Images of War - The Few Fight for the Skies PDF
Preview Images of War - The Few Fight for the Skies
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by PEN & SWORD AVIATION an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd. 47 Church Street Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978 1 78 346 302 2 EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47 385 443 7 PRC ISBN: 978 1 47 385 455 0 The right of Philip Kaplan to be identified as Author of thisWork has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing. Printed and bound in England By CPI Group (UK) Ltd. Croydon, CR0 4YY Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Family History, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Pen & Sword Discovery, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe True Crime, Wharncliffe Transport, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics, Leo Cooper, The Praetorian Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Frontline Publishing. For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact Pen & Sword Books Limited 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk Reasonable efforts have been made to trace the copyright holders of all material used in this book. The author apologizes for any omissions. All reasonable efforts will be made in future editions to correct any such omissions. The author is grateful to the following people for the use of their published and/or unpublished material, or for their kind assistance in the preparation of this book: Special thanks to Margaret Mayhew and Andy Saunders for advice and suggestions throughout the development of this book, and to Richard Collier for text and Pat Collier for research. Many thanks to Monique Agazarian, Tad Andersz, Malcolm Bates, R.A.F. Bentley Priory, Tony Bianchi, Harold Bird-Wilson, C.J. Bunney, John Burgess, Alan Deere, R.F.T. Doe, Gilly Fielder, Bryan Forbes, Christopher Foxley-Norris, Dave Glaser, Joan Goodman, Stephen Grey, Richard Hillary, Tony Iacono, Lynn Johnson, Claire and Joe Kaplan, Neal Kaplan, Eric Kennington, Brian Kingcome, Edith Kup, Eric Marsden, Mike Mathews, Michael O’Leary, Curthbert Orde, Geoffrey Page, Keith Park, Edward Reeves, Mark Ritchie, Derek Robinson, William Rothenstein, Mary Smith, Tangmere Military Aviation Museum, Peter Townsend, Ray Wagner, and Frank Wootton. Contents EAGLES PETER TOWNSEND DEFENCE VERSUS OFFENCE EYEWITNESS THEY ALSO FOUGHT FOR BRITAIN PUNISHING THE BRITISH GALLERY IT JUST STOPPED KEITH PARK THE FEW Eagles Saturday, 17 August, was a day of sullen overcast. On both sides of the Channel, Fighter Command and Air Fleet Two reported only reconnaissance flights. At the airfields the pilots, after nine days of frenetic activity, caught up with domestic chores. In a farmhouse at St Inglevert, near Boulogne, Oberleutnant Hans-Otto Lessing, aged twenty-three, of the 51st Fighter Group, was one of several writing home for the first time since the Battle began. “My dear parents,” he wrote, “…At last I have some time to write to you … Of course, we have a lot to do every day … sometimes two to three sorties … usually we are in the vicinity of London—if you look at the map, you’ll see the distance between the French coast and Dover. With a flying time of 1? hours and air battles as well—and a fuel shortage—you can imagine how difficult it is to get back.” For all that, Hans-Otto had one triumph to record. ‘Yesterday I shot down my fifth enemy plane … not very much if you think of the many opportunities we get, but unfortunately not every plane we shoot at falls from the sky … Another time I had very bad luck having got to a good position I found I had no ammo left, but one gets experience even in running away … my enemy plane was the hundredth of the group. “The English pilots seem to get less these last few days, but those few are fighting very well. The Spitfires sometimes give us the most astonishing aerial aerobatic display. I watched with great interest how one tore about among thirty Mes without getting hurt himself. These are exceptional ones.” Pilots of RAF Fighter Command in 1940 Regretfully, Hans-Otto Lessing brought his letter to a close: “Well, this is a short report—one would have to write a book in order to give the whole picture.” But this too had to be said: “For me this is the most exciting time of my life—I wouldn’t wish to change places with a king. Peacetime will seem very dull after this.” Predictably, few pilots took time from the wheeling chaos of the combat to set down their thoughts like Oberleutnant Lessing. The way they felt was more often expressed in a casual aside, a verbal shorthand shared only by initiates. Those with few doubts shared the ebullience of Pilot Officer George Bennions of No. 41 Squadron at Hornchurch: “My God, life wouldn’t seem right if you didn’t go up to have one scrap in the morning and another in the afternoon. “The more introspective felt the same misgivings as Flight Lieutenant Tom Hubbard, of 601 Squadron, Tangmere:” We all knew it was like a game of roulette, backing black all the time. Our luck wouldn’t come up forever” The few who kept diaries revealed little of the true emotions, in entries as terse as telegrams: “Had a scramble today but they went home,” noted Pilot Officer Eugene Tobin on 30 August. “Did some practice flying and we were lousy. Went to Andover and drank. Then home.” Pilot Officer Patrick Barthropp of No. 602 Squadron, faced on 15 September with a German armada stretching beyond the horizon, noted succinctly: “Thousands of them.” Following the afternoon sortie, he noted again: “Still thousands of them.” Both sides were anxious to prove themselves, but the RAF were at first more conscious of their limitations. Flying Officer Dudley Williams of 152 Squadron recalled that before his first combat he had twice been allowed to fire his eight Browning machine- guns into the sea for practice—and barely ten per cent of Air Chief Marshal Dowding’s pilots had undergone more stringent training. Most, unaccustomed to sighting their guns, opened fire at 600 yards, then at 200 yards, a surer range, broke from combat. All had been schooled to fly in rigid air display formation, and to home in on bombers in one of four standard Fighter Command attacks. “No one had told us that was the most stupid thing on earth to do!” said Bob Doe, then a Pilot Officer with 234 Squadron at Middle Wallop. “… The change of tactics came purely by knowing that the one laid down was wrong … I learned that I had to fly an aeroplane through the gunsight; you do what’s needed to keep the gunsight where you want it.” As Doe recalled it, his first victory, against an ME 110 over Swanage, Dorset, bore that lesson out. It was the first time he had ever peered through his reflector gunsight or even touched the red-painted firing button at the apex of the control column. It was then that the only advice his flight commander the Australian Pat Hughes, had ever offered him came abruptly back to him—“Get as close as you can and you can’t miss”—and in this moment he barely gave a thought to his adversary, the rear-gunner; hosing back fire until he baled out, only a thousand feet above the water And it was then that Doe felt ‘suddenly invincible’—although as a survivor he “retained the knowledge that you could be shot down very easily, and you’re always shot down by the one you don’t see.” Another Spitfire pilot, John Burgess, recaptured the psychology of the moments succeeding the two-and-a-half minutes that it took 222 Squadron to scramble from Rochford: “You got that horrible feeling down in the pit of your stomach … and when you were climbing you still had that sort of peculiar tummy feeling. But once action started you were too busy and all you were interested in was avoiding getting killed or trying to shoot down the other aircraft. It was rather like a dare to some degree. You wanted to see how far you could go.” An operations board of No. 609 Squadron during the Battle of Britain.
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