In Europe

aircraft, without the need for constant patrolling. Surprise attacks were no longer possible, pilots and planes remained available for the fighting itself.
    Despite its massive air power, however, the Luftwaffe was not prepared for a typical air war, and particularly not for an air war against Britain. The German fighter, the Messerschmitt 109, was a better plane than theBritish Hurricane and at least as good as the Spitfire, but it was not suited for long-distance flights: the fuel tanks were so small that the planes could remain in British airspace for no more than half an hour.
    The Blitz that came later, the series of German bombardments of London and other cities, was also an improvised affair. The Heinkel, Dornier and Junker bombers were designed to operate in unison with troops on the ground, and to attack enemy tanks and infantry from the air. In practice, they proved unsuited for carrying the enormous quantity of bombs needed truly to devastate a large industrial country.
    In the end, Germany's plans for an invasion proved no more than fleeting. The
Wehrmacht
had received absolutely no training in landing operations, the country's capacity for troop transport was insufficient and Germany had almost no landing craft. Now, for the first time, the under-side of the blitzkrieg coin became apparent: the
Wehrmacht
, and the German wartime economy, were attuned to brief, overwhelming explosions of energy, and not to long, exhausting struggles. By late July 1940, according to some of those in his immediate surroundings, Hitler had already turned his attention to something completely different: the march on Russia.
    The White Heart pub in Brasted, close to the Kentish airfield of Biggin Hill, was the RAF pilots’ local. The building itself has since been enlarged, but the area around the bar where the young airmen noted their ‘hits’ has remained unchanged. They were often too tired to get drunk; there were days when they made up to six flights, strafed and bombed during take-off, getting into dogfights with ME 109s, being wounded, ejecting from their planes and hitchhiking back to the base, from where they would take off again the next morning. The chalkboard with their names on it is still hanging on the wall. ‘Hold my glass for me, I'll be right back,’ they would say before disappearing into the sky.
    During summer 1940, the life expectancy of the British pilot was four, perhaps five weeks.

Chapter TWENTY-NINE
London
    THE REALITY OF THE BLITZ LIVES ON TODAY ONLY IN THE NIGHTMARES of the elderly, and in a handful of war museums. It is striking to see how quickly the normal historical perspective in London has made way for the myth and the spectacle. In city museums on the continent, the key words for this particular epoch are silence and serenity. One sees photographs, a black-and-grey scale model of a badly wounded town, a handful of scorched objects, and that is usually it. In London, things are very different.
    A top attraction at the moment is the Britain At War Experience, a ‘realistic experience’ where, after paying a few pounds, one can walk down a wartime street, hear wartime radio reports and sit in a fairy-tale air-raid shelter listening to the howl of the sirens and the thudding of the Heinkel bombers. The climax is the cleverly reconstructed ruins of a housing block, complete with flashes of anti-aircraft fire, a few limbs tossed around and the melancholy burbling of a burst water main. ‘Jolly good!’ the schoolboys standing beside me shout.
    In summer 1940, London was the world's biggest metropolis. The city had more than eight million inhabitants (New York had almost seven million.) One out of every five Britons lived there. It was where all the lines of the British Empire converged. And after Hitler had abandoned his plans for an invasion, it was the most obvious target for the German bombardments.
    The Germans started the Blitz more or less out of frustration, without any clear planning, as a sequel to the Battle of Britain. During the first half of that summer they had focused on dominating British airspace, in preparation for a possible landing. Their bombardments had been limitedlargely to airfields and other military installations. On 24 August, more or less by accident, a pair of Stukas dropped the first bombs on central London. Churchill seized the opportunity: in ‘revenge’, eighty RAF bombers pounded Berlin. Hitler was infuriated. Nearly 600 German bombers came back during