The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots

by Jon E. Lewis

  BATTLE OF BRITAIN DIARY

  D.H. WISSLER

  After the fall of France, Hitler turned his attention to Britain, determining upon invasion of the island in the autumn of 1940. First, however, there was the small matter of sweeping the fighters of the Royal Air Force from the skies. Herman Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, believed that it would take his fighters, now operating from their new bases in occupied Europe, just four days to eradicate the RAF from the south of England. As it turned out, it took the Luftwaffe one month – 12 August to 15 September 1940- to lose the “Battle of Britain”. Although the numerical advantage lay with the Luftwaffe (which initially put up some 980 fighters against the RAF’s 700), the range of the principal German fighter, the Messerschmitt Bf109, when used as an escort to bombers, was limited to the south-east corner of England, and then for a relatively short period only, something in the region of ten minutes. Or, put another way, RAF fighters could fly for longer over the main area of the battle. They also had the advantage of aground system of radar which detected the enemy and a fighter control which directed them to the target, removing the need for patrol. This said, the Luftwaffe came close to winning the Battle in September, when it destroyed 185 British aircraft for the loss of 225 German (including bombers) in the first week, and the RAF began to run precariously low on men and machines. The RAF might have triumphed anyway, but Hitler made sure that they did. In a fit of of pique following the RAF’s bombing raid on Berlin of 25 August, he ordered the Luftwaffe’s bombers to switch their aim from Britain’s airfields to its cities, particularly London. On 7 September the Luftwaffe sent nearly 400 bombers and more than 600 fighters in two waves to attack the East End of London. The damage was considerable; but it did nothing to lessen the effectiveness of Fighter Command. Nor did the ensuing raids on Britain’s cities. On 17 September, Hitler suspended his plans for the invasion of Britain. Total losses of aircraft incurred during the Battle stood at 922 British, 1,767 German. The Third Reich had lost its first battle. A Hurricane pilot with 17 Squadron, Wissler fought throughout the Battle of Britain.

  Diary 15 August 1940 [Martlesham Heath]

  I did not get up until 8 this morning and then went down to flight. I did a convoy patrol this morning, acting as section leader. Then in the afternoon there was a flap and took off. Joined Red section and went hunting. The aerodrome was bombed, several 10001b bombs being dropped not doing too much damage. We didn’t even get a chance to fire although F/1 Harper was shot down, but managed to jump, though wounded. In the evening we watched a raid over Harwich being machine-gunned and shelled. He[Heinkels] dropped one large bomb!

  Monday, 19 August

  I was recalled from leave today . . . The squadron is moving to TANGMERE. I flew “X”, which was due for an inspection, to Debden. “V”, my own plane not ready, so I spent the night in a comfortable bed for a change . . .

  Tuesday, 20 August

  I took off from Debden at about 10.15 and flew to Tangmere. I navigated my way ok but being on the coast this wasn’t very hard. Tangmere is in a shocking state. The buildings being in an awful shambles, several 10001b bombs having fallen. We were put to 30 mins at 1, and did nothing for the rest of the day. The dispersal hut is most cozy and puts ours at Debden to shame.

  Wednesday, 21 August

  We did some flap flying patrols today . . . but the Flight commander only saw one E/A [enemy aircraft] and then only for a second when it was between some clouds. The other section in our flight shot down a Ju88 as did yellow section in “A” flight. After it was quite dusk we were sent up on patrol but having got to 7000 ft over the aerodrome we were recalled.

  Friday, 23 August

  I did not fly at all today, in fact it was very quiet. We were released at 1 p.m. and went up [to London] on train. I went home.

  Saturday, 24 August

  There was an air raid warning in Blackheath and thought I should miss my train. However, we caught it and arrived back ok. In the afternoon we went up on a flap and saw dozens of E/A going out to sea, however did not fire although the CO and P/O Stevens got an He111. We had one very short patrol after this, but nothing was seen.

  Sunday, 25 August

  This was our hard day being at 15 mins and readiness the day long. At about half past seven we had a hell of a scrap over Portland in which 100 a/c were engaged. F/L Bayne made an attack below and astern quarter. The ME110 whipped up in a slow turn and I gave him a long burst while he was in a stalled condition, it fell over and went down. I then went on my own and made an He111 break formation. I gave it another burst and it went down towards the sea. F/L Bayne shot down but ok. F/L Williams lost wing. Shot off.

  Saturday, 31 August

  We did four patrols today ending up with one in which we intercepted about 30 Do[rnier]17s and 20–30 Me 109s. I got on an Me 109s tail, after an ineffectual attack on the bombers, and got in several long bursts at about 300 yards, however nothing was observed in the way of damage. Another got on my tail and I had to break away. I succeeded in throwing him off in a steep turn but not before he had put a explosive bullet through my wing. Sgt Stewart was shot down, but was safe. I lost another tail wheel today.

  Tuesday, 3 September

  We did two patrols, in the first intercepted about 100 E/A (Do.215 and Me 110). F/Lt Bayne and I got on an Me 110’s tail and firing together sent it down in flames. We then attacked a Do 215, [?] Leary finishing the attack and the bomber crashed in a field just North of the River Crouch. I collected a bullet in the radiator and got covered with glycol, force landing at Castle Camps. Collected a Hurricane off 111 Sqd., flew back to Debden . . . We did one more patrol over the Thames. Then in the night I was aerodrome Control Pilot.

  Saturday, 7 September

  I did two types again today, the one in the morning was uneventful, the second at 5.30, on which we used V.H.F. for the first time, we saw four huge enemy formations but as we were only 6 we did not engage. We had one short scrap with Me 109’s, but I only had one short burst – with no effect. These raids created a lot of damage in London. The provisional casualty list say 400 dead, 15,000 seriously injured: what complete swine these Jerries are.

  Sunday, 8 September

  Did not fly today and got afternoon off. Went on 4 days leave. Air raids have messed up London quite a bit.

  Sunday, 15 September

  I flew once today but missed the Big Blitz owing to my a/c being unservicable. Nothing was claimed by anyone because there were so many Jerries, over 200 in all. I am at 15 mins readiness tonight, and will be second off, if we have to fly. The RAF claimed 167 e/a destroyed, boy oh boy what a total. We had the station dance band in the mess tonight, and it turned into quite a party. Czernin is now DFC.

  Tuesday, 17 September

  We did a couple of patrols today but neither came to anything. I feel very depressed tonight. I don’t know why, just a passing mood. Alf Bayne’s engine cut taking off, and he had a glorious pile up, completely wrecking the Hurricane but only getting an odd bruise himself.

  Wednesday, 18 September

  We did four patrols today of over an hour each. On the first we saw lots of Huns way above us we could not engage, and anyway they were fighters. Nothing happened on any of the other patrols although there appear to have been lots of e/a about. We tried most unsuccessfully to play a game of snooker in the evening but the lights kept going out: switched out by the Control room when a Hun is about, how they flap here!!

  Friday, 20 September

  I went to the Sergeants’ Mess this evening for a party and got to know a sweet little W.A.A.F. named Margaret Cameron and we had quite a kissing session after the party was over.

  Tuesday, 24 September

  I had just one (patrol) and one blitz only (8.30). We were attacked by ME 109s and having made our attack on an Me 109 I was making a second . . . when I realized I should let it all go. I levelled off. Suddenly there was a blinding flash on my port wing and I felt a hell of a blow on my left arm, and the blood run
ning down. I went into a hell of a dive and came back to Debden. A cannon shell had hit my wing and a bit of it had hit me just above the elbow and behind. The shell had blown away most of my port flap. So I tried to land without flaps and I could not stop and crashed into a pile of stones just off the field, hitting my face and cutting it in two places. I was taken to Saffron Walden General Hospital, they operated but had to leave small pieces in . . .

  Thursday, 26 September

  Hospital.

  Sunday, 29 September

  Did nothing during the day but there was the usual band in the mess and when they packed up I completed the party at the Sergeants’ Mess. Met Edith Heap and fell in love with her at sight. I rather cut Margaret Cameron and I am not as popular as I was!!!

  Monday, 7 October

  Returned to Debden, had grand party, and met Edith Heap, my God it seems to be the real thing this time. She is so sweet and seems to like me as much as I like her.

  PO Wissler was reported missing in November 1940.

  FINEST HOUR

  JOHN BEARD

  Pilot Officer John Beard was 23 at the time of the Battle of Britain. He flew a Hawker Hurricane Mk I, the mainstay RAF fighter during the Battle of Britain.

  I was supposed to be away on a day’s leave but dropped back to the aerodrome to see if there was a letter from my wife. When I found out that all the squadrons had gone off into action, I decided to stand by, because obviously something big was happening. While I was climbing into my flying kit, our Hurricanes came slipping back out of the sky to refuel, reload ammunition, and take off again. The returning pilots were full of talk about flocks of enemy bombers and fighters which were trying to break through along the Thames Estuary. You couldn’t miss hitting them, they said. Off to the east I could hear the steady roll of anti-aircraft fire. It was a brilliant afternoon with a flawless blue sky. I was crazy to be off.

  An instant later an aircraftsman rushed up with orders for me to make up a flight with some of the machines then reloading. My own Hurricane was a nice old kite, though it had a habit of flying left wing low at the slightest provocation. But since it had already accounted for fourteen German aircraft before I inherited it, I thought it had some luck, and I was glad when I squeezed myself into the same old seat again and grabbed the “stick”.

  We took off in two flights [six fighters], and as we started to gain height over the station we were told over the R. T. [radio-telephone] to keep circling for a while until we were made up to a stronger force. That didn’t take long, and soon there was a complete squadron including a couple of Spitfires which had wandered in from somewhere.

  Then came the big thrilling moment: action orders. Distantly I heard the hum of the generator in my R. T. earphones and then the voice of the ground controller crackling through with the call signs. Then the order “Fifty plus bombers, one hundred plus fighters over Canterbury at 15,000 heading northeast. Your vector [steering course to intercept] nine zero degrees. Over!”

  We were flying in four V formations of three. I was flying No. 3 in Red flight, which was the squadron leader’s and thus the leading flight. On we went, wing tips to left and right slowly rising and falling, the roar of our twelve Marlins drowning all other sound. We crossed over London, which, at 20,000 feet, seemed just a haze of smoke from its countless chimneys, with nothing visible except the faint glint of the barrage balloons and the wriggly silver line of the Thames.

  I had too much to do watching the instruments and keeping formation to do much thinking. But once I caught a reflected glimpse of myself in the windscreen – a goggled, bloated, fat thing with the tube of my oxygen supply protruding gruesomely sideways from the mask which hid my mouth. Suddenly I was back at school again, on a hot afternoon when the Headmaster was taking the Sixth and droning on and on about the later Roman Emperors. The boy on my right was showing me surreptitiously some illustrations which he had pinched out of his father’s medical books during the last holidays. I looked like one of those pictures.

  It was an amazingly vivid memory, as if school was only yesterday. And half my mind was thinking what wouldn’t I then have given to be sitting in a Hurricane belting along at 350 miles an hour and out for a kill. Me defending London! I grinned at my old self at the thought.

  Minutes went by Green fields and roads were now beneath us. I scanned the sky and the horizon for the first glimpse of the Germans. A new vector came through on the R. T. and we swung round with the sun behind us. Swift on the heels of this I heard Yellow flight leader call through the earphones. I looked quickly toward Yellow’s position, and there they were!

  It was really a terrific sight and quite beautiful. First they seemed just a cloud of light as the sun caught the many glistening chromium parts of their engines, their windshields, and the spin of their airscrew discs. Then, as our squadron hurtled nearer, the details stood out. I could see the bright-yellow noses of Messerschmitt fighters sandwiching the bombers, and could even pick out some of the types. The sky seemed full of them, packed in layers thousands of feet deep. They came on steadily, wavering up and down along the horizon. “Oh, golly,” I thought, “golly, golly . . .”

  And then any tension I had felt on the way suddenly left me. I was elated but very calm. I leaned over and switched on my reflector sight, flicked the catch on the gun button from “Safe” to “Fire”, and lowered my seat till the circle and dot on the reflector sight shone darkly red in front of my eyes.

  The squadron leader’s voice came through the earphones, giving tactical orders. We swung round in a great circle to attack on their beam – into the thick of them. Then, on the order, down we went. I took my hand from the throttle lever so as to get both hands on the stick, and my thumb played neatly across the gun button. You have to steady a fighter just as you have to steady a rifle before you fire it.

  My Merlin screamed as I went down in a steeply banked dive on to the tail of a forward line of Heinkels. I knew the air was full of aircraft flinging themselves about in all directions, but, hunched and snuggled down behind my sight I was conscious only of the Heinkel I had picked out. As the angle of my dive increased, the enemy machine loomed larger in the sight field, heaved toward the red dot, and then he was there!

  I had an instant’s flash of amazement at the Heinkel proceeding so regularly on its way with a fighter on its tail. “Why doesn’t the fool move?” I thought, and actually caught myself flexing my muscles into the action I would have taken had I been he.

  When he was square across the sight I pressed the button. There was a smooth trembling of my Hurricane as the eight-gun squirt shot out. I gave him a two-second burst and then another. Cordite fumes blew back into the cockpit making an acrid mixture with the smell of hot oil and the aircompressors.

  I saw my first burst go in and, just as I was on top of him and turning away, I noticed a red glow inside the bomber. I turned tightly into position again and now saw several short tongues of flame lick out along the fuselage. Then he went down in a spin, blanketed with smoke and with pieces flying off.

  I left him plummeting down and, horsing back on my stick, climbed up again for more. The sky was clearing, but ahead toward London I saw a small, tight formation of bombers completely encircled by a ring of Messerschmitts. They were still heading north. As I raced forward, three flights of Spitfires came zooming up from beneath them in a sort of Prince-of-Wales’s-feathers manœuvre. They burst through upward and outward, their guns going all the time. They must have each got one, for an instant later I saw the most extraordinary sight of eight German bombers and fighters diving earthward together in flames.

  I turned away again and streaked after some distant specks ahead. Diving down, I noticed that the running progress of the battle had brought me over London again. I could see the network of streets with the green space of Kensington Gardens, and I had an instant’s glimpse of the Round Pond, where I sailed boats when I was a child. In that moment, and as I was rapidly overhauling the Germans ahead, a Dornier 17 sped
right across my line of flight, closely pursued by a Hurricane. And behind the Hurricane came two Messerschmitts. He was too intent to have seen them and they had not seen me! They were coming slightly toward me. It was perfect. A kick at the rudder and I swung in toward them, thumbed the gun button, and let them have it. The first burst was placed just the right distance ahead of the leading Messerschmitt. He ran slap into it and he simply came to pieces in the air. His companion, with one of the speediest and most brilliant “get-outs” I have ever seen, went right away in a half Immelmann turn. I missed him completely. He must almost have been hit by the pieces of the leader but he got away. I hand it to him.

  At that moment some instinct made me glance up at my rearview mirror and spot two Messerschmitts closing in on my tail. Instantly I hauled back on the stick and streaked upward. And just in time. For as I flicked into the climb, I saw the tracer streaks pass beneath me. As I turned I had a quick look round the “office” [cockpit]. My fuel reserve was running out and I had only about a second’s supply of ammunition left. I was certainly in no condition to take on two Messerschmitts. But they seemed no more eager than I was. Perhaps they were in the same position, for they turned away for home. I put my nose down and did likewise.

  Only on the way back did I realize how hot I was. I had forgotten to adjust the ventilator apparatus in all the stress of the fighting, and hadn’t noticed the thermometer. With the sun on the windows all the time, the inside of the “office” was like an oven. Inside my flying suit I was in a bath of perspiration, and sweat was cascading down my face. I was dead tired and my neck ached from constantly turning my head on the lookout when going in and out of dogfights. Over east the sky was flecked with A. A. puffs, but I did not bother to investigate. Down I went, home.