report dated September , written by General Felmy, who
chaired the air force’s “Special Staff Britain.” Felmy warned that
none of their bombers or fighters could operate meaningfully
over Britain. True, existing bombers might carry half a ton each,
but they would arrive over London unescorted by any fighters.
Given our present means [General Felmy concluded],
we can hope at best for a nuisance effect. Whether this
will diminish the British will to fight depends in part
on imponderable and unpredictable factors... A war
of annihilation against Britain appears to be out of the
question.Panic seized the field marshal. He reached for a colored pencil,
and where Felmy had warned, “Our training has hitherto disre-
garded the requirements of operating far out to sea,” he
scrawled in the margin, “See to it immediately!” Next to Felmy’s
list of possible British targets, Göring wrote, “Work these u p
with priority!” “I don’t believe,” Göring wrote, “that I asked for
a memorandum casting doubts on our prospects and underlin-
ing our weaknesses I am fully aware of them myself.”
Searching for a solution, he ordered his generals to Carin-
hall on the twenty-seventh and told them to mass-produce the
still untested Junkers high-speed bomber. It was the last word
in bombers, with self-sealing tanks, variable-pitch propellers,
and retractable undercarriage. A prototype had broken all re-
cords in April . He refused to heed the sober warnings ut-
tered by Milch that the fully loaded military version would
probably not fly faster than miles per hour, with a range
more like nine hundred than thirteen hundred miles.
He had no choice, because he had found on his return to
Berlin that Hitler had issued a public ultimatum to Czechoslo-
vakia, set to expire at : .. on September .