Dogfight (19 page)

The assault on Biggin Hill was the first day in an increasing crescendo of assaults as the airfield was attacked no fewer than half a dozen times over three days. Damage to Biggin Hill was repeated at Kenley, Luton, Tangmere and Detling. The damage on 30 August was the result of over 1300 sorties and the following day this was exceeded with a further 1400 flown by the Luftwaffe. It looked as though the battle was turning and Hitler proclaimed that, should the Luftwaffe gain complete mastery of the air, the invasion would be launched on 20 September.

CHAPTER 8

Standing in the way of the Führer's plans was a cadre of RAF pilots up to the task, including Anzac Brian John Carbury. The New Zealander's entry into the annals of military aviation was by way of a rapid string of victories on 31 August, when he destroyed five enemy machines. His record was set during a particularly nasty day of enemy action when Hornchurch became the focus of Luftwaffe attention. Also caught up in the action were Carbury's 603 Squadron colleague Australian Richard Hillary and 54 Squadron's Kiwis, Deere and Gray.

Scotland-based for the opening stages of the battle, 603 Squadron transferred south in August just in time for the critical battles of the campaign. Hillary had only recently joined the unit, but Carbury had been posted temporarily to 603 a year earlier, to facilitate the squadron's conversion to Spitfires. A graduate of King's College, Auckland, the former shoe salesman was involved in putting the part-time Auxiliary Squadron on a wartime footing. When the Second World War broke out he was permanently posted to 603. At 6 ft 4 in, Carbury was one of Fighter Command's more easily recognisable pilots. Yet he was quietly spoken and rarely seen without a pipe in hand. Beneath the calm exterior, Carbury was a gifted pilot. The inactivity in the north had chafed on the airmen of 603 and the posting to Hornchurch had been eagerly anticipated.

By 8a.m. radar operators had deduced that something was brewing on the other side of the Channel, and 603 was scrambled within the hour as the Germans made for Dover and the Thames. The lanky New Zealander spotted the enemy first and led the diving attack on the closest of twenty Me 109s. The Spitfire spat a three-second burst. The withering fire of the eight machine-guns had an immediate effect on the fighter and the Luftwaffe pilot baled out of his inverted machine. After the squadron returned to
Hornchurch, a period of relative inactivity lasted until just after midday when they were once again aloft as twin waves of bombers supported by fighters appeared on glowing radar screens. The squadron was vectored onto a formation of fifty aircraft west of Southend, Essex, only to discover they were shadowing friendly fighters.

Back at Hornchurch, Hillary, who had flown all the previous day, had the morning to himself and crawled out of bed with a headache just before noon. He eventually meandered off to the mess for a late breakfast in the stifling August heat. Hillary had just turned down a lift in a lorry by the ground crew, led by a Sergeant Ross, when the controller, over the loudspeaker system, informed the airfield that an enemy formation was headed straight for them. ‘All personnel not engaged in active duty take cover immediately.' The typically languid Hillary was in no mood to consider such a request seriously and besides, the sky was empty. More wisely, one of his colleagues, Robin ‘Bubble' Waterston, made a dash for an air-raid shelter and Spitfires that had just been stood down were now wheeling around for an immediate take-off.

The tail-end trio of aircraft were 54 Squadron machines, one of which was piloted by Deere. His path was obstructed by another aircraft and, unwilling to be caught on the ground when the bombs started falling, he tried desperately to find room to roll down the runway. ‘Get the hell out of the way, Red Two,' the New Zealander yelled over the radio. He determinately elbowed his Spitfire into a wedge of free space and opened the throttle. Picking up speed, he spied the main body of the squadron clear the hedge at the end of the runway. As he took off he thought, Good, I've made it.

Deere's recollection of what happened next was forever lost by the brain-addling explosion that nicely bisected the three remaining Spitfires. Hillary, who had hunched over his shoulders and ducked his head, saw the effects of the blast out the corner of his eye. ‘One moment they were about twenty feet up in close formation,' he recalled, ‘the next catapulted apart as though on elastic.' The pilot on Deere's right was caught in a neck-whipping spin as his wing dug into the ground, while the other pilot had both wings ripped clean off and was flung out of the airfield and over the adjacent river. The massive blast of displaced air unceremoniously corkscrewed Deere's light-framed mount onto its back. Terrified, the New Zealander now hung trapped in the cockpit as his fighter gouged an ever-lengthening furrow into
the runway. Deere habitually took off with his seat at its lowest setting, and this doubtless saved his life, as his head was pushed against the ground and his face sandblasted by stones and dirt.

As he saw the third Spitfire vault the river, and standing amongst incoming bombs, Hillary stupidly reflected on the fact that that was probably the briefest flight the unfortunate pilot had ever made. The next moment he was lifted off his feet and his mouth filled with grass and dirt. Dazed, he glimpsed ‘Bubble' wildly beckoning him to the shelter, yelling, ‘Run you bloody fool, run!' Belatedly the Australian took to his heels and entered the ill-lit enclosure. At another shelter one supplicant was temporarily denied entrance when his desperate banging on the door revealed that he was the driver of the base's refuelling lorry. Without a thought to his actions he had parked the bowser right up against the shelter. ‘Sod off, and take that bloody thing with you,' shouted the sergeant guarding the door, ‘...park it somewhere else before you blow us all to pieces.'[1] The shelters were rocked by explosions and anti-aircraft fire that simultaneously deafened and dust-coated the hard-pressed inhabitants.

Suspended in his overturned Spitfire, Deere was almost overcome by the fumes from the aviation fuel pooling around his head. Even as bombs still fell on the field his greatest fear now was fire. Pushing down panic he heard: ‘Al, Al, are you alive?'[2] It was his number three in the section, who had barely survived the explosion and, injured himself, had crawled over to aid Deere. In a fine imitation of a contortionist, the Anzac somehow freed the locks on the cockpit's door and released himself from his parachute. The station Sick Quarters were overflowing with wounded and Deere made for the mess to clean up his head wound and then lie down in his room.

When the raid came to an end, fellow New Zealander Colin Gray was the first to visit the convalescing Deere and examine the bald patch about the ‘diameter of a tennis ball' above his temple. Gray, who had just returned from a mission, told his compatriot that his Spitfire was a write-off, with a wing torn loose and the detached engine sitting forlornly some distance from the airframe. As for the pilot who had been blown clean off the airfield, an hour later he arrived unannounced in the dispersal hut largely unhurt. The station diary noted the survival of all three pilots as a ‘complete miracle'.[3]

While Deere struggled to free himself, Carbury had finally located the enemy raiders. His first reaction was to strike at the bombers, but upon spotting prowling Me 109s above he pulled on the controls and attacked
the fighters. His first victim ‘went straight down ... and crashed into the ground.'[4] The second received a long burst and the pilot evacuated the aircraft as it rolled on its back.

At the airfield the situation was grim. Hillary gingerly emerged from the shelter to survey the damage. The runway was a mess, pockmarked with craters and dirt and grass strewn everywhere. The Australian's machine had had a close call and he directed one of the ground crew to ask Sergeant Ross to see that his machine was properly inspected. ‘Sergeant Ross won't be doing any more inspections,' the mechanic replied, nodding in the direction of a lone lorry ‘lying grotesquely on its side'. Hillary felt sick as he inspected the Spitfire himself.[5]

The hiatus in attacks was soon exploited by the industrious station commander. The group captain ensured that unexploded munitions were isolated and he laid out yellow flags to mark out a temporary runway. Personnel not engaged in other essential tasks were co-opted into restoring the airfield. Shovel-wielding men were aided by the base's traction steamroller in filling craters and flattening the surface. In shifts, workers peeled away for a quick bite to eat and a cup of tea before returning to the backbreaking work. The transformation was inspiring; over a four-hour period, order was restored and 603 was again able to use the main runway. ‘Thus, apart from four men killed in the lorry and a network of holes on the landing surface,' recalled Hillary, ‘there was nothing to show for ten minutes of really accurate bombing from 12,000 feet, in which dozens of sticks of bombs had been dropped. It was striking proof of the inefficacy of their attempts to wipe out our advance fighter aerodromes.'[6] In attacks on other airfields in close proximity to London, the same resilience was demonstrated.

At 6.00p.m. another raid was made, but Hornchurch's squadrons were forewarned. Like many experienced units, 603 first flew away from the incoming enemy in their initial climb in order to purchase enough height before turning directly into the intruders' path. In the fighting that ensued, fighters came in to refuel and rearm. As they rolled to a standstill, Hornchurch ground crew ran from their shelters to prepare the fighters for a second round amidst eardrum-popping explosions. Not a single man was seen to waver in the face of the task at hand, to the unending gratitude of the pilots who were only too keen to get back into their natural environment of the sky. At one point a couple of Spitfires stalled on the airfield with empty
fuel tanks. In the face of falling bombs, ground crews took a lorry out onto the field to tow the machines out of the way of incoming aircraft.

In the air, Carbury was exacting a degree of revenge when he dived to meet the enemy. He struck two fighters; the last machine was his fifth for the day.

The Auckland shoe salesman had become one of only two Battle of Britain ‘aces in a day'. Effectively, he had accomplished in three sorties what most pilots would not achieve over the entire course of the war.[7] During a four-day period he shot down eight Me 109s. His last action had badly damaged his machine. A cannon shell had disintegrated the compressed air system, but he was able to nurse the Spitfire home in spite of a foot injury. His prodigious efforts were officially recognised in early September with a DFC. He continued his assault on the record books throughout September and into October. By the end of the campaign he had 15 destroyed and a string of shared, probable and damaged enemy aircraft recorded against his name.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Carbury's record was that all fifteen destroyed machines were the Luftwaffe's most fearsome weapon: the Me 109. In October, the quiet New Zealander with the crinkly hair was awarded a bar to his DFC, an honour shared by only five pilots of the campaign. This second award was gazetted on 25 October and it recognised his individual flying prowess and his contribution to his unit: ‘His cool courage in the face of the enemy has been a splendid example to other pilots of his squadron.'[8] Even the cynical fellow-Anzac Richard Hillary recognised in Carbury a man who fought for more simple and selfless reasons than himself:

Across the battlefield, Australians also picked up a series of scalps. Hillary
recovered from his brush with falling bombs to score a victory against an Me 109 and Mayers downed a Do 17 and heavily damaged another.[10] Millington, 79 Squadron, knocked out a couple of aircraft but was hit himself. The cannon fire from an Me 109 rocked his Hurricane as it took out the radiator and engine. A flash of pain down his thigh served notice he himself had been hit. Fire threatened to engulf the cockpit and billowing smoke filled the young Australian's lungs. He pushed the canopy back to evacuate the dying aircraft only to discover it was on a direct path to the village of Tenterden. As flames were invading the cockpit, and in disregard for his own life, Millington regained his seat, gliding the fighter to a crash-landing on a field. With moderate burns he made his escape from the Hurricane just before the fuel tank exploded.[11]

Among the hardest hit was 19 Squadron of 12 Group. The squadron found a formation departing the scene of a bombing raid and attacked the twenty Dorniers and fifty twin-engine fighters. The latter had the advantage of height over the Spitfires. Frighteningly for the Allied pilots, their experimental cannon once again jammed on some of the aircraft. Auckland-born Kiwis Wilfred Clouston and Francis Brinsden were among the pilots scrambled, the latter only with some difficulty. Although Brinsden found the twelve-cylinder engine turning over and eager for the chase, he was delayed a full ten minutes as ground crew hurriedly worked to fix the cockpit canopy, which would not close. In the meantime, Clouston had taken to the air and was one of the fortunate ones who found his cannons worked and shared a victory with another pilot. When Brinsden arrived belatedly on the scene of the aerial battle, the Takapuna Grammar School old boy decided to make a head-on attack. However, the relatively low-speed climb and altitude disadvantage conspired against him. He was hit and baled out.[12] Although it might not have felt like it at the time, he was one of the lucky ones.

With a blood-covered ‘foot hanging loose on the pedal' thanks to enemy fire, another of the squadron's flying officers pushed on to attack a Dornier only to have his cannons jam. He grazed the underside of the bomber and the hood was erased from the Spitfire. In a death spiral the pilot thrashed his way out of the mangled cockpit. Covered in a cocktail of blood and fuel, he used radio wire from his helmet to put a tourniquet around his thigh as he floated towards Duxford. The pilot's leg had to be amputated below the knee. Another 19 Squadron pilot crash-landed and the machine instantly caught fire; the ground crews could only look on in horror as they saw the
nineteen-year-old burn to death.[13] In all, four 19 Squadron aircraft were shot down, with only a single Me 110 on their side of the ledger. Brinsden would not fly again in the Battle of Britain, but he was alive and intact.