The Luftwaffe Command diary records that on the following day, General Adolf Galland reported personally to Hitler that a force of Mosquitoes had been engaged over the Bay of Biscay and four [sic] of them had been shot down. Post-war research by the eminent aviation historian Chris Goss established that the Mosquitoes were ‘bounced’ by Fw 190s of 8/JG 2. Oberfeldwebel (Ofw) Friedrich May is credited with shooting down two and Feldwebel (Fw) Alois Schnöll claimed a third. Fw Schnöll was himself killed in action on 22 August 1943, while Ofw May died in action on 20 October 1943.
Some of the others mentioned in Jack Cheney’s Instep patrols also failed to survive the war. Australians Gordon Panitz and his navigator/radar operator Richard Williams were both later awarded the DFC; Panitz rose to the rank of wing commander as OC No 464 Squadron, but both were killed in action on 22 August 1944. Australian Flt Lt John Newell lost his life in an aeroplane accident on 5 March 1945 while serving with No 256 Squadron.
Fg Off Jack Cheney is remembered on the war memorial in Spalding Parish Church and on the Roll of Honour in Spalding Grammar School. Both he and Plt Off Mycock are also recorded on the Runnymede Memorial to the Missing.
3
THE FLYING FARMER
Wing Commander Walter Dring
When the Second World War broke out, Walter Dring was 23 years old and farming land at Westfield Farm, Pinchbeck West, near Spalding in Lincolnshire. His father, also named Walter, and mother Ethel ran Woad Farm, the main family business near Weston, where the younger Walter was born on 14 July 1916. Walter junior was educated locally at Moulton Grammar School before joining the family business. Although not particularly academically inclined, he was nevertheless a very articulate man and partial to reading poetry. As a young working man, however, Walter lived for farming and sport, excelling at both. He played cricket, in which he was considered a good batsman, and rugby for Spalding. According to his cousin Peter, Walter was energetic and gregarious by nature, but a moderate drinker who did not feel the need to bolster his sometimes enthusiastic socialising by such means. He held firm views about right and wrong and, while he did not force his opinions upon others, he expected his friends to be loyal and did not hesitate to reciprocate this loyalty – backed up if necessary by his strong physique. Walter had supreme confidence in his own abilities yet was perfectly at ease and utterly reliable as a member of any team and he would follow any leader in whom he could believe or respect. Family correspondence shows he was also a modest and thoughtful man. All these attributes stood him in good stead in his work, social and sporting activities and they certainly provided a sound basis for his future flying career.
According to his brother Harold, Walter went to live with another family on the Pinchbeck farm in 1937 because he was such a go-ahead person; this caused arguments with his father who – while being a brilliant businessman – was more for taking his time over things. Walter would not be tied down to conventional ways of doing things, and out on his own he soon proved himself to be both a good farmer and a popular employer.
Throughout 1939, well aware of the world situation, Walter did not like what he saw as aggressive bullying by the Nazi regime. His spirit of fair play and adventure was stirred and he decided he would leave what could have been a secure reserved occupation and volunteer for the RAF. He put in his application and was called – actually the day before his twenty-fourth birthday – to attend No 3 Recruit Centre at RAF Padgate, where he was inducted as an aircraftman in the RAF Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) for training as potential aircrew. Walter wrote later:
It was in the memorable heat of 1940 when the RAF finally decided they could use my body. I had fought hard for a long time to get my release from farming but the Ministry of Labour saw fit to keep me, as food became more problematic. So, while the Spitfire squadrons moved up and down the country, usually flying over my farm, I stood and waved – but my determination to fly increased.
I remember on 4 September 1939, I had rung up my nearest recruiting centre and had been told ‘nothing doing!’ However, after continually arguing, I was called for my medical. During the cold winter of 1939/40 I had skated on the flooded fields of Cowbit Wash. I had danced and played rugger and all the time I was getting restless with people who did not bother about the war. I lost interest in my farm, which would carry on alright and I spent my time brushing up my geometry and getting really fit to pass the required tests when they should arrive.
It was in July 1940 – I remember the men were hoeing sugar beet and the women were weeding – when eventually I received the blue envelope. I was told to report to Padgate on the 13th. I remember going back to the work in hand and telling my men – who seemed dubious of my capabilities of flying! I always had a touch of drama about myself and now saw myself as a young farmer going off to war. It went down fairly well.
Having made this commitment, he was placed on the reserve pool, returning home to await the call to arms. This duly arrived and, leaving his farm in the capable hands of brother Harold, LAC Walter Dring reported for duty at the RAF Receiving Unit in Torquay on 27 September 1940. After two weeks of induction he was posted to No 6 Initial Training Wing (ITW) in Aberystwyth. Here, for the next three months, aspiring pilots and observers were taught the necessities of service life and the basics of, in Walter’s case, pilot ground school training. His first posting was to No 18 Course at No 22 Elementary Flying Training School (22 EFTS), a unit operated by Marshalls Ltd at Cambridge airfield, where his aptitude for pilot training was first assessed, then – being considered suitable – continued in the DH Tiger Moth. It was on 29 December that he made his first flight in T5634 under the watchful eye of Sgt Smullian who remained his instructor for most of his flying at the school. In quite rapid time, Walter ‘went solo’ in T5634 on 12 January 1941 after just seven hours fifty minutes dual instruction. More intensive training followed until, having accumulated twenty-one hours dual and thirty-two hours solo, and assessed as ‘above average’ as a pupil pilot, he set out by ship on 24 February to Canada for further pilot training. Walter was posted to No 31 Service Flying Training School (SFTS) located at Collins Bay, near Kingston, Ontario, from 11 March 1941. This unit was part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) and while Walter was there, he operated the Fairey Battle as a trainer. Walter went solo in Battle (T) R7471 on 25 April, recalling: ‘Forgot the undercart until I was on final approach!’ Five months later, now with 140 hours in his logbook, having scored top marks both in dive-bombing (a portent of his future?) and in his final exam, he was awarded his ‘Wings’ as a ‘single-engine’ pilot. Walter was posted back to England, arriving at No 3 Personnel Reception Centre, Bournemouth, on 21 August to await his next duty.
LAC Walter Dring on the ice-encrusted deck of the ship taking him to Canada, February 1941. (John & Susan Rowe, Dring Collection)
LAC Dring climbs into the cockpit of a Fairey Battle Trainer at No 31 SFTS Collins Bay, Canada, April 1941. (John & Susan Rowe, Dring Collection)
By July 1941, having successfully completed his pilot training and been promoted to temporary sergeant, in August Walter was commissioned as a pilot officer and selected for operational service on single-engine fighters. On 27 August this saw him reporting to No 11 Course at No 58 Operational Training Unit (58 OTU), a day-fighter training unit equipped with the Supermarine Spitfire based at Grangemouth, near Falkirk in Scotland. Following a few hours dual in a Miles Master, he was allowed to go solo in a Spitfire for the first time, taking up P9543 for an hour, after which he wrote in his logbook: ‘absolutely the cat’s whiskers.’ Over the next six weeks Walter practised hard in the Spitfire, carrying out circuits and landings, navigation and formation exercises, air gunnery, aerobatics and instrument flying until, on 6 October 1941, assessed as ‘above average’, he was posted to his first operational squadron, No 56 (Punjab) Squadron at RAF Duxford.
When he joined the squadron it was commanded by ace Battle of France veteran Sqn Ldr Peter ‘Prosser’ Hanks DFC and currently using
the Hawker Hurricane IIB, but it was in the process of re-equipping with the Hawker Typhoon IA. It was on 27 October that Walter Dring made his first flight with the squadron, a sector recco (reconnaissance) in Hurricane II, Z3082 – ‘bags of panic!’ After that it was mostly a daily routine of familiarisation with the new Typhoon and – when there were enough serviceable aircraft – flying practice interceptions. Failing that, the pilots fell back on the trusty Hurricane to keep their hand in and Walter, a member of ‘A’ Flight, only made his first flight in a Typhoon (R7597) on 10 December 1941.
No 11 Course, No 58 OTU, RAF Grangemouth; Plt Off Dring is seated third from the left on the front row, September 1941. (John & Susan Rowe, Dring Collection)
The Hawker Typhoon was being rushed into service in an effort to counter a new German fighter: the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. In September 1941, No 56 was the first squadron to receive Typhoons, but such were the problems encountered that the squadron was not declared fully operational until 30 May 1942, nine months after receiving its first aircraft. It was with the Typhoon, though, that Walter Dring would remain associated for the whole of his operational RAF career and indeed would emerge as one of the leading exponents of Typhoon tactics during the next three years. Initially, No 56 was equipped with the Typhoon IA, such as R7586, R7589, R7591 and R7641, the version fitted with twelve. 303in Browning machine guns, but this model was soon superseded by the Typhoon IB, which was armed with four 20mm cannon. For a time the squadron operated a mixture of Typhoons and Hurricanes because low serviceability caused by problems with the former meant the latter were needed to fulfil the squadron’s readiness commitments.
Conceived as a medium- to high-level interceptor to replace the Hurricane, when it was found that the Typhoon’s Napier Sabre engine and its thick wing section produced a disappointing rate of climb and poor manoeuvring performance at altitudes above 18,000ft – coupled with the catalogue of teething problems – there was some talk about withdrawing it from service altogether. Even though more and more squadrons were being re-equipped with this aircraft, its real salvation came when experienced squadron commanders, such as No 609’s Roland Beamont, recognised its potential for ground attack and close support fighter-bomber operations. Like Hugh Dundas, of whom we shall hear more later, Beamont was given an opportunity to present his views on the aircraft at a key meeting – where scrapping was indeed a serious item on the agenda. He was tenacious and persuasive in his defence of the Typhoon as a ground attack fighter; indeed to the extent that it was not scrapped. The interceptor role would have to be addressed by the RAF in a different way because from 1943 onwards, the name Typhoon became synonymous with ground attack, a role in which it was supreme and to which, in no small way, Walter Dring contributed in due course.
In December 1941 Prosser Hanks was promoted to wing commander, remaining at Duxford to command the embryonic Duxford Typhoon wing, while command of No 56 Squadron passed to another Battle of Britain ace, Sqn Ldr Hugh ‘Cocky’ Dundas DFC. His job was not only to ensure that the many technical issues were resolved and to bring the squadron to a state of operational readiness, but also to lift the morale of the squadron by raising its pilots’ belief in their aircraft. After his first flight in a Typhoon, Dundas had no hesitation in addressing immediately the poor rear view which, from his combat experience, he saw as a potential pilot killer. In his autobiography Flying Start (Stanley Paul, 1988), he wrote:
When I was called upon to give my views I stated simply that if I had been asked to go to war in 1940 and 1941 in an aircraft with similarly restricted rear view I should have been dead long ago. I said that I did not believe that any experienced fighter pilot would disagree with me in stating that the matter must be put right before we were made operational.
His vociferous representations to higher authority were acted upon and the rear end of the ‘car-door’ cockpit was rapidly redesigned and retrofitted by the manufacturers, who subsequently went further by developing a bubble canopy for this aircraft.
Meanwhile, throughout the winter of 1942, the pilots of No 56, including Walter Dring, worked hard with whatever serviceable aircraft they had, but on 20 January the last of their Hurricanes was flown out to RAF High Ercall and the squadron was declared non-operational. It would remain so until they had ironed out all the issues with their Typhoons, something which everyone was keen to do as quickly as possible. In the meantime, it relieved the pilots of the bind of readiness duty.
Severe overnight frost made the airfield surface serviceable on 14 February, allowing a lot of flying practice to be put in. A practice sweep to Hull by eight Typhoons, including that flown by Plt Off Walter Dring, was led by Sqn Ldr Dundas. During February, four of No 56 Squadron’s pilots flew to Brockworth to ferry new Typhoons from the factory to Duxford for eventual use by No 266 Squadron. When the second and third squadrons to be equipped with the Typhoon, Nos 266 and 609, actually moved into Duxford, No 56 moved out to Snailwell on 30 March 1942, from where ‘A’ Flight operated, while ‘B’ Flight used RAF Ludham. No 56 shared Snailwell with No 137 Squadron (Westland Whirlwind) and No 268 (AC) Squadron (NA Mustang I). By the middle of April, with the squadron now entirely equipped at Snailwell with ‘modified’ Mk IB aircraft, the squadron diarist was moved to write: ‘Everyone in a very cheerful mood. The squadron has already done 240 hours of practice flying in Typhoons this month. Serviceability is improving and there are hopes that the squadron will be operational soon.’
All of the practice flying was directed at bringing all pilots to a high state of expertise on the Typhoon and thus be declared operational once more. It was natural, therefore, that the full squadron formation flying practised during April would eventually lead to trial wing formations in company with Nos 266 and 609 Squadrons. The first of these took place on 17 April when No 56 flew as top cover to No 266, the whole formation being led by Wg Cdr Denys Gillam DSO, DFC*, AFC, who was now the Duxford wing leader. Spitfires of No 616 Squadron intercepted 266 but failed to spot No 56 Squadron and were themselves ‘bounced’ by the joyous Typhoon pilots.
Now promoted to flying officer, as a squadron pilot trying to come to terms with this potent aircraft Walter Dring was actively involved with all these issues and events. It was on 18 August, just after the squadron moved to Matlaske, that an unusual coincidence occurred involving the loss of Typhoon IB, R7644, and its New Zealand pilot, Sgt James Jones. A squadron formation, including Walter, made a practice sweep across the Fens from Matlaske. Reaching the vicinity of Moulton, near Spalding, at about 12.45, this aircraft dived towards the ground and was seen to break up in the air and crash. It came down on Gibson’s Farm, Spalding Gate, Moulton, near the Dring family home. Whether any high spirits were involved in the incident is not known, but Walter wrote later: ‘[I] did a fairly steep dive; Sgt Jones followed but failed to pull out and went in about half a mile from my home.’
Hawker Typhoon fighters of No 56 Squadron. (Author’s Collection)
Despite the optimism expressed by the squadron diarist, during May aircraft serviceability took a nose dive. Several new engines had to be fitted that month and there were some days when the squadron could muster only two aircraft to fly. However, by the end of the month serviceability rose once more and everyone was somewhat cheered by rumours of an impending return to operational status. Rumour became reality on 29 May 1942 when Gp Capt John Grandy, Duxford’s station commander, visited Snailwell to break the news that the AOC had approved operational status for the squadron. Furthermore, he announced that one flight of four Typhoons was to be detached to the Westhampnett satellite of RAF Tangmere and another flight of four aircraft to RAF Manston. The Typhoon was to be pitted immediately against the bomb-carrying, tip-and-run Messerschmitt Bf 109s harassing land and shipping targets along the south coast. Although they had first been noted in January 1942, these raids began in earnest from about March 1942 and continued until June 1943. The Typhoon pilots were buzzing with expectation and raring to get a crack at the enemy – and they did not ha
ve long to wait since these detachments were implemented the very next day.
With Wg Cdr Gillam scenting the prospect of a fight on his old stamping ground at Manston, he flew off to the Kent airfield with ‘A’ Flight, comprising himself, Flt Lt Ronald Fokes and Fg Offs Robert Deugo and Walter Dring, where they arrived at 11.40. No 56’s CO, Sqn Ldr Dundas, took ‘B’ Flight to Westhampnett in company with Plt Offs Doniger, Pollack and Coombes. Spare pilots followed in a Handley Page Harrow, which dropped off Flt Sgt Myall and Sgt Stuart-Turner together with ground crews at Manston, before flying on to Tangmere with Plt Offs MacDonald and Reed (USA) with the remaining ground crews and the intelligence officer.
Sqn Ldr Dundas was keen to get the job under way and as soon as the pilots had fixed up dispersal and accommodation with the resident No 129 Squadron (Spitfire) boys, he scheduled a sortie for 17.30 that day. Thus the first operational sortie by Typhoons was made by Sqn Ldr Hugh Dundas and Plt Off Norman Doniger, who patrolled – uneventfully – from Selsey Bill to St Catherines Head on the Isle of Wight, landing back at Westhampnett at 18.50. This pair were relieved by Plt Offs Pollack and Coombes, who patrolled at heights between 300 and 3,000ft over the same route. Twice they were vectored on to an X-raid, but despite seeing vapour trails they were unable to make contact. Over at Manston, Plt Off Dring, from ‘A’ Flight, was quickly off the mark as he was airborne for one of two similar patrols flown in that sector. Next day, the 31st, the Manston Flight put up three patrols of two aircraft each but without success. During the day ‘A’ Flight was joined by three more Typhoons flown in by Plt Offs Mause and Poulter and Sgt Stimpson, while ‘B’ Flight also flew two patrols and was joined by Sgts Storey and Woodhouse.
They Spread Their Wings Page 9