War Stories III Page 3

  RAF Fighter Command’s Supermarine Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes, vectored by fifty “Chain Home” radar stations, swarmed up to meet the attacking Luftwaffe formations. Hermann Goering, Hitler’s air minister, responded by ordering an increase in the number of Me-109 and Me-110 fighter escorts for their bombers.

  On 19 July, Hitler summoned the Reichstag—Germany’s now impotent legislature—all of the puppet governors from the conquered territories, the diplomatic corps, and the world press to Berlin’s Kroll Opera House for a “victory celebration.” At the conclusion of his lengthy speech, the German dictator made a blatant call for British capitulation: “I feel it is my duty, before my own conscience to appeal once more to reason and common sense in Great Britain and elsewhere. I consider myself in a position to make this appeal since I am not the vanquished begging for favors, but the victor speaking in the name of reason. I see no reason why this war must go on.”

  While waiting for Churchill to accept the futility of further resistance, the Luftwaffe continued its daily raids—with inevitable dogfights over the Channel and the fields of southern England. By the end of the month the Luftwaffe had lost more than 100 bombers and eighty fighters while the RAF had lost just seventy Spitfires and Hurricanes. While almost half the British pilots had parachuted to safety over friendly territory, nearly all the downed German airmen were killed or captured.

  On 30 July Hitler summoned his commanders to Berghof, his Bavarian retreat. There he reiterated his decision to double the number of Panzer divisions from ten to twenty and increase the Wehrmacht from 120 to 180 divisions. Two days later he issued Führer Directive No. 17, launching Operation Eagle and ordering the Luftwaffe to “overpower the English air force.”

  Goering commanded his pilots to effectively double the number of strikes against British “flying units,” bases, aircraft plants, and anti-aircraft installations and predicted that his pilots would “crush Britain.” Fortunately for the British, the Luftwaffe never developed a coherent plan for doing so—nor did Goering, a World War I ace, ever seem to grasp the importance that radar played in defeating the German air offensive.

  German Dornier planes over Britain.

  For another two weeks Luftwaffe bombers pounded RAF fighter bases and bomber fields, the piers at Portsmouth, munitions plants, and shipping along the Thames and in the English Channel. Only once were any of the radar stations hit—and none of the German raids succeeded in disrupting the carefully integrated RAF early warning and control centers.

  When he met with his senior military commanders at the Reich Chancellery on 14 August, Hitler once again expressed his hopes that the air campaign would bring the stubborn British to some accommodation, to protect their “Asian colonies and trade from Japanese aggression.” But the next day, losses of Stukas and pilots were so high that Kesselring and Sperrle, commanders of the Luftwaffe 2nd and 3rd Air Fleets, stopped sending the dive-bombers across the channel.

  For the German Me-109 pilots escorting the bombers, each trip over England became increasingly dangerous as the RAF fighter pilots gained proficiency and experience. Gunther Raal, a young pilot from Stuttgart, Germany, saw this transition firsthand from the cockpit of his Me-109.

  GUNTHER RAAL, LUFTWAFFE PILOT

  Qoquel Airfield, Near Calais, France

  15 August 1940

  I joined the army as a cadet at the age of eighteen. Then I changed to become an officer to the air force when I was twenty years old because I wanted to fly. I was not politically orientated—and besides, active duty officers weren’t allowed to join political parties. I just wanted to serve my country.

  I went to a famous fighter pilot school northeast of Berlin. Just when I finished the course, the war started. In those days we didn’t count flying hours, not even takeoffs or sorties. Once you got your wings you decided whether to go into bombers or fighters. My temperament is for a fighter pilot. I wanted to sit alone in my airplane and fight, not as part of a crew in a plane. That’s not my temperament.

  I was just twenty-two years old when I saw combat for the first time. When the war started, my squadron of Messerschmitt Me-109 fighters was on the frontier with France and there was hesitation on both sides about flying across the border. The French flew down the Rhine on the western side, and we on the eastern side. Then in May ’40, the Wehrmacht moved into France and we had our first air-to-air contact. Mine was against a Curtis P-36 and it was my first victory.

  After the French surrendered, we were told to prepare for the invasion of England. I was a lieutenant in one of the fighter units with the mission of escorting the bombers to their targets in England. At first our assignment was to escort Stuka Ju-87 dive-bombers. These were very slow flying airplanes, and our fighter escorts had to stay close by. We would meet them at a rendezvous point over France and then lead them over to England. Our Messerschmidt 109s—the escorts—were good aircraft, but as we approached the coast, the British Spitfires would be waiting for us upstairs. And we lost a lot of pilots.

  At first they just had us go after military targets—not the cities. But even after we switched to using just the Dornier and Heinkel bombers—they were faster than the Stukas—but the Luftwaffe wasn’t a strategic air force. Precision bombing was not that far developed, and our fighters didn’t have the range to escort the bombers all the way to targets on the west side of the island. The whole concept was wrong. The weather was terrible—and just got worse as the summer wore on.

  The British pilots had the advantage of defending their own territory—and many of them were very good. As we lost pilots and planes, the British just kept getting more of both. Their Spitfires and Hurricanes were no better than our Me-109s—but they could stay up longer because they were fighting right over their own airfields. We could only engage for a few minutes before we had to turn and go back across the channel before we ran out of fuel.

  I was credited with shooting down 275 planes because I flew fighters in combat for five and a half years, except when I was in hospital. The best pilots are those who fly many missions. The best British pilots were the ones who flew hundreds of missions—that’s what makes a good pilot. All of us had the greatest respect for the Royal Air Force. Their tactics and skills were excellent.

  By mid-August, Goering and his high command decided that the only way to bomb England more effectively would be to eliminate the British fighter threat to the Dornier and Heinkel bombers. Accordingly, the Luftwaffe was ordered to shift the focus of their attacks and concentrate on “obliterating” the RAF Fighter Command bases. For the next three weeks, nearly every Spitfire and Hurricane station in southeast England was hit as the Germans launched thousands of sorties against the British defensive network.

  By the end of the month, losses of RAF fighters and pilots were almost double that of the Luftwaffe. In the last week of August and the first week of September, RAF Fighter Command lost nearly 300 Spitfires and Hurricanes. And although the RAF managed to down more than 375 German aircraft, fewer than half were fighters.

  Bigham Hill—a key sector station for Eleven Group of RAF Fighter Command, twelve miles south of London—was hit multiple times a day for nearly a week. And though it never went completely out of service, scores of ground support personnel were killed and numerous fighters damaged in the German raids. One of the young pilots flying from Bigham Hill throughout the onslaught was twenty-two-year-old Hurricane pilot Pete Brothers.

  PETER BROTHERS, RAF PILOT

  Bigham Hill, South of London, England

  29 August 1940

  I joined the Air Force after we were given the talk by a First World War fighter ace, who said, “There’s going to be another war and you chaps are going to be in it. I’ll give you one piece of advice. When you get into your first combat you’ll be frightened. Always remember the chap in the other cockpit is twice as frightened as you are.”

  He was right. When I got into my first combat, I was practically hysterical but I thought of those words, and then said, �
��Well then, the poor chap in the German cockpit must be going insane, so I’d better put him out of his misery.” Which I did.

  I applied to join the Royal Air Force as soon as I was seventeen and then in January 1936, they sent me a letter saying to report. I was lucky because I had already done 100 to 150 hours flying at a training school. The RAF gave me a couple of checks, put me through some drills, a little ground school, and then my instructor said, “Fine, you know how to fly, you’ve done it.” So I was selected to fly fighters and assigned to a Hurricane squadron.

  Nobody had imagined that the Germans would roll up to the coast of France so fast. We reckoned the only aircraft we were going to see were bombers. But my first fight was against Messerschmidt 109s. And as they were coming toward us I thought they were specks on the windscreen—when suddenly they grew larger, coming right at us. I vividly remember the first one I shot down. He came out of a cloud about thirty feet above me—so close that I could see oil streaks from underneath his engine cowlings and missing chips of paint. He swept over the top of me and he was turning around, coming in to attack. As he did, he overshot, so I got on his tail and shot him down.

  Within a couple of weeks the British Expeditionary Force in France was surrounded at Dunkirk and they pulled my squadron back to Bigham Hill. From there, I flew cover over Dunkirk, trying to protect the troops being evacuated and providing cover for them from attacks by German bombers and fighter aircraft. We were amazed that so many troops were able to get out and across the Channel. France capitulated shortly after that. We said, “It’s up to us now... and nobody is going to muck us about anymore.”

  After Dunkirk there was a lull while the Germans got ready to launch their heavy strikes on England. And then the raids started in what the newspaper people called the Battle of Britain, and it began to get very hectic.

  At first they went after the ports and beach defenses and the like. Then, after a few weeks, the Germans started to mount heavy raids on our airfields with 200 to 250 bombers—escorted by a similar number of fighters flying above them. We’d take a look and say, “Well . . . where do we start?” Our tactics had us going this way and that, and it wasn’t very successful. After we had lost a number of our mates, someone said, “I tell you what—let’s take the Germans head on. They probably won’t like that—the gunner in a bomber is sitting in a Plexiglas nose—and we’ve got eight guns and he’s only got two. So let’s take them head on. That should split them up.” And it did.

  The Germans’ instinct was to pull up, over the top of someone that they thought was about to collide with them. And that’s a bad instinct. We learned to always push forward and fly underneath for two reasons: one, you expect the other chap to pull up, and two, you gain more speed shoving the nose down into a quick dive. It gives you time to turn around and attack from the rear.

  That kind of thing helped. And you got to know your aircraft inside out—all it could and couldn’t do.

  On a typical day we’d be up and on the airfield before first light—aircraft ready, engines warmed up and ready to go. Because we had radars to warn us of an incoming raid in our sector, we were usually on fifteen-minute alert. But in late August and early September—when they were hitting our bases—sometimes several times a day we would be on “cockpit alert”—sitting in the cockpit, guns loaded, engine running, just waiting for the signal to launch, what direction to head and what altitude they were coming in on. Those were very long days—and very short nights.

  Had we lost, and been invaded, Germany would’ve controlled the whole of Europe. There would have been no stepping-stone for the U.S. to come to our help. That was something we thought about a lot in those days.

  By the first week of September 1940, RAF Fighter Command was reeling from the effects of the Luftwaffe assault on its string of bases. Hitler, still hoping for some kind of accommodation from Churchill, had ordered that London not be attacked—and the British capital had been largely spared the wrath of the German bombing campaign. Though aircraft plants, munitions factories, and shipyards had been hit—with attendant civilian casualties—the Führer reserved for himself any decision on attacking London’s closely nestled residential areas. But on 7 September that all changed. For the first time, massed formations of Luftwaffe bombers headed not for the beleaguered RAF Fighter Command stations, but straight for the British capital.

  For fighter pilots like London-born Billy Drake, the shift in German tactics was a reprieve. By that first grim week in September 1940, the twenty-three-year-old fighter pilot had already been shot down and wounded over France, evaded capture, and made his way back to England to rejoin his mates in the desperate battle.

  BILLY DRAKE, RAF PILOT

  London, England

  31 August 1940

  I took my first flight in a bi-plane at a circus when I was fourteen and became a pilot in 1936. I used to read a magazine called Flight, and there was an advertisement saying that the Royal Air Force wanted pilots. And I told them that I wanted to join a fighter squadron

  The first time I saw a Hurricane was about 1938. We’d already been briefed by the British air attaché in Berlin, about the capabilities of the Messerschmitt 109. And the Hurricane was an airplane that had been produced to compete against the 109 with its eight guns, a proven engine, and it looked like a proper airplane. At the same time we saw the Spitfire. It had been produced at about the same time. We were certain that with these two aircraft we could take on anything that the Germans wanted to throw at us.

  In those days there were no two-seat trainers. A test pilot would sit us down and tell us about the airplane, so we weren’t completely in the dark. But we had to teach ourselves how to fly it.

  After the Germans invaded Poland we flew to France and were posted to a French air base and settled down to wait for the Germans. We were at this place for about nine months, until May, when the Germans invaded France.

  While we were in France we had no radar, like we had back in England—so we had no advance warning of any movement of the German air force. The only indications we had was when we saw these condensation contrails in the sky. But of course we had no communications so we didn’t know if they were ours, French, or even German airplanes. So we had to intercept them to find out. The first time I saw a German airplane was when I intercepted one of these condensation contrails—and it turned out to be an RAF aircraft doing photographic reconnaissance. I was following him when I looked down and saw a German Me-109, coming up to intercept this recon airplane. So I paid a compliment for this German’s interest by taking a shot at him.

  He saw me first, dived away, and I followed him. It took me about ten minutes before I got closer to him—but I still couldn’t get within range to fire. He dove again, trying to lure me into some high-tension cables but I saw them in time. He pulled up to see if I hit them and crashed, but as he pulled up—which slowed him up—it gave me an opportunity to get within range and I shot him down.

  On the second day of the German invasion, my own personal airplane—which I’d had for about three years—was being serviced, so I got into another plane. When I got to 18,000 feet I realized the oxygen wasn’t working. So I called the flight leader and said, “I have to return to base—my oxygen is not working.”

  The pilot flying the point said, “Okay . . . push off. We’ll see you later.”

  As I was flying back to my base at about 12,000 feet, I saw three Dornier 17s and went straight in to attack. I shot one down, and as I was getting into position to shoot down a second one, a Messerschmitt 110—the twin-engine German fighter—got behind my tail, and repaid the compliment, setting my airplane on fire. I was panicking, and decided to get out with my parachute, and did all the necessary preparations. But when I tried to jump, I hit my head against the canopy—which probably saved my life because the flames were all around me and I was covered in petrol. If I had I opened the cockpit hood at that time, the flames would have come inside and enveloped me. But as it was, I was able to roll
the plane upside down, the flames were swept in the opposite direction, and I fell out.

  The parachute worked, but I’d hurt my back and my legs getting out of the aircraft—I thought I’d lost my leg, it was hurting so. Somehow I made a safe landing, but as I was climbing out of my parachute harness, five or six French peasants confronted me with pitchforks and scythes. They thought I was a German. I showed them my RAF wings, and then they couldn’t have been more helpful.

  They got me on a motorcycle and took me to a medical clearing station. There were no doctors there, just orderlies—and they had run out of anesthetic. Before they started to dig away and to extract the bullet fragments that were buried in my back, they gave me morphine. They said, “Do not worry about your leg, it is still there. There was only shrapnel doing all the harm in your leg.”

  After digging out the metal from my back, they got me into a car, and took me to a train that took me to a French hospital at a town called Chartres.

  About five of my squadron mates were killed during the period that I was laid up. When I made it back to England, the medical authorities had a good look at me and said, “He’s fit enough to fly.” By now the Battle of Britain had started, and all I wanted to do was to get back into a fighter unit.

  The Germans shifted tactics and started to bomb our fighter airfields. If they had kept it up—and gone after the radars—they might have knocked Fighter Command out of the skies over England. But then Hitler suddenly shifted tactics again and started to bomb London and ignored the fighter airfields. It was a big mistake for their air force. It gave Fighter Command a chance to recover—to replace planes and pilots and repair our air stations.

  Because we had radars and a very good early warning network, we could launch our Hurricanes and Spitfires just in time to intercept the bombers as they were lining up to make their bomb runs over London—when they have to stay straight and level.