Fighter, p.25
Fighter, page 25
But 501 Squadron had no time to spare for self-congratulation. Sergeant pilot Lacey was one of the men who scattered the Heinkels, but no sooner had he come round for a second attack than he saw bullets hammering into his wings and engine. The cockpit cover went black as oil sprayed over it. He kicked his way into a steep turn but bullets continued to hit him: ‘Whoever was doing the shooting was either very lucky or knew a lot about deflection, because it had been constantly changing.’
Unable to see what was happening, Lacey jettisoned his oily hood but was discouraged from the idea of bailing out by the grey water of the Thames Estuary that he saw beneath. He had considerable altitude and decide to glide as far as land. When he reached the Isle of Sheppey he decided to try to get all the way home in a shallow glide. As he neared Gravesend he pumped his undercarriage into the down position, and did the same for his flaps. With engine lifeless he made a perfect landing, and rolled to a stop almost exactly at the place from which he had taken off. The camera crew were delighted, and filmed the whole landing. There were eighty-seven holes in the Hurricane, not counting the exit ones.
Lacey was rather pleased with himself but the Engineering Officer wiped the smile off his face when he said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you bail out? … I’d have got a new aircraft tomorrow morning! Now I’ve got to set to work and mend it.’
Earlier that morning, over Maidstone, there had taken place one of the most sudden episodes of carnage of 1940, and in fact of the whole air war. Wing Commander Tom Gleave was one of the most senior officers flying in combat at this time. Born in Liverpool in 1908 he had founded a flying club while still in his teens and gone on to get a pilot’s licence before joining the RAF in 1930. He started the war as Bomber Liaison Officer at Fighter Command HQ but talked his way into getting command of 253 Squadron in spite of being 32 years old. This was completely against Dowding’s order that no Squadron Commander could remain in the job after becoming 26 years old. And in July Tom Gleave was promoted to Wing Commander, which meant he was both too old and too senior for the job. Desperate to continue flying his Hurricane, he asked the newly appointed Squadron Commander if he could remain in the squadron as ‘an ordinary bloke’, but was generously invited to ‘share the squadron’ with the new Commanding Officer.
This day provided Wing Commander Tom Gleave with his first taste of combat. Detached from the rest of the squadron, his vee of three aircraft was vectored on to an enemy formation. Ahead of him and about 500 feet above Gleave saw line-astern formations of Bf 109s riding above the haze, well spaced out and stretching as far as the eye could see. It was the culmination of all Gleave’s ambitions. Unhesitating, he flew right through the enemy fighters. He remembered the scene clearly, and described the smell of the cordite, the hiss of the pneumatics, and the way the Hurricane’s nose dipped as the guns recoiled.
He gave the first Bf 109 a four-second burst and saw his bullets hitting the engine. He saw the Perspex of the hood shatter into fragments that sparkled in the sunlight. The Bf 109 rolled on to its back, slewed, and then dropped, nose down, to the earth. Another enemy aircraft came into his sights. Gleave turned with him, firing bullets that brought black smoke from the wings before the Bf 109 dropped vertically, still smoking. Gleave narrowly missed colliding with his third victim, and then gave him a three-second burst as the Messerschmitt pulled ahead and turned into the gunfire. The cockpit seemed empty; the pilot slumped forward out of sight. The Messerschmitt fell. The German pilots were trying to maintain formation and by now there was so much gunfire curving through the air that Gleave had the impression of flying through a gigantic golden bird-cage. A fourth Messerschmitt passed slightly above Gleave, and he turned and climbed to fire into the underside of its fuselage. But after two or three seconds’ firing Gleave heard the ominous clicking that told him he had used up all his bullets. But already the fourth victim was mortally hit, and rolled on its back before falling away.
In spite of his age and rank, Gleave possessed the one quality that distinguished the ace pilots on both sides. It was something more important than flying skill, more important than keen eyesight, even more important than quick reaction times and the ability to ‘aim off’ for the correct deflection. Such men as Gleave had the nerve to fly on collision courses (that forward-facing guns require) very, very close to the enemy. Gleave was 175 yards from his first victim (very close by 1940 standards) and 120 yards from the second one. But the third and fourth Messerschmitts were hit from only 60 and 75 yards respectively. At such close quarters the eight machine guns did terrible damage. Furthermore the RAF were discovering that the shortened, lightened version of the Oerlikon 20-mm cannon that the Luftwaffe was using had severe limitations. The reduced muzzle velocity was causing the shells to explode before penetrating the RAF airframes, and the cannon shells were fragmenting into such small pieces that the monocoque structures were often being perforated but not always shattered. The extra armour plate that the fighters now carried, thanks to the efforts of No. 1 Squadron in France, enabled many pilots to escape from fighters suffering direct hit by cannon shells. Some pilots even brought such aircraft home.
The pre-war theories about the destructiveness of explosive cannon shells were eventually to prove right but in 1940 the short Oerlikon cannon that the Bf 109E used had such a low velocity and poor rate of fire that the armament of the opposing fighters was about equal. And the Messerschmitt wings were still imposing terrible limitations upon the Luftwaffe’s fighter pilots. Even with bubbles on the lower surface of the wings, the cannon magazines could hold no more than sixty rounds. This gave the Bf 109 a mere nine seconds of gunfire compared with the RAF’s machine guns which could deliver fourteen seconds of fire. And such gunfire could be equally destructive if the pilot flew very close.
And on this day of August, Tom Gleave had flown very close. It was an instructive insight into the ways of the Air Ministry assessment boards, and their indifference to the rules of evidence that, at a time when RAF claims were so far from reality, Gleave’s claim to four Bf 109s shot down was allowed only as four ‘probables’. It seemed to them unlikely that Gleave had shot down four aircraft in as many minutes and so they offered him a vague compromise. Dissatisfied, Gleave sought out the wrecks just south of Maidstone and proved his claims. They were all from JG 27.
As the day came to an end, Fighter Command could console itself with the news that thirty-six German aircraft had been destroyed for only twenty-five RAF fighters, and from these fifteen pilots were safe. But the Luftwaffe seemed to have discovered the way to hurt the defences. The attacks against the sector airfields had been delivered with resource and determination, and the relentless timing had scarcely been giving the RAF fighters enough time to rearm and refuel. Luckily none of the attacks had found the fighters on the ground but inevitably they would, and the results could prove as devastating as they had in France and Poland.
31 August
It was a day when the Luftwaffe did everything exactly right. Every available Bf 109 had been moved to airfields in the Pas de Calais under Kesselring and as close as possible to England. Today no less than 1,300 fighter sorties were flown, to protect 150 bombers.
The skills and experience of the German fighter pilots became evident early in the day. The newly operational Canadians of No. 1 Squadron RCAF were bounced by a Staffel of Bf 109s, and three Hurricanes were shot down before breakfast.
Following this wave of fighters came the first bombing raid. Again the attacks were directed against the sector airfields. The raids were delivered with skill and determination. No. 56 Squadron, out of North Weald, went to intercept a raid heading for their base. They met the enemy over Colchester but the Bf 109 escorts knocked four Hurricanes out of the sky without suffering any casualties themselves or losing any bombers.
The raids continued with the same relentless energy as they had the previous day. Inevitably some RAF fighters were caught on the ground. At lunchtime the Kenley Controller phoned 85 Squadron at Croydon and scrambled them. As Squadron Leader Peter Townsend cleared the perimeter fence and reached for the undercarriage retraction gear, his engine stopped. It missed a few beats before roaring back into life again. ‘Turning in the cockpit, I saw the rest of the squadron emerging from a vast eruption of smoke and debris.’ The blast of the bombs had strangled his engine but the Hurricanes survived the bombing. Out of sight over the horizon were the vulnerable Dornier Do 17s discovering that their low-level diving runs gave their targets no warning, and gave themselves a chance of getting away.
As Townsend climbed steeply away at full boost, he saw in the distance black smoke from another attack, upon neighbouring Biggin Hill. Chasing after the raiders, 85 Squadron caught up with the Bf 110 fighter escort at 9,000 feet over Tunbridge Wells. But as they did so, Bf 109 high escorts dived into the fight. All Bf 110s were flown by selected crews but those attacked by Townsend were really Experten. They belonged to ErprGr 210 (the precision light-bombing unit that had done such damage to the radar chain on 12 August). No. 85 Squadron shot down one of the Bf 110s and damaged two others, but as Townsend was aiming at a Bf 109 with thumb on the firing button, his Hurricane was rocked by a burst from a Bf 110. Townsend saw the winking light of the muzzle flashes before his windscreen went white, fuel poured over him, and the nose-cap of a cannon shell went into his foot, and stayed there. But his Hurricane was still in one piece, and Townsend climbed out and pulled the ripcord of his parachute. When still dangling in the air he remembers calling to two girls, ‘I say, would you mind giving me a hand when I get down?’ By 21 September, walking with the aid of a stick and minus one toe, Townsend was back with his squadron.
There were many such miraculous survivals and they were partly due to the low muzzle velocity of the shortened Oerlikons. On 9 August a Spitfire of 92 Squadron had been hit by cannon shells, one of which struck the control column, but the pilot had flown his fighter back to Kenley. On 24 August Pilot Officer Andy Mamedoff, an American flying with 609 Squadron, had an amazing escape when a cannon shell actually pierced his seat armour. The Spitfire was a total loss but Mamedoff had nothing worse than a bruised back. It was his first combat.
The smoke that Townsend had seen rising in a black cloud from Biggin Hill was the result of a formation of Heinkel He 111s bombing from about 12,000 feet. They turned away south-east and were intercepted by 253 Squadron. That morning Tom Gleave had inherited the squadron again when the new commander (with whom he was ‘sharing’) died after bailing out of his Hurricane. The squadron pilots were convinced that he had been deliberately shot up by the Germans while descending, but such incidents were rare simply because the combatants seldom had the time for such dangerous activities. As the brief combats ended, the fighters tried to re-form and/or gain height, rather than circle round parachutists expending valuable ammunition.
Now, with Tom Gleave in command, 253 Squadron found the homeward-bound Heinkels. Gleave’s Hurricane took a direct hit from a Bf 109 that came up into the blind spot under his tail. Flames roared over him as he tried to tear himself loose of his radio and oxygen connections. He saw his skin bubble and crisp, and felt the pain from his burning clothes as he undid the harness and slid back his hood. An explosion threw him out of the cockpit, and he managed to pull the ripcord of his parachute. By the time he landed in a farm, his burned flesh had swollen to close his eyes to thin slits. Put to bed in the farmhouse, Gleave politely objected because he would mark the clean linen.
The Heinkels that bombed Biggin Hill were part of a two-pronged attack of which the second half went for Hornchurch airfield. These Dorniers, hidden by a heat haze, bombed from 15,000 feet. Their bombs came down just as 54 Squadron were scrambled. Eight Spitfires escaped unhurt, but the final section of three was destroyed at the moment they became airborne. One was tilted far enough for a wing to touch the ground; it cartwheeled across two fields, and the pilot went into a river. The second was hammered back to earth minus a wing, and the leading Spitfire – flown by Flight Lieutenant Al Deere – was flipped onto its back and slid 100 yards across the airfield upside down. Deere remembered the violent impact ‘and a terrifying period of ploughing along the airfield upside down, still firmly strapped in the cockpit. Stones and dirt were thrown into my face and my helmet was torn by the stony ground against which my head was firmly pressed.’ The wrecked Spitfire – with engine and one wing missing – came to rest with Deere in complete darkness inside. Petrol fumes were almost overpowering him but, showing amazing agility, he crawled out through the tiny flap door. Incredibly, all three pilots were back flying again next day.
That afternoon, ErprGr 210 returned to the task of bombing the radar stations. Beachy Head, Whitstable, Foreness, Rye, Dunkirk and Pevensey were attacked, but as soon as the raiders disappeared the technicians started to repair the damage. By nightfall all the stations were working again.
At teatime the indefatigable ErprGr 210 crossed the English coast yet again. This time they went to Hornchurch and Biggin Hill, escorting Junkers Ju 88s. Two Spitfires were destroyed on the ground but the squadrons were in the air. No doubt the raiders were heartened to see the chaos of wreckage that the previous raids had caused, but German intelligence were convinced that all RAF Operations Rooms were deep underground (they were not; they were on the surface and very vulnerable, as were the communication links that emerged from them). And in the summer months Spitfires and Hurricanes did not need runways – few fighter airfields had them – they could take off across any stretch of firm grass. But by now Biggin Hill was in bad shape. Two of its squadrons were withdrawn and its Operations Room was now a converted shop in the village.
Thirty-nine RAF fighters had been lost, with thirteen of the pilots killed. Luftwaffe losses were also thirty-nine aircraft. By any measure Kesselring’s new tactics were paying off handsomely. But Dowding’s greatest worry was not to be measured simply by the loss in numbers. The danger came from the lowering quality of his squadrons, as pilots were rushed through a few hours of operational training or converted from their duties with Bomber Command, Coastal Command or the Fleet Air Arm. These men were diluting effectiveness of the defence. For instance, 616 Squadron had gone to Kenley in mid-August. In only fifteen days of fighting, four pilots were killed, five were wounded, and one became a POW. Additionally the commission of one officer was terminated and another was posted away from the squadron. There was no alternative but to withdraw it from the Battle.
It was not only newcomers who faced a terrible strain. The veterans were flying more sorties, and nursing inexperienced pilots too. At one squadron a Spitfire taxied to a standstill but no one got out. The ground staff climbed up on its wing expecting to find the pilot dead or wounded, but he was slumped over his controls, fast asleep. The pilots were tired, and so were the ground crews. Often men sat down to eat and fell asleep before even picking up a knife and fork.
The Germans had every reason to be more tired. They were not rotated as the RAF flyers were, and the need for fighter escorts – sometimes two relays for one raid – gave them little rest.
The fighting was hard and yet there was surprisingly little bitterness between the two sides. Erich Rudorffer, of the Grünherz Geschwader, JG 54 (who ended the war as one of the top German aces, with 222 victories), remembers the Battle of Britain as a time when no one fired upon men descending by parachute. He added:
Once – I think it was 31 August 1940 – I was in a fight with four Hurricanes over Dover. I was back over the Channel when I saw another Hurricane coming from Calais, trailing white smoke, obviously in a bad way. I flew up alongside him and escorted him all the way to England and then waved goodbye. A few weeks later the same thing happened to me. That would never have happened in Russia – never.
Oberleutnant Hans von Hahn, a Bf 109 pilot of I/JG 3 – the Udet Geschwader – remembered the ever-present obstacle of the Channel. He said, ‘There were only a few of us who had not yet had to ditch in the Channel with a shot-up aircraft or a stationary propeller.’
Running out of fuel was a constant hazard for the Bf 109 pilots. It needed only a careless error to stretch the narrow Straits of Dover to the 70 miles of sea between the English coast and Abbeville. One Bf 109 pilot, his red fuel warning light glowing, watched seven of his Gruppe ditch in the ocean, and then saw another five make belly landings on the French beaches.
Forced landings and parachute descents had become commonplace. Of 85 Squadron’s eighteen pilots at Croydon during this two-week period, fourteen were shot down, two of them twice. On 31 August its commander – Peter Townsend – added another Hurricane to the total. No. 56 Squadron had also suffered so badly that it was withdrawn from the Battle.
Brought to interceptions at a lower altitude than their enemies, the RAF fighters were at a serious disadvantage. Yet the Controllers had no option. The radar showed the German formations assembling over Calais, but the fighters’ short endurance prevented them being scrambled until the raid was on its way. In the 20 minutes it took a Spitfire to climb to 25,000 feet, even the slower German bombers could travel 80 miles. Added to this was the imperfection of the radar, which was now suffering regular jamming. Few Controllers committed the bulk of their forces if the weather was good enough to wait for a confirmed visual report.
1 September
By Sunday 1 September, Dowding realised that he could no longer rotate his squadrons because he had no adequately rested and refitted ones to bring south into 11 Group. Forced to what he later admitted was ‘a desperate expedient’, he classified the squadrons into three types, A, B and C. The squadrons in 11 Group and Duxford and Middle Wallop were classified as A squadrons. The B squadrons (most of those in 10 and 12 Groups) were to be kept up to strength, so that they could be sent to relieve A squadrons. But the C squadrons, in the quieter parts of Britain, were now to be used like training units, preparing pilots for posting to A squadrons.
