Meanwhile, off the Normandy coast...

Ron Muggleton writes > I was recently loaned a book by a friend who thought it might be of interest. It is entitled “Normandy – The Sailors’ Story” and is subtitled ‘A Naval History of D-Day and the Battle for France’. The author is Nick Hewitt and the publisher is Yale.

Although the book runs to 432 pages, disappointingly there is nothing at all about the RAF GCIs. However, at the top of p.258 there is a brief mention of the three Fighter Direction Tenders which controlled fighters from out in the Channel.

At the end of the first paragraph there appears the following:

“As was so often the case, the sailors afloat were often unaware of just how much the FDTs and the night fighters did to protect them, one contemporary lamenting that, ‘It was probably not appreciated by the fleet how many raids were broken up and turned away before reaching a position which would have necessitated the promulgation of air raid warnings… our strong fighter cover acted as a deterrent to the enemy. ‘Y’ {wireless interception personnel, also present on the FDTs} reported that many of the enemy were distinctly ‘jumpy’.”

I wonder how many of those same sailors (and also the soldiers being conveyed to Normandy) gave any thought to the effectiveness of the Royal Air Force night-fighter cover.  In particular, asks Ron, did they realise the absolute dependence by the crews of those night-fighters on information concerning e/a’s (enemy aircraft) provided to them regarding course, speed, height etc., by 85 Group Ground Controlled Interception Radar Units.

Armed with that information, they were able to wreak havoc on intruding enemy aircraft in the way we know they did.