Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945

by Patrick Bishop

  The distinction fell, collectively, to three No. 1 Squadron pilots, who between them on 29 March destroyed three Me 110s. Johnny Walker, Bill Stratton and Taffy Clowes were ordered up in the early afternoon to patrol over Metz at 25,000 feet. Half an hour after taking off they spotted nine Me 110s cruising unconcernedly in sections of three in line astern, east of the city. Once attacked, according to the squadron record, the German machines ‘proved very manoeuvrable, doing half-rolls and diving out, coming up in stall turns’. The ensuing dogfight followed the inexorable physical rules of such engagements, with the advantage shifting from attacker to attacked and back again as they followed each other’s tails in a downward spiral that in no time brought the mêlée to a bare 2,000 feet. Walker and Stratton ran out of ammunition and returned to Vassincourt, believing they had crippled one machine, the wreckage of which was later found. Clowes meanwhile had disposed of two. After hearing their accounts, the consensus was that the Me 110s were not as fearsome as their name suggested. The record concluded: ‘As a result of this combat it may be stated that the Me 110, although very fast and manoeuvrable for a twin-engined aircraft, can easily be outmanoeuvred by a Hurricane.’ The pilots also reported that ‘it appeared that the rear gunner was incapable of returning fire whilst [the] Me 110 was in combat because of the steep turns “blacking him out” or making him too uncomfortable to take proper aim.’ Barratt kept his promise. Two days later he sent his personal aircraft to whisk the three to Paris for dinner at Maxim’s.

  On the morning of their success, Paul Richey brought down the squadron’s first 109. It was a fine day with high, patchy cloud when he took off with Pussy Palmer and Peter Matthews towards Metz. Noticing puffs of smoke from French anti-aircraft fire hanging in the sky, they went to investigate and saw the pale-blue bellies of two single-engined fighters 1,000 feet overhead. As they climbed to reach them, they were attacked from behind by three other 109s that nobody had noticed. Matthews called a warning over the R/T and Palmer jammed his Hurricane into a sharp turn to the left in what was to become the standard, desperate move to escape a pursuing 109. In doing so he lost control and spun down for 12,000 feet before straightening out. Matthews also dived and turned, and as the G forces drained the blood from his head he blacked out, coming to only at 10,000 feet. Richey continued to climb in a left-hand turn. Watching his tail, he noticed an aircraft moving behind him, but was unsure whether it was friend or foe and waited to see if it opened fire. When it did, he twisted down underneath his nose. ‘As I flattened out violently,’ he wrote, ‘either he or one of the other 109s I had seen above dived on my port side and whipped past just above my cockpit. He was so close that I heard his engine and felt the air wave, and I realized that he must have lost sight of me in the manoeuvre. He pulled up in front of me, stall-turned left and dived steeply in a long, graceful swoop with me on his tail.’ The German was faster in the dive than Richey. But when Richey pulled up violently and began climbing steeply, he started to gain on him. When, eventually, he was a few hundred yards distant, he ‘let him have it. My gun button was sticking and I wasted ammunition, but he started to stream smoke. The pilot must have been hit because he took no evasive action, merely falling slowly in a vertical spiral. I was very excited and dived on top of him, using my remaining ammunition.’9

  Many pilots were to feel the same rush of elation at the sight of smoke and flame or the first barely perceptible faltering of control that showed a pilot was hit. The temptation to follow the machine down to its fiery end was overwhelming. It was the same instinct that makes a boxer hover over his dazed opponent as he is counted out on the canvas. A pilot had to learn to suppress this impulse if he was to improve his chances of staying alive. By giving in to it he could lay himself bare to another enemy fighter who, unnoticed, may have fastened on to his tail during the intense seconds of combat. Sure enough, as Richey broke away, he noticed another 109 about 2,000 above him. Instead of running for it, he turned to face him. The German, either through caution or lack of ammunition, fled.

  That night there was a celebration, first in the officers’ then in the sergeants’ mess. Toasts were drunk from a special bottle of rum and a ‘victory’ card signed. Before the party started, Richey ‘went across to the village church opposite the mess to say a prayer for the German pilot I had killed, before I got too boozy. The door was locked, so I knelt on the steps and prayed for him and his family and for Germany.’ In fact, as he was to discover later, his opponent had crash-landed near Saarburg and survived.

  As the countryside thawed out and the days lengthened, it was clear that the Germans were stirring and the fraught boredom of the phoney war was drawing to an end. Until now Luftwaffe activity had mostly been limited to daily reconnaissance flights, with individual or small groups of Dorniers, Heinkels and Junkers 88s snooping over the Maginot defences and the Ardennes sector of the border between France and Germany. The Messerschmitts had been restricted to patrolling their own side of the frontier, only occasionally venturing into Allied air space. From April the reconnaissance missions were more frequent and grew bolder, probing deeper into France, while the fighters came in large formations of up to forty aircraft wheeling brazenly over Metz and Nancy.

  The longer hours of daylight meant longer periods at readiness and the day’s patrolling now began at 6.30 a.m. when the first Hurricane slithered out across the clayey mud of the thawed-out airfield and took off towards the German lines. In two consecutive days at the beginning of April, the squadron shot down two Me 110s and two 109s. The tactics they had been taught in training were being revised or jettisoned, and new ones invented, with each new experience. One was the designation of one pilot in a section to act as lookout, criss-crossing the sky to cover all possible approaches and shouting a warning if anything was sighted. The value of the ‘weaver’, or ‘Arse-End Charlie’ as he became known, was demonstrated on 2 April when Les Clisby, Flying Officer Lorimer, Killy Kilmartin and Pussy Palmer set off after high-flying twin-engined aircraft. As they approached, Palmer, weaving at the back, noticed Me 109s above, waiting to pounce, and alerted the others in time for them to break off the pursuit and face the attackers, shooting two of them down. Palmer was not so lucky and had to bale out after his reserve petrol tank was struck and set on fire.

  In mid April it seemed that the war had finally started when the squadron was moved at a few hours’ notice to a new base at Berry-au-Bac, thirty miles north-west of Reims. But after a week, during which the log noted that the ‘pilots are all fed up with the lack of activity and the long stand-by hours which seem of no avail’, they returned to Vassincourt. The first full day back, 20 April, was the busiest they had so far experienced. In one encounter, Berry and Albonico claimed a 109 each, Hanks downed a Heinkel 111 and Mould a Heinkel 112, the first time the type had been engaged. At the same time, Walker was leading Brown, Drake and Stratton on another patrol which ran into nine 109s. Walker and Brown got one each. Billy Drake opened fire on two as they made off and saw one apparently go out of control. The other he followed to the frontier and watched it crash into a hill. Killy Kilmartin had meanwhile set off in pursuit of a high-flying Ju 88 and caught up with it at 26,000 feet, the limit of its altitude. The pilot dived to shake him off, and Kilmartin’s Hurricane had a struggle to get within firing range, but eventually managed to score a hit, forcing the Ju 88 to land. It had been a good day for the squadron, the first in which almost all the pilots had seen action. Halahan noted with satisfaction that ‘all the original pilots who were with the squadron when it came to France last September, with one or two exceptions, have had combats with the enemy. It is most commendable that the squadron has worked so well and made it a squadron “show” without any publicized individuality’.

  By now it was clear that the main threat from the German side came from the Me 109s. The relative merits and shortcomings of the Hurricane and Spitfire compared to the Messerschmitt was to be an eternal subject of debate among pilots on both sides, who were understanda
bly fascinated by the machines opposing them. Like the British fighters, the Me 109 owed much to the engineering prowess of one man. This was Willy Messerschmitt, whose restless creativity was exercised on a broad range of aircraft from gliders to the first jets. In the Me 109 he attempted to wrap a light airframe around the most powerful engine it would carry. The resulting design problems were as daunting as anything faced by Camm and Mitchell. The thin wings that gave the aircraft its superior performance were inefficient when flying slow, requiring a system of slots on the leading edges to increase lift on take-off and landing. Their fragility placed severe restrictions on the way guns could be mounted. Nor were they strong enough to take the machine’s weight, a weakness which meant that the undercarriage had to be supported by the fuselage. This made for a very narrow and unstable wheelbase which was the cause of many crashes on landing. According to one estimate, 5 per cent of all Me 109s manufactured were written off in this way.

  The Me 109 was smaller and frailer-looking than both its British opponents. It was shorter and sat lower on the ground. Its wingspan was only 32 feet 4 inches compared with 40 feet for the Hurricane and 36 feet 11 inches for the Spitfire. Its total wing area was 174 square feet, whereas the Hurricane’s was 258 square feet and the Spitfire’s 242 square feet. It had a top speed of 357 m.p.h., the merest shade higher than the Spitfire and perhaps 30 m.p.h. faster than the Hurricane. It carried two machine-guns mounted one on either side of the upper nose decking, each with 1,000 rounds. Each wing housed a 20 mm cannon and 60 shells.

  The pilots of 1 Squadron had a chance to examine the German fighter close up when, early in May, they were summoned to Amiens to examine a machine that had been captured intact. Hilly Brown took the controls and, after a practice, mounted a mock dogfight with a Hurricane flown by Prosser Hanks. From this exhibition, the squadron log noted, ‘several facts emerged. The Hurricane is infinitely manoeuvrable at all heights and at ground level is slightly faster. The Me 109, however, is unquestionably faster at operational heights and although appearing tricky to fly and not particularly fond of the ground, possesses many fine features to offset its disadvantages.’ The report noted enviously that it had ‘an excellent view to the rear’ – something the Hurricane definitely did not possess. This sober assessment would turn out to be largely accurate. The aircraft was subsequently flown by Brown to the RAF experimental station at Boscombe Down for further testing.

  The air force needed all the information it could get. The phoney war had, mercifully, given Britain the lull it needed to accelerate the manufacture of aircraft and the training of pilots, but it had provided little practical experience of modern air warfare such as the Luftwaffe had gained in Spain and Poland. Unlike 1 Squadron and 73 Squadron, the other four fighter units based in France had had little contact with the enemy. Their job was to support the BEF, which was doing nothing, and the buffer zone of Belgium lay between them and the Germans. Squadrons 85 and 87 were based at Lille-Seclin aerodrome, where they flew sector patrols in their Hurricanes. The two auxiliary squadrons, 607 and 615, which arrived in November still equipped with Gladiators, were in no position to inflict much damage on the Luftwaffe even if they had been called on to do so.

  Roland Beamont joined 87 Squadron at Seclin in October after a rare moment of excitement. ‘Two days before they’d shot down their first enemy aeroplane. It was a Heinkel 111. I arrived just in time to take part in the celebrations with an Air Ministry photographer out there taking pictures of all the ground crew holding on to various parts of the Heinkel that had been sawn off it with black crosses.’ Photographs were also taken of the pilots running to their Hurricanes as if they had just been scrambled, a deception that Beamont was required to join in, even though he had never flown with the squadron. The Heinkel was the first enemy aircraft to fall in France in the Second World War and the pilot who destroyed it, Robert Voase Jeff, a twenty-six-year-old short-service commission officer, was rewarded with the Croix de Guerre by a grateful French government.

  The moment soon passed. Beamont discovered that normal activity consisted of ‘endless patrols looking for enemy reconnaissance but we very seldom saw them. There was no radar to help. It was just a question of eyeballs.’10 It was not until January that he had his first brush with the enemy. The squadron had been moved to Le Touquet when appalling winter conditions made it impossible to operate from Seclin. It was a miserable day, with rain and scudding low cloud, and none of the pilots expected to be flying when a call came through from the wing operations room ordering two pilots up on an intercept. Beamont took off with John Cock, one of the Australians who had answered the call for recruits, and they were directed over their radio telephones to climb through the cloud, where they saw a ‘small speck’ a few miles ahead. Beamont ‘didn’t really know what it was. I could see it had got two engines. Streaks of grey started to come out of the back of it. It suddenly dawned on me that this was a rear gunner firing tracers…miles out of range.’ The pair finally reached the German at 19,000 feet, whereupon Beamont blacked out, the victim of inoxia or oxygen starvation, caused by the fact that the tube to his oxygen mask had disconnected. He came to, upside down and diving very fast, in time to roll upright and steer for home.

  Nos. 607 and 615 Squadrons had also gained little experience from their months at a succession of bleak fields in the Pas de Calais. No. 615 set off from Croydon to its first French base at Merville. One flight was led by James Sanders, who after leaving Italy aged nineteen in 1935, and securing a short-service commission, had risen to the rank of flight lieutenant and acquired the nickname ‘Sandy’. He had recently been transferred to the squadron after a display of high spirits landed him in trouble with Harry Broadhurst, the commander of his old unit, 111 Squadron. One September morning at Northolt, with nothing much going on, Sanders had decided to perform a particularly hazardous trick involving taking off, roaring immediately upwards into a loop, then performing a roll at the top. Unknown to him, a meeting of senior officers was taking place at the time. Such exuberance was out of kilter with the stern mood of the times. He was placed under arrest by Broadhurst, who most of the pilots liked, but whom Sanders thought ‘a wonderful pilot but an absolute sod’. Broadhurst took him to see the Air Officer Commanding 11 Group, Air Vice-Marshal Gossage, who was more sympathetic and asked him what he would like to do. Sanders mentioned France. ‘He said, right, off you go,’ Sanders recalled. ‘So I was posted to 615 Squadron, demoted from Hurricanes to Gladiators, which were twin wings, and from a regular squadron to an auxiliary.’11

  With his departure there was an incident that almost altered the course of the war. Winston Churchill had gone to Croydon to see the squadron off, accompanied by his wife, Clementine. The Gladiators were escorting five transport aircraft loaded with fifty-four airmen and stores, and so had their machine-guns, one on either side of the fuselage and one under each lower wing, cocked and ready. The firing system was notoriously unstable. As Churchill inspected Sanders’s machine, Clemmie climbed into the pilot’s seat and began asking the functions of various knobs and buttons. Just as Churchill stooped to examine one of the wing-mounted machine-guns, his wife reached for the firing button. Sanders moved rapidly. ‘I got her out of the aircraft fast,’ he said. ‘It suddenly dawned on me what an idiot I’d been.’

  For much of the winter 615 Squadron was based at Vitry-en-Artois. Sanders was billeted with other officers in the village in the house of an elderly women who still dressed in black in mourning for the husband she had lost in the previous war. After dinner in the mess, which the officers set up in a local hotel, ‘they would arrive back and there would be Margot with a tray with some hot bricks with some cloth wrapped round them. I’d always say, “Non, non Margot, ce n’est pas necessaire,” but she’d insist. Then at five o’clock in the morning she’d be there with a café noir.’ When he returned to see her after the war he learned she had performed the same services for the Germans, for which even-handed hospitality she was branded a collaborator by
her neighbours.

  The pilots found that interaction with their French counterparts tended to be more social than professional. Sandy Sanders and his comrades ‘used to go and have parties at Lille with their squadrons, then we would go to a night-club and they would produce the girls. The French were mad keen on that subject, but all we were interested in was the drinking, having a good party. You might say, “Look at that lovely blonde over there,” but that’s as far as it went. But the French, one by one, would take the girls away and we’d be left, every one of us, drinking until two or three in the morning, having a wonderful time with the French orderly officer waiting for us to finish our fun and go away.’ The squadron’s enterprising adjutant had arrived with a suitcase full of French letters, as condoms were known to British servicemen, hoping to sell them to pilots and airmen, but custom was non-existent.

  The squadron passed its time training on its obsolete aircraft, carrying out ‘affiliation’ exercises with bomber squadrons and mounting patrols over the Channel. On 29 December Sanders managed to get within range of a Heinkel 111 flying very high above the sea at 26,000 feet and emptied his ammunition at it without visible result. The squadron was told on 1 January, during a visit by the Under-Secretary of State for Air, Captain H. H. Balfour, that it was likely the unit would be re-equipped with Hurricanes within a fortnight. It was not until 12 April that the first machines started to arrive, and the squadron, like 607 Squadron, had only a few weeks in which to get accustomed to them in conditions of relative calm. The transition was still in progress when the frustrations, apprehensions and scares of the phoney war finally came to an end.