by John Nichol
Despite growing rumours about the Spitfire, the Staffel – squadron – of He111s that left Germany early on 8 December 1939 were confident of catching the Royal Navy in port.
If they came from far to the north, there was little chance of detection by whatever paltry defences the British might muster, and thus a greater chance of surprise. The squadron was cruising south of Aberdeen when the gunner-radio operator in the lead aircraft received a three-letter code. ‘Careful. You have been detected by the defence.’26
He repeated it to the Staffel Kapitän. ‘Rubbish,’ the officer replied. ‘The English defences are no good.’
But he took the precaution of gaining height on his way down to the Firth of Forth.
It was a wise decision.
Flying directly towards them and a few thousand feet above were five Spitfires from 72 Squadron.
They had been scrambled just after midday when radar picked up seven enemy aircraft flying towards the warships moored in the Firth of Forth.
For the first three months of the war, Flying Officer Desmond Sheen, twenty-two, had spent hours searching the skies for his first enemy targets. He had come over from Sydney, Australia, two years earlier to join the RAF and by December 1939 he was impatient for action. When he spotted the bomber formation he felt his heartbeat quicken.27
‘Blue Flight strike!’ he ordered over the radio, not caring whether he used the right terminology.
The lead Heinkel’s gunner saw them coming. ‘Behind us. Fighters!’
‘All right, turn away to the North Sea,’ the Staffel Kapitän calmly replied. ‘We can fly for a long time, they cannot. We’ll have to shake them off.’
The Heinkels dropped to sea level then closed in tight formation as the Spitfires dived near vertically down onto them.
The fighters were met with a curtain of defensive gunfire. Sheen ignored the streaks of tracer and fired on the rear bomber, scoring multiple hits. The Heinkel quickly lost height.
The Australian turned his attention elsewhere. He pulled a tight turn, swept past a lighthouse fifteen miles out to sea, and zeroed in on a Heinkel on the extreme right that had already been hit. The other Germans fought hard to protect their comrade, but to no avail. The bomber’s guns went silent and it began to drop away.
The lead German gunner was not going to let the British fighter claim another victim. He was a veteran and excellent shot. But this was his first close combat with a Spitfire and he knew their weapons would be deadly at close quarters. He waited patiently for the British pilot to close in then let go burst after burst of 7.92mm fire.
Sheen was caught in the crossfire of three Heinkels’ rear-facing machine guns. A bullet smashed through his canopy and sliced through his earphones, cutting his ear as it skimmed past his head. Another speared through the cockpit and into his thigh. The damage to his body he could deal with, but not the damage to the aircraft. A round had blown a hole in its fuel tank. Petrol streamed into the cockpit, stinging his skin, blurring his vision.
Sheen tried to pull round for another attack but he felt lightheaded, dizzy, verging on blackout. He manoeuvred back to the coast.
The battle was far from over. Seeing Sheen hit put his 72 Squadron comrades in vengeful mood. The Spitfires went for the Germans, diving and firing in fury. The Heinkel gunner looked left and right. Only one other rear gunner remained in action. But he was inexperienced and slow, engaging the enemy only after they turned away from his tail.
The 72 Squadron pilots were quick to spot an easy prey. They dived on him relentlessly.
The Heinkel gunner fired a long salvo in his comrade’s defence. There was a metallic click. He’d finished his last drum of ammunition. He turned and shouted at the Staffel Kapitän: ‘All the ammo you have, back to me at once!’
The Staffel Kapitän didn’t need to hear it twice. He made his way on his hands and knees along the catwalk between the bomb racks, dragging the much-needed ammunition behind him.
The gunner whipped on a drum and fired. As he pulled the trigger he shouted: ‘More. Quick!’
The Staffel Kapitän crawled back as quickly as he could. For what seemed like an age the gunner aimed, fired and changed drums while the officer frantically fed him ammunition. Another Spitfire was hit and began smoking. The fight had taken them far out to sea.
Finally the British broke off and headed home.
The Heinkel gunner sat back, wiping the sweat from his brow. He looked over at the Staffel Kapitän. They both grinned and shook their heads. The officer pointed to his trousers. He had donned his best uniform that morning. Now they were threadbare at the knees.
The Heinkel’s interior was a mess, its aluminium fuselage torn apart by .303 Browning rounds. Brass casings and empty ammo drums were strewn everywhere. The gunner wiggled his toes then pulled off his flying boot, emptying a cascade of shell casings. The plane lurched and he looked out of the window in time to see one of their fellow bombers gently ditch onto the water.
They could do no more than wave at the survivors before setting their own mauled Heinkel on a south-easterly course for home. But they had a problem. The wireless had been shot to pieces and after the long-running battle no one had any idea where they were. At that moment one of the two engines stopped.
The Heinkel lost height.
Five hundred metres. Two hundred metres.
We’re going to join our comrades in the sea.
One hundred metres. Fifty metres.
Slowly, the pilot managed to get the nose up.
Thirty metres.
Their position held just above the waves. At any moment they expected the machine to give out and plummet into the sea.
Then they had a stroke of luck. The direction-finding instrument suddenly sprang into life, giving their position and course.
The nearest airfield was Westerland, on the island of Sylt, just off the Denmark peninsula. They headed straight for it, making a belly-landing.
They had survived. Just. It was a testament to the He111’s durability.
It had been estimated that bombers needed to be hit a maximum of 300 times to be sure of destruction.
‘Counted holes in aircraft,’ the gunner recorded. ‘Three hundred and fifty.’
The bomber’s resilience and the Spitfire’s inability to bring it down only strengthened German confidence.
72 Squadron’s encounter did not go unnoticed. RAF Fighter Command pored over every scrap of after-action report. How could seven Spitfires fire 2,400 rounds each – their full complement – and only account for two out of seven He111s in such favourable circumstances?
An inquiry was ordered. It found that the bullet groupings of the eight Browning machine guns was too far apart, lacking the concentration needed to fatally damage a plane. It recommended that the muzzles be refocused to concentrate the spread of bullets at 300 yards rather than 400 yards.28
Fighter Command was learning some valuable lessons.
ATA pilot Diana Barnato Walker
1940
Diana Barnato Walker joined the British Red Cross in the belief that there would be mass casualties on declaration of war.29 By early 1940, they hadn’t materialised and her services were not required.
For the granddaughter of Barney Barnato, joint founder of De Beers mining, and the daughter of the multimillionaire racing driver Woolf ‘Babe’ Barnato, there was only one thing left to do. Socialise.
After a long night dancing at the Embassy Club on Bond Street, Diana decided to go skiing in France. It was mid-January 1940. Bar the odd sandbag, the war had barely touched London, and she’d heard the Scots Guards were on manoeuvres in Chamonix. Diana came from a hugely enterprising and fearless Jewish family; she was not going to let a war put her off. And the opportunity of skiing with the Guards was too good to miss.
Driving off the ferry in Calais, she discovered that France offered a number of immediate benefits. With no rationing she could fill her thirsty Bentley as often as she liked. She motored south, via an ov
ernight château stop, to the slopes of Mont Blanc.
She couldn’t pass Paris on her return without dropping in on her friend Gogo’s atelier studio. During Diana’s five-day stay, the House of Schiaparelli created a collection for her that included a pink satin evening dress and silk afternoon outfit in duck-egg blue with fine red and blue stripes.
Before finally heading back to Calais, Diana lunched with Count Henri de la Falaise in Amiens, where he was acting liaison officer to the 12th Lancers. As the two friends shared an excellent duck pâté at the Café Godebert, the German General Staff were finalising their plans for the invasion of France.
* * *
Joe Roddis felt the same joy when he tinkered with a motorcycle as he’d had assembling his red Meccano steam traction engine. He understood it, cared for it and could fix it.30
Joe passed the RAF recruiting office every day as he fetched the sandwiches for his mates at their Sheffield motorcycle workshop. His desire to service fighters that could fly at five times the speed of a Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike increased each time he saw the Spitfire and Hurricane posters. As did his determination to provide his impoverished family with a steady income.
When the eighteen-year-old Yorkshireman’s application to join up was accepted, he was overjoyed. His sandwich delivery duties were cut short, as was his mechanics course when he was put on a wartime footing. Joe was posted to 234 Squadron at RAF Leconfield in Yorkshire to await delivery of their Spitfires.
When the red Very flare went up over the airfield signalling a scramble for another squadron, Joe sprinted across to see his first ever Spitfire in flight. ‘It was magical and elegant. The tail was just coming off the ground. It looked like it was doing 400mph. It was a beautiful war machine, especially to have on our side.’
But the thrill quickly evaporated as a Miles Magister training aircraft taxied onto the runway. The Spitfire pilot could not avoid a collision. His whirling propeller cut through the open cockpit of the monoplane trainer, which disintegrated in a shower of plywood and fabric. The Magister’s pilot was killed instantly.
‘There was nothing we could do. It was just a mass of human flesh scattered around which had to be cleared up. I picked up a flying boot with a foot in it. The seagulls had been feeding on it for a while. A terrible sight.’ It was 21 February 1940, and Joe’s first view of death close up.31
The gloom lifted considerably a fortnight later with the arrival of eighteen brand-new Spitfire Mark Is. ‘We crawled all over them, taking the cowling off and drooling over the Merlins. It really felt we were becoming part of the war, part of the fight. You could also see the change in the pilots. They were drooling over the aircraft too, desperate to get airborne.’
He and his fellow mechanics learned the intricacies of the Rolls-Royce engine and could soon feed the gun belts all 2,400 rounds and fill the eighty-five-gallon tank in twenty minutes. The pilots learned to fly and fight the plane, whose value was so high that they were dispersed to fields a few miles away every night, to protect them from marauding German bombers.
With his RAF pay packets, Joe made regular visits to the local pubs and, when he felt really flush, took a bus to the pictures in Hull. But at that point there was little social mixing between what he described as the different classes. ‘Ground crew would never dare initiate a conversation with a pilot. The aircrew then were from rich backgrounds. They were only used to telling a garage mechanic to fill up their Bentley or wipe the windscreen. They were not rude, but we rarely spoke to them other than about the aircraft.’
But the distinctive lines of the British class system, which had survived relatively unscathed from the Great War, were about to become severely blurred. The divide between mechanic and pilot would quickly close, as neither the Spitfire, nor the war, would be any respecter of class.
CHAPTER TWO
THE FALL OF FRANCE
Hugh ‘Cocky’ Dundas
The incursions across the North Sea proved useful continuation training for the Luftwaffe bomber force. In April 1940, following the pattern set in Spain and Poland, they started bombing civilians in Norway.
Britain’s hapless participation in the Norway campaign led to Chamberlain being replaced by Churchill on 10 May 1940. Hours later, the German blitzkrieg – lightning war – was launched on the Low Countries.
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had been sent to France on the outbreak of war to bolster the French army, as it had done in the previous war. But it was ill-equipped to fight the blitzkrieg.
German paratroopers swept through Belgium’s defences, rendering France’s fabled Maginot Line an irrelevance. And the campaign came to an irreversible conclusion when General Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division ghosted through the Ardennes.
The French rustled up a mixed bunch of 826 combat-ready fighters and 250 bombers. Their command and control systems were chaotic at best, and at times non-existent. More than 4,000 Luftwaffe aircraft were released to bomb them into submission.1
As the French lines collapsed, the BEF called for Spitfires to cover its headlong retreat. Churchill had fought in the trenches alongside the French army, and felt compelled to assist. But Air Chief Marshal Dowding had other ideas.
Sir Hugh ‘Stuffy’ Dowding, head of Fighter Command, was not widely loved. Socially awkward and abidingly obstinate, he appeared to deserve his nickname. However, he was also focused, clear-sighted and iron-willed – essential qualities for the times.
It was Dowding who had the foresight to ensure the RAF had a modern fighter, and to make radar integral to home defence. He had overseen the introduction of the Fighter Control System, which used a combination of radars, direction finders and the Observer Corps. It gave Fighter Command headquarters the direction, height and time of incoming raids, allowing them to ‘vector’ fighter squadrons for the intercept. This saved on fuel, engine use and perhaps most importantly pilots’ energy, as they were not required for airborne patrols. It also sapped German morale. The Luftwaffe had underestimated Britain’s complex home defence system which left its pilots bemused how nearly every raid was met with RAF fighters waiting to pounce.
But Dowding now had to answer the most burning question of the conflict thus far: would his Spitfires be able to blunt the Luftwaffe’s efforts long enough for the French army to regroup?
In a two-page memorandum to the Air Ministry on 18 May 1940, he set out his arguments.
While the Allies might still prove victorious, defeat had to be contemplated. If this happened, he ‘presumed’ Britain would fight on – and therefore required a minimum fighter strength. ‘I would remind the Air Council that the last estimate which they made as to the force necessary to defend this country was fifty-two squadrons, and my strength has now been reduced to the equivalent of thirty-six . . .’2
The Air Ministry needed to decide as ‘a matter of paramount urgency’ what numbers should be left to defend Britain. Once they had done so, he wanted reassurance that ‘not one fighter will be sent across the Channel, however urgent and insistent the appeals for help may be’.
Then came the final, career-risking but visionary paragraph. ‘If the Home Defence Force is drained away in desperate attempts to remedy the situation in France, defeat in France will involve the final, complete and irremediable defeat of this country.’
Dowding was listened to.
Not one Spitfire would be deployed in the defence of France. The force of 452 Hurricanes, joined by the woefully inadequate Bristol Blenheims, Fairey Battles and Lysanders, would have to make do.
MAY 1940
RAF pilots who made it home after crash-landing in northern France in late May reported chaos on the ground. Former portrait painter Hugh Riddle, twenty-eight, of 601 Squadron, was among them. ‘Refugees block main roads and there is a sense of complete confusion. Soldiers without rifles roam aimlessly about the countryside, all making their way westwards.’3
Bombed to near-madness, French soldiers would run panic-stricken at the merest sound of
an aircraft engine. For an orderly withdrawal to have any hope of success, the skies had to be protected from the marauding Luftwaffe.
Twelve squadrons of Hurricanes had been in France since the outset of the blitzkrieg, and Dowding had been powerless to prevent another eight going in mid-May, although he cannily ensured they were half-squadrons.
Churchill had done his best to keep his closest allies in the fight, but it was not enough. He finally conceded that the attempt to hold off the Germans was a ‘colossal military disaster’. To retrieve anything from the impending defeat, the 400,000 men of the BEF – ‘the whole root and core and brain of the British Army’ – had to be saved.
It was vital, therefore, to protect the northern evacuation ports. Dowding could not argue against using the most modern aircraft available to cover the troops streaming towards the beaches of Dunkirk.
The Spitfire was about to be pitched into battle against an undefeated foe. All the toil that had gone into its creation would count for nothing if it proved a failure.
* * *
‘I saw another Messerschmitt curving round. It had a bright yellow nose. Again I saw the ripples of grey smoke . . . Red blobs arced lazily through the air between us, accelerating dramatically as they approached and streaked close by, across my wing.’4
It was 28 May, day two of the Dunkirk evacuation. Hugh Dundas had left the Garden of England for the Dunkirk beaches. He was about to confirm the adage that the fighter pilot’s first fight was his most dangerous.
‘I pulled my Spitfire round hard, so that the blood was forced down from my head. The thick curtain of blackout blinded me for a moment and I felt the aircraft juddering on the brink of a stall.’
He straightened out and his vision cleared – to reveal the twisting confusion of fighters locked in combat. Another Me109 took a shot at him. Dundas threw his Spitfire into a turn so tight it led to another blackout. For a split second, a Messerschmitt filled his windscreen. Dundas pressed the Dunlop firing button for the first time in anger. His deflection shot – estimating his foe’s flight path and shooting ahead of the moving target so the bullets would intersect with it – was wide of the mark.
