by John Moffat
As tracer bullets started to whip over my upper wing, it quickly dawned on me that these aircraft were not friendly. Then a fast monoplane fighter shot past me and I saw the Iron Cross markings of a Luftwaffe fighter. I decided to follow at full throttle, when more bullets started to go past. I looked in my mirror and saw another aircraft approaching fast, its gun ports twinkling as the pilot tried another burst. I made a very tight climbing turn to the left and the attacking plane shot underneath me. I could see that it was a Messerschmitt 109, and as I pulled round tightly I saw the German pilot's face as he looked up at me out of his cockpit. It was my first face-to-face contact with the enemy.
I realized that I was no match for these fast fighters, with their no doubt much more experienced pilots, so I kept climbing into the cloud. I stayed there for about ten or fifteen minutes before venturing out, and by this time the German fighters had decided to head back. During my flight to altitude Eastleigh had come under attack and had launched its barrage balloons. Under these conditions we were instructed to fly to Worthy Down, near Winchester, which was our reserve station.
I was lucky, because the Messerschmitt 109s were at the limit of their endurance and did not have the fuel reserves to fly around and wait for me to appear once more. Also, there was a good chance that a group of Hurricanes or Spitfires might be sent up to take them on. If I had been flying over enemy territory, however, I would not have had that advantage. This was the problem for the crews of the Skuas and Gladiators in Norway. The aircraft carriers HMS Furious and Glorious had ferried some RAF Gladiators and Hurricanes to fly from an airstrip at Bardufoss to provide air cover for the allied troops. Both carriers remained on station, sending out anti-submarine patrols and bombing missions. It was a strain on the crews, because in northern waters there was daylight for almost twenty-four hours, so the carriers were the target of lots of dive-bombing attacks from the Luftwaffe. There were a lot of casualties in the Fleet Air Arm during this period, because not only were their machines inferior, but if they were shot down over land they were usually taken prisoner. The German army did not have it all its own way, however: Norway is particularly difficult terrain to fight in. But the war there was overtaken by other events.
Hitler invaded Belgium and Holland on 10 May, and then crossed into French territory. The British Government decided to pull our troops out of Norway. There was a squadron of Hurricanes still operating there and, because every modern fighter was now precious, a decision was made to recover them on to an aircraft carrier and get them back to Britain. I was told that they could have gone on to Ark Royal, but her deck-lifts were too narrow, so they opted instead to try to fly on to Glorious. Remarkably, they succeeded. Unfortunately, Glorious was seen on her journey back to Scapa Flow by two German warships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, battlecruisers with large-calibre, radar-controlled guns. The two destroyers escorting the carrier, Ardent and Acasta, tried to attack the German vessels, but they were hit and sunk, although Ardent managed to fire a torpedo at Gneisenau, forcing her to break off the action. But Scharnhorst fired shell after shell into Glorious and she went down with most of her crew, and with her aircraft, including the Hurricanes. Around twelve hundred men were killed.
Scharnhorst had also been slightly damaged by the attack from Acasta and anchored in Trondheim fjord for some repairs. The air group on Ark Royal was ordered to mount an attack on the ship while she was at anchor. In my view this was a risky operation, and I gather that many on the Ark thought the same. However, if there was a possibility of crippling the warship, which was a powerful threat where she was, then I believe that there was no option but to try it. Two squadrons of Skua aircraft took off for a daylight attack. The RAF should have bombed the local German airstrips to prevent Luftwaffe fighters taking off, but the plans went totally wrong. The Skuas were met by Messerschmitt 109s, which tore into them. Our planes made some direct hits, but the 500lb bombs carried by the Skuas couldn't penetrate the deck armour of Scharnhorst. People on the Ark at the time still remember the day when they waited for the planes to come back and only seven out of the fifteen returned. Sixteen pilots and observers had gone missing. To lose the equivalent of a whole squadron like that is a severe blow to an air group, very damaging to morale, and it was probably a good thing that the Ark returned to Scapa Flow.
So there we were, in the space of a few days, with the loss of another aircraft carrier and her aircrew, as well as eight Skuas and some very experienced pilots. The results of this operation probably helped to influence a decision I made a few months afterwards, but for now the disaster in France completely overshadowed what was happening to the Fleet Air Arm. The German army had stormed through the French lines and the French were retreating. Holland and Belgium had surrendered. The British army had been surrounded and there was an all-out attempt to rescue them from the beaches at Dunkirk. For almost a week we listened to the six o'clock news on the radio, and read the Daily Mirror and Daily Express for news of what was happening to our troops. As an individual you went about your daily duties, but I thought that we were approaching an extremely serious and difficult time. These were very worrying events. Winston Churchill had become Prime Minister after the invasion of France, and there was a feeling that the lot who had got us into this mess were no longer in charge, so there was less of a sense of despair than there could have been at what was really a humiliating defeat.
I remember listening to the wireless as Churchill made his speech about fighting on the beaches, never surrendering. I think it helped that there was no attempt to pretend that things were better than they were. It was a clever way of making people feel too proud to contemplate surrender.
Our base at Eastleigh was part of the Supermarine factory, which produced Spitfires. It was a juicy target, in easy flying range for the Luftwaffe now situated in northern France, hence my contact with the two Messerschmitt fighters. Subsequently, there were frequent raids on the factory and the airstrip and incursions by German fighters became very common.
'Air raid imminent' warnings were received on a red telephone in the air duty office at the base. Almost immediately the barrage balloons would be released and they would shoot up into the air at an enormous speed, causing the tethering wires to smoke with friction as they unwound rapidly on the rotating cable drum. Of course, once the balloons were lazily bobbing about in place the airfield was out of use; no planes could take off and none was allowed to try to land. I was often diverted to our alternative airfield, Worthy Down, because an air-raid warning had Eastleigh on alert. Sometimes these precautions did not work. During one of my stop-offs at Worthy Down I was with three other pilots in the air-watch office, waiting for a call from Eastleigh telling us it was safe to make our way back there. It was a lovely summer's day and we were idly chatting, probably about our plans for the weekend and the local girls we were interested in, when we heard this aircraft. We recognized the engine noise almost simultaneously – we had heard it too many times during raids – and we all shouted, 'Jerry!' There had been no air-raid warning, but we all rushed for the door, my three companions turning left while I turned to the right, heading for a slit trench near the aerodrome fence. I had run not more than a few yards when a bomb dropped behind me and exploded with an immense bang. I remember flying up in the air, then plummeting back on to the ground face down, with stones and gravel falling on top of me until I was almost covered. I could hardly breathe, the blast had winded me so much, and I was stone deaf, but I managed to crawl a few yards and fall into the slit trench. It was obviously one of those lone raiders that used to sneak over the Channel in broad daylight. It came back on two other passes, machine-gunning anything that appeared in the pilot's sights.
When it finally flew off the all-clear sounded and I staggered out of the slit trench and down to the officers' mess. The building was just a heap of red bricks; rubble and dust covered the ground and bits of wooden beam and window frame were scattered around. There was a horrible smell of explosives. I never saw my
three companions again; they had all been killed by the single bomb. Their bodies were never found.
I went to the sickbay and was checked out by the medical orderly, but apart from a ringing in the ears there was nothing physically wrong with me. I flew back to Eastleigh with my uniform ripped and dirty. This incident had quite an effect on me – I suppose I was suffering from some sort of shock. I was very disturbed by the sudden deaths of my three companions and my lucky near-miss. It brought me up with a round turn, as they say in the navy. If sometimes during my training it had been easy to forget that others were engaged in a life-or-death struggle, this bomb was a harsh reminder. I found it hard to get to sleep at night for some time after, and was quite alarmed by sudden noises. I have sometimes read that young men have no fear of death, but if this incident happened too quickly to feel fear at the time, then I certainly felt it afterwards as I searched the wreckage for any signs of life.
Next day I had to borrow some clothes and set off to Geives, the naval tailor in Portsmouth, for a new uniform, which I had to pay for out of my own funds. Luckily I was properly dressed, because the next day we were called out to a parade and, quite unannounced, we were inspected by His Majesty the King. I wonder what the reaction would have been if I had stood there in my dust-covered, blast-torn uniform?
It was not long after this that I had my next meeting with the enemy. I had been instructed to take a Lieutenant Crane to Kemble to pick up some spare parts. We were going to fly up in a Skua, so we took off and flew north. I was in the pilot's seat and he was in the rear in the observer's position. It was a lovely summer's afternoon and we flew at about 5,000 feet. As we were passing over Marlborough College there were shouts in my headphones and, looking in my mirror, I saw Crane pointing frantically behind and there was this twin-engined Heinkel coming for me. As we were on a simple housekeeping flight, our aircraft had not been armed and we had no ammunition. I gave the engine full boost and headed down, but still he came on and I thought if I turned left or right he would open up on me from his forward turret. It was then that I noticed Swindon and the big railway marshalling yards, so I dived down at a very steep angle and pulled out about 50 feet above the rails. I could no longer see him, and neither could I see Crane. We flew as low as I dared and landed at Kemble, about 10 miles further on. I taxied over to some RAF Hurricanes whose pilots were on standby and told them where I had encountered the Heinkel. Within five minutes three of them were in the air. Lieutenant Crane had been thrown to the floor of the cockpit in my dive, and he struggled out as we stopped. We obtained the spare parts from the stores and then he said, 'I am pulling rank, so you can go in the back.' That was the thanks I got for shaking the raider off my tail.
Shortly after, although the lightning hit-and-run raids continued, what became known as the Battle of Britain started in earnest, with heavy bomber raids on London and other cities all over Britain, including Portsmouth and Southampton. The main targets were the docks, but of course the bombs fell everywhere, and many of the poor civilians would move out to the surrounding countryside every night to avoid the heavy raids.
The squadron that I was in then, 759, was referred to as 'The broken-down actor and windy jockey squadron'. We had Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, the film star Robert Douglas and the jockey Frankie Furlong of Grand National fame as members. If it hadn't been for the constant raids it would have been great fun. Ralph Richardson was an instructor and once told me, 'If you see a plane flying over the airfield going like this,' and he mimicked a plane rising and falling with his hands, 'then it's me. I suffer from kangaroo petrol.'
Ralph in particular was great company, and of course they could all drink like fish in the wardroom at night. We had some very enjoyable parties, but sadly the airfield was becoming just too dangerous and the navy decided to move us all out to various places. The experienced pilots were sent to boost the ranks of the RAF, where they were thrown into action in the Battle of Britain.
This was a strange period, at times both frightening and bizarre. The weather was extremely good – it was a glorious summer. Here we were in the midst of a deadly war, with blue skies and the sun shining. I had a forty-eight-hour pass from Eastleigh – in fact I had two for successive weekends. For the first one I was invited by one of my fellow pilots, a chap called 'Lucky' Sutton, to visit his family at Kingston upon Thames. About four of us went and we were made extremely welcome by his parents and had a good night out at the local club.
The next weekend's leave saw the same group travel to a fellow pilot's home in a village in mid-Kent. We ended up on the Friday night in the local inn, being stood drinks by everyone. The next day after lunch we went with our host to the village cricket match. I always remember on this July day sitting on a grass bank outside the pavilion, watching a rather boring match. I have never been an enthusiast of the game, but there was a great deal of local interest. Then I noticed the sky: there were aircraft at about 10–15,000 feet having a terrific dogfight. The noise of machine guns was faintly audible and there were great swathes of vapour trails stretched across the sky. A fight to the death was taking place above our heads, and my heart went up to the boys in their cockpits, knowing how they would be desperately turning, their mouths dry, anxiously checking their mirrors, their speed, their legs aching through pressure on the rudder pedals, their planes shaking as the guns fired. I was the only one looking up; nobody else was showing any interest in what was going on above them – they were concerned only with the cricket. It was difficult to comprehend.
Shortly after this the squadron was disbanded. However, before our transfer one strange incident occurred which had a profound bearing on my life, although if I had known at the time just how it would affect me I would have been even more disturbed by it than I was.
I was on afternoon duty in the air-watch office with a senior officer. It was another nice summer's day, and I think it was probably the weekend because everything was quiet. There were just the two of us, smoking and chatting. On the table were the telephones linking us to the adjutant's office and the switchboard, and of course the red 'alert' handset. In a rack on the wall were three sets of loaded Verey pistols, two with red flares and one with a green. Suddenly the red phone rang for an air-raid alert. So we sprang up and switched on our air-raid siren, which was on a lattice tower. As the horrible wail of the siren started up, my partner on duty noticed a Hudson aircraft taxiing out from the Saunders Roe hangar on the other side of the aerodrome. It kept coming out and lined up at the end of the runway, turning into the wind. We both knew how efficient our barrage-balloon operators were by now; they would spring into action as soon as they heard our siren. I rushed into the watch room and grabbed both the red Verey pistols, rushed out and handed one of them to my companion. He immediately fired it into the middle of the airfield where it burst lazily, leaving a trail of red smoke. It didn't seem to deter the pilot of the Hudson, and realizing he was opening up to take off, I fired the second red Verey pistol. Sure enough, the balloons were soaring up. To our alarm, the pilot of the Hudson ignored both our danger signals.
'The idiot, what is he doing?' I shouted, but there was nothing else we could do. The aircraft started rolling, reached speed and took off. He must have been at about 200–300 feet altitude when he reached the airfield perimeter where several barrage balloons were stationed. I was tensed, waiting for the inevitable, horribly powerless to prevent what I knew was going to happen. I didn't see the pilot make any attempt to manoeuvre. One wing struck a cable, bits flew off and the aircraft dived into the ground, where it exploded. We stood there for I don't know how long, as smoke from the burning wreckage climbed into the sky. I felt sick. We learned later that the plane had crashed on to a house in Nutbeam Road, destroying it and killing both the Mayor and Mayoress of Eastleigh who lived there.
The closure of the squadron meant that I had to make a choice about what I wanted to do next. I knew that I did not want to continue training on Skuas. What I knew personally about t
hem, and what I heard about them in action, made me think that they did not have much of a future in the Fleet Air Arm, and their replacements, the Fairey Fulmar, did not look any more promising.
One of the functions of the Fleet Air Arm that had been stressed at different times during our training was to attack enemy ships, sinking them or damaging them sufficiently that they could not escape our fleet. There was a slogan that summed it up: Find, Fix and Strike. We would locate the enemy by searching vast areas of the ocean from the air, work out his position and then mount a strike from the air using bombs or torpedoes. This seemed a way forward that would enable me to fight back against the enemy. The war was happening all around me now, and I felt restless and out of it. The cricket match at which I had been a spectator while the war was being fought out thousands of feet above my head had upset me. It was fine for the civilians, who were doing what they could, but I was meant to be a pilot, not a spectator.
So I made a formal request to be transferred to a training course for TSR aircraft, which stood for Torpedo Spotter and Reconnaissance. I went north to another naval shore-based establishment, HMS Sanderling at Abbotsinch, which has now become Glasgow airport. Here I was taught how to dive-bomb, drop depth-charges and launch torpedoes into the Firth of Clyde off the Isle of Arran.
I often decide on a course of action and then wonder whether I have made a mistake, and I certainly felt that at HMS Sanderling. The problem was not the course; it was the aircraft I was flying. I was piloting the slowest pre-war biplane still in front-line service. I refer of course to the Fairey Swordfish. This aircraft seemed like a hangover from the 1920s, although it had actually come into service in 1936. It was a biplane, and it had all the struts and wires reminiscent of the First World War planes like the Avro 504 that had first excited my interest in flying. But the Battle of Britain was being fought by fast monoplanes – Hurricanes and Spitfires. They were all metal, whereas the greater part of the Swordfish, the wings and the rear fuselage, were canvas covered. It was powered by a single radial engine that gave it a top speed of barely 110 miles an hour. The Spitfire could manage over 300 quite easily. The Swordfish was a big aircraft, with a crew of three. The pilot sat in a forward open cockpit, which was high above the centre line and gave a good field of view. Behind was another cockpit, set slightly lower in the fuselage, in which there was first the observer/navigator; then behind him the telegraphist air gunner, or TAG, who worked the radio and could fire a rear-pointed drum-fed Lewis gun. Apart from this, there was a forward-firing machine gun mounted in the fuselage behind the engine. The huge wing area gave the Swordfish the ability to carry a bomb load of almost 2,000lb, which was impressive for a single-engined plane. It was manoeuvrable at slow speed and could pull out of a dive without any trouble.