Ginger Lacey: Fighter Pilot

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  On 26th July the squadron moved to Gravesend, a former civilian airfield on the south bank of the Thames, near its mouth. Here, they were in the Biggin Hill Sector, with Squadrons Nos. 32, 600 and 610. The officers lived in the control tower. The sergeants slept on camp beds in an empty house just inside the barbed wire fence that had been run round the aerodrome, and ate their meals in a hut behind one of the hangars. In this hangar was the De Havilland Comet in which Scott and Black had won the Mildenhall to Melbourne air race.

  Also on the airfield was a small factory making fuel tanks for Spitfires. The factory hands were soon subjected to a lucrative form of leg-pulling by the sergeant pilots. As soon as an air raid warning was given, the civilians used to drop their work and very sensibly run to the air raid shelters, while 501 Squadron was scrambling. By the time the squadron landed, the workers would be emerging from shelter. This was the appropriate moment for one sergeant pilot to call loudly to another: ‘How did you get on?’ And, whether his friend had seen the enemy or not, back would come the reply: ‘Oh, not too badly. I got a 109 and a Do. 17. What about you?’ ‘Not as well as you. I only got a He. 111.’ To all of which the civilians would listen with grateful admiration.

  In consequence, when the bold sergeants appeared in the local pubs that evening they were almost drowned in free beer.

  The war in the air was putting increasing pressure on Fighter Command: on 27th July, Lacey flew six times, and three times on the next day.

  The most noticeable effect of these strenuous days was the ever-present fatigue. There was always some physical strain in flying a fighter, but this was small compared with the mental effort. At all times the fighter pilot had to keep his reactions razor sharp. When he was simultaneously holding his position accurately in a formation and scanning the sky for the enemy, his whole nervous system protested under the burden. Already the fighter pilots of the R.A.F. were doing more work in one day than mind and body could reasonably support over a whole week. Day after day they flung themselves onto the ground or into a deck chair, when they landed from a patrol, and fell instantly into heavy sleep until the harsh voice of the Tannoy ordered them to scramble again.

  Photographs of Lacey taken during the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain shew a smooth-faced boy who looks eighteen and not the twenty-three that he was. They also shew that he wore his forage cap at what must have been the most rakish angle in the Service: only his right ear seems to keep it on his head at all. Spikes of corn-coloured hair, undefeated by the brush, remind one of a schoolboy’s unruly thatch. Compared with the more rugged aspect of his contemporaries he hardly appears old enough to entrust with an expensive aircraft, let alone capable of leading a section in combat and shooting down the enemy with ferocious accuracy.

  The war, despite the ravaging weeks in France and the tiring weeks at Middle Wallop, despite the eroding effect of reaction to incessant flying, always-lurking danger and the frequent death of friends and comrades, was still very much a game to the fighter boys. A game in which you had time to play practical jokes at the expense of gullible civilians (who would have laughed even more loudly than you, if they had been admitted to the jest); a game in which you spent the daylight hours with your heart thudding in fearful anticipation of the next scramble; a game in which you reverted every evening after stand-down to the normal life of young men like yourself in peacetime: an evening at the flicks or a dance, with some of the boys or one of your girl friends, or over pints of beer in the local.

  At night, there was no difficulty in falling asleep. But sleep was too often restless, invaded by dreams of head-on collisions with Me. 109s, of bullets hammering on the armour plate a few inches behind your head; of some friend whom you had seen going down in flames that afternoon—only a couple of hours before you were ordering a round of beers in the ‘White Hart’ or the ‘Leather Bottle’.

  Sometimes the game was seen to be a very dirty joke indeed. As when, on the day that the squadron moved to Gravesend, ‘Pan’ Cox was shot down—apparently by your own anti-aircraft batteries at Dover.

  ‘Things were getting hectic,’ Lacey remembers. His log-book shews four patrols on the 27th July, and two flights from Gravesend to Hawkinge and back, amounting to almost four hours’ flying in one day with six take-offs, six landings, and four belly-wrenching howls from the Tannoy to ‘scramble, scramble, scramble.’

  On the 29th July, operating from their forward base at Hawkinge, on the Kent coast, 501 were in action over Dover once more; and unhappily, with the opinion they had now formed of the gunners’ aircraft recognition. Of a large force of Ju. 87s and Me. 109s, they shot down six and damaged four. Pilot Officer R. S. Don had to bale out and was taken to hospital. Bringing a damaged aircraft in to land, Pilot Officer E. G. Parkin overshot, injured himself, and another pilot was temporarily non-effective in hospital.

  The pilot strength of the squadron at the end of July, was:

  Squadron leader H. A. V. Hogan, Flight Lieutenant G. E. B. Stoney, Pilot Officers P. R. Hairs, K. N. T. Lee, R. S. Don, E. G. Parkin, J. A. Gibson, K. R. Aldridge, A. J. Bland, R. C. Dafforn, B. L. Duckenfield, Midshipman L. Lennard, Flight Sergeants Morfill and Payne, Sergeants Howarth, Wilkinson, Lacey, McKay and Farnes.

  Pilot Officer F. T. Andrews was Adjutant, Pilot Officer J. C. Nixon., Intelligence Officer, and the Medical Officer was Flight Lieutenant D. A. Davies.

  August began with a sluggishness which was, withal, ominous. The world knew that a tremendous German invasion of Britain must be imminent. The civil population wondered when, where and how terribly the first massive air raids would begin. They braced themselves to face paratroops and a sea-borne force that might strike anywhere. Fighter Command, in its Staff offices, its Operations Rooms and its squadrons, nerved itself for the looming battle against crushing odds.

  Yet the atmosphere of a game persisted. No. 501 Squadron patrolled daily from Gravesend and Hawkinge; while on the ground, the pilots’ nerves were stretched taut by the anticipation of the shrill order to scramble that would come at any moment from the Tannoy loudspeakers; when the day’s work was done and they were lined up in their best blue, along some congenial pub’s bar, nothing seemed more unreal than German gunfire and the stench of an aircraft in flames. The R.A.F. played cricket against the Fire Service at Lord’s, and the rush to see an evening paper was as much concerned with seeing how the teams had done as with learning about the war situation.

  Nothing can break the British spirit, and adversity only strengthens it; yet dismay is to be avoided, and it was therefore as well that the real danger in which the country lay was known to so few.

  At the start of the Battle of Britain, the R.A.F. serving at home could call on 1,250 fighter pilots and about 600 fighter aircraft. The total squadron strength of Fighter Command was 29 of Hurricanes and 19 of Spitfires. No. 11 Group, which covered south-east England and must therefore expect to carry the greatest burden, mustered 6 Spitfire Squadrons and 13 Hurricane squadrons.

  Controlling and positioning the fighters from the ground was the duty of the Control and Reporting System, an organization in which radio, radar and the Royal Observer Corps were integrated.

  Overall control was exercised from the Operations Room at H.Q. Fighter Command, where a table map shewed the whole of the British Isles and the seas for forty miles around. On this table were vari-coloured arrows and symbols, shewing the position, direction of flight, strength and height of every single aircraft or formation which was airborne anywhere within the whole British area. On the walls were displayed details of the squadrons, with their available aircraft and pilots, throughout the Command; for purposes of reinforcement and tactics.

  The four Groups of Fighter Command (No. 10 in the west, No. 11 in the south-east, No. 12 in the midlands and No. 13 in the north) each had a H.Q. Operations Room, which reported to that at Fighter Command, and shewed, on its map table, similar information but limited to its own area and small overlaps of its neighbouring Groups.

&nb
sp; Within each Group there were Sectors, corresponding roughly to the main airfields; and it was from these Sector Operations Rooms that the ground fighter controllers were in direct radio contact with the fighters.

  Information about anticipated enemy movements in the air was first reported from radio listening posts which listened out for snatches of German radio-telephone conversations that would betray activity across the Channel. As soon as enemy aircraft were airborne, they became liable to detection by the radar stations around the British coast. The original chain of these was known as ‘Chain, Home’ or C.H., and its stations could only pick up aircraft flying above a certain altitude and without accuracy in counting numbers or assessing range. Later, a different type of radar was introduced to supplement these, known as ‘Chain, Home, Low.’: this equipment was able to follow aeroplanes down to lower altitudes and to obtain readings on range and numbers. Last of all came ‘Chain, Home, Extra Low’; but with the increase in sensitivity there went the penalty of vulnerability to interference: the more accurate equipment was also more affected by cloud and other conditions.

  Aircraft flying within sight of shore or overland were reported by Royal Observer Corps posts, whose staffs depended on phenomenal ability at aircraft recognition and a few simple means of computing heights and speeds.

  All this reporting by radar and observers went straight to the Group Filter Rooms. Here, naturally, there was much duplication and multiplication of plots; brought about by several sources reporting the same formation. From the jumble of plots shewn on the map tables; Filter Officers resolved a single plot for each raid (the term for all aircraft, whether single or in formation, whether friendly or hostile), using the best information from all that available. These filtered plots were then rapidly told through to Group and Sector Operations Rooms: mainly by exceedingly attractive W.A.A.F. plotters, who spent long spells with head-and-breast sets on, in watches of forty-eight hours on duty and twenty-four hours off, accurately passing vital information which, though it appeared in front of them as prosaic, impersonal letters and figures, affected men’s lives and the safety of Christian civilization.

  A Sector Operations Room was an annexe of a fighter pilot’s cockpit, an extension of his faculties, an extra pair of eyes and a sixth sense of intuition.

  On the sunken floor stood a large-scale plotting table around which W.A.A.F. and airmen stood, wearing head-and-breast sets, receiving information from the Group Filter Room. With long rakes, like those of croupiers, they moved coloured arrows to shew the progress of each raid. Alongside these were small stands on which were the identity, height and strength of the raid. Friendly fighters appeared with the prefix ‘F’ in red on a white ground. Hostiles with a bold, black ‘H’ on a minatory yellow.

  On a balcony above the plotting floor were ranged four Deputy Controllers, usually N.C.O.s, who, with a chart and a course-and-speed computer, could work out the track of any individual Hostile or Fighter and direct the pilot of the latter towards the former. On the main balcony a few feet higher sat the Controller. He would control fighters directly from the plots shewn on the table or hand them over to one of his deputies. Beside him were an Army Searchlight Officer and an Anti-Aircraft Officer, who, on the Controller’s orders, instructed their respective sites to illuminate or fire or remain inactive.

  Messages were passed from ground to air in a simple code. ‘Angels’ meant height in thousands of feet—‘Angels fifteen’, 15,000 ft—‘Vector’, meant steer. Enemy aircraft were ‘Bandits’, and an order to land, refuel and rearm was simply ‘Pancake’.

  A close relationship quickly grew between fighter pilots and their controllers. All that the latter could do, in the early days, was to put their fighters up-sun and above the enemy, and to vector them to the best position in the shortest possible time. They also had to maintain a flow of information about the enemy, without being so long-winded that the pilots either forgot what they had been told or were left no time for the vital exchange of messages among themselves. A good controller made an essential contribution to a successful interception; a bad one could ruin the chances of the best of pilots.

  Here, then, lay Britain’s strength in those opening days of August 1940.

  The R.A.F. was faced by three German Air Fleets. In Denmark and Norway, Air Fleet No. 5 had 40 fighters (twin-engine), 130 bombers and 50 reconnaissance machines. In France, Belgium, Holland and northern Germany, Air Fleets Nos. 2 and 3 primed themselves for the main assault. 60 reconnaissance aeroplanes, 250 twin- and 800 single-engine fighters, and 1,450 bombers were operational and fully crewed, with ample men in reserve.

  Only the vagaries of the British summer, with its sudden days of overcast, rain or haze, delayed the onslaught.

  CHAPTER SEVEN - The Height of the Battle

  On Thursday the 8th August 1940, it came.

  Four hundred German aircraft operated over the south coast of England and along the English Channel; but most of the activity was well to the west, in the Sussex and Hampshire areas, and 501 Squadron was not called upon to join battle.

  The weather in Kent and east Sussex was still bad. Sergeants Howarth and Wilkinson, landing together in bad visibility, collided and wrote off both their aircraft without, happily, injuring themselves.

  Strange faces were beginning to appear on the squadron, too: Polish pilots, who had escaped by a variety of routes when their homeland was over-run, were coming to fortify the R.A.F., Flying Officer Witorzenc, and Pilot Officers Lukaszewics, Zenker and Kortowski, were posted to 501.

  It was not until the 12th August that the squadron played its part again in the main defence of the island.

  At half-past eleven that morning, when airborne on their way to Hawkinge from Gravesend, the Controller at Biggin Hill called them sharply. ‘Vector zero-eight-zero. Thirty bandits approaching Thames estuary.’

  They had been cruising at economical speed, called ‘Liner’. The Squadron Commander snapped ‘Buster’ on the R/T and instantly, as they swung to port on an easterly heading, they increased to maximum cruising speed.

  ‘Bandits at Angels four,’ the Controller told them.

  ‘Message received and understood.’ The leader was curt, scanning the sky.

  Occasionally the R/T crackled as a section leader chided one of his wing men for keeping bad formation; once or twice someone called out that he had spotted what looked like a formation dead ahead … and then they all saw them.

  ‘Nasty, wicked-looking little Ju. 87s, diving absolutely vertically, trying to bomb a destroyer. The destroyer was putting up a magnificent show; doing everything except slow rolls.’

  There was an escort of Me. 109s, but the Hurricanes went straight for the Stukas. Lacey picked out one which was streaking eastward at sea level. The dryness in his mouth had gone, now that nervous anticipation had given place to the excitement of the chase. With his right flying boot hooked into the toe-strap of the rudder bar and his left beating its usual tattoo on the floor of the cockpit, he overtook his quarry and lined it up for a deflection shot from above and to the left. A three-second burst, and he broke to the right to come in again from that side. Another three-second burst, a spurt of flame-shot smoke, and a pillar of water foaming and creaming up as the dive bomber plunged beneath the sea.

  Pulling the stick hard back he climbed furiously to 4,000 ft. again and fastened his eyes on another Ju. 87, which dropped its bombs in the estuary as soon as it saw him coming, and turned east. Throttling back, Lacey opened fire from 250 yards dead astern, while tracer from the rear guns hurtled past his wings and over his cockpit canopy. His mouth was dry again: that damned tracer, every sizzling streak of it looking as though it was going to pierce through his guts. He kept his thumb on the firing button, feeling the shuddering of his Hurricane as its eight Brownings hammered at the rear turret. Suddenly, the air ahead was clear: there was no more tracer; he had killed the rear gunner. He was within a hundred yards now, gaining. At fifty yards, the enemy was on the fringe of a bank of c
loud and Lacey opened fire once more. The Ju. 87 flick rolled to the left, out of control, with a dense plume of black smoke spouting from its engine. Then he lost sight of it and as he did not see it hit the water or the ground he could only claim it as a probable.

  At 1240 the squadron scrambled from Gravesend to the Manston and Ramsgate district, where they found 30 Me. 110 Jaguars and 20 Me. 109s at 5,000 ft.

  Lacey slanted down from the starboard quarter, onto a Me. 110, starting to shoot at 250 yards and continuing till he was out of ammunition. White smoke belched from both engines and he saw the pilot bale out.

  Two Me. 1.09s were on his tail, he had no ammunition left, so he opened the taps and plunged into a big cloud and stayed there till he was out of harm’s way.

  Flying Officer Lukaszewicz was killed in this action.

  Landing, eating a hasty lunch of bully beef sandwiches and strong tea, out at the dispersal point, he flung himself into a canvas chair and was just falling asleep when one of the other N.C.O. pilots shook his shoulder.

  ‘Hey! Ginger.’

  ‘Whaddayouwan’? Go’way …’

  ‘There’s a visiting Air Marshal around the place.’

  ‘I’ll stand up when he gets around here—if I’m awake.’

  ‘It’s the Inspector General, Air Chief Marshal Sir Ludlow Hewitt.’

  ‘Well, he can take my place on the next scramble, if he likes. God! I’m tired.’

  ‘Look out: here he comes …’

  There were other visitors at that instant also. The air raid sirens wailed just as a formation of He. 111s and Ju. 88s swept over. The bombs burst deafeningly around the aerodrome, and ‘The I.G., although so much older than we were, was just as nippy at diving down slit trenches!’

  But despite the bodily and mental tiredness, there was a party after the squadron’s return to Gravesend: Sergeant Pilot J. H. Lacey was gazetted that day as having been awarded a Distinguished Flying Medal.