Dogfight
Page 9
I could see the Spitfire rapidly separate from me, then the tank blew up with a huge orange flash. I lost interest at that point and pulled the parachute ripcord and waited for the jerk.[34]
Nothing. Olive looked down and to his horror the little pilot-chute, which pulled out the main parachute, had wrapped itself around his boots in a ghostly funeral shroud. In free fall, he madly worked it loose—the sudden deceleration as the rest of the silk was pulled out and opened above him dazed the young Anzac. Olive had already used up two of his proverbial nine lives in one sortie, but was about to call on a handful more.[35]
The Spitfire was a crumpled toy in a field below, having barely missed a series of high-tension cables. Olive was now drifting close to the 330,000 volt lines. He had heard of pilots pulling on their straps to collapse one side of the parachute to ‘side slip’, and in this rudimentary manner direct their descent. Yanking on the straps was not as helpful as he had hoped, because the parachute was in the process of disintegrating. The middle section had completely disappeared and he was left with ‘two half moons’ held together by the frailest of seams. His life was literally hanging by a thread. The parachute had been packed four months earlier and had not been aired since; moisture had mildewed the silk. Olive abandoned tugging on the straps, fearing a mere sneeze could be lethal. He skimmed past the wires with only inches to spare. Given his speed, he was lucky to make landfall in a freshly turned field of potatoes, but less lucky to find himself in the sights of a couple of shotgun-wielding Home Guard members. Both men were poor shots and Olive fortunately merely heard, rather than felt, the ‘thunk, thunk’ of discharged lead shot as they fired in his direction.
Covered in sweat and dirt, and surrounded by mashed and scattered potatoes, the prone and winded Olive lifted his head from the dark English soil to find himself besieged by a troop of Women’s Land Army girls silhouetted against the early afternoon sun. ‘Eee luv, be you one of us or one of them?’ asked one round-faced cherub. The question was understandable, since the patriotic Australian had continued to wear his less easily identified dark blue RAAF uniform. When the Home Guard appeared, Olive cleared up the situation with some well-placed ‘Australian vulgar tongue’. Befitting a comedy, the Land Army girl gathered the parachute, motioning to a friend: ‘It’s a luvly bit of stuff. See ’ere Gert, make luvly knickers, wouldn’t it?’ To which Gert replied, ‘It’s not much good luv, it’s all ripped to ruddy ribbons. Better take it back and trade it in for a new one.’[36] The airfield’s ambulance and fire engine were soon on hand.
The Anzac caught his breath aboard the ambulance as it left the scene on its way to the base, from which he had taken off only minutes before. The reassuring cocoon of the ambulance, however, was short-lived as it ran into a ditch masked by recently scythed grass. Olive crawled out from the overturned machine shaken but without additional injuries. The fire engine beckoned, and after the crew doused the still-burning Spitfire, he clambered atop the red truck to thunder back to the base.
On the back-country roads the crew could open the throttle right out, and did so. With tears streaming back across his face from the wind in his eyes, and the alarm bell literally ringing in his ears, the Australian held on for dear life as they careened along the green-hedged lanes. Unfortunately, the driver was a newcomer to this particular country network, which included a bridge set in a hairpin bend. With a full head of steam, he predictably failed to negotiate the turn and the fire engine went straight over the bank into a creek. Olive was once again airborne, catapulted free from the vehicle, landing heavily on the far bank. Dazed, he looked over his shoulder to observe the upside-down fire engine sink gently into a watery grave. It was another close call, not only for Olive but also the firemen, who fortunately made it clear of the wreckage.
He now chanced his arm walking the last mile back to the airfield and was met by a local farmer at the wheel of his car. Did the Australian want a lift to the base? Olive replied, ‘Not bloody likely, I’m going to walk.’[37] With badly singed hair, mild skin burns, a broken foot and bruises the size of continents wrapping his body, he was given forty-eight hours by the doctor for recuperation.
Ground Crews
Olive’s exploding oxygen tank indicated how dependent the pilots were on the effective and timely maintenance of their machines by the ground crew. In general the Anzacs had a relatively egalitarian attitude toward their supporting team on the ground and treated them very well. ‘We could not have done it without them,’ wrote Kinder. ‘They worked very long hours and in appalling conditions during the main fighting ... Speed was the essential in the re-arming and re-fuelling [of] aircraft after combat and our men did a magnificent job. A whole squadron was refuelled and rearmed in two minutes flat. Armourers would climb onto the aircraft wings before it had stopped, belts of ammunition draped over their shoulders.’[38]
‘They were terrific,’ noted former Marlborough sheep musterer James Hayter; keeping ‘twelve aircraft in the air was a hell of job’. The New Zealander got very attached to his ground crew, to the point of picking up some of their habits. Hayter confessed that he had never smoked a cigarette until they offered him one, and then ‘I started to love smoking ... [and] smoked like a chimney afterwards.’[39]
The mechanics were particularly favoured by some of the pilots. Deere’s chief mechanic throughout the Battle of Britain was G.F. ‘Ricky’ Richardson. The New Zealander was particularly fussy when it came to his machine and demanded that it be ready at all times. ‘All the other pilots would take any other machine if theirs wasn’t serviceable,’ recalled Richardson, ‘but with Alan you had to work till two or three o’clock in the morning.’ Yet, as he noted, both Deere and Gray, as ‘the only colonials’, were ‘different to our chaps in the RAF; there was no side at all to them, it would be “Ricky this” and “Ricky that”.’[40]
On the occasion when the Windmill Girls arrived, Al Deere came into land and he had something wrong with his aircraft. I think it was something to do with the spark plugs and the engine was running red-hot. But there was not much I could do about it till the engine had cooled. Al wanted the plugs changed immediately and I complained bitterly that I had got myself a seat to see the Windmill Girls. I thought that was that, I won’t get to see them now. Anyhow, I changed the plugs and arrived later during the performance and went in, and Al had saved me a seat right beside him, right up front...[41]
Kanalkampf Endgame
Attacks by German aircraft continued, but at a lower intensity due to the poor prevailing weather conditions and the need to conserve aircraft for the next phase. The final significant throws against the convoys occurred on 8 and 11 August. Terrifyingly, at 3.00a.m., a convoy of twenty merchant vessels and nine Royal Navy ships, codenamed ‘Peewit’, was assaulted by massed German E-boats. The fast motor torpedo boats created havoc, sinking three ships and seriously damaging three more. Göring ordered the Luftwaffe to administer the coup de grâce to the scattered vessels, in what would become the biggest attack on a convoy in the Battle of Britain.
After 8.30a.m. on 8 August, dive-bombers and fighters assembled on the French side of the Channel. Park dispatched five squadrons to meet the threat. The resulting aerial battle successfully prevented any further vessels from being hit but, at midday, a larger Luftwaffe effort was made. The force included fifty-seven Ju 87s, twenty Me 110s and, at altitude overseeing the proceedings, thirty Me 109s. Three squadrons of Hurricanes and one of Spitfires were vectored to intercept. Among them were the Australians Clive Mayers and Curchin. The Cambridge-educated Mayers had only been with the Tangmere-based 601 Squadron for five days, while the former Victorian Curchin had made his home with 609 since 11 June 1940. Within minutes both found themselves embroiled in a large, freewheeling dogfight.
As an Me 109 swept across the nose of Mayers’ Hurricane he turned to follow. Closing to within fifty yards, his five-second burst from the eight machine-guns was enough to dispatch the enemy, trailing smoke, into the Channel.[42] Curchin
’s Spitfire was aimed at a Me 110 and, closing in to 100 yards, he delivered a long burst, silencing the rear gunner who had been firing frantically at the Australian. In moments another of the twin-engine heavy fighters came into view and he opened fire. ‘I gave him the rest of my ammunition,’ wrote Curchin in his after-action report, and a ‘white puff of smoke came out of the fuselage and he turned on his back—[then] did a nose dive.’[43] Out of ammunition, he turned for home.
Although the two pilots had a kill each, the Ju 87s were able to break through and sink four vessels. At 3.30p.m. the final Stuka-led attack was undertaken with an even greater collection of machines. By the end of the day, of the twenty-seven vessels that set sail, only four had made it to their destination; the rest had either been sunk or so badly damaged they were forced to seek shelter. The Luftwaffe had lost nineteen aircraft and twenty-two men, and the RAF seventeen fighters and eight men killed.
On 11 August, the final day of the Kanalkampf, two Australians and two New Zealanders were again in the thick of the effort. Early German activity near Dover was merely a feint; the real target of the day was the Portland naval base. Park was informed of a concentration of enemy machines within the vicinity of Cherbourg Peninsula. Fighter Command put eight squadrons up in preparation for the inevitable attacks. In over five raids the Germans deployed nearly 200 aircraft in all. South Australian John Cock was one of six pilots in B Flight, 87 Squadron. A veteran of the fighting in France, he looked older than his twenty-two years, and already had a slew of confirmed and probables recorded in his logbook.[44]
The squadron’s late-morning targets were the Ju 88 bombers that had just set alight the oil storage tanks at Portland. Dirty black smoke cloaked the port, punctuated by fires burning brightly at the hospital and other buildings. Before reaching the bombers, Cock crossed paths with an Me 109 into which he unleashed a hail of fire, tearing chunks off the machine. His next target was a Ju 88. The Brownings set one wing alight, but Cock was unable to follow the bomber down as the Hurricane was suddenly peppered with cannon and bullets, destroying the instrument panel and damaging the engine. The Australian, nursing a bullet nick to the shoulder, inverted the aircraft, tugged himself free from a snag in the cockpit and opened his parachute in the midst of the free-for-all dogfight. All too soon he was aware that he was being fired on by a Messerschmitt and, in fact, a number of the cords attaching him to his parachute were severed by the enemy’s attempts to kill him mid-air. Mercifully a fellow RAF pilot intervened, dispatching the enemy pilot and machine.[45]
Once in the water, Cock divested himself of his boots and trousers in an aquatic dash for the shore. Overhead and monitoring events, a fellow 87 Squadron pilot laughed all the way back to base after seeing the bedraggled and trouser-less Australian crawl from the surf.[46] For his troubles Cock was put on leave for a month. The other Australian, Walch, was less fortunate. A massive formation of Me 109s caught his section of 238 Squadron completely outnumbered and three pilots were killed. The loss of Walch was a blow to the squadron as the Tasmanian was well known for taking less experienced pilots under his wing. It would appear that his death was precipitated by an attempt to rescue two young men from overwhelming odds.[47]
Among the Kiwis involved in operations over Portland were Squadron Leader Hector McGregor and Cobden. A graduate of Napier Boys’ High School, McGregor was a good half-dozen years older than most Anzac pilots in the Battle of Britain, and prior to the war had commanded squadrons in Egypt and Palestine.[48] The Distinguished Service Order (DSO) recipient had returned to Britain in 1940 and taken over the command of the Biggin Hill-based 213 Squadron. At 10.30a.m., his Hurricane squadron intercepted approximately 50 bombers and 30 single-engine fighters at 10,000 feet.
Attacked Ju 88 in leading section from beam and gave two second burst and rear gunner stopped firing. Put a second burst into the starboard engine which caught fire and aircraft crashed in flames on west side Portland Bill. Attacked No.2 of ‘A’ Section of 3 Ju 88s and saw petrol streaming from aircraft, but as No.3 of section was about to drop his bombs, diverted my attack on to that aircraft; but ammunition ran out before any result was observed.[49]
Twenty-six-year-old Cobden had shot down one of the first bombers of the campaign, but would lose his life on 11 August. The squadron took up patrolling duties over a convoy. Forty Me 110s were attacked and formed a defensive circle. In the ensuing struggle, the former All Black was shot down off Harwich and his body recovered by the enemy. The New Zealander was buried at the Oostende New Communal Cemetery, Belgium. Cobden’s death closed off the first phase of the Battle of Britain—it was his birthday.[50]
CHAPTER 5
Eagle Attack
By early August, on the Nazi-occupied side of the Channel, the Germans were confident enough to finalise planning for the aerial assault on Britain proper. On 30 July, Hitler told Göring to prepare his forces for ‘the great battle of the Luftwaffe against England’ and two days later a directive was issued with a view to undertaking ‘the final conquest of England’. Strengthened German forces would now turn from the convoys to a direct contest with the RAF, with a view to overpowering it ‘in the shortest possible time’. Hitler hoped that within a fortnight after the commencement of the air battle he would be in a position to issue orders for the invasion. The forces of Kesselring, Sperrle and, to a lesser extent, Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen Stumpff’s Luftflotte 5 in Norway, would undertake attacks ‘primarily against flying air units, their ground installations and their supply organisations, also against the aircraft industry, including the manufacturing of anti-aircraft equipment’.[1]
On 2 August, Göring issued his orders for the 14-day battle, dramatically dubbed Adlerangriff (Eagle Attack). Confidence was high, as the Luftwaffe believed that, after offsetting Fighter Command losses and new production, the RAF only had 450 single-engine fighters on hand—in reality it was closer to 750. The campaign’s commencement, Adlertag (Eagle Day), was dependent on a three-day clear-weather window. On 12 August, the meteorologists confirmed the good weather was upon them and Göring pencilled in the next day as Adlertag. In preparation, the Luftwaffe was tasked with blinding Fighter Command by knocking out the radar towers running along the south-east coast from the Thames Estuary to Portsmouth. In addition, forward RAF bases at Lympne, Hawkinge and Manston, which had been used so effectively in defending the convoys, were to be raided.
Dowding System
The day broke clear on 12 August but with some mist patches. An early decoy attack was followed closely by the real objective of the morning, the radar network. It was the first real test of Dowding’s carefully planned and prepared defensive system. Dowding, like many of those walking the corridors of power in the RAF in the early 1940s, had been an airman in the Great War and witnessed the attacks by massive Zeppelin airships and Gotha G.V. heavy bombers. Inter-war strategists drew two differing conclusions from the German aerial assaults.[2] On the one hand, some commanders believed fighters offered the best possibility of thwarting bomber offensives, while on the other hand, many theorists believed the Zeppelin-Gotha raids indicated the best form of defence was a bombing offensive.
Of these two views, the latter gained ascendancy in the inter-war era and became the received wisdom among many air-power thinkers. While the results of the bombing had been relatively modest, they did feed into public fears that, in a future war, larger, higher flying and more heavily defended bombers would wreak havoc on dense urban populations and destroy morale. The influential Italian Giulio Douhet suggested that victory in future wars could be attained by air power alone. As already mentioned with regard to Olive’s failed attempt to get assigned to bombers, this theory accentuated the role of the bomber over the fighter in any future contest.
Spearheaded by Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, Britain’s Independent Air Force (the forerunner of the RAF) initially emphasised the need to build up a potent bomber striking force. Yet, with the growth of Germany’s own aerial capabilities in the 1930s, it
was recognised that Britain needed to balance this bomber strategy with an effective system of air defence around fighters. As part of a total reorganisation of the air force, Fighter Command was established in July 1936 under the command of Dowding. In contrast to Trenchard’s myopic bombing mantra, Dowding suggested that:
The best defence of the country is the fear of the fighter. If we were strong in fighters we should probably never be attacked in force ... If we are weak in fighter strength, the attacks will not be brought to a standstill and the productive capacity of the country will be virtually destroyed.[3]
Dowding’s appointment ushered in a four-year period of intense work in which he threw himself into the creation of an integrated air defence system. Nicknamed ‘Stuffy’, Dowding was an austere man with few close friends, but his organisational skills, technological knowledge and flying experience all combined to produce what became known as the ‘Dowding System’.[4] The result was a complex but resilient network that incorporated, among other things, radar; the rapid filtering and dissemination of large amounts of information; the devolution of tactical control to local commanders; and the plotting of enemy and RAF aircraft across a widely dispersed geographical area.
Dowding was one of the first airmen to recognise the importance of radar. At the turn of the century it was already known that solid objects reflected radio waves and in the early part of the twentieth century work began on military applications of this knowledge. When in 1935 a bomber was observed by the displacement of a radio signal, Dowding was reported to have declared that this was a ‘discovery of the highest order’.[5] At his urging, a chain of transmitter-receiver stations that could pick up aircraft 100 miles away was established along the coastline from southern Britain to the Shetland Islands. Codenamed Chain Home, this was supplemented by the Chain Home Low system that was capable of detecting aircraft flying at lower altitudes. In the hands of a skilled operator, data from radar—known at the time as Radio Direction Finding—made it possible to assess the range, bearing, strength and, with some qualification, the altitude of intruders.