The Secret Life of Fighter Command

by Sinclair McKay

  The Hurricanes were shot out of the sky. The first flying fatality of the war – a victim of friendly fire – was Pilot Officer Halton-Harrap. Later, the original ‘unidentified’ plane that had started the entire incident turned out to be a Blenheim coming back from a reconnaissance patrol; it too was shot down mistakenly, by anti-aircraft guns. But the tragedy of the Hurricanes was even more extraordinary; it was not as if the planes were revolutionary new designs that the pilots could not have recognised. What it illustrates is the edginess of the fighter pilots, twitching for the battle to begin.

  Having shot down the Hurricanes, the pilots flew back to RAF Hornchurch. ‘We looked for Malan,’ recalled Freeborn, ‘but he was nowhere to be seen.’ Having returned safely, Malan had already left base; he was called back. Freeborn, however, was met upon landing by a squadron leader who told him that he and Paddy Byrne were to be placed under immediate and close arrest.

  Freeborn, a very young man, was now desperately worried to find himself facing a court-martial. ‘But our Commanding Officer,’ he said, ‘was a hell of a nice chap and he said “Sir Patrick Hastings is Intelligence Officer at Fighter Command Headquarters. Go and see him.”’ Freeborn did so, having been specially released to make the journey to Stanmore. Sir Patrick met him there and announced that he would act as defence barrister. Roger Bushell of 601 Squadron, of course, also had a distinguished background in law, and he was pulled in to support Hastings. The following month, the case was heard at a specially convened General Field Court Martial at Bentley Priory. There did not seem to be very much argument; on the recommendation of Sir Patrick, who argued that ‘this young man should not be condemned for his actions’, the case was dismissed.3

  A matter of greater concern for Fighter Command was the way that the incident illustrated the vulnerable nature of the new Chain Home System. Although the scientists and technicians were constantly making tweaks and adjustments – in the archives are blueprints and memos concerning every last corner of the operation, together with requests for new parts and different equipment – there was no precedent to work from, no established rules to follow. This was an entirely new sort of conflict in terms of speed and technology; everything had to be extemporised. And this to an extent went for the pilots as well. They may have had radio transmission equipment, but it was not yet wholly reliable.

  Indeed, for the young men of RAF Hornchurch, taking off in the lemon light of dawn from the mist-enshrouded marshes, heading upwards and tensed with every nerve and synapse to face the sinister approaching wings of the enemy, the war to come was as much about the instincts and skills that they had acquired through extraordinarily hazardous training. It is one thing to theorise about tactics; but for a young pilot thrown into a whirling dogfight, possibly in and out of cloud, the sky swarming with aircraft both friendly and hostile, the mathematical calculations would only go so far. Find your target, fix upon it, hunt your target down.

  In those first days of war, fighter squadrons were sent out to France too, and newspaper correspondents returned admiring dispatches immediately. ‘The men are in fine spirits,’ wrote an embedded reporter of one squadron for the Manchester Guardian on 24 September 1939, ‘and enjoying the novelty of the conditions in which they are living … most of the men are in billets in towns, villages and farmhouses; the people have done everything possible to make their guests at home … There is no shortage of food and the men can enjoy a variety of choice fresh fruit … Chicken and goose appear on the menus.’ Not for such heroes the dreary round of bully beef and hot sweet tea; there was an undercurrent of class bias in the suggestion that for these young men, fresh fruit and goose were no less than they would expect, in sharp contrast to the urban lads being conscripted for the army.

  In the midst of this flurry of preparation, this national tensing of the muscles, the King paid his first visit to Bentley Priory on 6 September 1939, and caught his first sight of the radical – almost futuristic – arrangement of the Operations and Filter Rooms. Bentley Priory’s location was a matter for the Official Secrets Act; even the wealthy Metroland commuters who lived in the nearby town of Stanmore had no idea of the establishment’s true purpose. ‘When the King arrived … he was welcomed by the Air Chief Marshal, Head of Fighter Command,’ noted The Times. ‘The King wore the service side cap, and carried his gas mask in a khaki container over his shoulder.’ No one had quite discounted the possibility of those poison gas attacks coming. It would be some weeks before the general public felt blithe enough to abandon their own gas masks, and then much to the chagrin of officialdom.

  The royal visit must have conferred a sense of vindication on Hugh Dowding; for all the constant tension within the Air Ministry as to whether it was better for Britain’s fighters and bombers to go on the attack, here was the King, inspecting the Dowding system, with its ringing telephones, colourful flashing lights and the slick choreography of the filterers and plotters. Dowding had responsibility for one of the more psychologically difficult tasks to achieve in any war: the bestowal of a sense of reassurance, an unswerving confidence that the defences and the fighters would be more than enough to see off any German aerial attack.

  But again: had the Germans launched a serious heavy attack, would Fighter Command have been ready that autumn? Despite the radical brilliance of radar, the system itself was still new. As Vincent Orange wrote:

  There were still gaps in the coastal coverage and stations could not report aircraft flying below 1,000 feet [304 metres]. Group and sector controllers were to bear in mind these limitations in the system: range and position were accurate to within about one mile; height was accurate to within plus or minus 1,000 feet [1.6 kilometres] in the Thames Estuary and plus or minus 2,000 feet [610 metres] elsewhere; up to three aircraft could be accurately counted, but more than three could mean as many as nine and more than nine ANY number over nine.4

  In other words, whenever fighters, from Biggin Hill to Debden, received the signal to sprint to their aeroplanes, take off and intercept the incoming enemy, there would still be uncertainty about exactly what they would be facing up there in the clouds, and in what numbers. But as Dowding himself wrote, ‘RDF is very capricious and unreliable but it is better than nothing, as being the best evidence we have of what is going on over the sea.’5

  In the curious silence of the ‘Bore War’, a reconnaissance crew based in France managed in early October to get themselves into jeopardy beyond the Siegfried Line – the German line of fortifications and tank defences, built in the First World War, which stretched from the border with the Netherlands to that of Switzerland. Though not a part of Fighter Command, these pilots were nonetheless to give the public an unwitting preview of what was to come. The planes were flying, as the reporter from The Times wrote, ‘in the most strongly defended part of the Saar. Anti-aircraft batteries put up fierce barrages but our aircraft went through it successfully.’ However, on the line of the horizon, the Messerschmitts materialised. What followed was a harrowing struggle for survival. Three British planes had to make a forced landing. As the reporter continued, starting now – consciously or unconsciously – to take on the tone of Captain W.E. Johns:

  The squadron leader’s machine alone was left, but he flew on to finish his job. The aircraft by this time was in a sorry way. There were 80 bullet holes in the fabric; the ailerons and rudder were damaged; both petrol tanks were burst and flooding the inside of the fuselage with petrol and fumes … from the starboard tank, petrol poured through a bullet hole each time the aircraft banked; but by stopping the hole with a handkerchief, the pilot was able to save enough petrol to get home.

  And after an excruciating landing – followed by the crew beating flames off one another’s clothing – the pilot declared: ‘Old Hitler gave me a bit of a headache but that was nothing to what we will give him.’

  Skirmishes over enemy territory were one thing; but in mid-October 1939, Fighter Command was to receive its first proper test. Just days before it came, Sir Kingsle
y Wood, Secretary of State for Air, had been moved to announce in Parliament that inactivity was as fraught for pilots as action. ‘The intensity of the operations of Fighter Command … depends largely upon the activities of the enemy,’ he said. ‘Instant readiness is demanded and the strain imposed has been as great, if not greater, than if active operations were in progress.’

  Obligingly, out of a dazzlingly bright sky, came the enemy. On the afternoon of 16 October 1939, over the wide and grey Firth of Forth, dropping close to the vast red metal exoskeleton of the Forth Railway Bridge, swept twelve German bombers. Their target was the Rosyth naval base. There was something especially incongruous about an attack taking place just after lunch, at half past two on an unseasonally sunny day. According to the official report put out swiftly afterwards, the German bombers were met instantly with RAF fighters; the bombers failed to inflict any serious damage on the shipping below; and four of the German planes were downed. An eyewitness reporter in nearby Edinburgh was on hand to log a helpful account, published in The Times the following day, of the reactions of locals to this unexpected German incursion:

  Ideal weather conditions prevailed with the sun shining from a blue sky when shortly after two o’clock, the muffled bark of anti-aircraft guns was heard in the centre of the City of Edinburgh. The shell bursts were plainly visible high around the city … Citizens were puzzled by the absence of any air-raid warning – but the sight of German aircraft being hotly pursued by RAF machines above the house tops put all doubts at rest … Citizens climbed on to roofs and other vantage points to watch through binoculars.

  Not everyone seemed impressed; the observer was also keen to record some unlikely nonchalance in the city’s business quarter:

  Citizens basking in the sunshine in Princes Street Gardens hardly bothered to lift their eyes from their newspapers and even when pieces of anti-aircraft shell casing were picked up, there were no traces of undue excitement. One businessman reading a book near the Scott Monument looked up for a moment and after remarking: ‘The RAF lads will look after them,’ resumed his reading.

  Quite so; and this was the Spitfire’s first active engagement of the war. The hostile Junkers had been intercepted by pilots from 602 and 603 Squadrons, based in Drem and Turnhouse. The following day brought another small incursion: a formation of nine German bombers went for the more northerly naval base at Scapa Flow, damaging one destroyer. A Heinkel was brought down on the island of Hoy. Small though both of these raids were, they had an immediate – and secret – impact. ‘The raids on both places in October,’ states the official history of Fighter Command, ‘exposed their vulnerability and from October 28th, the Clyde became the main fleet anchorage.’ This, of course, was on the west coast, just outside Glasgow, and faced towards the Atlantic; little use for a naval fleet that was supposed to be defending the nation’s eastern coastline. A great deal of hurried work was put into the base at Scapa Flow to fortify it more heavily against future attacks.

  And what about protecting the shipping itself, as opposed to the bases? The first of the long convoys were beginning their hazardous voyages, carrying not just food imports, but crucial supplies of materiel. Could they be escorted by fighter pilots, who would see off any Luftwaffe aggression? As the official history states:

  It was pointed out that Fighter Command could not provide effective protection for shipping except when it was routed to close inshore, and even then there might not be sufficient warning for fighters to reach a convoy or group of ships before the initial attack was made. Accordingly, it was recommended, and later approved, that four squadrons of fighters should be formed for the sole duty of providing close escorts for shipping passing between the Firth of Forth and Southampton.

  These squadrons were soon urgently needed; the Luftwaffe was fast to spot how nakedly vulnerable the lines of shipping were. Air Chief Marshal Dowding agreed to move some fighter squadrons near the coast.

  He was also thinking about the vulnerability of the air force itself: the ever-pressing need for more planes and pilots, and for more skilled men to train those pilots. Then there was the tempting target of British plane-making factories, many of which were in the industrial Midlands, within striking distance of the Luftwaffe. Direct bomb hits on those would instantly cripple Britain’s defences, leaving her open to invasion. The plane-making factories were not about to be relocated to the far west coast. Not for the first time, Fighter Command was being painfully stretched and pulled in all directions.

  The year turned; and in the first harrowingly cold days of 1940, that freezing winter when London was dense and grey with coal smoke from millions of homes, and when warming light was craved on murky evenings, Fighter Command was anxious to let the citizens know that any German bombers would be looking for the tiniest chink of illumination. ‘It has been determined that London can never be completely blacked out,’ ran one report, though adding that if the regulations were followed properly, ‘it will be impossible for enemy pilots to ascertain their exact position.’6

  Observer pilots had been up there in the dark; they came back with an extraordinarily poetic vision of the darkened city. Although it was now difficult to pinpoint particular streets – masked car headlamps had stopped long routes like the Edgware Road glittering for miles – there were unexpected lights elsewhere. ‘The flashes from tramcars and electric railways catch the eye of the observer overhead,’ ran the report, ‘but … they would be little use guiding pilots to the City. One observer described London from the air during the blackout as resembling the vault of the heavens on a starlit night with a “few diamond necklaces scattered about”. The diamond necklace effect is made by railway marshalling yards.’

  There were other illegitimate glitters: silvery railway lines picked out by the uncovered lights streaming from windows of houses backing on to the railways; properties that the wardens could never see around the back of, and at whose owners they could therefore never do the necessary shouting.

  The Spitfires were getting plenty in the way of dress rehearsals. On the night of 13 February 1940, a Heinkel raider was detected in the mouth of the Thames Estuary. Three Spitfires were sent off in furious pursuit. ‘When the raider saw them, he at once began a long twisting dive towards a patch of cloud far behind him,’ went the breathless report in The Times. ‘The three Spitfires followed, firing in turn as they dived. As fast as the raider eluded the fire of one, another was ready to take up the attack. Although visibility was very poor throughout the action, several bursts of fire took effect. When last seen, the enemy was heading eastwards, into cloud and darkness.’

  Among the young fighter pilots waiting impassively on the ground for the telephone call signalling that he and his men were to sprint for their planes was Peter Townsend. Since the start of the war, he had been posted and re-posted up and down the country. Come February, he was moved from the sylvan West Sussex base at Tangmere – fresh with its new asphalt runways and superb pilot facilities – to a rougher and readier prospect just outside Newcastle at Acklington. He and his colleagues found rudimentary quarters and a pervasive, uncomfortable east coast cold. But it was from over the granite grey waves of the North Sea that German Heinkels were making their nervy incursions, alternately threatening and infuriating. Townsend lost good friends in the individual skirmishes that were to follow; he himself successfully brought down a Heinkel near Whitby.

  A spell at Wick near Scapa Flow in the bitter wastes of northern Scotland was to follow. Townsend later recalled that it was in this period that he crossed a shadow-line; he told his son that somehow, earlier, in his encounters with the enemy, the idea of killing had not even skittered across his mind, for he could not bring himself to imagine killing men who shared so exactly his love of flying. Skirmishes, he said, were regarded more as an insanely dangerous form of sport than as the cold and pitiless pursuit of other aircraft in the hope of making them and their pilots fall thousands of feet to their deaths. But in Scotland, in that gelid spring of 1940, the chan
ge had stolen over him. The innocence perhaps had been an illusion. Now, he said, it was more of a killing game.

  One night, Townsend was out on patrol in his Hurricane. There had been a great deal of anti-aircraft fire; he knew how easily collateral damage was inflicted. And there came a point when, over his radio, Townsend’s local controller told him to abandon his nocturnal search for enemy planes and return to base.

  Townsend deliberately disobeyed; he switched his radio off. Flying through the silent dark, he refused to give up, and eventually he sighted tiny lights. He had a Heinkel ahead of him. The young man who had simply wanted to share his passion for flying was gone; now, as Townsend recalled, he was utterly remorseless. He had the advantage very quickly, firing upon the plane that simply could not get away in time. He watched as the dark was dazzled with flames, seeing the plane and its crew plummet into the sea below. Townsend felt no anguish, or indeed emotion of any kind. When he finally returned to the base, it turned out that his Hurricane was peppered with bullet holes. He had been a very short distance from plunging into those waves himself.7