Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945

by Patrick Bishop

  The authorities took a sympathetic attitude to drink. In July 1940 the Judge Advocate General of the RAF, Foster MacGeagh, pointed out that the Air Force Act had purposely avoided precision over what exactly constituted drunkenness. He drew attention to the observation of his predecessor that it was ‘one of those things that it is easier to recognize than to define comprehensively’. He concluded that ‘the only safe rule is that no person should be convicted of drunkenness…unless the court is satisfied that he was so much under the influence of drink as to be drunk according to the view of ordinary, reasonable men’.32 In fighter squadrons, that allowed considerable leeway.

  Commanders understood the need for release. When his pilots grew more and more fatigued Beamish arranged the rota to try and give everyone one day in four off duty. Sometimes he would accompany them to town, impressing the younger men with the familiarity with which he was greeted by the female habituées of the night clubs. Peter Devitt, commanding 152 Squadron, would send exhausted pilots off to a pub in Swanage to rest for forty-eight hours. Staying in with a cup of cocoa did not guarantee either success or survival. Charlton Haw found that ‘throughout the war, people in squadrons who used to go to bed early and not go out and chase a few pints were far more likely to buy it than people who were a little bit on the wild side’.33

  Laughter and drink edged out thoughts of death. The lowest hour of the day was always the first, sitting at dispersal in silence, smelling the familiar smells of crushed grass, metal, oil and high-octane fuel, waiting for the arrival of the coffee wagon to dispel the beer taste lingering from the night before, nervous sickness stirring in the bowels in anticipation of the first scramble. This was the time when courage was most fragile. Each pilot braced himself to face a day which might bring death or horrible injury. If he survived it was only in order to face the same ordeal the next morning. The ring of the ops telephone was almost welcome. Then, an hour later, they were back on the ground and if everyone had made it home the mood was transformed. It was as if the sun had emerged from behind a cloud. So far, so good. The first, the worst, was over. Having got through it, the pilots’ natural optimism persuaded them to hope that the end would not come that day. Clambering out of the cockpits, the relief showed in the shouted banter and the sudden appetite for bacon and eggs swimming in greasy Naafi trays by the dispersal hut. But towards the close of day the foreboding returned. The pilots were strained and tired. Their nerves were on the surface now, exposed by the constant ebb and flow of emotions and sensations: fear, hatred, anger, satisfaction. So many had gone up on the last sortie of the day and not returned. It seemed to be tempting fate. It was without eagerness that they trotted out across the lengthening shadows towards their Hurricanes and Spitfires, and with thankfulness that they bumped down over the grass or concrete and headed for the pub.

  The resolution of the pilots, their ability to keep going up day after day, over and over, with each trip shrinking the odds of survival, was sustained by interlocking feelings and convictions. The essential sentiment was loyalty, and it came in several forms. There was loyalty to the country and its inhabitants. Noisy expressions of patriotism were considered bad form in Fighter Command. It took outsiders to see how deep and passionate the attachment was. Tim Vigors had been schooled in England and spent much of his youth there, but considered himself an Irishman to the extent of having a tricolour painted on the nose of his Spitfire. He wrote later that he was ‘not possessed of that uncaring patriotism which caused so many young Englishmen…unselfishly to lay down their lives for their country’. But he believed that had the battles been fought ‘over the green fields and purple mountains of Tipperary, in all probability I would have been fired with the same wild, protective feeling for my country which was responsible for the deaths of so many of my brave friends and almost certainly would not be alive…today’.34

  Next to this lay loyalty to comrades. The determination not to let down the man next to you is the main ingredient of military courage and the dynamo that drives all wars. ‘The strongest feeling was not to disappoint your friends,’ said Peter Dunning-White. ‘There was no question of not flying. You daren’t not take off.’35 This was particularly true of the leaders. It was impossible to funk it without everyone seeing you turn away. Belonging depended on sharing the risks and the dangers, and also, though it was by no means essential, achieving some success. No matter how fearful they might be, pilots wanted very much to fly and to succeed, even the least experienced. As the attrition of the summer ground on, Ian Hutchinson ended up as the most senior sergeant pilot in his squadron, able to decide for himself whether or not he would fly. ‘We were flying from a base near Southend and the scramble call came. One chap came to me and said, “Can’t I fly?” I had been flying all the time so I said OK. He went up and he was killed. It was such a shame. He was a lovely chap. I hadn’t allowed him to gain enough experience so I blamed myself.’36

  The pilots were fighting a battle for the survival of Britain. It was only afterwards that the significance of their effort started to become apparent. Most pilots held the silent conviction that they were engaged in a struggle between good and evil. That feeling intensified the longer the war continued. Beyond their allegiance to hearth, home and squadron, a loyalty to humanity drove them on. Brian Kingcome remembered looking at the body of a dead German airman, a member of the crew of a Ju 88 he had helped shoot down near Minehead. ‘Gazing at the young man lying in front of me I could not accept that he had been some kind of non-political combatant. He seemed too close to the ideal Aryan mould cherished by Hitler to be a coincidence or accident, and any charitable…thoughts I might normally have harboured simply remained frozen…I found myself looking at him with loathing.37

  Stories circulated of German breaches of the unwritten conventions of aerial war, in particular the cold-blooded shooting of pilots as they dangled defencelessly on the end of parachutes. The pilots of 266 Squadron believed that their commander, Squadron Leader Rodney Wilkinson, had been killed in this way on 16 August. ‘He was seen to bale out of his crippled aircraft apparently unhurt but his body was found, so we were told, as full of holes as a sieve,’ Dennis Armitage reported. ‘This incident stirred up intense hatred of the Germans. Perhaps they had some justification in that a fully trained and experienced pilot was far harder to replace than the machine he was flying, but our “Wilkie” was much loved and the thought that he was shot up while dangling helplessly from a parachute filled us with a vindictive hate that had not been there before.’38 Other accounts say he died colliding with a Me 109. Squadron Leader Harold Starr of 253 Squadron was certainly machine-gunned to death by a Messerschmitt after he baled out over Eastry in Kent on 31 August. Flight Lieutenant Robert Ash, flying as gunner with a Defiant of 264 Squadron, baled out after being hit on the morning of 28 August. The pilot also jumped and landed with minor injuries, yet Ash was found dead with bullet wounds in his body. Dennis David believed Johnny Dewar had been shot while descending.

  There were no accusations that British pilots had ever responded in kind. There were some suspicions, though, that Polish pilots were less fastidious. Peter Matthews was on leave at the beginning of September and went home to Ewell. He was teaching his wife to drive on Epsom Downs when he looked up to see ‘Hurricanes shooting down Germans in parachutes. I knew jolly well who they were. They were 303 Squadron boys. Poles. They owned to it.’39

  As the German attack widened to include civilians, British sensibilities hardened. Pilot Officer Richard Barclay of 249 Squadron reported in his diary how he had led a chase of two Me 109s, one of which tried to crash-land near Manston. ‘Just as he was at tree-top height Sergeant X shot at the E/A [enemy aircraft]. It flew straight into some trees and crashed in flames. On returning Butch [Flight Lieutenant Robert Barton] tore a terrific strip off Sergeant X about his unsportsmanship, etc., and we all heartily agreed.’ The following day the squadron heard of the bombing of Coventry. Barclay noted: ‘We are inclined to think that perhaps Se
rgeant X’s action yesterday wasn’t so bad after all.’40

  Paddy Finucane’s detached attitude towards the Germans changed after he visited Southampton to see friends shortly after a blitz. When he returned he was visited by a Polish pilot friend, Boleslaw ‘Ski’ Drobinski, at his room in the country house near Tangmere where he was billeted. Finucane stood shaving while Drobinski listened. ‘It was the longest shave I can remember,’ he told Finucane’s biographer. ‘We talked for about an hour. Speaking slowly to ensure I understood, Paddy said: “Listen, Ski, when this war is over we must make sure there will not be another one. It is a terrible way to settle anything. Until it is, we must shoot down every bloody Jerry from the sky.”’41 For some, the point of the fighting now was to hurt as well as to kill. Sailor Malan told Geoffrey Flavell, a doctor acquaintance, that he changed tactics and now tried to avoid shooting down bombers outright. ‘If you shoot them down they don’t get back and no one in Germany is a whit the wiser. So I figure the right thing to do is let them get back. With a dead rear gunner, a dead navigator, and the pilot coughing his lungs up as he lands…I think if you do that it has a better effect on their morale.’42

  Killing and maiming were none the less not things to boast about. Most pilots told themselves and the outside world that, when they shot at a German aeroplane, they were aiming at the machine not the man. George Bennions ‘was relieved when they baled out’. Another 41 Squadron pilot, Tony Lovell, who was a devout Catholic, ‘used to go and see the RC padre and pray for forgiveness…He used to get very upset when he’d shot something down, very upset.’43 Michael Constable Maxwell of 56 Squadron, another fervent Catholic, left behind in his diary an account of the complex evolution of his feelings as he closed in on a Dornier that he had managed to isolate from the fleet.

  While attacking the formation I was frightened and excited, but once it had left the others I began to experience the most wonderful and jubilant excitement imaginable. I took a joyful pleasure in the thought that I had made it leave the formation, and all I wanted to do was close in and kill. I had no fear of his bullets, even though a shower of tracer came at me whenever I got within range, and I felt no compunction in shooting something damaged. I just felt a primitive urge to chase and to kill…

  [But then] suddenly all this changed. I saw that he had had enough and merely wanted to land. The fight was over. He had given in and all he wanted was a safe place to get down. Four humans were in that plane. They were up in the air and in a damaged machine that the pilot was heroically trying to land. This last few minutes [were] the most unpleasant I have experienced in this war. I was safe, they were in danger of death. They crashed and no one got out.

  The next day’s entry describes an encounter he had with some other pilots with a local lawyer who was friendly with the squadron. ‘He is told of the Dornier. “Oh how absolutely splendid of you, I do hope they were all killed!”’ Constable Maxwell found this ‘the filthiest remark I have ever heard and I was staggered by its bloody sadism…it is this loathsome attitude which allows papers to print pictures of wounded Germans. They must be killed and I hope to kill many myself…but the act is the unpleasant duty of the executioner which must be done ruthless and merciless [sic] – but it can be done silently.’44

  No matter how powerful the pilots’ motivations might be, they could not dispel the surges of fear that rose and fell with the stresses of the day. Robin Appleford ‘got that sort of sick feeling all the time. I think most people if they were honest would confirm this.’45 Peter Devitt was ‘scared bloody stiff most of the time and anybody who says he wasn’t frightened…was just as frightened as everybody else’.46 Even Wing Commander Teddy Donaldson, who was notably unsparing of his pilots in 151 Squadron, admitted that the experience of tackling enemy aircraft when hugely outnumbered was ‘very, very, frightening’.47 But the level of fear climbed and fell away. In between the peaks were periods of excitement, even of boredom. No pilot could have operated if gripped by terror.

  Few were ever overwhelmed by fear, but for some the struggle was fearful. One pilot in 501 Squadron would pause to vomit as he ran out to his aeroplane. One of George Unwin’s sergeant pilots was ‘terrified not of the Germans but of the Spitfire. I used to say, look, would you like me to have a word with the CO, and get you on to bombers. “No, no,” he said, “that shows I’m a coward.” I said, “Be buggered, it doesn’t show you’re a coward at all if you’re prepared to go on bloody bombers.” But he wouldn’t and eventually he killed himself landing.’48

  Constant exposure to fear, though, inevitably caused psychological damage. Pete Brothers came across one of his pilots sitting on the grass bathed in sweat and ordered him to report to the medical officer. Later ‘the doc appeared and said: “This chap’s sick. He’s not to fly again. I’m grounding him.”’ He had been suffering the delusion that he had been shot down in flames, the fate of another squadron member the day before.49 Fatigue, Birdy Bird-Wilson remembered, ‘broke into a chap’s mentality in the most peculiar ways. Some really got the jitters…others, as I did, had nightmares at night. I used to wake up in the dispersal hut…and I was night-flying my Hurricane. This went on for quite a long time.’50

  Good squadron leaders understood when a man was at the end of his limits and had him posted away for a rest, usually as an instructor at an Operational Training Unit. Peter Down recognized the symptoms in himself. In the middle of September, though he was only a pilot officer, he led the remnants of 56 Squadron out of the line to Boscombe Down. They were given a week’s leave, but Down knew that would not be enough. He asked to see Air Vice-Marshal Sir Christopher Quintin Brand, the commander of 10 Group. ‘To my surprise he appeared two days later and led me under a tree near our dispersal point away from everybody else and said, “What do you want to see me about?” And I just said I wanted a break…I seemed to be doing all the work because of the lack of experience of anybody else. I knew my England without looking at a map and could fly anywhere within reason, whereas the squadron commander at the time didn’t have the ability to do so…He said, “All right, nice to have spoken to you,” and he gave me a pat on the shoulder and left. Three or four days later the signal came through saying I could take myself off as an instructor to Sutton Bridge.’51

  The training units at Sutton Bridge and Aston Down were staging posts for many strung-out pilots. ‘You saw chaps who had really taken shock extremely badly,’ said Birdy Bird-Wilson, who instructed in both. ‘They’d come into the bar and they’d have a terrible facial twitch or a body twitch and there was nothing you could do to help them except to act back again the same twitch. If they had a facial twitch, while you’re drinking your drink, whatever it might be, you did the same back to them. And so they realized they were doing it – it’s a very cruel way to be kind…It cured chaps in the end, it really did, and they returned to operations thereafter.’52

  In a small number of cases a pilot’s inability to fulfil his duty could not be overlooked and action had to be taken. One pilot came to Donaldson and ‘admitted to me that he was a bit terrified and so I said, “Right then, off.”’ He had already noticed ‘too many engine failures. He’d just disappear in the middle of a battle and go home.’53 Denys Gillam witnessed one pilot who ‘went to pieces on the ground, just as he was getting into his aeroplane. The doctor [was] seeing us off. He hit this chap on the chin, hard, knocked him out. He didn’t fly again.’54

  In one case it was the commander himself whose nerve was suspect. In early September Pete Brothers and Bob Tuck were posted to 257 Squadron at Martlesham Heath to replace two flight commanders who had been killed on the same day on the same operation. Brothers discovered that ‘morale in the squadron was…way down the bottom, naturally. They were a bunch of young chaps, only two of them with pre-war experience. The others were chaps with minimum training. Naturally they were thinking, if these two experienced chaps can be shot down, what sort of chance have we got?’

  On the first sortie they flew with the sq
uadron leader, the ground controller ordered them to patrol a line above Maidstone at 20,000 feet. As they did so they saw a large formation of bombers with fighter escorts approaching and alerted the squadron leader. ‘He said, “We’ve been told to patrol the Maidstone line and that’s what we’ll do until we’ve been told to do otherwise.” So we all pissed off and left him and got stuck in.’ Later Brothers worried that perhaps he had made a misjudgement. ‘But then this happened a second time, then a third time, and we decided that this chap just wanted to avoid combat at all costs.’ A few nights after they arrived, after fortifying themselves with beer, they rang up Keith Park and asked for him to be sacked.55 The squadron leader was immediately posted away to a training unit. Other pilots deemed to be suffering from ‘lack of moral fibre’ were put on menial duties like towing drogues.

  The pilots’ resolution was fortified by the knowledge of the admiration they were held in by everyone in the country. Churchill had acknowledged the nation’s debt in a speech on 20 August in the House of Commons, when he expressed the thanks of ‘every home in our Island, our Empire, and indeed throughout the world’, towards the pilots, who were ‘turning the tide of world war by their prowess and devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ This gratitude was already visible to the pilots every time they ventured off base.