within four months.1 As a part of this ill-considered and Draconian measure, work on Messerschmitt's amazing Me 262 jet fighter was forbidden. Messerschmitt continued with some work, but in the spring of 1941 Milch went to Messerschmitt's home and

"I refer here to the conference on 7 February 1940 at which Göring presided and Keitel, Milch, and Economics Minister Funk discussed acceleration of the armaments programme. It was the report and recommendations of the Quartermaster General (Air) that led to the ban on new designs. insisted that all work on the jet should end. Galland considers that the 1940 order delayed the Me 262 by about two years.

The failure to understand the importance of the Me 262 was only a part of the failure to understand the importance of the fighter plane. Even after the 1940 fighting, the Luftwaffe failed to give fighter production the priorities it needed. Not until late 1943 can fighters be said to have been produced in large quantities, and then only because the totals include later variants of the by then obsolescent Bf 109.

Many German failures were due to the way that the country's leaders clung to the hope of the 'quick war." Even after the Battle of Britain's stalemate, Germany still made no long-term war plans. Hitler decided that Britain's reluctance to make peace was due to its belief that one day the USSR would fight Germany. To cut this Gordian knot, Hitler decided upon a 'quick war' against the USSR. After this, he said, Britain will make peace. As the air battles of 1940 continued, and the German army stood waiting, Hitler gradually confided to his generals his ideas for "Barbarossa."