Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain

by Norman Gelb

  I cannot impress upon you strongly enough my complete lack of confidence in the entire [British] conduct of this war. I was delighted to see that the President said he was not going to enter the war because to enter this war, imagining for a minute that the English have anything to offer in the line of leadership or productive capacity in industry that could be of the slightest value to us, would be a complete misapprehension.

  *

  Raymond Lee, United States Military Attaché, London

  Letter to his Wife, 5 October

  I walked past Buckingham Palace where the bomb damage is being repaired, and past Queen Anne’s Mansions, hit four or five times, and Westminster and the House of Commons, both damaged. After this the War Office, which had a big bomb. From here past Trafalgar Square, where there are numerous sandbagged pillboxes and barbed wire entanglements, and to Albemarle Street, where two buildings ... are a heap of ruins. Dover Street has a dent in it where a bomb demolished two or three buildings next to Batt’s Hotel. Piccadilly Arcade is blocked up completely at one end. Savile Row is fairly battered to pieces; all the glass is out in Bond Street and Regent Street. Not a shop in Conduit Street has any glass in it ... And so on back along Oxford Street, where John Lewis is a burnt-out ruin and Selfridge’s huge plate-glass windows have been shattered. Nevertheless, I look at the ruin in the West End with satisfaction, for it marks another of the famous German mistakes. Had they continued to batter the East End and kill and destroy among the slums, there would certainly have been great discontent. As it is, the only complaint the poor people have is that government assistance to the homeless and the provision of deep shelters are not being attended to with necessary promptness.

  *

  The Very Reverend W. R. Matthews, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral

  We had come through so many nights of air attacks unscathed that we began to think that we were immune. Could it be that the Germans were actually trying to spare St Paul’s? We were soon disillusioned, for in the night of 9 October, the Cathedral had its first direct hit and suffered most serious damage. Those who were on the roof that night had the impression that the Cathedral was one of the selected targets. The raid began with the dropping of flares from a great height over St Paul’s ... [It was] one of the most beautiful and thrilling spectacles which can be imagined. The so-called ‘chandelier flare’ contains a constellation of brilliant lights which very slowly fall together, illuminating the whole sky and diffusing vivid and unearthly radiance on the buildings beneath. The shadows that they cast are quite different from any that were ever made by sun or moon ... To get the full picture, you must imagine that a number of chandelier flares are released together and that they are of different colours, orange and red, perhaps, and you must add the angry glow of a fire on the horizon. It may be supposed that we had other emotions than those of pure aesthetic enjoyment, but I believe that few of us were quite unmoved by the beauty. I remember that on such a night the sight of the stars, placidly shining above the man-made glow, seemed to complete the vision with the suggestion of an eternal order behind the confusion.

  At 5.55 a.m. on 10 October the Cathedral received a direct hit by a high explosive bomb. It penetrated the roof of the choir and detonated on the crown of the transverse arch immediately west of the apse, tearing a large hole in the vault and lifting the roof from end to end. Its explosion brought down a large amount of heavy masonry, which crashed on to the floor of the choir ninety feet below ...

  *

  Joyce Atwood

  I can remember travelling by train to Liverpool Street and going out into the smoke and flame after the first very heavy raid in which the area around St Paul’s Cathedral was very badly damaged. Because of the smoke, you could see just the cross on top of the dome. Buildings were still burning. The fire brigade had been working right through the night and now their hoses had run dry. There was no more water. I had to get to my office. I was working for the Ministry of Labour and National Service. I walked down roads where, if buildings were burning like that today, the general public wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near them. But the memory that holds most clearly was that of huge sewer rats, which had been driven out of the sewers by the smoke or the bombings, lying dead in the gutters.

  People did not panic. We were under terrific strain. But I can’t remember seeing people in any state where they had lost control of themselves. I saw firemen with eyes rimmed red, worn to a shred from fighting the fires, but I never saw any hysteria. People said, ‘Isn’t it shocking,’ and terrible this and terrible that. But there was no panic.

  Mass Observation (public opinion study) asked people how to deal with an unexploded incendiary bomb (which would explode and throw burning fragments in all directions if water was thrown on it). Answers: ‘Stand up by a brick wall.’

  ‘Lay on it.’

  ‘Leave it to a warden.’

  ‘Flop a coat over it, or throw it into a sewer, or anywhere

  there is water.’

  ‘Sit back and hold tight.’

  ‘Leave it where it is and run.’

  ‘Keep the thin places of your house patched up.’

  ‘Put on your gas mask.’

  FINALE

  As suggested earlier, the dates used to mark the various phases of the Battle of Britain are, to some extent, arbitrarily fixed. They provide only a rough guide to the changing patterns of combat in the battle. They are, nevertheless, useful in understanding how the battle developed and finally ended.

  The closing phase lasted, more or less, six weeks. This phase began on 16 September when German aircraft losses (particularly in the huge, abortive raids on London the day before) and the failure by the Luftwaffe to cripple Fighter Command (also glaringly obvious on 15 September) meant Nazi plans to invade England had to be seen as only a pipe dream. This phase, and the Battle of Britain itself, can be said to have come to an end in the closing days of October when German daylight raids against England petered out, never to be resumed in any significant way.

  The onset of the closing phase of the battle did not ease the intense pressure on Fighter Command. Until the tide clearly turned in October, its frontline squadrons still had to face the enemy in fierce aerial encounters over southern England.

  *

  Squadron Leader Sandy Johnstone

  We were still going up every day, several times a day. We were still on high alert. We were doing two, three, sometimes four sorties a day. People were coming back and falling asleep, sometimes on the floor at dispersal, or sitting upright in a chair. We were that tired.

  *

  Pilot Officer Robert Deacon-Elliott

  I was so tired and annoyed at being shot at, I was feeling sick. By then, I really didn’t care when I went up whether I’d be coming back or not. And I wasn’t alone in those feelings. It wasn’t only the interceptions and patrols. It was also the perpetual sitting at readiness, ready to go off in a flash.

  *

  Pilot Officer Wally Wallens

  When I was in hospital the time I crash-landed with my aircraft shot up and a cannon shell through my leg, the boys in the squadron would come to see me when they had some time off. The hospital was only a few miles from Hornchurch. Sometimes they’d fly past my window and wave to me. Some days, someone wouldn’t come past the window and I knew he’d gone and I’d never see him again.

  *

  Pilot Officer Bobby Oxspring

  They still seemed to believe they could smash Fighter Command. They changed their tactics, but they still wanted to bring us up to shoot us down. They sent over fairly high flying aircraft — Me 110s and Ju 88s — pretty fast aircraft, rigged up with bombs and escorted by Me 109s. They didn’t necessarily come into London, but went around Dover and the ports as an enticement for us to go up and get at them.

  *

  Squadron Leader Harry Hogan

  In fair weather, they still came over two or three times a day. A formation of fifty 109s could draw up practically the whole of our availabl
e force. You didn’t know in advance whether they were fighters or bombers coming over. You were only given a patrol line or an interception course. Whether it was a bomber at the other end, or a fighter carrying a bomb, you had no idea. Radar couldn’t distinguish between them and they were coming in high.

  *

  Pilot Officer Jas Storrar

  421 Flight was formed to help the radar, which wasn’t as effective as it might have been. We patrolled over the French and Belgian coasts and reported back by radio visual sighting of German raids forming. You’d fly as high as you could and follow the raids in, reporting back the number and progress of the raids. We operated singly at first, but when two or three failed to return, we started to do it in pairs to cover each other. Our Hurricanes were especially lightened, without armour, so we could get up high. We weren’t supposed to be doing any fighting, just spotting the raids forming up and coming in. You couldn’t always tell where the raids were heading. Sometimes they would split up and go in different directions. But by that time, our radar would usually have picked them up.

  *

  Pilot Officer Robert Doe

  When the bombers were coming over at night, we, of course, wanted to put up some defence and shoot down as many as we could. On moonlit nights, volunteers were called for. We were vectored out over the Channel to try to get into the bomber stream and shoot them down before they reached England. It depended completely on luck, on whether you saw them or not. It was not terribly successful.

  *

  Flight Lieutenant Brian Kingcome

  There was the usual fracas when the sky was a mass of wheeling, darting aircraft. And then this strange thing happened which most fighter pilots tell you about. One moment, the sky is full of aircraft. The next moment, it’s empty. You’re on your own. Everyone’s disappeared. You can see one or two aircraft in the distance. But it’s as if someone’s wiped the slate clean.

  It was a beautiful day. I was at 25,000 feet and decided to do an absurd thing. I thought I’d use the occasion to practise a forced landing. I saw three Spitfires behind me and nothing else. So I throttled back and started to glide. I saw Biggin Hill in the distance. My mind was really on the eggs and bacon I hoped to get there.

  A moment later there was a rattle and a bang and a crash. Something hit my leg. I looked around and the three Spitfires I had seen behind drew up alongside me and half rolled away. I don’t know if they had shot me up or if they had shot someone I hadn’t seen off my tail. My aircraft was in a fairly parlous state. There was blood coming out of my flying boot. Being shot didn’t hurt at the time. It was just as if somebody had given me a bump. But bleeding to death was the thing one didn’t want to do so I baled out.

  I was taken to Maidstone Hospital, where the surgeon made an absolute cock of it. He nearly killed me because he tried to find the bullet by following it through the back of my leg without X-raying it. He cut a blood vessel, groping up and down, but couldn’t find the bullet. So he stuffed the wound, which was by that time a foot long, full of gauze and wadding, put it in a plaster cast and crossed his fingers. When I came to, the theatre sister said, ‘Christ, we never expected to see you again.’

  *

  Pilot Officer Robert Doe

  I climbed up through cloud, entirely on my own, following a vector from the Controller. What I forgot was that when you’re climbing out of cloud, you can be seen from above for the last 500 feet, though you can’t see a blind thing till you’re clear of it. The enemy formation was slap over the top of where I was coming out of the cloud. No sooner had I broken cloud than I was hit from in front and behind at virtually the same time. Tracer came right over my shoulder into the petrol tank. Luckily, it didn’t explode. At the same time, I was hit through the shoulder and got shrapnel through my hand. It was time for me to get out of there. I had always known this situation might arise. I had taught myself — I used to go to bed at night thinking it — that if it did happen, I would hit the stick hard forward, as hard forward as I could, because the safest direction you could move was down. So I hit the stick hard forward and got out of the bullet stream. I managed to release my harness and got thrown out through the roof. I fell for a few thousand feet before I discovered where my parachute handle was — I was a little gaga by then. I was shot at by a German plane, but landed on an island in Poole Harbour, slap on my bottom in a quagmire. My legs were in no state to support me.

  A senior surgeon operated on me and did a very good job. He committed suicide a week later. Hospital staff told me he had had a lot of operating failures. It was preying on his mind.

  *

  Pilot Officer Bobby Oxspring

  When the night blitz began, they put us up at night to try to deal with it, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. You couldn’t see a thing. We’d go up in singletons and be given specific patrol lines and specific heights. I did a number of these. I could see the bombs hitting London, clusters of them, and the fires below. But I never saw a bomber up there at night. One or two of our chaps did and one or two opened fire and sometimes they shot something down. But I saw only one thing up there at night during the whole of that time — the glow of twin exhausts. I was above it and heading in the opposite direction. I turned to follow it, but it just melted. I didn’t know where it went. I couldn’t find it again.

  *

  Pilot Officer Desmond Hughes

  At night you flew a patrol line, just using your eyes to look for German bombers. It took me, I think, 200 sorties before I saw one at night. I was surprised when it happened. It was a fairly bright, moonlit night. I found myself sitting about twenty-five yards from its right wing, just a little below it, looking up at it. It never knew we were there. My gunner, Fred Gash, put his turret onto the engine nearest him, blew an enormous hole in it and it went up just like that. It was a fuel injection engine, with all sorts of little fuel injection pipes, and Fred was firing De Wilde incendiary ammunition. The German never knew what hit him.

  We sometimes came across condensation trails at night. I was up around 18,000 feet one night when I came across one of them. I thought, ‘That’s a German bomber. All I’ve got to do is follow it flat out and I’ll find a bomber at the other end.’ What I didn’t notice was that I was flying in a circle. When I finally did notice it, I thought, ‘Ah, he’s taking evasive action.’ It wasn’t till it must have been my third time around that I realized it was my own condensation trail. I’d been chasing myself.

  *

  Sergeant Len Bowman

  One foggy evening at Gravesend, when we were at readiness, we went across to the crew room. We used to sit under a blue lamp there to get our eyes accustomed to the dark before we had to take off. Jimmy Green, my pilot, said, ‘There won’t be any flying tonight, Len, not with this fog.’ We were there about an hour when the telephone rang, telling us to scramble. Jimmy looked out the window and said, ‘Sorry. We can’t take off in this weather. It’s too foggy over here.’ They said, ‘Fair enough.’ A half-hour later they rang again. ‘What’s the weather like over there now?’ Jim looked out the window. ‘Still too foggy,’ he said. This went on for about three hours when I said to Jim, ‘Why don’t we find our way to the cookhouse for a meal?’ I said we could put the other Defiant crew that was going to take over from us on readiness in our place. He said it was a good idea. When we opened the crew room door to go, it was a bright, moonlit night outside. The fog had cleared long before. The blackout material that had been put on the outside of the window had made it look as though it was still foggy. Jim rang up Group and said, ‘It’s just cleared,’ and we took off.

  *

  Sergeant John Burgess

  For me, the Battle of Britain had three phases. Phase one — when I was naive and thought nothing could happen to me. Phase two — when the battle became a highly dangerous sport and you regarded the Germans as supermen to some degree. They always seemed to be on your tail. Phase three — one day, around the end of September, I was returning to base and
saw two aircraft coming up behind me. I turned to take a look at them. They turned out to be enemy aircraft. They had me at a disadvantage. They could have shot me down. But the moment I turned towards them, they both turned away and fled! I suddenly realized the Germans were as scared as I was. It gave us a sense of superiority we didn’t have before.

  *

  Squadron Leader Sandy Johnstone

  When we went up now, we began seeing more and more British aircraft in the sky. This was unusual because previously when we saw anything else up there it was a Hun. Suddenly we were seeing not nearly so many Huns. When they did come over, it very often was only for nuisance raids. They started putting bombs on their 109s. This created something of a problem because they were difficult to find; they came in at low level. We also discovered they were sending over their 109Es, which could fly very high. You used to see them cruising up around 35,000 feet. The Spitfire wasn’t much good in combat above 30,000-32,000 feet. So down at Tangmere, the station commander, the other two squadron commanders and myself got together and said, ‘Why bother to go up after them. Let’s make a maximum height limit for ourselves of 27,000 feet.’ That’s where our aircraft were still pretty manoeuverable. If the Germans wanted to come down and mix it with us, they could jolly well do so. We were not going to go up after them because they were doing no harm up there. They weren’t carrying bombs — with bombs they would have been too heavy to go that high. We cruised around trying to entice them down and a couple of them did come down. They’d just whizz down and go right up again. They didn’t wait to fight it out. That’s when we began to think the tide was turning.

  *

  Squadron Leader Peter Devitt

  We were banking up from Warmwell one day to meet a raid coming in to London. We got to somewhere near Guildford, where we should have met that raid, but it had disappeared. We later learned it had turned back, possibly because we had got in the way. Instead of bombing London, they unloaded their bombs on Sevenoaks. I had all my furniture in store at Young’s Depository at Sevenoaks and I lost the bloody lot. I got a letter from Young’s Depository a few days later saying, ‘Regret but due to enemy action all your furniture has been destroyed.’