‘If you could break up the leaders, that was the ideal situation because we knew that they were the pathfinders for the bombing raid,’ Harold Bird-Wilson, a Hurricane pilot with 17 Squadron, said later. ‘The bomber formations were very good and they [followed] their leader’s bombing. The leader dropped his bombs followed by everyone else.’ When the protecting fighters saw a Hurricane attack go in, ‘they used to come hurling down at us and through us and then back up again…“yo-yo” tactics.’26
The effectiveness of head-on attacks was now established. Brian Kingcome, who arrived with 92 Squadron at Biggin Hill at the beginning of September from the relative tranquillity of Pembrey in South Wales, discovered that the escorts ‘never had time to get to you if you attacked from head on before you had managed to have at least one good solid go at the bombers’.27 The attacker had a good chance of shooting down the leader, thereby removing the raiders’ controlling intelligence as well as unnerving the following pilots. The tactic, though, required tungsten nerves. Its invention was sometimes attributed to Gerry Edge, who had been an auxiliary officer before the war. He flew in May with 605 Squadron over France, where he showed exceptional aggression, shooting down at least six aircraft and damaging many more. Count Czernin of 17 Squadron was another practitioner. He used it not only against bombers but also against Me 110s, as a means of overcoming their habit of forming a defensive circle to enable the rear gunners to put out a retaliatory curtain of fire. The trick was to get in and out with the maximum speed before one or other of the Messerschmitts in the circle broke off to fasten on to the attacker’s tail. Czernin’s commander Squadron Leader Cedric Williams, tried a head-on attack on an Me 110 on 25 August. His left wing was shot off by the forward fire from the German and he crashed into the sea off the south coast.
The squadrons being fed in to replace exhausted and depleted units had been training hard during their time out of the front line and gaining what experience they could from the interceptions they were called on to make against intruders. But little effort seems to have been made to pass on systematically to the squadrons waiting their turn in the front line the tactical lessons that had so far been drawn from the fighting. On 30 August, 222 Squadron, which had arrived from the north the day before, began operating from Hornchurch. By the end of the day eight Spitfires had been shot down, one pilot killed and three wounded. They had been flying in tight formation and using a weaver to protect their tails, tactics recognized as faulty months before. Individual squadrons did what they could to modify their techniques, trying out flying patterns which allowed more flexibility and a greater field of observation. But in October squadrons were still flying in V-shaped ‘vics’, in which the leader was supported by two wingmen, each formated closely on him. When Archie Winskill joined 72 Squadron, they ‘still hadn’t got out of this rather archaic business of flying in tight formations of three, which was ridiculous. It meant…keeping in formation and watching your leader rather than flying in the loose two formations which the Germans did which left you completely free to roam the skies.’28
The German formation, known as ‘finger four’ by the RAF pilots who experimented with it and eventually adopted it, was the one developed by Werner Mölders in Spain. The basic unit was the pair: a leader and a wingman who flew roughly two hundred yards behind on the sunward side and slightly below so his partner did not have to look into the glare to see him. The wingman’s job was to protect the leader. The formation was known as a Rotte. Two Rotte made up a Schwann. The tactic was basically protective, and if efficiently applied would give early warning of an attack coming out of the sun. Once battle was joined, however, both sides found that cohesion and control vanished and most of the time pilots had only themselves to rely on.
Since the end of the brief pause lasting from 19 to 24 August, the Luftwaffe had been launching several major raids a day involving hundreds of aircraft. On the first day of the resumed assault, there were six large attacks by a total of at least 500 bombers and fighters lasting from 6 a.m. to 6.45 p.m. After night fell the Germans returned and the residents of southern and western England, South Wales, the Midlands, East Anglia and Yorkshire heard the drone of enemy engines overhead. As well as the raid on London, bombs fell on Liverpool, Sheffield, Bradford, Hull and Middlesbrough and were scattered over areas of Kent, Hampshire, Reading and Oxford.
On the 25th there were no mass attacks until the afternoon, when two were launched by at least 400 aircraft, and once again there was a full programme of night attacks, concentrating on the Midlands. On the 26th there were three main phases directed against the Dover-Folkestone area, then Kent and north of the Thames estuary, then the Portsmouth-Southampton area, involving nearly 500 aircraft, followed by a widespread night bombing. Bad weather on the 27th brought a respite. The following day there were four main raids and a 150-bomber raid on Liverpool by night. The 29th brought a momentary shift of tactics. A huge force of several hundred aircraft appeared on radar screens, building up over the French coast. It turned out to be a ruse. Most of the force were fighters and the small number of bombers were clearly intended as bait to lure up the British fighters, a stratagem which did not succeed.
Given the weight of German numbers and the strains imposed on pilots and controllers alike, it was inevitable that breakthroughs would occur. On 30 August, the Luftwaffe succeeded in pressing home a devastating attack on Biggin Hill. The base had been heavily bombed twelve days before but had remained operational. As one of the key bases in 11 Group’s defences, strategically positioned at the gates of London and facing the main direction of the Luftwaffe attack, it was inevitable that further intensive efforts would be made to destroy it.
The first raid came in just before noon, when a group of ninety bombers and an equal number of fighter escorts crossed the Kent coastline and peeled off to attack the London perimeter airfields. Park ordered almost all his fighters into the air and two squadrons were sent down from 12 Group to patrol Kenley and Biggin Hill. A group of Ju 88s nonetheless slipped through and dropped more than thirty bombs, most of which fell in the cornfields around the base and the village next door.
Once again the station’s luck seemed to have held. Instead of waiting a few hours to launch the next phase, the Luftwaffe maintained the pressure with successive waves of bombers rolling over the south-east all afternoon. In two hours from 4 p.m., about 400 aircraft swept in over Kent and the Thames estuary, confusing the controllers trying to plot so many courses and direct fighters towards them. At about 6 p.m. a small group of eighteen Ju 88s suddenly appeared, flying very low over Biggin Hill. No warning was given and there was no one overhead to stop them, 79 Squadron being on the ground at the time and 610 Squadron patrolling elsewhere. When the raid swept in, airmen were just leaving the mess after their evening meal. Only sixteen 500-kilo bombs were dropped, but the effect was devastating. One bomb landed directly on a trench crowded with airmen, killing many. One of the four remaining hangars was destroyed, as well as workshops, the armoury, storerooms, the sergeants’ mess, the Waaf quarters and airmen’s barrack blocks. All gas, electricity and water mains were cut and telephone lines severed. The walls of one shelter caved in under the shock, burying a group of Waafs, all but one of whom were later dug out alive. Altogether thirty-nine ground staff were killed and twenty-six wounded.
The following day 610 Squadron was moved north to Acklington, to be replaced by 72 Squadron. At noon, while the squadron airmen were waiting with their kit to be picked up, the noise of anti-aircraft guns signalled another raid, which left the runways so badly cratered that they were unusable and 79 Squadron, returning from operations over Dover, had to be diverted to Croydon. The ground crews worked themselves to exhaustion during the afternoon, filling in the holes so that when 72 Squadron arrived they were able to land. ‘The amazing thing about it,’ wrote Robert Deacon Elliot, one of the new pilots flying in, ‘was the human factor – no panic, everyone doing their utmost to keep the aircraft in the air. Bomb craters in the
airfield being quickly filled in, food being delivered to dispersals to avoid waste of time returning to messes. Land lines installed to run out from ops to squadron dispersals to replace those lost.’29 The base was to be attacked five times in forty-eight hours, one raid arriving as the station commander, Group Captain Grice, led the burial service for fifty Biggin Hill staff at the small cemetery at the edge of the aerodrome. Despite the effort and the stoicism, the base was no place to leave precious pilots and aeroplanes. The day after it arrived, 72 Squadron shifted a few miles away to Croydon, which, though damaged, was in better shape than Biggin Hill and had the added advantage of the Airport Hotel, where the pilots took their first baths for three days.
The squadron it had replaced, 610, had been pulled out of the line after being at Biggin Hill and Gravesend since July. At the start the unit had twenty pilots ‘on state’. Over the two months, nine pilots were killed and six seriously wounded. In addition there were numerous shootings down, crash-landings and balings out. Such figures were high but not unusual. Between 1 July and 6 September, 501 Squadron lost twelve pilots, and 601, squadron of the dashing pre-war auxiliaries, whose insouciant ranks were filled with sportsmen, playboys and adventurers, lost eleven. By the time it was taken out of the line most of its original pilots were gone, dead or posted away. Two of the pre-war members, Carl Raymond Davis and Willie Rhodes-Moorhouse, son of a First World War RFC pilot and winner of a Victoria Cross, were killed on the day before they were due to move to the relative quiet of Exeter. Rhodes-Moorhouse had obtained his pilot’s licence aged seventeen at Heston, near Eton, where he went to school, had been engaged at every stage of the war, and was an outstanding pilot who had shot down at least nine bombers and fighters, shared in the destruction of several more and been awarded the DFC. His death was a reminder that skill and experience were no protection against the inevitable shortening of the odds that each combat brought.
Squadrons like 501 and 601 absorbed their losses over a relatively lengthy stay in the line. With others the heart was torn out of the unit in a few nightmarish days. Between 12 and 16 August, 266 Squadron, which had arrived in such good spirits, determined to do well after a summer of relative inactivity in the Midlands, had suffered six pilots killed, including the squadron leader, and two badly wounded. Next it was caught in a bombing raid on Manston on the 17th, the second time the pilots had been battered on the ground since their arrival. There had been twenty-three pilots when they came south. By the end they were down to nine, which meant that every fit man had to go on every trip. Dennis Armitage, wounded in the left leg, walked with a stick and had to be helped into his Spitfire. Fortunately, as he observed, ‘there is no place other than bed where full use of the legs is so unimportant as when driving a single-engined aeroplane’.30 Twelve days after arriving in the south, they were sent back to Wittering to lick their wounds.
Pilots died horribly, riddled with splinters from cannon shells, doused in burning petrol, dragged down into the chilly depths of the Channel by the weight of their parachutes, heavy boots and fur-lined flying jackets. Unless they were killed outright, they had time to recognize they were finished. Often they died in front of their friends, who witnessed the strike of fire, the faltering engine and the long inexorable dive, trailing smoke and flame. On a few occasions, when the R/T was switched to ‘on’, they heard them die, screaming prayers and curses as they ‘went in’. The survivors reacted to the losses in the only way they knew how, with nonchalance and a touch of manufactured, protective heartlessness. There was no open grieving. ‘You didn’t spend days moping around,’ said George Unwin. ‘You just said, “Poor old so-and-so’s bought it,” and that was it.’31 In 32 Squadron there was a black tradition of inking in devil’s horns on the dead man’s picture in the squadron group photograph. Pilots in some squadrons put money into a kitty kept behind the bar in the mess so they could be toasted on the evening of their death. There was hardly ever time to attend a funeral. Burial arrangements were often complicated by the absence of a body. The dead men were burned to cinders, or at the bottom of the sea, or still welded, phantom-like, to the controls of their beloved Hurricane or Spitfire buried in mud or sand or water.
Death was ‘the chop’ and all that was left behind of those who got it were memories and a handful of young man’s possessions: cigarette case, cuff links, perhaps a tennis racket or a set of golf clubs. The RAF bureaucracy listed personal effects with poignant precision. Among the effects left behind by Paddy Finucane were: ‘1 blue leather wallet contg. – 2 snapshots; 2 Religious illustrations, 2 Religious emblems. 1 Black Cat Mascot. 2 silver cigarette cases. 2 cigarette lighters. 3 cabinet photographs (1 with glass broken). 1 Eversharpe pencil.’32 The melancholy business of sorting out kit was described in a poem by Flight Lieutenant Anthony Richardson:
The officer in charge
Made out the inventories, point by point –
Four shirts, six collars and nine pairs of socks,
Two uniforms complete, some flying kit,
Brushes and comb, shaving gear and shoes –
(He tried a jumper on which didn’t fit!)
There was dirty washing, too, which was a bore,
Being certain to get lost in the delay.
A squash racket with two strings gone, and a cap
That like himself, had seen a better day.
Then there were letters, beginning ‘Darling Dick’,
Photos and snapshots all of the same girl,
With a pale, eager face and fluffy hair…33
Frequently there was a car, which would be auctioned at a convenient moment, or driven around until claimed by a relative. Geoffrey Page bought a 1938 Ford convertible that had belonged to Ian Soden, who was killed in France. Soden had acquired it from the estate of another dead pilot. After Page was shot down and badly burned, a fellow 56 Squadron member, Mark Mounsden, wrote to him in hospital asking him what he wanted him to do with it. Page replied that it was his for five pounds. Later he saw the jinxed vehicle being driven through Torquay, where he was recuperating. A badly burned officer was at the wheel.
There was no point in brooding about death. It was too commonplace, and in all likelihood soon to be encountered by those who were left behind. ‘The death of a friend or enemy,’ wrote Page, ‘provided food for a few moments of thought, before the next swirling dogfight began to distract the…mind from stupid thoughts such as sadness or pity…the art was to cheat the Reaper and perhaps blunt his scythe a little.’ Events such as being shot down and crash-landing or baling out were almost too commonplace to merit mention. ‘Something more spectacular was necessary to draw anything greater than a passing comment.’34
Behind the blank exteriors, though, they felt the ache of loss. David Crook was with Peter Drummond-Hay, a 609 Squadron original who had amused his fellow officers with his aspirations to a life of landed leisure, when he was shot down. Returning to their shared room the following day, he saw ‘Peter’s towel was still in the window where he had thrown it during our hurried dressing eighteen hours before. Now he was lying in the cockpit of his wrecked Spitfire at the bottom of the English Channel…I took my things and went to sleep in Gordon’s room next door.’35
Inside the squadron, the emotional burden of the losses fell most heavily on the leader. It was his melancholy duty to write the letters informing parents that their sons were gone. Dennis Armitage took over 266 Squadron after Squadron Leader Wilkinson was killed and the senior flight commander was shot down and severely burned. At the end of a day’s flying from Hornchurch, while the other pilots made off to the pub, he would be left with the paperwork. ‘I would get down to the awful job of writing to the parents or wives – not often wives I’m glad to say – of the lads who had not come back…I tried hard at first, tearing up several letters before I was satisfied, but I am afraid before the end I had developed a more or less stereotyped letter which needed little more than the name and address adding.’36
Some squadron commanders m
ade great efforts to comfort grieving families. No. 603 Squadron had been too occupied with the fighting to send a representative to Noel Benson’s funeral, which took place in St Mary’s Church in the Bensons’ home village of Great Ouseburn, and wreaths from his brother officers and the sergeants’ mess were delivered instead. They did, however, invite his father, a Yorkshire doctor, down to Hornchurch for lunch, which was disturbed when the squadron was scrambled. Writing to his brother, Dr Benson described how he had last seen his son only two days before his death when, by a happy chance, the squadron stopped overnight in the neighbourhood on its journey from Scotland to Hornchurch and he had been able to come home for supper. ‘You can imagine our joy at the chance of seeing him again, tho’ both we and he knew full well what it meant! That “they were flying South”.’
Dr Benson’s grief was all the more moving for its understatement.
We have no regrets for him. He was happy at school, at Cranwell and with his squadron, on service. He loved every minute he was flying. He was devoted to his home and to his father and mother, loved by all who knew him. He never gave us a moment’s anxiety except for his safety and that was inseparable from the career he had chosen. I have never known a finer character. If he had been spared he would have achieved eminence in his profession of that I’m certain. Early he has been killed and gladly he has made the supreme sacrifice, but we are left to miss him very, very sorely.37
Dr Benson lost only one son. The Woods-Scawen family lost two, on consecutive days. On 1 September, Patrick, a twenty-four-year-old flying officer with 85 Squadron, was shot down in the skies over Kenley, within sight of his old school, the Salesian College, Farnborough. He baled out but his parachute failed to open. The following day his younger brother, Charles, a pilot officer with 43 Squadron, was cornered by Me 109s near Folkestone and badly shot up. He also baled out, but too low for his parachute to work. He was twenty-two.
Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945 Page 36