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Or the Luftwaffe to achieve economical destruction when bombing attacks were made indepenfailure dently of the battlefield was in strong contrast to the achievements of the bomber in the campaigns launched by Germany in April and May The invasion of Denmark and Norway was an exceptional case, 1940. partly due logistics to the small scale of the possible opposition, partly to the of the contest, and partly to British naval codes, an German ability that frequently ability to read the kept her a step ahead of the otherwise formidable British naval forces.

It was a disastrous failure, since Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding had held back his fighters in the northeast for just such an occasion. However, the pace soon began to tell. Many formidable raids were being mounted each day, sometimes almost from dusk to dawn, and fighter pilots were flying three, four and sometimes even more missions a day. The sprint could not last for ever. Neither could supplies of either pilots or planes. Just as serious, the strain was beginning to show in the number of vital airfields bombed into uselessness.

On the evening of the 24th the Germans prepared 170 bombers to attack a group of widely dispersed targets. Although they had so far failed to make the much-feared concentrated attacks on the Midlands aircraft industry, they had achieved, as much by luck as by an> thing else, one or two considerable successes such as a heavy raid on a Spitfire shadow factory at Castle Bromwich. But the raids for the 24th were planned to reach as far north as Northumberland, and as far west as T Plymouth, while the oil tanks at Thameshaven, and the aircraft Rochester and Kingston-upon-Thames, were also among the targets.