The Battle of Britain.

Today was probably the most significant day in the Battle of Britain as far as the North-East and No.13 Group Fighter Command were concerned; this is the day Kenton Bar bunker played its role in the Battle of Britain.
Thursday, 15th August 1940 was the day the Luftwaffe attempted to saturate the British Defenses. One of the many areas of attack was Luftflotte 5's flank attack on the east Coast; they met heavy opposition and suffered serious casualties, most of whom fell into the North Sea. Luftflotte 5 never attempted a flank attack again.
At Watnall the approach of 13 Groups first daylight raid was watched on the operations table with particular interest. With an hours warning the controller was able to put squadrons in an excellent position to attack, with 72 Squadron Spitfires in the path of the enemy off the Farne Islands and 605 Squadron over Tyneside. No. 79 and 607 were also put up, but while the latter was in the path of the raid, No 79 was too far north.
No 72 Squadron from Acklington was the first to make contact and it came as a distinct shock when the thirty materialized as I and III/KG 26 with sixty-five Heinkel 111s, and the entire I/ZG 76 from Stavanger with thirty-four Me 110s. After a brief pause in which to survey the two massive groups flying in V formation, Squadron-Leader E. Graham led No 72 straight in from the flank, one section attacking the fighters, and the rest the bombers. The Me 110s formed defensive circles, while the Heinkels split up. Some of them jettisoned their bombs and headed back to Norway, leaving several of their number in the sea. The separate parts of the formation finally reached the coast, one south of Sunderland and the other south of Acklington. No 79 intercepted the northern group over the water, while a flight from No 605 Squadron caught it over land. Most of the HEs fell harmlessly in the sea.
The group off Sunderland found No. 607 and 41 waiting for it and they too bombed to little effect, apart from wrecking houses. The raiders turned back to Norway, the Me 110s having already departed some minutes before. Of a total force of about 100, eight bombers and seven fighters were destroyed and several more damaged without British loss. The airfield targets such as Usworth, Linton on Ouse and Dishforth went unscathed. One Staffel of III/KG 26 lost five of its nine aircraft in the course of the fighting. Heavy anti-aircraft fire was directed against the bombers and one was brought down. Altogether, six of KG 30s Ju 88s were shot down, representing about 10% of the force sent over."
In all, the northern attackers lost sixteen bombers out of a serviceable Luftflotte 5 force of one hundred and twenty-three, and seven fighters of the thirty-four available."
The following is an account of August 15 1949 taken from Basil Collier's book 'The Battle of Britain'.
The main feature of the second days (August 15) programme was that, for the first time, fairly weighty attacks across the North Sea were to be made by General Stumpff's Luftflotte 5 in concert with further attacks in the south by Kesselring and Sperrle. This was an extremely risky innovation.... but he could scarcely refuse the part assigned to him. His orders were attack aerodromes near Newcastle and in Yorkshire, and he had roughly sixty-five Heinkel 111s, fifty Junkers 88s and thirty-five Messerschmitt 110s with which to do it.
The 110s were far too few to escort a hundred and fifteen bombers, and had barely the endurance to cross the North Sea in both directions. Making the best of a bad job, he fitted them with supplementary fuel-tanks; ordered them to fly without rear-gunners to compensate for the added weight; sent them to Newcastle with the Heinkels; and ordered the faster and more modern Junkers 88s to fly to Yorkshire unescorted. It was a desperate gamble, but it might conceivably come off.
The RDF stations on the east coast picked up the Heinkels and their escort when they were still far out to sea. Their first estimate was that more than twenty aircraft were approaching, but later they raised the figure to more than thirty, and finally to more than fifty. The stations said, correctly, that the aircraft were flying in three distinct formations.
AVM Saul was less well known to the public than his colleagues to the south, whose forces were in the thick of the fighting through-out the battle. August 15 gave him his first chance of countering a big attack in daylight. In spite of the enormous area he had to cover, he made such good use of it that it also proved to be his last, for the Germans never repeated the experiment.
Saul's position at noon, when the Heinkels of Kampfgeschwader 26 and the Messerschmitt 110s of Zerstorergeschwader 76 were first detected miles away over the North Sea, was that he had three squadrons of Spitfires, one of Hurricanes and one of Blenheims in the two sectors which covered the north of England. Of the remaining eight squadrons which made up the resources of his group, four and a half were far away in Northern Ireland, Shetland and the north of Scotland.
To supplement the five squadrons he had immediately at hand, he could count only on two and a half squadrons of Hurricanes near the Firth of Forth and a squadron of Defiants near the Clyde. The Blenheims were no match even for long-range fighters, while the Defiants had suffered crippling losses in their last encounter with the Germans and were at least a hundred miles from any objective which Stumpff was likely to attack. Saul began by sending one of the four single-seater squadrons close at hand to meet the enemy well off the coast. At the same time he brought down a squadron of Hurricanes from the Firth of Forth to patrol the Tyneside - an almost unprecedented step. As the threat became more imminent he added the remaining three single-seater squadrons immediately available, keeping back only the, the Defiants, and a squadron and a half of s near the Forth. By this time correctly appreciating that he had the greater part of Stumpff's resources on his front, he nevertheless responded to a call for reinforcement from No 12 Group, on his southern flank, by parting with the Blenheims, his only uncommitted squadron within reach. Like Brand (Air Vice-Marshal Sir Q. Brand AOC of 10 Group) in face of Sperrle's threat on the 13th, at least he ran little risk of being caught by Stumpff with his aircraft on the ground.
Meanwhile, to seaward of the Farne Islands, the Spitfires of No 72 Squadron from Acklington were closing with Stumpff's escorted bombers at the rate of something like eight miles per minute. In the absence of a squadron-leader, they were led by Flight-Lieutenant Edward Graham, who thus stepped into the place of honour in one of the most spectacularly successful air combats of the war.Thirty miles off the coast, the squadron sighted the enemy - a hundred aircraft to their eleven. As the RDF stations had predicted, the Germans were flying in three formations - the bombers ahead and the fighters in two waves stepped up to the rear. Misled by the supplementary fuel tanks slung below the fighters, which looked like bombs, Graham and his pilots took the nearer wave for Junkers 88s.
Stumpff's armada was so vast in comparison with Flight Lieutenant Graham's little force that he hesitated for a moment, uncertain at what point and from what direction to attack it. Apparently unable to bear the suspense, one of his pilots asked whether he had seen the enemy. With a slight stutter which was habitual, he replied "Of course I've seen the b-b-b-bastards; I'm trying to w-w-w-work out what to do." The reply became famous through-out Fighter Command. He did not hesitate for long; The Spitfires had had plenty of time to gain height during their long flight from the coast, and were about three thousand feet above the enemy's mean height. Making the most of his advantage and of what corresponded to the weather-gauge, he decided to lead the squadron in a diving attack from up-sun, leaving each pilot free to choose his own target. Two-thirds attacked bombers or supposed bombers, the remaining third the second wave of fighters, correctly identified as 110s.
The results were startling. Jettisoning their external tanks, some of the 110s formed the usual defensive circle, while others dived almost to sea level and were last seen heading east. The bombers, less an indeterminate number destroyed by Graham's squadron, then split into two formations, each accompanied by some of the remaining fighters. One formation headed for Tyneside, apparently with the intention of bombing Saul's sector station at Usworth; the rest turned south-east towards two aerodromes at Linton on Ouse and Dishforth which they had been ordered to attack.
The first formation, engaged successively by the remaining squadron from Acklington, the Tyne guns and some of the Hurricanes which had come south from Scotland, dropped most of their bombs in the sea. The second, engaged by a squadron of Spitfires from Catterick, a Hurricane squadron from Usworth and the Tees guns, dropped theirs almost as ineffectively near Sunderland and Seaham Harbour. From first to last Saul's fighters, backed by the guns of the 7th Anti-Aircraft Division under Major-General R.B. Pargiter, destroyed eight Heinkels and seven 110s without suffering a single casualty.
Luftflotte 5 was finished in the daylight battle, apart from reconnaissance, and most of its bomber strength and some of its fighters were transferred to Luftflotte 2, based in France, towards the end of August.
Remarkably at the end of the battle, Air Vice-Marshal Saul was even able to lend No 12 Groups Air Vice Marshal Leigh-Mallory, his squadron of Blenheims to help in the defence of numerous airfields under attack. The Blenheims were lent even though Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory had squadrons nearer to him available to fight, than Air Vice-Marshal Saul had at the beginning of the action.

Exerts taken from The North East Diary.1939-1945. Roy Ripley and Bill Pears
Used by kind permission.