5
When disaster looms, the British look for a leader rather than a scapegoat. Winston Churchill entered the cabinet room, and we rose like a jury. He walked briskly around the table to his post nearest the world map and nodded once before lowering himself into the chair. He was wearing a black, rumpled pinstripe suit, a burgundy tie, and the knowing smile and sparkling eyes of one who has already won the battle. Lately, Churchill’s public face had not been lasting through these sessions.
We settled into our seats. Pipes and tobacco were produced. Churchill chewed on a cigar. He seldom lit them, by the way, just gnawed them down to empty rags. Water was poured into glasses from several pitchers, and folders were opened. This was a meeting of the Defense Committee, comprised of portions of the War Ministry and the Anglo-American Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sitting near Churchill were the only other men not in uniform, Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Minister for Coordination of Defense Lord Lindley.
The table, covered with green cloth, was a rectangle with a gap in the center. Overhead were massive steel beams, double riveted and painted red. Several fans and a clock were on the wall. Arranged round the room were portable blackboards and map boards. The room was ten feet underground.
General Clay sat opposite the prime minister, quite a distance from him, since the table was twelve or so feet across. On Clay’s left was Lieutenant General Henry Bisset, commander of the Canadian I Corps. The Americans, four of us, were grouped together. Admiral Walter Stanton, commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet East, was to Clay’s right. Stanton’s aid, a lieutenant commander from Chicago, was near me. We aides, about fifteen of us, called ourselves the Flying Buttresses. At each meeting we leaned in our chairs against the walls as if holding them up.
“Shall we begin?” the prime minister asked as he pulled another cigar from his breast pocket. He stared at it a moment, turning it in his hand. From his expression, it was impossible to tell if he was pondering the fate of the free world or an imperfection in a tobacco leaf. He cleared his throat grandly, a British art. “Let’s start where we ended yesterday. Bring in the meteorologist.”
A nagging dread was that the weather would blind us to the attack. German air, land, and sea operations required a minimum level of weather conditions. Whenever the North Sea and English Channel were tossed by storms, committee members shared a palpable sense of relief. We prayed for white horses, as the British called white caps. The Meteorology Committee, a subgroup of the Defense Committee, met twice daily, at five in the morning and ten at night.
One of the few advantages we enjoyed over the enemy was more accurate weather reporting. The Germans were forced to predict the predominately western weather patterns based on data from Ireland and Norway and periodic weather patrols in the east Atlantic by four-engined Fw200s stationed at Lorient. In contrast, the Allies gleaned information from stations in Northern Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, the Faero Islands, Labrador, Gibraltar, and the eastern United States. Weather in the North Sea could be reliably predicted twenty-four hours in advance. In the channel, forty-eight hours.
Group Captain Dr. Richard Swarthmore was shown into the room, looking uncomfortable in his RAF uniform, which hung limply on him. Swarthmore was a civilian meteorologist on loan to the Royal Air Force. He led a team of experts collected from the Admiralty and from the Air Ministry at Dunstable. He stepped quickly to a map displaying eastern and southern England.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Swarthmore,” Churchill said, his wonderful voice filling the room to its corners. Despite frightening intelligence reports from all fronts, I was convinced that with that voice, we could not lose the war. “I want you to tell me your children have been playing with your barometer.”
Swarthmore was accustomed to the prime minister’s perplexing openings. Churchill liked holding forth a moment before each session. “My children, Prime Minister?”
“You remember, I am sure, that the night before the devastating storm of 27 November 1703, Daniel Defoe in London glanced at his barometer to find that the bottom had quite fallen out of it. He accused his children of playing with the instrument. Defoe did not know that the gale of the century was hours away. I want you to tell me, Doctor, that your barometer has fallen to unprecedented lows, and that our seas will shortly become impassable.”
“I am afraid I cannot, Prime Minister.” Swarthmore pushed a lock of his hair to one side. His face was the pasty color of one who never saw the sun. He had dark patches resembling oysters under his eyes. Swarthmore’s job allowed little sleep. “A high-pressure ridge, reaching from Iceland east to the Outer Hebrides, continues to force depressions southward. Yesterday I said that depressions may be forming between Newfoundland and Ireland, which will make the weather eastward deteriorate. These are developing, but we remain under the calming influence of the broad high-pressure zone. Those depressions are moving our way, but too slowly to interfere dramatically with channel weather in the next three days.”
“Hitlerwetter, is it then, Doctor?” Churchill asked. Hitler-weather, or perfect sailing, as German radio was openly calling it.
“For the next twenty-four hours there will be a patchy two-thousand-foot ceiling over the North Sea from Edinburgh south. A touch lower further north. Seas will be level two to three. The channel will be clear, with the possible appearance of spotty clouds at three or four thousand feet and with a slightly freshening wind. Fair weather, Prime Minister.”
“Do all the members of your team agree?” Admiral Peter Fairfax challenged. He was commander of the Royal Navy Home Fleet. He and his superior, Admiral Parker Gilford, commander in chief, Allied Naval Forces, were on the hallway side of the room. The other Royal Navy representative in the room was Lord Erskine, admiral of the fleet and first sea lord, sitting next to Attlee.
“Admiral, there is little to disagree with in our report,” Swarthmore replied. “This is a predictable front, with little movement and few surprises. Yes, the team agrees.”
“There is a saying that in war weather is neutral,” the prime minister said. “A regrettable fiction in our case. Doctor, on your way out will you ask General Cadogan to join us?”
General Roger Cadogan was head of the Combined Intelligence Committee, which drew members from all British and American forces. Cadogan reported to the Defense Committee daily and sent reports three times each day. He marched into the room.
I’m always surprised to see an overweight Englishman. Cadogan carried a substantial bulk that pushed out his uniform and robbed his face of angles. Rumor had it that he shaved several times a day to avoid a five o’clock shadow.
“Prime Minister, there have been developments since we spoke last.” Cadogan began his briefing this way each day, much like a radio announcer’s distinctive sign on. Nobody questioned his right to do so, because he was always true to his word, bringing some new, startling glimpse of what was to come.
He said, “We have analyzed the submarine caught by the Pettibone this morning in the North Sea near Benacre Broad. It is a V80 midget which carried no weapons other than one pistol. The sub was fitted with a Netz radio designed to send continuous signals once the sub has surfaced. It also had an Asdic-type apparatus, called a Nadel BE, made by the Kroner Radio Works in Hamburg, which broadcasts sound waves through the water to be picked up by underwater listening devices on German ships.”