Piece of Cake

by Derek Robinson

  “You chump!” Cattermole shouted. “You blundering buffoon!” He deliberately cocked his wings to display the roundels. “See, you silly man? I’m on your side.” The Spitfire came at him again, and now he lost his temper, wrenched the Hurricane into a shuddering turn and took a snap shot. This merely angered the other pilot. The Hurricane wallowed as Cattermole tried to force more bank out of it. His legs ached, his nose dripped blood. Both hands clamped the stick, heaving as if they could lever the plane around. In the corner of his eye he saw the curl of wings. The Spitfire was making another attack. “Cretinous peasant!” he bawled. The words turned into a scream. For the first time in his life Cattermole tasted terror.

  Everything was going wrong. His Hurricane was clumsy and heavy and slow, while this murderous fiend was lithe and tireless and fast. Cattermole raged at the man’s stupidity, at his madness. He pounded the canopy, shouting: “Can’t you see? Can’t you see?” until his voice cracked. A knife-edge silhouette swam into his mirror. Brownings crackled, and fresh holes chased themselves across his wings. Cattermole’s bladder emptied itself. He was screaming and praying at the same time.

  Then, unexpectedly, the Spitfire overshot. There was a glorious moment when it sat slap in front of him and he stopped screaming and pressed his gun-button. Compressed air whistled, breech-blocks clanked. No ammunition. Cattermole wept.

  The Spitfire sheered off. It had seen its mistake. It climbed, and circled twice. Cattermole tried to read its number, but his eyes were full of tears and his head was trembling like a drunk’s. The Spitfire flew away.

  It should have stayed. Cattermole was, by now, miles from the main raid. He was out of ammunition, his engine was leaking glycol, he could maneuver only sluggishly, and there were no friendly fighters to which he could attach himself. His compass was broken but he could see the Channel and he steered for where he guessed Brambledown should be. He was making a Mayday call when he met a flight of Me-109’s, also in the process of going home. He stopped speaking, and stopped breathing. They looked so neat and well-behaved, he couldn’t believe they would do him any harm.

  His lungs jerked, demanding air, and he coughed. The dribble from his nosebleed spattered everywhere. “For Christ’s sake someone help me,” he said.

  “Bearskin Yellow,” the Mayday controller said, “transmit for fix, transmit for fix.”

  “Oh Jesus,” Cattermole whispered. The 109’s had made a small deviation to their course. As he reached up to slide back the hood they came within range. His arms were still raised when a converging cone of bullets hacked through the side of the cockpit and killed him.

  His straggler, the tattered Dornier with its wheels down, didn’t last long: someone else found it and finished it off. The Kent coastline was dotted with columns of smoke, markers on the German route. Yet the raid churned on.

  By now Barton’s wingman had turned for home, his guns empty. Barton made one more pass at a bunch of Ju-88’s, decided the storm of defensive fire was too heavy, and broke away, checking the sky above and behind. He searched for the tail of the parade and saw only more bombers emerging from the horizon.

  For a moment the odds sickened him. Then he was overtaken by a sense of outrage. He thought: What the hell do these Huns think they’re doing? Whose country is this, anyway? He turned on the nearest formation. Heinkels, black and hulking. They saw him coming. Tracer throbbed from the gun-turrets and seemed to stretch itself toward him, lazily, casually, until suddenly the stuff was streaking past the cockpit so fast that he hunched his shoulders. The Heinkel he’d picked out jinked, but ponderously and too late. His bulletstrikes hammered its fuselage, making bright splashes of orange. Then Barton was half-rolling and diving away. Across his blurred vision passed a scattering of images: a Spitfire shedding a wing; a Dornier going round in circles, one engine on fire; flak appearing like smuts on a window; rank upon rank of raiders, all as ordered as tin soldiers; and—dangerously big—a pair of 109’s, racing to the defense of the Heinkels. Barton saw spirals of white smoke leaping from their wings, and cursed, and before the curse was finished they were far behind him, chasing some other poor bastard.

  Barton circled, and saw his Heinkel. It was on its back, leaking flame and falling fast. A kill.

  He enjoyed the kick of triumph, but it faded and he suddenly felt washed-out. That reaction scared him to the point of panic. He knew a kill broke his concentration, left him slack and dull: easy meat. He purposely frightened himself even more, stretched his muscles, gulped oxygen, prayed that Jerry would leave him alone while he dredged up some adrenalin. Automatically every ten seconds he changed direction. Voices scratched faintly but urgently in his headphones: Green Two, break! … I see him … Lost you, Yellow One … Watch that bloody 88! … I’m up-sun, Yellow Two … Got him, got the bugger! … How’s your ammo? … Look out, you silly bastard … Break, for Christ’s sake ….

  CH3 was also alone, his wingman having baled out of a cockpit flooded with smoke. CH3 had had a brisk flurry of fighting, and now he felt curiously carefree. The battle was insanely lopsided: it might be desperate but it wasn’t serious. So why did a nervous tremor keep shaking his left leg? Maybe it was trying to tell him something. “Speak up, dummy,” he told it, just as a pair of 109’s bounced him and nearly spoiled the joke. He broke so violently and banked so steeply that the g-forces dragged his oxygen mask down his face, skinning his nose and forcing him to breathe through his mouth. Absurdly, a stray Messerschmitt wandered in front of him, apparently in a dream: its prop gently windmilling, its wings trembling like a butterfly’s. Before he could fire, the dream ended; the enemy vanished. CH3 was left circling, searching. He shoved his mask up and wiped saliva from his chin.

  A lone Hurricane stooged over to join him. He recognized Fanny Barton. For a few seconds they flew side by side, high above the bomber stream. Down through the haze they could make out docks and warehouses. A sudden avenue of explosions sprang up as the first stick of bombs struck. Nothing could save London now.

  “Got anything left?” Barton asked.

  “Couple of squirts, maybe.”

  Barton put his nose down and CH3 followed. At once, tracer pulsed up at them, crisscrossing: it was like diving into a network of lights. CH3’s neck-muscles stiffened, and the tremor in his left leg began kicking again. Blood thumped in his temples and in his wrists: the old familiar drumbeat of fear. Then they were through the net and hacking at the bombers’ flanks.

  Author’s note

  With a story like Piece of Cake the reader is entitled to know how much is fact and how much fiction.

  Hornet squadron is fiction. The places where it was based do not exist. All the characters in the story are invented. Everything else is as authentic as I could make it.

  By this I mean that the story is broadly true to the way the war went in 1939–40, and all the minor events are at least feasible. For example, the event I have called “the Battle of Southend Sands” is based on a confused episode known at the time as “the Battle of Barking Creek” when, on September 6, 1939, a formation of Spitfires shot down two Hurricanes, while anti-aircraft gunners destroyed a Blenheim fighter. Mistaken identity remained a constant hazard: on August 11, 1940, a Hurricane on convoy patrol was shot down by a Spitfire, and a month later No. 73 squadron lost three Hurricanes, all reportedly shot down by Spitfires (the pilots survived). Similarly, my account of the massacre of Defiants from Hawkinge is substantially accurate, as is the earlier description of the Maastricht raids.

  References to aircraft performance—speeds, armaments, rate-of climb, operational ceiling, and so on—are as accurate as I could make them. Hurricane squadrons did enter the war with wooden propellers, canvas-covered wings, and no armor behind the pilot. References to tactics and combat procedures-are also based on fact. British fighter squadrons flew in tight, inflexible formations and used the cumbersome Fighting Area Attacks until well into 1940. After the fall of France, some squadron commanders changed their tactics, opened their f
ormations, and flew in pairs, like the Luftwaffe; but many others persisted with the obsolete textbook approach. As Air Vice-Marshal Johnnie Johnson has said: “These formation attacks … were useless for air fighting” because “the tempo of air combat did not allow time for elaborate manoeuvers in tight formation” and as a result “the last words too many splendid fighter pilots heard were ‘Number … Attack, go.’” (Full Circle, pp. 118–19) Moreover, aircraft in tight formation were always vulnerable to getting bounced from behind. “Ass-end Charlie” was indeed a dangerous position: the fate of Nugent and McPhee was not uncommon.

  Several American pilots served in the RAF. Biggin Hill’s first kill of the war—a Dornier 17—was shared by an American flying officer, Jimmy Davies, and a British flight-sergeant, Brown, on November 21, 1939. By June 1940 Davies was a flight lieutenant credited with six kills: he died in combat on the day he was to be awarded the DFC. At least seven Americans flew with Fighter Command in the Battle; of these, six were killed later in the war.

  Although September 15th is now celebrated as Battle of Britain Day, the massive German raid that forms the climax of Piece of Cake actually took place a week earlier, on Saturday, September 7th, 1940, when the Luftwaffe sent a thousand aircraft against London. This was really the turning-point of the battle. As Group Captain Peter Townsend (then a squadron leader in command of 85 Squadron) was to write: “On 6th September victory was within the Luftwaffe’s grasp.” In 11 Group, defending southeast England, six out of seven Sector airfields and five advanced airfields had been severely damaged. Fighter reserves were at an all-time low. The output of new pilots—hastily trained though they were—lagged behind losses. In the words of 11 Group’s commander, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park: “… an almost complete disorganisation of the defence system made the control of our fighter squadrons extremely difficult … Had the enemy continued his heavy attacks [against airfields and the control system] … the fighter defences of London would have been in a perilous state.” Instead, on September 7th, Germany switched targets and attacked the capital itself. The RAF pilots intercepting that vast formation could not know it, but the Luftwaffe had made a fatal mistake. Fighter Command was given time to recover and it was never again seriously threatened.

  One small point: I have not used the word “radar” in Piece of Cake. At that time, radar was called “RDF” more often, secrecy was such that it was not referred to at all. Another small point: British fighters carried cine-guns both during and after the Battle. As late as the Dieppe Raid of 1942, analysis of film taken by these cameras revealed the average fighter pilot’s low standard of gunnery.

  On two occasions in the story, the views of Air Chief Marshal Dowding, C-in-C Fighter Command, are quoted: once when Rex describes the “Dowding Spread” and once when he comments on the “long-burst-long-range” attack. These references are based on Dowding’s own statements. Dowding had no faith in close-range attacks. At a meeting of the Gun Sub-Committee of the Air Fighting Committee held on July 5, 1939, Dowding insisted that “it was by no means axiomatic that the closer they [the fighters] got to the bomber the more bullets would hit it.” Others disagreed; nevertheless the recommended range for opening fire (and therefore for harmonizing guns) was agreed to be 400 yards.

  This meeting also discussed German Air Force involvement in the Spanish Civil War. In April 1939 an Air Staff officer had gone to France to interview Spanish Republican pilots in exile. They strongly emphasized the skill of German pilots, the destructive powers of the cannon-armed Me-109, and above all the absolute necessity for back armor. Dowding’s meeting was also told that Messerschmitt pilots used cannonfire at long range but they came in close—200 meters for light-machine-gun fire. “This was noted … ‘say the minutes,’ but it was generally agreed to be unwise to base any very definite conclusions on this report, as the conditions of air warfare in Spain were unlikely to prevail in a general European war.” On the whole the RA Fignored the lessons that the Condor Legion taught the Luftwaffe.

  I have tried, in Piece of Cake, to paint a fair and honest picture of a squadron in RAF Fighter Command in the first twelve months of the war. The popular image of those men represents them as invariably gallant, brilliant and indefatigable, rather like Churchill’s famous description in August 1940: “… undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger …” This was good backs-to-the-wall rhetoric but it gave a false impression of the way the Battle went. In reality there were times when pilots were daunted by the overwhelming odds they faced day after day; and far from being unwearied they were often at the point of exhaustion. Which brings me to the controversial matter of claims.

  After the war it was accepted that RAF claims during the Battle had been far too high. Indeed they were challenged, during the “Battle,” by the American press. American newspapermen refused to believe that the RAF was shooting down all the German planes it claimed. On August 17, 1940, Churchill showed that he too was not entirely happy: he inquired how many German aircraft had crashed on British soil during a recent day’s fighting, and he asked Dowding what proportion of that fighting was over land. “This,” Churchill wrote, “would afford a good means of establishing for our own satisfaction the results which we claimed.” Dowding replied that there had been eleven fights over land and eleven over the sea. “If the total day’s bag was 180,” he said, “we might expect to pick up 90 on land.”

  Evidently Churchill was not satisfied. On August 29, 1940, he called for another check: a tally of German aircrew taken prisoner. He asked: “How does this square with our claims of German aircraft destroyed over Britain?” I couldn’t trace a reply to this, but a few days later Dowding submitted an analysis of enemy losses in the period August 11–August 24th. In all, Fighter Command claimed 636 enemy aircraft destroyed. However only 113 of these had come down on land. Where were the others? Fighter Command said they were in the sea—most of them, anyway.

  An assessment of combat reports (Fighter Command said) showed that 80.8 percent of all enemy aircraft destroyed fell in the sea. Thus, of the 636 claimed destroyed, 514 were in the sea. That was the explanation.

  Not everyone at Fighter Command accepted it. A week later, Dowding’s headquarters staff completed a secret analysis of five weeks’ air activity, from August 8 to September 11. It showed that for every six enemy aircraft claimed destroyed, only one wreck was found.

  The pilots were not to blame for the inflated scores. They made their claims in all honesty. Given the whirlwind nature of air combat, it was all too easy for mistakes to be made—for instance when two fighters attacked the same bomber without being aware of each other. The real fault was elsewhere. Fighter Command accepted squadron returns far too readily, as if the Battle could be won on paper. By contrast the Luftwaffe scrutinized its pilots’ claims very carefully. As a result, its score of RAF losses was much nearer the mark.

  Dowding has, quite rightly, received credit for his handling of the Battle. He must also take the blame for Fighter Command’s unwillingness to check claims more rigorously. Wildly exaggerated totals made punchy headlines, but to treat them as truth did not help Britain beat Germany. Some claims can be explained only by the heady stimulus of combat. On one occasion the Duxford Wing (with Douglas Bader leading 242 squadron) intercepted a raid and claimed to have destroyed 57 German aircraft; it is now known that all but eight of those raiders returned to base. On another occasion (September 9, 1940) Bader’s Wing attacked a formation of Dorniers over southwest London and claimed 19. German records (which may be incomplete) say none was lost. More to the point, British ground observers did not confirm any of the claims, and not a single crashed Dotnier was found.

  It is hard to escape the conclusion that, in this area, Dowding was not the best of judges. When, on July 21, 1940, the American press cast doubt on his pilots’ claims, he retorted: “If the Germans were correct they would be in England now”—a spirited reply but no real answer: proving German figures wrong did not prove British
figures right. Well after the Battle, Dowding remained indignant. His Battle of Britain Despatch (1941) said: “The German claims [of losses] were of course ludicrous; they may have been deceived about our casualties, but they knew they were lying about their own.”

  Indignation is bad for objectivity. An Air Ministry account of the Battle, published in 1941, declared that between August 8 and October 31, 1940: “2,375 German aircraft are known to have been destroyed in daylight,” and a footnote emphasizes that this figure includes “only those actually destroyed” and not those damaged. “The Royal Air Force,” the account adds, “lost 375 pilots killed …”

  This is the stuff of which myths are made, and even today—after so much work has been done to put the record straight—anyone who tries to write honestly about that period risks the wrath of those who prefer the simpler version. It was never my intention to debunk the Battle or to belittle the men of Fighter Command. On the contrary: the more I learned about the faults and deficiencies with which they had to contend, the greater became my admiration for their courage and resilience.

  All war is an untidy and inefficient business: the weapons are never completely adequate, the plans go awry, there are faults of leadership, clashes of temperament, blunders caused by jealousy, stupidity, over-ambition. This was true, to a lesser or greater extent, of RAF Fighter Command, just as it was true of the Luftwaffe. To pretend that Dowding was a genius and Goering a fool is to see the struggle in comic-book terms; and to believe that Dowding’s pilots were undaunted, unwearied and unbeatable is to wish to create supermen out of ordinary flesh and blood. Nor does their human fallibility make their efforts any less admirable. It took at least as much courage for a young, inadequately trained, inexpert pilot to go into combat as it did for an ace; and at the climax of the Battle there were very few aces left alive.

  There was a lot more to the Battle of Britain than the legend suggests. By exaggerating the triumph of the RAF, and by deflating the performance of the Luftwaffe, the legend has given Fighter Command both too much and too little credit. The truth is fairer to everyone.