Dogfight Page 6
Given Fighter Command’s vulnerability in machines and pilots, Park was reluctant to deploy all his forces in the protection of Channel shipping when he judged the main event still lay some days, if not weeks, in the future. His biggest problem was that radar, which was to prove so effective later in the campaign, was less useful in this type of engagement. German bombers assembled in great numbers outside the range of detection, so that by the time the enemy raiders were picked up and their intentions plotted, there was very little time left to scramble Fighter Command machines and direct them to Channel and Straits of Dover targets. In order to make meaningful contact with the enemy, Park’s only alternative was to establish standing patrols over the area—an impossible mission to fulfil given the number of convoys.[9] In the month-long Kanalkampf, Park’s airmen would be outnumbered and outmanoeuvred.
Battle Begins
On 10 July, two large German formations arrived off Margate and Dover. The larger of these included twenty-four bombers with an escorting force of some forty single-and twin-engine Messerschmitts. Scrambled to meet the attack were five squadrons, including Donald Cobden of 74 Squadron, based at Rochford, Essex. In common with a number of South Pacific colonials, Cobden was a fine rugby player—the capstone of his career was donning the All Black jersey in August 1937 to represent New Zealand in a test against South Africa’s Springboks. Flying a Spitfire as part of 74 Squadron, he saw considerable action over France in May, securing some probables and at least one confirmed Me 109.[10]
The intruders were spotted at 1.30p.m. and all fighters were soon engaged in a vicious dogfight. The New Zealander was one of the few pilots to penetrate the Me 109 perimeter and strike the bombers, diving on a Dornier and firing his machine-guns in a short but effective burst. The result was a stream of black smoke spiralling from the starboard engine of the Luftwaffe machine. In moments, he himself came under assault from a handful of the enemy fighters. Desperate evasive manoeuvres failed to prevent cannon and machine-gun fire damaging his faltering Spitfire. He managed to shake off his assailants and limp back to a coastal airfield for a wheels-up landing. Seven Luftwaffe machines had been destroyed for the loss of one RAF pilot and a single 400-ton merchant vessel.
Cobden’s success followed the first shooting down of a German machine much earlier in the day by the curly-haired Robert Yule of Invercargill. The lone reconnaissance machine had been dispatched by the Anzac and two others in the Hurricane-equipped 145 Squadron at 5.30a.m.[11] Yule seems to have incurred no damage himself but Cobden, some hours later, probably counted himself extremely lucky to have made landfall. Both Allied and Axis pilots feared ending up ‘in the drink’.
Fighting over the waters of the Channel greatly diminished the prospect of survival. Eighty per cent of pilot losses during the month-long skirmishes occurred at sea.[12] Dowding had not anticipated the extensive use of his fighters over the Channel and consequently the RAF was ill-equipped to rescue its pilots. The Luftwaffe, on the other hand, had an excellent air-sea rescue service—the Seenotdienst—furnished with the robust Heinkel He 59 float-planes in white livery and painted with bold Red Cross markings. To enable the Seenotdienst to spot downed airmen, all German pilots were furnished with fluorescein sachets that, when broken open by a pilot, turned the surrounding waters into a bright green carpet. Lockers inside the He 59s contained first-aid equipment, heated sleeping bags and artificial respiration equipment. For the Allied pilots of the RAF, the Luftwaffe’s air-sea rescue service was to be envied but also viewed with some suspicion as it was felt in some quarters that the machines bearing the Red Cross were also being exploited for reconnaissance duties, particularly when escorted by fighters. Just the day before, Deere found himself confronted by a He 59. The following combat highlighted such fears and was the first of many close calls he endured during the Battle of Britain.
While leading a Spitfire formation out of Hornchurch in his aircraft nicknamed ‘Kiwi 2’—‘Kiwi 1’ had been lost over Dunkirk—Deere spotted a German Red Cross float-plane skimming foam-tipped waves under the protective escort of a dozen Me 109s. Deere’s section attacked the fighters, leaving the float-plane to others. Firing the new explosive De Wilde ammunition, he soon saw ‘small dancing yellow flames’ running along the fuselage of an Me 109, helping Deere gauge his effectiveness. His next target was less obliging.
About 3000 yards directly ahead of me, and at the same level, a Hun was just completing a turn preparatory to re-entering the fray. He saw me almost immediately and rolled out of his turn towards me so that a head-on attack became inevitable. Using both hands on the control column to steady the aircraft ... I peered through the reflector sight at the rapidly closing enemy aircraft. We opened fire together, and immediately a hail of lead thudded into my Spitfire. One moment the Messerschmitt was a clearly defined shape, its wingspan nicely enclosed within the circle of my reflector sight, and the next it was on top of me, a terrifying blur which blotted out the sky ahead. Then we hit.[13]
The controls were ripped from Deere’s startled hands as his seat harness cut deeply into his shoulders at the sudden impact and loss of air speed in the glancing collision. Smoke and flames bellowed from the Merlin engine and the propeller blades bent back like a claw. The Me 109 had viciously ground itself along the top of the Spitfire at high speed and in the process damaged the canopy, trapping the New Zealander inside the increasingly inhospitable cockpit. He had no alternative but to glide towards the distant British coastline. Amazingly he made it and put the wrecked machine down in a paddock near Manston airfield. Deere used his bare hands to smash his way out of the machine as the carcass of ‘Kiwi 2’ went up in flames. Sitting well back from the conflagration, he catalogued his injuries: cut and bleeding hands, singed eyebrows, badly bruised knees and a cut lip. ‘But I was alive!’ A local farmer’s wife offered him a cup of tea, to which he replied he would ‘prefer something stronger’.
A whisky later and he was transported to Hornchurch where two matters of interest were being discussed: Deere’s ‘brush’ with a German, and the He 59 air-sea rescue aircraft’s true purpose. Rumour had it that, having exhausted his ammunition Deere had intentionally ploughed into the German fighter. ‘I may be a mad New Zealander...,’ remarked a bemused Deere, ‘but not so mad that I would deliberately ram an enemy aircraft head-on.’[14]
Other pilots had also come across the sea-rescue aircraft and were uncertain how they should be treated, particularly as they bore civilian registration letters and Red Cross markings, and appeared to be unarmed. What made the RAF pilots suspicious was the heavy escort some He 59s were receiving from Me 109s. After some sea-rescue machines had been shot down, the Air Ministry directed that aircraft marked with the Red Cross engaged in legitimate evacuation of the sick and wounded would be respected, but those that were flying over areas in which British operations were being undertaken would be accorded no such ‘immunity’. The Germans, however, took no chances and subsequently armed and camouflaged their aircraft as they continued to save downed Luftwaffe and, on occasion, Allied airmen during the battle.
On the Allied side, a dedicated British air-sea rescue service would not be formed until 1941. In the meantime, Park set about organising the transfer of suitable aircraft from the Army to work with coastal rescue launches to pick up downed airmen as a stopgap measure.
First Losses
In addition to the Kiwis, a trio of Australian-born pilots saw action on 11 July: John Curchin, Richard Glyde and Flight Lieutenant Stuart Walch. A morning attack on a convoy drew out Curchin’s 609 Squadron. At the outbreak of the campaign the Melburnian was still relatively inexperienced when his unit was jumped by twenty Me 109s. He barely managed to scrape through his first air battle and a number of squadron members were less fortunate. By midday, 87 Squadron had joined the fray with Glyde as Blue 2.
Glyde, unlike Curchin, was already an accomplished fighter pilot with four victories to his name in France and a DFC pinned to his chest. Originally from Perth, Western
Australia, he was denied admittance to the RAAF on medical grounds, forcing him to pay his own fare to Britain, where he obtained direct entry to the RAF. On this day, his first major engagement, he attacked three Me 110s near Portland. The first sustained damage to both engines. His next target was less easily dispatched, with the rear gunner shooting a large hole in Glyde’s canopy and placing three bullets in his starboard wing-tip. Finally, he leapt to aid a fellow Hurricane pilot having trouble with another Me 110. Although the tail gunner’s aim was for the most part wayward, he did manage to drill a bullet through the control panel, striking the armour plating near Glyde’s head. Shaken but undeterred, the Anzac reeled in the fleeing intruder forcing the Luftwaffe airman to put his aircraft down in the water, where it sank moments later.[15] Meanwhile, Walch of 238 Squadron engaged a Me 110, also near Portland.[16] A native of Hobart, Tasmania, Walch fired three-second bursts as he closed to within fifty yards. He saw it plunge into the sea, with black smoke trailing from an engine. The Anzac had chalked up the squadron’s first confirmed victory.[17] This was tempered by the loss of two Anzacs in short order.
Twenty-four hours later the Kiwis suffered their first loss when Aucklander Henry Allen, piloting a Hurricane out of North Weald, Essex, was hit. Charged with protecting convoys plying the Thames Estuary, 151 Squadron was ordered to cover a small armada codenamed ‘Booty’. Soon after, word was received of incoming enemy machines. At 9.00a.m. in broken cloud cover the squadron fell amongst the bombers.[18] The part-Maori twenty-six-year-old, with a cabinet full of sporting trophies and medals from his college days in New Zealand and three years as an officer for the Blue Funnel Line steamship company under his belt, was about to engage the enemy for his first and last time.[19] Met by labyrinthine crossfire, the Hurricane’s engine was knocked out of action, blades frozen in blunt testimony to the damage. Squadron pilots saw his machine glide seaward. The waters off Essex claimed aircraft and pilot.
The very next day, 13 July, an Australian was lost. RAAF Point Cook graduate Flight Lieutenant John Kennedy was covering Convoy ‘Bread’ on its way to Portland. His fellow Australian in 238 Squadron, Walch, was close at hand when Kennedy spotted a lone Do 17. The Sydneysider ordered his section to intercept the bomber, only to be bounced by three Messerschmitts. Kennedy was hit and attempted to crash-land on the beach, but the machine stalled and he was killed. The first New Zealander and the first Australian to die in the battle had done so within a day of each other.
Over the next ten days the Luftwaffe employed the same tactics as weather permitted. Bombers and fighters would accumulate over the French coast and then in strength swing west in pursuit of a convoy. This pattern was repeated two to three times a day. With the advantage of surprise and numbers, the strategy was generally successful and culminated on 19 July with extremely heavy losses to Fighter Command—the greater part of which were suffered by Defiant-equipped squadrons.
Slaughter of the Innocents
Not all Anzacs were fortunate enough to find themselves at the controls of either a Hurricane or Spitfire. Alongside the development of these machines had been that of a third: the Boulton Paul Defiant ‘turret-fighter’. The Defiant was a curious beast, conceived as bomber-destroyer. The placement of a turret directly behind the pilot was its main point of departure from its more illustrious siblings. Utilising four turret-mounted Browning machineguns, it should have made for a fearsome combatant in the air war.
Wellington-born air-gunner Clifford Emeny was inserted into a Defiant and readily appreciated the potential when in training he was required to fire at a drogue. His pilot pulled the Defiant to within fifty feet and the young New Zealander opened fire at a rate of 2800 rounds per minute, shredding the drogue. His instructor offered fulsome praise: ‘There is nothing of the target left to count the hits. You have destroyed the target. Absolutely bloody perfect.’
Pushed along by the same Merlin power-plant as the Hurricane and Spitfire, the first Defiant prototype was test-flown in July 1937. Churchill was a keen sponsor and, the following year, 450 machines were ordered to outfit nine squadrons. Nevertheless, in spite of Churchill’s support, and its vague resemblance to the Hurricane, the Defiant would prove unsuited to modern aerial warfare.[20] The electro-hydraulically powered turret dominated the machine, adding an extra 1500 lbs to the Defiant’s overall weight. The result was that it barely scraped past 300 mph at top speed and its manoeuvrability, compared with that of the German single-engine fighter, was terminally sluggish. A lack of forward-firing guns only increased the turret-fighter’s vulnerability. Moreover, a mortally wounded Defiant was a death-trap for the gunner, who could extract himself from his coffin-like enclosure only with great difficulty.
Surprisingly, its unusual design meant that its first forays into the European air war were more successful than might otherwise be expected. Over the beaches of Dunkirk, German pilots mistook the Defiant for a standard fighter, only to find that their rear-on attack was coming under withering fire from Browning machine-guns. Luftwaffe crews were quick learners however, and soon the hunter became the hunted as enemy airmen discovered that frontal attacks and assault from below could be pressed home with impunity. Fortunately for RAF pilots, and the outcome of the conflict, only two squadrons rather than nine were equipped with Defiants by the time the Battle of Britain was under way—141 and 264 Squadrons. The intervention of Dowding, who immediately appreciated the limitations of a turret-fighter in terms of performance and ‘hitting power’, strangled its development and production in favour of the Hurricane and Spitfire.[21] In total, nineteen New Zealanders and two Australians were deployed in Defiants as pilots or gunners.
In what became known as the ‘slaughter of the innocents’, 141 Squadron’s two-seater Defiants were scrambled against a formation of Me 110s harassing shipping. Of the nine aircraft, a third were piloted by Kiwis: John Kemp, Rudal Kidson and Gard’ner. None had any combat experience—this would be their collective baptism of fire. Only that morning they had been ordered forward to Hawkinge airfield, Kent. Just after midday they were sent on a patrolling mission 20 miles below Folkestone. The turret-fighters lumbered slowly to gain altitude, but only fifteen minutes into their flight they were jumped by a large number of Me 109s. Among those rolling out of the sun on top of the Defiants was ace Hauptmann Hannes Trautloft, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, the attack on Poland and the invasion of France.
The eagle-eyed Luftwaffe airman spotted 141 Squadron flying in V-formation. He almost immediately discerned the Defiants’ defining mid-dorsal turret and decided to take advantage of their complete lack of forward armament. The Fighter Command pilots and gunners never had a chance. Trautloft observed fragments of fuselage torn away as his cannon fire raked the flank of a Defiant. The machine exploded in a fiery inferno.[22] The inexperienced RAF pilots had not been briefed on the best defensive tactic to give them a chance of survival. Consequently, instead of circling the wagons, the Defiants persisted in flying on a straight and level course. The Me 109s dived on the hapless turret-fighters and used their momentum to sweep quickly around for further attacks. The arrival of a Hurricane unit prevented the destruction of every Defiant. Nevertheless, the results were devastating, and it is likely that Kemp and Kidson and their gunners were killed early in the action. Only three of the nine Defiants were to make it home, and one of these had to be written off. Of the crews, four pilots and six gunners were lost.
The sole New Zealander to survive the ‘slaughter of the innocents’ was Gard’ner. He recalled years later how the Germans had gained the upper hand, bouncing them out of the sun. His gunner was most likely killed in the initial ‘thud, thud, thud’ of cannon fire. ‘I could see a small naval vessel,’ and he tried to get close to it but overshot by a wide margin. In the moments before hitting the sea he made the mistake of sliding back the cockpit hood and unstrapping his harness in order to make a quick exit. On impact, he was knocked out as his head bounced against the front and rear of the cockpit. He came to ‘i
n the water and struggling to get myself out of the aeroplane’. Blood from a deep cut across his forehead blinded the Kiwi, and then ‘suddenly I heard a voice saying, “Come on, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”’[23]
Gard’ner was hauled aboard the rescue vessel, but his gunner went down with the Defiant. The New Zealander promptly passed out, waking hours later in hospital with his head swathed in bandages. The unit had been decimated. The handful of crew and aircraft that remained were transferred to Scotland and the other Defiant unit, 264 Squadron, was immediately pulled from action. Suffering head injuries, Gard’ner was placed on sick leave for three months, only returning to the squadron, which had been transferred to night-fighter operations, in October.[24]
Action was sporadic over the following weeks, but a couple of Australians saw heavy fighting. On 20 July, Walch was leading Blue Section of 238 Squadron on a standing patrol over a convoy south-east of Portland. During the midday flight he became separated from the other Hurricanes in his section, but continued his duties until required to switch to his reserve tank and head for his home field of Tangmere. Then he spotted a formation of fifteen aircraft coming in at altitude towards the unsuspecting convoy. The Tasmanian pulled his machine around and climbed to make an attack from out of the sun. Bombs exploded around one of the escorting destroyers as he ‘pulled the plug’ of the fighter’s booster, propelling it towards three Me 109s. At barely 50 yards he laid down a two-second blanket of lead on one of the German fighters. The results were instantaneous: writhing black smoke spewed from the engine as a telltale sign of terminal injuries sustained by the 12-cylinder engine. Confirming the diagnosis, the machine fell into a vertical seaward dive. Within seconds, the two remaining Luftwaffe airmen were doing everything in their power to get astern of the young Australian. ‘I pulled up in a steep stall,’ he wrote in his after-action report, ‘and made for home.’[25]