Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940-1945. Patrick Bishop
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beside the smashed harrows; we shot them later. The air was foul of the reek of high explosive.3
The sight of dead civilians was to have a disturbing effect on many of the pilots who served in France, ruffling their careful nonchalance and stirring up feelings of detestation, even hatred for the enemy. That evening Richey flew the last patrol of the day over the aerodrome, noting the effect of the German visitation on the normally dull and tranquil landscape. ‘Smoke was rising from several towns and villages: bombed…Here and there farmhouses and barns were burning, and the sight of the lazy red flames licking up nauseated me; it was all so thoroughly evil and hellish.’
The last pilots bumped down on the grass airfields of Champagne, Picardie and the Pas de Calais in near darkness. It had been an extraordinary day. Altogether, the fighters of the Advanced Air Striking Force and the Air Component had flown 208 sorties. Between them, they claimed to have definitely shot down fifty-five bombers – Heinkels, Dorniers and Ju 88s – with a further sixteen probable. British losses amounted to seven Hurricanes shot down and eight damaged. Astonishingly, not one pilot was killed, and only three had been wounded.
The Luftwaffe themselves reckoned they had lost thirty-three bombers. Conflicting claims persisted throughout the air battles of the rest of the year. Wishful thinking, the confusion of battle and propaganda considerations inevitably inflated British figures. The Germans also exaggerated their successes and masked the extent of their losses, employing a system that fudged stark realities by assessing the damage to each aircraft in percentage terms. Whatever the discrepancy, it had been a bad debut for the Luftwaffe in northern France. The Hurricane pilots fell asleep believing, or at least hoping, that the Germans were less formidable than they had feared. ‘Am I browned off,’ complained Denis Wissler, who had missed the action, grounded because of his inexperience.
The first day was to turn out to be the best. Things had for once gone more or less according to plan. All the time put into perfecting the Fighting Area Attacks, precisely numbered and laid out in the pre-war training manuals, appeared to have been justified. ‘I have never seen squadrons so confident of success, so insensible to fatigue and so appreciative of their own aircraft,’ noted the satisfied Officer Commanding the Air Component, Group Captain P. F. Fullard. But it was beginner’s luck. The success which even relatively untested squadrons like 607 had enjoyed was due to the crucial fact that the bombers had arrived without any fighter escort in unconscious fulfilment of the Dowding prophesies as to what sort of war his squadrons would have to fight. The Hurricanes had been able to locate their targets with relative ease, simply because there were so many of them. The pilots arriving from England who were accustomed to Fighter Command’s by now reasonably sophisticated ground-control system found themselves operating without direction. Relying on reports of sightings from the French observers, interception orders were transmitted from wing headquarters to aerodromes by field telephone. The sketchy information that could be conveyed to the pilots in the air was often unintelligible because of the short range and poor quality of the R/T.
Setting off from Merville mapless into the dusk, Pilot Officer Mike Stephens of 3 Squadron had soon been separated from the rest of his section, and then lost. ‘We took off in whatever direction we happened to be pointing, hoping to catch the Heinkels,’ he wrote. ‘It was hopeless. There was no radar, no fighter control at all. We were wasting effort and hazarding aircraft in the hope of finding our quarry in the gathering darkness.’4 The official RAF daily report admitted that the fighters ‘had much too little in the way of an effective early-warning system’.5 In the confusion of the subsequent days, that deficiency could only get worse. Nor were the Luftwaffe to make the same mistake again. On the second day, when the bomber fleets returned, they brought the Me 109s and Me 110s with them.
The very limited strength of the France-based squadrons was to be bolstered by several squadrons from 11 Group, including some equipped with Spitfires, flying from bases in south-east England. The fighters of the AASF and AC, however, were overwhelmed by their workload. The Luftwaffe probed deeper and wider behind French lines. German reconnaissance flights roamed over the forward areas, reporting the progress of the French and British land forces moving by prearranged plan to block the anticipated German advance westwards from the Low Countries. At the same time, bombers began systematically tearing up the defenders’ lines of communication attacking aerodromes, railheads and bridges.
The squadrons went into action again at first light on the second day, Saturday, 11 May. Reims-Champagne aerodrome was bombed at 5 a.m. by Ju 88s. They were followed by two Dorniers. One of the raiders was brought down when 73 Squadron scrambled a section. The new arrivals from 79 Squadron at Merville also got into action early, shooting down a Heinkel spotted during a dawn patrol. At Berry-au-Bac, 1 Squadron spent the first hours setting up a new dispersal area, having decided the attack the previous day had probably been aimed at a concrete hut where they had first established themselves. The new arrangement consisted of a tent, a telephone to receive orders from 67 Wing headquarters and a trench and dugout to dive into in the inevitable-seeming eventuality of another raid. Now that the battle had really begun, Bull Halahan took his place at the head of his pilots, leading the first action of the day to confront Heinkel bombers, which turned back when they saw the Hurricanes.
The sound of gunfire and bombs rumbled around the airfields of northern France throughout the day, but the pilots had no clear idea of what they were supposed to do. No. 1 Squadron had been reprimanded by wing headquarters at Reims for taking off and chasing bombers on its own initiative. Their job, the pilots were told, was to await orders to escort Allied bombers trying to stem the German attack and to ignore any overflying raiders. Later on, after three large bombs were dropped outside the chateau where the headquarters staff were based, a request came through to mount a patrol in the vicinity.
The French-based squadrons were supported that morning by fighters which took off from bases in southern England on sorties over Holland and Belgium. Twelve Hurricanes from 32 Squadron were sent off from Biggin Hill to support the Dutch air force. They were directed to the aerodrome at Ypenberg, which they were told was in German hands. Pete Brothers led the attack as the CO had only just arrived at the squadron. ‘We arrived, and on the ground there were a large number of Ju 52 transport aircraft,’ he said later. ‘We dived to set them on fire and to my surprise there was nothing to shoot at. They were all burned out in the middle, though the wing-tips and tails were OK. We thought, that’s jolly odd. We whizzed around looking for something and found one parked between two hangars so we set that on fire and climbed back up again.’ It was not until several months later that the squadron discovered that Dutch forces had recaptured the aerodrome and had blown up the transports on the ground, saving one for escape to Britain only to see it destroyed by their allies.6
No. 17 Squadron, based at Martlesham in Suffolk, was ordered in mid afternoon to patrol the Dutch coast. The whole squadron took off in twelve Hurricanes, crossing into Holland just south of The Hague and turning north. It then split up, with the CO, Squadron Leader George Tomlinson, leading ‘A’ Flight back to circle Rotterdam while ‘B’ Flight headed on to The Hague. On the way, ‘A’ Flight was attacked suddenly by sixteen Me 109s, which swooped on them, breaking up the formation into a series of individual combats in what was probably the first mass dogfight of the war. Something of the hectic confusion was conveyed in the officialese of Flying Officer Richard Whittaker’s report. ‘Eight [came in] for the first attack,’ he wrote. ‘Afterwards a dogfight developed and I broke away and saw three 109s on the tail of a Hurricane. I did a quarter attack on his port giving a short burst, but had to carry on past him. I then saw another Me 109 and we circled each other feinting for position and I finally got on his tail. I gave him all I had. We had both been flying at very low speeds, trying to turn inside one another. At this point I commenced to stall and lost sight of the enemy aircraft temporarily.’ Breaking away, he flew through the smoke shrouding the coast and headed for home. Looking down he saw that ‘The Hague as a whole was on fire’. In the same mêlée, Sergeant Charles Pavey found that, when he did a steep turn to the left, a pursuing Me 109 ‘could not follow me round. I eventually got on to his tail and the enemy