The Handley Page Hampden was the only RAF bomber with a bomb bay that could be easily altered to carry sea mines. Each mine was like a large cylinder about ten feet long and eighteen inches in diameter with a parachute fitted into one end and an anchor into the other. They weighed approximately 1,500 lb.
One Hampden failed to return, an aircraft from 50 Squadron. Its pilot was Flight Lieutenant Bob Cosgrove from Hobart who had been Pat’s first roommate at Point Cook. Bob’s returning aircraft was detected by RDF as it approached England on its return flight but then it disappeared from the screen. It never crossed the coast. The Hampden apparently crashed into the sea off Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire. He and his crew were lost and their names are recorded on the Runnymede Memorial. Bob and his father never had the chance to reconcile.
Pat proposed to Kay in April. ‘The war will be over in a year,’ he said, as he put the diamond ring on her finger.7 They agreed to marry when it was over. But time was running out.
On 17 April, after only six weeks with their Spitfires, the pilots of 234 Squadron flew to Church Fenton for exercises to assess whether or not they could be declared operational. The decision was delayed pending another test at Leconfield; apparently they were not quite ready. An officer from No. 13 Group HQ carried out this next test on 8 May. He was willing to pronounce the squadron fit for day operations … and none too soon. Two days later the German army swept into France and the Low Countries.
7
ST EVAL JULY 1940
On 10 May, the uneasy quiet on the Western Front suddenly ended when the Germans marched across the Ardennes plateau into neutral Belgian territory. In the early morning, the Dornier and Heinkel bombers of the Luftwaffe ranged over north-east France, Belgium and Holland and attacked a total of twenty-three airfields and destroyed most of their potential opposition on the ground. The battle for air superiority was almost over before it even started. Any resistance that the Allied air forces in France (and indeed from England) could mount now would only be piecemeal and lacking coordination, although at times it was desperately heroic. Stuka dive-bombers roamed the skies almost at will without fear of being seriously molested. They systematically destroyed anything that stood in the path of the advancing panzers.
Later that day, Neville Chamberlain resigned as Britain’s Prime Minister. He was replaced by Winston Churchill who immediately formed a War Cabinet with members drawn from all political parties.
Now day operational, 234 Squadron began to carry out interception flights a few days later. Making successful contact was rare, but very early in the morning on the 28th Pat and his section, Bush Parker and Sergeant George Bailey (newly arrived on 4 May), intercepted a ‘bogey’ which turned out to be a friendly Whitley bomber probably coming home late from a night raid. The squadron also started night-flying training.
Meanwhile, the situation on the Continent went from bad to worse at an alarming rate. Casualties in the air and on the ground were heavy and included several of Pat’s Point Cook classmates. On 14 May, four out of eight Fairey Battles from 142 Squadron failed to return from attacking bridges between Sedan and Mouzon. Flight Lieutenant Ken Rogers, who was from Toowoomba, was killed in action. The squadron leader in charge of flying, Squadron Leader John Hobler, also a Queenslander from Rockhampton, was shot down and injured. Despite serious facial burns, Hobler set fire to his plane, evaded the advancing Germans and led his crew back to safety. The squadron’s other flight commander, Flight Lieutenant William ‘Wiggly’ Wight of Melbourne, another Point Cook classmate, took over Hobler’s role of leading the squadron in the air.
On the 15th, the Dutch army capitulated at 11 a.m. That same day, F/O Bill Fowler from Adelaide went missing over France. His Hurricane flying at the rear of 615 Squadron’s formation was bounced by Me 109s coming out of the sun. He shouted a warning to the others but his Hurricane was hit at the same time. Almost blacking out in a tight turn, he fired at a 109 which fell straight down but he was hit again by another Messerschmitt and his Hurricane burst into flames. He bailed out with his flying boots on fire but landed safely in the Ardennes Forest. Some French soldiers joined up with him but next day the whole group was captured near Namur. (Bill Fowler later earned the distinction of being one of the few Allied airmen to escape successfully from Colditz Castle.)
There were ten squadrons of Hurricane in France, and Hugh Dowding, in charge of Fighter Command, would not commit any of his Spitfire fighters.1 The pressure to release more fighter squadrons built as the Germans rapidly advanced. Dowding maintained his stance and defended it in his now famous 16 May letter to the Air Ministry. He reminded the Air Council that ‘the force necessary to defend this country was fifty-two squadrons and my strength has now been reduced to the equivalent of thirty-six squadrons’.
On the evening of 26 May, orders were given to commence Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the trapped British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. Fighter Command was to provide an air umbrella, and for the first time Spitfires operating from England were involved in fighting over the Continent. 616 Squadron, which had been flying convoy patrols, was relocated to Rochford, a forward base near Southend in Essex and committed to patrolling over Dunkirk. It was a race against time. On the 28th, Belgium surrendered to the Germans with effect from 11 a.m. British and French troops just managed to plug the gap this created in the line in time to block the German army from reaching Nieuport and the beaches. Dunkirk was finally captured on 4 June but by then a total of 338,226 troops, including 112,000 French, had been successfully evacuated – but Operation Dynamo had been costly.
616 Squadron flew a final patrol over the Dunkirk area that day. It was deserted, littered with debris and abandoned equipment. On the return flight the weather deteriorated and while attempting to land at Rochford one Spitfire crashed and the pilot was killed. The others were diverted to Tangmere. After leaving behind 2,000 guns, 60,000 vehicles, 600,000 tons of fuel and 76,000 tons of ammunition, the British army was now practically unarmed. Nevertheless, Winston Churchill in the House of Commons defiantly declared, ‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields … we shall never surrender.’
Elsewhere, another disastrous campaign ended as British and French troops began evacuating from Norway.
Three days later, Pete Pettigrew, Pat Hughes’ closest friend from his schooldays, disappeared while his unit, 151 Squadron, patrolled with 56 Squadron between Abbeville and Amiens. There was a brief clash with Me 109s, incorrectly identified as Heinkel He 113s, but no dogfight. All of the Hurricanes except Pettigrew’s returned to Manston and nobody had the slightest idea what had happened to it. (Casualty lists show him as being wounded around this time. An unconfirmed story suggests he was shot down, hidden by French nuns and eventually smuggled back to England. Another says he escaped from a POW camp. Whatever actually happened, he did get back to England and by 1944 he was with the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A & AEE) at Boscombe Down but on 24 August 1944 he was killed in a mid-air collision. He had married an English girl.)2
Events accelerated. On 5 June, the Germans launched the final Battle for France with air and artillery bombardments along the Somme and the Aisne. Five days later Mussolini, eager for spoils, declared war on Britain and France. It was only a matter of time; the French could not last much longer. British evacuations began from Cherbourg on 15 June and continued over the next three days. There were more evacuations from St Malo, Brest, St Nazaire and Nantes, all leading to the successful recovery of 144,171 British troops and airmen. The French government requested an armistice on the 17th and Britain would defiantly declare herself ‘alone’.
In fact, Britain was not completely alone – the Commonwealth was responding. Australian and New Zealand troops were diverted to England from the third troop convoy from Australia bound for the Middle East. They disembarked at Gourock on the Clyde on 17 June. Three liners in the convoy had transported around 8,000 officers and men and three other ships landed a similar number of
New Zealanders.3 Meanwhile, Canadian troops had already arrived and an RCAF fighter squadron was being formed in the RAF. An RAAF Sunderland squadron was already operational with the RAF at Mount Batten on Plymouth Sound.
New Zealand, for her size, was already making a major contribution in the air. By September 1939, there were some 550 New Zealanders serving in the RAF, more than from any other Commonwealth nation outside the British Isles. Aside from veterans who remained in the RAF after the First World War, increasing numbers of New Zealanders made their own way to Britain during the early 1930s so that by the end of 1935 about 100 were already serving with Britain’s air force, mostly as pilots. Then in 1936, at the request of the British Government, a start was made with the selection of candidates in New Zealand to serve as pilots in the RAF. As soon as volunteers were accepted they went to England for training, the first party arriving in July 1937. Thereafter, groups of twelve to twenty sailed at approximately monthly intervals for the next two years, the total number reaching 241. Shortly afterwards, this scheme was supplemented by another under which men were given preliminary pilot training in New Zealand and sent to the RAF as ‘trained cadets’, as were the Australian cadets from Point Cook. Training began at Wigram in June 1937 and the first seven pilots left for England the following April. Altogether 133 men reached England under this arrangement, the last of them arriving early in 1940. They were enlisted into the RAF under the short service commission scheme, and the UK paid the New Zealand government £1,550 for each home-trained pilot. Those who went to Britain under the pre-war arrangements were classified as members of the RAF.
Likewise, there were already many Canadians in the RAF when the war commenced. These were the ‘several hundred’ volunteers of the so-called ‘cattle boat brigade’, air-minded young men who crossed the Atlantic independently and of whom the RCAF kept no records.
On 18 June, 234 Squadron received movement orders to transfer from Yorkshire to St Eval in Cornwall. It was the same day that Winston Churchill made what was probably his most famous speech:
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin … The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into bright sunlight uplands. But if we fail, the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted silence … If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’
234 Squadron’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ Flights flew down to St Eval via Filton near Bristol with sixteen Spitfires, a Magister and two Avro Tutors. The remainder followed by train.4
Aviation in Cornwall had evolved since Percival ‘P. P.’ Phillips’ early days. At the end of the 1936 he had finally closed his Cornwall Aviation Company, but he continued his aviation interests in other ways. By the end of the 1930s there were numerous airfields dotted around Cornwall and commercial passenger services had also expanded with the establishment of such companies as Western Airways and Great Western and Southern Air Lines. As the decade progressed the threat of another conflict with Germany emerged, and so during 1937 the RAF carried out the first surveys of possible sites for military airfields. The compulsory purchase of land for military uses, including new airfield construction, was introduced under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act of 1939. By September 1939, plans were well ahead to utilise Cornwall’s position and resources for what was coming.
Immediately following the declaration of war, British commercial aviation was drastically cut by legislation forbidding all civilian flights over the east of England and Scotland and special licences were required. The Land’s End–St Mary’s link was one of the few services permitted to continue. Special measures were taken. The aircraft were camouflaged, their windows painted were over to prevent passengers photographing shipping, and landing lights were masked out. Service departure times were varied to avoid a routine that would be noticeable to the enemy.
By then the first new Cornish military airfield was operational, though its work was generally undramatic. This was RAF Cleave, four miles north of Bude on the cliff-top near Kilkhampton village. The station was used for anti-aircraft gunnery training.
Autumn saw the opening of RAF St Eval, 234 Squadron’s new home, around five miles north-east of Newquay. Planning for the airfield had begun two years beforehand when it was realised that aerial patrols off Cornwall would be needed. It was designed to accommodate two general reconnaissance squadrons. Work on the airfield began in 1938 when nine houses in the hamlet were torn down. The station opened on 2 October 1939 when twin-engine Avro Ansons of 217 Squadron arrived for anti-submarine work and convoy patrols over the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
The Anson squadron was reinforced by the addition of detachments of 58 Squadron Whitley bombers capable of carrying greater bomb loads. Later, Bristol Beaufort bombers and torpedo-bombers would arrive. When France fell in June 1940, Cornwall became vulnerable to the attention of the Luftwaffe so fighter defence was necessary. This became the responsibility of 234 Squadron which, when it arrived, was the only fighter squadron in Cornwall.5
The pilots found that St Eval was brand-new and close to the sea. It was in a very rural setting, home to a farming community, and an isolated old church was located right at the end of the runway. They were barely settled in when a French military aircraft, a Farman 222, landed unannounced the next day. Those on board were fleeing to England for sanctuary and to continue the fight. The squadron’s intelligence officer, Pilot Officer Gregory ‘Crikey’ Krikorian, by birth an Armenian who spoke several languages, acted as interpreter. Next day the Farman was flown to Boscombe Down near Andover escorted by a section of Spitfires from ‘B’ Flight. Over the following weeks several more escaping aircraft would arrive.
Once established, 234 Squadron continued with the role it had begun in Yorkshire – convoy patrols and flights to intercept ‘bogeys’ (unidentified aircraft) – but no early contacts were made. Often, unarmed PRU Spitfires used St Eval as a base from which to conduct reconnaissance flights high above the Continent to photograph what the enemy was doing.
St Eval was being organised to be a Sector Headquarters in Fighter Command’s new No. 10 Group which would cover much of England’s south-west and up to the south of Wales. It was not yet fully operational. The Group Commander was AVM Sir Christopher Quintin Brand, a capable South African who had served with distinction as a fighter pilot in the First World War, and been awarded an MC, a DSO and a DFC. His headquarters were at Rudloe Manor in Wiltshire. The Sector HQ was under the command of Wing Commander Harvey. Basic operations commenced on 26 June and it became fully operational at the beginning of July. On 5 July, twelve WAAFs reported for duty in the operations room as air plotters.
With France out of the war, Britain in July 1940 had to concentrate solely on bolstering her immediate defences against almost certain invasion. Anything that could hinder such an event had to be used as a weapon. Barbed wire and minefields were planted along the southern coast and trenches were dug behind them. Obstructions of all kinds were erected in fields where gliders might be able to land. On the aircraft industry’s test airfields old cars salvaged from rubbish-heaps were lined along the runways ready to be rolled into the paths of any invading enemy aircraft.
Civilians of the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) armed themselves with shotguns, pikes and pitchforks. The LDV had been initiated back on 14 May, and men between seventeen and sixty-five who were ‘capable of free movement’ were asked to volunteer to be part-time soldiers to defend the nation from the threat of parachute troops. Although there was no pay for service, within twenty-four hours 250,000 had volunteered. In July the numbers swelled up to 1 milli
on and Prime Minister Churchill gave them a new name: the ‘Home Guard’.
Fighter Command’s focus was on building up the strength of its squadrons. Before Dunkirk the pilot numbers in most units averaged about seventeen. By the second week in June most had been boosted to around twenty, but the drawback was these newcomers were new and inexperienced, fresh from training schools. They would have to gain their experience the hard way – if they survived long enough.
PRU pilots flying over occupied areas of Belgium and France and the coastlines of the Continent searched to see what was happening. They found the landscape changing. Strange scars in the form of huge strips of concrete were appearing in many places. The Germans seemed to be mixing the concrete with the bare earth after scraping off the turf. It became obvious that they were making runways for new airfields. Large army camps were appearing all over the countryside too. In other areas the canals seem to have disappeared but close inspection of photos revealed they were still there covered by camouflage netting. Underneath were increasing numbers of large barges. Railway sidings had appeared, roads were being extended and bomb and fuel dumps established. There was little doubt these were preparations for an invasion.
At the end of June, German troops landed unopposed on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel, and within twenty-four hours, on 1 July, the BBC announced that communication with the Channel Islands had ceased.
It was the next day that Adolf Hitler ordered his Armed Force Supreme Command, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), to make provisional plans for an invasion of England. Two weeks later Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch, commander-in-chief of the German army, and General Franz Halder, his chief of staff, submitted ambitious proposals for the operation. Hitler approved despite serious doubts expressed by the navy and he directed them to begin active preparations, but at the same time he stressed that attaining air superiority was the indispensable prelude to carrying out a landing.
A Spitfire Pilot's Story: Pat Hughes: Battle of Britain Top Gun Page 12
