A Spitfire Pilot's Story: Pat Hughes: Battle of Britain Top Gun

by Dennis Newton

As the Dorniers were attacking Kenley, sixty Heinkel He 111s supported by forty Me 109s made a bomb-run on Biggin Hill untroubled by either defending fighters or flak. Shortly beforehand, 32 and 610 Squadrons had been scrambled so they were already well clear and clawing for height. One bomb fell squarely on the airfield’s motor transport sheds and another exploded close to a Bofors gun, killing one man and wounding others. After a mad head-on attack through the Heinkels, the British fighters pulled up steeply, turned back and gave chase. The withdrawing Germans had to run a gauntlet of angry Hurricanes and Spitfires ordered to cut them off, but the weather was in their favour. Thickening haze made it difficult for the British fighters to make a concentrated counter-attack.

  With the Biggin Hill raid over, personnel were organised to fill in the many bomb craters pockmarking the field. Unexploded bombs were marked with red flags until a bomb disposal squad could arrive. The effort was only briefly interrupted as the returning fighters landed carefully, snaking their way between the craters and red flags.

  Kenley had suffered most. The damage to Biggin Hill was superficial and only a few bombs had been dropped on West Malling and Croydon.

  It was now south and south-west England’s turn to face the onslaught – and an onslaught it was. The attack was made up of the largest concentration of Junkers 87 Stuka dive-bombers so far deployed: the whole of Dive Bomber Geschwader 77, four Gruppen strong with a total of 109 aircraft. Their targets were the airfields at Gosport, Ford and Thorney Island, and the radar station at Poling. Each Stuka carried a 550 lb bomb under the fuselage, plus four 110 lb bombs under the wings.

  The Stukas were crossing the English Channel in one huge formation, supported by no fewer than 157 Me 109s. Acting as close escorts were seventy Messerschmitts from JG 27, and thirty-two from JG 53. In addition, fifty-five Me 109s of JG 2 were coming independently from Le Havre for a sweep over the Portsmouth area to catch the flushed out British fighters.

  To face this formidable total array of 266 enemy aircraft, not the 150 estimated, the RAF deployed sixty to seventy Hurricanes and Spitfires. Added to them from the Coastal Command airfield at Thorney Island, a detached flight of Blenheim If fighters from 235 Squadron was scrambled to assist. There were two Blenheim units stationed here, 59 Squadron with bombers and the detached flight from 235 Squadron.

  Realising the main weight of the German attack was coming in east of the Isle of Wight and over Selsey Bill, Tangmere Control ordered 601 Squadron there. A few minutes later part of the Stuka formation with its escorting fighters broke away and headed north-west. This was the Gruppe making for Gosport. As the main Stuka formation reached Selsey Bill, another Gruppe broke off for the attack on Thorney Island. The remaining two dive-bomber Gruppen swung north-east, heading for Poling and Ford. To bomb accurately, the Stukas had to attack directly into wind which was blowing from the south-west. They had to split up to come in from north-east of each of their targets.

  Around the dive-bombers, the escorting Me 109s began accelerating to fighting speed. To avoid overshooting and speeding away from their charges, they had to zigzag to maintain their relative positions. Meanwhile, the fifty-five Messerschmitts from Le Havre were moving in for their free hunt.

  By 2.30 p.m., it was all happening: thirty-one Ju 87s were in the process of bombing Poling RDF station; twenty-eight Ju 87s were bombing the airfield at Ford, but the Spitfires of 602 Squadron had sighted them and were moving in to attack; twenty-eight Ju 87s had started their attack on the airfield at Thorney Island, but they and their escorting Me 109s had been intercepted by Hurricanes from 43 and 601 Squadrons and were involved in a running fight; the Gruppe comprised of twenty-two Ju 87s was moving into position to attack the airfield at Gosport, but their Me 109 escorts were about to pounce on the Spitfires of 234 Squadron; and the Spitfires of 152 Squadron were moving across to the Isle of Wight to be in a position to engage the raiders as they withdrew.

  234 Squadron had a new commanding officer. Squadron Leader Joseph Somerton O’Brien DFC had taken over just the day before. Previously, he had been attached to 92 Squadron at Pembrey in South Wales. Joe O’Brien’s father had been an army officer, a major, who was killed in France in 1917, and as a young man Joe had actually sought a career in the Merchant Navy. He did spend several years at sea before joining the RAF on a short service commission in January 1934. After his flying training, he was posted to 3 Squadron at Kenley on 16 March 1935. The squadron flew Bristol Bulldogs and deployed to the Middle East in September where it was stationed in the Sudan during the Abyssinian crisis. It returned to the UK in August 1936. Meanwhile, O’Brien had been transferred to 23 Squadron which he joined at Wittering in Northamptonshire on 9 July 1936. The squadron had a mixture of Hawker Harts and Demons but in December 1938 began to convert to Bristol Blenheim Ifs.

  On 9 June 1940, O’Brien was ordered to take charge of the Operations Room at RAF Pembrey, north-west of Swansea, as a newly promoted squadron leader. It was while here that he had joined 92 (Spitfire) Squadron as a supernumerary on the first day of July. The London Gazette of 30 July recorded that he had been awarded the DFC. He was married and the father of a young daughter.1 It was O’Brien who led 234 Squadron’s twelve Spitfires off from Middle Wallop at 2.20 p.m. on the afternoon of 18 August. Pat, in command of ‘B’ Flight, led Blue Section in Spitfire X4036. As they climbed they were ordered to move out south of the Isle of Wight to intercept the incoming raid.

  At 2.55 p.m., as they flew over the Isle of Wight at 16,000 feet, they spotted around twenty of the escorting Me 109s above, apparently stalking them. The German fighters held all the advantages: superior numbers, greater height, and the sun at their backs. For the Spitfires it was a case of either facing the enemy and counter-attacking, or waiting to be attacked. There was no hesitation. The Spitfires climbed to face the 109s and by doing so they presented the Germans with the smallest possible targets – targets that were bristling to fight back.

  Pat opened fire at a Messerschmitt from about 150 yards but did not cause any obvious damage. He was not able see what happened to it next because another pair of aggressive Me 109s turned their attention onto him. Suddenly he was much too busy to keep tabs on the first German fighter. One of the two Messerschmitts shot at Pat from extreme range so he turned and counterattacked this machine, sending off an aggressive two-second burst. This time the result was immediate – the 109 caught fire. As it fell burning, Pat could not watch this plane go down either because the second German in the pair immediately launched his own attack. After firing, this second attacker zoomed up and away and then, apparently assuming he was safe, began to dive.

  Pat followed until the 109 started to level out. By now they were down to about 10,000 feet. The instant he saw his chance, Pat pounced. He went in close again as usual and pressed the firing button twice to deliver two-second bursts from just thirty yards away. The German fighter caught fire; with his aircraft crippled, the German pilot jumped. His parachute opened and floated down onto the Isle of Wight. A few seconds later the burning Me 109 crashed nearby. As Pat circled watching, he noticed flames and another cloud of smoke rising a short distance off the island that appeared to be the wreckage of the first Messerschmitt he had sent down burning.2

  A short time later all of 234 Squadron’s Spitfires were back on the ground at Middle Wallop – no losses. It was a brilliantly satisfying day for the squadron and a gratifying first combat mission for the new CO. The keeper of the Operations Record Book recorded:

  One interception scramble by 12 aircraft against large raid approaching, S/Ldr O’Brien claimed 1 Me 109 probable, F/Lt Hughes destroyed 2 Me 109, P/O Doe 1 Me109 confirmed and 1 Me 109 damaged, P/O Mortimer-Rose destroyed 1 Me 109 and destroyed another. P/O Gordon and Sgt Bailey each damaged 1 Me 109, Sgt Harker destroyed 2 Me 109.3

  While 234 Squadron battled the Messerschmitts, the Stukas were being mauled by the other British fighters. Altogether, the RAF fighter squadrons claimed thirty-four of these gull-winged dive-bombers destroyed
and the anti-aircraft gunners claimed two more. After the war this figure was revealed to be greatly exaggerated. Of the 109 Stukas involved in the four attacks, fifteen had been lost and one was damaged beyond repair. Another six Stukas returned to France with varying degrees of damage but they could be repaired. Eight Me 109s were shot down with three of the pilots killed, three taken prisoner and two rescued from the sea. For these results in the air, Fighter Command lost five aircraft and seven were damaged. Two pilots were killed and three wounded. The magnitude of the achievement, although much less than that it was thought at the time, was still significant. Because of their vulnerability when confronted by serious opposition like Hurricanes and Spitfires, the Luftwaffe was forced to reassess the chances of its Stuka dive-bombers surviving in English skies.

  However, despite their losses in the air, the Luftwaffe’s bombing did cause considerable damage and many casualties on the ground. The attack on Ford rendered the airfield practically out of use until it was handed over to the RAF in September. At Thorney Island and Gosport the airfields were still able to be used, but with reduced facilities. The long-range warning RDF station at Poling was put out of action.

  Tactically, however, the raids this day did not contribute to the enemy’s primary aim of knocking RAF Fighter Command out of the air as the necessary prelude to mounting an invasion. None of the airfields that were attacked were used by Fighter Command. In that sense, it had been a wasted effort at terrible cost.

  Gosport housed an RN torpedo development unit. The airfield at Thorney was Island Coastal Command, where three aircraft on the ground were destroyed and a visiting Wellington bomber damaged. Its flight of Blenheim fighters had been scrambled and was unscathed. The Fleet Air Arm Station at Ford, HMS Peregrine, where there had been only six post-mounted Lewis-guns for defence, had suffered the greatest damage, but it was actually the base at which 829 Squadron was working up with their new Fairey Albacore torpedo-bomber, the latest to enter service for RN aircraft carriers. It was also the home of the navy’s air observers’ training school.

  As for the long-range warning RDF station at Poling, its loss was only temporary and caused relatively few problems. The Chain Home Low (CHL) RDF station which was also located there for detecting incoming low-flying aircraft was still operational and it could ‘see’ out over the English Channel almost as far. Moreover, seventy miles along the coast on either side of Poling there were six other RDF stations providing interlocking coverage. The enemy had failed to punch a hole in the network through which German aircraft could slip by undetected. Within a couple of days a mobile RDF station was erected in the nearby woods and this supplemented coverage of the area until the main set at Poling could be repaired.

  A final Luftwaffe assault for the day developed in the south-east around 5 p.m., but it involved neither 234 Squadron nor No. 10 Group. RDF detected five separate German formations converging on Kent but for the most part they were engaged successfully by Hurricanes from North Weald and Spitfires from Hornchurch. The bombing was reported to be inaccurate and was widely scattered over Kent and Surrey.

  What was becoming an increasingly more serious problem for Fighter Command was the mounting pilot losses – men put out of action, either killed or wounded. More pilots were being lost than could be replaced and many of these men were veterans with invaluable combat experience. To boost numbers, the pilot training programme was shortened, but this resulted in replacements coming through inexperienced and therefore more vulnerable – and there were not enough of them. The Air Ministry had already circulated a request throughout the other RAF commands calling for volunteers to fly fighters. These men were beginning to arrive, some of them veterans who had flown Fairey Battle light bombers during the fighting in France. But the question was: would there be enough of them to redress the balance?

  That night, to maintain the pressure, the Luftwaffe sent about fifty bombers over England to carry out widespread nuisance raids. They also laid mines in the Thames Estuary and Bristol Channel.

  12

  26 AUGUST 1940

  With the arrival of fine weather on Saturday 24 August, both sides readied for the main event. Most historians agree that this day marked the beginning of the most critical phase of the Battle of Britain. It was time for the Luftwaffe to devote its entire energy into the destruction of RAF Fighter Command if it was to gain air supremacy before the invasion.

  The early morning was fine and cloudless. At 11 a.m., a large build-up of aircraft was detected moving from Cap Gris Nez but the Germans were adopting a new tactic to keep the British guessing. About twenty miles out to sea they turned and maintained a constant stream of aircraft flying parallel to the Sussex coast. Occasionally these planes turned in towards England but they were only feints to attract the RAF fighters up from their bases and make them waste precious fuel. These feints then turned quickly back to leave the British planes hopelessly out of position. Then, while the Hurricanes and Spitfires were returning to base to refuel, a real attack began.

  Out of this confusing mass, a raid by forty bombers escorted by over sixty fighters materialised and dropped bombs on Dover. The fighter escort was packed so tightly around the Dornier Do 17s and Junkers Ju 88s that British fighters that did intercept had great difficulty breaking through. The Germans retired almost unscathed.

  Meanwhile, the British made their own tactical blunders. Defiants of 264 Squadron were deployed into Hornchurch, a Spitfire base in 11 Group. There were no personnel there who were experienced in maintaining Defiants and no stores or spare parts for them. Over Dunkirk 246 Squadron had achieved outstanding results but at the time its Defiants had been mistaken for Hurricanes and been attacked from behind directly into their power-operated four-gun turrets.

  Mistake followed mistake. The squadron was ordered forward to operate from, of all places, a patched-up Manston airfield, where the least warnings, wild scrambles, and zooming, full-throttle climbs for height were the expected norm. Defiants were slow-climbing two-seaters requiring time for the crew to board and, once aloft, time to form up for a formation attack. They were simply not suitable for such a place.

  Just after midday the Defiants were being refuelled when a warning was given of enemy aircraft approaching. Nine of the turreted fighters scrambled, the last leaving the ground as the first bombs exploded. Caught low, they were at the mercy of the escorting Me 109s. Three Defiants were lost before (fortunately for them) a Hurricane squadron operating in the area intervened. The survivors made their way back to Hornchurch.

  At 3.30 p.m. another large raid built up over Le Havre, crossed the Channel and bombed Manston again. The Germans found so much smoke and dust had been created by the first bombing wave that they were unable to clearly identify their target. Nevertheless, to the hardworking ground personnel trying to affect repairs after the earlier attack, this new bombing was the last straw as the grounds were rendered virtually useless.

  At the same time, another large raid winged its way to targets north of the Thames Estuary where Hornchurch and North Weald came under attack. The commander of 11 Group, AVM Keith Park, realised that because all his squadrons were engaged his airfields were vulnerable. He requested air cover from 12 Group but, apart from six cannon-armed Spitfires from 19 Squadron, no help arrived.

  At Hornchurch, the Defiant crews had just finished lunch when they were ordered to scramble as they had at Manston a few hours before. Again, the last plane was just airborne as the bombs began falling. Unable to form up for their own defence, the Defiants had no chance of reaching the bombers at 12,000 feet. While Hornchurch was under attack, about twenty bombers arrived over North Weald and unloaded. Nine people were killed and ten wounded.

  Keith Park was bitterly angry over 12 Group’s failure to arrive. AVM Leigh-Mallory had ordered his squadrons up but they had instructions to assemble into a wing over Duxford first. In doing so they lost precious time and arrived too late to help.

  At 3.40 p.m., Ventnor RDF station, now repaired
with new equipment but experiencing teething difficulties, plotted enemy aircraft approaching the Isle of Wight. The British fighters were scrambled late, due in part to the Luftwaffe’s confusing patrolling tactics. An error in judging the enemy’s height caused controllers to order their interceptors to fly too low in anticipation of meeting Stuka dive-bombers once again. They were unaware that the Ju 87s had been withdrawn from the fighting.

  Up from Middle Wallop, 609 Squadron found itself over the Isle of Wight, 5,000 feet directly below the enemy aircraft. Fortunately, the German escorts were not particularly aggressive and 609 managed to extricate itself from the situation with only two Spitfires damaged.

  Likewise scrambled late to intercept the raid approaching Portsmouth, 234 Squadron clashed with the escorting fighters. The CO, Joe O’Brien; Bill Gordon, a Scotsman from Aberdeen; and one of the Poles, Ziggy Olenski were all credited with Me 109s destroyed, and Kiwi Keith Lawrence damaged an Me 110.1

  A flight of three Blenheims from 235 Squadron led by Fred Flood from Roma, Queensland, in his usual machine, ‘Buskarlet’s Brig’, was up to defend its base at Thorney Island but the German bombers, fifty Ju 88s of LG1, continued to Portsmouth and dropped over 200 bombs, causing considerable damage to naval installations and the city. 104 civilians were killed and 237 injured. There were fifty casualties among the naval personnel.

  Just after 5.00 p.m., Flood’s three Blenheims were patrolling over the Solent when they were suddenly attacked by fighters and faced with the shocking realisation that their opponents were Hurricanes. A patrol from 1 Squadron RCAF had mistaken the Blenheims for Ju 88s – not a difficult thing to do because from some angles the two types looked similar. One Blenheim was riddled by bullets and its crew killed – it plummeted down into the sea. A second had to crash-land. Through violent evasive manoeuvres, Flood managed to evade the Hurricanes and escape with his aircraft only slightly damaged.2