Dogfight (20 page)

The RAF had taken a hammering. North Weald, Debden, Eastchurch and Croydon were struck. Once again, damage to Hornchurch and Biggin Hill was considerable. The loss ratio between Fighter Command and the Luftwaffe had diminished to an uncomfortably narrow margin. On 28 August, Dowding lost twenty-eight machines to Göring's thirty. It seemed the battle was tipping towards the Luftwaffe.[14]

The causes were readily observable. First, the withdrawal of the Stukas affected the ratio as there were fewer easy pickings to be had in the aerial contest. Long gone were the days of racking up impressive statistics against the slow and poorly armed Ju 87. Second, and more importantly, the Germans made it much harder for the RAF pilots to attack the bombers unhindered. With greater numbers of escort fighters flying hazardously close to the bombers, the Allied airmen were forced to engage the Me 109s directly. By at least one estimate, every bomber was now arriving with up to four bodyguards. Consequently, fighter-on-fighter combat was taking its toll on Dowding's pilots in the swirling battles of high summer.

The Hurricane pilots suffered heavily. Between 20 August and 6 September twelve of the aces flying the Hawker-badged fighter were ushered from the battlefield by death or injury.[15] More commonly though, it was the squadron rookies who were the casualties of this unforgiving battleground. The shortened training meant that men were lost in quick succession. On one particular day, 111 Squadron, which saw five New Zealanders pass through its ranks during the campaign, received two new pilots. Fresh from their Operational Training Unit, the pilots in their eagerness to enter the fray had left their luggage in their car as they were ushered unceremoniously into battle, as noted by one of the unit's armourers. ‘They immediately went up with the rest of the squadron since we were so short of pilots, but only one returned, badly injured. I do not even remember their names. Their car stood outside the airport building still with their baggage in it.'[16]

In
Nine Lives,
Deere recounted the arrival and sudden absence of two Kiwi replacement pilots. Although the more experienced hands at 54 Squadron had managed to avoid an early exit from the battle, others had been less
fortunate. To bolster numbers, the RNZAF-trained Michael ‘Mick' Shand and Charles Stewart arrived on 22 August, having disembarked from New Zealand only five weeks earlier. Shand was allocated to Deere's Flight; the latter at first glance assessed the young man favourably as a ‘rugged, aggressive-looking New Zealander typical of the type one would expect to find in the second row of an All Black pack'. Nevertheless, Deere soon discovered that although the Wellington-born Shand was a year his senior, he was very much his junior in air warfare and terribly ill-equipped for the white-hot intensity of the August combat. Shand had received his flying wings barely five months earlier, confessing that he had only a grand total of twenty hours in a Spitfire. ‘As a matter of fact,' he told Deere, ‘I know damned all about fighters, I was trained as a light bomber pilot.'

‘Have you fired the guns of a Spitfire yet?' inquired Deere.

‘No, I haven't; apart from a very little gunnery from a rear cockpit, I've no idea of air firing.'[17]

Deere realised that, with far fewer hours than the 100 Gray had recommended to really get to grips with the Spitfire, the newcomer's chances of survival were not great. Hiding his concern, and in the forlorn hope of getting Shand through the combat that was to follow, Deere took him under his wing. On his first operational sortie, Deere told him to stay close and avoid German fighters. The idea was to watch and learn but not engage. Although he survived his inaugural mission, his very next sortie was less agreeable. In the afternoon fighting, Shand became entangled with an Me 109 at Hell's Corner. Cannon-shell fragments entered his arm, severing a nerve, and he made a forced landing at Manston.

Within twenty-four hours, Stewart, another Wellingtonian, was also missing from the officers' mess. As Deere lamented, at ‘the end of the following day neither Mick nor his compatriot was with us.' Stewart, a former accounts clerk, had ‘hit the silk' after his Spitfire took a pounding from an Me 109 and ended up in the drink. The initial rescue launch sent to retrieve him completely failed to locate the rapidly cooling New Zealander. A teeth-chattering forty-five minutes passed, and with all hope nearly gone, he was finally located by another vessel. Suffering from shock and exposure, the battered and bruised Stewart was plucked from the Channel and the rescue craft headed to Dover, but not before being ineffectually strafed by an Me 109.[18] Both men had survived their premature insertion into the battlefield, but others did not.

Irving Smith had been in operations extensively over August and his
squadron was reduced to four pilots by 1 September. As the unit prepared to leave the frontline for the relative calm of Digby, replacements were rushed in to fill the yawning gap in fighting strength. The withdrawal north should have been routine and well within the grasp of the new arrivals. However, as the squadron took off, Smith saw one of them veer away and fly straight into a crane. ‘I knew him for only five minutes,' the New Zealander lamented.[19]

The other factor in Fighter Command's mounting losses was the transfer in of weaker squadrons from other Groups. At least in units like 54 Squadron, the newcomers had the advantage of battle-hardened pilots like Gray and Deere to lean upon, but when complete new squadrons were inserted into the field of battle they did so at an acute disadvantage. What was extremely concerning to Park was the rising number of squadrons that were being almost massacred in the air. His own research found the culprit in Leigh-Mallory. The commander of 12 Group was holding back some of his more seasoned squadrons and dispatching units with little readiness for battle. Included among these were 266 and 79. The former unit had started the battle with three Anzacs, New Zealanders Richard Trousdale, Williams and Frank Cale from Australia. In a secret RAF report of 26 August, examining Fighter Command losses, it was revealed that the squadron had claimed credit for nine victories for an unacceptably high loss of six pilots, one of whom was Cale. In 79 Squadron it took only three days at Biggin Hill for Tracey to see four of his colleagues disappear.

Park wanted no more of these untested units, and stated that ‘only experienced squadrons be provided when the exchanges are necessary'.[20] The latter squadron was shipped out of the combat area and replenished by a trio of inexperienced Kiwis. Their high casualty rate came about in part because they were still using pre-war formation flying. The men were accomplished airmen, but unfamiliar with combat; the techniques and lessons learnt by pilots such as Olive, who had fought extensively over Dunkirk and in the early phases of the Battle of Britain, had not been widely disseminated. Wedded to outmoded flying methods, the newcomers were easily picked off by battle-hardened Luftwaffe airmen.

By early September the issue appeared to be nearing a crisis point and two days into the month a report stated that losses were exceeding new arrivals.
The rate of loss was nearly 125 a week and Fighter Command squadrons were 150 pilots short of their establishment numbers by the end of August.[21] Squadrons which had an establishment strength of twenty-six pilots were now averaging nineteen. Five days later at a top level RAF meeting it was stated that the Operational Training Units were currently pushing out only 280 fighter pilots a month, while losses for the past four weeks ran to 348 airmen. Park chipped in that the falling numbers of pilots in squadrons meant that remaining airmen were unable to get a breather from the battle and morale was suffering terribly.

Park was well aware of 11 Group's deteriorating position as he visited frontline airfields. His air logbook bears testament to his prodigious efforts. Over the entire period of the Battle of Britain he flew on no fewer than 31 days, calling into 11 Group airfields on at least 59 occasions.[22] Park felt it was his responsibility to get a first-hand feel for the battle and listen to the men under his command, from ground crews to pilots to station commanders. For their part, the pilots appreciated a leader who understood their craft, listen to their frustrations, and sometimes cut through red tape to achieve in hours what would ordinarily have taken weeks to implement. Nevertheless, all of Park's considerable industry was unable to rectify the dwindling reserves of pilots and the mind-numbing grind of fighting. Weariness and combat stress had become just as real an adversary as the Me 109 pilots.

Colin Gray during the last three weeks of August had undertaken a total of sixty sorties. Of these he had engaged the enemy on no fewer than sixteen occasions. ‘We were all absolutely dog-tired from the long hours of “readiness” or “availability” from dawn to dusk most days, from repeated encounters with the enemy, and the constant wear on nerves by air raids—including night-time when we should have been resting and recuperating for the next day.'[23] Over the first three days of September, Gray's logbook documented an additional thirteen sorties of which five involved combat.

Pilots were starting to display symptoms of severe fatigue. As Deere cast his eyes over the men waiting for the next call-up, he observed that the ‘strain had almost reached breaking point'.

Heavily in action, 111 Squadron was racked by losses and burnout. ‘On one of our busy days at Croydon,' recalled one of the unit's armourers, ‘we were watching the return of our Hurricanes, and ready to rearm quickly, when we noticed one aircraft landed and taxied a short distance only to stop some way off with the engine still turning over. Thinking the pilot wounded, we dashed over to the aircraft, only to find the pilot ... was leaning forward ... head on his chest and asleep with exhaustion.'[25]

The cruel unrelenting intensity of the period was enough to test the strongest pilot's resolve and judgement. Both flight commanders in 257 Squadron had been killed in a single day and the replacements found morale in the squadron was way down: ‘They were a bunch of young chaps, only two of them with pre-war experience ... Naturally they were thinking, if these two experienced chaps can be shot down, what sort of chance have we got?'[26] It did not help that the squadron leader was showing signs of what was termed a ‘lack of moral fibre' (LMF). On their very first mission with the squadron, patrolling at 20,000 feet above Maidstone, an intruder formation was sighted but the commander refused to order an assault, arguing that they had been directed to patrol and that is what they would do until they were instructed otherwise. The transferred airmen ignored the commanding officer and ploughed into the enemy. After a couple of similar episodes, they downed some beers before phoning through to Park to request that he be dumped. Within hours he was gone.

At the height of the battle, Deere suspected a case of LMF. The New Zealander was only too well aware of the ill-effects due to an incident in the early Channel battles in which a young sergeant in the squadron gained a reputation for diving through a formation with guns firing in the general direction of the enemy only to disappear from the field of battle. ‘He's “yellow” and there's no getting away from it,' Gribble had said to the commanding officer. The two New Zealanders, Gray and Deere, agreed that the sergeant in question was endangering morale, the latter suggesting he be transferred out as ‘operationally tired'.[27]

In late August, Deere remembered this incident when another pilot
demonstrated a lack of enthusiasm for duty. The loss-plagued unit needed a new section leader and Deere asked Jack Cole. Surprisingly, he was rebuffed: ‘I'd rather not fly again today, Al, I don't feel well.'

He's lost his nerve, an annoyed Deere thought and shot back tersely, ‘What do you mean, not well? You're probably just over-tired like the rest of us. I'm sorry but you will have to fly, there's no one else capable of taking the second section.'

‘If you say so,' Cole answered abruptly as he turned on his heel.

A few days later, Deere was taken aback to discover that Cole was admitted to hospital with malaria and should have been removed from the field of battle weeks ago. The embarrassed New Zealander visited him and offered his apologies. ‘So, I had been wrong about Jack; he really was ill and not just frightened, as I had smugly supposed,' admitted a chagrined Deere.[28] Doubtless the Anzac's false diagnosis was influenced by his own weariness. Fortunately, 54 Squadron was withdrawn from the fight on 3 September.

The Hornchurch diary summed up its efforts:

Alongside others, the two New Zealanders had done much to carry the squadron through its darkest days. Both men were prodigious fighter pilots. Deere was not only one of the squadron's leading aces with five confirmed kills and a further three probables and one damaged since 10 July, but clearly one of its leaders.[30] Even ignoring probables and damaged enemy aircraft, Gray's remarkable run of successes firmly placed him in the record books for the battle as he accounted for fifteen and one shared. However, the determination of the men from the antipodes was not without it limits.