The Battle of Britain (31 page)

‘18th. Two operations north of London. Ten victories: Obit Schöpfel four; Obit Sprick one; Lt Bürschgens two; Lt Ebeling one; two by No. 8 Staffel. The Gruppe flew an offensive patrol over North Weald and Hornchurch. Lt Müller-Dühe was shot down. Lt Blume is missing.'

On the 18th, Major Galland was absent, summoned by Goering to an interview. His second-in-command, Oberleutnant Schöpfel, accordingly led III Gruppe that day, and gave the following report of an engagement in the Folkestone–Canterbury area.

‘Suddenly I found a squadron of Hurricanes below me in the usual British formation of tight threes, which were climbing in a spiral. I circled about 3,300ft (1,000m) above them. Then I saw a pair of Hurricanes weaving behind the formation, on guard against attack from astern. I waited until they were curving north-westwards from Folkestone, then attacked out of sun and below.' According to his Combat Report he shot down both the weavers without the others being aware of it. ‘Now I was beneath a third machine. I fired a short burst. This aircraft likewise fell apart. The British flew on, having noticed nothing. I positioned myself under a fourth machine. This time I had to get closer. When I pressed the firing button the Hurricane was so close to me that fragments from it hit my aircraft. Oil covered my cockpit so thickly that I couldn't see, and after two minutes of action had to break off.'

At that time the Bf 109E had two cannon, each with 60 rounds, of which he still had 15 left.

‘After I had broken off, ‘Schöpfel continues, ‘Oberleutnant Sprick led No. 8 Staffel in an attack on the British, who were now aware that Germans were right behind them and dived. However, Sprick managed to shoot down two more. I think this was the first time in this war that a pilot shot down four British aircraft on the same sortie. Looking back at those anxious moments, it was not very difficult. My shots must have hit the right place, so that there was no time for the others to be warned. These four brought my score to a total of 12.'

No. II Gruppe habitually flew at a maximum of 26,000 to 30,000ft (8,000-9,000m), where lone Spitfires were sure to be found. On August 13, II JG 26 were at 26,000ft (8,000m) with 1 JG26 below them. They were approaching the coast with the cliffs of Dover in sight, but to the west spread an unbroken bank of cloud 6,500ft (2,000m) high. The Kommandeur, Hauptmann Ebbinghausen, flew through it.

In his diary, Leutnant Borris wrote: ‘Low on our left a formation appeared, apparently enemy fighters, by the suspicious look of their flying in threes. Low on our right someone reported another formation, towards which our Kommandeur turned. I was flying in the Staff Flight with März and Leibing. Ahead and beneath us flew three machines that I recognised as Hurricanes. Apparently the Kommandeur hadn't seen these, as he was watching the two big formations which were still some five kilometres in front of us. I dived . . . 400 metres . . . 300 . . . 200. I had the Tommy on the left in my sights. Would the other two turn on me? My concentration was stretched to breaking point. One hundred metres . . . 70 metres, the Hurricane grew big. Now! It swerved aside. I stopped shooting. It was on fire. I hauled my machine round in a climbing turn to rejoin my flight. In
front of me a Bf 109 was firing at a Hurricane, but couldn't turn as tightly as it. I side slipped down on the Hurricane . . . 70 metres . . . 50. My four machine guns hurled bullets at it. Thick black smoke and flames belched from it. I broke upwards. A little lower a Hurricane had spotted me. Climb! The Tommy couldn't keep up with me. He gave up and swung away. Where were my friends? I couldn't see anything. From above and behind an aeroplane was hurtling towards me. In an instant I rolled onto my back and disappeared.'

Borris flew home alone, striving to stay in cloud until he reached the mouth of the Somme, and arrived cheerfully over the airfield. On his landing approach the 109 dived to the right. He quickly raised the undercarriage, climbed to about 3,300ft (1,000m) and tried again. Once more the aileron stuck and he found himself about to hit the ground. He would have to land without flaps. März and Leibing landed after him. Unteroffizier Wemhöner had reported during the combat that he had been shot down (he was taken prisoner). The whole of No. 6 Staffel was missing and four pilots of No. 5 Staffel. They had lost their way in thick cloud and landed in the Reims and Verdun areas.

On May 19 II Gruppe had lost their Kommandeur, Hauptmann Herwig Knüppel, and on July 24 his successor, the dashing Hauptmann Erich Noack. On August 16 Borris recorded that 20 aircraft of the Gruppe were half-way across the Channel on their way to carry out an offensive patrol in the area of Dover and Folkestone, under the leadership of Hauptmann Karl Ebbinghausen, when 20 Spitfires jumped them. He was at 23,000ft (7,000m), line abreast with the Gruppe Kommandeur and Eckart Roch while Leibing and März flew behind. To their left ahead and above were the Spitfires. During the dogfight seven Spitfires engaged the five Bf 109s of the staff flight. In the confusion Borris saw a 109 some distance astern being attacked by a Spitfire. The 109 reacted swiftly with a diving turn. The pilot was Waldi März, whom he had been unable to warn, because his radio was faulty. März landed with 20 bullet holes and an overheated engine. Borris was able to confirm a victory for Eckart Roch. He says that how Ebbinghausen was shot down when the flight was attacked by ‘only seven Spitfires' remained a mystery. Ebbinghausen, he points out, had fought in Spain and was highly experienced.

There is no mystery about it: the Germans had met more than their match. The pilots on each side respected their opponents' courage and skill and acknowledged the quality of their respective aircraft. No RAF pilot conceded that the Bf 109 was superior to the Spitfire, although many regarded it as equal. Among the Luftwaffe, on the contrary, there was a host of Spitfire admirers, among whom was Galland. This infuriated Goering when the Commander-in-Chief visited his
fighter Geschwader on the Channel coast in the first week of September. Goering first asked Mölders what he most wanted and nodded approvingly at the reply: ‘A new series of Me 109s with more powerful engines.' He then put the same question to Galland, whose reply, ‘A Geschwader of Spitfires', threw him into such a fury that he walked away without comment.

The only advantage that the Bf 109 had over the Spitfire at that time was petrol injection instead of a carburettor. This meant that when a German pilot rolled his fighter onto its back and dived vertically his petrol supply did not falter. When a British pilot did the same manoeuvre, there was an interval of a couple of seconds during which his petrol flow was interrupted: sufficient time for the enemy to put enough distance between them to ensure his escape. Later, when petrol injection was introduced to the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, the Bf 109 pilots suffered some unpleasant shocks.

‘My most successful day,' says Oberleutnant Heinz Ebeling, who was shot down and taken prisoner on November 5, 1940, ‘was August 31.' After a long duel with a Hurricane he managed to shoot it down, but discovered that his radiator was leaking. ‘From well to the north of London I got as far as 10 kilometres out over the Channel beyond Dover, accompanied by my Number Two, before I had to bale out. I had transmitted on the radio for my position to be fixed and an hour and a half later a Do 18 flying-boat fished me out. At the sea rescue centre in Boulogne where I was given a beer glass full of cognac and some pea soup, a car came to fetch me back to the airfield. It was then about l400hrs. I flew on the Gruppe's next mission and bagged two more Hurricanes. That evening I met our Geschwader Kommodore, Major Galland, who told me that Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring had awarded me a goblet of honour.' In the Great War, German pilots were awarded a goblet for each victory and the custom of awarding such a trophy for special feats survived. ‘Shortly thereafter Goering presented me with it personally. The victory I had scored that morning was my thirteenth, but it had brought me good luck!'

Equal with Galland in the respect and admiration with which he was regarded and in which his memory is held, was Werner Mölders. He was the first fighter pilot in the world to surpass Manfred von Richthofen's Great War record of 80 victories and the first to reach a score of 100 enemy aircraft destroyed. Both these figures, however, included the 14 he shot down in Spain, where he was the Luftwaffe's highest scorer, which were a lot easier to achieve than sending down a French or British fighter.

At the age of 27, when he took command of JG53, Mölders was already a man of considerable maturity of character and high principles. An ardent
Catholic, he was of a serious nature and became known at once to the members of his Geschwader as Vati, ‘Daddy'. He fought his first combat of the war on September 20, 1939, when he shot down a French Air Force Curtiss, a week before being appointed to lead No III Gruppe of JG53. On June 5, 1941, by which time he had increased his score to 25 (11 in the current war), he was shot down by a French pilot, as has been described in the chapter on the prelude to the Battle of Britain, and taken prisoner. His incarceration was short. Two weeks later France capitulated and he was given command of JG51, to become the youngest Geschwaderkommodore in the Luftwaffe.

He became at once involved in the fighting over England and is regarded as the Luftwaffe's outstanding figure in the Battle of Britain. By October 29 he had flown 208 operational sorties and added 54 kills to the 14 he had made in Spain. His logbook shows the intensity of his activities during the second half of the Battle of Britain.

Perhaps more typical of his character, than the days when he was out hunting the RAF, was the occasion at the end of the Battle of Britain when his friend Oberleutnant Claus was shot down in the Thames Estuary. Mölders personally gave orders to the air-sea rescue service to begin searching for him without delay, before going up himself to look for some sign of his friend. No one on the Geschwader HQ staff could reason with him. Accompanied by Leutnant Eberle he dashed back over the Channel and made a fruitless search all over the Thames Estuary, where the 109 must have sunk long ago. During this dangerous search he was totally distraught and took no heed of where he went: a wonderful target for the RAF. But he lived to return to base.

In May 1941 Werner Mölders, at the age of 28, was promoted to General of Fighters. By then he had 101 victories, not counting the 14 in Spain. On November 22, 1941, he was killed when an He 111 in which he was a passenger crashed. The 29-year-old Adolf Galland succeeded him in command of the Luftwaffe fighter arm.

Galland, who became Germany's most famous fighter pilot, had qualified for his wings in 1934. In April 1935 he was posted to JG132 (later JG2), the ‘Richthofen' Geschwader, first fighter Geschwader of the new Luftwaffe. In 1937 he went to Spain as a member of the Legion Kondor that was fighting on the Fascist side in the civil war. His unit, Jagdstaffel 3, flew the obsolete He 51 biplane while the Republicans were equipped with the greatly superior American Curtiss and the Russian Polikarpov. Hence the Staffel that Galland commanded was compelled to limit its activity to strafing in support of the ground troops, which denied him the chance to shoot down any enemy aircraft. In May 1939 Werner Mölders took over the Staffel.

While Galland was in Spain he compiled a report on close support based on his 300 operational sorties. The Air Staff, whose thinking had turned to a new use of aircraft, dive bombing, to which ground attack was closely related, was much impressed and posted him to the Air Ministry. This was not what he had expected and he strove incessantly to return to flying.

In 1939 he was given command of a Staffel in a close support Gruppe equipped with the biplane Hs 123 dive bomber. This unit was the first to put into effect the technique of dive bombing as an important element of Blitzkrieg. Its effect was devastating. The lessons learned in the Spanish Civil War paid off. Galland was heavily engaged in the onslaught. In 27 days he flew up to four sorties a day and was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. As a recognised expert in this form of aerial warfare, it seemed most probable that he would spend his whole career practising it. He had become too valuable and his reputation now stood in the way of his unwavering desire to be a fighter pilot. It was always in his mind that two months after Mölders took over command of his Staffel in Spain it converted to Bf 109s; and Mölders had scored 14 victories there.

It was obvious to him that henceforth he would fly only second- and third-class aircraft and never do what he considered to be real air fighting, unless he took drastic action. He resorted to a ruse and reported sick with alleged rheumatism. The Gruppe medical officer referred him to higher authority. The next doctor to examine him was a friend and understood the mentality of young pilots. He reported that Galland must not fly in an open cockpit; which meant automatic transfer to modern aeroplanes. Shortly afterwards Galland joined JG27, commanded by Oberstleutnant Max Ibel; but, to his disappointment, he was made adjutant, which would involve trayfuls of paperwork and leave little time for flying.

It was not until May 12, 1940 that he made his first kill: a Belgian Air Force Hurricane. On the same sortie he shot down a second and, later in the day, a third. He says, ‘I took all this quite naturally, as a matter of course. There was nothing special about it. I had not felt any excitement and I was certainly not elated by my success. I had something approaching a twinge of conscience. An excellent weapon and luck had been on my side.' These sentiments were often expressed by British pilots, too.

T
he Battle of Britain, which was to prove so decisive and far-reaching in its outcome, was one which neither side wanted to fight. Even Hitler, on whose personal orders, embodied in a Directive dated July 16, 1940, the Battle was launched, had hoped to avoid it. And how, in retrospect, he must have wished that he had succeeded in doing so; for the Battle of Britain was his first failure and it turned out to be the precursor of a long run of declining fortune leading eventually to calamitous defeat.