Dogfight (24 page)

Because the war in the air was producing serious burns victims on a scale not experienced before in warfare, McIndoe was better placed to observe the ill-effects of this than any other medical practitioner in Britain. In the first four months of 1940, there had been a reported eighty-nine cases of burns resulting from accidents and enemy action in the RAF, but the next four months produced 258 cases and, of these, three-quarters would die due to their severity.[29]

By early October 1940, while the New Zealander's surgical counterpart for the Army had only admitted four serious burns patients, McIndoe had already seen dozens. Observing first-hand the numerous problems created by the most commonly applied treatment, McIndoe rejected the use of tannic acid, favouring the employment of a warm saline bath to foster wound health and general flexibility.[30] Within ten days of arriving on McIndoe's Ward Three, Fleming was cheered to hear that microscopic skin growth was being detected, thanks to time spent lying in the saline bath.

The New Zealander was a skilled and fast-working surgeon. He was particularly adept at dealing with deep burns and the effects of facial disfigurement via the use of skin grafts and reconstruction. Hillary had lost his eyelids and in order to prevent the loss of his sight, McIndoe immediately set about reconstructing these from the soft skin on the inside of his left arm. He was incapacitated for five days, then his bandages were
removed to reveal hideously large upper eyelids. When these had shrunk to a manageable size the lower lids were added.[31] Once this had been completed, Hillary was for the first time since his fiery trauma able to close his eyes to sleep. Previously, any night-time visitor looking in on the pilot would have been disconcerted to observe the upturned whites of Hillary's eyes staring in ‘frozen horror' at the ceiling as he slept.[32] Subsequent operations provided Hillary with a new upper lip and grafts to his forehead.

In addition to his considerable surgical skill, the Anzac surgeon applied his intellect to the psychological obstacles faced by his ‘guinea pigs'. His oft-stated aim was to ‘return every patient to a full and active life as a worthwhile member of the community'.[33] Not an easy task given the appearance of those in his care. Geoffrey Page, another famous patient, recalled seeing the Australian-born pilot just after he had received his eyelids:

To aid recovery and boost morale in the hospital, McIndoe turned the long low hut of Ward Three into his own fiefdom in which the ordinary rules of hospital life were either less stringently observed or completely flouted. Mixing commissioned and non-commissioned officers together, he broke down barriers between the patients. A radio was a constant companion during daylight hours to while away the time and drown out the cries of tormented patients. Whenever practical, men were encouraged to wear their uniforms rather than ‘hospital blues' in order to maintain their air service identity. McIndoe selected his nurses carefully for their attractiveness as much as their levelheadedness. In this way he hoped to lift the spirits of the men and demonstrate that those of the fairer sex were in no way unwilling to socialise with them.

Nevertheless, acceptance in the confines of the medical system was one
thing; going out into the greater world was another. Previously handsome and athletic men found the transition into society difficult in the extreme. The link between Ward Three and the greater outside world was the East Grinstead community. McIndoe and his staff persuaded locals to have patients in their homes and the village became so welcoming to the scarred and misshapen ‘guinea pigs', it became known as the ‘town than never stared'. Eventually, Fleming, Hillary and other Battle of Britain pilots would, to varying degrees of success, find their places in the outside world thanks to the work of the Anzac surgeon and his staff. In the meantime, the battle over London reached its peak on 15 September, during which the Australians dominated the midday battles for the Anzacs, and the New Zealanders the afternoon struggle. Co-ordinating it all was Anzac Keith Park.

The Prime Minister and his wife were visiting Park at his Uxbridge Headquarters on what would become known as Battle of Britain Day:

The incoming Luftwaffe pilots had been told that Fighter Command was on its last legs, when in fact it was growing daily in readiness and strength.
Although the German commanders thought switching to London would hasten the end of Fighter Command, Dowding and Park realised it offered the breather their pilots needed. In the six days leading up to 7 September they had flown a staggering 4667 sorties. In the six days that followed, this halved to 2159.[36] The London-centred defensive operations were intense, but were more concentrated and briefer than the preceding staggered assaults on the sector stations. Pilots now had more time to recoup and refresh before their next sortie. Airfields and the defensive infrastructure were all brought back up to full readiness. Squadrons were reinforced and it was possible to take new pilots out on a couple of training flights, rather than hastily inserting them straight into battle. Morale among the RAF airmen had noticeably lifted.

In marked contrast, Luftwaffe pilots were becoming less confident of victory and increasingly wearied by the incessant Fighter Command attacks. The oft-promised demise of Britain's defensive bulwark seemed no closer than it had at the beginning of the battle, two months previously. Göring's incessant claim that victory was just around the corner and that only one more final big push would carry the day was belied by the depressing appearance of Hurricanes and Spitfires in strength over London. While the first daylight assault on the capital had been spectacularly effective, in the days that followed Park more than ably marshalled his defences and prevented its repetition. Galland summed up the deteriorating situation and its causes: ‘Failure to achieve any notable success, constantly changing orders betraying a lack of purpose and obvious misjudgment of the situation by the Command ... had a most demoralising effect on ... [the] fighter pilots, who were already overtaxed by physical and mental strain.'[37]

Under the keen eyes of the Prime Minister, Park's intention to meet the enemy as far eastward as possible was aided by a delay in the Luftwaffe massing its resources. With an extended warning time, the 11 Group commander was able to pair up squadrons to meet the incoming tide of enemy machines in force. Kesselring had sent over 100 Do 17s, escorted by some 200 fighters stacked in layers above. Churchill described the scene at Uxbridge:

A grave and frowning Churchill asked Park, ‘What other reserves have we got?' To which the tall New Zealander calmly replied, ‘None.' In his magisterial history of the Second World War, Churchill reflected on his thoughts at that moment as he saw first-hand the closeness of the battle: ‘The odds were great; our margins small; the stakes infinite.'

There were now over 200 fighters in the air and Park called on Leigh-Mallory's 12 Group to reinforce the southern effort. The delay in the arrival of the enemy and the unprecedented speed in which Bader was able to get his forces arranged meant that a full wing of sixty aircraft was en route to London soon after. Fighter Command's force was close in size to that of the intruders for the first time in the battle.

Scattered among the Hurricanes and Spitfires were four Anzacs. They and their colleagues were facing a massive layered cake of enemy machines rising up to between 15,000 and 26,000 feet and stretching to nearly two miles at its widest. By the time the first Anzac, Australian Charles McGaw of 73 Squadron, launched his assault, the German formation had already been buffeted by blows from other units for a full half hour. At 12.05p.m. McGaw latched on to an Me 109 straggler which, to his pleasant surprise, employed ‘no evasive tactics whatsoever'.[39] A long burst of his Hurricane machine-guns lit a fire forward of the cockpit and the enemy machine plunged downward, a dark streak across the sky. When the bombers were in sight of London, a full nine squadrons launched a simultaneous attack, many head-on.

Among these were two Australians, Curchin and Crossman. They were a contrast in experience. Having survived his initial baptism of fire, Curchin was now a seasoned old hand having destroyed three fighters and damaged a handful of bombers over July and early August. The Queenslander Crossman, however, had only flown older biplanes of Tiger Moth-vintage. By mid-July, and in the following weeks, he began his all-too-brief familiarisation with this mount, the Hurricane. He was a product of the ever-shrinking Fighter Command training regimes. In his favour, Crossman
was fortunate to enter the battle at the very moment Fighter Command was gaining an ascendancy over the intruders.

Curchin's 609 Squadron hit the formation only seconds before Crossman. The weight of numbers on the RAF's side is clear from Curchin's report on his engagement. No sooner had he attacked a Dornier than two Hurricanes horned in on the action. Ignoring the interlopers, he gave the bomber a ‘short burst of about three seconds from astern and then broke away and attacked it from quarter ahead, after this attack I noticed that both engines had stopped. The aircraft started to glide down. I followed it and two men baled out at about 3000 ft.'[40] Ignoring the Me 109s above, Crossman turned into the bombers, and black smoke pouring from the port engine indicated hits. Ammunition exhausted, he wisely dived away from the battle when fighters appeared.[41] Both Australians would once again engage in combat with less success two hours later. As the German formation lumbered on to its target, it was blindsided by Bader's Duxford wing of two Spitfire and three Hurricane squadrons.

The staggering blow scattered a number of the bombers, making it impossible for the escorts to cover their charges effectively. Moreover, the Luftwaffe fighters were at their operational limit and were about to depart the scene in order to make safe landfall across the Channel. The ever-diminishing punch-drunk formation of bombers was forced to wheel over London, dropping their ill-directed payloads as they fled for home. Stragglers were soon picked up by Dowding's keen-eyed pilots. Wilfrid Clouston was leading Blue Section of 19 Squadron's Flight B when he spotted half-a-dozen Do 17s and ordered the attack. With one engine alight, his prey scuttled into cloud cover only to reappear with Clouston in hot pursuit. The Spitfire's Brownings chewed off ten feet of the bomber's port wing. One man managed to escape before the aircraft plummeted into a death roll, turning ‘over and over to port'.[42] By the end of the engagement the three Anzacs had taken out a fighter and a bomber. Additional successes included a probable and shares in another destroyed Dornier.

With that, Park's controllers ordered squadrons down to enable armourers and ground crews to replenish the Spitfires and Hurricanes. Across southeast England, relieved and sweaty pilots gulped down mugs of hot milky tea and ate thick sandwiches in preparation for the next onslaught. It was not long in coming and by 1.30p.m. it was apparent that a large force was assembling near Calais. The armada was even larger than the midday effort, three formations totalling 550 machines. Ominously, four hundred
of these were fighters. If the Luftwaffe hoped to catch the defenders still on the ground they were grossly disappointed. Within half an hour the New Zealand commander had sixteen squadrons on patrol and reinforcements on the way from 12 Group. The German waves crossed the English coastline at ten-minute intervals.

Among the pilots to strike first were the New Zealanders John Mackenzie and Lawrence in the vanguard of 41 and 603 Squadrons based at Hornchurch. Park wanted the front-runners to hit the Luftwaffe fighters in order to expose the bombers to the rapidly arriving reinforcements and both men were soon entangled in dogfights with the single-engine Messerschmitts. ‘I picked out a yellow-nosed Me 109,' stated Mackenzie, and fired a ‘burst from starboard side and then from the port side.' The grandson of one of New Zealand's shortest-serving Prime Ministers—less than three months in 1912—Mackenzie immediately drew the unwanted attention of another Me 109 and he was unable to verify his kill. The affable Lawrence had been transferred to 603 after the death of Pat Hughes. The skilled airman opened fire at seventy-five yards, closing to within thirty. His target was a fighter: ‘it went up steeply and then fell away in a spin ... I used the remainder of my ammunition on two [further] Me 109s, which dived into clouds.'[43]