Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945

by Patrick Bishop

  Once again, they would be operating at a significant disadvantage in numbers. Despite the losses sustained in the blitzkrieg, the Germans still had 300 bombers and could draw on 550 fighters to protect them. After the depredations of the Battle of France, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, whose 11 Group faced Dunkirk, had only 200 fighters at his immediate disposal. The mission, though, had the virtue of clarity and purpose. The pilots knew what they were supposed to do and why they were doing it. The stoicism of the infantrymen as they waited patiently among the bomb bursts was profoundly affecting to the men flying over them, however little this was appreciated on the ground.

  The burden of the fighting was to be borne by the squadrons based around London, which would be fully engaged for the first time. Dowding also decided that the time had come to throw his precious Spitfires into the battle. The 11 Group pilots watched the last, painful phase of the BEF’s campaign in France with anticipation. To some it seemed to be less of a disaster than an opportunity. ‘At Hornchurch,’ wrote Brian Kingcome, ‘the taste of war at last began to tingle our palates.’1 ‘Operation Dynamo’, as the evacuation was code-named, began on the evening of 26 May when a vast flotilla of yachts, pleasure boats, fishing smacks, sailing barges, motor cruisers and dinghies joined more conventional craft in carrying the soldiers back across the Channel.

  There had already been some preliminary skirmishing during the previous ten days. The Hornchurch pilots on the evening of 15 May were called to the billiards room of the officers mess for a briefing. There was no briefing room at the base. As Al Deere pointed out, ‘there was no need for any; our operations were purely defensive and aircraft were usually launched into the air at a moment’s notice, the pilots having only the vaguest idea of what to expect’.2 Now they were informed that they would be going on the offensive, roaming over the French and Belgian coasts to seek out the Luftwaffe.

  When the order came to start patrolling, there was competition among the 54 Squadron pilots as to who would go off first. The honour – for this was how it was seen – went to the twelve most experienced pilots. Al Deere described the excitement, after bumping over the grass at Hornchurch and climbing to 15,000 feet, of crossing the French coast: ‘There was a hum in the earphones as the CO’s voice crackled over the air, “Hornet squadron, battle formation, battle formation, GO.” Symmetrically, like the fingers of an opening hand, the sections spread outwards. As my eyes scanned the empty skies I was conscious of a feeling of exhilaration and tenseness, akin to that experienced before an important sporting event. There was no feeling of fear…’ When nothing happened, elation soon evaporated. When the squadron returned, the other pilots crowded round to hear about the first real taste of action. Colin Gray, a fellow New Zealander, asked Deere what it had felt like, ‘knowing that at any minute a Hun might pop up and take a pot at you?’ Deere reported that ‘at first I was tingling all over with excitement but when after a time nothing happened I was damn bored’.3

  It was Johnny Allen, a quiet member of the squadron who stood out because of his strong religious convictions, who scored first, shooting down a Ju 88. Deere’s turn came on 23 May. While eating breakfast in the mess that morning, he was called to the phone to speak to his flight commander, Flight Lieutenant James ‘Prof Leathart, so called because he had a degree in electrical engineering. Leathart had just come from a meeting with the station commander, Wing Commander ‘Boy’ Bouchier, who had learned that the CO of 74 Squadron, Squadron Leader White, had been shot at while patrolling across the Channel and forced down at Calais-Marcq aerodrome. ‘Drogo’ White was an example of the RAF’s fundamentally meritocratic nature. He had started out as a Halton apprentice and been selected for Cranwell, where he won the Sword of Honour. He was regarded as the finest shot in the air force, capable of scoring eighty hits out of a hundred on a towed drogue target, when the average was twenty. None of this had saved him from being shot down on his first sortie, and by a Henschel 126, a relatively slow-moving reconnaissance plane.

  Before landing he radioed Johnny Freeborn, who was flying with him, asking him to tell his wife that he was unhurt and would soon be home. This optimistic prediction came true sooner than he could have dared to hope. Bouchier asked Leathart to fly over in a two-seater Miles Master trainer, keep the engine running while White hopped in, then return at sea-level. It sounded to Deere, who with Johnny Allen was asked to fly escort, ‘a piece of cake’. They reached Calais without any trouble. Deere sent Allen up to stand guard at 8,000 feet, where Germans might be lurking in the broken cloud. The bright yellow Master landed and taxied over to a hangar, where White was presumed to be waiting. Then Deere heard ‘an excited yell from the usually placid Johnny’. Allen had seen a dozen Me 109s heading for the airfield. He attacked, and found himself in the middle of a frantic mêlée, shooting and being shot at.

  Deere dropped down to try and alert the Master, which had no R/T, by waggling his wings. As he did so a 109 flashed across his path. He latched on to it and reefed his Spitfire hard over in an attempt to turn inside the Me 109, the crucial manoeuvre in air fighting. If the chasing pilot succeeded in turning tighter, getting inside his opponent, he had the chance to fire a deflection burst, aimed in front for the enemy to fly into. If he failed, the target was always a little ahead, leaving the tracer twinkling harmlessly in his wake. Deere turned inside. He was preparing to fire when Allen’s voice again filled his earphones, calling for help. Deere asked Allen to ‘hang on while I kill this bastard’, and stayed clamped into the turn. Then, ‘in a last desperate attempt to avoid my fire, the Hun pilot straightened from his turn and pulled vertically upwards, thus writing his own death warrant. He presented me with a perfect no-deflection shot from dead below and I made no mistake. Smoke began to pour from his engine as the aircraft, now at the top of its climb, heeled slowly over in an uncontrolled stall and plunged vertically into the water’s edge from about 3,000 feet.’

  Now he went to look for Allen. As he climbed, he was seen by two 109s, which swung round steeply and started after him. Again Deere found that he could comfortably turn inside his pursuers, so that very quickly the roles were reversed and he was chasing them. Deere opened fire on the second 109, causing ‘bits to fly off’. Then he and the lead 109 went into an extended dogfight, chasing each other round at high speeds in tighter and tighter circles. Before the end Deere ran out of ammunition, but for reasons he could not later explain he continued the engagement until the German abruptly straightened out and headed east for home. Buzzing with adrenaline, Deere and Allen, whose Spitfire was by now ventilated with bullet holes, did the same. Deere indulged himself with a victory roll over the aerodrome as they came in.

  This encounter was the first time a Spitfire had gone up against a Messerschmitt and pilots and ground crew were hungry for details. Deere’s account was corroborated by ‘Prof Leathart, who had with White watched the combat from a ditch before they made their escape as soon as the sky was clear. Deere was excited and relieved. It seemed that one of the great questions that the fighter pilots, and those who directed them, had been asking themselves since the start of the war had been settled. Deere believed that as a result of his prolonged fight with the second 109 he had been able to assess practically the relative performance of the two aircraft. The experience of the Hurricanes in France, and the tests carried out on the Me 109 that had fallen into Allied hands, had concluded that the Messerschmitt could out-climb the Spitfire up to 20,000 feet, and always out-dive it, but was less agile at all altitudes. Deere agreed about the dive. The Messerschmitts, unlike the British fighters, had fuel injection, which meant they did not miss a beat at the moment of zero gravity that preceded a rapid descent. That aside, ‘the Spitfire was superior in most other fields, and like the Hurricane, vastly more manoeuvrable.’4 The Spitfire’s climbing performance had been significantly improved by the advent of the Rotol constant-speed airscrew.

  Later that day there was to be another formative experience for the squadron. That afternoon
it took off on cross-Channel patrol and ran into a formation of bombers silhouetted above in the clear sky, heading for Dunkirk. After climbing above, unnoticed, and gaining the maximum tactical advantage, Leathart, who was leading, ordered a No. 5 attack. The four sections of three fanned out into echelon formation, each one tucked into a neat inverted V-shaped ‘vic’ slanting across the sky in a shallow diagonal, each pilot selecting his target. The flying discipline would have delighted their pre-war instructors. Then a panicked voice on the R/T shouted: ‘Christ, Messerschmitts – Break!’ The squadron instantly ‘split in all directions, all thoughts of blazing enemy bombers momentarily ousted by the desire to survive’.

  In the tumbling dogfight that followed, the 54 Squadron pilots claimed to have destroyed eight of the attacking Messerschmitts, but unfortunately no bombers, which were their primary targets. Despite this success, the encounter set off intense discussion of the value of the tactics they had been taught. The criticism was led by George Gribble, a ‘very English, very good-looking’ twenty-year-old short-service entrant. In Deere’s admiring opinion, he ‘epitomized the product of the public school; young yet mature, carefree yet serious when the situation required it, and above all possessing a courageous gaity’. Gribble told Leathart that ‘everybody was so damn busy making certain he got into the right position in the formation that we were very nearly all shot down for our pains’. Leathart, who was shortly to take over command, did not argue. He promised that henceforth there would be no more Fighter Area Attacks.5

  These cross-Channel clashes taught valuable lessons to the 11 Group squadrons. They provided a demonstration of the startling reality of air fighting, but allowed the pilots an opportunity to recover and digest their experiences. Previously no one had known what to expect. During the first days of the Battle of France, 32 Squadron, flying from Biggin Hill, had barely seen the enemy. Michael Crossley noted one day’s non-events with typical candour and idiosyncratic punctuation in the squadron diary. ‘All set off to France, land at Abbeville, refuel, hear dreadful stories, get very frightened, do a patrol, see nothing, feel better, do another, see nothing, feel much better, return to Biggin Hill, feel grand.’6

  Mike Crossley was over six feet tall, with jug ears, dark, smiling eyes and a slightly caddish moustache. Between leaving Eton and joining the RAF he had studied aeronautical engineering, worked as an assistant director at Elstree film studios and signed on as an apprentice with De Havilland. He was a natural musician who played the guitar and trumpet brilliantly and had a jokey manner that sometimes appeared to border on the facetious. Crossley, though, could be serious enough when he had to be. Shortly after writing the diary entry he became the first pilot in the squadron to shoot down an Me 109, with a perfect deflection shot, and was to destroy three more in the next four days. Pete Brothers also shot down an Me 109 in the same encounter. In the following week the squadron was in action almost daily, flying offensive patrols and escorting bomber raids, using each sortie to add to its stock of collective and individual knowledge and increase its effectiveness and its members’ chances of survival. Its pilots’ capacity to learn meant that 32 Squadron remained intact as a fighting force for the next three months and was not withdrawn from the line until the end of August.

  Squadron commanders and pilots drew their own conclusions from their experiences and acted on them without waiting to seek approval from above. The nature of the fighting meant that advice or direction from superiors not involved in daily combat carried little authority. To their credit, Dowding and the best of his senior commanders accepted that their own understanding of what was happening could well be inferior to that of even the most junior front-line pilot. They sought their opinions, listened to what they had to say and, when needed, took action.

  The new rules of air fighting were being made up with each clash. To succeed, merely to survive, required an adaptability that was found chiefly in the young. In the mayfly span of a fighter pilot’s effective life, young meant under twenty-two. The older pilots commanding the squadrons, in whom the parade ground rigidity of the old tactics were strongly ingrained, were for all their experience and flying skills often among the first to go. Roger Bushell, the peacetime barrister who had helped defend Johnny Freeborn and Paddy Byrne and moved up to command 92 Squadron, was shot down on his first day. He would be missed. The squadron was essentially a new creation, having been re-formed only the previous October. Bushell was moved from 601 Auxiliary Squadron to supervise the birth, overseeing training, the switch from Blenheim bombers to Spitfires and infusing the nascent squadron spirit with his personality. He was born in South Africa, moved to England and went to Wellington public school and Brasenose College, Oxford. He was tough, intelligent and warm-hearted, and a good drinker. He was also a sportsman, a superb skier, coaching the British team in the 1936 Winter Olympics. He had a permanently half-hooded eye, the result of a skiing accident, which gave him a truculent look.

  Bushell had joined 601 Squadron in the mid 1930s, naturally embracing its credo of taking fun and flying equally seriously, making strong friendships and winning admirers throughout the service. His charm, the squadron chronicler recorded, was ‘magnetic and universal’.7 His forensic talents were at the disposal of all the squadron, fitter and pilot alike. Once he flew himself from London to a distant northern base to defend a ground-crew member, changing out of uniform and into wig and gown to demolish the authorities’ case. On the evening of 23 May, 92 Squadron set off on an evening patrol around Dunkirk. Bushell was leading, and when they encountered a formation of Heinkels, heavily protected by Me 109s and 110s, he ordered an attack. Tony Bartley heard him ‘swearing on the radio as he plunged into the bomber force’ with John Gillies and Paul Klipsch. All three were shot down. Klipsch was killed. Bushell and Gillies were captured. Bushell was last seen standing by his Spitfire, waving his scarf in farewell. He was a troublesome prisoner and was eventually murdered in March 1944 by the Gestapo after being captured in the aftermath of the Great Escape he helped to organize from Stalag Luft 111. He was, Brian Kingcome thought, ‘an amazingly great man’.8 The squadron diary admitted that the losses were ‘a very severe blow to us all’, and two days later 92 was moved to Duxford to rest and re-equip.

  The 19 Squadron commander, Squadron Leader G. D. Stephenson, also went early, on the first day of Operation Dynamo. Once again there were more men than machines, and pilots, with the exception of section leaders, drew lots for who was to go. The twelve Spitfires left at breakfast time and encountered about twenty Stukas over the coast near Calais. They appeared to be unescorted, a circumstance that should have aroused suspicion, but caution vanished as the pilots, most of them going into their first real combat, saw the black crosses and the gull wings crawling unheedingly across the sky and prepared to attack. As they did so, thirty Me 110s came into view. One section, led by Flight Lieutenant G. E. Ball, broke off to engage them. The rest closed in on the Stukas. George Unwin, who had missed out in the draw, heard later what happened from the returning pilots. Stephenson, he said, ordered a Fighting Area Attack No. 1. ‘That meant a very slow closing speed in formation “vics” of three, attacking with a very slow overtaking speed so you could get a very good shot at it. That was the idea.’9 It worked, up to a point. The squadron shot down four, but then the 109s arrived. Pilot Officer ‘Watty’ Watson was hit by a cannon shell, baled out and disappeared. Stephenson was seen heading inland in a shallow glide, trailing blue smoke. It later turned out he landed safely but was taken prisoner. The squadron claimed five Stukas and two 109s, a reasonable return on their losses, if true. The arithmetic of the squadrons involved at Dunkirk, however, was no more reliable than that of the France-based units. Later they flew another patrol and were again ‘bounced’ by 109s. Sergeant C. A. Irwin was killed and Pilot Officer Michael Lyne shot in the leg. He nursed his Spitfire back across the Channel and crash-landed on Walmer Beach. This time it seemed that only one 109 had possibly been brought down, and that was unconfirmed.
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  Stephenson and Irwin were both very experienced men. Irwin was an ex-fitter, typical of the cadre of ground staff who, through ability and ambition, had got airborne and whose professionalism and technical expertise stiffened the pre-war squadrons. Stephenson, like White, had been at Cranwell and was therefore marked out for the RAF’s upper reaches. He was regarded as a brilliant pilot and had been an instructor at the Central Flying School. It was a teaching post, but it carried prestige in a service in which skill was of paramount importance. Like the 54 Squadron pilots, 19 Squadron decided after the first day that no matter how flawless the technique, the tactics that Stephenson and his generation epitomized were dead. ‘That was the end of going in slow,’ Unwin said. ‘In fact it was the end of all we knew because we realized we knew nothing. From then on it was get in fast and go out fast. And go close – a hundred yards. Get in close but go in fast and get out fast.’10

  Some of the younger pilots discovered almost at once that they were good at air fighting. Also that they enjoyed it. ‘Prof Leathart described ‘that lovely feeling of the gluey controls and the target being slowly hauled into the sights. Then thumb down on the trigger again and the smooth shuddering of the machine as the eight-gun blast let go.’11 The best of them were pushed forward to fill the holes in the commanders’ ranks. Following the loss of Roger Bushell, Brian Kingcome and Bob Tuck were posted to 92 Squadron as flight commanders. Leathart himself was put in command of 54 to replace Squadron Leader E. A. Douglas-Jones, who had led the squadron on its first offensive patrol on 16 May but had not flown with it since and relinquished command nine days later on grounds of ill-health.

  Covering the evacuation meant that pilots were in the air two, three or sometimes even four times a day. Exhaustion set in quickly. Replacement squadrons arrived at the 11 Group bases to allow the spent units a rest. Some of the new arrivals had seen very little of the war and were slow to appreciate how serious things had become. On 28 May Al Deere returned to Hornchurch after a patrol and noticed that the dispersal areas normally occupied by 65 and 74 Squadrons now had Spitfires with unfamiliar markings. They belonged to 222 Squadron, sent in while 65 and 74 were rotated out for a rest. Later that evening Deere met one of the flight commanders, Douglas Bader, who questioned him closely. Bader, as a pre-war regular and an ex-Cranwell cadet, had become a figure of myth in the RAF by an extraordinary demonstration of willpower, struggling back to serve in a fighter squadron after losing both legs in a flying accident. His biographer wrote that Bader and his pilots were not impressed by their first sight of their Hornchurch comrades and ‘gazed, startled, then with mild derision at pilots…walking around with pistols tucked in their flying boots and as often as not with beard stubble’. They also noticed that they seemed quiet and preoccupied, but did not consider the significance of this and regarded the guns and the three-day growth as ‘line-shooting’.12