Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945

by Patrick Bishop

  Holmes discovered again that it was ‘surprising how quickly you lose your overall view of a lot of aircraft. We were travelling at 250, 300 m.p.h., and at that sort of speed the air clears very quickly. You make one attack, turn round and come back again and you wonder where everyone’s gone. Then, if you’re lucky, you see one or two that you can go for, if you’ve broken them up.’9 He fastened on to the rear of a bomber and began firing. His windscreen was drenched in flying oil. By the time it had cleared he was on the point of collision and dived steeply to flash underneath its belly. The Dornier had been hit and turned desperately for home. As it struggled out of London, it was attacked again, its second engine failed and it crash-landed in a field near Sevenoaks.

  Ray Holmes now turned on a lone bomber and attacked it from head-on. After a few seconds his ammunition was exhausted, but he was determined to hold his course. The left wing of the fighter and the tail wing of the bomber struck with what Holmes later considered was a surprisingly slight shock. Almost immediately the Dornier began to break up, crashing to earth in front of Victoria Station. As it fell, two bombs and a canister filled with incendiary devices tumbled into the gardens of Buckingham Palace. The bombs were not fused but the incendiaries ignited, setting the lawns on fire. Despite the apparent gentleness of the collision, the controls of Holmes’s Hurricane were gone. When the nose dipped he baled out. He landed on a block of flats, slithered down the roof and was saved from serious injury when his parachute snagged in the guttering and he found himself suspended a few feet above a dustbin.

  With extraordinary determination, the Dorniers had persisted with their bombing run, aimed at the railway viaducts at Battersea. After releasing their bombs, the pilots threw their machines into the tightest turns they could manage and tried to flee the fighters. As they did so, the Hurricanes and Spitfires of the Duxford wing tipped down from 25,000 feet. The confusion was total. The British fighters were getting in each other’s way in their determination to get a shot in, and there was a real danger of them shooting each other down. Richard Barclay turned to confront what he thought was an enemy fighter, only to identify it, just in time, as ‘one of those confounded Spitfires again’.

  As the formation fled, the fighters moved in to pick off stragglers. Rob Bodie attached himself to a crippled bomber limping along with a damaged engine. He raked it with fire and it slipped into a long shallow glide. He watched the gunner bale out, then flew alongside to inspect the damage. The pilot ‘sat bolt upright in his seat, and he was either dead or wounded for he didn’t even turn his head to look at me, or watch out for a place to land, but stared straight ahead. Suddenly a pair of legs appeared, dangling from the underneath hatch. The other gunner was baling out. He got out as far as his waist, then the legs kicked.’ Bodie realized the man was stuck and felt a momentary spasm of pity, then ‘thought of the people down below, wives, mothers, kiddies, huddled in their shelters, waiting for the “All Clear”.’

  But the sight disturbed him. ‘The legs still wriggled and thrashed, 2,000 feet above the cool green fields, trapped in a doomed aircraft, gliding down, a dead pilot at the controls. First one boot came off, then the other. He had no socks on, his feet were quite bare; it was very pathetic.’ The bomber was down to 1,000 feet. Bodie had an image of the gunner being cut in half when they hit the ground, scraped away like grated cheese. ‘In spite of all he stood for, he didn’t deserve a death like that. I got my sights squarely on where his body would be, and pressed the button. The legs were still. The machine went on. The pilot was dead. He made no attempt to flatten out and land, but went smack into a field and the aeroplane exploded. I saw pieces sail past me as I flew low overhead. I didn’t feel particularly jubilant.’10

  David Cox, who had arrived with 19 Squadron, engaged some of the remaining Me 109s but broke off to attack a fleeing Dornier, which escaped by ducking into a convenient cloud. Keen to shoot something down, he carried on. ‘I had plenty of ammunition and flew south a bit. To my right I saw six single aircraft which I thought were Hurricanes. We were always told you shouldn’t fly around on your own and you should always try and join up with any friendly aircraft.’ The angle he had been approaching from was deceptive. As they approached he realized they were Me 109s. ‘Four of them dived away and I saw nothing more of them. Of the others, one climbed behind me and one climbed in front. The one behind attacked and I turned very violently and he just carried straight on…but the one who had been above me turned. As he was coming at right angles I fired a ninety-degree deflection shot and he went down and crashed.’11

  The reluctance of the other Me 109s to engage was an indication of their desperation to get back to their bases. All the remaining raiders were heading for France. A Messerschmitt escort was waiting to shepherd them home. Despite the great concentration of force and the huge expenditure of ammunition, only six of the Dorniers had actually been shot down. The remaining nineteen struggled back some way or another, most of them sieved with bullets, frozen air whistling through the holes in the Plexiglass canopies, their interiors stinking of cordite and petrol, the wounded moaning or unconscious, the dead slumped, still strapped in where the fighters’ bullets had caught them. It was not the damage that had been inflicted that was significant. It was the story the survivors had to tell.

  The bomber crews were shocked at the strength of the British resistance, their superiors at first disbelieving. While they were being debriefed, another attack was already under way, bigger than the last. This time there were 114 bombers, Heinkels and Dorniers, which had taken off from bases in Holland and northern France to form up over Cap Gris Nez, half-way between Boulogne and Calais, and set course for the pebble promontory of Dungeness, thirty miles across the Channel. They arrived in two waves. In the first were three formations of sixty-eight bombers. The second was smaller, two formations of forty-six bombers. Each formation had an escort of about thirty Me 109s. Another 150 fighters cruised in a loose box around the core of the force, throttling back, swinging from side to side so as to remain just above stalling speed and not outstrip the bombers, with a similar number roaming ahead and on either side to sweep the way clear. Once again the target was London, this time the Royal Victoria and the West India Docks.

  The British pilots had landed, spoken to their intelligence officers, briefed the crews on the performance and needs of their machines and flopped down for a few moments’ rest while their machines were checked, refuelled and rearmed. Many fell straight to sleep. Richard Barclay and the other 249 pilots ‘had a rotten lunch in our dispersal hut sitting on our beds’. The excitement of the morning had not subsided before they were in the air again. At 2 p.m., Park ordered eight squadrons off in pairs to patrol over Sheerness, Chelmsford, Kenley and Hornchurch. Five minutes later he scrambled four more; then a further eight. Reinforcements from 10 and 12 Group were summoned to come to the defence of the capital, including a Big Wing of five squadrons from Duxford, comprising twenty-seven Hurricanes and twenty Spitfires.

  The first clash took place over Romney Marsh. As the Germans crossed over land, the advance guard of twenty-seven fighters from 41, 92 and 222 Squadrons sailed in to the attack. The escorting Messerschmitts broke off to confront them. Pilot Officer Bob Holland, 92 Squadron’s brilliant pianist, was shot up from behind. The German pilot watched him slide back the canopy and step out into space. He landed, unhurt, near Staplehurst. Park ordered 303 and 602 Squadrons to scramble. With that, every one of 11 Group’s units were now engaged. With outside reinforcements, 276 Hurricanes and Spitfires were facing or approaching the enemy, slightly more than had been in action in the morning. This time, though, the odds were not so favourable. Their task was to stop the bombers, which, if they maintained their formations, were capable of defending themselves strongly. To get to them they had to break through a defensive screen of 450 fighters. With height, the British pilots had the tactical advantage over those providing the close escort. But once they went in to attack they were vulnerable to the German ou
triders, flying high and wide to swoop as soon as they saw a British fighter commit himself to the dive.

  As the German formations breasted the first wave of attacks, they were confronted with the second line of defence, Hurricanes from 213 and 607 Squadrons, who flew straight into them. Pilot Officer Paddy Stephenson of 607 Squadron was unable to avoid a collision, smashing into a Dornier and sending his own and the other machine spinning out of the sky. Tom Cooper-Slipper, a nineteen-year-old pilot officer, after being shot up while closing on another Dornier and realizing he would have to bale out, decided to ram it before jumping. Appalled crews saw him overhaul the bomber and turn into it, knocking it into an uncontrolled dive. Astonishingly, both Stephenson and Cooper-Slipper survived.

  The German force was now arranged in three groups approaching London down an air corridor that took it past Maidstone, reaching the widening mouth of the Thames as it flowed past Gravesend, where it would swing left towards Docklands. But before the bombers and fighters reached the targets, they had to fight their way through the third and thickest line of defence, the squadrons now massed before the southeastern approaches to the city. The bombers cruised on, in bright sunshine one minute, the next tunnelling through the clammy grey of towering stacks of cumulus that reared up from 2,000 feet. Just after 2.30 p.m., ten minutes away from the bombing zone, the British fighters plunged into their third major assault. Bobby Oxspring with 66 Squadron was detailed to watch for fighters while the rest of the squadron tried to get among the centre group of Heinkels. With no threat apparent, he dived towards the action, where he found a bomber which had been chiselled away from the formation and was ‘getting a hell of a plastering by four or five Hurricanes and Spits’. He ‘gave it a squirt for luck just before he went into cloud. When last I saw him his wheels had come down and he was looking awful sick. My number 3 followed him through the cotton wool…along with several of the other fighter boys wasping around. He told me afterwards they succeeded in making [it] crash on a nearby aerodrome.’12 The Heinkel put down on West Mailing, with the fighters still in hot pursuit. It was to be claimed as a ‘definite’ in numerous individual combat reports.

  The presence of the German fighters made such unrestrained behaviour extremely dangerous. Pilot Officer Tom Neil, a friend of Richard Barclay’s in 249 Squadron, had just shot down a Dornier and been momentarily mesmerized by the sight of ‘spreadeagled arms and legs as two bodies flew past my head, heavy with the bulges that were undeveloped parachutes…the crew! Baling out!’ Then he was engulfed by Me 109s arriving to take revenge. ‘In a frenzy of self-preservation, I pulled and pushed and savagely yanked my aircraft about, firing whenever I caught sight of a wing or a fuselage in my windscreen. They were not sighted bursts, just panic hosings designed to scare rather than kill and directed against aircraft that were often within yards of me…a murderous, desperate interlude.’13

  Such encounters imposed huge physical strains. The crushing G forces endured in steep dives induced blackouts so that in any combat a pilot might be unconscious for several seconds, then come to find he was upside down or screaming towards the ground. At high speeds a fighter’s delicate controls became stiff and leaden and it took real strength to shift the stick so that after a fight the pilot’s right arm would be throbbing. The layers of warm clothing needed against the intense cold of high altitudes, the oxygen mask that enveloped half the face, became horribly restricting in the intense physical exertion of a dogfight and pilots climbed out of the narrow cockpits soaked in sweat. Almost everyone, even the ‘Tubbys’ and the ‘Jumbos’, lost pounds during periods of action.

  Despite the vicious attentions of the fighters, the German bombers held their formations and pressed on doggedly through the flowing, incandescent line of tracer and the foul black mushrooms of flak. Now and then a machine would dip earthwards or slip behind, engine coughing, away from the comforting embrace of the pack. But at 2.40 p.m. most of them were still there, approaching London and preparing to go into their bombing runs. The two formations aiming for the Royal Victoria Docks were unable to find the target, which was hidden under a bank of cloud. Just beyond, though, to the north and clearly visible, lay railway lines and a gasworks. They would have to do. The lead bombers tilted towards them. The bomb doors opened and the crews behind watched a ripple of white explosions race across the dingy townscape of West Ham thousands of feet below. The second formation’s target, the Surrey Commercial Docks on the south side of the river, was also cloaked in cloud. Three Hurricane squadrons coming in to intercept watched the Dorniers swing into a right turn and head away, scattering bombs as they departed over the suburbs of south-east London.

  On the way back they were harassed constantly by fighters and flak. The most vulnerable were the strays, deprived of the reassuring crossfire that a well-maintained formation could put up, reliant on the protection of any Messerschmitts which had noticed their plight and had sufficient petrol remaining to go to their aid, ducking wherever they could into cloud. Some were fortunate enough to meet up with a force of fifty Me 109s that arrived over the middle of Kent to help the bombers home.

  As the retreating bombers crossed the beaches of Kent, fringed with barbed wire, scored with trenches and sown with mines in preparation for the invasion, the attacking fighters fell away. Everywhere now the fighters were coming in to land. During the ninety minutes of the action, twenty-eight squadrons had been ordered off and every one of them had been in action. As the pilots reached for mugs of tea and lit up cigarettes, Fighter Command was potentially at its most vulnerable point in the entire summer. For the first time in their handling of the battle, Dowding and Park had thrown all their immediate resources into one fight. A second German raid now, aimed at the airfields, would have caught almost every man and machine in 11 Group and the neighbouring sectors defenceless on the ground. Park had gambled that the thunderclouds which blessedly sprawled over nine tenths of the sky above his main fighter stations would make it very difficult for an accurate attack. The anxious moments passed. One by one the squadrons came back to readiness, waiting for another onslaught that never came.

  The combined fighting of the main action of the day, from first sighting to the last bomber trailing over the coast, had lasted less than five hours. In the midday and afternoon engagements the Germans had lost fifty-six aircraft in action and 136 men were either dead or missing. It was the worst day they had suffered so far. The RAF losses had been relatively slight: twenty-nine aircraft, which were easily replaceable, and twelve pilots killed. The pilots could afford to feel a sense of profound satisfaction. Rob Bodie was exhausted when the order came to return to base. ‘The day had been a year. I flew to the coast and set course for home. Passing low over fields and villages, rivers and towns, I looked down at labourers working, children at play, beside a red-brick schoolhouse, a bomb crater two streets away; little black heads in the streets turning to white blobs as they heard my engine and looked up. I thought of workers in shops and factories, of stretcher-bearers and ARP wardens. I hoped the ‘All Clear’ had gone. I was tired. I’d done my best for them.’14

  17

  Autumn Sunset

  There were many parties that night as the pilots celebrated the unusual feeling of being in control of their own skies. The next day’s newspapers presented 15 September as a great victory for the RAF and one of the most severe defeats the Luftwaffe had yet suffered, and they carried hugely inflated figures of the German losses.

  The following morning, rain clouds covered much of south-east England and the bombers stayed away. No one yet felt, though, that the battle was ebbing. There was little sign that the German invasion preparations had been affected by the setback. In the Channel ports the build-up of boats and barges continued, despite a nightly RAF bombardment. Throughout the early autumn, tension remained high. Richard Barclay wrote in his diary on 25 September that ‘everyone was rather expecting an invasion to break out at dawn this morning because it was said that the Boche was sweeping the Channel
of mines yesterday. Everyone was therefore very much at readiness at 5.50 a.m.’ In his squadron there was concern at civilian complacency. On 29 September there was a rare political discussion between the pilots. Among their conclusions were that ‘the British people are still fast asleep. They haven’t begun to realize the power of our enemies and that they have to give their all, as well as the Forces, to win…That the threat of invasion is very real and not a sort of flap or bluff…that we need dictatorial methods to fight a dictator…that 1 German is nice, 2 Germans are swine.’1

  The caution seemed justified when, on 18 September, the bombers returned. During the morning there had been several combats at high altitude between German fighters and ninety Hurricanes and Spitfires sent up by Park, who thought the formation showing on the radar screens might indicate a bombing raid. Five Spitfires were shot down, and a pilot killed, a pointless waste of resources. When, later, a small force of bombers heavily escorted by Me 109s appeared over Dover, Park ignored the provocation, and it went on to bomb Chatham and Rochester. When a third, larger force appeared, apparently heading for London, he had to react. At its core were two formations of Junkers 88s flown by inexperienced crews, drafted in to replace the losses. Fourteen squadrons went up to meet them. Geoffrey Edge, the master of the head-on attack, was at Kenley when the order came through, playing a post-lunch game of squash after being released at midday. He managed to assemble six other pilots and they took off hurriedly to be vectored on to a course by the controller that took them into an excellent attacking position. They lay back in the sun, invisible to the bombers and the Me 109s flying closely round them and overhead. Edge ordered his men into a diagonal line, a wingspan apart and two aeroplane lengths between them. He selected the bomber to the left of the leader for himself. They were to try and attack any bomber that had not been hit. The two groups of aircraft were now approaching each other at a closing speed of 180 to 200 yards a second. Edge calculated that would allow five seconds of firing time before he would have to drag back on the stick and roll to the right to avoid collision. He opened fire at 1,000 yards.