Dogfight (21 page)

When the replacement 41 Squadron arrived, its pilots were taken aback by the bedraggled collection of pilots shipping out. The New Zealanders and their 54 Squadron colleagues had barely slept in a week and were eager to depart. When talking with Deere after the Battle of Britain, the replacement
wing commander later recalled ‘and you, Al, with your bandaged head and plastered wrist were an unnerving sight to our new pilots who hadn't tasted combat. They wondered what had hit them, or was about to hit them.'[31] As the battle raged on, Deere and Gray passed on the baton to another Anzac: Australian Pat Hughes.

Contemporary photographs reveal a man with a strong jaw, piercing eyes and good looks. Hughes looked the very image of a fighter pilot. As a young man at Fort Street Boys' High, Haberfield, Sydney, he had been a very good footballer and swimmer. Intelligent and inquisitive, as a young man Hughes had been an avid aircraft modeller and known for constructing crystal radio sets, before graduating and moving into a clerk's position with a local jeweller. His RAAF Point Cook cadetship in early 1936 was followed by a short service commission with the RAF. When war broke out he already had over two years of flying with 64 Squadron before being transferred to 234. He was fiercely proud of his homeland and Point Cook training, and was another who insisted on wearing his dark RAAF uniform rather than switch to the lighter blue of the RAF. Like many airmen of the time, he had a dog, dubbed affectionately ‘Flying Officer Butch', who on occasion flew with his master in non-combat flights.

Although only twenty-three years of age, he seemed older to his fellow pilots and soon slipped into the vacuum created by the unit's aloof squadron leader, a man in his mid-thirties, who seldom flew and was devoted to the methods of the inter-war era. Hughes, as leader of A Flight, found himself the de facto commander of the entire unit. ‘Hughes was the one who taught me everything in the air,' one of the squadron's airmen recalled later, ‘We respected him, listened to him ... He was the real power behind the squadron.'[32] Under his informal leadership of 234, he was able to nurture inexperienced pilots and was often the voice of calm in the heat of battle.

On one occasion during the
Kanalkampf,
one the squadron's two Polish pilots, Sergeant Jozef Szlagowski, was disoriented in heavy fog and running on fumes. Panic-stricken, he yelled the few relevant English words he knew down the radio. Hughes' reassuring voice was the first to respond and brought a measure of calm to the sergeant. The machine ran out of fuel, but fortuitously the fog broke and he was able to make a forced landing in a local field. Hughes ‘knew a lot and he taught us a lot,' said Szlagowski.
On 15 August, when the squadron was hit hard by the death of Hight and the capture of Parker, it was Hughes who led by example and took out two enemy machines. Even after the arrival on 17 August of a new and more able commanding officer, Hughes continued to play a pivotal role in the cohesion and success of the squadron.

Like his New Zealand counterpart Carbury, the Sydneysider Hughes was an Me 109 hunter. An examination of his successes reveals a strong bent towards fighter-on-fighter combat. His early claims were shared endeavours against Ju 88s, but when the squadron entered the battle proper in August, his ledger was almost exclusively marked by taking out Me 109s, with the odd foray against Me 110s. On 16, 18 and 28 August he was in action and shot down a pair of the German single-engine fighters on each occasion. Four days into September he faced a large body of Me 110s. He employed a head-on attack, his aircraft spitting two-second lead bursts at the leading Me 110. The Australian's directness forced the Luftwaffe pilot to pull up, exposing his underbelly to raking fire. Wreathed in flame, the Me 110 crashed near Brighton. ‘I attacked another 110 and from dead astern after 2 short bursts this aircraft rolled on its back and dived vertically to the ground and blew up, 10 miles N.E. of Tangmere.' Having upset the hornet's nest, he found himself in the cross-hairs of a trio of the twin-engine aircraft, while another circled in from behind.

A lesser pilot might well have thought better of continuing the fight, but the rugged Hughes managed to separate one machine from the pack. ‘I followed,' he later typed in his combat report, ‘and emptied the rest of [my] ammunition. One engine appeared to catch fire and the aircraft turned slowly towards the coast heading inland and both engines appeared to be on fire.'[33] The result was a bag of three machines for the day. Over the next two days he accounted for a further three Me 109s and one probable. One of the machines shot down on 5 September may well have been that of Oberleutnant Franz Xaver Baron von Werra. Although the ‘scalp' of von Werra has over the years been attributed to a number of pilots, Hughes, based on his ability and run of successes in early September, is certainly a strong candidate.[34]

Hughes' 234 Squadron was on a path to Gravesend when a tell-tale sign of invaders was spotted in the distance: bursts of anti-aircraft fire. With all eyes turned towards the action on the horizon, the Hughes-led Blue Section was jumped by Me 109s directly out of the sun. In the mêlée, twelve more intruders appeared, racing up the Thames. Outnumbered, but aided by the
recent arrival of two Hurricanes, the Australian pushed the Spitfire into the centre of the enemy fighters and a heart-thumping dogfight ensued. One German aircraft exploded in response to Hughes' Browning machineguns. He latched on to another target from astern, forcing the crippled Me 109 to land in a field. Shaken, the pilot exited the foliage-garnished and dirt-encrusted Me 109. The Queenslander observed soldiers on the scene capturing the unfortunate Luftwaffe airman.

The son of a bankrupted Swiss nobleman, von Werra had a playboy image and penchant for self-promotion. The latter included flamboyantly posing for press photographs with his pet, and unit mascot, Simba, a lion cub. Though a respected pilot, it was his exploits after being shot down that lingered in the public mind long beyond the end of the war. Von Werra did not take to captivity. His first, most widely reported, escape was carried out at Camp 13 Swanwick, Derbyshire, five days before Christmas 1940. Under the cover of an air raid, the Luftwaffe pilot and four others emerged from a newly completed tunnel and bolted for freedom. The others were netted within a few days, but von Werra avoided capture by claiming he was a downed Dutch bomber pilot. The ruse secured him transportation to the RAF airfield Hucknell, Nottingham. Cool and audacious, von Werra was able to allay the fears of local police as to his identity and secure entry to the base. A squadron leader remained unconvinced after questioning the ‘Dutch' pilot and sought to confirm the story. Realising the game was unravelling, the young German made his move, attempting to convince a mechanic that he had approval to take an aircraft up for a test run. He never made the ‘test flight', as the squadron leader returned to arrest him. Undeterred, the indefatigable von Werra was still to make his most remarkable bid for freedom, this time from Canada.

In early 1941, he was one of a group of prisoners being transferred across the Atlantic to take up residence in a camp lapped by the waters of Lake Superior, Ontario. Werra never saw the camp because he jumped from a train window outside Montreal. He found himself close to the Saint Lawrence River and made a bone-chilling crossing of the river in a pilfered rowboat without rudder or oars into the neutral United States.[35] Cold and exhausted, he handed himself into local police, who in turn advised immigration officials who sought to charge him with illegal entry into the country. Days slipped into weeks as the Canadians negotiated for his extradition. Von Werra moved about freely, with much of his time spent enjoying the high life in New York at the expense of the German Consulate.
When it appeared that the Canadians might in fact successfully secure his return, German Consulate officials moved quickly and slipped him into Mexico.

His eventual return to Germany was by no means unpleasant and included stopovers in Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona and Rome. In the second week of April he was welcomed back to the Fatherland with open arms and a Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

Unfortunately, Hughes would only have a couple of days to celebrate his victory over von Werra. He was killed on 7 September. The Australian was once again leading Blue Section when they encountered a large force. The ensuing dogfight claimed the lives of the squadron leader, O'Brien, as well as Hughes. The death of the latter appears to have been the result of a mid-air collision. The squadron's intelligence report was based on the observations of Hughes' wing-man and fellow Anzac, the Kiwi Keith Lawrence, and gives an incomplete picture of the tragic events that led to the death of the squadron's most revered pilot.

There is good reason to believe that the fatigue tormenting many Fighter Command pilots played a factor in Hughes' death. The squadron's intelligence officer considered the Aussie to be the ‘hero' of the unit and he was devastated by the loss and felt some guilt over the whole affair. ‘When he came and saw me the night before he died, saying he had spots in front of his eyes, it was already too late. How could pilots cope with the tension? In a way I felt responsible for Pat's death.'[37]

Not only was the loss of Hughes keenly felt in the 234 mess but also by his wife of only thirty-eight days. The Australian pilot had sent his wife Kay away during the intense fighting of early September to stay with her
mother. She returned on 7 September to find a clutch of the squadron's pilots awaiting her arrival at Middle Wallop. ‘I knew that Pat was missing,' she recalled. ‘That evening I learned he had been killed. Until then I had never really known what true grief was. I had never cried so much in my life. I wept until I could cry no more.'[38]

Like many Anzacs, Hughes had met his wife in Britain. Kay Brodrick had crossed the Australian's path when he was posted to Leconfield. She was immediately smitten by his good looks, his smart airman's moustache and the dark blue RAAF uniform. She dubbed him ‘an Australian Errol Flynn'.[39]

Fighter Command pilots had found themselves increasingly popular and welcome in the pubs and taverns of Britain after Churchill's speech of 20 August. As one 92 Squadron pilot later recalled with pleasure, ‘It was unbelievable. They loved us, and I mean they loved us. They brought us drinks, appreciated everything.'[40]

This celebrity status also brought with it the almost unqualified admiration of the fair sex. Having arrived at a local drinking establishment, usually in modern low-slung sports cars, the young pilots would enter wearing their trousers tucked into their flying boots, top jacket buttons undone and caps slightly askew at a suitably rakish angle. Removing the cap often revealed slicked-back hair. ‘There was no doubt about it,' Gard'ner recalled, ‘the Battle of Britain boys were known as the Brylcreem boys ... I used Brylcreem myself.'[41] The RAF wings and blue uniform were a magnet to the eyes of many young, and not so young, women. Many of the friendships struck up were of an innocuous nature. The young men sought out female companionship which did not necessarily lead to sexual relationships. But as the battle intensified in August and September, and the chances of survival fell, more passionate liaisons were a consequence. Looking back over the excesses in the air and in the night clubs, Spurdle described relationships fashioned briefly at the height of the campaign:

A good number of the pilots sought love and companionship fashioned after the ideal of the time: marriage. However, courtship and long-term relationships were difficult to maintain when pilots were constantly in action and squadrons could be moved at a moment's notice. As airmen and their brides-to-be were separated by the demands of Fighter Command, the best that could be hoped for were all-too-brief reunions as leave allowed, lovelorn letters and telephone conversations. The last were restricted to three minutes, and unreliable.

As Kay Hughes discovered, for those who made it to the church or registry, there was no assurance that their marriage would outlive the battle. In some cases the time between slipping on a wedding ring and entering widowhood could be horribly short. In the latter stages of the campaign, Emeny was among airmen attending the marriage of a young Scottish Spitfire pilot. Within two hours of the early-morning wedding service, the husband had been killed in action. The funeral was held that evening. ‘The Kiwi boys put what money we had into a pool,' and Emeny was delegated to escort the grieving young woman by taxi to an aunt's London residence. She sobbed inconsolably the entire journey. As Sergeant Emeny made his way back to the airbase, he vowed never to ‘mix marriage and war,' reasoning, ‘I never wanted to be responsible for the grief I had just seen'.[43]

A marriage that survived the carnage was not without its own trials. Gordon Olive met Helen Thomas in his pre-war Austrian excursions. Almost immediately the Anzac took a shine to the young Englishwoman, who had been working in Germany for twelve months. In the 1940 run-up to their engagement, there had been the odd heart-stopping moment for Helen, including the occasion Olive was temporarily reported missing after a particularly nasty dogfight. Like so many weddings of the time, the June service was abbreviated and spare—a couple of Olive's closest squadron friends were in attendance at the small church of St Mary's, Kensington. The honeymoon was a grand four days spent in a cosy hotel on the Thames east of London—well away from Hornchurch and Manston.[44] Because Helen worked at St Thomas' Hospital London, Olive, after returning to his unit, did not see her again until he was granted forty-two hours' leave on 8 August. Another month would pass before he saw her again. Thus, by mid-September, he had only seen her twice in three months of marriage.[45]