Eagle Day
Göring opened the battle with attacks on airfields, radar stations, shipping convoys and aircraft factories on June 30. It was more a private war of the Luftwaffe while the other branches of the service and Hitler were watching indifferently. The first phase which lasted through July is regarded as the "Channel phase". Colonel Fink, Commodore of the bomber group 2 was appointed "Kanalkampfführer" (channel battle leader). He got support by two Stuka groups and a fighter squadron. It was the objective to weaken the British fighters by a war of attrition. Dowding wanted to prevent this by all means. Even at the expense of sunken ships. And the Luftwaffe waited for the true personal order to go into action for the large-scale attack.
With the "Führerweisung No 17" (order) Hitler gave Göring the possibility on August 1, 1940 to plan such a full-scale attack. "Eagle Day" was supposed to be the beginning of the end for the British on August 13. At least that was Görings desire. August 13, however, the original “Eagle Day”, turned into a disaster. Contrary to the meteorological forecast the weather was bad in the morning. Göring wanted to move but the order did not reach KG 2 Fink in Arras. As a result of the miscommunication were five downed and five further damaged aircraft were reported. Only in the afternoon the weather improved. The "Eagle Day" took place now anyway. The bomber attacks against the airfields cost more German casualties than they imagined. But in the long run the RAF also could not make good the losses despite the increasing production numbers. The attacks on the airfields were taking effect continuously, but depressingly slow
Within these weeks some of the fighter pilots on both sides became real "stars". The aces as they were called were promoted by the media to national heroes. The Luftwaffe had a few with enormous shooting numbers. There was for example Werner Mölders who got awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves for 40 shootings as first pilot of the air force. He crashed fatally on the flight to the mourning solemnities for Udet in November 1941. Adolf Galland had 52 shootings on his account at the end of the battle. Helmut Wick even obtained 56 Kills before he was shot down and drowned in the Channel.
On the English side the cult around the highest shooting numbers was not so prominent. The actual numbers were not high as in the case of the German pilots either. The Czech Josef Frantisec is regarded as best RAF pilot with 17 confirmed shootings, followed by Lacey (15), Carbury (15) Doe (15) and Gray (14).
The large-scale attack on the English aircraft plants so feared by Dowding started on September 4. During these attacks on the factories in Rochester and Brooklands
the readiness for action of the British fighters sank to a low. The Luftwaffe had no idea that the Fighter Command was close to collapse. To the contrary, they were so upset about the permanent increasing aircraft numbers that they could not imagine how badly the RAF pilots were suffering from stress