Familiarity with combat, and confirmation of a man’s prowess in it, however, did not lessen the strain of aerial warfare. Indeed, for some, the longer they survived the greater seemed the probability that their turn to be killed could not possibly be much more deferred. Whatever the reason, there were many by now who reacted agonizingly to every announcement from the Tannoy: and Lacey was one of them. Every time the loudspeaker hummed its preliminary note on being switched on, he had to rush from his bed in the dispersal hut, or from the grass under his Hurricane’s wing, where he was lying, and vomit. Whether the message turned out to be ‘A.C. Plonk to report to the Orderly Room immediately’, ‘The film in the Station Cinema tonight is …’, or the anticipated ‘501 Squadron — scramble!’ the effect was the same. His stomach muscles jerked convulsively, his fatigue-sodden body and mind could not control them, and he must be sick.
On the 15th August they came to readiness at ten minutes past four in the morning and Lacey flew six times before the day was done. On one scramble, flying as Red Three, when the squadron encountered more than twenty Do. 17s between Maidstone and Rochester, he attacked the No. 3 in the rear section with a four-second burst, but found himself closing too fast and broke hard to the right. He saw his incendiary bullets going into the wings, but before he could continue this engagement a second Hurricane had taken on the bomber and he looked for another. He saw about thirty more Dorniers, flying east, and attacked one from 250 yards dead astern, with a nine-second burst. He saw it nose sharply down in a forty-five-degree dive with smoke enveloping it and disappear in a cloud. With the remainder of his ammunition he attacked a third Do. 17, inconclusively. The squadron destroyed or damaged 14 Ju. 87s, for the loss of two Hurricanes whose pilots baled out, and damage to one.
In two more actions that day, 501 accounted for eight more enemy aeroplanes damaged or destroyed.
On the 16th, the squadron was ordered off to find 20 Dornier 17s, 6 Me. 109s and 10 Me. 110s, in the Hastings-Dungeness area. Lacey, who was in Red Section, found after they had climbed through a thick layer of cloud, that the three aircraft had become separated from the rest. He took over as rear guard, zig-zagging behind the other two.
Red Leader, on the R/T, gave ‘Tallyho!’ and dived at a Do. 17, and immediately five Me. 109s dived on Red Leader. Lacey went to his defence, closed to within fifty yards of the leading Messerschmitt, and gave it a three-second burst. The German fighter whipped into a vertical dive, with black smoke rippling from its cockpit and engine, into the clouds.
Day after day, his log-book tells the same story. To Hawkinge in the morning. Patrol … scramble to intercept … patrol a convoy … scramble again … back to Gravesend.
On the 18th the squadron was in a fight over Canterbury, during the morning, in which two pilots were wounded, one killed and another suffered burns. In the afternoon they were scrambled to the protection of Biggin Hill, which was under attack.
At 4.50 p.m., seven Hurricanes, on their way back to Hawkinge after having landed at Gravesend following this last battle, met fifty mixed bombers and fighters. They shot down two Me. 110s, but Flight Lieutenant Stoney lost his life.
At the end of the day’s fighting, Red Section were put on Night Readiness.
On the 24th, Lacey flew eight times. Action began with a dogfight with thirty Dorniers and Me. 109s, at 10.30 a.m., four miles north-west of Dover, from which P/0 Zenker did not return. Lacey, flying Number Two, saw his leader attack one of the bombers, whereupon No. 3 in the last section broke right. Lacey attacked it head-on, from below, and saw it go into a dive with smoke coming out of an engine; then a Me. 109 opened fire on him and he had to abandon the bomber to deal with it.
At 1 p.m. the dreaded Tannoy sounded off again, scrambling the squadron to the Ramsgate area. They found fifty Ju. 88s, with a strong fighter escort. Lacey saw that one of the 88s had just started its dive, so he got on its tail and opened fire as it pulled up at 4,000 ft. He could see his incendiaries smacking into both engines and the rear turret; tracer was coming back at him from the upper rear gunner, but this stopped at the same time that the starboard engine went dead, its propeller wind-milling to a halt, and the port engine began to make smoke. Lacey turned aside to avoid a collision and the lower rear gunner fired at him; he turned and attacked again, from dead astern; and, so as to avoid the lower gunner’s fire, from slightly above. A few seconds after his final burst he saw the pilot take to his parachute while the bomber dived into the sea near the Goodwins.
On the fourth flight of the day, attacking a mixed force of Do. 17s, Do. 215s and Me. 109s, he had just put a burst into a Do. 215, when there was a streak of vivid colour across his bows, a clang from somewhere in the Hurricane’s nose, and he felt the aircraft pitch forward and down as its engine cut. Looking down and finding that he was right above Lympne aerodrome, he glided down with a dead engine, to find on landing that he had a bullet through the radiator. While fitters and riggers were patching his aircraft, he went to the Mess for a quick meal; by the time he had eaten, the aircraft was fit to fly back to Gravesend.
Flying six and eight times a day, never less than four times, week in and week out, had brought all the pilots to such a state of tiredness that they could not bother even to walk away from their aircraft on landing. In that blisteringly hot summer it was easiest just to lie on the grass in the shade of a Hurricane’s or Spitfire’s wing and fall instantly asleep. If the Intelligence Officer came to ask you for a combat report you put one in, and with it your claims for aircraft destroyed or damaged. If nobody asked you, you did not trouble to volunteer the information; until, perhaps, the day was finished and memory dulled.
In this way, many of the pilots were never credited with victories they had won. Time and again there was another scramble before an I.O. could make out combat reports on the mission just completed, and by the time the boys were back from that one, everyone had forgotten about the previous sortie … and so on, with scrambles piling up and each obliterating the details of its predecessor. Time after time, a pilot who had scored successes on an early sortie must have been killed on a later one before ever being able to make a report which would, at least, have given him permanent credit for what he had done.
Not that the Battle of Britain pilots needed any sordid accretion of numbers after their names to proclaim their skill, bravery and stamina. Just by being airborne, reacting to each German raid, they were saving the world: their presence was enough, on many occasions, to turn the enemy away before combat was joined. And the strain of operational flying was no less when no enemy was encountered, than when a vicious dog-fight was being decided: for each time they flew they expected to see the German and attack him, and it was this as much as, perhaps more than, the moments of battle, that frayed their nerves and robbed them of refreshing sleep and proper relaxation.
Some of them became so emotionally numb that they were like automata; morose, withdrawn, wanting neither food nor companionship; dragging themselves through each day in almost a stupor. Others, more highly strung, teetered constantly on the brink of frenzy: talking incessantly, smoking heavily, forcing themselves to loud laughter and feigned high spirits. But among the unfriendly silence on the one hand and the horseplay on the other, were the majority: level-headed, thoroughly professional, in control of themselves. Perhaps Lacey’s laconic Yorkshire character was as much responsible for keeping him sane and alive through that period, as his naturally brilliant eyesight and swift mental and physical reaction to quickly-changing events. If it hadn’t been for that damned, whining Tannoy, he would probably never have shewn any outward signs of nervous wear. Each day made the situation more desperate, with an average loss of fifteen fighter aircraft and ten pilots, nearly all in 11 Group.
Neither memory nor official records reveal details of the next few days. Log book entries tell of several hours flying, but no combat, until we come to the 29th, when, in what his log-book calls ‘a spasmodic engagement with Me. 109s in the Dover area’, Lacey added an
other of these enemy fighters to his score.
On the next morning, over the North Foreland, he fought an engagement with thirty or forty Me. 110 Jaguars which did not stay to dispute the issue: he put two long bursts into one of them, saw it stagger into the low haze with smoke emerging from one engine, and reckoned that he had a ‘probable’ at least. There was a twenty-minute break at base, while the aircraft were refuelled and rearmed; but the German Air Force was under orders to batter its way through the British defences and prepare the ground for Hitler’s final, devastating assault: 501 was soon in the air again, this time with the Controller ordering: ‘Vector two-seven-zero. A hundred-plus Bandits approaching Dungeness.’ And how right he was, for there were the He. 111s and Me. 110s in a countless swarm.
Lacey, Yellow Two, picked the 110 which was leading a big formation and attacked from ahead, opening fire at 400 yards and continuing until, as his combat report describes his actions: ‘Collision was imminent. So I broke underneath and when I pulled up I saw that the Me. 110 had left the formation and was going east with smoke coming from its port engine. Climbing, I found a He. 111 just ahead, also going east, rather slowly, as though it had been damaged. I attacked, opened fire at 250 yards, and saw the undercarriage drop and the port engine catch fire. As I closed, long flames and thick black smoke made vision difficult. I had to break off, as I was attacked by several 110s. I continued fighting until I had no ammunition left.’
But there was more in store before the 30th August came to a close. Lacey recalls that ‘Later on that day I had an interesting experience.’ It seems that a news reel film unit was working on Gravesend aerodrome and wanted a picture of a squadron scramble. Agreeably, the C.O. allowed his pilots to get into their cockpits, while the cameras whirred, preparatory to demonstrating a quick, dummy, take-off.
But even in those circumstances they had their R/T sets switched on, and with the cameras barely in position, the Sector Controller’s voice dinned in the pilots’ cars: ‘Scramble. Bandits in Thames estuary.’
The delighted cameramen marvelled at the co-operation they were receiving: the Hurricanes thundered across the airfield, climbed steeply, formed up and headed eastward.
Over the estuary, 501 saw well over fifty He. 111s, with several Do. 17s and a big escort of Me. 109s, flying due west. The C.O. led them into a head-on attack and they held their squadron formation, four vics of three, in the manner of head-ons of that day. ‘On the C.O’s word we all put our fingers on the trigger; not looking where we were shooting, but just keeping our formation and flying straight through the middle of the Germans. With ninety-six machine guns blazing straight at them, it must have been pretty frightening. It had the desired effect and the Heinkels split all over the sky. We were then able to pick them out one at a time. This time, however, as we were going in, I started to be hit by very accurate fire. I could see bullets entering my wings, coming in from directly ahead, and also straight into the engine.’
Oil sprayed all over the cockpit, from the punctured oil cooler at the bottom of the radiator. He pulled out to starboard, and as he banked, bullets were piercing his wings from beneath. He completed his turn and began gliding southward, away from the battle. Immediately, bullets hammered through his aircraft from the rear. ‘So whoever was doing the shooting was either very lucky or knew a lot about deflection, because it had been constantly changing.’
He jettisoned his oil-smeared cockpit hood and ‘was about to bale out when I suddenly realized that I was going to fall in the Thames; and I wasn’t particularly keen on that.’
It was a heart-stopping moment. The air was full of hostile fighters and his speed was very slow now that he had no engine. If he did bale out, the odds were that some sporting Luftwaffe pilot would shoot at him as he hung beneath his parachute. Either way, he was a sitting duck. He could only hope that other Hurricanes and Spitfires were holding the attention of the enemy enough to divert them from pursuing aircraft which were already out of the fight.
The engine was shewing no signs of catching fire, and the oil had run dry and was no longer spurting all over him, so he decided to stay in his machine, glide as far as the Isle of Sheppey, and bale out there. But when he arrived over this small piece of land he saw how unlikely it was that, without knowing the wind direction, he would succeed in landing on it. So he made for the mainland, aware by now that he had enough altitude to glide all the way back to Gravesend.
Pumping the undercarriage and flaps down by hand, he circled the aerodrome to lose height and made a perfectly judged landing. ‘And finished my run, with a dead engine, right smack beside the point from which I’d taken off. Much to the joy of the news reel unit, who were busy taking pictures of my landing.’
There were eighty-seven bullet entry holes in Lacey’s Hurricane, and innumerable bigger gashes where lumps of metal, ripped internally from the aircraft, had been smashed right through it.
‘I was awfully pleased with myself, having brought the aircraft back in that condition; until I eventually saw the Engineer Officer. His remark was, “Why the hell didn’t you bale out? If you’d baled out of that thing, I’d have got a new aircraft tomorrow morning! Now, I’ve got to set to work and mend it.”’
Lacey’s postscript is: ‘It certainly made me change my ideas about what was a good thing and what was a bad thing.’
On the last day of August, he killed his eleventh confirmed victim. To add to this were three probables and two damaged.
Action came at 3 p.m. ‘Scramble zero-three-zero. Bandits attacking Hornchurch.’
Hornchurch was a major aerodrome to the north-east of London, vital for the defence of the capital. When the seven serviceable Hurricanes of 501 Squadron got there, they were surrounded by thirty Do. 17s and twenty-four Me. 1095. Lacey, as Red Leader, headed the rearguard section. He saw a dozen Me. 109s lance into a stern attack and called a warning to the squadron leader. The Hurricanes reefed tightly round to face the Messerschmitts head-on and the enemy split to port and starboard as they blasted through them.
Lacey took his eyes off the 109 in front, flashing past his right flank, and glanced in his mirror: there was another of the swine on his tail, diving with its guns winking red-yellow splashes and sending glittering arcs of tracer within inches of his head.
He throttled back sharply and the enemy overshot, diving steeply. He put his nose down and went after it. It twisted to left and right, but he turned with it, awaiting his chance. The Me. pilot shewed no imagination: regular turns to port and starboard alternately; as soon as Lacey had established the pattern of his evasive tactics, he put himself in position for what must inevitably happen. At the split second that the target next jinked, he thumbed his firing button. The acrid cordite smoke in his cockpit was as heady as incense to a religious devotee, as he watched his bullets smash into the Io9’s fuselage and stitch a long row of gaping holes along it. The Me. steepened its dive. So did the Hurricane. With the aircraft vibrating and his controls stiff, Lacey put in another long, well-aimed burst. A gout of vivid flame, a streamer of grey smoke laced with oily black, and the German fighter hurtled on, plainly out of control with its pilot dead or crippled.
A few seconds later, when Lacey eased out of his dive, he saw a brilliant flash of flame followed by a great pillar of smoke as the Me. 109 plunged into a petrol storage tank on the estuary shore.
501 Squadron entered September 1940 with a pilot strength of: Squadron Leader H. A. V. Hogan, Flight Lieutenants J. A. A. Gibson and A. R. Putt, Pilot Officers S. Skalski, P. R. Hairs, R. C. Dafforn and B. L. Duckenfield; with three in hospital, K. R. Aldridge, K. N. T. Lee and F. Kozlowski. Flight Sergeant Morfill, and Sergeants McKay, Lacey, Wilkinson, Loverseed, Farnes, Howarth, Adams, Glowacki, Whitehouse, Gent and Henning.
On the sunny Sunday which opened the month, they tangled with twenty-seven 110s, 16,000 ft above Tunbridge Wells and damaged one.
Monday began with an air raid, at 7.50 a.m., during which bombs fell on the edge of the airfield. It was a
day of frequent scrambles and wild dog-fights that sprawled all over the sky, splitting formations so that pilots often found themselves alone among a vastly greater number of the enemy. Since the days in France, when ‘Cobber’ Kain had declared, half-seriously. ‘We have decided, in future, not to take on odds of more than four to one!’ the R.A.F. had been pitted against numbers gravely superior to their own. Four to one, five to one, even eight to one, were routine. But on the first Monday in September 1940, completing exactly one year since the declaration of war, one pilot of 501 reported finding himself tackling fifteen Do. 17s, and another, also alone, nine He. 113s.
It was bad enough for the Laceys, the Morfills and the MacKays, who had been continuously in action for four months; but it scarcely offered a hope to the novices. That morning, a young pilot officer, A. T. Rose-Price, was posted to the squadron. That afternoon, he was killed in action over Dungeness.
For Lacey, it was a day of confused memory. First they were vectored eastward, then west, then south; told to make Angels twenty, then ten, then back up to twenty-five. Now he was turning tightly on the tail of a Me. 109 at twenty-two thousand feet, a few minutes later he was spinning from eighteen thousand to six thousand, striving to shake off the four 109s which seemed glued to his slipstream. Not long after, he was scudding over the wavetops pumping bullets into a Heinkel, then breaking off with scarcely enough room in which to manoeuvre as a pair of Mes. came hurtling at him from his starboard quarter.
At ten minutes past eight in the morning, he was leading Yellow Section of ‘A’ Flight when the squadron waded into fifty Me. 109s which were escorting about as many Do. 215s, near Ashford.
‘Yellow Leader to Yellow Section. Climbing to attack those three 109s above the main formation.’
Numbers One and Two, craning their necks, could discern what their leader’s sharp eyes had first observed: three Me. 109s climbing fast to get high enough to attack the Hurricanes from astern.
Ginger Lacey: Fighter Pilot Page 10