The day was chosen, like the 18 August attack on Biggin Hill, for the preparation of a special volume of reports from the pilots and crew about the first major ‘vengeance-attack’. Though the reports were destined for the Propaganda Ministry, they reflected the view of German aircrew that the 7 September raids gave them a renewed sense of purpose after weeks of small-scale and costly conflicts. Air force medical personnel had already observed signs of nervous exhaustion and ‘aversion to flying’ among personnel who had had little respite for a month.101 ‘At last once again a splendid goal before us!’ ran one account among the many. Talks to the crews had stressed the fact that bombing London was revenge for the destruction of German towns and the deaths of German civilians, and this view reappeared in a number of the accounts. ‘Everyone knew about the last cowardly attacks on German cities,’ wrote one reporter, ‘and thought about wives, mothers and children. And then came that word “Vengeance!”’ The reports once again contrasted German operational achievements with British failures:
We steered towards London from the south. Still 50 or 60 kilometres away from Britain’s capital, we saw already in the sky thick, black clouds of smoke, which grew up like giant mushrooms. This is a target one can no longer mistake! A blazing girdle of fire stretched round the city of millions! In a few minutes we reached the point where we had to drop our bombs. And where are Albion’s proud fighters to be found? No Spitfire, no Hurricane in sight. Finished, quite finished is that British ‘air supremacy’. Before us now lies the bend in the Thames to the east of the city. In this bend lies our target: an electricity works surrounded by giant gasworks and docks. Below us flames and smoke…102
Another pilot recalled the sight of a ruined airfield on the flight to London, with nothing visible save the charred foundations. The impression from the air, which was largely what German Air Intelligence had to go on, was of systematic devastation.
The conviction that the German Air Force was
