Brian Kingcome was not a self-effacing man, but he resisted attempts to establish an order of precedence among pilots based on the number of ‘kills’. He qualified as one of the most successful pilots of the period. Between 2 June and 13 October he is credited with shooting down at least seven enemy aircraft and damaging many more. The true figure is almost certainly considerably higher as he was careless about recording claims. Kingcome was tall, amused, sceptical, slightly offhand. He had a flattened nose and droopy eye, the result of a pre-war car crash, which did nothing to reduce his attractiveness to women. These were attributes that might make him an object of envy to other men. Yet he was popular and respected. He was convivial and loved a party. He gave credit where it was due. His irritation with attempts to classify him as a hero was genuine. So, too, was a bluntness that could disconcert. ‘He didn’t suffer fools, there’s no doubt about it,’ said Sergeant David Cox, who flew with him in 72 Squadron and liked him.13 He worked hard at insouciance. Geoffrey Wellum, nicknamed ‘Boy’ because of his youth and innocence, described waiting at dispersal and thinking, in an atmosphere thick with anticipation, that ‘only…Brian Kingcome, who is reading and sucking a matchstick, looks relaxed. But on second thoughts, when did he last turn a page? I watch quietly and he doesn’t.’14
The Fighter Boys cultivated ironic modesty. Those who became well known to the public during and after the war were regarded with some reserve. Unlike Kingcome, Bob Stanford Tuck advertised his successes and painted swastikas on the fuselage of his Spitfire marking the number of Germans he had knocked down. This practice, according to Birdy Bird-Wilson, was regarded by the majority as ‘a bit of a line shoot’. Douglas Bader, the most famous fighter pilot of the period, aroused mixed feelings in those who fought alongside him. His bombastic nature and tendency to dramatize was in many ways the antithesis of the Fighter Boy ethos. All paid tribute to his courage, aggressive spirit and ability to enthuse those who followed him. There was reticence, though, about his sharp tongue and fondness for the limelight. David Cox regarded him as ‘a good leader, there’s no doubt about that. I think you could say you admired him. To like him, though, would be a little difficult.’ Dennis David, a generous-hearted man, found him, ‘very apt to being a bit smart, a bit short’.15 Christopher Foxley-Norris thought he was ‘a show-off’, but ‘enormously inspirational’.16 To the ground crews he could be arrogant, bullying and foul-mouthed.17
The worst criticism, made all the more damning by its apparent mildness, was that a pilot was ‘not entirely genuine’. To be a ‘gen man’ meant that you knew what you were doing and did it well, honestly and without fuss. Some of those who fell most emphatically into this category were unknown outside the ranks of Fighter Command. Johnny Dewar, who lead 87 Squadron, was at least ten years older than most of his pilots. He was a member of the whisky family and renowned for his hospitality. After graduating from Cranwell, his career had taken him to every corner of the inter-war RAF. He took the squadron over after it was posted to France and fought all through the summer until he was reported missing on 12 September 1940, shortly after being promoted wing commander. His leadership impressed Dennis David, who found him ‘full of common ordinary decency’.18 Roland Beamont, who also served with him, thought ‘he might have been a rather paternal type of schoolmaster in his manner, gentle, quiet mannered resolute and totally unflappable. He was all of thirty-two at the time. We thought he was an old man.’19
Most of the pilots were between nineteen and twenty-six years old. The extreme circumstances they found themselves in made them more appreciative of father figures than they might have been in peacetime. Among the most popular men in Fighter Command were several station commanders who were admired for their good nature and efficiency in keeping the bases going and the pilots properly looked after. Wing Commander Victor Beamish ran North Weald for the worst part of the summer. Cuthbert Orde, the former RFC pilot turned war artist, described him as ‘unique as an individual and probably the best-loved man in Fighter Command’.20 He was charming and slightly eccentric, roaming the base in mechanic’s overalls. He had been the RAF’s heavyweight boxing champion in India in the 1930s and had narrowly missed being selected to play rugby for Ireland, where he had been born, in Dunmanway, County Cork, in 1903. While his pilots were standing at the bar with their ‘half-cans’ in the evening, he would trot around the aerodrome, trying to keep fit. He flew continuously throughout the summer, shooting down about a dozen bombers and fighters and earning the respect of pilots almost half his age. ‘I don’t think any pilot would dare to do less than his best if Victor was about,’ wrote Orde. ‘Not because he might get ticked off but because he would feel ashamed.’ The ground staff liked him too. To Eric Clayton he was ‘a large burly figure with a friendly face and a ready smile…energetic with a powerful sense of duty; hot-tempered but quick to apologize. He was a pugnacious but warm-hearted Irishman. He was also ready with his praise, altogether a great leader.’21 Beamish resisted the pull of desk and office to the end and died in the air, shot down over the Channel in 1942.
The personality of Group Captain Richard Grice dominated Biggin Hill. Dick Grice was a veteran of the RFC and had won a DFC in the First World War. He was a comforting presence during the repeated blitzes of the base. Pilots, ground crews and station staff, men and women, were reassured by the sound of his calm voice over the Tannoy warning of an imminent raid then announcing the all-clear, and afterwards the sight of the slim, concerned figure picking his way through the smoke and flame to check on the welfare of his 1,000 charges. He was particularly solicitous towards the female staff, the 200 Waafs who were now indispensable to the functioning of the place, and the women who manned the Naafi. He praised their courage and nourished their morale. When the manageress of the Naafi appeared on the point of collapse through overwork, he overrode her demands to stay at her post and sent her on leave. When she returned she found he had arranged for a pullover she left behind, embroidered with the names of European capitals she had holidayed in, to have the name of Biggin Hill added.
It was natural that inside each squadron pilots made special friendships or formed little groups who would sit together at dispersal or return to each others’ rooms for a last drink after a night in the mess or down at the pub. In 17 Squadron Denis Wissler was particularly close to Birdy Bird-Wilson, and ‘Pitters’ – Geoffrey Pittman – his favourite companions on trips to bar, cinema or hop. Robin Appleford and Rob Bodie gravitated naturally to each other, both the babies of 66 Squadron, both good-looking. They teamed up for forays into London in an unlicensed, untaxed banger, once piling into a bomb crater as they raced home through the blackout. Like inclined to like. George Unwin formed an alliance with Frank Steere; both were pre-war sergeants and superb pilots. Richard Mitchell and George Johns, West Country boys and ex-Halton apprentices, teamed up together in 229 Squadron. It was also inevitable that there would be outsiders, those who somehow never managed to cross the low threshold that led to acceptance. On 16 October, Wissler noted the departure of two pilots who had been with the squadron for several months, but until then had failed to feature in the dramatis personae of his diary. They were ‘both dim types whose posting was expected’.
Fitting in was made easier by the very difficulty of becoming a fighter pilot in the first place. Being posted to a squadron meant that the first and most important test had been passed. The new pilots were joining an élite. Like all élites, it was indulgent towards its own. The social matrix was elastic, stretching to accommodate differences of personality and background. There were common attitudes that were reasonably easy to embrace. Fundamental to the outlook was humour. It was black, broad, coarse or feeble, usually schoolboyish but constant and all-pervasive.
The practical joking and ragging traditions of pre-war days survived and, when the situation allowed, evenings regularly ended with boisterous mess games. ‘A wonderful evening terminating at the Schooner,’ wrote the unofficial diarist of 73 Squadron of a night in
late July. ‘The CO, strong as he was, failed to prevent a not unusual ceremony of being debagged.’22 Ian Hutchinson was playing the piano in the mess one night when a raid came in. He reached for his steel helmet, but another pilot beat him to it. When he placed it on his head, beer cascaded over his shoulders. In 74 Squadron Peter Chesters bombarded his fellow pilots with meteorological balloons filled with water as they ran from the dispersal hut in response to a phoney scramble. The trick only worked once. Later the pilots had their revenge when, while again fooling about on a roof, he managed to get wedged between the walls of a hut and the surrounding blast barrier. His comrades relieved themselves on him before helping him out. Chesters was high-spirited until the end. He was killed when he misjudged his height doing a victory roll over Manston after shooting down an Me 109 the following year.
Mishaps that ended short of death were a subject of hilarity, such as getting shot down by a bomber rather than by one’s equal, an Me 109. The joking, as was recognized, served a need. ‘One of my greatest recollections of the time was laughter,’ Roland Beamont said later. ‘Obviously there was a release of tension in seeing the funny side of things. Maybe sometimes the laughter got a little high. Perhaps there was a bit of hysterics in it somewhere…We saw things in very sharp outline. If you saw a chum on a parachute, the fact that he landed with a bit of damage was thought of as really rather amusing. The fact that he wasn’t killed was extremely satisfactory for all concerned and a cause of merriment.’23
The pilots were further bound together by their own argot, a mixture of public-school slang, technical jargon and transatlantic coinages picked up from films and records. The public-school contribution included boyish expressions of enthusiasm as well as boredom (a very British preoccupation). Anything tedious, a broad category, was a ‘bind’. Pilots would complain of an uncongenial activity that it ‘binds me rigid’. Inevitably, when it came to serious matters, understatement was obligatory. ‘Walking out’ was parachuting out from a burning aeroplane. Colliding with the ground or sea at several hundred miles an hour was ‘going in’. Many a pilot’s death was announced with the laconic news that he had ‘had it’, or ‘bought it’, or ‘gone for a Burton’. The Fighter Boys’ enthusiasm for Hollywood movies and American singers and bands provided them with a rich new word-hoard. To the more traditional types, girls were still ‘popsies’. But among the racier pilots, young women became ‘dames’ or ‘broads’.
Most pilots were on the look-out for fun, and fun was almost invariably accompanied by alcohol. Fighter Boys were drinkers. Despite the obvious unwisdom of the combination, pilots and alcohol had always gone together. Beer, the tangy sudsy bitter of the county breweries that covered the country, was what they customarily ordered, served in dimpled mugs or pewter tankards, up to eight pints a night. They drank it, when they were not in the mess, in pubs whose nostalgia-wreathed names became as fondly remembered by the pilots as the airfields at which they served: the Red Lion at Whittlesford, the Old Ship at Bosham, the White Horse at Andover, the Golden Cross near Canterbury.
At the height of the summer battles, every effort would be made to get to the pub before closing time no matter how hard the day had been. Pilots at Biggin Hill welcomed the shortening of the days as the summer wore on, as it meant they could reach the brass rail sooner. Often they would be driven there by the station commander. ‘Dick Grice had a tannoy speaker mounted on his car and we’d be down at the White Hart and you could hear him coming from a mile away,’ said Pete Brothers. ‘“This is the CO. I want three scotches and two pints of bitter.” He’d got a bunch of chaps in the car and and was calling up the bar. You could hear this booming across the countryside.’24
The White Hart at Brasted, a pleasant village that straggles along the road from Westerham to Sevenoaks, became the most celebrated of the Fighter Boys pubs. There had been an inn on the site since the seventeenth century. It had steep-pitched tile roofs and thick lintels, large rooms made cosy with beams and fireplaces and stone-flagged floors. The White Hart was not the nearest pub to Biggin Hill, seven miles away across the fields, but it was the most attractive. The bar was presided over by a reserve navy officer, Teddy Preston, and his wife Kath. Among the customers were Moira and Sheila, handsome twins and the daughters of Sir Hector Macneal, a friend of Beaverbrook who lived near by at the Red House. They were, in Brian Kingcome’s description, ‘tall, elegant, sophisticated and beautiful young women…They exuded the indefinable quality that comes from impeccable taste’.25 Moira, the elder, was married to an air commodore on duty posted to the Middle East. Sheila was the widow of a fighter pilot who had disappeared after being sent on a hopeless mission on a winter night at the start of the war. She was left with a small daughter, Lesley.
Behind the blackout curtains the pilots would banter among themselves and with local customers, flirt with the Macneal twins and, when gently moved on by the local policeman at closing time, look for somewhere else to drink. Tony Bartley recorded the last frantic minutes of a typical session.
‘Time gentlemen please,’ yelled the barman.
‘Who’s for the Red House?’ said one of the twins…There was a unanimous howl of approval…We piled into the station wagon like sardines again, and after a short drive arrived in front of a fine old red-brick manor house. The twins had gone ahead and were waiting for us at the door. I was shown into the drawing room and had a very large whisky thrust into my hand. Someone put on the radiogram.26
After its move to Biggin Hill in September, 92 Squadron ensured there was always somewhere to go by creating its own club in Southwood Manor House, to where the pilots had been moved by Grice, who dispersed the squadrons around surrounding country houses because the incessant bombing made it too dangerous to stay on the base at night. The squadron had a jazz pianist of professional standard in Bob Holland. Other musicians from among the Biggin Hill staff would be drafted in for jam sessions. Writing to a Waaf friend, Holland enthused about their ‘wizard billet which is in a fairly large country house we have taken over with a dance floor, piano, drums, double bass and plenty of VR musicians to go with it. We just have a night club here every night. Our drink bill is mounting up to something terrific, but still, what the hell!’ Fun was necessary to forget what was happening. The next line in the latter reads: ‘Poor old Bill Williams and Drummond were killed this morning. They must move us soon for a rest.’27
Pilots pursued fun with the same enthusiasm that they brought to flying. Even at the height of the battles, pilots at the London perimeter bases would manage sorties to the West End. ‘There was almost a daily routine at the height of the summer,’ remembered Geoffrey Page, who was with 56 Squadron at North Weald. ‘We’d land, having been based all day at somewhere like Manston, trying to get on the ground in time…to get to the pub. The pubs closed at 10.30, so the rush getting from your aircraft to the local tavern was enormous. We’d make it. The landlady would give us some extra time, then some idiot would suggest we went up to London. We’d bundle into various cars, drive up and stay in a night club until two in the morning. We had to be back on readiness at four. Back we’d come, really not in 100 per cent condition to be doing the job we were doing but happy about it.’ They went to the Bag o’Nails in Beak Street or Hatchett’s in Piccadilly to bask in the admiration of the young hostesses. These encounters never ‘led to anything because you had to get back to the airfield…It was just schoolboy enthusiasm and mirth.’28 Back at North Weald, Page would sober up in the pre-dawn light by walking around the perimeter, acting the part of the keen young officer by pretending to inspect the men guarding the fence.
Some pilots in Al Deere’s squadron would dispense with bed altogether after a very late night and simply don their flying jackets and doze on deckchairs in the dew-laden grass at dispersal, waiting for the first scramble of the day. Archie Winskill, based at Hornchurch, would go to Romford with his squadron friends and take the tube to Piccadilly Circus ‘to hit the high spots. Often we stayed all night at t
he Jermyn Street Turkish Baths, which were open all night, and then after a few hours’ sleep, went back on the tube to Romford and into the cockpit.’29 The Antipodeans would meet up at the Tivoli bar close to Australia House and New Zealand House in the Strand. Irving Smith, a New Zealander with 151 Squadron had arranged to meet some friends there one evening but was delayed. His quarters at North Weald had been bombed. He was separated from his kit and had been moved to Stapleford Tawney. He sent a message to the bar saying he would not be coming, but then discovered there was a train that could get him to London by closing time. He arrived to find them holding a wake. ‘My message was garbled,’ he said later. ‘They all thought I’d been shot down and was dead. After that there was a great thrash.’30
Away from the metropolis the fun was less sophisticated. No. 87 Squadron, based in Exeter, lived in two hotels but had little contact with the local people. Their main social contacts were with the police and the Royal Marines, who invited them to drinks at headquarters. Internal squadron celebrations could have the quality of a provincial Rugby club piss-up. The unofficial diary of 73 Squadron, based at Church Fenton in Yorkshire, records a dinner held to mark the departure of one of the pilots on 29 August.
Throughout dinner Henry sat miserably, tugging at a large hydrogen balloon tied to his VR collar badge. After he had eaten his fill he was duly escorted to The Ship by the CO and Reggie Lovett [a flight commander], in company with several other members of the sqn. What a night! At 11.30 p.m. he was duly carried out of The Ship screaming loudly for assistance. After several unsuccessful attempts he was inserted into the awaiting vehicle where he peacefully passed out on the floor while being driven back to the mess. On arrival he was carted up to his room where we at last fulfilled our promise and put Henry to bed with his boots on. During the night sundry untoward incidents occurred about which the less said the better! However at 5 o’clock the following morning a certain very soiled-looking figure was seen searching for his teeth with almost frantic energy. They were eventually found in a place where they were very nearly washed away for good, and as a result they spent the rest of the night in strong disinfectant!31
Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945 Page 38