Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (28 page)

Failing to capitalize on German vulnerability in the Ardennes, the Belgians and Dutch were now shattered and the French army was collapsing. The French notion of suddenly beefing up their fighter squadrons with new planes and transitioning pilots simply wouldn’t work because, again, there wasn’t time. Same thing with their infantry reserves. In a strange practice, infantry units were rotated periodically between line service, construction, and agricultural duties, of all things. This may have allowed men to rest during the Great War, but had no usefulness in 1940. Bad communications were also a French trademark. There were few, if any, radios connecting Gamelin’s headquarters with line units. In fact, it took up to forty-eight hours for messages from headquarters to reach combat outfits.

The Germans had radios and their generals led from the front, wasting no time appraising the situation, since they were there on the spot. German commanders and even NCOs followed the principle of
Aufstragstaktik
, meaning they were given an objective, then left alone to accomplish it. This promoted independent thinking, tactical innovation, and an offensive mentality that overwhelmed the defensive French.

The defensive mind-set is also why the French kept just a quarter of their operational aircraft close enough for immediate tactical intervention. Like artillery and armor, aircraft were only really viewed as infantry support. Everything the French had done was simply intended to buy enough time to gather their massive reserves, plus the British, Belgians, and Dutch, for a counterattack.

By the morning of the fifteenth it was obvious this wasn’t going to happen. The traffic jams in the Ardennes had been cleared, so all three German bridgeheads at Dinant, Monthermé, and Sedan had been expanded and reinforced. The French 1 Division Cuirassée (1st Armored Division) was finally ordered across the Belgian border at Charleroi but had been caught refueling by Rommel’s panzers. The 1st Armored had advanced with 170 tanks and ended the day with less than 40—it was completely routed.

Panzer Corps Reinhardt punched through at Monthermé and advanced some 30 miles in one day. At Sedan, Guderian left the 10th Panzer back as a reserve to guard the bridgehead and sprinted west with the 1st and 2nd Panzer Divisions. As the Meuse Front collapsed, the French military began surrendering faster than the Germans could take them prisoner. Accompanying the 6th Panzer Division, war correspondent Karl von Stackelberg would write:

There finally 20,000 men here . . . in this one sector and on this one day were heading backward as prisoners. It was inexplicable. How was it possible that, after this first major battle on French territory . . . this gigantic consequence should follow? How was it possible these French soldiers with their officers, so completely downcast, so completely demoralized, would allow themselves to go more or less voluntarily into imprisonment?

Winston Churchill received a call on the morning of the fifteenth from Paul Reynaud, the French president, who simply said, “We have been defeated. We are beaten; we have lost the battle.” The next day the British Expeditionary Force was ordered to fall back along the Escaut River to avoid being outflanked, since the Belgians had collapsed to the north and the French had surrendered to the south. By May 20 Guderian’s tanks had captured Abbeville and reached the sea, cutting the Allied front in two. The following day, as the RAF ramped up to cover the impending evacuation, one of its future top aces got into the fight.

“Sailor” Malan, known to his close friends as John, got airborne at 5:37 p.m. from the RAF satellite field at Rochford and headed east.
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Breaking out of the clouds at 15,000 feet, his two sections of three Supermarine Spitfire Mk I’s continued climbing out over the Channel to 20,000 feet, heading toward the French coast. Malan was a product of extensive peacetime RAF training and was a disciplined, aggressive pilot. However, unlike the Luftwaffe in Spain, Poland, and France, the RAF had no recent combat experience. British fighter pilots flew the outdated “welded wing” close formation of the Great War and also employed a three-aircraft fighting unit called a “Vic.”

In the Vic, both wingmen flew very close and stayed on their respective sides regardless of how the leader maneuvered. This was flawed for several reasons. First, combat is fluid and doesn’t permit cookbook-type solutions. This is especially true of air combat, which moves fast in three dimensions and demands split-second reactions. Confining two-thirds of the available fighting power to staring at a wingtip was foolish and dangerous. The RAF also had set-piece tactics and specific, numbered attacks that were supposed to deliver maximum firepower against flights of enemy bombers:

1.  An attack from Dead Astern and from Above Cloud

2.  From Directly Below

3.  From Dead Astern (a) Approach Pursuit (b) Approach Turning, Above Cloud

4.  From Directly Below, Two Types of Approach

5.  From Dead Astern, Two Types of Approach

6.  Two Types of Attack

These were complicated formation assaults that assumed (1) the targets were nonmaneuvering bombers that would just fly straight ahead and die and (2) there was no fighter escort. Both assumptions were dead wrong and very costly. These attacks were identical in mind-set to the British military infantry tactics of the previous century, which marched men into lines for massed firepower. It didn’t work unless your opponent did precisely as you expected and relying on enemy cooperation for
any
tactical success is extremely risky.

The Germans certainly did not oblige.

Another problem that had to be quickly overcome was one of mentality. “Johnnie” Johnson, who would become Britain’s top ace, wrote that the pre–World War II RAF was “the best flying club in the world.”
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Many of the lessons of the Great War had been forgotten and flying outfits, particularly fighter squadrons, had reverted somewhat into extensions of upper-class public schools. It was an idyllic world of gentlemanly flying hours (the hangar doors were usually shut by teatime) with plenty of time for leisurely strolls through manicured gardens near the mess. Flying consisted of aerobatics and the perfection of those beautifully useless formation attacks. There were few, if any, tactical lectures, and only one annual trip to Sutton Bridge for live firing at towed targets. But behind this carefully cultivated facade RAF fighter pilots then, and now, are absolutely ferocious in the air. Unfortunately, this laissez-faire attitude had seeped into tactics, aircraft procurement, and the upper command structure. It would be corrected quickly enough, but not before many fine and desperately needed fighter pilots were lost.

The other mentality issue was with the “Never Land” crowd. These are the people who periodically emerge throughout history claiming something will
never
occur again. We’ll read more about them later, but in this case they said that dogfighting was over forever—it would never happen again. Bombers were the way of the future, and so who needed fighter pilots? Besides, it was argued, the speeds involved produced g-forces that would be fatal to pilots. This point of view was rapidly shattered during the Battle for France, when RAF bomber units suffered 80 to 95 percent casualty rates.
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In the event, RAF fighters did the best they could to cover the BEF retreat. However, the political need to support the Allies lost out to the survival of Britain itself. If the French had held on, then British support would have followed, as a German threat contained on French soil was preferable to repelling an invasion of England. That strategy had stopped the kaiser in Flanders during the Great War but wouldn’t work against the blitzkrieg—the French were surrendering too fast.

Lord Gort, the BEF commander, had very few options open to him and increasingly looked west toward the English Channel. He couldn’t get far enough to the north to make Oostende, nor could he go south to Calais. There was really only one port that might offer an escape for the entire British regular army and England’s only chance for continuing the war.

Dunkirk.

By the twenty-fourth of May, what remained of the Allied armies had their backs to the sea. The French First Army was squeezed into a pocket around Lille, and the surviving Belgians occupied a shrinking pocket between Bruges and the coast. The BEF was generally west of Lille in a line north toward Dunkirk, and Lord Gort was trying to pull in the widely scattered survivors. Calais had been overrun by the 1st and 10th Panzers, which were now driving hard along the Channel shoreline. Nine panzer divisions, three motorized infantry divisions, and the rest of the German Sixth and Fourth Armies were converging from three sides on the Allied pocket.

Here the Allies got their first real break from Adolf Hitler himself. Worried about the reported tank losses, the great risk taker had an attack of caution. He ordered the panzers to stay east of the Gravelines–Saint Omer canal 10 miles from Dunkirk—the Luftwaffe and the infantry would deal with the British. This “halt order” would remain in effect for two days and would go down retroactively as one of Hitler’s biggest blunders.

Rallying to fight, the Royal Air Force began appearing over the French coast to cover the retreat and impending evacuation. Robert “Bob” Stanford Tuck of 92 Squadron had gotten into action the day before. More than two hundred Hurricanes had been lost during the Battle for France, and Tuck’s squadron was fortunate to have the new Spitfire Mk I fighter. Taught to fly the Spit by Supermarine’s chief test pilot, Bob Tuck was a 700-hour pilot by the time he saw combat. As he appeared over Dunkirk, leading six fighters from Hornchurch, his flight was bounced by a gaggle of Bf 109’s.

Diving through the Brits at high speed, the 109’s sent a Spitfire down in flames. Immediately rolling after the leader, Tuck jammed the black throttle forward and the 1,175-horsepower Merlin engine surged. The German didn’t see him and pitched back toward the fight, which helped the Spitfire close the distance. As the 109 filled his GM-2 gunsight, Bob Tuck pressed down hard on the firing button. With all eight .303 Brownings spitting out over 100 rounds per second, the recoil made the plane vibrate. Aiming at the vulnerable wing root, the British pilot saw pieces fly off the German fighter. First an aileron tore loose, then the entire right wing broke off, spinning the 109 crazily toward the earth.

Then the sky was empty.

One second it had been full of flashing fighters, shooting, burning, turning, and then . . . nothing. Elated by his victory, Tuck also realized his very serious predicament. He’d been airborne for over ninety minutes and was low on fuel and ammunition, plus he was now alone. Climbing away from the French coast, he turned northwest toward England, swiveling his head constantly and searching for Germans—but there were none in sight.

Landing at Hornchurch after lunch, he stepped back while the riggers and armorers swarmed over the Spitfire. Debriefing at the operations hut, Tuck described the combat in detail for the squadron intelligence officer, then joined the other pilots for lunch. He didn’t know it at the time, but they’d be back over Dunkirk by 5:45 p.m. This time he’d hammer an Me 110 fighter to bits over the beaches. Eschewing the slash-and-run tactics of the 109, the twin-engine Zerstörers would actually try to turn and engage in a dogfight with the Spitfires. The British fighter’s heavy, bulletproof windscreen would save Bob Tuck and allow him to attack a third German. After a wild twenty-minute fight, the second Me 110 crashed, but the pilot crawled free. In an echo of Great War chivalry—and carelessness—the British pilot slid back his canopy, flew down low, and waved.

Suddenly several thumps startled him and a small hole appeared in the bulkhead below his canopy. Flushing with anger, he raised the flaps, firewalled the throttle, and stood the fighter on its wingtip, turning rapidly back around. Snapping level, Tuck steadied his gunsight on the burning German plane and the man beside it who was again lifting his pistol. As he pressed the firing button, the Spitfire shuddered, and hundreds of de Wilde shells churned the earth and chewed up the plane. The German pilot also disappeared.

Again low on fuel and over enemy territory, Tuck headed west and carefully climbed. His heart was pumping and his skin was prickly with the adrenaline-laced edge that only combat gives. Three kills in one day . . . but now he had to survive. Scanning his gauges as well as the sky, Tuck noticed that the Merlin was running hot. One of the 110 gunners had hit his cooling system, and the glycol was draining out. Flying smooth and easy, Tuck nursed the stricken fighter back over the chalky English coastline, limping toward Hornchurch. The field was in sight when his engine finally seized. Delaying to the last possible second, he lowered the flaps and gear to bounce down, just short of the landing area but safe enough.

The squadron would fight continuously to cover the evacuation and lose 45 percent of its pilots. Bob Tuck would close out 1940 with eighteen kills, and over the next year he’d become a squadron leader, then wing commander at Biggin Hill. In January 1942, while strafing targets near Boulogne, he’d be shot down and captured. Tuck spent three years as a POW but eventually escaped from a camp in Poland and got to Moscow, then to Odessa on the Black Sea, and finally safely back to England. But in May 1940 all of that was still ahead of him, and for the moment Tuck had all he needed: a great plane to fly, an enemy to fight, and a country to defend.

WHILE BOB TUCK
and the RAF tore through the skies overhead, Lord Gort, the BEF commander, made a pivotal decision. Early on May 25, on his own initiative, Gort ignored orders to launch a southern attack supporting the French. He pulled two divisions north, reinforced II Corps, and began his breakout to the sea. At this point, if Hitler had permitted the 1st, 6th, and 8th Panzers to press their attacks, it’s very likely the entire Allied army would’ve been destroyed. As it was, the British and remnants of the French First Army caught their breath and dug in around a much-reduced defensive perimeter along the canals connecting Gravelines, Bergues, Furnes, and Nieuport.