Dogfight (29 page)

If the Anzacs had a high claim rate in proportion to their numbers in Fighter Command, the Australians also suffered from a high loss rate relative to their colleagues. They had only three losses over the months of July and October, but sandwiched between were two months of heavy casualties. Over a particularly nasty six-day period in August the Australians lost six pilots—four killed, one wounded and one captured—though they also destroyed an impressive seventeen German aircraft.[24] In total thirteen, or thirty-five per cent, of the Australians were killed. This was one of the highest loss rates of any nationality in the battle. Comparatively speaking, their New Zealand cousins fared better. The twenty Kiwi losses were spread evenly over the four months. The most notable spike in New Zealand casualties occurred during the 19 July ‘slaughter of the innocents' when two Defiant Kiwi pilots were killed and one injured while ditching in the Channel. In all, thirteen per cent of the New Zealanders were lost, which was slightly lower than Fighter Command's overall loss rate of eighteen per cent.[25]

On the Australian side all losses occurred during operations. This once again reflects the fact that most of these airmen were stationed in close proximity to the German incursions. The Kiwis, who were more widely dispersed across the British Isles, had a full quarter of all losses attributable to accidents. John Bickerdike was the first New Zealander killed in this manner doing aerobatic manoeuvres in a mid-July training flight, while Stanley and Holder died within hours of each during a night-flying exercise in late October.

Anzac pilots became numb and resigned to the mounting losses among their ranks. Some reacted with bitterness, but as time drew on and weariness mounted, pilots became resigned to the empty places in the mess. The airmen feigned disinterest and sought distractions from mournful thoughts at the local pubs or on jaunts into the hot spots of London. Fighting hard in the air often meant playing hard on the ground. Alcohol was a constant factor in many a ‘knees-up'. Young airmen lubricated their nights on the town with beer or spirits as they let off steam and tried to forget the terrors of the fight. The patrons of English country ale houses welcomed Churchill's airmen with open arms.

Women flocked to the blue-uniformed fighter boys. Some liaisons were brief, forgotten as soon as the sun rose the next day, but other airmen cultivated relationships that could last a lifetime. Wartime marriages were
not without their trials and perils, however, and Olive spent little more than two weeks with his wife over the entire course of the Battle of Britain, while one of his best friends died mid-battle leaving a grieving wife and two inconsolable daughters. As Clifford Emeny escorted a sobbing, grief-stricken widow to a relative's home, he forswore a wartime marriage. The heartbroken young woman had lost her husband within two hours of their marriage.

Not all accidents and fire proved fatal. Good fortune played a part in the fate of some airmen. On one eventful morning Olive stared down an exploding oxygen tank, a disintegrating parachute, high-voltage lines, shotgun wielding farmers and a wayward fire-engine—any of which might have spelt his demise but did not. Deere gained a mythical status in this regard and must be considered one of the luckiest pilots of the campaign. His
Nine Lives
autobiography is aptly titled, with a catalogue of close calls that beggar belief, including a head-on collision with an Me 109, skidding along the Hornchurch runway in an inverted Spitfire during a bombing raid, and an extremely low-level bale-out cushioned by a plum-tree landing.

Pilots of the Great War had not been issued with parachutes. Fortunately for their Second World War counterparts, parachutes were standard equipment along with their yellow life-jackets. New Zealand's Gibson was not only a Caterpillar Club member four times over but also his survival in the waters of the Channel on two occasions was testament to the life-preserving powers of the Mae West. While some men were dried off after a Channel dip or dusted off by a local farmer and then speedily returned to the battle—sometimes within hours of being shot down—other Anzacs spent months recuperating from ghastly injuries.

Fire was the airmen's most feared foe. A spark united with pure oxygen could transform the life-giving breathing apparatus into a hellish flesh-consuming blast-furnace. Richard Hillary was grotesquely disfigured by a conflagration in the confines of his Spitfire. As he lay in the tendrils of his parachute in the Channel, the burnt and dispirited Australian attempted to take his own life. Fire had stripped his hands to the bone in places, and his eyelids, ears and forehead had been removed. New Zealander John Fleming learnt first-hand about the dangers pilots faced in their fire-prone Hurricanes. The gravity fuel tank directly abutting the instrument panel spewed burning liquid over his legs. The two men's sole consolation was they both came under the care of their fellow Anzac, the legendary Archibald McIndoe.

The Dunedin-born plastic surgeon revolutionised the treatment of severe burns. The saline bath and grafting techniques perfected for his ‘guinea pigs' were soon adopted worldwide. Hillary and Fleming were not only reconstructed but gained a measure of dignity thanks to the New Zealander's methods of rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Employing handpicked staff and co-opting local townspeople into his plans meant the ‘Boss' was able to create an environment that side-stepped medical conventions of the times, but ultimately eased the airmen back into a life beyond their injuries.

The Battle of Britain was not the end of the war for most Anzacs. The New Zealanders and Australians were cast to the winds—sitting behind desks; instructing new trainees; or once again donning their flying suits for operations over Europe, the Mediterranean, or the Asia-Pacific theatre. With time, many were promoted and not a few eventually found themselves commanding their own squadrons by the war's end. A handful of the Battle of Britain veterans joined ‘Bush' Parker in captivity, but greater numbers were wounded or killed in the intervening years.

Some losses were operational but a significant number were due to misfortune or accident. Hurricane ace Hodgson accumulated seven kills during a series of Battle of Britain dogfights only to meet his demise as a passenger on a routine ferry flight. The badly disfigured Richard Hillary pestered his superiors to return to the air. Diminished eyesight and poor hand dexterity—he used a knife and fork with great difficulty—were noted by follow airmen but they were unable to prevent him resuming flying duties. He died along with his radio operator-observer in a night-flying training flight in early 1943. Others died in combat, including the very last Anzac Battle of Britain veteran to lose his life in the Second World War—Ronald Bary. Based in Italy, the Kiwi pilot was killed only 28 days short of the end of the war in Europe in an army support dive-bombing attack on bridges and rail lines.[26] In all, a further forty-one New Zealanders and seven Australians died before the Second World War ended. Of the 171 Anzacs who took part in the Battle of Britain, only about half were still alive when Japan surrendered.[27]

In the post-war years most of the Anzacs put away their wings and returned to ‘civvy street' and pre-war occupations. Others turned their
wartime flying skills to good effect in commercial aviation, while some remained within the RAF, including Gard'ner. His hasty removal from the campaign after the ‘slaughter of the innocents' was followed by recuperation, a couple of night-flying tours, contacts with enemy machines and promotions. He covered the Normandy landings from his de Havilland Mosquito and eventually secured a permanent RAF commission. He returned to his southern homeland in 1965, nearly three decades after departing New Zealand.

Unfortunately, I never got to follow up on my first interview with retired Group Captain John Gard'ner because he died in May 2011. The wide-eyed ten-year-old boy who had been captivated by flying at his first brush with an aircraft on Dunedin's mudflats in 1928 went on to become one of the ‘little gods' of the air over the skies of England in the summer of 1940. He was one of Churchill's Anzac ‘Few'.

APPENDIX

Listed below are the New Zealanders and Australians who served with RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain. It includes, but is not restricted to, those airmen who qualify for the Battle of Britain Clasp. This latter group flew at least one authorised operational sortie between 10 July and 31 October 1940. Published rolls of Anzac Battle of Britain airmen vary from publication to publication. In part, this is due to the difficulty of assigning national status to some individuals. For example, some Anzac pilots included here were born in the Pacific Dominions but emigrated to Britain at an early age, while others were recent British immigrants to the Dominions. Moreover, some of the airmen frequently moved between New Zealand and Australia. By way of illustration, Valton Crook was born in Australia, trained in New Zealand, fought in Europe and returned to New Zealand in 1943, only to settle back in Australia a year later. Consequently he appears on both the New Zealand and Australian rolls. With all this in mind, the lists below have been compiled in an attempt not to exclude any airmen associated with the Anzac effort. It should also be noted that 235, 236, 248 Squadrons were Coastal Command units attached to Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain. The airmen who lost their lives include those who died as a result of accidents and air operations.

The New Zealand roll is adapted from Errol Martyn's exhaustive research on the subject (
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/files/documents/nzbattle-of-britain-list.pdf
), while the Australian roll is adapted from Dennis Newton,
A Few of the Few: Australians and the Battle of Britain
(1990).