Читать книгу For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II - Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard - Страница 8
ОглавлениеThe Battle of Britain and the Blitz
‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ Winston Churchill
On 1 August 1940, Hitler, finally accepting that no compromise peace was possible with Britain, ordered the destruction of the Royal Air Force as a prerequisite to the invasion of Britain. So the great air offensive started in earnest on 13 August, commencing with attacks on fighter airfields and radar installations on the South Coast. By the end of August many aerodromes had been badly damaged and the heavy loss in fighter planes had become almost unsustainable. Pilots were very tired and morale was slipping. Goering then decided to switch his main effort to day attacks on London, which gave Fighter Command the respite needed to revitalise its effort in fulfilling and expanding its defensive and offensive capabilities. From the end of October 1940 the aerial Battle for Britain could be said to have finished in Britain’s favour. Hitler’s aim of destroying the RAF had become completely unattainable. Heavy German bombing of cities, with considerable damage and disruption, continued until 16 May 1941, then the air armadas were withdrawn to the East, where Hitler had another role awaiting them. The invasion of Britain was quietly shelved.
One of those who fought in the Battle of Britain was Alan Gawith, a New Zealander, who was accepted for a short service commission with the Royal Air Force and commenced training in the United Kingdom in June 1938:
‘I managed to complete my training and was posted to a Blenheim Night Fighter Squadron when all I really wanted was to get into a Hurricane or Spitfire Squadron. It was No 23 Squadron based at Wittering Airfield, not far from Peterborough. In many ways it was a pretty leisurely and enjoyable life, but I wasn’t what I would call the least bit well trained by the time the war started. Those months of September/October 1939 were busy months for me. I was a Pilot Officer, busy all during the day for long hours on the adjutant’s job and trying to get a bit of flying in, and I had become engaged to my New Zealand girlfriend a few weeks before the war started and we decided to get married because she was caught in England and couldn’t get home again. That meant getting the Station Commander’s permission, which was quite an experience, but he granted us permission and even went through and shouted [treated] us immediately after the wedding, on 4 October 1939. My wife had got herself a job as a landgirl on a farm not far away and she carried on with that and I carried on with my work.
Alan Gawith
My work as adjutant terminated at the end of October and the flying went on, mainly searchlight co-operation at night and training, practising, getting some hours in, getting experience during the daylight. Life was pretty busy, particularly because we had to keep crews on standby every night in case of enemy activity, which didn’t start up for many, many months. We were busy expanding, forming more squadrons and, with shortage of crews and aircraft, we were doing stretches of perhaps seven, eight and nine nights consecutively on standby in the hangar or flying. Not a great deal of spare time during the day after one had caught up with a bit of sleep, eaten and so on, and I didn’t see a great deal of my wife during that time, but as the winter wore on and the weather was getting colder I felt that I couldn’t leave her struggling with milking cows twice a day in those sort of conditions, so we got digs in the village of Wansford. I was living out from then on, which meant that I missed out on the mess life, which is half of the fun of the war really, and I had the extra responsibilities. However, we got by.
Nothing much happened until, oh, we got radar, airborne radar in June 1940, which was pretty useless but still we had to practise to try and make it work. It was in June 1940, I think, that we had our first combat as a Squadron, when both Flight Commanders, Spike O’Brien and Duke Willy, had combats and managed to shoot at two enemy aircraft, not using radar but by visual sightings. Unfortunately O’Brien’s aircraft got into a spin and he tried to get his air gunner out of the aircraft with difficulty and eventually got himself free, but the gunner had met the prop on the way out and was killed. I think we lost two aircraft that night, but I think we got two enemy aircraft so we were all square. It wasn’t a very satisfactory start to the Squadron’s war.
The Battle of Britain then came on and, of course, the Day Squadrons were thoroughly occupied. We were in No 12 Group, which was the backup group for Sir Keith Park’s 11 Group, which really fought the battle in the south. Our job then became care of the convoys around the coast of Norfolk. The Day Squadrons had been doing those patrols and the enemy were raiding the convoys quite regularly, sinking ships. We used to start before dawn and I can remember many occasions when we took off in the dark and flew up into the dawn, long before it was daylight on the ground. In some convoys we would often find a ship or two sinking but no enemy in sight. We patrolled for month after month. It wasn’t dangerous, simply because we never seemed to be there when the enemy was there and we couldn’t quite understand that, but there wouldn’t have been much point in patrolling at night.
On 13 August my son was born. I’d just got my wife established back at home from the hospital with our infant, and on 11 September I got a call to say that I was to report back to the Squadron immediately. The Squadron had been posted to Forde airfield, which we’d taken over from the Royal Naval Air Service just south of Arundel on the coast of Sussex. So I had to desert my new family, leave them in the tender care of the landlord and landlady, and disappear down to the South Coast where we landed on a very small airstrip about 800 yards long with our Blenheims, which were used to longer fields.
We hadn’t been established there very long before the attacks came in from the coast. The enemy would swoop in about dusk and machine-gun the camp. We lived in wooden huts whilst there, and we’d guard our aircraft. Two or three times we had those attacks and, of course, nothing much we could do about it. We were in the front line at last; there were one or two casualties and we had one or two aircraft destroyed, and we found what it was like to be under fire. You get machine-gun fire when you’re in the mess and you sort of burrow under the carpet – it’s as simple as that. Bullets whistling through these wooden walls made one duck. However, we survived those all right.
We saw the battle going on, the day battle up above, and we knew what the base squadrons were tackling. We didn’t know a great deal more than the civilian population; we could see what was going on, and we heard from pilots who came in and our pilots who visited base squadrons nearby, Tangmere Airfield and others. We knew, as the time went on, how grim things were; Fighter Command was strained to the limit. Sir Keith Park – he wasn’t Sir Keith then – was not getting the support he needed from his friend Leigh-Mallory to the north, who insisted on holding his squadrons back until he’d got them mounted into wings of three or five squadrons. The Hun doesn’t wait for that sort of nonsense. Park’s theory was to attack every time; even if he only had three aircraft, they would get out and do their best. It’s amazing how much a single attack by a small number of aircraft diving down through a lumbering flotilla of bombers, shooting down two or three of them on the way through, is effective in diverting the attack or splitting it up, and Park never missed the opportunity. He’d get aircraft from somewhere and make sure that the Hun got some sort of reception.
Of course, we were aware that everybody’s nerves were getting frayed when the attack on the airfields was at its height. We weren’t getting the same plastering as they were getting at the sectional airfields where the Day Squadrons were. Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Manston and others were getting it all the time. It was not the actual bombing so much as the constant day and night attacks, and nobody was getting any sleep. It was the exhaustion that was wearing out the aircrew, the ground crew, the controllers, the WAAF staff, everybody. Had that gone on for another week I don’t think Fighter Command would have survived, and there was nothing to stop the enemy coming across except Fighter Command’s air supremacy. However, it’s doubtful to me whether we had air supremacy, but at least with the help of radar and the system that had been set up by Dowding in the few years before the war, and the systems like the short service commissions getting in young fellows from around the Empire, then the British, mainly British, getting them trained just before the war, that was the only reason that Britain survived, I think, the Battle of Britain. It wouldn’t have survived if Hitler hadn’t made the mistake of switching the attack away from the airfields and concentrating on London; it gave the airfields a breathing space and the aircrews, everybody, time to get a little bit of sleep and catch up and get operational again.
Then I think it was just after that, when the Huns thought they had Fighter Command finished, that late in their raid a big wing from 12 Group arrived. When the German pilots saw this, their morale suffered accordingly. By this time the enemy had started night raids on London, and there was much more enemy night activity for the night fighter squadrons, and we were often out every night patrolling, more or less, across the track of the bombers, because radar hadn’t reached the stage where it was making too many interceptions and there was more chance of combat by visual sightings. There was one night, when we were patrolling at about 20,000 feet across Southampton or that area, and there was a huge blaze in the sky, it seemed like at least 100 miles to the north, and it was a good night, and what I was watching from that distance was the blitz on Coventry – we read about it next day.
Because of that, it was decided that the Squadron should mount layer patrols from 20,000 feet down to about 12,000 feet at intervals – four aircraft at intervals of about 3,000 feet. The first pilot off was the Sergeant Pilot, I was Number Two, the Squadron Commander, who was then Squadron Leader Haycock, was Number Three, and I forget who was Number Four, but it doesn’t matter because he didn’t take off. The weather started to close in and Sergeant Dann was first and I was listening to his report about how he was in cloud at 5,000 feet, 7,000 feet, and the controller kept asking him and he kept saying he was still in cloud, and he got up to about 10,000 feet. Sergeant Dann obviously wasn’t happy, so the controller called him back to base and asked me where I was. I said I was at 10,000 feet by then and still in dense cloud; he kept me going up and reporting periodically while he tried to get Sergeant Dann down.
Meantime the Squadron Leader had taken off. He listened to the radio, and kept under the cloud, which was about 3,000 feet when we started and was down to about 1,500 feet; then the Squadron Leader decided the sensible thing was to get back on terra firma, so he landed. Then the controller was fully occupied trying to get Sergeant Dann down, but as there were hills in the region of several hundred feet not far from base, the controller couldn’t get him to come below the cloud to land. I had plenty of time to think, well, I’ve still got to land, and when I got to 17,000 feet and reported that I was still in dense cloud, no sign of the moon, he called me in also. I acknowledged and, as we were flying over the South Coast, I just pointed my nose to France and kept going until I got below the cloud.
By that time the cloud was about 600 feet, so I just kept coming in to the north. I kept a bit to the right of the airfield because I thought, well, if I get very far right I will see the White Cliffs of Dover, even on a cloudy night – in moonlight you’d see those cliffs and have time to do something about it. When the controller asked me where I was, I told him I’d made landfall to the east of base. He was still trying to get Sergeant Dann down; by this time I think he’d got him below the cloud base, so I kept heading for the base and if the weather was descending fairly rapidly I thought, well, I’m not going to muck about with the circuits when I get there – I’m going in to land. As luck would have it, Sergeant Dann got there just ahead of me, and when he was landing I was sort of coming over the eastern boundary of the airfield and Dann called out, reporting that he had landed. I didn’t wait for any acknowledgement from the controller or anything else, I said, “Get off the bloody runway because I’m right on your tail,” and I landed within half a minute probably of Dann landing. He’d moved off all right – we didn’t collide on the ground. The weather was such that one did not feel like staying up there any longer than was absolutely necessary.
Well, the patrols carried on until December 1940, when No 23 Squadron was selected to do Intruder Patrols.’
Robert Hugh Barber was serving in the Metropolitan Police Force when, in 1939, he joined the Royal Air Force:
‘Having completed my training I was sent as a Pilot Officer to Hawarden where I learned to fly Spitfires and Hurricanes and was posted to 46 Squadron at Digby; 46 Squadron was in 12 Group, and we were there till towards the end or middle of August 1940, when we moved from Digby down to the North Weald’s Wing to an airfield, one of the satellite airfields. We operated from there and, on 4 September 1940, the CO told me to be the Weaver, who watches the rear of the squadron. We set off on a flight and I could hear a lot going on on the RT, and as I went down the sun I could see it was clear, but I was suspicious, so I turned very quickly, and as I turned I saw a 109 approaching me. Before I could take much action there was a bang on the side of the plane and the plane was hit and my right leg slightly. I immediately dived and was covered with glycol, because he’d hit the glycol tank and it came out and it was all over me, hot and sticking. I lost considerable height and finally managed to sort of wipe the screen a little and see exactly where he was. I didn’t see any more of him but I’d lost a lot of height, so I decided that the only thing I could do was to bring it down with wheels up in a field somewhere.
So I looked around for a field, finally saw a field and landed the plane successfully with wheels up. Unfortunately, with no engine, the impact was very considerable and I was laid out. I don’t remember anything of that particular moment, but the next thing I remember I was getting out of the plane and a man was walking across the field towards me. This gentleman took hold of my parachute and carried it for me, and he led me over to his car and I was taken into Maldon in Essex to a lady doctor’s. She had a look at me and rested me up, but she had to leave and left me alone and, in the meantime, I phoned up North Weald and spoke to them, and they said, “Will you be all right for tomorrow?’
I said, “Well, I’m a bit shaken up but I should be OK.”
They said, “OK, we will send for you.”
So they sent an open-flap wagon down to pick me up and I bounced in this with my parachute all the way back to North Weald and was immediately taken to the MO. The MO looked at me and said, “I don’t like the look of you – I’m taking you down to St Margaret’s Hospital, Epping, right away,” and he took me to St Margaret’s, where I was immediately taken in hand. Exactly what they did I don’t quite know, but they eventually told me I had fractured three cervical vertebrae in my neck and I had broken my jaw in three places.
At hospital I was eventually picked up and taken to Halton, the RAF Hospital, and after a spell there was sent down to Torquay where the RAF Convalescent Hospital was. It was the old Palace Hotel taken over by the RAF. I had a long time to reflect in the hospital and was there with one of our most famous fighter pilots who won the VC, Nicholson – it was announced whilst we were in hospital. In my thoughts, after my being shot down, I’d wondered if I was the only flat-footed policeman who’d been walking the streets in 1938 in London in the Metropolitan Police and was, two years later, a Flying Officer in the RAF, flying aeroplanes 20,000 feet above that fair city.
After getting out of hospital eventually, I was posted to 10 Group Headquarters as an Assistant Controller. I quite enjoyed this job, seeing the fair ladies pushing discs all over the table down below, but my main purpose in life had been to join the Air Force to fly aeroplanes, so I was very keen to get back on flying. Although my medical category had been considerably lowered and I was off flying, I couldn’t wait till I could have another medical and finally get back on it again. I succeeded, but not on operations.’
Back from the ‘Phoney War’ in France, Flying Officer James Hayter had some difficulty locating his Squadron:
‘Eventually, after landing at about three aerodromes, we located our unit. We were then given an opportunity of either going on to Wellingtons or into Fighter Command, and seeing as I’d been shot down the odd time in the Fairey Battle, I thought this was a bit of a dead loss. I volunteered to go into Fighter Command.
I joined 615 Squadron and they gave us about five or six hours conversion on to a Hurricane, and then I went to 605 Squadron which was stationed at Croydon – that was towards the end of the Battle of Britain. Things were fairly hectic – we’d do sometimes two, three, four trips a day. I was shot down again over Kent and landed in Major Cazalet’s place – who I understood was England’s champion squash player and an MP – when he was having a cocktail party. I was slightly wounded and went back to my unit, and I was flying again in another three or four days.
When they had the big formations at night, Heinkels and 88s coming in, we were still flying formations of a number of fighters which the Germans had showed us not to use. Invariably, if you got into a dogfight or if you were attacking a formation, everybody got split up, so actually that formation was the most stupid thing we ever used. The Germans had showed us how to fly and attack but we didn’t learn. We had some big formations of 300 or 400 aircraft coming in, and we’d attack a formation and it would be a shambles. The formation that we were flying in was completely useless as everybody would break up into their own little thing.
At that stage I remember going to our Intelligence Officer and saying, well, look the claims were absolutely outrageous. There were some very, very good pilots in the aeroplanes – but I think it’s history now, and I suppose it was to keep the morale up, maybe, but we had a whole lot of glamour boys who over-claimed and this is proven now. I think the thing that impressed me most was that, while there were some individuals who were most likely the genuine scorers, there was a whole lot of people there that weren’t.
I think that what impressed me quite a lot in England was that when we arrived we’d come from all sorts of walks of life and were pretty rough, I suppose, socially, and a lot of these so-called English gentlemen looked pretty anaemic, weak physically; but when it came down to the real nitty-gritty, the anaemic-looking Pom was most likely the bravest of the lot. Of course they had something to fight for, it was their country, but what did impress was that these very, very nice chaps were tough.
We went through until we finished the Battle of Britain. We went to Scotland for a spell and then I joined 611 Squadron at Hornchurch where I did another tour on Spitfires, and then we were sent for a spell to Prestwick where Peter Townsend was the Wing Commander, Flying. He had a rose garden, and one night I had a nice little sports car and I tried to drive through the front doors of the Officers’ Mess and couldn’t make it, and backed out, but unfortunately I backed into Peter’s rose garden. Then I got my immediate posting to the Middle East.’
Another New Zealander, John Gard’ner, was accepted for a short service commission in the RAF and was under training in Britain when the war started:
‘On getting my wings I was posted as a Pilot Officer to 141 Squadron at Grangemouth, where I trained on and operated Blenheims. Our job in the Blenheims was to patrol in the Firth of Forth area, and as I recall the Germans were coming across from Norway or somewhere in that direction and I believe their target was the Forth Bridge and, of course, going on down to the Glasgow area. After a few weeks of flying the Blenheims – rather unsuccessfully as far as any action with Germans were concerned, and during this time we lost a number of aircraft, just plane crashes at night-time – we were told we were going to be re-equipped with the new Boulton Paul Defiant aircraft. Now those of us who had been on the Blenheims had to be now converted on to single-engine-type aircraft, and they brought in an old Fairey Battle. It was on this Fairey Battle that all of us pilots, who had been flying the Blenheims, were converted from twin-engined on to single-engined aircraft. Again, just circuits and bumps, and because the old Battle took so long to have its flaps come up and its wheels come up, we flew them just round the airfield wheels and flaps down until it was considered that we were well enough flying on single-engine ones to get into the first Defiants.
In the meantime we’d heard that No 264 Squadron, which was down south, they’d had their Defiants for some time before us and in the first few days they were doing extraordinarily well. The Germans didn’t know what they were and were being shot down rather rapidly by 264 Squadron. When the time came for 141 Squadron to get into the action, No 264 Squadron had been “sorted out” and the Germans actually had decimated it. We went down to take over from where 264 Squadron left off.
John Rushton Gard’ner (left)
We were posted to the airfield which is now Gatwick – it was a little grass strip quite near to Biggin Hill I think – and again we were put on to day flying training out of this little grass airfield there. It was a one-squadron airfield as I remember it. Anyway, this was day flying – we were just doing day training – and as soon as we were considered to be experienced enough we were sent down to Hawkinge for the first of our operational sorties. We flew daily; we flew out from Gatwick each morning down there and went at night-time back to this airfield.
The first patrols of the Defiant in daylight were not successful in any way – no fighter actions occurred – but on the third patrol which I was involved in we were sent off – I2 aircraft were ordered off. Nine of us got airborne because three of them turned out, well, had trouble, either engine trouble or trouble before they got to the take-off point, and didn’t get airborne. We took off and had got to some, I think it was, about 7,000 or 8,000 feet when we were jumped by 109s coming down out of the sun behind us. In those days we flew in formations of three, and I was tail-end Charlie in the third section.
I vividly recall what appeared to be white streaks of light going through my cockpit and out the front of the aeroplane and the smell of cordite and stuff, and, glancing to my left, I saw aeroplanes in flames and suddenly I realised that my engine was just stopping on me. I found that the rudder was loose, there was no control over the rudder, and I could wobble the joystick. Anyway, I thought I’m going to get out of here quick, so as far as I recall I sort of pulled the nose over and dived for the sea, which was down below me, thinking, “God, is that chap on my tail?”
Anyway, I just went down and down and I found I still had a measure of control. The engine had just stopped dead, and as far as I can remember the prop was dead in front of me. Anyway, I got down and I was able to level off and I could see a naval vessel way ahead and I thought, gosh, I don’t know what the speed was then, but I seemed to be going at quite a fast speed, and I thought, well, I’m going to try and land beside that naval vessel. Anyway, I overshot it and I went on and on and on and my speed was dropping off and dropping off, and finally I got to the point where I felt that at any minute now I was going to have to make a landing. Now, why I did it I don’t know, but I undid my straps, thinking I’m just going to plop on to the water and get out quickly. The result of that was, when the aeroplane finally stalled on to the water, the next thing I knew I was in Stygian blackness and I was in the water.
Anyway, I realised that I had to get up. I got out of the cockpit – I must have been knocked out just for a fraction – and I managed to struggle up to the surface which seemed a helluva long way up. Anyway, I came out of the surface and I realised that I’d been hit on the head; I felt a bit sore on the head, but otherwise I felt OK.
During this sortie, immediately after I knew I’d been hit by the enemy from behind, I had no response from my gunner – I’d heard no shooting from the gunner, my gunner sitting in the back there, and I presumed at the time that he must have been hit, because whilst I had armour plating behind my head, I knew that all he had to protect him was his own big gun turret. So when we went down and into the water, I did worry about him, but then he didn’t appear. I’d landed beside another little naval vessel – I think it was just a little torpedo boat of some sort which came roaring over and picked me up – and I recall again seeing my parachute, which I’d been sitting on, floating on the water, and I’d kicked off my lovely big black leather flying boots and they appeared to me to be floating almost side by side on the water. I suggested to the chaps who were picking me up, please go and pick up my boots, but they ignored me.
At this time I realised that I’d had a gash on my forehead. I was wounded in the sense that blood was pouring down in front of my eyes and I kept seeing blood, then I can’t recall much after that. I do know that the next thing I found myself in was a hospital in Dover, a small public hospital there, and there I came to again with stitches up the back of my head and stitches on my forehead and so forth, but otherwise unharmed. Thinking back on it, I realise, I think, that what got me on the back of the head was the fact that some bullets or something had hit that armour plating and had shattered something and had just torn the back of my head.
Anyway, I stayed in that hospital in Dover, and actually it was beautiful weather and I was lying in a bed and I could watch some of the battle going on and I was able to look out and see blue sky and the vapour trails of aircraft, whilst battles were going on just over that narrow part of the Channel where Dover is. I stayed in the hospital, I think it was about 10 days, and I was posted off on sick leave and I had the next two months on sick leave, where I was joined by another New Zealander who, unfortunately, was killed later on in the war, but he and I were on sick leave together. We had a marvellous time under the auspices of the Lady Frances Ryder Scheme. We went to Northern Ireland and even into Southern Ireland, and I stayed in some of the stately homes of Britain and it really was an interesting and exciting time of my life.
However, good things come to an end and I was posted back to 141 Squadron, by which time they had been converted on to night fighting. After my sick leave period I reported back to the Squadron at Gatwick. Now at Gatwick we were on to night fighting, but at some stage after that the Squadron was moved over to Gravesend. But I know most of my night fighter work, done on the Defiant, was out of Gatwick, and it was during this period that London was being heavily bombed and we in the Defiants were sent up over London night after night. I recall vividly that the night of the really big fire of London, I happened to be airborne that night and I was being controlled by some control unit from the ground, who was getting most frustrated, as I was, because he kept telling me I was right alongside enemy aircraft, and neither I nor my gunner could see any enemy aircraft there, and during this whole time when I was airborne and I had many, many operational flights out of Gravesend, but I personally never saw a thing.’
David Hunt left his studies at Birmingham University to take a short service commission in the RAF, and during his training the war started. He has recalled that:
‘As the threat of invasion loomed closer, some of the single-engined pilots, having now acquired their wings, were posted direct to squadrons with no time left for operational training courses. I was posted to Hendon and no one appeared to know our purpose, least of all ourselves. It was an interesting time during the fall of the Low Countries, with Sabena and KLM Dakotas flying into that historic Hendon airfield. Parked around the perimeter track were these venerable Imperial Airways biplanes, Hengist and Horsa. We spent our time watching these arrivals and inspecting the ancient aeroplanes with their cane and bamboo “pomp-forming” splendour, redolent of Empire.
David Hunt
Eventually planes started arriving, brought in by Air Transport Auxiliary pilots, including some lady pilots – a Magister, two Masters and numerous Spitfire Mark 2s. We sat in the cockpits of the Spitfires, which felt as small as Tiger Moths, and wondered if we should ever be able to fly these sleek, powerful machines. Later we found that they handled as easily as Tiger Moths, with a few additional complications like flaps and retractable undercarriages and massive instrument panels.
Our spell in wonderland had to end sometime, and after the fall of France and Dunkirk the war-torn remnants of the Allied Air Striking Force Squadrons returned from France. It wasn’t long before we were flying, first the Magister, which is a light open-cockpit, club-style plane, then the Masters, real gentlemen’s planes, and at last the great day, the first flight in a Spitfire. This had to be at Northolt with its single long runway. Everything went well and it called for celebration.
During June all the Spitfires were removed by the ATA pilots and replaced with Hurricanes, because Spitfires were in short supply, and we grew to like the Hurricanes. Another thing happened in my life at this time: I got married and we managed a honeymoon of a few days down at Midhurst, Sussex.
On 14 July we were posted to Northolt where our training went on apace, including formation flying and air-to-air firing at Sutton Bridge with a target towed by a Hawker Henley. Air-to-ground firing was at Dengie Flats in East Anglia. One amusing experience was RT practice – that’s Radio Telephony. We were taken by coach to an Uxbridge football ground complete with stadium, where we pedalled around in low gear on El Dorado ice-cream tricycles which had been converted for blind flying with screens around and magnetic compasses and RT sets and headphones. We had to carry out the orders received over the RT to “fly” on various courses using the appropriate call signs and terms such as “Fly victor 120”, “angels 20” and “yellow through”, “pipsqueak in”, “scramble”, “pancake”, “tallyho”, “under bandits” – all that sort of thing.
In July 1940 operational flights were becoming an everyday occurrence with convoy patrols and interception of enemy sorties. The Squadron was operating from forward bases at Hawkinge near Dover and Tangmere near Portsmouth, as required, and intercepted small formations attacking the ports and radar installations. The Squadron was now at readiness from an hour before dawn until an hour after dusk for most of the time. The Squadron RT call sign was “Alert” and my section was Yellow section.
At this point I should say something about the Hurricane, powered by the Rolls Royce Merlin of a 1,030 brake horsepower. Its top speed at 15,000 feet was over 300 miles an hour, and the three-bladed propeller converted this power into thrust, and the aircraft ceiling was 30,000 feet. An optical gunsight projected an aiming ring and crosswires on to a glass screen behind the bullet-proof windscreen. She was armed with eight Browning 303 machine-guns with 2,660 rounds of ammunition, which could all be fired off in three or four short bursts of 4 seconds each. The pilot’s face-mask was plugged into oxygen and RT connections. After bonding and earthing was carried out by a radio expert, the RT was as good as the ordinary telephone. The cine camera-gun recorded the action when the guns were fired.
In early August the Squadron had the honour of escorting the Prime Minister on a tour of the East Coast Defences. Next day the Squadron left Northolt for its forward base at Tangmere; three sections were scrambled with a big contact over St Catherine’s Point. This was an attempt by the Jerries to put one radar station, our radar station, out of action. The raiders were driven off with losses to both sides; we lost our Flight Commander and two other pilots. The great German “Eagle” attack was due to start on 10 August, but was delayed by bad weather. This was aimed at destroying coastal fighter airfields and radar stations.
A few days later the Squadron returned to Tangmere, but before landing we were vectored to the Portsmouth area to repel a raid by 500 enemy aircraft. Our new Squadron Commander, Squadron Leader Harkness, led us straight in to drive off the big formations of Heinkel 111s, Dornier 17 Flying Pencils and a fighter cover of Messerschmitt 109s and 110s. The Squadron shot down several aircraft and we lost one pilot; another pilot lost a finger which had to be amputated.
We left Northolt for our new sector at Debden where the Station Commander, Wing Commander Fullergood, welcomed the Squadron and explained the characteristics of Sector F. After settling in at Debden the Squadron moved to its forward base at Martlesham Heath near Ipswich. Yellow section was scrambled early at 0622 hours on the southbound convoy escort patrol off the East Coast. It dawned a bright sunny day as usual that summer, and it wasn’t long before we saw a Dornier Flying Pencil sneaking in for an attack. Cockram yelled over the RT, “Bandit tallyho!” and roared into the attack, and we struggled to keep up with him and had the satisfaction to see the Dornier limping away after the attack, quite out of control with its undercarriage obviously damaged. As we tailed the plume of smoke we resisted the temptation to chase him out to sea and stayed with the convoy.
In the late afternoon the Squadron was scrambled and we intercepted a raid of German bombers and fighter escort proceeding up the Thames Estuary in box formation, also accompanied by top cover fighters several thousand feet above the main formation. It was an awesome feeling to realise that there was nothing between this large formation and the City of London except our little squadron. However, we stalked them steadily for a minute or two, keeping well ahead, until the time came and we just had to attack. As we closed in to attack, the bombers started to move into the sun and split up into smaller formations, jettisoning their bombs all over Kent and Sussex. At that moment the top cover came screaming down out of the sun, hotly pursued by Spitfires. All hell let loose in a series of dogfights all over the sky. A formation of Stukas decided to make a break for it, having shed their load; I helped them on their way with the occasional squirt from my guns as they gradually came into range. I must have caused some damage as one dropped out of formation. I closed in for a good stern attack. Smoke started to stream as he dived down steeply, dropping a few bits as he went. I turned back towards the main scrap but by that time the day was done, the battle over and the sun dipping in the sky.
The next day the Squadron received orders to fly to the forward aerodrome at Martlesham Heath and to stay there for several days using 17 Squadron’s ground staff. We carried out convoy patrols. Blue section intercepted an unidentified aircraft; after a few warning shots the aircraft, a friendly Blenheim, gave the correct identification signal for the day. More convoy patrols next day, and Green section flushed out a Dornier 17 which was stalking the convoy. He put up a spirited defence with his rear guns and did some damage to our lads. He disappeared into cloud trailing some smoke. On their next convoy patrol Green section had better luck and destroyed a Dornier 215.
Another day of intensive flying followed and we had the Squadron at readiness all day from dawn till dusk with continuous precautionary patrols and convoy duties. This state of affairs was to last until 26 August when Debden was bombed, killing three airmen of 257 Squadron and damaging hangars badly and many other buildings, including the Sergeants’ Mess.
The whole Squadron was scrambled at 0830 hours at the end of the month on 31 August. In the Clacton area at 18,000 feet a formation of 50 Messerschmitt 110s was attacked and they went into defensive circles, each plane covering the next one’s tail. I attacked one ring from the reverse direction in which they were turning, which must have put the fear of God up them, and me too. One of them dropped out of the formation, smoking from both engines, and made for the coast. I pursued him out to sea, past the Dengie Flats, filling him with some final bursts, and roared back to Martlesham in a power dive of 450 miles an hour plus. In these late stages of the battle there had been little contact with the rest of the Squadron. One of our pilots was killed and another one shot down in flames. At that stage the Jerries gave Debden another drubbing, but this time there weren’t any casualties.
After two days of patrols, the Squadron was scrambled from Martlesham with orders to orbit Chelmsford. On that day my aircraft had been taken into the workshop for maintenance. I had an earlier mark Hurricane with fabric-covered wings and non-self-sealing tanks, and when the scramble came over the field telephone she wouldn’t start. The whole Squadron took off and there I was still on the ground with a dead prop, but I was determined and 5 minutes later we had her going and I took off to join the Squadron. I’d only just closed with the formation when there was a terrific concussion with coloured lights flashing all around me. In a moment the fuel tanks and the cockpit became an inferno, but I knew I had to get out quick and I reached up to open my hood but it had jammed tight. I struggled and, putting my feet up on the instrument panel, chopped it open with an air axe and ripped off my safety harness and helmet and jumped. I should say that my father’s war effort was the production of this air axe and the ARP axe, and they were insulated to withstand a high voltage. One of them saved my life on that occasion.
I pulled the ripcord without delay and felt the satisfying jerk as the canopy opened. Everything went quiet, save for a gentle flutter from the parachute. The Squadron droned away into the distance. It took me about half an hour to come down. As I floated closer, I could hear cars, people shouting, “There he goes.” I came down in a Brigadier Brazier Craig’s garden in Stock near Chelmsford, narrowly missing a glasshouse of grapevines by bumping into a tree trunk on the way down. There I sat on the ground with sheets of skin hanging and flapping around me and all my sleeves and trouser legs burned off, just my rank stripes hanging limply from my wrists.
My plane had crashed into a railway embankment near Margaretting and was burning fiercely and ammunition was exploding. Onlookers held up my parachute to shield me from the bright sun – I couldn’t find a comfortable position to be in. Under my instructions they managed to remove my parachute harness and my Mae West lifejacket with the Croix de Guerre painted on it.
I was told an ambulance was on its way. I said, well, I couldn’t get under the anaesthetic quick enough. I must have had morphine. When the ambulance came they arrived in such a hurry that they knocked the gatepost down. By that time I was in the Brigadier’s living room on the sofa, offered brandy and all I wanted was water. I remembered no more until I woke up in a hospital bed after a cleaning-up operation. I was covered from head to foot with a dye called Kelly’s Blue. My arms were soaked for hours at a time in a saline solution to soften up the bandages. My wife, she spent almost all her time by my side, but I was pretty low and miserable.
After some weeks Archie McIndoe called in to see me and asked if I’d like a transfer to Queen Victoria Cottage Hospital. I placed myself in his hands and I was transferred and admitted to the Kindersley Ward under the care of Sister Hall. After a day or two I was moved out on to the balcony and joined by other charred pilots, Richard Hillary, Tony Tollemache, Geoff Page, Ian McPhail, Geoff Noble, Roy Lane and Smith Barry. We soon took over the ward, which had been geriatric.
Archie fitted me out with new nose and eyebrows, new eyelids, upper and lower, during which time I had plaster casts over my eyes and wandered about the ward on dead reckoning, reinforced by directions from all sides. I had Tiersch and pinch grafts and during the course of the operations it was also discovered that I had some cannon shell fragments in my right shoulder, which until then, when extracted, had not wanted to heal up. Archie’s new saline bath treatment helped to heal the third degree burns on my arms and legs and by Christmas 1940 I was allowed out, after much pleading to go home on leave. I must have been in and out of Queen Victoria Cottage Hospital for six months between ops, but I was fortunate compared to many.
Archie came to see me before the ops and showed me photographs of myself before the burns and said, “How would you like it?”
I replied, “That’s all right, but I might have the nose a bit bigger.”
Archie would do his rounds of the wards accompanied by his team and as soon as he entered the ward it was rather like a visit by Royalty. The general tone went up straight away accompanied by smiles and laughter; indeed it was as good as a tonic.
The Guinea Pig Club was started almost as a joke when one of the patients was heard to observe that we were being treated like guinea pigs to improve Archie’s technique. The reply came back smartly,“ Good name for a club, old boy.” This was the start of the club and Archie was the obvious choice for Chief Guinea Pig.’
The perspective of the air-gunner in fighter squadron aircraft in the battle is conveyed by James Walker, who joined the RNZAF and was seconded to the RAF. He arrived in Britain in May 1940 where he qualified as an air-gunner with the rank of Sergeant:
‘I was posted to City of London Auxiliary Squadron 600, which was stationed at Manston. I arrived there in the middle of an air raid and I witnessed combat between a Spitfire and a Messerschmitt 109, which the Spitfire got the better of, and the Messerschmitt 109 crashed in front of our eyes as we were driving along to the Station, so that was our baptism of fire, as it were. Arriving at 600 Squadron I was met and introduced and I was the only New Zealander there, which was quite a novelty to them, and I was treated rather well and everybody was very friendly. I had my first flight in a Bristol Blenheim, a training flight, and I think the second day or the third day there we really experienced the might of the German Air Force. We were having lunch in the Sergeants’ Mess when the bombing raid took place, which was so unexpected; we had no warning whatsoever, and I remember a concerted dive under the tables. The peacetime Warrant Officers, who at that time had rather looked down on us as jumped-up sergeants without any experience, they were all levelled to the same grade under these tables and it was quite amusing to see these Warrant Officers and us jumped-up sergeants in the same situation.
James Ian Bradley Walker
So, after that more precautions were taken and the air raid sirens became more operational and we did get some warning in the future raids. The first raid they concentrated on the hangars and there was major damage. How many planes were lost I do not remember, but I know that there was quite substantial damage done. The runways were put out of action but were quickly re-instated, the holes being filled up. That was the first raid that Manston had experienced and was the start of many.
We at that time were a night fighter squadron and we were engaged in defensive operations mostly over Southern England, London especially, as London then became the target, the main target for the German Air Force. The fires were burning, the docks were hit; the Germans needed no navigation, they just had to fly over the Channel and the fires identified their target for them. We had very little success, in fact no success in tracking the German bombers, although we had the earliest form of radar, which was operating quite well, but we found that because the German bombers were faster than we were, we had no chance of making contact because they were dropping their bombs and then hightailing it back to the Continent.
But then we received Beaufighters. Beaufighters had an improved radar on them and some success was achieved. I did not experience any success, although we made contact but we were unable to gain sufficient closeness of range to open fire at any time. From then on the raids increased on our own aerodrome. One air raid shelter was hit with great loss of life, including WAAFs, English girls; quite a number of them were killed and we spent quite a lot of time in the air raid shelters.
Then on one occasion I was dining, lunch I think it was, in the mess and we were called to immediate readiness and we had to travel quite a distance. I had by that time obtained a bicycle and I rode this bicycle across the aerodrome at the time when, I think it was three Messerschmitt 110s were dive-bombing the aerodrome. However, I managed to arrive at the readiness point but the aerodrome had been damaged so much that no one was able to take off. Fortunately one of the Messerschmitt 110s was brought down by ground fire and that was a rather horrific sight because it crashed in the vicinity of one of the hangars and the crew were all killed. That evening, when we were taking off for a patrol, as we were driving out to our aircraft the cranes were removing the 110 and the dead bodies were very apparent, and we at that time found that rather traumatic, seeing these bodies.
We took off on our patrol. We patrolled the London area with the fires so bad in London that it was hard to believe that the city could survive. We maintained these patrols night after night and also enduring the many air raids on Manston aerodrome, which eventually became so bad – the aerodrome was damaged so badly, the hangars, the runways were put out of action – that it was decided to evacuate Manston completely.
We moved then inland to Redhill, Hornchurch and various other stations, which we operated on for the remainder of the Battle of Britain.’
Norman Ramsay joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve and, when war broke out, qualified as a pilot and was posted to his first squadron as a Sergeant Pilot converting directly from Harvards to Spitfires:
‘Here I was given a couple of rides in a Master in the back seat, which is about the same angle as the Spit coming in to land because the slower you get the higher the nose gets – you can’t see forward, you’ve got to look out forward and to the side. I got the general idea and I was pushed in a Spitfire and took off. In those days we had to pump the undercarriage up, and the elevator controls were very, very sensitive, so you had to change hands, take your hand off the throttle to hold the joystick in your left hand and pump with your right hand. It was very difficult not to pump and equally weave up and down in the sky with the stick; as you were pumping forward you tended to move the stick forward at the same time. However, I eventually got it all together in the air and when I turned round and went back, it had taken me so long I couldn’t even see the airfield. So I flew back on a reciprocal and found it and after, I think, I made one approach and overshot and then came in and landed, that was it.
Norman Hugh Donald Ramsay
After that they took me for a bit of formation flying and that sort of thing, and then one day they said, “Well, we’re thinking of going over to France this afternoon.” By this time of course Dunkirk was over and we were isolated. “Pop over there, Ramsay, and go and see what the weather’s like over there.”
So I took off and I wasn’t at all keen on it, I can tell you; it seemed rather a lonely affair going across the Channel on your own and not knowing what to expect when you got to the other side. Anyway, I crossed over to France and nobody shot at me; obviously I couldn’t fly very high else I would have been shot at, but I was fairly low and I had a look around and I could see that it was fairly clear so I didn’t go as far as I was supposed to go, but I just turned round and came back. Nipped back across. I was very pleased when I crossed over the coast again, being on my own, and of course I couldn’t see England, just set a northerly heading and eventually it turned up and I recognised where I was and I got back to the Squadron.
So that afternoon I had my first sweep over France, which I was quite interested to see, you know, the fields and colours and all this sort of stuff. That was my introduction there and then, of course, that stopped very quickly, because then they started to come in over England and we were kept mainly confined to fighting over England and over the Channel. I remember once, when we climbed out over the Channel, it was a hazy day, lovely, it was sort of a marvellous summer that year – a lovely hazy sunny day, and there was a bit of cloud about and we were climbing up over the Channel and I looked behind. We flew in a section of three in those days, and looking back when we were out in battle formation, which is flying out and wider so you’re not in close formation, I saw three aircraft and I thought, oh good, they must have scrambled another section.
The next time I looked behind there was a great big Iron Cross on a 109 and I knew instantly that I had one right behind me, so I rammed the stick hard fully forward and hard over to the left, and I just about started to move downwards when there was a huge bang and I’d been hit. The shell went into the engine and glycol streamed back and I was way out over the sea. I thought, my God if I catch fire, which mostly you did; fortunately I didn’t, and I got into a huge spiral going down and eventually looked back and could see I wasn’t being followed, so straightened up. I couldn’t make out which coast I could see in the distance was England, so I thought, well, there’s nothing for it, the next coast that comes round I’m going towards that – if it happens to be France, well, I’m a prisoner and that’s it. As it so happened it turned out I was east of Dover – I recognised it and it was pure luck. The reason why I had to do this was because the compass was spinning and I couldn’t see the sun to get a bearing of which way to fly, north or south. Anyway I was lucky, it was England, and I glided in and I realised I was east of Dover – we’d taken off from Hawkinge near Dover. I glided back and was going to do a wheels-up landing, but then I suddenly realised I had plenty of height and was quite all right, so selected wheels down and blew them down and locked them. I hadn’t time to pump them down so used the emergency air bottle and landed and taxied in. I went down after I’d turned and taxied and just swung off the grass field – it was a grass field, had no runways – and climbed out of the aircraft and went to Air Traffic Control to go and report in, which I did. Walked back and then eventually I met the CO, who came up and said, “I’ve been looking for you, I’ve been searching for you down in the water. Number Three went down in flames.”
That was that, so we went back and had a look at my aeroplane and he said, “Well, we’ll have to wait here and I’ll get somebody to come and pick you up and bring you back to Biggin Hill,” which is where we were stationed then. Eventually a Blenheim came and I went off, had a look at my aircraft on the ground – which you’ll probably be interested to know is AB910, which is flying today and is preserved by the Battle of Britain Memorial Society.
So we had interesting times there, scrambles and stuff like that, and the most scrambles – take-offs to go and meet incoming enemy – was seven in one day. Then you get a bit tired after a while, even if you are only 20. You didn’t know anything else, there wasn’t anything to compare it with, so it was a way of life, it was just accepted and that’s all there was to it. There was no sort of bravery or stuff like this or stiff upper lip and that stuff – that was the way it was. It was a learning period and a fairly steep learning curve because if you didn’t, you didn’t live and that was quite simple. You didn’t realise, of course, it was that sort of thing, because as I say, and I can’t emphasise enough, if you’d never experienced anything like it before you just carry on. People come and go and that’s it. My first Squadron, which was 610, we lost a lot of people in fairly quick time; they were all experienced flyers, they were Royal Auxiliary Air Force characters, having been flying in their spare time for some years.
When, at last, we were pulled out of that scene, and as the casualties came in, I went to join 222 at Hornchurch. I remember my introduction, my first day there. We went down to dispersal – I was a sergeant of course – and a chap said, “Oh, you see that burnt patch over there by the railway line?” This is I think at Romford, which was our forward base, so I looked over in that direction and could see a brown patch, so he said, “That’s where Baxter went in – you’re his replacement.”
That was that. Baxter having been shot up and got back to the airfield, collapsed and obviously crashed coming into land, after being wounded, as I subsequently was told.
Eventually we went up to Coltishall, which is in Norfolk and near Norwich, where we used to do what we called Kipper Patrols, which was guarding the fishing-boats, because the Germans used to send the 88s and 110s over and bomb the fishing-ships or nip in and go and bomb the local ports, and that was our job to guard against such intruders. The next time I was shot up was night flying one night and a chap attacked me when I was coming in to land at night at Coltishall and I saw all this stuff going by. I didn’t know I was being attacked, and pretty shortly afterwards I saw the tracer going by me and ducked and weaved and got the aircraft down and swung off the runway, which was grass and lit with grid lamps, and swung through those into the darkness, switched off, had no lights, turned everything off. Climbed out and got away from the aircraft in case I was going to be strafed, but in actual fact it didn’t happen; he was driven off by a couple of friends of mine, one was Ray Marlen, and in the end we got back to dispersal. It took us ages walking about there trying to find the aircraft in the darkness again to bring it back to the Squadron.
On those fishing patrols I remember tackling the odd 88 and Heinkel 111 there. I don’t know, but I think the Flight Commander and I definitely got an 88 between us because we fired every round we had into it and we weren’t getting any return fire, but he was dropping down, in level flight; he just disappeared into the clouds and we never saw him crash, but I would say pretty certainly he didn’t get back because I could see all my ammunition exploding and flashing all on the upper wings of the 88. As I say, there was no return fire, so I presume the gunner had been killed. They used to come over at night and try and bomb us. I told you, I got attacked by a chap who used to come round and find us; we used to call him Coltishall Karl because, you know, if anything’s a bit on the light-hearted side, when things aren’t going too well or you’re getting a bit frightened or worried, so you just laugh it off. While I was on that Squadron I got commissioned; Ray Marlen and I were commissioned together. Ray was, unfortunately, killed in the desert later. So I stayed with the same Squadron, which was very unusual after being commissioned.’
Alan Bennison, another New Zealander, joined the RNZAF on the outbreak of war. He left for Great Britain in May 1940 and was duly promoted to the rank of Sergeant Air-gunner:
‘We were posted to Aston Down No 5 OTU for further training in the power-operated turrets. We were there for virtually four weeks and we were flying with Czech, Polish, Belgian and English pilots, and some of the foreigners were very aggressive in their method of flying and they used to throw the aircraft around like a single-seater, or try to. They had a pet hobby of flying under the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and the span of the bridge wasn’t just quite wide enough to take them down going straight through, they had to side-slip through. This went on, until one day one of the Polish pilots, I think it was, he clipped the mud bank on the other side of the bridge with his wing tip and that was that – that put the end of that episode on flying under the bridge.
Alan Bennison
Then there was one day when we were quite surprised to hear shooting going on up in the air, and we rushed outside and looked up and here were some Hurricanes that had attacked a couple of German Junkers 88s. Both of the Junkers crashed fairly close to the aerodrome and we tore across the field, and although we weren’t supposed to, we snaffled souvenirs and took illegal photographs and we got away with that anyway.
Well then, about the second week in September 1940 the party started to break up as we were posted to various RAF Squadrons. I was the only New Zealander posted to 25 Squadron, which was based at North Weald, near Epping Forest. There was another English lad, he was posted there with me, and we’d only been there about a couple of days when the Jerries came over one morning and an aircraft flew round the aerodrome and laid a smoke circle right round the aerodrome and all the bombers had to do was to drop their bombs inside the ring. We had a great number of bombs there in a matter of an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half, which did quite a lot of damage to the station. Fortunately we didn’t lose any aircraft through it. That was our first introduction to active warfare.
The Blenheim carried a crew of three, a pilot, the air-gunner and radar operator. Now, radar was very much in its infancy at this stage – we were only operating on about a Mark 1, Mark 2 set – and the Blenheim wasn’t always the best aircraft for the job because it was too slow. It was fast to what we’d been used to in New Zealand, but it still wasn’t fast enough for the Germans, and we were employed mainly as night fighters, but during the daytime in the Battle of Britain we had to do area patrols over designated areas, as for aerodrome defence and also out on the coast. The Blenheim was a very cold aircraft because of the opening where the Vickers gun pointed out through the Perspex; it was an open “V” and the wind used to come in through there; it was sucked in, and even with all your flying clothing on you still used to freeze to death almost. A lot of our flying was up round 15-19,000 feet.
There were two other New Zealanders in the squadron at that time, and one was Stewart Lusk, who at that time was a Pilot Officer and had been a law student at Oxford University. About the second or third trip I did at night with Stewart Lusk some idiot vectored us into the London balloon barrage, and then the control came up and told us that we were to turn on to given courses on a countdown and to turn and to be accurate to within a degree. After some two hours they got us out of it and we landed back at base.
We were at North Weald until about the first week of November, I think it was, when we went to Debden. It was in September the Squadron had received its first Beaufighter and, of course, the pilots had to have ground instruction on it and do some daylight flying on their own to familiarise themselves with the aircraft. One or two of us went up and did some daylight flying with the pilots. The Beaufighter was a very much more sophisticated aircraft than the Blenheim; it was faster, it only carried a crew of two, and it had an armament of four 20-millimetre cannons firing through the nose and six machine-guns, four on the starboard and two on the port I think it was – they were Brownings.
We went to Debden in about the first week in November, as I said, and whilst there we took delivery of quite a number of Beaufighters, and the Blenheims were gradually phased out, but Debden wasn’t a good aerodrome from the point of view of night flying – there was always a danger of fogs. We took off one night and we’d been away for about two and a half hours and when we came back they switched the floodlight on for us to touch down and it gave us a false ceiling – it showed up a blanket of fog, and we landed on top of a 20-foot fog. When the pilot cut the motors the machine just dropped straight to the ground and damaged the undercarriage. It was rather fortuitous for us because the Flight Commander had done exactly the same thing only a matter of about half an hour before us.
When Coventry was bombed we were about a straight line, about 40 miles from Coventry; we could see the blaze of the city and we were patrolling a given line, and although we patrolled for three hours we never even saw a sign of an aircraft. Now, there was always a danger at night that you could be directed on to a friendly aircraft, and one night we did actually line up on a Stirling and it took a minute or two before the pilot was able to get identification of the aircraft because it was one which was only just coming in to beam at that time and we didn’t have a silhouette of him. Fortunately the ground control was able to identify it for us and so we didn’t give it a reception.
Getting back to 1941 again, Stewart Lusk had to go off flying for a while, on account of indifferent health, and I had to fly with the CO of the Squadron. One day I hadn’t had any leave for about three weeks – hadn’t had a night off – and I asked him if I could go into town. I wanted to do some shopping, and that was all right. When I got back, the boys in the mess were quite surprised to see me and I asked them what was the matter.
“Well, we thought you were with the CO.”
I said, “Why, what happened to him?”
They said, “He took off and instead of going down the runway, he took off at right angles to it and finished up and hit a tree.” So I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time sometimes.
Anyway, he went into hospital and there was another pilot came on to the Squadron and he just looked like an English schoolkid and I flew with him a couple of times and I wasn’t very happy. He didn’t master the machine. The Beaufighter is like a frisky horse – you either mastered it or it would kill you. I flew with him for about a fortnight, I think it was, and then I went to the Flight Commander and told him that I’d like to be taken off and given another pilot because I didn’t feel safe with him. He listened to my story and swapped me over to fly with an Australian pilot. It was only a matter of two or three nights after that, that this English lad was coming into land and he had to come across the Great North Road – it was on the boundary – and he had to come over that at night and he missed it and he was too low and his undercarriage hit the verge on the Great North Road and he crashed into the airfield and he broke his radio operator’s legs at the knees and he had to have his legs amputated.’
Pilot Officer Bernard Brown, after his activities over and around Dunkirk, was to transfer to a more modern type of aircraft, but the introduction was stark:
‘As they were losing lots of Hurricanes at that time they asked for volunteers to go to Fighter Command, so two or three of us went; we were sent to Hawarden, near Chester, and we learnt how to fly a Spitfire and it was very interesting because I’d never flown anything like that. You didn’t have any dual or anything; they said there it is, sort it out. Well, I got it off the ground and got it back again.
After this training at Hawarden I was posted to Biggin Hill, and on arrival I was just in time to see that a number of Junkers 88s had plastered the airfield and there was a big cloud of smoke all over the place. I arrived at the entrance and, as I looked, there were people running round with little red flags, and I enquired what it was all about. They said, “Oh there’s unexploded bombs down there.” Then, when I got to the Mess, there was an orderly putting letters in the rack and taking a number of them out again; there was a big pile of them on the floor. I was quite surprised about this and I said, “What are you doing?”
“Oh,” he said, “I’ve got a list in front of me,” he said. “People’s names that are on this list, they won’t be collecting their mail; I’m taking it out and putting it on the floor.”
I said, “Thank you very much, that’s a very good introduction to Biggin Hill.” They were losing quite a number of aeroplanes every day.
When not on duty, people would say, oh, let’s have a party. On the particular day that I got shot down, it must have been about 2am, the Flight Commander came along to me and he said, “Oh, it’s a pity it’s your day off tomorrow, but you’re on at 6.” It didn’t mean very much – I’d had quite a lot to drink, but I would be off duty at 9am. Anyway, at 8.55 the hooter goes – oh dear – and I was fast asleep, so it was straight into the aeroplane, everything on and away. At 20 minutes to 10 I was floating down in a parachute over Eastchurch.
We had been jumped from above and scattered, and I saw an aeroplane miles below me and I thought, oh, you can’t shoot me, but he did; he must have pulled his nose up and let me have it. That next second there was a big bang in the cockpit and the throttle assembly underneath my left arm and leg just disappeared, gone. There was no control on the aeroplane whatsoever, the thing was roaring its life out and I couldn’t steer it, I couldn’t do anything with it, so I thought, “Right Brown, this is the time.” Someone had said, “This is what you do when you jump out,” and funnily enough, I remember the drill exactly. They said, “Take your helmet off, because your helmet is connected to the aeroplane and you’ll probably get hung.” So I took my helmet off and I remember hanging it on the hook in the cockpit. “Right, now undo the straps,” because we always went into action with the hood open because if a bullet went by, one could not get the hood back, so the hood was already back, so I just undid the straps, said, “Right, here we go,” and turned over. The next moment I knew I was out; I didn’t remember going out, I could feel air coming past my face and then no air. Ah, I’m turning over and over – I’d better find that D ring, which is underneath my left arm, and I just gave it a quick pull and then all went dead quiet and I just sat and I went out at about 16,000 feet.
Everything was quite happy and I saw where I was going to land and I landed in the marsh just out from Eastchurch airfield. Of course, what I didn’t know was that I had a hole in my left leg; I hadn’t any pain, I hadn’t noticed anything. When I landed I really did fold up, thinking I’d got two legs and I only had one, so that was that. Then I looked up and there was one of these Home Guard people coming along and he stopped before he got to me with his .303 rifle and loaded it, so I swore at him and I did everything I could to him, and he approached me with this .303 and I knew it was loaded and he just didn’t say a word, just stood about 10 yards off me and kept me covered with his .303. Well, by this time I looked across and I could see the little van arrive from the RAF, people coming, and they came along and all was well and he just walked away.
Then I ended up in the hospital there and that was the end of my flying career as far as the Air Force was concerned because my left leg was there but I couldn’t stand on it. There was a hole at the back of the knee and the tendons had gone. After they had fixed me up and I was out of hospital I badgered them to keep on flying and they said, “Well look, you can go into Training Command,” so I said, “Yes, I’ll go into Training Command,” and so they gave me an instructor’s course up at Montrose. I could fly a little aeroplane all right, but I had to be very careful, I had to keep the leg absolutely stiff, I couldn’t put any pressure on it. I could bend the leg and walk on it, but I couldn’t stand on it – a little moment and the knee would give way.’
Also flying Spitfires was Roy McGowan, who had joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve and, with war considered imminent, was undertaking six months’ training and was posted to 66 Squadron as a Sergeant Pilot:
‘In those early days the Spitfire still had a number of teething problems. The manufacturers, who were both the Supermarine, who built the air frame, and Rolls Royce, who were builders of the Merlin engine, were always with us and sorting out some of these problems. That first Spitfire 1 was very, very different from the later Marks. It had an enormous two-bladed wooden propeller, low revs on take-off and a long, long take-off run on the grass airfields, and a lot of rudder to offset the torsion of the engine and of the propeller. Immediately the aircraft got unstuck you had a big hand pump on the right-hand side at the top bit, which you used to pump up your undercarriage because your left hand was on the throttle holding that wide open. What you saw, having opened up the throttle, was an aircraft taking off in a series of rises and falls because pumping this hard hydraulic pump meant that you had movements on your stick as well, so the aircraft was going up and down, quite an unusual sight but everybody did it.
Roy Andrew McGowan
We started building up hours with the Spit, a beautiful aeroplane, but in May of that year I was commissioned. In those days one couldn’t remain with the same squadron if one moved up from Sergeant Pilot to Pilot Officer, so I was posted to 46 Squadron at Digby in Lincolnshire, where we flew Hurricanes, also, of course, another monoplane fighter. No difficulties in moving out of Spits into Hurricanes. It, too, was a very, very pleasant aeroplane.
I continued with them, and should have returned to civilian life in July, but by then it was very clear that war was a matter of weeks away. We went up to Yorkshire to do our liaison two-week operation with a bomber squadron – Whitley bombers. After one week we were recalled because in late August war was going to start any day, as it were. As soon as we got back to Digby we lived under canvas in Bell tents, alongside our aeroplanes, in what was known as a dispersal point. We started digging slit trenches and really doing 24 hours a day on the job.
We were somewhat relieved to hear on the morning of 3 September that war had been declared. As soon as that announcement had been made we got on to a wartime arrangement of one flight being released, another flight available, another flight at standby, so of course we had more time off immediately after war started than we had before.
Early days in Digby in wartime, our main commitment was convoy patrols. We used to fly out, and the operations room guided us out to a convoy moving either northwards or southwards on the North Sea off Norfolk and Suffolk. We would patrol seawards of them; they usually had an escort of a couple of destroyers or armed ships of some sort. We patrolled for probably an hour, three of us in a loose formation, and then we’d be relieved by another section, as they were called, and we’d go back and refuel and wait for our next turn. We were told by the Navy we mustn’t come within, I think it was, 1,000 metres otherwise they would open fire and, yes indeed, they did from time to time. During clear air we didn’t see any hostile aircraft. In poorer weather, with a lot of comparatively low cloud, yes, you would see that there was something going on, because the Navy opened up; we might get a sight of a hostile aircraft, but it would immediately disappear into cloud.’
Although Roy McGowan doesn’t mention it in his tape, the Squadron was sent to Norway in late May 1940 and lost many of its men and planes when, during the evacuation shortly afterwards, the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious was sunk.
‘Anyhow, later – I guess by mid-June – things started hotting up. We were very much outnumbered in those days. The Operations Room controller would scramble us and climb us to 15,000 feet or something like that. Initially in sections of three, and then a flight of six aircraft and eventually, because of the numbers of enemy aircraft, whole squadrons and later the whole wing. It took time to form up but of course you had to get some numerical strength.
I made many interceptions; I fired my guns on pretty well every time we took off. I didn’t get any confirmed victories, but we were very involved. We would see aircraft smoking, we would see pieces coming off. The pattern was that we in the Hurricanes would attack the bombers whilst the Spitfires, with their ability to climb faster and higher, they would go higher and get involved with the escorting Luftwaffe fighters.
We were still operating from Digby in Lincolnshire and the Air OC of 12 Group, Leigh-Mallory, Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory, conceived this “big wing” theory. The problem was getting it formed up in some kind of order before we went south to make an engagement. It wasn’t anything like as manoeuvrable as a smaller operation of 12 aircraft. We would go down and most days often go down to an 11 Group airfield in the immediate London area, land there and refuel, and do operations from there, and then we’d return to Digby in Lincolnshire.
However, in September some time we were posted to a little airfield called Stapleford Tawney, which was a satellite of North Weald, which was one of the well-known Sector Fighter Stations. Stapleford Tawney had this sloping grass airfield and I recall Hillman Airways, a pre-war small Civil Airline, they used to operate London-Paris out of Stapleford. With our Hurricanes it was a little bit of a problem; irrespective of wind direction you certainly couldn’t land downhill, so often you had to make cross-wind landings and monoplane fighters weren’t too happy with a strong cross-wind landing. However, we coped.
On one occasion, I guess it was the Sunday before 15 September, which was also a Sunday, I got shot up quite badly. I was losing glycol, the engine temperature was going up pretty rapidly, we were down somewhere in the Kent area, I had to get down quickly before the engine packed up, and I landed at Biggin Hill. Looking down at Biggin I saw all kinds of bomb holes; I selected a line between bomb holes, landed safely and I quickly taxied in, because by then the glycol was well over the permitted temperature, and switched off. Nobody came out to meet me, no attendants whatsoever near the tarmac. However, an airman ran out and said, “Quick, get down, we’re being attacked!” So we got into a slit trench and, sure enough, Biggin on that day, Sunday, was being very, very heavily bombed. Their transport, I recall, their Transport Section, had a direct hit; quite a number of ground crews and airmen and WAAFs were injured and killed.
I then found I had an unserviceable aeroplane and I had no way of getting a ride by a vehicle, by a transport vehicle or anything else, and certainly not by an aeroplane, to get back to my own station, Stapleford Tawney, north of London. I was south of London. The end result was I hitch-hiked; I hitch-hiked up to the southern end of London, I took a tube across London. I called my own unit from the most northerly point and they came and picked me up. That was the way of life in those days. I guess I should mention that in this journey back to Stapleford I carried my own parachute on my back, not open of course, and so was ready to get into the air again.
Moving along, that following week we were very hard worked; we were doing three or sometimes four patrols a day or flights a day, up to two hours in length, often making an interception and having an engagement.
For me, 15 September was a day I certainly will never forget. I think I was on my third flight of that day. Around midday we joined up with another squadron, probably two squadrons, of 24 aircraft climbing up into an enormous raid which was coming over. We made an interception. The pattern was with these that when you came across these bombers with the Hurricanes you could get in perhaps two good attacks, by which time the bomber formation would break up, your own comrades would break up and you’d find yourself in a sky full of single-engined aircraft of both nationalities, German and British, and you’d have to try and make some reforming if you had any ammunition left. During that act, on that day, I suddenly was shot at and in no time my aeroplane was on fire, burning merrily, and I got out very smartly. I recall that I was probably about 12,000 feet and I had in mind, right, I won’t open my chute immediately – there was some scattered cloud – I’ll wait until I get just about to the bottom of the cloud layer, which might be 5-6,000 feet, so I wouldn’t be a target, I wouldn’t be shot at, and this is what I did.
I opened my parachute around 5-6,000 feet. I looked around at myself – my trouser legs were in tatters from having been burned, I didn’t have shoes any longer. Contrary to all advice – like most other pilots, because we were searching and you can’t search with a pair of goggles on – I had not had my goggles over my eyes. I realised I had some burning in my face; the oxygen mask, of course, is round your nose, and as soon as the aircraft caught fire that oxygen burned up, so I was quite damaged with burns and so on. I saw I was coming down to land in the sea. I landed in the sea perhaps a mile, perhaps a little less, from the mouth, the southern mouth, of the Thames estuary, and I had a Mae West on and I just sat in the water and saw a small craft coming towards me, a power craft, and they pulled me aboard and they saw I wasn’t in good shape. I, too, saw I wasn’t in good shape. They got me ashore, they put me into a vehicle and took me to a First Aid Post in the Isle of Sheppey, north of Rochester, and called Rochester Hospital. They said, well, do nothing with this man, bring him here immediately. So in a private car I was taken to Rochester Hospital.
In Rochester Hospital I was immediately put in the theatre and given a full anaesthetic and had my burns worked on. The following day I learned that – I didn’t ever see him – but I learned that a Luftwaffe pilot was also a customer at Rochester Hospital. I was extremely well looked after at Rochester Hospital. I was treated with something called gentian violet, which was a dark dye, and that was put all over my face and my hands and my legs. I had a few shrapnel injuries upon my legs.
Eventually, after several weeks, I guess, a civilian surgeon was going around South East England looking at RAF casualties and evaluating them. He decided that I should go up to RAF Halton, which was the hospital near Aylesbury. I and two or three other fellows were transported up there by ambulance. I recall we drove through the centre of London, saw all the damage that was being regularly inflicted, stopped at a local pub and had a glass of beer brought out to us in the ambulance and off we went again to Aylesbury and into the Halton Hospital.
From there, the New Zealand burns specialist, Archie Mclndoe, decided that I should go to his hospital in East Grinstead for skin grafts. So I guess it was in November 1940 I went down to East Grinstead where a whole mass of mainly RAF people suffering burns, some away back to the early days of the war in France, were all being attended by Archie, as we all called him, and he did wonderful work. He recognised not only the necessity for surgical work, but also rehabilitation. He got on to all the families in the East Grinstead area – the solicitor belt as it was called – and said to them, look, you’ve got to make these fellows, who are badly disfigured, more conscious of everyday life and invite them to your homes, and so on. So he had great success in that aspect of his work as well.
I only had grafts on eyes – top and bottom eyelids were replaced. The pattern was, you had an op and then you went off from there to a Convalescent Hospital down in Torquay, the Palace Hotel, which had been taken over. Then you’d come back for your next op, so it was a long and slow business, but we were well looked after.
After several medical boards I was cleared for home service only and with limited non-operational flying. I was posted as a Flight Lieutenant to the post of Air-ground Control Officer running the watch office, now known as “flying operations”, and this was at Martlesham Heath. They were interesting times. I had control of a dummy town, which was supposed to be Ipswich, and lights came on at night and made it look for all the world like an operating city, and it attracted some German bombs. Also a dummy airfield – we would switch on the flare path at night and aircraft movements showing on the ground, all disguised of course and artificial, but that too attracted bombs from time to time.’
A final vignette of the 1940 air war over Britain comes from Alan Burdekin, who had joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve in March 1939 as a wireless operator/air-gunner:
‘We did get some flying; apart from the training in the town centre, we had camera-gun exercises flying. We were flying Fairey Battles and Audax mainly, open cockpits of course, strings and wires, biplanes, all very little different from the aircraft they finished up the Great War with. A monkey wire to stop you falling out and your scarf flying in the breeze, all real Biggies stuff, and for a young man interested in flying all very exciting. So then, of course, we were into the “Phoney War”. We did war training, we did hangar guard, duties at the aerodrome and that sort of thing. I think it was 1 October 1939 I was posted away to join 266 Squadron at Sutton Bridge.
They had Fairey Battles, the odd one or two, that was all. Got no flying there until I went off to Penrhos in Wales for a gunnery course, where we were flying again almost last-war aircraft, the Westland Wallace for instance, which was a fair sort of antique, even then. However, I passed my Gunnery Course and back to Sutton Bridge, where the Squadron had then re-equipped with Spitfires, so there wasn’t a job for me, and I transferred to 264. We went to Martlesham Heath and trained with our new Defiants, which had a good turret, a four-gun Boulton Paul turret – it really was magnificent.
Then I was detached on to a Parachute and Cable outfit; there was just one pilot, myself, a sergeant fitter and a couple of erks [ground crew]. The idea of this Parachute and Cable was that we would lower the bomb-bay of our Handley-Page Harrow, again strings and wires, biplane and canvas, and, when the enemy approached, we would steam across their bows but higher up, if we could get that far, and drop this load of 1,000 feet of piano wire with a parachute on one end and a bomb on the other. The enemy would obligingly fly into this, which would either wrap round the prop or soar back over the wing with the resistance of the parachute and either wreck the engine or blow the wing off. Well, it was a nice idea!
Then, on 10 May 1940 the Squadron was told to be at Knutsford that same afternoon and ready to go into battle, so I went across the road and saw my Flight Commander and said, “What do I do, sir?” and he said, “Well, you’re working on this experimental job – you’d better stay there. I’ll speak to the CO.”
Alan George Burdekin
Well, they went in a rush to Knutsford, went into battle that same afternoon, and the Flight Commander was shot down so he never did speak to the CO and it wasn’t until the thick of that particular battle was over that somebody thought to ask where I was, and I was sent for to join them at Knutsford and found a very depleted lot of aircrew. There were 23 when they left Martlesham and there were seven when I walked into the crew room.
So then they decided virtually to disband the Squadron; they’d had a fair sort of beating because the Germans, once they found out that we couldn’t fire downwards, they used to come up from underneath and that was it because the aircraft was underpowered. So I then did a conversion course on to Blenheims and went to join 600 City of London Squadron at Manston, and this was Battle of Britain time of course. Looking back on it, it was a very, very interesting time. We were night fighting. The Blenheims were undermanned as far as armour goes, of course. We didn’t have a great deal of fire power. The aircraft was too slow and we chased around London – we were supposed to be defending London – we chased around being vectored by all the ground control, and they would say, “There’s enemy aircraft ahead of you,” and so forth. We never did catch one – at least, I never did – and our biggest danger was the anti-aircraft; they’d open up a quarter of a mile behind the enemy and under our nose, which wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Then they’d cone you with the searchlights and that’s an awful feeling when you’re coned – you feel just like, well, as I imagine a moth on the end of a pin feels, you really feel pegged there.
I think our Squadron did get the odd one, but we did lose quite a number. They seemed to hang around – the enemy that is – they’d hang around and when we scrambled, somebody would come down and before you were really airborne you’d be shot down. I know one finished up in Dover Harbour or finished up round Ramsgate. It was a pity because we were, well, we were outdated, that’s the basic thing I suppose, and the Germans weren’t above using their brains. I was going to the Mess one night, going down the main road towards the Sergeants’ Mess, and I heard these aircraft on the circuit and just looked up and saw them, six aircraft with their wheels down, and said, oh, she’s right, as everybody else did, and suddenly up with their wheels and opened up with everything they’d got, and they were 109s. The next thing there was a mixed cannon shell and machine-gun fire coming right up the road behind me and I didn’t wait very long. Barney and I dived behind the nearest hut, which, of course, were concrete block at Manston, and all in 10 minutes they dropped 110 bombs, apart from shooting everything up. There must have been others there because 109s didn’t carry bombs, but they gave us a fair plastering and finally we had to leave Manston – it was wrecked.’
