Dogfight

by Adam Claasen

  Mayer’s heart-stopping brush with death was not shared by Glyde. The Western Australian, who had been awarded a DSO in June, was scrambled with his Hurricane-equipped colleagues on the same morning. The sortie was too late to meet the main challenge, but an isolated twin-engine bomber was spotted and attacked. As the stricken invader made its death plunge into the Channel, other 87 Squadron pilots noticed that Glyde’s machine was leaking copious amounts of glycol, a sure sign of successful enemy defensive fire.[21] When they next checked on the pilot’s status, the ace with seven victories to his name had vanished. Neither Glyde nor his machine was located in the subsequent aerial search. Glyde, who, thanks to operations over France, was more experienced than Mayers, had been hit by a lone bomber and lost his life for it, while Mayers with only ten days in combat had cheated death in the air and then at sea by a hair’s-breadth.

  Assessment

  The next day the pace of Luftwaffe operations diminished somewhat and assessments were being undertaken on both sides of the Channel of their respective progress to date. Significantly, the events covering 12–14 August had revealed that the Luftwaffe was operating under a handful of important constraints centred on poor intelligence. First, the importance of the radar system was never fully understood by the Luftwaffe high command, with the result that future attacks were sporadic and unconvincing. The 100-mile gap that had been created on 12 August had been quickly repaired. Consequently, when raids were made that evening in the belief that they would not be picked up by radar, the Luftwaffe was hit hard. This in turn led the Germans to mistakenly downplay the potential advantages to be had from all-out operations against the radar chain.

  Second, attacks were made on targets that had little impact on the operational capabilities of Fighter Command. For example, the 13 August raid on Detling airfield, near Maidstone, had killed sixty-seven men and destroyed twenty-two aircraft on the ground.[22] By all accounts a decisive blow, were it not for the fact that the field was part of Coastal Command’s inventory, not Fighter Command’s.

  Third, the Germans were never fully aware of the vulnerability of the Spitfire manufacturing facilities. In addition to the Hurricane and Spitfire Rolls-Royce engines being built at only two factories, the airframes for the latter fighter were by and large produced at one plant: the Vickers-Supermarine factory in Southampton. Dangerously close to Kesselring and Sperrle’s airfields, this factory was falsely identified as manufacturing bombers.

  Finally, Kesselring and Sperrle were overestimating Fighter Command losses. Tall tales of confirmed kills prevailed on both sides. Some pilots falsely boosted their successes, but most of the inflation was due to multiple claims on the same kill in fast-moving combat. One pilot might hit an enemy aircraft only to have others hit the machine before it was destroyed. An August interception by 54 Squadron of a lone Me 110 highlighted the potential for confusion and multiple claims.

  The combat report chronicled the unusually protracted assault: ‘P/O Gray attacked from 100 yards. Firing long burst setting both engines on fire.’[23] The German machine refused to surrender to Gray’s salvos, though it rapidly shed its speed. In fact, the low velocity of the Me 110 made it difficult for the other pilots to finish it off. The flight leader was only able to hole the fuselage. A flight sergeant ‘fired third and set the engines alight again ... This time the enemy was diving steeply towards the French Coast.’ Further ‘bits and pieces fell off the machine’ from the efforts of a pilot officer, but still the Me 110 sputtered eastward losing altitude. The fifth and last to hit the aircraft was a sergeant. George Gribble, as flight leader, signed off the document, noting that although the ‘machine was not actually seen to crash in the water by this time it was fully ablaze’.[24] Sometimes it was possible to accurately attribute success to lone pilots but often in the heat of a dogfight multiple claims were impossible to avoid, especially if more than one squadron was involved.

  While the resulting exaggerated claims were troubling for Dowding in assessing the progress of the battle, it was an exceedingly serious matter on the other side of the Channel. The RAF was in the business of simply surviving; the Germans on the other hand needed to destroy Fighter Command to facilitate the invasion. Göring was certain, based on the vastly inflated figures, that Dowding must have stripped his other defensive forces, 10 Group and 12 Group, to reinforce the struggling 11 Group. How else could he account for Park’s continued resistance in the south when his Luftwaffe pilots had allegedly destroyed the greater part of the RAF’s fighter stocks?

  The Luftwaffe hoped to exploit this apparent weakness by attacking Britain across a broad front, drawing the northern Norwegian and Danish-based Luftflotte 5 into the fray. The Greatest Day—15 August—saw the largest collection of aircraft gathered together over Britain. Göring’s three Luftflotten had a dizzying 1790 bombers and fighters to hurl at Dowding’s 351 serviceable Hurricanes and 233 Spitfires.[25]

  Northern Attack

  The German assault would be delivered across the broadest front of the campaign thus far, incorporating the Scandinavian-based units of Stumpff to take advantage of the alleged dearth of men and machines in the north. Fighter Command’s Commander-in-Chief, however, had maintained the numbers of squadrons in 13 Group and had continued to use it to circulate units that were in need of a break and refit from the rigours of battle. Consequently, 13 Group had six fighter squadrons on hand and many were manned by some of the RAF’s most seasoned fighter pilots. With regards to radar, Luftwaffe planners assumed it would be less well monitored, giving greater opportunity to surprise the defenders. As bad luck would have it for the Luftwaffe, a convoy was moving north from Hull around midday and radar operators had been ordered to maintain extra vigilance in view of its significance. Added to this was the much greater distance between the German-occupied Norwegian and Danish airfields and targets in Britain. This worked to the defenders’ distinct advantage. The time available between radar picking up intruders and having fighters at the right altitude to intercept was much greater than for Park’s 11 Group.[26]

  For Stumpff, the distances involved also hamstrung his forces. Missing from the raid would be the most potent weapon facing Fighter Command airmen: the Me 109. The single-engine Messerschmitt simply did not have the range to make it to Britain from Scandinavia. Sixty-three He 111s from Norway were to raid the Dishforth and Linton-on-Ouse fields, with Newcastle, Sunderland, and Middlesbrough as secondary objectives. Protection was to be provided by twenty-one Me 110s fitted with bellydrop fuel tanks to allow them to complete the nearly 1000-mile mission. The Danish component was made up of fifty Ju 88s to attack the Driffield, East Yorkshire, airfield. These would fly without fighter escort, though a modicum of protection would be provided by a handful of Ju 88s fitted out as fighter-bombers.

  Stumpff hoped to bamboozle the northern radar by undertaking a feint employing twenty floatplanes. This flight was designed to deceive the defenders into thinking that the German targets were heading for the Firth of Forth, well north of the bomber targets in Dishforth and Linton-on-Ouse. The enterprise was a complete fiasco as a three-degree error in the following bombers’ course in fact placed them on the same course setting as the decoys that had left Norway thirty minutes earlier.

  ‘Thanks to this error,’ noted a staff officer within Luftflotte 5, ‘the mock attack achieved the opposite of what we intended. The British fighter defence was not only alerted in good time, but made contact with the genuine attacking force.’[27] Among the defenders were a good smattering of Anzacs.

  First into the air was Australian Desmond Sheen of 72 Squadron operating out of Acklington. The Heinkel crews, belatedly aware they had been flying off-course, turned south towards their targets—and right into the path of Sheen’s unit. At 12.45p.m., contact was made thirty miles east of the Farne Islands. The twenty or so bombers turned out to be approximately five times the size of the anticipated force. Facing nearly 100 bombers and Me 110s, the twelve Spitfires had more than a handful to deal with.
The squadron leader continued out to sea in order to come in behind the large formation, hoping to dive out of the sun on to the bombers cruising at 18,000 feet. Sure that the Spitfires should by now have made contact, the controller asked the squadron leader, known for his stutter: ‘Haven’t you seen them?’

  The reply, which was subsequently widely reported throughout the RAF, came through: ‘Of course I’ve seen the b-b-b-b-bastards. I’m trying to w-ww-work out what to do.’[28] In the end the separation of the German force decided the matter and, while some of the squadron attacked the bombers, Sheen, as leader of B Flight, took his Spitfires into the escorting Me 110s. While some twin-engine fighters formed up into a defensive circle, Sheen latched on to a straggler. The young Australian misidentified the drop-tank on the machine as a large bomb. Many of the German pilots had already divested themselves of the dangerous tanks but it appears that at least one pilot had not. Sheen hit the ‘bomb’ and the enemy aircraft disappeared in minute fragments.’[29] One of the Me 110 pilots recorded his own frightening run-in with Sheen and his colleagues:

  I heard ... my ... rear gunner fire his machine guns and on looking back I stared into the flaming guns of four Spitfires in splendid formation. The plane was hit—not severely, but the right-hand motor was dead ... I tried to reach the protection of the bombers which were overhead, but without success ... as Spitfires came in for the kill, I sent out my Mayday. This time the RAF fighter got the left-hand motor and knocked out my rear gunner (who was wounded in the knee) and the front screen. The bullet missed my head by inches.[30]

  Sheen followed his first run with another on an Me 110 and he hit the port engine, which was soon sprouting flames and smoke. With another aircraft dispatched, his action for the day was complete. Seven Me 110s had been destroyed—a third of the force. Although on returning from their ill-fated sortie the dejected German airmen went on to claim that they had shot down eleven Spitfires, none had in fact suffered this fate. While the remaining enemy fighters fled for cloud cover and home, the main body of bombers continued tenaciously towards their targets.

  Having identified a much larger force, 13 Group unleashed further squadrons. First on the scene was another Acklington formation, 79 Squadron, with New Zealander Owen Tracey and Australian William Millington each at the controls of a Hurricane.[31] The former, a Dunedin store-hand, had been turned down three times for a short commission in the RAF and was finally informed that he did not meet the educational requirements for the service. Determined to achieve his dream, he undertook private tuition. The latter pilot’s English parents had made the voyage to Australia when he was a young child and put down roots in South Australia at Edwardstown near Adelaide. Millington returned to England and took up a short service commission in 1939. Both men were now pilots in a unit that had a heritage stretching back to the Great War. The fighters fell mercilessly on the Heinkels. Tracey claimed one and Millington three.

  Close to 1.00p.m. the Hurricane squadrons that had been scrambled from Drem, in the north of the Group’s area, and Catterick in the south, arrived on the scene. New Zealanders James Samuel Humphreys of Greymouth, formerly a clerical cadet in the Government Audit Office, Wellington, and John Mackenzie, the son of an Otago farmer, were pilot officers in 605 and 41 Squadrons respectively.[32] The airmen of 605 squadron boasted they had taken down four bombers, although the boyish Humphreys, a veteran of the fighting in France, was not one of the claimants. Mackenzie, on the other hand, did get to put in a claim. In an interview years later, Mackenzie still vividly recalled the events: ‘We had a bit of a to-do on the 15th. They came in from across the North Sea. I fired my guns but don’t know what happened. It was a real mess-up and the Germans went in all directions.’[33]

  In an impossible situation, many of the He 111s simply jettisoned their bombs and limped back to Norway as quickly as possible. The more southerly attack from Denmark was somewhat more successful and though they destroyed ten Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bombers at Driffield, Yorkshire, they were heavily mauled in the attempt. Seven of the fifty Ju 88s were shot down and a further three made crash landings on the Continent. In all, Luftflotte 5 lost a full fifth of its raiding force while Fighter Command had lost only one Hurricane. This was the first and last time the Luftwaffe attempted to raid Britain from Norway and Denmark in the Battle of Britain.

  Meanwhile in the south, major raids were continuing against the RAF.

  CHAPTER 6

  Shot Down

  The 15 August opening southern sallies caught New Zealander John Gibson with cards in hand learning the intricacies of bridge at 501 Squadron’s forward coastal airfield at Hawkinge.[1] The Hurricanes were dispersed around the all-grass airstrip and the pilots clustered in battered chairs by their temporary canvas accommodation. Chess, reading and card games were distractions and time-fillers before the inevitable call-up. The first indication that something was afoot came at 10.45a.m. when thirty or so aircraft were picked up by radar and plotted heading for the English coast from Cap Gris Nez. Along with a handful of other units, 501was sent aloft to patrol the Hawkinge airfield. ‘Gibbo’ was leading a section in his second sortie of the day.[2] With seven confirmed and two unconfirmed victories, plus seven damaged enemy aircraft to his name already, the former rifle-shot champion of New Plymouth Boys’ High School was already an ace and leading member of his unit.

  Gibson spotted twenty incoming Ju 87s and immediately pushed his Hurricane to intercept with two wing-men in his wake. The slow Stukas were no match and the New Zealander and his compatriots took out one apiece. Over the radio the squadron received a hasty recall as another formation of Ju 87s was in the process of bombing Hawkinge. But on this occasion the Stukas proved they were not without defences. Although Gibson was able to wing a Ju 87, he was badly damaged in the process. The rear gunner had fatally wounded his Hurricane over the town of Folkestone and Gibson was forced to bale out at low altitude. Unaware that the New Zealander had vacated his machine, one of his fellow card players gleefully asked Gibson via the radio: ‘Did you get one? By the way, three no trumps doubled! See you back at base.’

  The late afternoon forays in the south drew in the day’s biggest clutch of Anzacs. A large force including forty Ju 87s, twenty Me 110s and a massive escort of sixty Me 109s was making for Portland. To counter this, Fighter Command put up three squadrons. Around 5.00p.m. the Hurricanes of 87 and 213 Squadrons were vectored to break up the dive bombers and scatter the Me 110s, while the Spitfires of 234 had the unenviable task of taking on the numerous Me 109s. In all, only thirty-six fighters stood in the way of the 120 intruders. Of the RAF airmen at least eight—that is, a quarter—were Australians or New Zealanders.

  The dapper Squadron Leader Terence Lovell-Gregg led 87 Squadron. The unit had just finished rebuilding from its fall-of-France hammering and, because of its westward location at Group 10’s Filton sector airfield at Exeter, it had seen little action thus far. Like the other New Zealand Squadron Leader at Exeter, McGregor, Lovell-Gregg was an early entrant into the RAF. The Nelson College graduate was academically brilliant and only denied entry to the University of Otago’s medical school due to his youth. He turned his hand to flying and became one of the youngest qualified pilots in Australasia. Though considered too scrawny for air service by the New Zealand medical examiner, he made his way to England and entered the RAF in 1931.[3] In spite of operational experience in Iraq and Syria, most of his pre-war service was as an instructor. Sporting a carefully groomed moustache and slicked-back hair, Lovell-Gregg had been keen to resume operational duties when war broke out. He was appointed commanding officer in late July 1940. The decision was a popular one and the well-liked Lovell-Gregg was simply known as ‘Shovel’.

  Recognising his lack of recent operational experience, the ‘old man’ of the squadron (at twenty-eight years of age) often relinquished operational command in missions to younger combat-hardened officers.[4] On this occasion his right-hand man was fellow New Zealander Flight Lieutenant Derek Ward.<
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  After lunch, 87 Squadron pilots had taken to their motley collection of chairs under the hot August sun. In addition to ‘Shovel’ and Ward, the 87 crew boasted another Kiwi, Wellingtonian Kenneth Tait. Like Ward, Tait was a veteran of France, already able to catalogue a series of death-defying adventures including having crashed on the wrong side of the Maginot Line on one occasion, and waking to the sound of artillery shrapnel ripping his tent to pieces on another. His escape from France was widely reported in newspapers and chronicled his inspired requisitioning of a Dutch aircraft and alighting in England near naked, lacking a shirt, scarf and flying boots.[5] In the mass exodus he had reluctantly abandoned his personal effects.

  The inevitable warning phone call came through and pilots who had been sunning themselves tugged on their shirts, along with the obligatory yellow Mae West. Twenty-five minutes later the operations bell harshly broke the reflective calm and sent Tait and others scampering to their aerial mounts, encouraged by one of the pilots’ dogs, a barking bull terrier named Sam.[6] Not far behind was Exeter’s other Hurricane unit, the McGregor-led 213 Squadron.

  ‘Shovel’ sighted the enemy ten miles south-west of Portland. The intruders had already been engaged and the area of combat resembled a tall cylinder stretching from 12,000 to 16,000 feet within which an angry swarm of bees engaged in a life-and-death dance; at the lower altitudes the Ju 87s were formed into defensive circles with escorting Me 110s at their shoulders, and in the upper reaches prowled packs of Me 109s. It was a jaw-dropping sight for the relatively unpractised Lovell-Gregg. Nevertheless, swinging his Hurricane over into the fray he yelled the traditional ‘Tallyho’ over the radio. Ward followed: