by John Nichol
Smarting from Malta’s defiance, Kesselring launched a final bludgeoning attack on the island. For seventeen days over October, Luftwaffe bombers once again came in waves and the Spitfires rose to meet them.
But with the fuel from the Ohio, the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots were able to push their throttles wide open to gain height. On 12 October, Allan Scott’s squadron rapidly climbed to 10,000ft above a formation of 100 Ju88 bombers.27
‘Seeing the bombers below we immediately dived down to engage. I got my sights on a Ju88 and opened fire with a good three-second burst. Bits flew off it and an engine was hit, smoke pouring out. I had to break hard then to avoid an Me109 on my tail. A dogfight was in progress, with Spitfires and 109s weaving all over the sky. I managed to destroy a 109 and damage another. With the need for the attacking fighters to reserve enough fuel to get back to base, these dogfights did not last long. It was not often three could be bagged in one sortie. It had been a very successful outcome.’
Within a week the game was up. ‘Our losses were too high,’ Kesselring admitted.
The German commander scaled back the attacks as more Spitfires, equipped with 170-gallon drop tanks, arrived in Malta after a five-hour, 1,100-mile direct flight from Gibraltar.
Victory had significant implications for both sides. Rommel’s desert forces would contract and the British 8th Army would thrive. It had been an exceptionally close-run thing. Before the Spitfire arrived, Malta was near to surrender. While the fighter’s presence by no means guaranteed success, it bludgeoned the Luftwaffe and lifted morale, an intangible benefit in war.
During the siege, the Axis lost 309 planes compared to 259 British fighters, destroyed in the air and on the ground, the majority of them Spitfires. A total of 120 RAF pilots were killed.28
Laddie Lucas succinctly grasped the implications had Malta been lost: ‘In short, a chain reaction of hideous proportions would have attended the garrison’s fall.’29
Once again the Spitfire was on the side of the victors. The fighter’s iconic reputation grew ever more.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DIEPPE, AUGUST 1942
Alan Peart
Alan Peart glanced at the veterans’ faces, eyes alert to the prospect of a serious dust-up. He felt for the tattered cigarette card in his pocket, to convince himself that he really was here, in England flying Spitfires with 610 Squadron and the renowned ace Johnnie Johnson as his squadron leader.
It was 18 August 1942. Almost exactly a year earlier, Peart’s boyish features had appeared before the appeal board of three officers. He wanted to be a fighter pilot rather than fly bombers.1
Looking at their reactions Peart did not quite have the stomach to tell them that, actually, I want to become a Spitfire pilot.
Ever since the day he had seen the picture of a Spitfire on a card from his father’s cigarette packet he had been spellbound. Although he lived among the mountains, lakes and glaciers of New Zealand, Peart had never seen anything quite so beautiful.
During the appeal he had thumbed the dog-eared card in his pocket, resisting the temptation to pull it out and slam it on the table.
At the end of elementary flying training his dream had been shattered. Assessed as an ‘average’ pilot and ‘above average’ navigator, to his horror he had been categorised as ‘suitable for flying bombers’.
His request for an appeal hearing had been granted.
Bollocks. He placed the cigarette card on the table, the beautiful curved lines of the fighter instantly recognisable. ‘That’s why I want to fly single engines. I want to fly the Spitfire. It’s that or . . .’ He shrugged his shoulders and took a step back.
The three officers looked at each other and nodded.
Seeing the shaking hands of 610 Squadron’s fliers as they lit their cigarettes brought back to him his mother’s pain as he said goodbye a year ago. After a long drag the shakes stopped. Peart stared a moment longer at the group of men he’d recently joined, wondering what fears or horrors they had confronted in past battles. His thoughts again went back to his final farewell in New Zealand, at Hamilton railway station. ‘My poor mother was convinced, not without good reason, that she would never see her son again. She said goodbye with stoicism but I never forgot the look of agony on her face as I parted from her. While I simply dismissed the dangers ahead, my mother certainly knew.’
And the shakes were there for good reason. Before dawn the next morning, 610 Squadron were to fly over the French port of Dieppe and draw as many enemy aircraft up to the fight as they could. It was going to be the fiercest air battle since 1940 and 25 per cent casualties were expected. That’s one in four, Peart thought as he glanced around the dozen or so heads in the room.
Worse, as the squadron ‘sprog’ he was to be at the rear of the formation, the most vulnerable position, reserved for the most inexperienced pilot.
‘I looked along the line of chaps next to me and wondered who was due for the chop. The awful truth dawned on me that from now on things were for real. Will I be an easy target for some German ace, before I could get enough experience to look after myself? All my past reading confirmed the likelihood of that scenario. It was a traumatic and sobering thought.’
His mind cast back to a few weeks earlier on his first flight in the Spitfire. It was not what he’d expected. As Peart sat in the small but comfortable cockpit, he felt the excitement built over years of dreaming for this moment overpower him. It felt like he was looking at the switches and dials for the first time. A momentary panic gripped him, as he tried to remember what to do to get the plane airborne. He took a deep breath and reached for the throttle lever, pushing it forward. The engine noise increased significantly, then the Spitfire was moving. But not in the direction he wanted it to go. It spun round in a complete circle. Peart felt his cheeks burn with embarrassment as he used the rudder pedals to control the tail and keep the Spitfire straight. It was his first lesson in the power of the Merlin engine.
He opened the throttle again and hurtled down the runway and into the air, experiencing the Spitfire’s agility and its joy of being freed from the ground.
The Spitfire proved much more powerful and faster than anything he’d flown before. It would need to be. The Mark V might have been a match for the 109 ‘F’s over Malta but it was really struggling against the Focke-Wulf 190.
The RAF desperately needed to find out what made the Fw190 so good. Supermarine’s test pilot Jeffrey Quill was drawn into a plot by Philip Pinckney, an enigmatic SAS commando, to drop into France and steal a 190. The plans, marked ‘Most Secret’, were well advanced when a Luftwaffe pilot mistook the Bristol Channel for the English Channel and subsequently became totally lost, finally landing his Fw190 intact in South Wales in June 1942.2
Quill and others flew the captured 190 to discover its attributes. An official RAF report found that the German fighter was ‘superior in speed at all heights’ and could outclimb as well as out-dive a Spitfire V.3
The designers at Supermarine had been working hard to come up with a riposte. The answer was simple: improve on what we have. They developed the Spitfire Mark IX, arguably the greatest variant to come out of the Supermarine workshop.
When Jeffrey Quill viewed the Mark IX for the first time he was not that impressed. Yes, she had the same sleek outlines as previous Spits and yes, she had the dual cannons and he knew the new Merlin 61 engine lay under the cowling, but what else did she bring to the party?
Well, quite a lot as it proved. ‘The performance and handling of this aircraft in its present form is quite exceptionally good at high altitude,’ Quill wrote after fifty-seven hours flying the new model. ‘It is considered that this machine will be a very formidable fighter.’4
The Mark IX also added 70mph to the Spitfire’s top speed and 10,000ft to its fighting altitude. ‘The performance of the Spitfire IX is outstandingly better than the Spitfire V,’ the official test report read. ‘Spitfire is considerably faster and its climb is exceptionally good.’5
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br /> The only structural alteration from the Mark V had been to elongate the body by nine inches to accommodate the Merlin 61. But what a difference those nine inches made. With its two-stage supercharger, in which air was doubly compressed before entering the carburettor, the Mark IX was given an astonishing 20 per cent increase in power.
Brian Kingcome, who at twenty-four was one of the RAF’s youngest Wing Commanders and had been fighting in Spitfires since Dunkirk, was among the first to discover its powers. ‘The effect was magical. I had expected an increase in power but nothing to match the reality. To enhance the dramatic effect, the second stage cut in automatically without warning. One minute there I was, relaxed and peaceful, as I climbed at a leisurely pace towards 15,000ft, anticipating a small surge of power as I hit the magic number. The next minute it was as though a giant hand had grabbed hold of me, cradled me in its palm like a shot-putter and given me the most terrific shove forwards and upwards. The shove was so great that I almost bailed out. It literally took my breath away. It was exhilarating, a feeling that I could never forget. I yearned at once for a chance to demonstrate the astonishing new tool to the Germans.’6
However, the new aircraft very nearly fell into the Germans’ laps before it even fired a shot. Keen to share its qualities, Quill flew the brand-new Spitfire down to Hornchurch in Essex to let his friend Group Captain Harry Broadhurst have a go. Charismatic, independent and unconventional, Broadhurst took the Supermarine test pilot at his word. As Quill went into the Hornchurch ops room to watch a fighter sweep’s progress over France, Broadhurst took the latest Spitfire for a flight above. While the wing headed towards Boulogne at 25,000ft, Quill noticed a single aircraft on the plotting table some distance behind.7
‘What’s that plot there?’ he asked the controller.
‘Oh, that’s the Station Commander.’
‘God damn it, he’s in my aeroplane! Do you realise that’s the most important prototype fighter in the country right now? What’s more, the guns aren’t loaded!’
‘Well, there’s nothing I can do about it,’ the controller tartly replied. ‘But right now he seems to be at well over 35,000ft.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Quill said, then resigned himself to an anxious wait as dozens of Luftwaffe fighters flew up to meet the Hornchurch Wing.
Quill wondered how to explain to his boss that he had taken off from the Supermarine test base at Worthy Down, Hampshire, that morning in a vital trial aircraft and before the day was out it had been shot down in France.
‘Magnificent aeroplane,’ Broadhurst told him on landing. ‘Get as many as you can, as quickly as possible.’ Then his dark gaze settled on Quill. ‘By the way, you might have told me that the guns weren’t loaded.’ Quill stifled a reply.
* * *
Harry Strawn with his dog, ‘Red’, August 1942
On the same day Peart received his briefing, there was some nervous laughter among the American pilots of 309th Squadron as they listened to the Dieppe plans amid the lush, rolling hills of West Sussex at Westhampnett airfield.
The medium-sized port of Dieppe had been chosen as the place that an Allied amphibious force would land and hold a piece of occupied France for a day, proving that sea-borne invasions were possible. When they withdrew, the 6,000-strong ground force would destroy the port’s defences and hopefully leave with useful intelligence. What was more, the British public would see the impunity with which the Nazi continent could be breached and that Britain was committed to liberating Europe. The summer of 1942 would be good for morale.
In the skies above would be squadron after squadron of Spitfires protecting all below. This time an umbrella of fighters would cover the sky. It would not be another Dunkirk.
The mission for the newly arrived American pilots of the 309th Squadron, about to be tested in battle for the first time, was clear if somewhat contradictory. ‘We are going to destroy the entire town and hold it for one day,’ wrote Harry Strawn, the pilot who’d had careers in farming and advertising before finding his vocation flying Spitfires. ‘Of course we will be fighting Fw190s all day. It should be a big show and my first fight. I’ll need strength tomorrow.’
The RAF was about to unleash more than 600 Spitfires, although nearly all Mark Vs, as only four squadrons of Mark IXs were currently operational.
The Fighter Command chief Trafford Leigh-Mallory was convinced that a good opportunity lay in the Dieppe plans. The Rhubarb, Ramrod and Circus attacks into France were at a stalemate and Jerry wasn’t playing ball. In fact, he was drawing them ever deeper into France only to strike when the planes had a few minutes’ fuel left. It might have seemed a deadlock but in fact the RAF was losing. In the first six months of 1942 it had lost nearly five times as many aircraft as the Luftwaffe, 245 to 59.8 And despite heroics among some French, nearly all British bail-outs ended up in capture.
Intelligence had suggested that if a French port was seized the German protocol was to assume it was the prelude to a full-scale invasion. The Luftwaffe would be ordered to mount a major operation to control the skies. RAF commanders saw an opportunity to give the ‘Hun’ a bloody nose.
There was pressure as well from the army, particularly the Canadians, fed up with exercises in the damp British countryside while there was a gargantuan clash of arms in Russia. They wanted to prove themselves in action.
There were demands too from Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, to open up a second front in Europe. With German forces penetrating deep into the Caucasus in summer 1942, he argued that the Germans would move forty of their 180 divisions off the Eastern Front to fight in France.
The Dieppe ‘invasion’ by a division of 6,000 men had the modest ambition of seizing a French port merely for ‘the duration of at least two tides’.9
To provide overhead cover Leigh-Mallory had a total of seventy squadrons, almost double the number at Dowding’s disposal at the start of the Battle of Britain. His squadron leaders and flight commanders were also all seasoned fighters from the previous two years of conflict.
Opposing them was a force of skilled German fighter squadrons, with almost 200 of the deadly Fw190s, a handful of 109s and a fleet of more than 100 bombers.
With the odds in his favour, Leigh-Mallory was content for the battle of attrition to begin.
* * *
The final briefings on the evening of 18 August gave pilots no room for doubt. They were told to fight it out to maintain air superiority over the beaches ‘even if you are to remain alone there to the end’.10
A few hours later the task force of 237 ships sheltering in harbours along the south coast weighed anchor and headed into the Channel for the seventy-five-mile crossing to occupied France.
It was the middle of the night when Alan Peart felt a gentle tug on his shoulder. ‘Cuppa cha for yer, sergeant. It’s two-thirty.’11
He sat up and pulled on his still-new battledress. Around him others donned faded uniforms and old ‘best blues’. Peart tied a silk scarf around his neck, followed by his New Zealand wool jumper.
His hand went to his face. Should I shave? He tramped to the washrooms, and splashed water on his face before applying shaving cream. A few minutes later he stepped back from the mirror and nodded to himself. Ready for action.
A light, warm wind brushed across West Malling aerodrome, nestling among the woods of mid-Kent, as he strode to the breakfast tent. Those who had not shaved were already emptying their plates of a rare feast – real eggs, chips, fried bread and margarine.
Stars still shone brightly as Peart walked to the dispersal hut. He glanced at his watch. 3am.
Over among the green hills of the South Downs that looked down on Westhampnett, the American pilots shared the same thoughts. ‘I guess this is the big day in my life,’ Harry Strawn had time to note in his diary after his 3am wake-up call. ‘The planes are warming up in the dark. Others are already in the air heading towards Dieppe for the big day. Most of us are joking and laughing, but I rather imagine it’s to cover up nerve
s. I feel a bit on edge and a little shaky.’12
At sea, 3am was the cut-off time to cancel the invasion. British commandos and Canadian infantry waited in ships to embark on the new landing craft specially designed for putting ramps down on beaches to allow fast disembarkation. Their fears of being cut down were somewhat assuaged by the knowledge that alongside them lay fifty-eight of the new, powerful Churchill tanks, also using new landing craft. Before dawn they would all be storming up Dieppe’s shingle beach, over its sea wall and into town, rounding up those Germans wise enough to surrender. Within twenty-four hours they would be back home with the opportunity to brag in bars and pubs of how they had set foot in occupied France, given Jerry a bloody nose and come back to tell the tale. The ladies, no doubt, would be swooning for a Dieppe hero.
The majority bobbing in the Channel did not want to hear any cancellation order. And no such order came. The signal was given and rope ladders went over the sides, and the infantry began clambering into the gently rolling landing craft. At 3.06am the first boats chugged towards the sloping shingle beaches of Dieppe.
Overhead, four-inch shells from the destroyers crashed into German concrete emplacements.
Undaunted, the landing craft ploughed on. As the minutes passed, troops could hear aircraft overhead. A few minutes later bomb blasts accompanied flashes on the cliffs and shoreline around Dieppe. The soldiers grinned and nudged each other. Jerry’s gun batteries were clearly taking a hammering.
But so was the RAF. Among the first to suffer casualties were the eight squadrons of ‘Hurribombers’, Hurricanes converted to dive-bombers to drop 250lb or 500lb bombs minutes before the amphibious assault came in. Eight Hurricanes were lost with a further twenty damaged.
