Dogfight (25 page)

Scrambled to support Mackenzie's unit was Biggin Hill's 92 Squadron and Howard Perry Hill of Blenheim, New Zealand. A former 1st XV rugby player for Marlborough Boys' College, the athletic twenty-year-old had made his first flight in a Spitfire in the middle of May 1940 and until now only had a claim in a shared kill. In spite of his relatively limited combat exposure, Hill struck the German onslaught with ferocity:

In the combat report prepared by the squadron's Intelligence Officer, Hill finished the mission with six aircraft against his name. Most were shares with other pilots, but two of the bombers were his alone.[45]

Once again, Bader's Duxford wing produced an unpleasant surprise, albeit mostly psychological, for the increasingly skittish German pilots when they turned for home. The harrying of the Hurricanes and Spitfires and the strong anti-aircraft fire—bolstered by the arrival of new defensive London-based guns—forced the bombers to unload their payloads ineffectually over a widely dispersed area. The massed fighters alarmed the Luftwaffe airmen. To one Dornier gunner the onslaught was as inexplicable as it was terrifying:

A former office clerk from Christchurch, New Zealand, Geoffrey Simpson latched on to a formation of thirty Heinkels south-east of London at 20,000 feet. Simpson supported a fellow 229 Squadron pilot in his attack on a rotund bomber, setting alight an engine. A second attack run by the fresh-faced twenty-one-year-old was hastily aborted when an enemy fighter made itself known.[47]

Over West Malling airfield, Kent, Flight Lieutenant Minden Blake deftly sidestepped a screen of Messerschmitts and ordered the squadron to attack a formation of nearly forty bombers. The New Zealander depressed the control column's fire button 150 yards astern. The ‘winged' bomber drifted wanly out of formation with a stopped engine. ‘I broke away and saw eighteen Do 17s flying north and turned to attack, but my windscreen was covered in black oil.' Defensive fire had nicked a pipe, flicking black
syrup over the engine cowling and canopy. He was going to have to make an emergency landing.

At twenty-seven, Blake was one of 238 Squadron's senior pilots. The unit's insignia, a three-headed hydra, was based on the mythical serpent-like beast of the ancient Greek world. Famous for is tenaciousness and ability to withstand the most severe of assaults, the hydra reflected Blake's own hardiness as an airman. Born in Eketahuna, he combined a sharp intellect with considerable athletic talents. In 1934, he graduated with an MSc from Canterbury University College and a year later was appointed a lecturer in physics. For two years running he was the New Zealand Universities gymnastic champion and in 1936 won the national pole-vaulting title. When he twice narrowly missed obtaining a Rhodes Scholarship, he chanced his arm in a new direction and won entry into the RAF as a University Entrant.[48] There he found his home and rose steadily through the ranks.

His only blemish of note was a crash in mid-1938 when returning from a routine training mission over London. As he approached the airfield in the early evening the lights were momentarily extinguished, causing the New Zealander to overshoot the airfield. As he opened the throttle the engine died and he had little option but to glide his machine earthwards in the evening gloom. Unfortunately, he clipped the chimney of a nurses' home at Croydon. The fighter flipped and planted itself in the middle of the newly prepared foundations of Purley Hospital. Blake escaped the affair with only sixteen stitches and a catalogue of bruises. The cause of the engine failure, hay in the air intake, was remedied by Rolls-Royce through a modification to the intake.[49]

On 15 September he once again demonstrated his ability to survive perilous returns to earth when his engine failed at 1000 feet and he made a forced landing at West Malling airfield. His only consolation was he was able to survey, at close hand, the damage he had inflicted on the German bomber which lay only feet away from his own machine. Two of the Luftwaffe airmen were badly burnt, but the pilot, who survived uninjured, was able to confirm Blake's account of proceedings.[50] While Blake made his way back to his airfield by train that night, the respective air commanders mulled over the day's events.

The results for the day had been impressive for the RAF, if not quite as impressive as originally thought. The confusing battlefield and shared attacks on single aircraft produced an impossibly high 183 enemy machines destroyed, which in the cold light of the post-Battle of Britain period was
reduced to fifty-six aircraft. Nevertheless, Göring's forces had been hard hit, and the actual tally was the highest loss of Luftwaffe machines on a single day. In contrast, Dowding was down only twenty-six aircraft and more importantly only thirteen Fighter Command pilots had been killed. For their part, the Anzacs claimed the destruction of six enemy machines without the loss of a single New Zealand or Australian life. As a sergeant in Blake's squadron later enthused in a letter home: ‘What about the RAF yesterday? My gosh, for every bomb dropped upon the King and Queen old 238 gave them hell ... We went in as one man and held our fire until very close range and then blew them right out of their cockpits.'[51] For the first time RAF fighters had the numbers on their German counterparts and had pushed this home to devastating effect. Soon thereafter Churchill addressed Parliament: ‘Sunday's action was the most brilliant and fruitful of any fought up to that date by the fighters of the Royal Air Force ... We may await the decision of this long air battle with sober but increasing confidence.'[52]

CHAPTER 10

Within two days Hitler ordered that the 21 September date for the invasion be postponed and a handful of days later he had elements of the invasion barges thinned out to weaken the effectiveness of Bomber Command assaults. Although fervour for the invasion was waning, the aerial assaults continued, with nightly visits of between 150 and 300 machines. The daylight raids, on the other hand, were refashioned. In general the Luftwaffe's efforts were less concentrated on London and spread further afield to include the aviation factories of Southampton and Bristol. In addition, Göring increasingly resorted to sending high-altitude fighter sweeps, designed to fool the RAF into thinking that major bombing raids were being attempted. The result was a reduction in the weight of bombs being dropped and a decline in losses on both sides.

Nevertheless, the high-flying incursions still required Fighter Command to put up the same numbers of aircraft just in case it was a bomber initiative. For example, although on 23 September most of the intruders were Me 109s, Park scrambled as many defenders as he had on 15 September.[1] Moreover, meeting German fighters freed from escorting bombers was extremely hazardous, as many an Anzac was to discover.

One of the first to experience this was Howard Hill. On 20 September 1940, the Germans sent in a series of Me 109 sweeps. Park had no wish to needlessly entangle his airmen with enemy fighters, but radar operators were in no position to determine if the blips on their screens were bombers or fighters. Once the enemy crossed the coastline, observers were hard pressed to identify the types of intruder given the height of the incursions. Under the circumstances, 11 Group sent four squadrons aloft: two apiece from Biggin Hill and Hornchurch. The New Zealander's 92 Squadron was vectored to link up with 41 Squadron at 5000 feet over Gravesend but
contact was not made and Hill and his fellow airmen pulled their Spitfires up to 20,000 feet. Controllers turned them south and ordered them to cruise at 27,000 feet. In this rarified air the Me 109 had an edge on the Spitfire thanks to its supercharger. A barked warning of ‘snappers above' came at the same time as the single-engine, clipped-finned sharks fell among them from above and astern, cannon and machine-guns blazing. Hill, as tail-end Charlie, stood little chance when attacked by Luftwaffe ace, Major Werner Mölders.

Seven years Hill's senior, Mölders was recognised as one of the world's great fighter pilots long before the Battle of Britain had begun. In the Spanish Civil War, as part of the German Condor Legion support of General Franco's Nationalists, the dapper Westphalian had amassed fifteen victories and helped develop the Luftwaffe ‘finger four'
Schwarm
formation to devastating effect. During the invasion of France he became the Luftwaffe's first recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Affectionately known as ‘Daddy' for his paternalistic concern for his men, and an ardent Catholic, Mölders was gentlemanly towards captured airmen, often inviting them to dinner.

Hill, though a novice airman in comparison, was no stranger to chivalry himself. Only two days earlier he dispatched a Ju 88 seven miles off the English coast. Like a smooth flat stone, the bomber skimmed the surface of the Channel before the crew made a hasty exit. The young New Zealander, instead of making for safety, immediately called in a rescue launch and waited for its arrival to see that the enemy aircrew were plucked safely from the cold waters.

At midday over Dungeness the German ace, with nearly forty victories to his name, lined his sights up on the New Zealander. The Me 109's cannon and machine-gun fire was deadly and Hill's machine was struck and fell out of formation. Two other 92 Squadron pilots followed Hill down, noting that he had somehow managed to keep his machine flying on a level course towards home base, though they were unable to raise the Kiwi on radio. The Anzac never turned up at Biggin Hill; he had simply vanished.

The errant aircraft was eventually spotted, lodged in the treetops of a small forest not far from the airfield. A recovery team located the machine wedged in dense foliage forty feet in the air. As the men clambered up towards the Spitfire they halted on their ladders, assaulted by the smell of decaying flesh. The glasshouse-like canopy had magnified the sun's rays as they fell on the body. ‘Gagging and retching', they discovered Hill's
remains; a cannon shell had blasted through the fuselage, fatally striking the pilot.[2] Clearly Hill had been killed outright, but the aircraft, unaided, had curiously homed in on Biggin Hill before nesting between heaven and earth. Five days later, another Anzac was killed—Kenneth Holland.

Much of the defence for the southern aircraft manufacturing industry was furnished by 10 Group and its clutch of Australians. Although controllers were not fooled by the early diversionary raids on coastal towns, they erroneously calculated the major assault would fall on factories in Yeovil, Somerset, rather than the extensive works further to the north at Filton, South Gloucester. Before midday, three squadrons were sent aloft: the Warmwell-based 152 Squadron with Holland and Ian Bayles; Exeter-based 601, which included Mayers, and, finally, Middle Wallop's 609 manned by Curchin. The trio of squadrons missed their northbound target. Unopposed, the force of sixty Heinkels, Junkers and Dornier bombers supported by Me 110s and 109s, hit the Blenheim-producing factory hard. Eight brand-new aircraft were destroyed and more damaged. In all, casualties numbered over 250 and production, which also included engines for several aircraft types, took weeks to recover. The Australian-born pilots were waiting as the bombers turned for France.

Two of the airmen, Bayles and Mayers, were products of the University Air Squadrons at Cambridge and Oxford respectively, while Holland was a graduate of the Airspeed Aeronautical College, Portsmouth. Curchin, who struck first, was a RAF entrant in August 1939, and he led his section in to attack the main formation. During the dogfight, Curchin, Mayers and Bayles all destroyed an enemy aircraft and had a share in at least one other machine each.[3] A trail of black smoke from a Heinkel was a good indication that ‘Dutchy' Holland had also hit his target and would also be able to claim some bragging rights in the mess that evening. The twenty-year-old Sydneysider was a clear-eyed young man from the beach suburb of Bondi and only just hitting his straps in combat with a couple of recent claims to his name. As the bombing crew made ready to evacuate their crippled machine, Holland closed in to survey his handiwork. However, as he did so an enemy gunner, delaying his departure, opened fire and struck Holland in the head. The fighter tipped over and plummeted to earth with the bomber in a synchronised death plunge.

A major daylight raid took place two days later, with another Anzac loss, New Zealander James Paterson. Just the day before his death, Paterson had shown one of 92 Squadron's new boys, a Londoner, Donald Kingaby, the ropes. Kingaby recalled his first meeting with the Kiwi: ‘I noted in the pilots' crew room earlier in the day a pilot with the most terribly bloodshot eyes and found out that he had been shot down earlier that month, his eyeballs having been badly scorched by the flames from his burning Spitfire.' Paterson ignored his own fatigue and took the squadron's newest member up, shepherding him around the sky, and ‘watchful for any threat'.[4]

Paterson had received his burns sixteen days earlier while patrolling over Ashford, Kent. At 28,000 feet Me 109s were encountered. As he lined up a fighter for an assault he was bounced out of the sun. Cannon fire sheered through his starboard wing and ruptured the fuel tank. To his shock, the entire wing section bent inward towards the cockpit as if on a rusty hinge and then ripped itself completely free of the fuselage. The control column whipped from his hand and the Spitfire kicked into an inverted spin. Awash in fuel, he pushed the canopy free only to have flames engulf the cockpit. Frantically kicking and struggling, he sought to extricate himself and in the slipstream lost his goggles. Fire licked his face and eyes. In a human-torch free-fall, Paterson's oxygen-starved brain clawed out of semi-consciousness and he opened his parachute at 6000 feet. An ambulance delivered him to the nearest hospital. He was worse for wear and was examined by an eye specialist. In the end he resisted hospitalisation and returned to his unit and, in spite of his commander's cautions, took to the air before his sight had fully recovered.

The burns and the fighting fundamentally changed the previously happy-go-lucky New Zealander. Upon returning from sick leave days later, he was met by his girlfriend. ‘He was unusually quiet and thoughtful during our walk in the woods ... Jimmy had his head bowed,' she recalled, ‘and shuffled the autumn leaves with his feet as we walked.' He said to her, ‘I just have a feeling I have not long to live.'[5]

That evening, in a melancholy mood, he wrapped many of his possessions in a parcel for posting back to New Zealand. A letter he wrote in September also hinted at the darker turn the war had taken in the minds of many pilots due to the Luftwaffe attacks on the women and children of the British capital and ugly reports of German pilots shooting defenceless RAF airmen who had ‘hit the silk':

The morning of 27 September dawned clear and blue. It would see one of the last major daylight raids of the Battle of Britain. By 8.00a.m. the pilots of 92 Squadron, having already downed cold toast and strong tea, were draped languidly over various careworn armchairs and the odd bed in the crew room. Any pilot missing could be assumed to have succumbed to the laxative effect of the hot tea and greasy toast, and it was not uncommon for the squadron scramble to be called and an unfortunate individual caught under such circumstances to be jeered and upbraided as he spilt from the squadron's ‘thunder box' desperately trying to haul up his trousers on the way to a Spitfire. When forty-five minutes later the call did come through, the red-eyed Paterson, startled from his semi-slumber, leapt for the door. Fire and plumes of black smoke followed the turning over of nine Merlin engines.

Paterson was leading his section over Sevenoaks, Kent, as he closed to within 100 yards of a bomber. Disaster struck when other squadron members saw budding flames forward of the New Zealander's cockpit suddenly bloom into a large orange fireball engulfing the trapped pilot. The results were horrific. Fellow pilots saw Paterson thrash around in a futile attempt to free himself from the inferno. ‘In my mind I can still see the Spitfire appearing over the roof of our houses with flames streaming from the aircraft,' recalled a seven-year-old girl who saw the burning machine singe the top of her home before exploding nearby. A schoolboy witnessed the crash site where Paterson's Spitfire was spread across a field and the local fire brigade carried away the ‘covered pilot on a stretcher'.[7] He was one of twenty-eight Fighter Command pilots shot down. Dowding's only solace was that Göring's losses were greater.[8]

The Germans had once again attempted to target the aviation industries, only to find 10 Group would not be caught napping twice, ripping holes in the Luftwaffe offensive. Likewise, daylight assaults on London were met with unflinching resistance by massed fighter units and little damage of note was made to the capital. Of the fifty-four Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed, at least one had fallen to the machine guns of Millington, with fellow Australians McGaw and Bayles each inflicting damage on an Me 110. New Zealand Hurricane pilots Ronald Bary and Charles Bush were also successful, the former sharing in a Ju 88 and the latter knocking out an Me 109. Three days later the Germans launched their final significant daylight raid of the Battle of Britain, and it would be the last day that Crossman took to the air.

While Paterson had fallen into a fatalistic malaise, Crossman was still upbeat and relishing the opportunity to get into battle. ‘I hope I will never have to leave the RAF,' wrote the twenty-two-year-old Anzac to his family in the third week of September. ‘There's something about the service that gets into one's blood and these days I get a very satisfied feeling...'[9] Monday 30 September dawned with a touch of cloud and light winds, but otherwise good flying weather, and Crossman was one of the first into the air. Though the Germans had sent over 200 aircraft across the Channel, his early-morning sortie was an uneventful patrol.

This and later Luftwaffe waves were primarily directed against London, with a late afternoon attempt on the aircraft factory at Yeovil. In the preliminary forays Curchin in 609 Squadron damaged a fighter. In the southern Yeovil raid, 152 Squadron with Ian Bayles and 87 with John Cock were involved in the action. Bayles opened the Australian account damaging a Ju 88, followed by Cock who destroyed a Junkers and injured an Me 109. The South Australian Cock was no stranger to close calls as witnessed by his watery escape earlier in the battle, and on this occasion barely avoided colliding with the Ju 88 before taking it out.[10]

Crossman was less fortunate. His last mission was in response to a midday raid of 100 bombers, with nearly 200 fighters in tow. Their target was London. The Hurricanes of 49 Squadron were paired with those of 249 Squadron and spotted the Me 109s beyond their reach at high altitude. While they were scanning for the bomb-laden Junkers, a handful of enemy fighter pilots chanced their arms, breaking ranks to dive on the 49 Squadron Hurricanes. Caught off guard, the 249 pilots could only watch in dismay as
a stricken machine etched a fiery arc across the sky. It came to earth near the small village of Forrest Hill, Sussex. A local artist on the scene captured the moment in water colour.