by Norman Gelb
That evening, we were sent up again, to patrol Dover. We were over Dover when suddenly there was a bang and a bullet whistled between my legs. I looked out over the nose of my aircraft and saw little white dots appearing there. Bullets were puncturing the skin of my aircraft. I looked up and not more than twenty or thirty feet above me was a duck-egg blue wing with an Iron Cross on it, a Messerschmitt 109. We were being bounced by 109s. The man I was formating on was in flames. I pulled sharply away and found my engine overheating badly. I went down and just managed to get back to base when my engine seized.
It was then that I realized finally that the Germans were intent on killing me and that it wasn’t a great big game or a newsreel and that if I didn’t keep my wits about me, I was going to die pretty quickly.
During that first week in the front line, our squadron suffered maybe twelve losses. On 31 August, I was the most junior pilot in the squadron. Within two weeks, I was one of the most experienced. I got a book recently listing the names of all who had been in our squadron during the Battle of Britain. Some I couldn’t remember. They passed through and had been shot down before I could get to know them.
*
Sergeant Iain Hutchinson
I know it sounds crazy, but I believed I’d be warned in time by something hitting my aircraft and be able to take evasive action to save myself up there. I’d developed a tactic which I thought was perfect for making the attacking aircraft lose sight of me. It was an awkward manoeuvre, the first bit of a bunt, an outside loop, when an enemy got on your tail. You just pushed the stick forward hard. The chap behind you would then have trouble following you. In order to make a deflection shot at you, he had to point his nose lower than you. But he couldn’t do that if you were bunting hard. Then, if you did a series of downward spirals, it would be very hard for him to follow you. You’d then climb up and resume combat. I was convinced that device would always save me.
But when we were moved south, we had a lot to learn. On our first sortie as a squadron in the south, we lost half the squadron — not all killed — but half the squadron shot down. I myself was shot down the next day when I got split off from the squadron. I saw three 109s coming out from underneath me and opened fire at them. But I didn’t look back and somebody came up behind and shot me up.
I was going to bale out, but realized that my parachute harness was slack and that my aircraft was still capable of flying so it would be safer to put it down in the field, and it would cause less damage. As I came down, I saw a man ploughing the field with two horses. I had a momentary vision of him looking extremely surprised as I flew past him, hit the ground and came to a halt.
I was flying again the next day, but I was shot down five times during the next month, though I didn’t end up in hospital until the last time. Until then, I felt I couldn’t miss a sortie. It’s hard to explain, but the feeling was that as long as I kept going up, it was going to be OK, but the moment I broke the sequence, something might happen. The first time I broke the sequence and missed a sortie, a friend of mine, Ramshaw, took my place in the squadron and was killed.
People were quick on the trigger. You daren’t wait for the other guy to shoot. One time, I saw another aircraft in the sky and went straight towards it because it could have been a German. When I got near enough, I could see it was a Spitfire so I turned away. As I turned, a shower of tracer went right past my nose. As the plane went past me shortly afterwards, I saw not only that it really was a Spitfire, but that it was someone from my own squadron taking a shot at him. He’d recognized me, but his impulse to fire had been quicker than his recognition.
The last time I was shot down, I’m quite sure it was by a Spitfire. That was a traumatic moment. I tried to get out of the plane as it went down, but my parachute was stuck against part of the cockpit just behind me, I was stuck with the bottom part of my body inside the aircraft and the top part of me flattened against the outside of the aircraft by the airflow, with the plane going down at about 400 miles an hour. I remember wondering which part of me — the part inside the plane or the part outside — would be more intact after I hit the ground.
Flames were coming out of the plane and I was being frizzled. The next thing I knew, I was floating free in the air. I couldn’t see very well because my face had been burned. I pulled my ripcord — my parachute was there — but it was rather late and I hit the ground with a thud.
My recollections of what happened next are hazy. Some ladies came along to help me. They brought some tea but they wouldn’t let me drink it. They brought some brandy but wouldn’t let me drink that either. I remember trying to make some funny cracks, but nobody seemed to appreciate my sense of humour. I must have looked a horrid sight. My uniform was all burned. My face was burned. My eyes were bloodshot because I’d bounced my skull off the tail of the plane when I was thrown out.
*
Flying Officer Ben Bowring
By mistake, our squadron was sent the first Hurricane 2s. These had the twin superchargers. They were really meant to go to a maintenance unit to be modified so that as soon as they got to 9,000 feet, the second supercharger would come in and give it extra boost, so we could have more power at height and go much higher. Though these aircraft came to us by mistake, we used them and the first time you took off in one of them, you were getting something like sixteen pounds boost for take off, so you went off like a shot.
We got used to it. When you got to 9,000 feet, you pulled a plug out and that gave you the new boost. We had these for four or five days before they found out we had them by mistake, but the battle was so fast and furious at the time that by then we had only one left. The others had been shot down or damaged. We reported that we’d finished them all, but decided that we’d all fly the Hurricane 1s.
We’d been posted a new squadron leader. He’d been in France and he wasn’t very keen to fly any more. But we didn’t have many pilots left and I said to him he just bloody well had to fly. He said he would, but insisted on flying the Hurricane 2 we still had left. I was to fly as his number two. Of course, when he got to 9,000 feet, he opened his tap. He got extra boost, went soaring off and we couldn’t catch him. We kept shouting at him, asking him to slow down and then we saw the Germans coming. By then, we were up in Spitfire country, where Hurricanes really shouldn’t have been, and got mixed up with 109s. He got back all right. I didn’t.
*
Pilot Officer David Looker
Me 109s came at us just as we came out of the clouds. My plane was hit by cannon shells and I went into a spin. I managed to straighten out and finally came safely through a balloon barrage, pulled up and found myself at about 600 feet with a big hole in my right wing and the right side of my cockpit shot away. I was about the bale out when I saw Croydon airfield below. So I decided to try to crash land, but as I came over the road to the airfield, our anti-aircraft guns opened fire at me. They thought I was a German plane and blew my tail off. Instead of crash landing, I went in head first and ended up in hospital.
Two years later, I was out in Canada and met a squadron leader who’d been commandant at Croydon at the time and remembered the incident. He told me, ‘It got me posted to Iceland because I’d complained so much about the army being unable to tell the difference between a Hurricane and a German aircraft.’
*
Corporal Claire Legge
Behind the Controller’s dais in the Ops Room there were four cabins which were monitoring the four radio channels we had. For reasons I’ve never understood, these were jobs they gave to girls. They monitored these channels and recorded what was said by the pilots in the air. The doors of these cabins were open most of the time. That’s how the Controller sitting in front of them found out how the battle was going. Once he’d got the men onto the enemy with his directions, it was up to them. What they heard often distressed the girls very badly. They knew the pilots and they heard them screaming and going down. It was horrid.
*
Elaine Leathart (wife of S
quadron Leader James Leathart)
I had got to know the men of 54 Squadron very well. I felt deeply when people like Johnny Allen were killed. I remember saying to James’s father, ‘I don’t think there will be any of them left.’ It was sad for the wives. The men were right in it, doing something. But we were just sitting there waiting.
There were always cars in our family. They were of prime importance. During the battle, James said, ‘I’m going to get killed. You’d better have a car.’ So he bought Johnny Allen’s car when Johnny was killed and had an airman drive it up to me in the north.
*
Pilot Officer Peter Hairs
You’d be drinking in the mess one night. And you’d be drinking in the mess the next night. You’d look around and see that two or three who’d been there the first night weren’t there anymore. You tried to accept it as normal. It was normal! I remember seeing my own flight commander — Flight Lieutenant Stoney — crash. We’d been up on some action. When you met the enemy, you’d pick an aircraft, go after it and fire at it. He’d fire at you and you’d have a bit of a dogfight. In the process, we’d all be separated. Afterwards, each section commander would wiggle his wings so we could pick him out and formate on him again. I saw him on this occasion and started flying towards him. He was flying quite normally, but suddenly he did a half roll, his nose dropped and he went straight down and crashed into the ground. Whether he’d been shot in action, I don’t know. These things did happen. Sometimes they were seen to happen, sometimes not.
*
Pilot Officer Robert Doe
Every time I was in action, I managed to get hit. Everytime I’d land, there’d be bullet holes in the plane. Half the time I didn’t know about them till I was on the ground. To my knowledge, I should have been shot down on two separate occasions, when another pilot shot a German off my tail whom I hadn’t seen and who was about to shoot me down. You almost always got shot down by the ones you didn’t see.
I never gave much thought to the enemy pilot. I just saw an enemy plane and attacked it. Once I saw a 109 going out low over Southampton. I set out after him. It took me a long time to catch him up because he was going flat out. Eventually I was close enough to shoot at him, which I did. Parts of his plane fell off and his engine stopped as I flew up alongside him. He was a tall, blond man in sky blue sort of overalls. Nothing I could do. I waved at him and watched him go down and crash into the sea.
We had a bunch of new pilots sent in, but not many had a chance to fly with us because we were losing too many aircraft as well as pilots. We just couldn’t spare anything to let them fly in. A couple of them did fly with us and just disappeared, virtually on their first trips.
*
Flying Officer Christopher Foxley-Norris
The fact that you had not been killed or wounded did not mean that you were combat-ready. You could be exhausted. Some people, like A1 Deere, appeared to be inexhaustible, but others weren’t. It wasn’t lack of moral fibre or cracking up. You just got so tired that you were useless.
I still don’t like the telephone because you’d be sitting there in the dispersal hut, playing cards or reading a book or something like that and the telephone would ring. Everyone froze. An orderly answered. It might be ‘Squadron scramble’, or something quite unimportant — so-and-so to see the equipment officer or something like that. But the tension which built up between the ringing of the phone and learning what it was is my hangover from the Battle of Britain. I still don’t like telephones.
*
Flight Lieutenant Alan Deere
You never could tell. Some of the least likely chaps turned out to be best and sometimes you got things wrong in sizing men up. I had a pilot who came to me one day and said, ‘I can’t fly today. I’m not feeling well.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to fly. We’re short of men.’
He said, ‘I just can’t.’
I called the doctor and told him, ‘Take a look at this chap. I think he’s lost his nerve.’
It turned out he had malaria. I was unable to judge because I was so tired myself.
*
Sergeant David Cox
There was one sergeant, Jack Roden, who should never have been a fighter pilot. He was one of the bravest men I ever knew. He was dead scared from the beginning, but he kept on flying. I used to say to him, ‘Go to the CO or to your flight commander and get taken off.’ He wouldn’t.
He used to crash Spitfires in all sorts of silly ways — three or four of them. He was frightened of the plane. He never shot anything down. One day, he got shot up and badly hurt trying to land his damaged Spitfire in a field. If he had crash landed with his wheels up, he’d have been all right. He’d have come to a grinding halt quickly. But he landed with his wheels down. The field was too small and he ran into a tree and was badly injured. He was conscious enough at first to be asked why the heck he had put his wheels down when he should have crash landed. He said it was because he didn’t want to damage another Spitfire. He died three days later. It was unnecessary. He should never have been a fighter pilot.
There were others who were also ill-placed. It was inevitable. We were so short of pilots. And there were a few who didn’t really want to be there. The one who was easiest to spot was the one who always came right back with something wrong with his aircraft — the radio had gone or the revs were dropping or it wasn’t flying right or it was overheating. If it happened often, the flight commander or CO would say, ‘The next time it happens, have it tested on the ground or have someone else take it right up again.’ If the plane was found to be all right, the pilot would be quietly posted away.
*
Squadron Leader Ted Donaldson
If I thought it was a rest a man needed, I’d give him a fortnight’s holiday. If I felt the war had really got to him, I’d get rid of him. There weren’t many of them. There was one chap who said one day, ‘I think I’d better stay down today because I’ve got double vision.’ He was obviously fatigued; we all were, though we didn’t use that word for it then. I looked at him and his eyes really were pointing in different directions. I said, ‘Look, the Germans don’t know you’ve got double vision so you’d better come with us. The Germans will see twelve Hurricanes, not eleven with one extra chap who can’t see straight.’ Someone said, ‘You’re a shit, sir.’ But he survived. I saw him not long ago.
*
Pilot Officer Roland Beamont
A chap was occasionally removed from the squadron and posted to a non-operational job if he didn’t appear to be worth his place. It wasn’t any good having a formation of eight Hurricanes going up to face a hundred Germans if on the way up one of them veered away from the formation without saying anything. When you got back you’d find he’d landed. He’d say his engine was U/S [unserviceable], but the engine fitter couldn’t find anything wrong with it. If that happened once, OK. If it happened twice, you had to do something about it. Without any vindictiveness at all, that chap had to go, because his presence was going to lower the morale of the entire squadron.
*
Pilot Officer Peter Brown
I went up with the squadron one day and my undercarriage would not retract. So I reported on radio to my squadron leader that I was returning to base, I landed and taxied straight to the maintenance hangar to have it serviced. They put the plane on the jacks, jacked it off the ground, operated the undercarriage and it retracted without any trouble at all — it slammed straight up. They tried it eight or nine times and said there was nothing wrong with it. Of course, retracting in the air was different. There were different pressures. I taxied back to dispersal to await the squadron’s return.
Later, we went off again and again I couldn’t get the undercarriage up. So I called up the CO again and said, ‘Red two returning to base. Undercarriage won’t retract.’ By this time I was desperately worried. It was getting to look as though I really didn’t want to stay with the squadron. I taxied to the maintenance hangar again and they jacked it up again and tested and f
ound it absolutely perfect.
I started getting some strange looks and I taxied over to flight dispersal again and again waited for the squadron to come back. When we went off on the third trip of the day, I prayed to God harder than I had ever prayed in my life that the undercarriage would come up so that I could prove that I wasn’t trying to stay out of action. To my intense relief, the undercarriage finally came up.
I was desperately frightened of being thought a coward. Every mission during the Battle of Britain was potentially a life or death situation, but I was much more concerned about that than about risking my life fighting the Germans.
*
Flight Lieutenant Peter Brothers
There was one pilot who, when we were sitting on the ground waiting to be scrambled, had beads of sweat on his forehead. He said he wasn’t feeling too good. I rang up the station doctor and took this chap to sick quarters. Then he rang me up in the dispersal tent and said he wasn’t even to fly his aeroplane back to Biggin Hill from the forward base at Manston where we were at the time. We never saw him again. He’d cracked up.
But you couldn’t call that chap a coward. He later got a job testing rebuilt aircraft. He had the most ghastly crash in a Hurricane, but went on testing. He had a different sort of courage. He couldn’t face up to the Germans, but he could face death in the job he had moved on to.
