The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  So it was that at 5 a.m. the pilots of 87 Squadron awoke at Senon to the sound of ack-ack guns and then, more menacingly, the intense crump of bombs exploding, which shook the ground and tents in which the pilots had been sleeping. Roland ‘Bee’ Beamont, nineteen years old, had already had an interrupted night as he had been feeling increasingly unwell, and had only just got to sleep when the explosions began.

  ‘Ack-ack – ’ell!’ shouted his tent partner, Johnny Cock, as more explosions sent the lamp in the middle of their tent swinging. A moment later, Johnny had disappeared outside. Clutching his stomach, Bee followed, to find a group of pyjama-clad pilots standing in a clearing in the trees beside the airfield, gazing up at the sky as a formation of German bombers thundered overhead.

  Minutes later, the pilots were scrambled, hastily putting on flying gear over their pyjamas and running for their Hurricanes as the ground-crew started up their machines. There could be no flying for Bee, however, who, wracked by dysentery, was forced to return groaning to his camp bed; it was not the first time he or other pilots had suffered because of the poor standard of conditions at their airfields in France.

  Bee may have been prostrate in his tent, but before 6 a.m., the rest of the 87 Squadron pilots were already engaged in fighting over Thionville near the Luxembourg border. ‘The boys got four Huns before breakfast,’ noted Bee, ‘and Voase Jeff was attacked by an Me 109* while force-landing with a damaged radiator, but he got away with it.’ Voase Jeff had been hit earlier by return fire from a Dornier 17.

  To the west, at airfields spread through northern France behind the BEF, the main part of the RAF Air Component was also now hastily preparing to carry out its duty in support of the BEF. At Méharicourt to the south-east of Amiens in the Somme Valley, 18 Squadron of twin-engine Blenheims were slightly slower off the mark, however. Pilot Officer Arthur Hughes, a tall, lean-faced 24-year-old, was only woken at 7 a.m. when the wireless in his room was switched on. Still half asleep, he listened drowsily to the news until realizing that the announcer was talking about the invasion of Holland and Belgium. Jumping out of bed, he hurriedly dressed wondering whether it would be the last time he performed such a routine.

  At the mess, no-one was quite sure what was going on, but as the pilots began to gather and there were still no orders, they decided to have breakfast. ‘When we began at 8.10,’ Arthur scribbled in his diary, ‘we were at Readiness 1. By the time I finished at Readiness 2. At 8.40 a.m. I was ordered off on a photographic reconnaissance.’ Rushing to flights, he felt a mixture of emotions: devil-may-care yet horribly scared and wildly excited all at the same time.

  Having mentally prepared himself for immediate action, Arthur was then told that Pilot Officer Smith would be undertaking the visual recce instead – over Venlo, where Helmut Damm and the 171st Infantry Division were crossing into Belgium. Several tense hours followed, with Arthur and the other pilots hanging around near their flight, waiting for news. Smith got back at 11.30 reporting that Brussels was blazing fiercely, and that all of the bridges along the Moselle had been blown up. ‘He also saw some nuns running frantically along the bank,’ added Arthur. Smith had then been attacked by an Me 110, a German twin-engine fighter, and although hit, managed to evade his attacker by flying at only fifty feet off the ground at 285 mph, as fast as the Blenheim could take him. The only problem was that by flying so low, he exposed himself to enemy small-arms fire and was hit again. Fortunately, he managed to make it back to Méharicourt in one piece.

  Meanwhile, further west, the pilots and aircrew of the Advanced Air Striking Force were also hurriedly being scrambled into the air. 1 Squadron, part of the Advanced Air Striking Force at Vassincourt to the south-east of Reims in northern France, had been woken at 3.30 a.m. and told to head straight to the airfield. With conditions considerably better than 87 Squadron’s, the pilots were billeted comfortably in the nearby village of Neuville, with a splendid mess in the Mairie. Twenty-two-year-old Billy Drake was one of the 1 Squadron pilots who hurried straight from his digs to the Mairie, where a lorry was waiting to take them all to the airfield. Ever since April had turned to May, they had heard rumours that something might soon be afoot and now, on this Friday morning, they heard aircraft overhead as they approached the airfield.

  Hurrying from the lorry, they headed over to the dispersal tent and the ‘A’ Flight commander, Flight Lieutenant ‘Johnny’ Walker, immediately rang through to Operations to find out what was going on. With the kind of insouciance that was a feature of 1 Squadron in particular, Johnny returned laughing, reporting that Ops were in a hell of a stew. ‘Plots all over the board,’ he grinned.

  They did not have to wait long. At 5 a.m. the phone in the dispersal tent rang with orders for them to scramble and patrol Metz at 20,000 feet. They headed off in two flights, Billy with ‘B’ Flight led by Flight Lieutenant ‘Prosser’ Hanks. Having taken off, they formed up into two sections of three, maintaining the tight figure ‘V’ vics that they had trained at so assiduously, and with a further pilot following behind as ‘arse-end Charlie’ protecting their rear. Climbing through the thick early-morning haze, at around 5,000 feet they emerged into bright clear sunlight.

  The problem was that with no controller on the ground vectoring them into position, they were now on their own. They could barely see the French countryside below; nor could they see any aircraft at all.

  The pilots of the RAF and Armée de l’Air were very quickly discovering just how confusing air warfare could be and how all the balls were in the court of the attacker. Neither side had an early-warning system such as radar. This mattered less to the Luftwaffe because the pilots knew before they took off where they were heading and when. For the Allied airmen, however, it was a question of responding to visual reports – which invariably arrived too late – or of mounting patrols in the hope of spotting some of the enemy.

  Eventually, however, ‘B’ Flight did spy a formation of Dornier 17s, which they attacked. ‘Boy’ Mould overshot and had his Hurricane riddled with bullets as a result, but Prosser Hanks managed to down one. Soon after, Billy managed to get separated from his section because he had been watching some Me 109s in the distance over Metz. Two 109s attacked him, but Billy managed to elude them and then get behind one of them himself. Closing in, Billy was almost within firing range, but the German pilot dived down towards the deck* and sped towards the German frontier. Following him, Billy crossed over into Germany only to watch the German pilot fly underneath some electric cables, hoping Billy would follow and hit them. Fortunately, he managed the same feat himself and opened fire with his eight Browning .303 machine guns. Much to his satisfaction, the 109 crashed in flames into a wood, exploding on impact.

  *

  Although 87 Squadron had been tussling with the Luftwaffe, there was comparatively little enemy air activity over north-east France that day. The full weight of the Luftwaffe was reserved for the skies of Holland, Belgium and north-west France. Quite deliberately, as part of the German deception measures, the mass of bombers and dive-bombers – as well as airborne landings – took place in the north in support of Army Group B. Luftwaffe activity over the Ardennes was left primarily to the fighters, whose task it was to pounce on any unsuspecting Allied reconnaissance aircraft that dared to show its face.

  Thus the beginning of the campaign was primarily the task of Luftflotte 2, under the command of Generaloberst Albert Kesselring. ‘Smiling Albert’, as he was known because of his even temper and willingness to break into a wide grin, was popular amongst both his superiors and subordinates, lacking as he did the patrician hauteur of many of the leading commanders in the Wehrmacht. There was certainly nothing particularly striking about him: his was a slightly bulky, rather bland, almost forgettable face. Yet underneath lay an iron will and a ruthless determination. Both efficient and pragmatic – as well as an unrepentant optimist – Kesselring was a cool-headed and intelligent man; precisely the kind of person a more flamboyant character like Göring needed to command
one of his primary air fleets.

  After the 1914–18 war, Kesselring had remained in the post-war army, demonstrating his aptitude as a staff officer, and where he steadily rose to the rank of Colonel with the command of a division. With the birth of the clandestine Luftwaffe in 1933, Kesselring was one of those drawn from the army by Göring to help build the new air force. Given a necessarily civilian post he set to work running the administration and airfield development of the Luftwaffe. He also taught himself to fly and worked hard to develop the Luftwaffe strategically and tactically. By 1936, he was back in uniform, both as a general and as the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff.

  At the onset of war, Kesselring was in charge of the 1st Air Fleet that helped launch the blitzkrieg on Poland with such devastating results, and then had taken over as Chief of the Berlin Air Command. In January, the Mechelen incident had taken place, with Göring subjected to a considerable torrent of rage from Hitler as a result. He in turn called his senior commanders together to give them a severe dressing down. First the commander and Chief of Staff of Luftflotte 2 were sacked, and then the rest of his senior commanders were called in. After rollocking them all, he turned to Kesselring and snarled, ‘And you will take over Luftflotte 2 – because there’s no-one else.’

  When Kesselring did take over in January, he was pleasantly surprised to find Luftflotte 2 in an advanced state of preparation already, yet the new commander recognized there was still much to do. Strenuous weeks from February to May were spent with staff conferences, plan revisions and operation rehearsals both on the ground and in the air. The thorny issue for Kesselring was the timing and co-ordination of the airborne forces to be used, of whom he had no real experience, with the bombers. Thus Kesselring had been understandably nervous that morning of 10 May. ‘I breathed a sigh of relief,’ he noted, ‘when the first favourable reports came in.’

  The aim of the airborne operations – the planning of which had greatly interested the Führer – was to catch the enemy off guard and to secure airfields and key defences in Holland and Belgium. To reach the drop zones, rather a large number of slow, poorly protected Junkers 52 transport planes and even more vulnerable gliders had to fly over much of Holland and Belgium and it was the task of fighters to escort them and give them as much protection as possible.

  Amongst those accompanying the airdrops were the Messerschmitt 109s of the three fighter groups of JG 27. The second group were supporting paratroopers of the 7th Fliegerdivision in the Rotterdam area. Flying from Wesel in the Rhine Valley, the II Gruppe first flew over Holland covering one of the later waves of paratroopers. One of the pilots in the 6th Staffel, and flying his first combat mission, was Julius Neumann. Blond and good-looking, the 21-year-old Julius was the second of five children from Harzgerrode in the Harz Mountains. The son of a lawyer who had fought in the First World War, Julius was part of a close and happy middle-class family. His ambition, however, had originally been to join the army. In April 1936, he had joined the labour corps, the Arbeitsdienst, as an officer cadet attached to the 51st Infantry Regiment. After a year he was sent to the officers’ school in Munich, but eighteen months later was transferred to join the Luftwaffe instead. ‘Göring needed pilots,’ he says. ‘You had to be physically and mentally fit and intelligent enough.’ Out of 600 at the officers’ school, half were sent to flight school, and one of them was Julius. ‘At the beginning of your time in the army, you had to sign a contract,’ he adds, ‘and wherever you were needed, you had to go.’ Unusually for a young man, Julius had no particular interest in flying, but he accepted his fate and duly went to the pilot school in Werneuchen, near Berlin.

  This was the A/B school for elementary flying training, which consisted of building up some 150 hours of flying in biplane trainers. It was a thorough and extensive course, and only at the end of it was Julius finally awarded his pilot’s certificate and badge. It was also at this point that he was posted to train as a fighter pilot – after an assessment not only of his flying abilities but his character too. He was delighted. ‘At fighter pilot school you found the same type of people,’ he says. ‘Fighter pilots are individualists.’ Fighter pilot school lasted another three months in which he began flying the Me 108 trainer and then early models of the Me 109. With a further fifty hours to his name and having survived – the accident rate among trainee pilots on 109s was high – he was finally posted to a fighter group, JG 26, with around 200 hours in his logbook. There he had stayed until February, when he had been posted again, this time to Magdeburg as a Leutnant in the 6th Staffel of JG 27.

  Not until the beginning of May were the 5th and 6th Staffeln moved to Wesel as the Jagdgeschwader made its final preparations for the offensive. Everyone had been both excited and apprehensive about what was to come. Now, at a little after half-past eight on the morning of 10 May, Julius was flying in combat for the first time, escorting Ju 52s as they ferried their second load of airborne troops to the drop zones.

  Having completed escort duties of the airborne troops, however, JG 27’s task was to then provide protection for the aerial artillery of VIII Fliegerkorps consisting principally of twin-engine Dornier 17s and the already world-famous Junkers 87 dive-bomber. Organizing the Jagdgeschwader on the ground was a highly frustrated 28-year-old Hauptmann, Adolf Galland, JG 27’s adjutant. Desperate to get in the air and specifically in the cockpit of an Me 109, Galland had been a fighter pilot with the German Condor Legion that had been sent to Spain to support General Franco’s Nationalists. There, he had led a Staffel of Heinkel He 51 biplanes operating in direct support of Franco’s troops on the ground. In this he had been rather hoisted by his own petard, for he had performed the task so well that when he came back from Spain he had become an acknowledged ground attack expert. After a brief stint commanding a Staffel of the embryonic JG 52, then designated JG 433, he had been moved back to ground attack and given his own Gruppe of Henschel 123s. For someone as passionate about shooting and air combat as Adolf Galland, commanding yet more biplanes was clearly unacceptable. Managing to persuade a doctor to pass him medically unfit to fly in an open cockpit, he demanded a transfer to a fighter unit. This he was given, but as Geschwader adjutant the opportunities for flying had been limited, especially since JG 27 was a developing formation and right up until May was still working up to strength.

  Thus on 10 May, ‘Dolfo’, as he was known, was busy supporting staff operations, liaising with General von Richtofen’s VIII Fliegerkorps, and ensuring that each Staffel within the Geschwader knew exactly what it should be doing. Soon, though, he promised himself, he would get up in the air himself.

  It was a hard first day of air fighting. At Méharicourt, only three Blenheims had been sent out on reconnaissance missions all day. Why so few is not clear, except that they were not achieving very much. After Pilot Officer Smith had returned with his aircraft damaged, Pilot Officer Geoff Harding had been ordered into the air. He had not returned. Later in the afternoon, after the airfield was bombed, Pilot Officer Dixon was sent off on another low-level recce mission. By evening, he had also failed to make it back. ‘Two out of three!’ wrote Arthur Hughes. Nor would they return: Geoff Harding’s Blenheim had been shot down by an Me 109 near Venlo, while Dixon’s had been hit by ground fire in the same area. Only one man out of the two three-man crews survived.

  In the evening three Hurricanes of 79 Squadron landed, having been at Biggin Hill to the south-east of London in the morning, then sent to Manston on the tip of Kent and from there to France. They had been supposed to spend the night at Mons-en-Chaussée but, having chased a Dornier, got lost and so landed at Méharicourt instead. Arthur was amazed to see that one of the pilots was still wearing his pyjamas underneath his flying overalls.

  Meanwhile, 87 Squadron had been ordered back to Lille-Marcq airfield this time, rather than Lille-Seclin where they had been before. Bee Beamont, still gripped with dysentery, had spent the morning lying on some bundles of kit while the groundcrew frantically packed up. The ambulance that was d
ue to take him back to Lille never turned up and, after staggering around for it, he stumbled back to the airfield just as it came under attack once more. The rest of the pilots, having a last drink before leaving, dived for the cover of the neighbouring wood as the bombs began falling, so that almost every other tree had a prostrate form behind it. ‘It was an interesting experience,’ noted Bee, ‘listening to the whistle of the bombs and having guessing competitions with one’s next-door neighbour as to where the next one would land, while a nightingale would absolutely on no account be diverted from his solo in an oak overhead.’ After the raid, Bee eventually secured a lift to Lille from their French interpreter, Capitaine Lasseud of the Armée de l’Air.

  At Vassincourt, 1 Squadron had also had a busy day. After his first victory, Billy Drake had safely made it back and had then flown again around midday when ‘B’ Flight were ordered to provide cover for RAF bombers attacking Luxembourg. They never found the bombers, but did run into some Dorniers and, above them, some 109s. Recognizing that they were in a hopeless position to attack with the German fighters hovering above, Prosser Hanks ordered them not to attack. Just then a vic of three Hurricanes from a different squadron pounced on the Dorniers. A moment later, the 109s were peeling down on them like hawks, and in a trice one of the Hurricanes was tumbling to the ground in flames.

  Back on the ground again, the entire squadron was ordered to move, to nearby Berry-au-Bac. ‘B’ Flight took off again, and this time Billy and ‘Boy’ Mould shared in shooting down a Heinkel 111 bomber. Arriving back down at Berry, they were soon bombed again. Fortunately, although some of the bombs landed close to the prostrate pilots, most fell wide, killing a neighbouring farmer and his son. Later that evening they took off again on yet another patrol. Smoke was now rising from several towns and villages. The airfield at Reims Champagne had been badly bombed. Here and there, farmhouses burned, angry flames and smoke pitching into the sky. They eventually went to bed as dusk fell. At 2.45 a.m. they would be woken again. ‘There was a feeling that total chaos was reigning,’ says Billy. ‘Germans were everywhere and we were constantly being bombed. In between we were flying four or five times a day.’