Ginger Lacey: Fighter Pilot

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  The R/T was bristling with the usual crisp warnings, interspersed with the Controller’s orders and information.

  ‘Behind you, Red Two ...’

  ‘Break left, Blue Three, break left …’

  ‘Can you see him, Green Leader?’

  ‘I’ll take the one on the extreme left, Red Section …’

  Lacey’s section attacked the three top-cover 109s before they were able to launch their own attack. He took the leader for himself: its red-painted cowling rather asked for trouble. As they dived in line astern, he put nine seconds’ worth of ammunition into the fuselage and wings, taking his thumb from the trigger when the target banked out of his line of fire. Breaking steeply with it, he endeavoured to line up his guns for another burst but held his fire when he saw the hood whip open and the pilot plunge out.

  All the other 109s were engaged, as there was another British squadron in the area by then, so he set his sights on a Do. 215 at the rear of the formation. Glancing down, he saw that the pilot of the Messerschmitt had done a delayed drop and opened his parachute five thousand feet below.

  He fired at the Do. 215s starboard engine and almost at once it turned to the right with smoke feathering out from the nacelle. He fired again, but his ammunition ran out and he last saw the bomber making its way slowly across the sea, losing height.

  In the afternoon, over Dungeness, with his stomach still raw from the retching effect of the Tannoy’s ‘501 Squadron scramble!’ he led Yellow Section into an armada of 30 He. 111s, 3o Do, 214s, 20 Ju. 88s, and 30 Me. 109s and 110s.

  At 300 yards he began with a three-second shot at a Me. 109 which was leading a vic of five. It produced a dramatic result: the enemy fighter exploded with a violence that swept its companions aside, turning one of them upside down. Lacey felt his Hurricane bucketing in the churning air, and he instinctively shut his eyes as he swept into the ball of smoke which eddied around the explosion. A hail of metal from the shattered aircraft rattled against his wings and canopy and for a moment he thought that he was under fire.

  Bursting out of the smoke he heeled over to tear into an attack on the remaining four with Yellow Two and Three holding their positions on either side of him. The sky was strewn with darting, feinting, lunging fighters, and with bombers which clumsily tried to evade the Spitfires and Hurricanes that could spare a few seconds from the Messerschmitts. Somewhere in this tangle, Yellow Section used all their ammunition without being able to make any more certain claims.

  The war had been in progress for a year, and Fighter Command had brought down, 1,776 German aeroplanes. Flying sorties of about only an hour’s duration, fighter pilots had covered 17,000,000 miles: of these, 4,500,000 were flown in August 1940.

  The pattern of the times is inexorable and appears to be never-ending. Rise at an early hour: 4 a.m., perhaps, certainly never later than 6.30. Fly a standing patrol somewhere around ‘Hell’s Corner’, the south-east angle of England. Land at Hawkinge. Scramble … scramble … and scramble again. One more standing patrol, waiting for an enemy who might or might not come. Back to Gravesend. Maybe, a night stand-by. If not, a hurried visit to some place where there are ordinary people to mix with and take one’s mind off revs. and boost and deflection shots. Finally, a flop into bed and instant sleep, with always the semi-conscious appreciation that tomorrow might be ones last day of life. Or the day after that. Sometime next week at the latest, surely, with the huge enemy formations coming and coming again, and the odds seldom better than five to one.

  And still there is room for humour. The growing number of Poles, Czechs, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians and Frenchmen appearing on R.A.F. stations, gives rise to new problems and birth to new anecdotes. A favourite one is about the Polish airman who, on being told by a Station Commander that he is to be remanded for a Court Martial, drops instantly in a dead faint. It is only when the interpreter explains that, at home, this usually means execution by a firing squad within four hours, that the C.O. understands why it is that he cannot strike similar terror into the hearts of his British airmen. There is another, too, about the foreign nobleman, commanding a unit of his countrymen, who had to be dissuaded from his feudal method of dispensing justice: arguing against the necessity to hear evidence when a man is on a charge, he declares ‘If I say he is guilty, he is guilty.’ The R.A.F. likes those stories.

  The 5th September. ‘501 Squadron scramble!’

  The familiar voice of the Controller. ‘I’ve got some trade for you coming in from the south. Maintain Vector one-zero-zero, making Angels twenty-five.’

  And the C.O., matter-of-fact, sounding even indifferent. ‘Understood. Any idea how many Bandits?’

  ‘Looks like sixty-plus.’

  ‘Good show.’

  A few seconds’ pause, then some wit breaks R/T silence with a terrifyingly realistic imitation of machine-gun fire, in the best music hall style.

  But you can’t hide your identity from men with whom you share almost every waking second. The Boss, sounding reluctantly amused, tells him to shut up.

  The Controller again. ‘What Angels now?’

  ‘Just passing through Angels twenty-two.’

  ‘O.K. Level out. Trade approaching from south at Angels eighteen.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘I’m going to turn you, presently, and bring you in from up-sun.’

  ‘Thanks!’ The irony in the leader’s acknowledgment is not entirely accidental.

  ‘Bandits three-o’clock, range forty. Start turning now onto two-seven-zero.’

  The squadron wheel, turning to their right so that they will face the enemy who is approaching from the south. They settle down to a due westerly heading, and the Controller’s voice gives them some more help. ‘Bandits now ten-o’clock, range fifteen.’

  They begin to wriggle on their parachute packs, feeling the chafing of their harness straps as sweat starts involuntarily to run over their backs and chests. In their silk gloves, palms grow moist while mouths feel dry and eyes burn with the concentration of staring, staring, always staring … at the man ahead and the man on your wing … at the burning, sunlit sky ….

  ‘Target should be eleven-o’clock, range five …’

  And instantly the leader’s exultant ‘I’ve got ’em … Tallyho! Tallyho!’ And the tight wheel, with your heart pounding and your eyes smarting with the glare on those threatening cross-shapes which are suddenly Messerschmitts and Dorniers and Heinkels in countless numbers. The air around you boils and seethes as you are tossed around and sucked down by slipstream and explosion. Here a bomber goes to smithereens in a mighty thunderclap that almost shatters your Perspex windscreen, as incendiary bullets hit its bomb bays. There a fighter in an inverted, flaming spin—God! You see it is a Hurricane and recognize the letters on its side … so much for your double date that evening to take those two girls to a dance … one of them would have to find another partner … and now there are three 109s on your tail and you are on the tail of one yourself. Who would get whom first?

  Grip the stick, thumb poised over firing button. Ease the throttle back a shade … one … two … three … four seconds—would the brute never show signs of damage? Ah! That is better: a puff of smoke … another two seconds … a flicker of crimson along the edge of his cowling … then, suddenly, the 109 is on its back and a sprawling figure is dropping from its open cockpit.

  Look in the mirror, throttle back, watch the three behind overshoot, open the taps again, get the rearmost in your sights … one, two, three seconds … a vomit of oil-streaked smoke, the Me. staggers, a sliver of metal drums against your cowling … you see a wingtip sawn off as you give another burst … and the pilot doesn’t get away from that one.

  One hour and forty-five minutes later, you land back from the longest operational sortie you have flown to date, but with two more Me. 109s confirmed to bring your score up to fifteen.

  On the 6th, there is more fighting, in which Sergeants Adams and Houghton are killed.

  On
the 7th you do an air test, and go on leave.

  ‘I had a special reason for wanting to go home on leave to Wetherby then. I had not told my mother that I had been given a D.F.M. and I wanted to be at home when it was published in the Press.’

  It was a laudably filial consideration, but the maternal reception, as he was greeted at the door of 15 Fairfield Villas, was hardly what he had expected.

  Ginger is not the tallest of men, but his mother’s eye-level was at about that of the flying badge on his left breast.

  ‘What are you wearing that ribbon for, Jim ?’

  Might as well make a joke of it … ‘I thought it would be a good idea: get me more drinks in the local pubs !’

  ‘Well,’ he was told firmly, ‘you’re not going out with that stitched on you. Take it down immediately.’ So he stayed at home that evening.

  ‘Of course the next day the announcement was in the newspapers; and then I was in trouble again: because I didn’t want her to worry about the fact that I had ever been in any danger.’

  On the day that he went on leave, his squadron took part in an interception of the biggest formation of enemy bombers yet to be seen in this war: four waves of them, each numbering a hundred, with strong fighter escort. For an hour and a half they pounded the London docks, leaving them in flames whose glare could be seen in the evening sky, five hours later, from twenty miles away. The R.A.F., for the loss of twenty-two aircraft and thirteen pilots, brought down over a hundred hostiles.

  A week’s leave didn’t take long to get through. Perhaps the best part of it was being able to sleep late every morning and to eat good meals at his leisure.

  When he rejoined the squadron, on the 13th September, they were at Kenley, thirteen miles south of London and four from Croydon, where they had been posted on the l0th.

  The move was popular with the squadron. They were delighted to find that ‘The station was populated by W.A.A.F. Talk about high life! At least, after having been the only squadron at Gravesend, with a very small Station Headquarters, and pretty much in the wilds there, we thought it was.’

  A fifty-minute patrol yielded nothing, and then the weather deteriorated.

  But it wasn’t long before Ops. were on the telephone to the crew room to ask for a volunteer to take off and look for a Heinkel which was somewhere over London. ‘But,’ they warned, ‘owing to the unbroken cloud everywhere in the south-east, whoever goes will probably be unable to land: it will mean baling out.’

  Lacey said he had always wondered what it was like to bale out, and off he went.

  It was a long stalk, and he was airborne for two hours.

  The Controller guided him eastward, at 14,000 ft., above the solid layer of cloud that covered the whole of the south-east of England. A turn to the south, another to the east; a turn to the south-east, then east again. The Controller’s directions were concise and intelligent, but the Heinkel was elusive. Until …

  ‘I saw it, slipping through the cloud tops, half in and half out of cloud, making for the coast. I didn’t know where I was, because I hadn’t seen the ground since taking off. I dived down on him and got in one quick burst which killed his rear gunner. I knew he was dead, because I could see him lying over the edge of the rear cockpit. Of course the Heinkel dived into cloud, and as I was coming up behind him I throttled hard back and dropped into formation on him, in cloud. He turned, in cloud, two or three tunes, still making a generally south-easterly direction, and I’m quite certain he thought he had lost me or that I’d stayed above the cloud. Actually, I was slightly below and to one side. You couldn’t see very well, in cloud, through the front windscreen of a Hurricane, but you could see through the side quarter-panel and I was staying just close enough to keep him in sight through this. I stayed with him in all his turns. He made one complete circle and then carried on south-easterly. Eventually he eased his way up to the top and broke cloud, presumably to see if the fighter was still hanging around. Just as he broke cloud and I was dropping back into a position where I could open fire, the dead gunner was pulled away from his guns and another member of the crew opened up on me, at a range of, literally, feet.’

  ‘I remember a gaping hole appearing in the bottom of the cockpit. The entire radiator had been shot away, and I knew it was just a matter of time before the engine would seize, so I put my finger on the trigger and kept it there until my guns stopped firing. By that time he had both his engines on fire and I was blazing quite merrily too. I think it was a glycol fire rather than an oil fire, but what was burning didn’t particularly interest me: I knew that I was burning and I was going to have to get out.

  ‘As soon as the guns ran out of ammunition, by which time the He. 111 was diving steeply through the cloud, I left the aircraft.

  ‘I came out of cloud in time to see my aircraft dive into the ground and explode. While drifting down, I saw various people running across the fields to where it had crashed. There was one man passing almost underneath me, when I was about five hundred feet up, so I shouted. This chap stopped and looked in all directions, so I shouted again, “Right above you.” He looked up, and I saw that he was a Home Guard.

  ‘As he saw me, he raised a double-barrelled shotgun to his shoulder and took aim. I knew it was a double-barrelled shotgun, because I was looking down the barrels; and they looked like twin railway tunnels!

  ‘I shouted, “For God’s sake don’t shoot,” and amplified it with a lot of Anglo-Saxon words that I happened to know, and continued to exhort him not to shoot for the rest of my way down; and added a lot more Anglo-Saxon words.

  ‘Eventually I fell in a field and just sat there, but he still kept me covered with this gun. I said “Hang on a minute, while I get at my pocket and shew you my identity card.” He put his gun down and said, ‘I don’t want to see your identity card: anyone who can swear like that couldn’t possibly be German.’

  ‘I was a little bit singed (his trousers were burned off to the knees) but had beaten out the fire on the way down, and my face was a bit burnt. Not very burnt, because I was always careful to pull my goggles down as soon as I saw an enemy aircraft. I’d seen too many of my friends in hospital who hadn’t pulled their goggles down, and burnt eyes were a pilot’s trademark that I was determined not to get.’

  He had come down near Leeds Castle, which was the Officers’ annexe of the Shorncliff Military Hospital. Here he had an argument with a doctor who wanted to put him to bed; Lacey was determined that he would first telephone the airfield and inform the squadron that he was safe. But, owing to the bombing, there were so many telephone lines down that he had to abandon it after two hours of trying.

  ‘So I told them that they must send me back, and I had to get back before the squadron packed up for the day, otherwise a “Missing, believed killed” telegram would go off to my mother, and I didn’t want her to have that kind of shock.’

  The doctor had told him to report sick on returning to camp, so he dismissed the ambulance at the Guard Room and walked to the Officers’ Mess to report to his C.O. By then, he had on a new pair of trousers which concealed the burns on his legs. ‘So I was able to go straight back on readiness.’

  It was only now that he learned that the Heinkel he had just shot down had bombed Buckingham Palace.

  His log-book carries the entry ‘Must remember to leave bombers alone in future. They are shooting me down much too often.’

  He didn’t fly on the following day, because he was drawing new uniform and flying equipment.

  Which brought him to the 15th September 1940: the day on which the climax of the Battle of Britain came, and the date that is celebrated every year as Battle of Britain Day.

  This was the crucial day, on which Hitler staked everything to overpower Britain. Great Britain, never truly more great.

  It was half-past eleven in the morning when, on that Sunday of glorious sunshine, 250 hostiles, stepped from 15,000 to 26,000 ft., crossed the coast between Dungeness and Ramsgate. Five squadrons from Nos. 10 and 1
2 Groups, and sixteen from No. 11, were ordered off to fight them. 501 Squadron was in action by noon, against twenty Do. 175 and fifty fighters, near Ramsgate. They shot down an Me. 109, damaged another and lost a Dutch pilot, Pilot Officer Van der Hove Esterrych.

  The second attack came in the afternoon. Twenty-one squadrons in all were again used. No. 501 joined battle over Heathfield, at 2 p.m.

  Lacey, flying Red Three, said in his combat report that they intercepted a raid flying north-west at 16,000 ft. They attacked from slightly below, head-on, throttling back to 150 m.p.h. so that the approaching speed would not be too great. He opened fire, himself, at 400 yards, pulling his Hurricane’s nose up as his target approached until he went over the vertical and stalled into a right-hand spin. By the time he had regained control and climbed to 17,000 ft. there were no other aircraft in sight.

  ‘Red Three to Red Leader. Where are you?’

  ‘Red Leader to Three. Just north of Brighton.’

  ‘O.K. I’ll join you. What Angels?’

  ‘Angels fifteen.’

  ‘O.K. Be with you in a minute.’

  But twelve yellow-nosed Messerschmitts (the vaunted Abbeville wing) had other ideas.

  In a flash, Lacey found himself racing head-on towards them. He dipped his nose as though about to dive under them, then pulled back the stick and rocketed up in a loop, to attack the last one in the formation, which was lagging. He put a satisfactory burst into it while still inverted, and as he had plenty of speed, half-rolled off the top of his loop and followed the formation. ‘Who didn’t seem to have seen that their last man was diving vertically with flames pouring back over his cockpit hood.’

  Closing to 250 yards, he fired on No. 3 in the rear section. It pulled out of position with a white stream of glycol leaking out of its radiator.

  Around him were shell-bursts from the anti-aircraft guns, and he hoped that they would not hit him. But there was no time to worry about friendly ground gunners, for the remaining ten Me. 109s were charging at him. He fired the last of his bullets into the leader and dived vertically into cloud.