The air battle of the Heligoland Bight

On 18 December 1939, over the Heligoland Bight off the coast of Friesland and the mouth of the Jade, the first air engagement of the war took place that both sides regarded as a battle in its own right and gave a name to. Twenty-two British Vickers Wellington bombers, flying without fighter cover on a bright, cloudless day in search of German warships off Wilhelmshaven, were attacked by several dozen Luftwaffe fighters. Twelve failed to return to base, and three more crashed on landing in England. Not a single German ship was hit. The fight lasted less than half an hour, but it changed the way British bombers waged war: from then on the RAF’s heavy aircraft flew over Germany chiefly by night.

Chronologies often state briefly that the Germans defeated Britain in the Battle of the Heligoland Bight. It should be added that this was neither of the two naval battles fought in the same waters during the First World War (in August 1914 and November 1917), but an engagement fought entirely in the air. On the British side only bombers took part; on the German side, fighters and anti-aircraft artillery.

Bombers that were to defend themselves

The British RAF Bomber Command entered the war convinced that well-armed bombers flying in close formation could defend themselves against fighters without an escort. The Wellington, a modern twin-engined bomber of geodetic construction, had gun turrets in the nose and tail and was regarded as the RAF aircraft best prepared for such a fight. In any case, for lack of fighters with sufficient range, there was nothing to escort it with.

At the same time the bombers operated under strict political restrictions. The British and French governments had undertaken to attack only military targets, and fear of Luftwaffe retaliation meant that in practice the only targets left were Kriegsmarine ships at sea and in the roadsteads. Ever since the first RAF raids on Wilhelmshaven and Brunsbüttel on 4 September 1939, bombing ships moored alongside quays, where bombs might hit buildings, had been forbidden. The Admiralty, which after the sinking of the Royal Oak at Scapa Flow and the German air raids on warships in the Firth of Forth was demanding a response, pressed the RAF to strike at the German fleet.

The experience of the autumn sent mixed signals. On 29 September German fighters shot down five Hampden bombers over the Heligoland Bight. On 3 December 24 Wellingtons attacked warships off Heligoland, beat off fighter attacks and returned without loss, which Bomber Command took as proof that the formation worked. On 14 December twelve Wellingtons of No. 99 Squadron flew beneath very low cloud to the mouth of the Jade to look for the cruisers Leipzig and Nürnberg, damaged the day before by the British submarine Salmon. Five aircraft were shot down and a sixth crashed on the way back. The command attributed the losses to anti-aircraft fire rather than to fighters, and did not change its tactics.

18 December: the flight over Wilhelmshaven

For 18 December No. 3 Group of Bomber Command detailed 24 Wellingtons from three squadrons: No. 9 Squadron from Honington, No. 37 from Feltwell and No. 149 from Mildenhall. The raid was led by Wing Commander Richard Kellett, commanding officer of No. 149 Squadron. The orders were to attack German warships at sea or in the roadsteads, but not to bomb merchant ships, land targets or warships alongside quays. That morning the London newspapers were full of the Battle of the River Plate and the scuttling of the Admiral Graf Spee the day before. The RAF hoped for a success of its own at sea.

The aircraft took off at about half past nine. One turned back with engine trouble and another escorted it home, so 22 flew on. After crossing the North Sea the sky cleared. The bombers flew in crystal-clear air at a height of about three kilometres, visible from far away. Their route took them north of the Frisian Islands towards the Danish border and then south, so as to strike Wilhelmshaven from the east and avoid the heavy anti-aircraft guns on the islands.

The radar nobody listened to

The Germans detected the raid earlier than the British expected. On the island of Wangerooge stood an experimental Luftwaffe Freya early-warning radar, and on Heligoland a similar naval set. According to the account of the officer operating it, Leutnant Hermann Diehl, the echo of a large group of aircraft appeared on the screen while the bombers were still about 110 kilometres from the coast. The report was received with disbelief, however: it seemed unthinkable that the British would venture over the German coast in such good visibility, and communications between the naval and air force radar services and the fighter airfields worked badly. The fighters took off only when ground observers confirmed that a formation was approaching – and the observers put it at 44 aircraft, twice the real number.

The air defence of the German Bight coast was commanded by Oberstleutnant Carl Schumacher, a former officer of the Imperial Navy in the First World War, who led a fighter wing known after him as Jagdgeschwader Schumacher. He had 80–100 aircraft under him: single-engined Messerschmitt Bf 109s of II Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 77 and of the night-fighter Staffel of Jagdgeschwader 26, and twin-engined Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighters of Zerstörergeschwader 76. According to various tallies, between 44 and about 50 of them joined the fight.

The fight

The bombers flew over Wilhelmshaven and the Schillig roads through anti-aircraft fire from the shore and from the ships. Below them lay the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, but so close to the quays and the town that Kellett, in accordance with his orders, did not attack. Practically no bombs were dropped; according to some accounts one section dropped a few on ships in the roads, with no visible effect. By the time the formation turned west and left the range of the guns it was already strung out: two sections held formation, but the leaders of the sections from Nos. 9 and 37 Squadrons pulled ahead and their wingmen fell behind.

This was what the German fighters had been waiting for. The first to attack were the Bf 109s of JG 26’s night-fighter Staffel under Oberleutnant Johannes Steinhoff, later an ace and a general in the air force of the Bundeswehr; then came the Bf 110s, among them the aircraft of Wolfgang Falck, Helmut Lent and Gordon Gollob, all future well-known commanders of the German fighter arm. The German pilots quickly discovered the Wellington’s weakness: the nose and tail turrets could not fire to the sides, so they attacked from the beam and from above. An attack from astern, straight into the fire of the rear turret’s four guns, was dangerous and cost the life of at least one pilot. Wellingtons of this series had no self-sealing fuel tanks, so when hit in the wings they often caught fire.

The fight began in the early afternoon and lasted about half an hour, until the German fighters began to run short of fuel. No. 37 Squadron suffered worst, losing five of its six aircraft. Both section leaders who had pulled ahead of the formation were killed. Two damaged bombers ditched in the North Sea on the way home, and three more crashed on landing in England.

The toll

The RAF lost 12 Wellingtons shot down or ditched in the sea and three wrecked in England – 15 in all of the 22 aircraft that reached the target area. Fifty-seven airmen were killed and several taken prisoner. German losses were slight: according to various tallies, two or three Bf 109s destroyed and several aircraft damaged, with two pilots killed.

Both sides greatly exaggerated their successes. British gunners reported a dozen or more fighters shot down. German pilots initially claimed more than 30 victories, and the Luftwaffe command, after verification, credited 27 – still more than twice the RAF’s actual losses and more than the entire raid had numbered. The propaganda of Joseph Goebbels proclaimed a great victory, and Hermann Göring could boast that German skies were closed to the enemy.

Lessons learned and not learned

Bomber Command’s first reaction was to look for culprits. The commander of No. 3 Group, followed by the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, blamed the section leaders who had broken formation. As late as 22 December a No. 3 Group report argued that a tight formation of six Wellingtons could survive a prolonged fighter attack without serious loss. It recommended fitting the bombers with beam gun positions and self-sealing tanks. Ludlow-Hewitt, who had long doubted the safety of daylight operations himself, nevertheless came out more and more clearly in favour of operating under cover of darkness. Further experience in the spring of 1940, over Norway and during the campaign in France, confirmed that unescorted bombers could not survive by day within reach of fighters. The Wellingtons, Hampdens and Whitleys switched to night operations; by day only light bombers now flew over Europe, and increasingly with an escort.

The Germans, by contrast, saw the battle as confirmation that their defences were effective. Although communications between the radar and the airfields had failed, and the best part of an hour between the detection of the raid and the first clash might have cost them dearly, the German side contented itself largely with celebrating the victory. In the years that followed the Luftwaffe concentrated on offensive air power and neglected the daylight air defence of the Reich, convinced that no one would seriously threaten it over Germany.

Place in the war

The engagement of 18 December 1939 is one of the turning points in the history of air warfare. It shattered the pre-war belief, voiced in 1932 by Stanley Baldwin, that “the bomber will always get through” – at least in daylight and without fighter cover. Bomber Command’s switch to night operations had far-reaching consequences. By night the bombers were safer, but they lost accuracy: an analysis of aerial photographs carried out in August 1941, the so-called Butt Report, showed that only one crew in three dropped its bombs within five miles (eight kilometres) of the target. Out of this helplessness grew the strategy of area bombing of whole cities, pursued from 1942 by Arthur Harris, together with the development of navigational aids, airborne radar and target-marking units.

The Americans, too, remembered the lessons of the Heligoland Bight, although in their doctrine of daylight precision bombing they at first disregarded them. The heavy losses of unescorted bombers over Schweinfurt and Regensburg in 1943 repeated the lesson of December 1939 on a larger scale, and only long-range fighters in 1944 allowed the daylight bombers to survive over Germany. The Luftwaffe, for its part, paid for its complacency of 1939 when in 1943–1944 it had to build up in haste the defence of the Reich against raids by day and by night. The Freya radar, whose report was played down on 18 December, became the foundation of that defence.