On the 10th poor conditions kept German activity to a minimum. The following day bomber formations managed to penetrate to London in the afternoon and bomb the docks, but when fear of running out of fuel forced the fighter escorts to withdraw they were harried by the British fighters and ten bombers were shot down on the way home. The next two days saw another daytime pause. On Saturday, 14 September, a week after the first big blitz of London, the tempo picked up again with random raids on south London and coastal towns which did little damage to any significant target but killed civilians, nearly fifty of them in the tranquil suburbs of Kingston-upon-Thames and Wimbledon.
It was a different story at night. The raiders returned again and again, but the RAF was not there to meet them. A night fighter, equipped with airborne radar and capable of intercepting intruders, had yet to be perfected. A handful of patrols were dutifully mounted, each of only one or two aircraft. Their presence could only be symbolic. London would have to rely on anti-aircraft artillery, and the number of guns was doubled in the two days following the blitz. The inability of the air force to mount a nocturnal defence was a blessing. It spared the fighters from having to operate on another front, so deepening their exhaustion and accelerating the rate of attrition. The great strategic necessity was the preservation of Fighter Command. Set against that, the bombing of the city was tragic. But in the end it was a lesser tragedy than the destruction of Britain’s fighter strength.
Unlike the soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk, Londoners seemed to accept the RAF’s limitations. Tim Vigors shot down an Me 109 on 9 September and was then shot down himself and crash-landed, unhurt, in an allotment plot in Dartford. He salvaged his parachute and was given some tea and whisky by a friendly lady. Unable to make it back to Hornchurch, he arranged to stay with his aunt at her flat in Tite Street and called a girlfriend, Jill, to invite her to dinner. He met her at the Berkeley Hotel and took her on to supper. It was only when it was over that he remembered to call the squadron. His voice was met with relief. His comrades had assumed he was dead. He promised to be back first thing in the morning and resumed enjoying the rest of the evening. They spent an hour dancing at the Four Hundred Club in Leicester Square, then he escorted Jill to the station and the last train home. On the way back to Tite Street, he had a taste of what Londoners were going through. ‘Sirens were wailing. Searchlights were lighting the sky over to the East and the thuds of exploding anti-aircraft shells blended ominously with the screech of the sirens. The drone of bombers could be heard above the racket and then the bombs started to rain down. They fell in sticks of three or four and one could judge from the explosions of the first two in each stick where the subsequent ones were going to fall.’6 Early the following morning, parachute slung over his shoulder, he set off for Fenchurch Street to catch a train to Hornchurch, passing through streets littered with debris and lined with smouldering buildings. No trains were running but there was a bus service. He asked two policemen for directions to the bus stop and they offered to show him the way. ‘We walked through the arch onto the road and there was a queue of about a hundred people lined up by the bus stop. As we approached a number of people started looking at us curiously. “There’s a bloody Hun!” said one of the leaders.’ The crowd surged forward and Vigors realized what was happening. ‘The blue/grey colour of my uniform was not dissimilar to that worn by pilots of the Luftwaffe…My head was covered by a crop of light blond hair. My parachute, helmet and flying boots made me look like somebody who had just got out of an aircraft. With a policeman on each side of me, they had taken me for a captured German.’ The three backed against a wall while the policemen yelled that the pilot was one of their own, but nobody was listening. ‘Now there were about forty around us and those at the back of the crowd were pushing forward on the leaders. I was suddenly scared. These wretched people who had seen their homes going up in flames meant business. “Hell,” I thought to myself. “What a way for a fighter pilot to get killed: lynched by a bunch of East Enders.”’ But then those at the front of the mob realized their mistake. ‘The ferocious hatred in their eyes turned to horror. “He’s RAF,” they yelled and started to try and push back the crowd behind them…then the reaction set in. I was quickly hoisted on to the shoulders of a few of the front division and carried through the crowd with everybody cheering and trying to clap me on the back.’
Compared to the days of July, the fighting had been hectic. Compared with the relentless activity of the first week of September, the pace had definitely slackened. In the six days before the blitz, Fighter Command flew 4,667 sorties. In the six days after it flew only 2,159. Some squadrons were as occupied as ever, but many in the front line were allowed a brief, longed-for spell of semi-relaxation. The pilots were young, strong and fit, and even a small respite had a powerful restorative effect. More welcome still was the slackening of attacks on the airfields. The Luftwaffe’s attention seemed definitely to have shifted. Between 8 and 14 September there were only token raids on RAF bases. The work of repair could go relatively unmolested and unit rotations take place without the fear that newcomers would be arriving and exhausted units leaving in the middle of a raid.
Such was the rate of pilot losses before the blitz began that Dowding had been forced to reconsider the system of rotation. Inexperienced squadrons arriving from the north were suffering heavy casualties in short periods that shattered their cohesion as a unit and forced their early removal from the line. Dowding had reluctantly devised a system to keep seasoned squadrons for longer than he wished at the forefront of the battle, replacing losses with veterans from other squadrons. Units were to be divided into three categories. All those in 11 Group, the most important sector, were classed as category ‘A’ and were kept up to strength with fully trained pilots, as well as those units in 10 or 12 Group which would be the first to be called in as reinforcements. Squadrons that were fully equipped and up to strength and held as a second-line reserve were ‘B’ class. ‘C’ squadrons were those which had suffered the heaviest losses and were to be kept out of the fighting while pilots rested and new ones were trained. Veterans who had survived could, after recuperating, be posted away to replace losses in squadrons in the first two categories.
Dowding had held back a few strong assets. No. 92 Squadron, home of some of the most aggressive and skilful pilots in Fighter Command, had spent most of the summer in Pembrey in South Wales, and was impatient to get properly to grips with the Luftwaffe. On 8 September it arrived in Biggin Hill. Over the next few days, despite the lull, it still lost six aircraft, with two pilots killed and two seriously wounded. Even for a well-rested unit, manned by experienced pilots, the skies over south-east England continued to be a very dangerous place.
The diminished daytime presence of the Luftwaffe was assumed to be an indication that the last touches were being put to the invasion preparations and a landing was imminent. Church bells, the signal that the Germans were coming, had been rung, mistakenly, on 7 September and Local Volunteer Reservists had gamely set off to their roadblocks to stem the German advance. The continental Channel ports were choked with barges and boats and every night the RAF went to bomb them. ‘The invasion is expected any moment now,’ wrote the politician and diarist Henry ‘Chips’ Channon on Thursday, 12 September, ‘probably some time during the weekend.’7 In fact Hitler’s plans were undergoing another revision. On 14 September, unpersuaded that the preparations were complete, he decided to put off his decision to give the order for the invasion to proceed until 17 September. Before that could happen, though, another great effort was required from the Luftwaffe.
The morning of Sunday, 15 September, was fair in contrast with the thundery, showery and unsettled weather of the preceding days. A warm sun burned off the light haze hanging over the coast. Dowding assumed the change in the climate would mean a busy day and at each sector station a full squadron was kept at readiness from first light. At North Weald Richard Barclay was woken at 4.30 with a cup of tea by an orderly. He was slee
ping with the rest of the squadron in the dispersal hut. It was cold and he dressed quickly. He put on an Irvine flying suit over his pyjamas, which acted as insulation against the chill felt at high altitude in the unheated cockpit of his Hurricane, also a sweater, scarf and flying boots, and finally his yellow Mae West. He took down the blackout from the window and saw it was ‘a lovely autumn morning with a duck-egg blue sky half covered with high cloud’. He wondered what he would be doing in peacetime: probably preparing to drive over to a relation’s estate to shoot partridge and then sit down to a hearty lunch. He reflected that ‘now a fine sunny day meant flying, flying, flying and terrific tension all day, gazing endlessly into the burning sun to see what wily Hun was lurking there, a fight or two perhaps, and someone not there to join the drinking in the bar that evening’.8
Outside he greeted Airman Barnes and Airman Parish, who were running up the engine of his Hurricane. He climbed into the cockpit and glanced over his instruments, checking that the petrol gauge was showing full and the airscrew set at fine pitch. He made sure that two pairs of gloves were stuffed where he knew where to find them and that his helmet was sitting on the reflector sight, with the oxygen and R/T leads connected up, ready for a fast getaway. He lay down on the grass and ‘immediately became unconscious, as if doped’.
In what seemed like only a few moments he was awake again. ‘I woke with a terrific start to see everyone pouring out of the hut, putting on Mae Wests, silk gloves…I could hear the telephone orderly repeating, “Dover, 20,000 feet, fifty plus bandits approaching from SE.”’ He ran, still half asleep, to his machine. The crew had already started the engine. They helped him into the cockpit and tightened his straps. He taxied out into position No. 2 in Yellow Section and took off, only full waking up when he switched on his R/T to hear the orders. His mouth ‘was like the bottom of a birdcage from last night’s party’. It was too early in the morning and he was ‘not in the mood’.
The first blips indicating a raid had appeared on the screens of radar stations near Dover at about eleven o’clock. They represented a smallish formation of twenty-seven Dorniers from a base near Paris. Their appearance was passed on immediately to the control room at the Uxbridge headquarters of No. 11 Group, which Winston Churchill, on a whim, had decided to visit that day. The Dorniers had been late arriving at Calais, having had to re-form after scattering while climbing through cloud. When they got there their escorts, three Gruppen of twenty 109s each, were waiting for them, circling impatiently and wasting precious fuel. They knew that the extension of the raids to London meant that their already limited time over target was further reduced and they were operating at the outer reaches of their capacity. A further force of twenty-one Me 109s equipped with underslung bombs, protected by a similar escort, was due to overtake them and carry out a nuisance raid that would distract the defenders before the arrival of the main force.
To the controllers, the force of a hundred-plus aircraft now showing represented two possibilities. It might be another major raid aimed at London. It could equally be simply a large group of fighters preparing a free hunt to lure up the British fighters. Park judged, emphatically, that it was the former, and decided to bring all his forces to bear. He immediately ordered two squadrons up from Biggin Hill; then, ten minutes later, nine more squadrons from the airfields around London, eight of them arranged in pairs. He also requested a squadron from 10 Group to cover the south-west approaches to London. Finally, he ordered five squadrons from Duxford, massed in a Big Wing, to take off and be at 20,000 feet by the time they were over Hornchurch. Thirteen minutes after the first scramble order, a second set of orders was issued ordering another ten squadrons to climb to different heights in defensive positions around the capital. By midday, there were fifteen squadrons of Hurricanes, totalling 167 aircraft, and eight squadrons comprising 87 Spitfires in the air.
Park’s responses had been developed from nearly two months of intensive decision-making while dealing with daily attacks and refined with the grim experience eight days previously of the first major raid on London. His plan was arranged in three phases. The first bombers would be attacked by Spitfires shortly after they crossed the coast in an attempt to try and break up the formations before they got near the targets. The Messerschmitts would then be expected to come to the rescue. By doing so, though, they would be burning fuel at four times the cruising rate in high-speed chases, further reducing the time they were able to stay with their charges. After the first jarring impact would come a relay of assaults by Hurricane squadrons arriving in pairs from all directions. The last phase would take place in the skies over London, when the remaining squadrons would descend on what it was hoped would by then be a battered and demoralized bomber force and a dwindling fighter escort as, out of ammunition and low on fuel, the Messerchmitts broke off and ran for home.
The advance guard of German fighters crossed the Kent coast just after 11.30 p.m., followed by the Dorniers. The Spitfires of 72 and 92 Squadrons were stationed on their right flank, just to the north and east of Ashford, waiting for them. For once the pilots had the greatly desired advantage of height. The early decision to scramble meant they had reached 20,000 feet. It was freezing up there even at the height of summer, and the cold bit through sheepskin jackets and fur-lined boots and silk gloves. The discomfort was forgotten as the pilots looked down at the Dorniers cruising westwards 9,000 feet below, then looked up to check that the sky was clear of escorts. In fact the German fighters were 3,000 feet underneath. The twenty Spitfires were led by Flight Lieutenant John ‘Pancho’ Villa of 72 Squadron. He ordered the two squadrons into line astern, then swung his machine over on to one wing and peeled off into a steep dive, followed, in a long chain, by the others. The sight of the British fighters galvanized the Messerschmitts, who turned to meet them. The Spitfires failed to break through to the bombers, although another Spitfire unit, 603 Squadron, which arrived to reinforce, shot down three Me 109s in the space of a few minutes.
But the action had succeeded in drawing some of the German fighters away from the bombers they were supposed to protect. The Dorniers flew on straight into the path of two Hurricane squadrons from Kenley, 501 and 253, who attacked them head-on. Two of the bombers were shot down, a third so badly damaged that it immediately turned for home. Those remaining held their formation, bunching up to maximize their formidable defensive firepower. As they moved westwards another twenty-four Hurricanes from 229 Squadron and the all-Polish unit, 303 Squadron, joined the mêlée. The body of aircraft crawled across the sky towards London. At the bottom were the bombers, plodding stoically on to their targets. Above and around them darted the rival fighters, wheeling, twisting and plunging, scrabbling for an advantage that it was only rarely possible to seize.
The sound of the battle drifted down to the placid fields and villages to a population which, despite the expected invasion, were engaged in the old rituals of a Sunday morning: returning from church or preparing the roast beef for lunch. The action looked far off and unreal. Yet the distant violence would intrude from time to time. Metal and flame would descend out of the azure, bringing with it death. Just after midday a Hurricane detached itself from the turmoil over the village of Staplehurst and dropped, spinning earthwards. The Belgian pilot, George Doutrepont, was dead. The machine roared down, the engine note rising ominously, and smashed into the green-and-cream painted railway station, killing a young ticket clerk and severely wounding the station master, sending flaming debris flying through the village.
The formation butted on. As the first British fighters turned away to rearm and refuel, four more Hurricane squadrons moved in from around the capital to block its path, some engaging the escorts while the rest tried to crash inside the bombers’ ranks. Again the Dornier crews held their nerve. By now the Messerschmitt fighter-bombers had overhauled the main body of aeroplanes and reached south London, and were scattering bombs over the Victorian streets of Penge, Dulwich and Norwood.
The main body arrived
a few minutes afterwards. By now the German fighters who had shepherded their charges through successive waves of Spitfires and Hurricanes were reaching the end of their reserves of petrol and ammunition and were faced with the choice of crash-landing or running for their lives. As the fuel gauges sank lower and the red warning lights began to glow, they started to swing away. By the time the bombers arrived over their targets, their formations were still intact but the phalanx protecting them had dwindled alarmingly. Through the Plexiglass canopies the bombers could see an unexpected – almost unbelievable – sight. The sky ahead, the air around, was dotted with small shapes that were rapidly getting bigger. Having survived some of the heaviest concentrations of British fighters they had ever encountered, they were now faced with a huge force of yet more Hurricanes and Spitfires, fighters which they had been told by their superiors did not exist.
The anti-aircraft batteries, which had begun to fire as the bombers crossed into the great brick bowl of south London, ceased their barrage for fear of hitting the approaching fighters. The Germans were now in the very unusual position of being significantly outnumbered. Six squadrons, Nos. 17, 41, 66, 73, 257 and 504, were over the city, a stirring sight to the population craning its necks below. More were on their way. A Spitfire squadron, No. 609 from 10 Group, was stationed in the west. And approaching from the north were five squadrons from Duxford, formed in a Big Wing.
The Hurricanes of 504 and 257 Squadrons were the first to engage. Sergeant Ray Holmes followed his leader, Squadron Leader John Sample, who ‘more or less took us slap across the centre of the formation. The Dorniers didn’t fly particularly tight, which was to their disadvantage. If they had done, they’d have had better fire power to beat off the fighters. But our CO went at them in a quarter attack and more or less went through them and spread them out a bit.’
Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945 Page 42