However, even after aircraft returned with battle damage that after tests confirmed cannon fire from below, it was not at first believed then seems to have been ignored.
It seems shocking that the Int Os and those above them refused to believe the eye-witness accounts of numerous crews - "vertical fire followed by destruction of a bomber", and even came up with the totally spurious concept of Scarecrows, rather than investigate the accounts of
Schrage Musik properly. A similar attitude was experienced by those Fighter Command pilots who first encountered the Fw 190 in 1941, but were told that the radial-engined aircraft which were decimating them were "just Hawk 75s which the Germans captured from the French". Did the hierarchy really believe that Hawk 75s, which had proved inferior to the Bf109E in 1940, would be used by the Germans on the Channel Front? And that, if the Germans did this, the H75 would suddenly be able to beat Spitfire Vs? Good to see those on the front line getting the support they needed from on high...some things never change...
