The Battle of Heligoland Bight 1939: The Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe's Baptism of Fire [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

"The Battle of the Heligoland Bight 1939" by Robin Holmes is more of a study for me of the mind of the typical British author than it is a examination of the actual events between the RAF Bomber Command and the defending German fighters stationed in the NE part of Germany. There are some interesting first-hand account of British crew members and a couple of statements of German fighter pilots. The first thing which caught my mind was the dust jacket, the front of which shows a painting of a formation of Vickers Wellington bombers and a Bf 110 going down in flames. The fact is that no Bf 110s were lost during the combats over the German bay with Wellingtons. Holmes makes the usual mistake of the uninformed in that he refers to the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Bf 110 as Me 109s and Me 110s. Holmes is an engineer and not a aviation historian. He is also very so biased to the British cause that he loses sight of the actual facts. I always look at the sources an author uses and I note in the bibliography he has consulted the French edition, "Les Aiglons," which I assume is a translation of "Fledgling Eagles" which I have, by Christopher Shores, et al.

The center piece of the book is the battle on 18 December 1939. Holmes makes the claim that ten Wellingtons were shot down by the German fighters. This is only partly true. Ten Wellingtons did crash into the North Sea or crash-landed on German soil, but then two other Wellingtons were forced to ditch into the ocean after battle damage and two others crashed on British soil and were written-off as damaged beyond repair (Category 3) and an additional four Wellingtons crash-landed with severe damage (Cat. 2--repairable by depot or contractor). In the table of Wellingtons participating in the battle, he indicates that these landed at base. Since he had Shores' book as a source, this either misrepresents the facts or he overlooked them. The British lost fourteen Wellingtons destroyed and four severely damaged. As is typical of many British authors, the British losses are minimized to lessen the spector of defeat.

On the other hand, Holmes like many British authors, exaggerates the Luftwaffe's losses and also misrepresents the Luftwaffe pilot claims. In a battle involving several different fighter units (II./JG 77, Staff/JG 1, JGr 101, 10./JG 26, I./ZG 26), there were several fighters attacking a Wellington and each pilot believed he had shot it down. Holmes implies that German claims were falsified. The explanation is simple; each unit filed reports on its own and sent them to Berlin for the Abschusskommission for confirmation. The number eventually confirmed and credited were 27. This is two claims for each British loss instead of the four to one which Holmes indicates (38 claims vs. 10 shot down).

Holmes on page 86 claims that "Bomber Command's true score was seven German fighters downed." Holmes includes four fighters which were damaged but repairable. This is to make the bombers' gunners claims closer to actuality (12 claims vs. seven shot down). The Luftwaffe lost two Bf 109s destroyed and one written-off with four damaged. Holmes counts the damaged fighters as a loss. Why does he not include the two Wellingtons which ditched, the two written-off in crash-landings, and the four damaged to the account of the Luftwaffe? He is the typical British hypocrite who minimizes British losses and inflates the German losses in order to make the British look better.