by Norman Gelb
Men began paying increased attention to tactics. Even experienced flyers, like chief Spitfire test pilot Jeffrey Quill, a volunteer newly arrived at a frontline squadron, was briefed in detail on combat dangers by veterans who were often only twenty-one or twenty-two years old. ‘Get in as close as you can; you’re usually further away from the plane you’re attacking than you think you are.’ ‘If you hit a 109, don’t follow him down to see him crash; another will get you while you’re doing it.’ ‘Scan the skies constantly; it’s essential you see them before they see you.’ ‘Never get separated if you can help it; and don’t hang about on your own.’
*
Air Vice Marshal Keith Park to Group and Sector Controllers
19 August
The German air force has begun a new phase in air attacks which have been switched from coastal shipping and ports to inland objectives. The bombing attacks have for several days been concentrated against aerodromes, and especially fighter aerodromes, on the coast and inland. The following instructions are issued to meet the changed conditions:
(a) Dispatch fighters to engage large enemy formations over land or within gliding distance of the coast. During the next two or three weeks, we cannot afford to lose pilots through forced landings in the sea;
(b) Avoid sending fighters out over the sea to chase reconnaissance aircraft or small formations of enemy fighters;
(c) Dispatch a pair of fighters to intercept single reconnaissance aircraft that come inland. If clouds are favourable, put a patrol of one or two fighters over an aerodrome which enemy aircraft are approaching in clouds;
(d) Against mass attacks coming inland, dispatch a minimum number of squadrons to engage enemy fighters. Our main objective is to engage enemy bombers, particularly those approaching under the lowest cloud layer.
*
Pilot Officer Peter Parrott
The 109s were always above you. You tried to get up there but it took time. It was very frustrating. They usually took the initiative. They’d come down and try to bounce you. Because of their limited range, they didn’t have long over England. They had to get into action quickly if they were going to achieve anything. You would be going up to get at them and wondering when they’d be coming down to get at you.
*
Pilot Officer Bobby Oxspring
I was on a forty-eight-hour pass when the squadron moved south. We hadn’t seen much action up to then but even before I could rejoin the squadron at Kenley, six of our pilots had been killed. We lost so many men that within ten or twelve days, though I was only a pilot officer, I was made B-flight commander.
*
Flight Lieutenant Brian Kingcome
In those days, people were promoted in fighter squadrons on seniority, which was the normal peacetime thing. But it wasn’t working because you needed somebody who actually had operational experience. The mere fact that you had a lot of flying hours under your belt, all of which had been done in peacetime or in training command, didn’t qualify you to lead a fighter squadron right in the middle of the Battle of Britain. We had an awful lot of experienced pilots, but not many experienced fighter pilots.
There was a very nice chap who came to take over our squadron. One of the first mornings he came down to dispersal, he had some oil on the sleeve of his tunic. He got a rag, dipped it in some hundred-octane fuel and rubbed it on the sleeve of his tunic to get the oil off. He then lit a cigarette and, of course, burst into flames. He had to be carried off to hospital, so I became acting CO of the squadron, though only a flight lieutenant.
I led the squadron for two or three weeks and then we got another CO, a squadron leader who had a decoration for activity on the Northwest Frontier in India. His operational experience was chasing Pathan tribesmen in that part of the world. He’d dropped notes on villages where people had misbehaved, saying, ‘We’re going to bomb you rotters at twelve o’clock on Tuesday. So get the hell out.’ And then at twelve o’clock on Tuesday, they’d drop a couple of bombs and afterwards the people would go back and carry on as before. That was the operational experience of our new CO. He decided to fly on my wing for a few days for experience. On the second flight, he was shot down. Not killed — the bullet came up through the floor of his cockpit, took skin off his ankles, the inside of his knees, and the tip of his tool, the tip of his nose and went out through the top. So I continued as CO.
Two or three weeks later, we got another CO, a very nice chap who had lots of flying hours under his belt but only as a flying instructor. He also flew as my number two to get the hang of it. He was shot down too, off my wing tip, his third or fourth flight. So I continued as CO until I was shot down.
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Pilot Officer Bob Kings
I was at an operational training unit in August when Fighter Command was having a very rough time and replacements were needed. We were very keen to get into the fighting and very annoyed at being held back when we thought we were well enough trained. We were strained to get assigned to squadrons. Our instructor kept saying, ‘Don’t be in such a hurry. When you leave here, your life is worth no more than half-a-dollar.’ In fact, of the dozen or so of us who were soon farmed out to various squadrons, some of the names were soon on the ‘missing, believed killed in action’ lists.
I was only a very junior pilot officer when I finally joined my squadron. We had a flight lieutenant with a DFC, somebody you looked up to. He and two others just vanished one day — missing, believed killed. I thought, ‘By golly, if somebody experienced like that could be lost there isn’t much hope for somebody like me.’ I really didn’t expect to survive. But it didn’t worry me. I remember thinking, ‘I must get home on leave (where my widowed mother was) to tidy up a few things,’ so I could get the chop without leaving anything too untidy.
At dispersal at the aerodrome, we’d be sitting in the Nissen hut, waiting. There’d be an airman near the telephone in the corner. We’d be reading, writing letters, playing cards, playing shove ha’penny, playing chess. And the phone would ring. If it was ‘Scramble!’ everybody would leap up. Tables would go over, the cards and chess boards would be knocked aside. In two minutes or so you’d be in your plane and climbing like mad and thinking, ‘I wonder if I put my queen’s bishop’s pawn in the right place.’ Once I was playing shove ha’penny with a Czech sergeant. We were scrambled and he didn’t come back. We’d been playing shove ha’penny only twenty minutes before.
*
Flight Lieutenant Sir Archibald Hope
Unquestionably Billy Fiske was the best pilot I’ve ever known. He was an American, one of the first to join the RAF. It was unbelievable how good he was. He picked it up so fast, it wasn’t true. He’d flown a bit before, but he was a natural as a fighter pilot. He was also terribly nice and extraordinarily modest. He fitted into the squadron very well. The day Tangmere was bombed, Billy Fiske was airborne with the rest of us. We were up at 20,000 feet and came down to chase the Ju 87s, which had dropped their bombs and were going out to sea. We went after them. When we’d exhausted our ammunition and were low on petrol, we returned to the aerodrome and landed. As I came down, I saw one of our aircraft on its belly, belching smoke. It must have got a bullet in its engine.
I taxied up to it and got out. There were two ambulancemen there. They had got Billy Fiske out of the cockpit. He was lying on the ground there. The ambulancemen didn’t know how to take his parachute off, so I showed them. Billy was burnt about the hands and ankles, so I told them to put on Tanafax, the stuff we were supposed to put on burns. I’m told now it’s one of the worst things you could put on a burn. I told Billy, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be all right,’ got back in my aeroplane and taxied back to the squadron. Our adjutant went to see him in hospital at Chichester that night. Billy was sitting up in bed, perky as hell. The next thing we heard, he was dead. Died of shock.
*
From Readiness at Dawn, a fictionalised account of the Battle of Britain, written in 1940 by ‘Blake’ (pseudonym of Squadron Leader
Ronald Adam, Controller in the Operations Room at Hornchurch at the height of the battle).
One of the new squadrons from the north was [codenamed] Amber. Its Squadron Leader was a neat figure with a quiet, diffident manner, shy eyes and a soft voice. Amber had been released from readiness to available and were at lunch. From over the entrance door to the dining room came the crackle of the loudspeaker as Operations Room switched on.
‘Operations calling Amber. Operations calling Amber. Readiness. Readiness. Switching off.’
They dropped their knives and forks. They ran to the entrance where their cars were waiting for them. The last out of the mess galloped down between the cars, jumping on them as they gathered speed. As they reached their dispersal point, the loudspeaker was issuing its next message.
‘Operations calling. Amber Squadron scramble. Amber Squadron scramble. Patrol base. Patrol base. 10,000 feet.’
They ran for their Mae Wests, their helmets and goggles and gloves and their parachute harness, and so to their aircraft.
‘Amber Squadron taxiing into position,’ lookout’s voice said in the Operations Room. ‘Amber Squadron A-flight taken off. Amber Squadron B-flight taken off.’
‘Hallo, Tartan. Hallo, Tartan. Amber Leader calling. Are you receiving me? Amber Leader to Tartan. Over.’
‘Hallo Amber Leader. Hallo Amber Leader. Tartan answering. Receiving you loud and clear. Are you receiving me? Tartan over to Amber Leader. Over.’
‘Hallo, Tartan. Amber Leader answering. Receiving you loud and clear. Have you any instructions?’
‘Hallo Amber Leader. Tartan answering. Patrol base 10,000 feet. Possible attack developing. Will keep you informed. Listening out.’
‘Close up B-flight,’ Amber Leader could be heard saying to one of his flight commanders.
‘OK, OK. Just behind you.’
[The Controller] watched the plots. It was the old business, or what in those full and hurried days now seemed old. From the southeast they marched, the steady long line of them as each observer centre gave its message. Fifty plotted, then a hundred, then another hundred just behind, with diversionary attacks north and south of the main road.
Cricket and the other new squadron, Falcon, had engaged the fighters far away, towards the coast. The bombers came on.
‘Hallo, Amber Leader. Tartan calling. What is your height?’
‘Amber Leader answering. 10,000. 10,000.’
‘Hallo, Amber Leader. Many enemy bombers south of you now turning north. Height reported 13.’
‘Hallo Tartan. Shall I turn away and gain height?’
[The Controller] paused for a moment. Height was everything. But the bombers had now left no doubt of their objective. It was to be the aerodrome.
‘Hallo, Amber Leader. Base is likely to be attacked. Bombers very near. Leave it to your discretion.’
The quiet voice of the Squadron Leader answered. ‘Hallo, Tartan. Will try and gain height here.’ Another voice broke in.
‘Hallo, Amber Leader. Ack ack fire due south of us. Ack ack fire. Twelve o’clock from you. Twelve o’clock.’
And then another voice. ‘There they are — tally-ho! Twelve o’clock above us, coming towards us.’
Amber Leader’s same quiet, unhurried voice spoke: ‘Line astern. Amber Squadron, line astern. Going in. Head-on attack.’
From the rampart of the Operations Room the anti-aircraft puffs, woolly in the distance, crisp in the foreground, poised their snowballs in the sky. The crack of the guns and the woompf of the bursting shells were more and more audible. The group captain was at his vantage point, tin hat at the same angle, hands on hips, sturdy little figure, erect and gazing upwards. The anti-aircraft fire swelled to a roar. In that roar, the crackle of machine-gun and cannon fire was lost, and then suddenly the roar ceased and the crackle came through clear.
‘They’re turning away,’ the group captain called back through the window. ‘By Jove, they’re turning away!’ Amber Squadron had gone in. Climbing with every ounce of help their engines could give them, they had met the bombers as these had steadied their course for the aerodrome. There was no time for tactical manoeuvering. In a minute or two the bombs would be falling on their base. They went in, firing at the great obscene objects that were carrying destruction to their station. One voice after another spoke: ‘Returning to base for more ammunition.’ The anti-aircraft fire broke out again. But this time its noise was more distant and the puffs nearby became woolly while those far away were crisp. The enemy was retreating.
‘Hallo, Amber Leader. Hallo, Amber Leader. Tartan calling. Are you receiving? Over.’
But Amber Leader had gone. No one found him or his machine ever again. He had led the squadron into the bombers as the antiaircraft fire was at its densest. A shell had burst and a puff of billowing smoke marked where Amber Leader once had been.
*
Pilot Officer Roland Beamont
Pilots flying from Biggin Hill, Kenley and the other airfields in 11 Group were at the centre stations of the battle. They had to face the main onslaught each and every day. Further out in the battle area — in 10 Group to the west, where we were — the fighting was just as hard when it happened, but more spread out in time. For our squadron, number 87, battles occurred roughly every other day. We’d nearly always lose a pilot; often two. But there wasn’t the pressure there was at Biggin Hill and those places. The thing that sticks out in my mind was the laughter. Some of the things we laughed at might be regarded as a bit macabre. ‘Old so-and-so ended up on his back and they had to get a crane to lift his aircraft to get him out.’ The fact that old so-and-so was in the hospital was neither here nor there. It was still a hell of a laugh.
We didn’t take ourselves too seriously. If anybody was heard waxing a bit heavy, and asking if any of us would survive another week, he’d be laughed out of the room. It was taboo to admit that you were in any sort of personal difficulties. We were kids, but at the top of our profession. We were demonstrating that we were better than the enemy and were saving our country. We were climbing out of Exeter one sunny day with eight Hurricanes. None of the other planes in the squadron were serviceable. We were told on the radio that there were 100 plus Germans coming in over Cherbourg. Then the controller said it was 120 plus. Then we heard the enemy was 150 plus, plotted twenty miles south of Portland, heading north. We were ten miles north of Portland, heading south. All of a sudden, the sky was full of these black bees — a great mass of them. We were approaching them obliquely from the front. They were stepped up in formations from 1,500 feet below us and towering up above us in the distance, probably up to 18,000 feet. The front fifty or so were Stukas. [The Stuka was a particularly easy target for British fighters.] I just had time to think, ‘This is going to be easy,’ when behind we saw twin-engined planes that looked like Ju 88s. It was going to be a dive bombing attack on Portland naval base. While we were closing in, the first Stukas were peeling off and going into their dives, one after the other. I thought, ‘What’s the CO going to do? Is he going in behind this lot?’ But I realized there was no going behind them. They were stretching out right across the Channel. He just eased off towards the second echelon of Stukas and said, ‘Come on, chaps. Let’s surround them.’ And there were just eight of us! That was Lovell-Gregg. He didn’t come back.
We shot down a lot that day. They produced tremendous boils of white water as they dropped like bombs into the bay. We just opened up, went into the lot, went through them firing, pulled up from underneath the formation, then came back and picked off individual ones.
*
Pilot Officer Desmond Hughes
Once, when we were down at Manston, one of our flight commanders wasn’t able to start his engine when he was scrambled. His numbers two and three took off without him. In due course, he was able to get his engine going, took off and was tucking his wheels up when he looked into the circuit and saw two aircraft. He flew off towards them, got in front and waggled his wings to indicate, ‘OK, I’l
l take over now.’ He was very upset when they shot him down because they turned out to be 109s. To add insult to injury, the bullets from the German fighters, quite apart from forcing him to land, set off the Very cartridges in the turret. His poor gunner in the back of this Defiant was sitting there, as they went into a belly landing, with red, yellow and green signal lights whistling all around him inside his turret.
*
Pilot Officer Brian Considine
During time off, all we were interested in was booze and girls. There was a place we used to go to in Andover to booze up, and all the rest of it. There was a girl there we called the Gypsy. She was a black-haired, sultry type and used to go for the boys. She had quite a reputation. Our flight commander was Stuart Walch, an Australian, a marvellous fellow and an outstanding pilot. One night, he was out with the Gypsy, didn’t come back until around five the next morning and then led B-flight up. I was about to go on leave, so I didn’t go up that time which was fortunate for me because that was a disastrous day for us. We lost five out of the six in B-flight. The only one in the flight who came back was Jackie Urwin-Mann. He wasn’t sure what had happened. I can’t believe that Stuart Walch — he was too good — would ever have let them be caught napping up there the way they were if it hadn’t been for his night out with the Gypsy.
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Pilot Officer Christopher Currant
Our aircraft were parked just at the end of the gardens of the houses where we were billeted. There was a bell which they would ring when the squadron was to scramble. When it went, we would dash out, jump into our kit, jump into our aircraft and take off. This was happening a hell of a lot of times every day. Sometimes there’d be a false alarm. It got on our nerves. An order was issued that no one was to run down the garden or by the aircraft unless there was a real alarm because whenever we’d see somebody running, we’d think, ‘This is us’, and we’d all start to run. It was hypnotic.
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Squadron Leader Sandy Johnstone
We relied at Westhampnett on telephone orders which came from the Operations Room at Tangmere. It was one of those cranking telephones. You’d turn a handle to make it ring. We were damn fools. Our system of signals was: one ring for A-flight to scramble, two rings for B-flight, three rings for the whole squadron, and four rings for a call through to the officers’ mess. You used to get the chaps sitting there and on one ring, A-flight would jump up. Two rings, A-flight would sit down and B-flight would jump up. Three rings and we’d all get up. Four rings and it might turn out to be only someone in the Ops Room inquiring what there was for lunch. So we finally changed it all around and made it one ring for the mess.