‘Almost instantly,’ he wrote, ‘his cockpit starts to disintegrate. His plane swerves towards his leader, crashing into the tail plane. I leave my guns firing on the port side of the formation. The bombers are breaking up and I have moved my aim to my starboard and at this range I just left the guns firing as I aimed at one cockpit after another.’ Just before a crash became inevitable, he pulled up, then threw his machine into a steep dive and felt G forces drain the vision from his eyes. As it returned he saw dark shapes flashing past his wings. The Germans were jettisoning their bombs. He had seen no incoming fire from the bombers, who appeared to have been oblivious to the attack until it was too late.2
Such encounters could not be endured repeatedly by the Luftwaffe without serious damage to morale. Seventeen aircraft were lost and forty-one men were dead or missing as a result of the day’s action. Members of a bomber flight that had lost four of its six aircraft in the raid on London got drunk that evening in memory of their dead comrades and sang a defiant dirge, ‘Es blitzen die stahlernen schwingen, Uns hat der Tommy verfehlt’ (‘The steel wings are flashing, the Tommies have missed us again’). But implicit in the song was the recognition that, despite the assurances of the commanders, the RAF was far from beaten. Each night the bombers were bringing fire and death to London. But the violence seemed to be leading nowhere. Goering assured the crews that their attacks ‘at the heart of the British Empire…have reduced the British plutocracy to fear and terror. The losses which you have inflicted upon the much vaunted Royal Air Force with your determined fighter combat are irreplaceable.’3 If the first assertion was true, there was no sign of a British surrender. The second, they knew from harsh experience, to be false.
The pilots and crews were as patriotic as their British counterparts. Their doggedness and determination were testimony to their conviction that they could win. But that assurance was fading. ‘At the beginning we weren’t particularly taken aback at the resistance,’ said Gerhard Schöpfel. ‘We thought it wouldn’t last. But as it continued we became more and more surprised at how resilient they were and the fact that they didn’t back down.’4
By the time Goering delivered his morale-boosting address, plans for the invasion had undergone further modification. On 19 September the decision was taken to postpone the issuing of orders for the final preparations once again, this time without setting a new date for the question to be reconsidered. As the other service chiefs pointed out forcefully, the Luftwaffe had failed to deliver the conditions necessary for a successful operation, and was even unable to protect the transports waiting to carry the Wehrmacht to England’s shores.
The problems facing ‘Sealion’ were not discernible to British pilots, who felt themselves to be in a limitless conflict. The desperation felt in the squadrons during the end of August and the first week in September had eased, however. Aircraft production was booming and the new Hurricanes and Spitfires were the more powerful Mark 11 models. By the third week in September, almost every squadron in 11 Group had a full complement of pilots. Fresh pilots were arriving in the system in quantity, allowing the creation of six new fighter squadrons. Veterans of the fighting of the early part of the summer, who had spent the months from June to September serving as instructors, now rested, were volunteering to return to operations, among them Killy Kilmartin and his old No. 1 Squadron comrade, Billy Drake, who joined fighter squadrons in September and October.
But even with the slight relaxation, the pilots were still suffering. As September wore on the Luftwaffe began altering its tactics. The frequency of daylight bombing raids by large formations fell away, though they continued to be launched intermittently, sometimes with considerable success. On 25 September a fleet of Heinkels devastated the Bristol Aeroplane Co. factory at Filton. The following day the Supermarine works at Woolston, near Southampton, was hit. Production was disrupted, but there was no lasting effect on the supply of machines. On 27 September there was a daytime raid by Ju 88s aimed at London which was beaten back with heavy losses on both sides. Three days later, 100 bombers and 200 fighters launched another attempt to reach London, which again was forced back.
The Luftwaffe was adjusting to the fact that, since 15 September, its circumstances had changed, significantly and for the worse. If it persisted with mass raids in daylight it would face devastating punishment. Instead, Fighter Command was now increasingly having to contend with precision attacks by Me 110s using their speed and their bomb-carrying capacity to hit important targets. At the beginning of October there was a further refinement when each fighter wing was ordered to adapt thirty of its new generation of Me 109s to carry an underslung bomb, thus transforming them into Jabos or fighter bombers. The Luftwaffe commanders also took to sending masses of regular Me 109s on high-altitude sweeps over southern England. In his previous, reduced condition, Dowding would have chosen not to react. Fighters on their own could do little damage except to other fighters. As his forces recovered their strength, however, he decided to confront them in a further assertion of Fighter Command’s growing control of British skies.
As the days went by, the pilots flew higher and higher, outbidding each other in the search for altitude and the tactical advantage. Only the Spitfires could get near the Me 109s. Flying at 25,000 and 30,000 feet in an unheated, unpressurized cockpit meant new discomforts. Pilots experienced the illusion that their stomachs were inflating grotesquely. They felt intense pain in their elbows, knees and shoulders caused by tiny bubbles of gas in the blood. The prolonged inhalation of oxygen created a burning sensation when they breathed and the skin around their mouths became raw and tender. Most pilots switched it on at 15,000 feet. Above 20,000 feet it was an absolute necessity. Without it they quickly developed anoxia, or oxygen starvation. It induced feelings of giddiness, nausea, sometimes rapture, then insensibility. A fault in the oxygen supply at great height often meant death. On 10 October two pilots, Sergeant Edward Bayley of 249 Squadron and Sergeant H. Allgood of 253 Squadron died within a few minutes of each other in crashes that were attributed to unconsciousness brought on by oxygen failure.
Leave became more regular, but the hours at readiness were still long and the yearning for rain and cloud that would limit flying was frequently thwarted by the fine weather that annoyingly reappeared just when it seemed that an English autumn had finally set in. The prolonged contact with danger meant that, sooner or later, even the most experienced pilots ran out of skill or luck. Birdy Bird-Wilson was unfortunate to meet Adolf Galland over the Thames estuary on 24 September and was forced to bale out, becoming his fortieth victim. The insouciant spirit cultivated by 92 Squadron was severely tested by a spate of casualties. ‘First Norman Hargreaves had gone,’ wrote Tony Bartley. ‘Then Sergeant Eyles. Gus Edwards was found dead a week after he’d gone missing, in the middle of a forest. Similarly Howard Hill, after three weeks, lodged in the top of a tall tree, decomposing in his cockpit, his hands on the controls and the top of his head blown off by a cannon shell.’5
Bartley wrote to his mother on 19 September that, despite the losses, ‘the morale of the Fighter Boys is terrific. We will crack the German air force at all costs. This is our greatest and diciest hour but we are proud to have the chance to deal with it.’ He made a thoughtful but futile appeal for her not to worry. ‘I am safe until my predestined time runs out. I am happy and almost enjoying myself. In these times of danger one gets drawn much closer to one’s friends, and a great spiritual feeling of comradeship and love envelops everyone. I can’t explain, but everyone seems much better men somehow.’6
It seemed to Bartley that the only one unaffected by the searing events was Brian Kingcome, for whom ‘the war in the air seemed just an incidental interruption which kept him occupied during the day’. Even Kingcome’s composure was disturbed when he was shot down on 15 October, apparently by Spitfires who had either mistaken him for a Messerschmitt or who hit him while attacking a German who was on his tail. He jumped and survived.
But survival meant
many things. George Bennions had been patrolling high at 25,000 feet and was about to return to base with the rest of the squadron when he saw a group of Hurricanes being pursued by some Me 109s. He dived towards them and found he was on his own. ‘I thought, “I’ll just try to attack the rearmost one of the squadron, shoot him down if I can and then get away.” It didn’t happen like that.’7 He made one attack and saw his bullets striking the German fighter. Then his machine shuddered with the impact of a cannon shell hitting the right-hand side and exploding inside the cockpit. He found he could not see and felt terrible pain in his right arm and leg. Blinded, he groped at the canopy to push it back one handed as his right arm was useless. So was his right leg. The clarity that seems to have flooded the thinking of many pilots as they faced death came to his rescue. He undid the small hatch on the left of the cockpit, tipped the machine to port and tumbled out. Now the problem was getting the parachute to open. The release cord was on the right of the harness. He reached around with his good hand feeling for it and somehow grasped it, pulled and felt the kick of the harness between his legs as the parachute opened, then blacked out. He came to in a field, told his rescuers who he was and lapsed into a coma.
He woke up in the Queen Victoria hospital, East Grinstead. While he was unconscious he had undergone preliminary operations performed by the plastic surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe for severe burns received during his struggle to get out of the cockpit. Bennions was unaware that he was burned. When he tried to open his eyes he thought he was blind. An awful depression descended. ‘I felt terribly isolated. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear very well. I couldn’t recognize people unless it was somebody very close to me. My wife came down and my mother came down. I felt so deflated, just as though half of my life had been taken and the other half wasn’t worth bothering with.’ He was told that he had lost the sight of one eye. To save the other, the damaged one would have to be removed. Bennions resisted, knowing this would mean the end of the flying life he loved, but in the end was forced to agree.
He was ‘feeling extremely sorry for myself’ when he got a message from another patient, a friend who had joined the air force with him from school. He had badly burned legs and asked Bennions to come and see him. Bennions
was on crutches at the time, but I managed to get over there with a hell of a lot of struggle and self-pity. As I opened the door in Ward 3 I saw what I can only describe as the most horrifying thing I have seen in my life. [There] was this chap who had been badly burnt, really badly burnt. His hair was burnt off, his eyebrows were burnt off, his eyelids were burnt off. You could just see his staring eyes. His nose was burnt, there were just two holes in his face. His lips were badly burnt. Then, when I looked down, his hands were burnt. I looked down at his feet also. His feet were burnt. I got through the door on the crutches with a bit of a struggle. This chap started propelling a wheelchair down the ward. Half-way down he picked up a chair with his teeth. Then he brought this chair down the ward, threw it alongside me and said: ‘Have a seat, old boy.’ I cried. I thought, ‘What have I got to complain about?’ From then on, everything fell into place.
The man was Sergeant Ralph Carnall of 111 Squadron, who had been shot down on 16 August. He underwent a year of treatment by McIndoe and eventually went back to flying.
For the burns cases, the relief of having escaped death did not survive the first look in the mirror. Lying on the operating table shortly after being shot down, Geoffrey Page caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the overhead lights. He saw ‘a hideous mass of swollen, burnt flesh that had once been a face’.8 Arriving at East Grinstead for reconstruction surgery, he met the other patients, including Richard Hillary, who had been shot down and baled out into the sea on 3 September. ‘Standing at the foot of the bed was one of the queerest apparitions I had ever seen. The tall figure was clad in a long loose-fitting dressing gown that trailed to the floor. The head was thrown back so that the owner appeared to be looking along the line of his nose. Where normally two eyes would be, were two large bloody red circles of raw skin. Horizontal slots in each showed that behind, still lay the eyes. A pair of hands wrapped in large lint covers lay folded across his chest. Cigarette smoke curled up from the long holder clenched between the ghoul’s teeth. The empty sleeves of the dressing gown hung limply, lending the apparition a sinister air. It evidently had a voice…it was condescending in tone. “Ah! Another bloody cripple!”’9
The victims were acutely aware of the effect they had on others. Page was taken to the pub by two squadron friends. For a moment he felt he was back in normal life until he overheard the landlord’s wife whispering loudly to her husband. ‘The poor dears, and them so young and all. Quite turns me stomach.’ The barmaid at the Red Lion in Basingstoke, where patients from the hospital at Park Prewett nearby would go for a drink, was by contrast magnificently humane, welcoming burned pilots with a kiss and a greeting: ‘My darling, how lovely to see you.’10 As a Waaf, Edith Heap frequently encountered the ravaged faces, and made sure to always look them, unflinchingly, in the eye. But the sight was desperately upsetting. In 1942 Richard Hillary visited an old comrade, Ron Berry, who had been a sergeant in 603 Squadron with him and was now commanding a fighter squadron. In other circumstances it would have been normal for Hillary to have been introduced to the pilots. ‘It was a very difficult decision I had to make,’ Berry said later. ‘With my young flock I’m afraid I denied him the pleasure of going round the squadron…I think one or two of them would have felt it very difficult to stomach.’11
As October wore on, the number of daylight bombing raids dwindled but the fighter sweeps persisted, requiring the squadrons to maintain a high level of vigilance. The Hurricane units could do little against them. No. 249 Squadron was still awaiting its Mark II replacements and its aeroplanes were showing their age. Most of them had developed oil leaks that blotted out the windscreens after half an hour in the air. On many patrols the pilots sighted the condensation trails of Messerschmitts high above. They were unable to reach them but lived in fear of them swooping down. On the third trip of the day on 30 September, Richard Barclay noted that ‘we had hundreds of 109s above us. We were too high for the Hurricane anyway…an awful trip as we were quite helpless, just waiting to be attacked.’
On 12 October the squadron was
up before breakfast, climbing up to 23,000 feet and patrolling all over Kent and south London. We were looking for some 109s which for once were said to be below us. But no luck in the first hour. We were floating about over Dover with 257 Squadron, who were meant to be guarding our tails, below us, when I happened to look back to the left and there was a glistening yellow nose pointed very much in my direction about fifty yards away. I immediately took action to avoid his quarter attack in the shape of a violent turn to the left and lots of bottom rudder. The inevitable result at that height was a flick roll and spin. I got out, had a good look around and saw three 109s 2,000 feet above. I kept a good eye open for the 109s and rejoined the squadron. Unfortunately my No. 2 has not been heard of since this short mêlée.12
Nothing had gone right. On the second scramble a wireless fault meant that the pilots were unable to hear the controller and the sortie was abandoned. The replacement pilots arriving at the squadron were proving slow to learn. Barclay complained that ‘the new sergeant pilots, of whom we have all too many, didn’t take off in their right sections, the resulting chaos taking some time to sort out. We’ve almost got to train them in formation flying.’ The third operation was also ‘a farce. As we took off we saw the trails of the Me 109 bombers over London…we were scrambled twenty minutes late! As usual this was due to Group’s slowness…it was ridiculous taking off at all.’
The new tactic of sending off squadrons in pairs that Park had introduced at the beginning of September was proving difficult to operate, as he had known it would be. There were further frustrations as the brother squadrons tried to work out new flying formations to reduce their vulnerability to fighter attack, slow
ly moving away from the reliance on ‘vics’ and moving towards the rotte system of covering pairs used by the Germans. But the uncharacteristic note of irritability in Barclay’s diary had deeper causes. He had arrived at the height of the battle on 1 September. He got his first proper break on 27 October. He was, as he admitted, in need of it. ‘I’m glad I’ve got some leave coming along,’ he wrote a few days beforehand. ‘I’m getting so intolerant of the shortcomings of the new pilots.’ Here and there, between the accounts of beery nights in the mess and at the Thatch in Epping to celebrate a clutch of medal awards, a touch of sadness creeps in. After he heard of the death of his friend Percy Burton he noted: ‘I am now the only one left of the five Cranwellians of the squadron.’
Almost everyone had lost a dear friend by now. Tim Vigors spent most of his evenings with Hilary Edridge. Their backgrounds were different. Edridge came from Bath and was interested in music. Vigors was steeped in the horsy traditions of the Anglo-Irish upper class. But, since meeting at the start of the year, they had become inseparable. Almost every night they would drink beer and play darts with the locals in the pubs around the base. Once or twice a week they went to London for dinner and a tour of the nightclubs. On the morning of 30 October, shortly after they had returned from a trip to town, together with Vigors’s other constant companion, his lurcher Snipe, they took off together from Hornchurch. They attacked a formation of Dorniers coming in north of Dover and were immediately bounced by Me 109s. A cloud of smoke engulfed a Spitfire on Vigors’s right. He knew it must be Edridge. Back at Hornchurch he ‘waited in dread. Still no sign of Hilary. All the rest of the squadron were home…an hour passed and still no news. I had no appetite for lunch and waited by the telephone at dispersal. At about 2 p.m. the news came through from Group Headquarters. The wreckage of a Spitfire bearing Hilary’s markings had been found in a field near Sevenoaks. The pilot was dead.’
Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945 Page 44