Dogfight (13 page)

His saving grace was that he was a natural aviator and genuine flying prodigy. A pilot at the age of fifteen years and winner of a highly contested flying scholarship in his latter teenage years, Pain used his full evasive manoeuvre repertoire and, with a measure of good fortune, not only avoided being cut to shreds but turned on his attackers. As the fighters flew past him, almost netting him in strings of tracer fire, Pain eased his aircraft in behind the last Me 109. As it turned in front of him, he fired: ‘Saw smoke coming from the enemy. Gave him another short burst and smoke increased.'[17] In the end he accounted for a Ju 88 and was able to claim a probable on the fighter. In his log-book he simply jotted ‘Nasty Blitz on Croydon attacked by six Me 109's.'[18]

One of the last interceptions was to be flown by 54 Squadron. Both New Zealanders hoped it would be uneventful and Gray was heard to exclaim he was ‘dying for a beer, a good meal and bed', when news of the raid broke.[19] Forming up over the French coast was the day's last big raid. The clanging warning bell heralding the order to scramble chased away thoughts of beer and bed. Deere and Gray pushed their Spitfires to maximum speed and made a dash for the coast with seven other fighters in attendance. Through the radio chatter the controller vectored the pilots onto the intruders, which were about to make landfall close to Dover at 20,000 feet. The pilots of the squadron added 5000 feet to the estimation just to be sure and gained an advantage over the enemy. The enemy bombers were clustered together
with fifty-odd fighters layered overhead. Surprise was complete and the Spitfires fell among the Me 109s.

Engaging the enemy at the same time was Smith. The good-natured industrial painter from Auckland was flying with 151 Squadron's Hurricanes en route for a very large formation of fighters. He had only joined the Squadron four weeks earlier and was now in the thick of the fighting and about to cap off a remarkable baptism of fire. Based at North Weald, the squadron had seen heavy action over the Thames Estuary in July and was now operating further south near Dover. Like many of Park's squadrons in this phase of the battle, Smith's squadron carried out most of its operations from a forward satellite airfield. In this instance it was the all-grass Rochford, on the coast north of the Thames Estuary.

After barely four hours' sleep at North Weald sector airfield, Smith and his fellow airmen would be awoken around 2.30a.m. and after washing down an egg or two with a cup of tea would be airborne by 4.00a.m., making their way to Rochford. Here they cohabited with two Spitfire squadrons and, like Gibson at Hawkinge, the men had only light tents as accommodation and made do with scrounged seating and tables from the local town. All three squadrons utilised only one field phone, so that when it rang there was the habitual start and then the anxious pause before the waiting pilots discovered who was being scrambled. At dusk the Hurricanes could be back at North Weald for servicing. Getting a decent meal could be a hit-and-miss affair. At Rochford, food was delivered to the pilots in boxes and it was possible in a heavy day's action to miss these and remain unfed until returning to North Weald, and even there the cooks, accustomed to a set regime, had to be cajoled into conjuring up a boiled egg.

Conditions could vary considerably from airfield to airfield, due in good part to the quality of the station commander. Some were extremely diligent in looking after their airmen's needs, but others less so. Miller and Curchin found 609 Squadron was not well looked after at Warmwell, Dorset, where the accommodation was so run-down that the bulk of the airmen preferred to sleep in the dispersal tent lacking running water and toilets. Pilots were forced to sleep in dust-laden blankets. Meals were problematic too. Civilian cooks refused to rise early enough to feed the pilots before they departed, and the entirely unsympathetic station commander, frustrated that the airmen were not appearing in a timely manner for meals, ordered the mess to be locked outside of the dictated meal times. As the Australians' incredulous squadron leader later sarcastically fumed, ‘All our efforts to get
the Luftwaffe to respect ... meal times having failed, deadlock occurred.'[20] Even after the 609 pilots intercepted a raid on the Warmwell facilities that doubtless not only saved hangars and aircraft but also unhelpful mess personnel, the station commander remained unmoved and, consequently, pilots went without hot meals. In the end, RAF staff stepped in with copious boxes of provisions which the hungry pilots turned into dubious al fresco delights.

At Hornchurch, conditions were far more to the liking of pilots. The benefits of a good and loyal cook were appreciated by the airmen; 54 Squadron was fed and watered by Sam, whom Deere described as a ‘tyrannical house master' but a very popular mess chef. On one occasion in the campaign the unit's pilots had returned late and the famished airmen made a beeline for the officers' mess. A senior pilot was surprised the head cook was still on duty and had not left the late-night offerings to his lesser minions. ‘Sir, you know that I never go off duty,' retorted Sam, ‘until my pilots have returned from operations and are properly fed.' The homely comforts of bacon and eggs or, as on this occasion, roast beef accompanied by brussels sprouts, served up by their caring mess cook were roundly appreciated by the fatigued pilots.

Flying out of Rochford, in his third and final operation at 7.00p.m., Smith latched on to an enemy fighter. His fire was accurate and he followed the wounded machine down to 5000 feet, at which point he broke away observing the Me 109 heading down in a vertical spin.[21] A single victory would have been an achievement in anyone's books, but Smith had already been in two other combat operations, in one of which he had destroyed an Me 109 and damaged another. A total ‘bag' of two victories and a wounding was a considerable feat for such an inexperienced pilot officer. Smith was, however, in no mood to celebrate and scrawled in his after-action report that the squadron had lost three pilots in the last engagement.

Meanwhile, Deere's initial attack was truncated when he came under fire from a German pilot. Evasive action shrugged off the attacker and he was soon on the tail of two enemy fighters fleeing east to France. The Luftwaffe pilots had capitalised on the Me 109s' speed in the dive and stretched out a frustrating lead. Determined, the New Zealander nudged his Spitfire into one of the Me 109's blind spots just below the tail. Edging closer in the downward run he was about to open fire at 5000 feet when light cloud cover intervened, prolonging the chase. Eventually shedding the cloud cover and basking in the full sunlight, Deere belatedly realised with horror that he was
now crossing the French coast. Thinking he was safe within the confines of France, one of the airmen rolled gently left to land at the local airfield. He was blissfully unaware that he had been shadowed all the way home and Deere's short depression of the firing button was immediately effective and the aircraft dived to its death. The second machine was also hit with glycol and smoke belching from the engine, but Deere was unable to finish his handiwork. The odds were not in his favour as he found himself in an area thick with prowling German fighters. Almost immediately five turned in to snare the wayward Kiwi. ‘You bloody fool,' he muttered.[22]

He was now consumed with two tasks: avoiding the fighters and edging closer to the English coast. The fly in the ointment was the fact the enemy's speed and direction would see them intercept Deere long before he reached the white cliffs of Dover. Two of the fighters soon bore down on the sprinting New Zealander, forcing him to take evasive action in a series of vicious turns. ‘I knew that before long they would bring their guns to bear ... with each succeeding attack I became more tired, and they more skilful.' Machine-gun fire homed in on the Anzac, shattering the canopy and disintegrating the instrument panel. Only the armadillo-like armour plate at his back saved him. ‘Again and again' they came at the fatiguing Deere, and ‘again and again I turned into the attack, but still the bullets ... found their target'. The damaged Merlin engine broke into a death rattle that shook the light-framed fighter. Oil slithered over the windscreen and he turned for Dover violently snaking the Spitfire from side to side to present as difficult a target as possible. The coast loomed large now and, unlike Deere, the Luftwaffe airmen astutely reckoned that the chase had already taken them too close to a potential ambush and they promptly broke off the enterprise, pointing their Me 109s towards France.

At 1500 feet over England the engine caught fire and Deere was forced to turn the Spitfire on its back to facilitate a gravity-aided escape. Unfortunately, the machine was reluctant to allow Deere's emancipation and the nose dropped, angling the Spitfire into a vertical free fall. As if grappled by an unseen hand he was pushed against the fuselage directly behind the cockpit, pinned like an insect in an entomologist's display case. Tensing his muscles he purchased enough distance between his spine and the fighter for the wind to pluck him away. His wrist roughly struck the tail as he pulled the ripcord at a perilously low altitude. ‘I just felt the jerk of my parachute opening when my fall was broken by some tall trees.'

Miraculously his ‘only injury was a sprained wrist'.[23] Worse for wear
was the plum tree. The farmer gave the New Zealander a regular tongue-lashing. The fruit-laden tree was the only one unharvested—deliberately saved for a future plucking. Deere cast the entire crop.[24] An ambulance delivered him to East Grinstead hospital. X-rays revealed no broken bones but the pain was sufficient for Deere to receive suitable sedatives and sleep the night away at the hospital. The next day, brandishing a plastered wrist, he slipped back into Hornchurch to find that Gray had been awarded a DFC, news the latter had received alongside a good meal washed down with a beer.

Deere's survival was due to good luck and a well-maintained parachute. A few pilots tipped their packers the princely sum of 10/-, not an inconsiderable amount, nearly a fifth of their weekly pay.[25] Fighter Command airmen recognised the importance of a well-maintained silk saviour and considered the money small change, given its life-preserving properties. The pilots of the Great War were not so fortunate and, as their machines became flying crematoria, they sometimes resorted to a pistol to hasten their exit from the excruciating pain of fire. In marked contrast to the pilots of this earlier era, approximately two-thirds of Battle of Britain airmen in stricken machines survived to tell the tale thanks to this inter-war development. Those aviators saved by the parachute were eligible for entry into the Caterpillar Club, named after the source of the silken thread parachutes were manufactured from. As ‘Bush' Parker stated simply in his August 1945 letter applying to join the Caterpillar Club: ‘one of your parachutes saved my life.'[26]

That is not to say that baling out was not without it perils, as the loss of Cale to the River Medway grimly attested. In the first instance, the canopy of a fighter travelling anything in excess of 180 mph would not open. In addition, should the groove in which the canopy slid be damaged, the airman's last resort was a crowbar stored at the pilot's side. Not a heartwarming prospect when some pilots estimated that you had barely eight seconds on a good day to evacuate a burning fighter. Further, as Deere's escapade demonstrated, there was always the possibly of striking or snagging the tail section of the fighter. If the airman was knocked unconscious in the process the parachute would remain forever unopened.

Where the pilot landed was also an important consideration. Terra firma was clearly preferable to a dip in the drink. Though it depended on which
side of the Channel the evacuation had taken place, a point well understood by the few pilots like Parker who baled out over occupied France and only found freedom in May 1945 when he was liberated. Even baling out over ‘Blighty' was no guarantee of a welcome reception, as Olive had both experienced and observed. After his first kill on 20 July, he had flown home with the intent of seeing what had become of the fellow pilot who had popped out of his aircraft like a ‘cork from a champagne bottle'. He located the parachute in a field of ripe wheat:

In the early weeks of the Battle of Britain, fuelled by stories of German paratroop-led assaults in Denmark, Norway and Belgium, members of the Home Guard, according to the Queenslander, treated all parachutists as either hostile or ‘excellent random target practice'. Olive was not about to let a fellow airman suffer the ignominious fate of being killed by the Home Guard and made a series of low passes over the ‘two intrepid defenders of the realm', cursing the fact he had no ammunition left to fire off a cautionary round or two in their direction. His only hope was that he had done enough to force the trigger-happy farmers to take cover, allowing the pilot sufficient opportunity to make good his escape. Finally, for an airman to have even a chance of survival after exiting an aircraft, the jump needed to take place at a sufficient altitude to facilitate the optimal deployment of the parachute.

If Deere's 15 August escape from his Spitfire was dangerous, Gibson's earlier example was at first flush downright reckless because it had been executed at an extremely low level. The citation for his DFC explained the significance: