13 – 14 AUGUST
‘FROM REICHSMARSCHALL GOERING TO ALL UNITS OF AIR FLEETS 2, 3 AND 5. OPERATION EAGLE. WITHIN A SHORT PERIOD YOU WILL WIPE THE BRITISH AIR FORCE FROM THE SKY. HEIL HITLER.’
So this was Adlertag, the day when Goering – whose signal was promptly deciphered at Bletchley Park – was to open the great Adlerangriff intended to crush all RAF opposition and clear the way for ‘Sealion’. It was, instead, to be a day of anti-climax and gaunt tragicomedy.
The first black joke was the weather. As dawn broke, the clear skies of the prolonged anti-cyclone so confidently predicted by the weathermen on both sides of the Channel revealed only solid banks of cloud as far as the eye could see, with the density that an experienced airman knew would mean great depth.
The morning’s operations for Luftflotten 1 and 2 were not contingent upon favourable weather. They were also immensely complex, with engine-starting and take-off times, climbing speeds, rendezvous between bomber, twin-engined and single-engined fighter cover, all dovetailed with the precision and accuracy at which German staff officers have always been masters.
The first armada, composed of seventy-four Dorniers of KG2, started engines at their three airfields before dawn, causing the usual consternation among the French peasantry and their livestock. By 5 a.m. Oberst Johannes Fink was leading out his Gruppe of bombers for take-off. The ‘Horst Wessels’ of ZG26, who had been busy the previous day and were at Barley, Crécy and Yvrench, were awoken at the same time, and their big Me 110s, provocatively painted (the jaws of a shark were popular) and packed with fuel and ammunition, rolled out for take-off. They were led by their hero, Joachim-Friedrich Huth. Huth knew that his machines had recently been equipped with new-issue radio crystals; he did not know that (surely not a staff failure?) his charges, the bombers, had not been so equipped.
They had scarcely formed up above cloud at 12,000 feet over Amiens for the rendezvous and the crossing (and, incidentally, been clearly identified by British radar), when a cancelled-operation code call came over the R/T. It was 6.15 a.m. Goering personally had made the decision to postpone Adlerangriff until later in the day and recalled all his aircraft. He had learned from a recce report that the cloud was as thick and unbroken over England, which meant that the bombers’ targets – Eastchurch and Sheerness in KG2’s case – would be obscured or only bombable from below cloud, a very tricky business, especially with the Thames Estuary littered with defensive balloons.
As Huth was about to reverse his ‘Horst Wessels’, he spotted the distant dots in the sky to the south, which could only be the Dorniers, gaining height on their north-west-by-north course. Why hadn’t they turned back, as ordered? Handing over command, Huth made off to investigate. When he was near there was still no sign of any deviation by the bombers. He tried repeatedly to call up Fink but could get no reply. Finally, he was reduced to carrying out an unorthodox manoeuvre, zooming up in front of the perspex nose of Fink’s leading machine, turning steeply and flying past extremely closely, at the same time frantically gesticulating.
Fink clearly regarded this as dangerous and rather bad form. KG2 continued on its journey, its sixty-odd, twin-engined bombers presenting a fine picture of aerial might in the early morning sun.
The gods of war were, for the present, on the side of KG2. For a while, the Observer Corps missed the formation entirely as they came in west up the Thames Estuary, due to poor weather, and the radar stations most closely concerned – Dover, Foreness and Whitstable – had somehow lost them. No one will ever know why. But the raid followed its scheduled course, Fink dividing his force ten miles north-west of Margate, one Gruppe making for the naval base at Sheerness while he led his thirty Dorniers towards Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey. The sky had suddenly cleared and the Thames Estuary was laid out like a map below. Fink remained puzzled by the absence of his promised escort, but felt no need for them – not until ‘Sailor’ Malan’s 74 Squadron came swarming on their tails.
The South African’s shooting was always deadly. His fellow ace, Alan Deere, no bad shot himself, reckoned that Malan was the finest shot he had ever seen. Now he took out one of the Dorniers with deceptive speed and ease. The Spitfires were rapidly joined by John Thompson’s 111 Squadron and John Gordon’s 151 Squadron (Hurricanes).
The second of these Hurricane squadrons boasted a machine fitted experimentally with two 20 mm cannon and another with four cannon. Only one of the pilots showed keenness for these heavily armed Hurricanes, and chose one or other of them on every operation when they were serviceable. He was Flight Lieutenant Roddick Lee Smith, B Flight commander, with the added distinction of having over 1,000 hours on Hurricanes and Spitfires in his log book. Smith did not find the cannon altogether reliable, and the pods beneath the wings* impeded speed and manoeuvrability. ‘The cannon equipped aircraft were slower and less manoeuvrable, but they packed a much greater punch and at a longer range,’ he wrote later.
On this occasion, Smith attacked a tight formation of Dorniers from a range of about 300 yards and one of them burst into flames. Few pilots could have achieved such instant results from this range with eight machine-guns.
But the Dornier gunners, conscious that only they afforded any protection from the enemy, kept up a steady, accurate and well-coordinated fire.** Sergeant George Atkinson of 151 Squadron was one of the first victims. Then, a senior Polish Spitfire pilot of 74 Squadron, Flight Lieutenant Brezezina, was forced to bale out. He survived, to be killed in combat later. As proof of the fever of these critical days, on that very morning Hendon Borough Council sacked all Polish ARP (Air-Raid Precautions) and other foreign workers. The Hendon Times welcomed ‘the removal of aliens from key positions in services of national importance’.
But, despite the stout defence put up by the gunners, both Gruppen began to pay heavily before they even reached their targets, five in all being shot down and six more badly damaged with wounded crews. One of the Dorniers managed to get back across most of Kent. The village of Elham, which had seen so much of the fighting on the previous day, was just overflown by this mortally wounded Dornier, which crashed on a railway line nearby, slewing into some woodland and spewing out four live crew members, who had good reason to be thankful for their escape.
Eastchurch, one of Martini’s misidentified ‘fighter’ stations (in fact Coastal Command), was the temporary home of 266 Squadron (Spitfires), who expected to leave any day, so Fink’s raid was not a complete waste. Flight Lieutenant Dennis ‘Tage’ Armitage was still in bed at 7.05 a.m.: ‘I awoke to find my bed waltzing about my room which seemed most unpleasant but was caused by what was in reality a blessing in disguise, the bogginess of the land. The whole place shook as if it were in the middle of an earthquake but the bombs … buried themselves deeply before exploding, leaving nothing but a little pile of earth.’
It was not as innocent as all that, however. A number of airmen were killed, a hangar was set on fire, all the airfield’s ammunition had gone up and, on a lighter note, six officers who had sheltered within the solid chimney of the mess lounge fire came out black as night. ‘And six little nigger boys they remained, for the water supplies had been cut off,’ Armitage recalled.
Fink claimed ten Spitfires were destroyed on the ground, a ten-times overestimate, which was a great deal higher than their average three-times overclaim in the air.
But 266 remained sting-less without rounds of .303 ammo, or the equally vital boxes to contain them. Armitage was deputed to get them, quickly. It was not as simple as he had expected. The trouble was that 266 had been detached from Wittering for ‘special’ work and the squadron fitted into no Command, Group or sector. He was greeted with deep suspicion by telephonists and supply officers alike, until after several hours he telephoned their old base.
‘All right, Tage, leave it to me,’ came a deep voice from the other end. It was Harry Broadhurst, station commander, a notable ‘strong’ man with a razor-sharp knife for cutting corners. At midnight two Humber brakes arrived at Eastchurch, each loaded with ammunition and boxes. ‘Someone realised the war had started.’
For a while the east of England was left in peace, while Goering, furious at the futility of the muddled operations so far, ordered Adlerangriff to start in the middle of the afternoon, concentrating the raids, mainly from Luftflotte 3, on the west and central south of the country, and some of the inland airfields.
Sperrle tried the old trick of first sending in ‘free chase’ Me 109s in the hope of getting the RAF airborne in defence, and in need of refuelling by the arrival time of the main force. Wing Commander David Roberts, Middle Wallop’s controller, was not to be taken in, scrambling only 152’s Spitfires, which quickly sent the 109s packing but without loss on either side.
With this tease out of the way, the radar operators awaited the real thing, and they did not have to wait for long. An enormous armada was building up over the Cherbourg Peninsula and the recently occupied Channel Islands. Not far short of 300 Luftwaffe aircraft, ranging from Ju 88s to Me 109s, from Ju 87s to Me 110s, were on their way by 3.30 p.m.: their orders, to smash 10 Group, its aircraft, its airfields and operations control. The great seaport of Southampton was also on the programme, in accordance with the German High Command’s policy of spreading wide the targets in order to confuse and exhaust the defences.
Two Hurricane squadrons, 257 and 43, were despatched to deal with the bombers’ mighty advance up the Solent. Outnumbered by at least ten to one, the pilots could do no more than distract the attention of the bombers’ gunners of LG1, mostly Ju 88s. A few minutes later, the centre of Southampton was swept by high explosive and incendiary. The docks were also badly hit and many people killed. By any rational judgment, however, an air-raid on Southampton which failed to smash the vulnerable Woolston Spitfire factory was of minor importance. The only damage there was trivial, and the works had clearly not been a target.
By 4 p.m. every fighter in 10 Group was airborne, directed hither and thither by Middle Wallop as the armada which had arrived en masse broke up to deal with its wide range of targets. Scattered cloud and indifferent visibility made these targets difficult to locate. One force of Stukas searched fruitlessly for Warmwell, and scattered their bombs about the countryside before beating as hasty a retreat as they could.
By this time the people of Sussex and Kent were becoming blasé about the fighting overhead. But for many of those living in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset the raids of mid-August were their first introduction to the sound and fury of bombing and air combat. For children particularly, who seemed not to recognise the danger, it was an exciting time. Sybil Eccles, whose husband David was working in the embassy in Madrid, wrote to him of the children’s introduction to the air war on this day:
I was struggling with the young ones to get them ready for a walk – John sauntered in and said, ‘They’re having a practice, I suppose, I’ve just heard an air-raid warning.’ But I always underestimate the astonishing accuracy of my eldest and just pooh-poohed the poor boy and off we went up the hill – and a good thing we did for we had a fine sight of it all from the pub. Half-way up the boys ran off – a stream of aeroplanes came over at great speed and presently the crumps began and columns of smoke rose from Ludgershall…. One could see the salvoes hit the ground in rapid succession and the puffs go up. Presently the Spitfires were overhead and we watched a chase…. Our trio thoroughly enjoyed themselves and made a striking example of the insensibility to danger of the young.1
Two Staffeln of Ju 88s, which could have done appalling damage to the sector station, failed to find Middle Wallop, or mistook a reserve strip outside Andover for their target and tore up the grass with their 500 kg bombs. Another force of Ju 87s had a worse experience while trying to find Middle Wallop, because their Me 109 escort had allowed themselves to become too far separated from their charge. These unfortunate dive-bombers were found and pounced upon by 609’s Spitfires.
That brilliant pilot, George Darley, ordered two sections above to keep an eye on the 109s and to disentangle themselves from them as soon as they could ‘and come down and join us in dealing with the bombers’.
‘I managed to get in below the fighters,’ 609’s CO continued, ‘– I don’t think they even saw me. I throttled back a little – not too much: otherwise I would have thrown the whole formation out of position – and went through the whole lot of Ju 87s, letting fly with everything I had. The chaps coming in behind me were able to pick their targets.’2
Several of 609’s pilots, however, were too preoccupied with the 109s to have much time to spare for the easier game. Pilot Officer David Crook’s combat was brief but sweet, typical of so many at this time: ‘I saw about five Messerschmitt 109s pass just underneath us. I immediately broke away from the formation, dived on to the last 109 and gave him a terrific burst of fire at very close range. He burst into flames and spun down for many thousands of feet into the clouds below, leaving behind him a long trail of black smoke…. He crashed just outside a small village, and I could see everybody streaming out of their houses and rushing to the spot.
‘The German force was flying at 15,000 feet on a northerly course, with fighters some distance behind, but the failure of the escort to carry out its duties is reflected in our pilots’ claim to have destroyed nine of the dive-bombers compared to four Me 109s.’3
The final figure was not quite so high, but for one Staffel to lose six out of nine aircraft was a savage enough blow. Another of 609’s successful pilots was John Dundas, brother of Hugh ‘Cocky’ Dundas, two of the most famous brothers in the Battle. He was already credited with a score of six, three in the last three days.*
A surprising eyewitness to all this air activity in Hampshire was the privileged, pacifist, literary figure of Frances Partridge, who deplored the war but suffered few of its discomforts. She wrote in her diary:
Suddenly we heard terrific air activity, and planes seemed to be dashing about in all directions. Then a great grey mushroom of smoke rose from the direction of Newbury … four large bombers swooped over the Down, making a deafening noise. They flew over our heads fairly low, and on over Ham Spray … how easily they could have machine-gunned our two little figures, I so conspicuous in my red shirt…. It was not until Nannie came back from her day out in Newbury that I knew what a good view we had had of German bombers.4
Not far away, a more purposeful figure was another eyewitness to the massive air battles over Dorset and Hampshire: C-in-C Home Forces, General Sir Alan Brooke, who was daily expecting a German invasion. ‘We found a German plane’, he wrote in his diary, ‘which had just come down. Pilot was all burned up, but, as 500 lb bomb was in the debris which was burning, we didn’t stop long.’5
The action returned east again later in the afternoon. Kesselring had his eyes on two more airfields, Rochester and Detling near Maidstone. He still believed with his pilots that the airfields they had struck the previous day were knocked out indefinitely and that the Luftwaffe was well on its way to depriving the enemy of fighter airfields. In view of the heavy scattered cloud still over south-east England, he decided on a gamble and sent in his dive-bombers, with a heavy escort. There was nothing to compare with the accuracy of the Stuka when conditions were ideal.
The first force was no more successful than Sperrle’s efforts on 10 Group. The Ju 87s never found Rochester, were intercepted by 56 Squadron and scattered all over the Kent countryside. They were lucky to get back more or less intact.
Under the overall command of Hauptmann von Brauchitsch, LGI’s Stukas – some forty in all, and escorted by Major Gotthardt Handrick’s JG26 109s – set off undeviatingly for Detling. It was a dive-bomber’s dream target: hangars, stores, administration and domestic blocks, motor transport, offices, fuel supplies, easy to find near the Thames Estuary but high above sea level, the three main hangars visible for many miles. It was also highly vulnerable, the airmen’s mess and sleeping quarters being of wood and concentrated in a small area, and many of the personnel under canvas.
One surviving flight mechanic and his brother remembered that they were (like everyone else) making their way to tea when they heard the air-raid sirens sounding in Maidstone and Chatham. J. R. Hearn wrote: ‘We were unperturbed because the station commander had decreed that the airfield siren would not be sounded unless an attack was imminent. Suddenly we heard the roar of aircraft and looking up we saw about fifty Me 109s breaking formation and without warning bullets began ricocheting all around us. Ju 87bs then broke cloud and dived to the attack. We had been caught stone cold, airfield defences were antique and minimal.
‘We managed to reach a shelter unscathed and fell down the steps into it just as the first bombs began to fall. The shelter was designed for about fifty but throughout the entire raid there was only one other occupant…. The enemy carried out the entire attack undisturbed and the bombing was lethally accurate. Two hangars and numerous [twenty-two] aircraft were destroyed, two shelters received direct hits, as did the airmen’s mess…. The station commander was killed instantly at the entrance to SHQ, including several of his subordinates, and as the noise of the raid diminished it was broken suddenly by Blenheims [intended to raid invasion barge concentrations] blowing up with entire petrol and bomb-loads. We emerged from the shelter to a scene of utter devastation and carnage. The final death toll was put at sixty-eight and many more severely injured.’
As the smoke and dust rose higher and higher above the airfield on this warm Kent evening, survivors could – and did – reflect on the instant and epochal consequences should RAF Fighter Command lose control of the air completely, as they had, temporarily, over this airfield. Constrained only by hopelessly inadequate ground defences, the German bombers could have picked out any target in the United Kingdom – from armament factories to government buildings, port facilities to railway termini and junctions. Less than half of the Luftwaffe’s bomber strength had so far been deployed against the island enemy, and the thin blue line of Fighter Command was already stretched almost to the limit.
The fact that Detling was a Coastal Command station, and unconnected with Dowding’s command, was a blessing but did not diminish the seriousness of the lesson.
As for Kesselring, he wrote off with a piece of chalk one more RAF fighter station: Kaput!
The Luftwaffe lost no aircraft on the Detling raid, but elsewhere on Adlertag they lost forty-five aircraft in action, three in accidents and thirty-nine more seriously damaged. Fighter Command lost thirteen machines and three pilots killed.
Readers of The Times on 14 August were given not only a detailed account of the previous day’s air fighting (no names, no place names, no targets beyond ‘south-east England’), but also an assessment of the pilots’ attitude to the fighting.
The RAF flying man’s outlook [wrote the aeronautical correspondent] has run the whole gamut from the detached impersonal to the deadly personal. It is difficult to say exactly when it started, but it is there all the same, writ clearly for all who know the RAF men as they were then and as they are now. What has caused this radical swing round? It is not just the intensification of the air war…. It goes much deeper than that. From being daring young adventurers of the air they have become Men with a Mission, men who feel a personal responsibility for helping to destroy that threatening machine that is the Luftwaffe.
No one claimed that the German aircrews’ attitude had been modified by the fighting so far. The spirit was as self-confident and determined as ever. But Luftwaffe pilots like Hauptmann Friedrich Aschenbrenner, Gruppekommandeur in KG100, von Brauchitsch, Walter Rubensdoerffer, Adolf Galland of the crack JG26 ‘Schlageter’, Werner Moelders and Otto Bertram, Gruppekommandeur of III/JG2, and many more who had been uplifted by Goering’s ringing call of the previous day, this morning felt let down. Bad news travels as fast among flying men as through any community, and the agony of II/StG2 Stukas over Hampshire and the Channel had spread to every French and Belgian airfield.
Nor was the dull overcast weather of the early morning of this day calculated to raise German spirits. As for the RAF fighter squadrons, undisturbed at dawn and for another six and more hours, there was great relief and much catching up on sleep, while cups of tea provided by batmen grew cold on bedside tables.
The night of 13/14 August had been less eventful, on both sides of the Channel. Bomber Command had been anxious for many weeks to mount a raid on Italian industry. It would give great confidence to aircrews, provide useful experience and give immense satisfaction to the public, who despised the opportunistic Benito Mussolini and his flashy forces who had waited until Germany had conquered much of Europe before crying ‘Me too’!
So thirty-six Whitley heavy bombers staggered into the air at dusk, loaded with a greater weight of fuel than high-explosive, and set off across France for the Alps, Milan and Turin. Their bombing caused great outrage.
Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe sent nine He 111s of KG100 to the Spitfire factory in Birmingham. Four of them found it successfully, but caused relatively little damage. Others had more success in Belfast, where the new Stirling four-engined bombers were being completed. Five were destroyed.
But in daylight hours, nothing much happened before midday, when plots building up over the Pas de Calais led Park to scramble some forty fighters. The enemy force took some time to form up and then, as had happened so often before, appeared to pass up and down the Straits of Dover indecisively before, this time, turning towards Dover itself. Observer Corps reports, assisted by improving weather, told of several Staffeln of Ju 87s strongly supported by Me 109s.
This led to ‘a hell of a donny’ over Dover, with some 200 aircraft milling about in numerous dogfights. In this area, the Luftwaffe were little more distant from their bases than the RAF squadrons, and for once were prepared to mix it instead of making the one pass and then diving for home, waiting for the red-light blink warning of fuel shortage. No. 615 Squadron lost two pilots, and three of 32 Squadron’s pilots, unhurt themselves, made forced landings, while JG26 and JG52 each lost a 109 in the mêlée.
More serious was another low-level attack, completely undetected again, on Manston, the handiwork once again of Rubensdoerffer. His Me 110s blasted four hangars and made a ruin of several of the dispersals. But for once the ground fire was effective. A single Bofors pumped several 40 mm shells into one of the fighter-bombers, and some enterprising ground crew who had rigged a 20 mm cannon had the immense satisfaction of seeing a second no hit the ground and explode.
Not far away, at Lympne, our conscientious Inspector-General turned up as promised, examined the bomb damage and promptly put in his report. It praised the courage of AC2 Anderson and his party, who had promptly extinguished a burning petrol fire above a tank dynamited for demolition, and it recommended the supply of more men and machines to fill up the 380 bomb craters. Some strengthening of the anti-aircraft defences – four Hispano guns – was also strongly urged.6
An even more august figure was also engaged on inspection work this day. Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Pile later wrote:
I was escorting HM the King round the gun-sites at Dartford and Welling. Everyone enjoyed it very much, and the King was in great form, ticking me off for being improperly dressed, as I was wearing a cloth belt. He took a great fancy to the bakelite models of German aircraft and asked if he could have some, saying, ‘Even if I don’t play with them, the children will.’7
Both Sperrle and Kesselring had been ordered to prepare themselves for their greatest effort the next day, while keeping the RAF on its toes. Sperrle’s answer was to mount a great number of small raids on the south and south-west, which he reckoned would serve the purpose of getting the enemy airborne without himself risking the severe losses he had suffered the previous day.
It was well-nigh impossible to intercept every one of these raids, mostly of three aircraft only. One of these trios pushed their luck far north into Cheshire, where they bombed the airfield at Sealand. There were no fighter squadrons within miles, but anti-aircraft fire had accompanied the He 111s on most of their journey, and the wing commander (flying) himself at a busy Spitfire Operational Training Unit (OTU) – well-named John Hallings-Pott DSO – took off and shot down one of the Heinkels near Chester.
Far to the south, Sperrle had at last succeeded in getting some of his bombers through to Middle Wallop. Hearing the approaching enemy, three gallant airmen turned from the nearest shelter and ran to close 609 Squadron’s hangar door in the hope of providing some protection for the Spitfires inside. Alas, a 500 kg bomb struck the centre of the hangar, instantly forcing the huge steel door off its runners and on the unfortunate airmen.
But two of 609’s finest pilots, John Dundas and David Crook, succeeded in taking off in the midst of the raid and pursued the leading plane relentlessly at low level, taking turns to make attacks and finally causing the Heinkel to crash and explode in the middle of a naval munitions dump at Dean Hill, near East Dean. It was not until later that the two pilots learned that they had killed KG55’s navigation specialist, the Chief of Staff to Luftgau VIII and the Geschwaderkommodore Alois Storckl.
The pressure on the Middle Wallop sector had led Brand, that very morning, to move 234 ‘Madras’ Squadron (Spitfires) up from St Eval. An armourer, C. R. Blachford, remembered their departure from the tranquillity of Cornwall to the hurly-burly of Hampshire: ‘An advance party of mixed trades, armourers, fitters, mechanics and electricians were hurriedly bundled into two old Bombay troop carriers and off we went. After about an hour’s flying we were overtaken by our Spits, and after another half an hour we found ourselves over Middle Wallop looking down on an airfield being bombed, and being involved in a dogfight with Spitfires and German fighters and bombers mixing it all around us.
‘We viewed the scene with excitement and fear, rushing from one side of the plane to the other to get a better view, until the pilot cursed us in a mixture of Polish and English, told us to settle down as we were causing the plane to rock from side to side. He then made two remarkable attempts to land the plane, despite the bombing. Even more remarkable was the very courageous airman who ran out of the control tower, firing red Very light signals at us, which meant of course not to attempt a landing. The pilot of our plane then decided on an exit and flew away as quickly as possible, and to our great relief landed us safely at Boscombe Down a few miles away. The people at Boscombe Down could see our plane trying to land at Middle Wallop and each time thought we had been shot down or had crashed. After about half an hour or so, we got back on the transport plane and headed once again for Middle Wallop, which by now had had the all clear.
‘We landed without any further trouble and managed to miss the many bomb craters that were on the airfield. The Spitfires that had been engaged in the dogfight of course needed instant rearming and refuelling, so we didn’t have any time to reflect on our fright.’
There was very little night activity by the Luftwaffe, confirming Dowding’s hunch that the biggest daylight ordeal for his Command was imminent. He had already, during the last daylight hours of 14 August, reshuffled his Command’s pack, taking out from the front line three of the most hard-pressed, 145 Squadron, ‘Sailor’ Malan’s ‘Tiger’ 74 and 238, and reinforcing 11 Group’s front line with experienced but less weary pilots. The weather forecast for the next day, Dowding learned, was for clear skies and continuous sun: the anti-cyclone had, it seemed, at last set in.
* Later enclosed within the wings.
** Of some 100 surviving Battle pilots who gave an opinion in 1988 on the quality of German bomber gunnery, forty pronounced it good or excellent (‘they shot me down twice’), thirty-two thought it average and thirty poor. Donald Stones DFC, then a pilot officer, recalled that the gunnery ‘varied greatly, and probably depended on the training and esprit de corps of the individual squadron or wing. Also on the efficiency and planning of our attacks. A badly thought-out and executed attack as we did on nine He 111 s of a specialist unit over the Irish Sea on 29 September resulted in the loss of three Hurricanes out of the first six to attack. These enemy rear-gunners were highly trained and disciplined and the pilots kept perfect formation for the gunners to bring accurate and concentrated cross-fire to bear.’
* Later John shot down the German ace Helmut Wieck, but was shot down and killed seconds later by Wieck’s number two.