The Elite

by Ranulph Fiennes

  However, notwithstanding what others might have thought of his personality, Dowding had ensured that he, and Fighter Command, were ready for the task. In 1936, he had already begun to implement and refine a defensive screen, which would later be known as the ‘Dowding system’ and would prove vital to Britain’s defences. This system saw Fighter Command divided into four operational groups, each consigned to different sectors of the UK. Each group had its own headquarters that would send out orders to individual sector stations based at key airfields. Upon these orders, the planes would be sent into the sky to do battle. The nerve centre for Fighter Command was situated at Bentley Priory, on the outskirts of London, where the initial fighter pilot orders were in the hands of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).

  With the RAF suffering from an acute shortage of manpower at the outbreak of the war, women began to supplement, and then take over, roles that would normally have been denied to them, including as radar operators and plotters. From radar screens at Bentley Priory, the WAAF could see any incoming enemy aircraft and inform the relevant group of their positions. This system relied heavily on RAF wireless interception stations, which would take advantage of the poor radio discipline of German pilots and help to confirm the range and destination of enemy raiders.

  However, while all of these elements contributed significantly to Britain’s defences, they would be nothing without the planes and pilots who would actually do battle. And it would be the fighter planes under Dowding, rather than bombers, that would be crucial to Britain’s success – in particular, the Hurricane and the Spitfire.

  A mix of ancient and modern technology, the Hurricane had a wooden framework that was covered in fabric, while its Rolls-Royce PV twelve-piston engine was capable of speeds in excess of 330mph. This combination of old and new was ingenious. Economical, easy to produce and maintain, the Hurricane would prove to be the workhorse of Fighter Command. Even its somewhat old-fashioned elements would prove useful: enemy cannon shells, so quick to destroy all-metal constructions, were less deadly against the Hurricane as they simply passed through the fabric-and-wooden frame instead of exploding on impact. It was also an awesome killing machine. With its eight guns, fixed as two groups of four, it was perfectly suited to tackling the waves of German bombers that would soon be descending on Britain.

  Nevertheless, while the Hurricane would outnumber the Spitfire by two to one throughout the Battle of Britain, it was the Spitfire that would become the iconic symbol of British resistance.

  Its inventor, Reginald J. Mitchell, an acclaimed aircraft engineer, had started drawing up the designs in 1933. Following a trip to Germany, where he witnessed the rise of Adolf Hitler, he could tell at that early stage that another war was inevitable. On his return to Britain, he immediately went to work on designing an aircraft that could be useful in a war situation. As a result, Mitchell aimed to create a well-balanced, high-performance fighter aircraft, capable of fully exploiting the power of the Merlin engine, while also being relatively easy to fly.

  By 5 March 1936, Mitchell had a prototype. With the Spitfire’s distinctive elliptical wing giving the aircraft a higher top speed than several contemporary fighters, including the Hurricane, the RAF was blown away. As John Nichol writes in his fantastic Spitfire: A Very British Love Story, ‘The RAF had woken up to the demands of modern warfare. They needed a single-engine, single-seater fighter armed with eight machine guns that could produce the greatest destructive power possible in one quick attack.’

  This saw the Air Ministry place an order for 310 of the new fighters. But, sadly, Mitchell was never to see his invention in combat, dying of cancer at the age of forty-two in 1937. His colleague Joseph Smith subsequently took over as chief designer, pushing it through a series of developments, which soon saw it find favour with its pilots.

  George Unwin, a Spitfire pilot, enthusiastically told Nichol:

  It was a super aircraft, it was absolutely. It was so sensitive on the controls. There was no heaving, or pulling and pushing and kicking. You just breathed on it and when you wanted, if you wanted to turn, you just moved your hands slowly and she went . . . She really was the perfect flying machine. I’ve never flown anything sweeter. I’ve flown jets right up to the Venom, but nothing, nothing, like her. Nothing like a Spitfire.

  Yet, with Britain already facing a shortage of aircraft, the Spitfire and the Hurricane did not roll off the production line as quickly as had been anticipated. Production was especially hampered by the difficulty of assembling an aircraft as precision-engineered as the Spitfire, which took an astonishing 13,000 hours to build. With time of the essence and resources running low, Lord Beaverbrook, a Fleet Street baron and also Minister of Aircraft Production, launched a national appeal on 10 July 1940. Placing an advert in all the national newspapers, he urged Britons to donate whatever they could that was made of metal, such as pots and pans, so that these items could be used in aircraft production. Throughout the country, every echelon of society subsequently stripped their kitchens bare. Beaverbrook also ran a Spitfire fund whereby Britons could contribute to the £20,000 cost to build just one aircraft. By the middle of August, over £3 million had been raised. A further 1,500 Spitfires would be airborne directly as a result of these appeals, each proudly bearing the name of their contributing fund on the fuselage.

  But, even with sufficient aircraft, there was still a chronic shortage of skilled British pilots. Fortunately, Fighter Command could look to the Commonwealth for additional manpower. Soon men flocked to the cause from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Rhodesia, India and even Jamaica, as William Strachan had done so, becoming the only black man serving in the RAF. Pilots also came from America and Canada, as well as those countries that had already fallen to Germany, such as Poland, which contributed 146 pilots. Indeed, the commander of No. 11 Group, Dowding’s deputy, Keith Park, was a New Zealander, while Quentin Brand, the commander of No. 10 Group, was South African.

  Training such candidates was not an easy task. With the RAF quickly needing an influx of pilots, it meant that corners were inevitably cut in order to get them into the air. In 1939 alone, the RAF suffered 219 training fatalities, while many a pilot would be thrown into the front line having had barely a dozen hours’ training in a modern fighter. In comparison, Luftwaffe pilots had an average of thirteen months of training and over 200 flying hours.

  But Britain had no time to waste.

  In July 1940, German aircraft moved on from targeting British supply ships in the English Channel and now aimed to hit its ports and harbours. With Britain’s undermanned and undertrained pilots taking to the air to engage, vicious dogfights saw the loss of planes and pilots quickly mount up on both sides. In Nichol’s Spitfire, pilot Hugh Dundas recalls his panic after his fuselage had been hit by cannon shells:

  Smoke filled the cockpit, thick and hot, and I could see neither the sky above nor the Channel coast 12,000ft below. Centrifugal force pressed me against the side of the cockpit and I knew my aircraft was spinning. Panic and terror consumed me and I thought, ‘Christ, this is the end.’ Then I thought, ‘Get out you bloody fool; open the hood and get out.’

  Desperately pulling himself out of the cockpit, Dundas was able to deploy his parachute and escape just in time, watching his Spitfire hit the ground below and explode as he sailed to earth. Many were not so lucky. Some were unable to escape their cockpits and burnt to death. Others who did manage to escape then found themselves entangled in their parachutes in the Channel and drowned. The glamour of aviation and war was soon swept away. Yet the British hoped that, if they could just delay the Germans until the onset of winter, then this would make it very difficult for them to continue with their daylight raids.

  The British also had one major advantage when it came to frustrating any German attack. The German Me109 fighter planes escorting the bombers were operating at the extent of their fuel range. They therefore had only a limited amount of time to engage before being forced to turn for home. If the
RAF could frustrate a German raid for long enough, then it would have to abort its mission.

  As the pilots gained more battle experience, they also came to realise the most effective methods to take down a German plane, as listed in Sailor Malan’s ‘Ten Rules of Air Fighting’:

  1. Wait until you see the whites of his eyes. Fire short bursts of one or two seconds, and only when your sights are definitely ‘ON’.

  2. While shooting, think of nothing else, brace the whole of your body, have both hands on the stick, concentrate on your ring sight.

  3. Always keep a sharp lookout. ‘Keep your finger out!’

  4. Height gives you the initiative.

  5. Always turn and face the attack.

  6. Make your decisions promptly. It is better to act quickly even though your tactics are not the best.

  7. Never fly straight and level for more than thirty seconds in the combat area.

  8. When diving to attack the enemy, always leave a proportion of your formation to act as top guard.

  9. INITIATIVE, AGGRESSION, AIR DISCIPLINE and TEAMWORK are all words that MEAN something in air fighting.

  10. Go in quickly – punch hard – get out!

  With the Spitfires and Hurricanes continuing to keep the Luftwaffe at bay, Hitler now called for the destruction of the RAF, with its radar stations along the coast of southern England key targets. Although the Luftwaffe was able to hit those stations regularly, they were only out of action for a few hours at a time, with frantic repairs soon making them operational again.

  In addition, the Germans also began to target British airfields. On 30 August, Biggin Hill suffered particularly devastating consequences, when thirty-nine ground staff were killed, with twenty-six wounded, while the 500kg bombs destroyed armouries, storerooms and staff accommodation. The next day the Germans struck again, this time hitting the operations room itself. For the first time since the Battle of Britain began, a vital component of the defensive system was shut down. However, by the following morning it was up and running again, after engineers worked through the night to fix it.

  No matter what the Germans did it seemed nothing truly crippled the RAF or its systems. In the face of such resistance, and with autumn soon approaching, Hitler was growing increasingly frustrated. He knew that Operation Sealion could not commence unless air superiority had been achieved over the southeast of England and yet nothing seemed to be working. The Germans needed a quick knockout blow to shake the life out of the British. As such, they decided to target London. This would force large numbers of British fighters into the air, which the Luftwaffe then hoped to destroy in one big hit. Moreover, with the citizens of London also feeling the full wrath of the Luftwaffe, Hitler believed the British government would finally be forced to the negotiating table.

  On 7 September 1940, RAF radar screens lit up as wave after wave of enemy planes crossed the Channel. Nothing like this had ever been seen before. With the WAAF sending out urgent orders from Bentley Priory, propellers were soon whirring on the airfields of every squadron within a 70-mile radius of the capital. But, before the British squadrons could attack, the first bombs were already raining down on the docks and factories along the Thames. As the air-raid sirens screamed their warning, people fled from the London sunshine to find shelter. For the first time since the start of the war, London was ablaze; 448 lives were lost in a single day. With the daylight bombings of London, everyone’s worst fears of the Nazi war machine had been realized.

  However, there was no way the Luftwaffe could maintain this kind of momentum on a daily basis. Over the next couple of days, only limited raids were launched, and the weather had finally begun to turn, grounding aircraft on at least one occasion. The British pilots were also now fighting with renewed vigour to protect their friends, their families, their homes and their country from obliteration. They would not be found wanting.

  On 9 September, with the weather improving, the German raiders gathered in substantial numbers for another attack. But this time the RAF was ready for them. As the Luftwaffe approached in a pincer movement, with two separate raiding parties looming towards London via Dover and Beachy Head, the call quickly went from the WAAF to No. 11 Group. Taking to the skies, the stammer of the Merlin engines turned into a roar as they turned towards London and were positioned well in advance of the capital.

  The first German raiding party was harassed by Spitfires, with the British planes swarming around them like a plague of wasps, eventually forcing the bombers to offload on Canterbury rather than London. The second formation was also frustrated. So much so that, in a desperate retreat, it also showered the surrounding towns and countryside with its arsenal. Despite high RAF losses – a total of seventeen planes and six pilots – the Luftwaffe had failed to strike at their intended target. Indeed, German losses were even higher – twenty-four aircraft and ten pilots – and with nothing to show for it.

  Hitler was apoplectic. They could not withstand such losses indefinitely and, with winter not far off, there would not be many more opportunities to claim the skies of Britain. With this in mind, on 15 September Goering authorised one final attempt to destroy Fighter Command. For the Germans, it was now or never.

  That morning, Churchill had chosen to visit RAF Uxbridge and so was present as the drama began to unfold. The first raid was spotted shortly after 11 a.m., with squadrons quickly scrambled from all over the southeast. It was clear that the Germans meant business. But the British squadrons were not deployed en masse. Two were situated well forward, hovering over Canterbury, another four patrolled over Biggin Hill, while a further two were held slightly in the rear as support.

  As the German Dornier bombers, and their fighter escorts, crossed over into Britain, the British squadrons began to swarm around them like a pack of hunting dogs. Slowly the bombers’ fighter escorts were stripped away as they became embroiled in fighting off the attacking Spitfires and Hurricanes. In response, the bombers bunched tightly together, offering each other protection, and continued on their flight path towards London. But before them was an almighty horde of British Hurricanes and Spitfires crowding the skies. Ducking and diving, the British soon shot down six bombers, with one abandoned by its crew, which plummeted towards the heart of London and crashed into Victoria Station. When one Dornier bomber looked to be heading for Buckingham Palace, it was intercepted by pilot Ray Holmes, whose encounter was covered by the Sunday Express:

  He was hurtling straight for the Dornier. In a moment, he must break away. But the German pilot had not deviated an inch from his course. There was only one way to stop him now. Hit him for six. In the heat of the battle, with his own machine crippled and in a desperate bid to smash the invader before it broke through to his target, he shunned the instinct to turn away. How flimsy the Dornier tail-plane looked as it filled his windscreen. The tough little Hurricane would shatter it like balsa wood. As he aimed his port wing at the nearside fin of the Dornier’s twin tail, he was sweating. He felt only the slightest jar as the wing of the Hurricane sliced through. Incredibly, he was getting away with it. The Hurricane was turning slightly to the left and diving a little. Suddenly, the dive turned vertical, Holmes was heading to the ground at 500mph. After a struggle Holmes managed to bail out. The scene of the Dornier, Hurricane and parachute coming to earth was watched by hundreds of grateful Londoners. The Dornier that seemed intent on bombing Buckingham Palace had been brought to earth. It was one of the many acts of heroism seen during the battle.

  However, while the British looked to have succeeded in yet again frustrating the Germans, this was just a preliminary raid designed to tire the RAF before the Luftwaffe launched its main assault. As the bombers in the preliminary raid turned back, the 254 Hurricanes and Spitfires that had been deployed also returned to their bases to rearm and refuel. Just as they were doing so, the German main thrust was forming over Calais, consisting of 114 bombers and an incredible 360 fighters.

  At Uxbridge, the commander of No. 11 Group, Keith Park, reali
sed that the Germans were throwing everything they had at this. With Churchill watching on, cigar clamped between his lips, Park quickly issued orders to lull the attacking raiders into a false sense of security. They would hit the Germans with small attacks and then, just as their fighter escorts were beginning to run low on fuel, the British would launch their main assault, and hopefully cripple the Luftwaffe.

  Shortly after 2 p.m., the first British defenders made contact. As Park instructed, there were only twenty-seven planes in the sky, but they still managed to strike down fourteen German aircraft, for only one loss. However, the majority of the vast German formation continued to bear down on London. Park now increased the number of attacks as he scrambled every squadron within No. 11 Group. But it was no use. The German bomber escorts swatted them away, with the bombers ploughing on in three columns towards their targets: the Royal Victoria and West India Docks.

  However, between them and the docks were now the bulk of Park’s defences – 185 fighters. They soon found themselves under attack and their fighter escorts became scattered as they twisted and turned, trying to escape the British fighters. Before long, their petrol lights had flicked on, just as Park had wanted, and now the main thrust of the British defenders dived into the attack. The German bombers desperately scanned the ground below for their designated targets but thickening cloud obscured most of the city directly beneath them. With just a few fighters to protect them, and unable to find their targets, the bombers were forced to turn for home, scattering their bombs over Dartford, Bromley and West Ham as they fled from their attackers.