CHAPTER 2
For Hughes and the other Anzacs, the first few weeks of the war were spent in anticipation of combat. However, as September rolled over into October and October spilled into a wintry November, the first flush of excitement was replaced with a dull resignation; generalised aerial combat would be some months away. The so-called ‘phoney war’ ushered in nine months of relative inactivity in Western Europe. In spite of guarantees given to Warsaw by London and Paris, little could be done to protect their Polish ally. Aside from very limited operations in the Saarland, French troops were, for the most part, cloistered within the Maginot Line and the most conspicuous martial activity undertaken by the RAF involved dropping, not bombs, but five million propaganda leaflets over Germany.[1]
In Britain, one and a half million mothers and children were evacuated from England’s cities, only to return in the months that followed. For many Britons, wartime life was little different to that of the immediate prewar period. As they were posted out, fighter pilots discovered that fighting was not immediately on the agenda and the unexpected calm over winter was a welcome respite from an intensive training regime. Arrival at their new squadron homes and the lengthy hours of ‘readiness, occasional scrambles, some training flying, and boring convoy patrols’ over the winter were, observed Deere, just the conditions that encouraged horseplay. Newcomers were invariably sent on a fruitless mission to locate the squadron’s ‘oxometer’.
Deere had been posted to 54 Squadron, along with Gray, at Hornchurch, and as the unit’s dogsbody he was assigned the Navigation Inventory. The only item missing was the phantom oxometer. His flight commander was adamant the New Zealander find the device due to its ‘vital importance to the squadron’. Deere’s inability would doubtless incur the wrath of the station commander, ‘a most frightening thought to a very junior officer on his first operational station’. It took the wide-eyed twenty-three-year-old days of searching before he realised he had been sent on a wild-goose chase. Once in on the gag, Deere and others took it to a new level by creating an oxometer, which the next unsuspecting pilot duly found and after being informed that it was designed to measure airspeed, was asked to ‘test’ the device by blowing into it. ‘Our hero needed no second bidding; with gusto, he blew into the mouthpiece only to be covered with a fine spray of soot which had been placed inside the gadget ... squadron pilots, concealed in various spots around the hangar, witnessed and enjoyed this amazing experiment.’[2]
Senior officers who took their duties too seriously were irresistible targets for junior pilots. During the phoney war Kinder was posted to the Air Observers’ School, Jurby, which at the time was under the command of a particularly odious officer. The Wing Commander’s favourite torment was to turn the entire camp out of their beds in their nightclothes on the pretext of running a simulated enemy gas attack. In response, Kinder and the other pilots when returning from a mission would, at every opportunity, shoot-up the commanding officer’s little yellow Ford 10. When others delivered him a message by replacing the base flag with a pair of bloomers, the commanding officer sent the entire camp, including the resident Women’s Auxiliary Air Force personnel, on a twenty-mile march. Along the route WAAFs fell ‘thick and fast,’ filling up the camp hospital.[3] The fiasco saw the officer transferred out.
Inclement weather curtailed flying opportunities and the fact that duty hours were reduced over winter facilitated more visits to pubs and lengthy liaisons with the opposite sex. Olive felt somewhat favoured because his posting to 65 Squadron, also at Hornchurch, meant that he and his fellow pilots were only thirty minutes by train from Piccadilly and thus the sights and sounds of London:
Overall though, compared ‘with the massive carnage of the First World War there seemed to be something wrong’, Olive observed. ‘It was once said that war is a time of prolonged boredom punctuated by periods of intense fear. We were certainly having our share of boredom.’ As uninspired as some pilots were, the phoney war was a blessing in disguise as it afforded the New Zealanders and Australians the opportunity to become better acquainted with the aircraft that would become synonymous with the Battle of Britain.
The Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire arrived along with the Anzacs in response to the rise of Hitler. In 1934, a year after the National Socialists came to power in Germany, the British Air Ministry set its sights on machines more powerful than had previously graced England’s skies. It issued specifications demanding a monoplane with a speed exceeding 300 mph and capable of flying at an altitude in excess of 33,000 feet. This called for an aircraft with slippery aerodynamics, retractable undercarriage and an enclosed cockpit. In terms of armament, the Air Ministry calculated that given the speed of these new machines, any given attack would last only a couple of seconds. Therefore, in order to maximise the possibility of shooting down the enemy in these fleeting moments, the usual two guns would be boosted to a staggering eight machine-guns, each delivering 1000 rounds a minute.[5]
The first response to these specifications was the Hurricane. Kinder found the Hawker machine far faster and more lethal than its biplane predecessors. In good measure this was due to the installation of the Second World War’s finest aviation engine: the Rolls-Royce twelve-piston Merlin. Delivering 1030 horsepower, it was twice as powerful as any power-plant of the Great War.[6] ‘Hurricanes were my favourites ... as they were so stable in rough weather or behind a jerry aircraft pumping lead into him,’ concluded Kinder.[7] The Hurricane’s well-known ease of maintenance and a supercharger modification in March 1940 made up for the slightly older construction methods that included the use of fabric covering.
Like the Hurricane, the Spitfire was a Merlin-powered monoplane. However, in two important areas it differed from the former. First, the airframe, following trends in France and Germany, was all metal, with the aircraft’s skin supporting the structural load. Second, the distinctive thin wings set it apart from the bulkier Hurricane appendages. Elliptical wings offered the possibility of reducing drag and thereby enhancing the aircraft’s performance. This design feature was reproduced in the tail unit, giving the Spitfire its characteristic sleek, head-turning shape. Incremental improvements throughout its history greatly increased its performance and longevity as a frontline fighter. For the Battle of Britain the most important enhancement was the replacement of the original wooden two-blade, fixed-pitch propeller with a constant-speed, three-blade design. The constant-speed propeller varied the angle at which the blades cut into the air to allow the engine to run at a constant rate. The result was an increase in the Spitfire’s operational ceiling. From mid-1940, Spitfires and Hurricanes were converted to the new propeller just in time for the Battle of Britain.
When the Anzacs got hold of the Spitfire they were smitten. ‘Everything in the plane was strange,’ observed Spurdle the first time he squeezed himself into the machine:
In flight the Spitfire lived up to its promise. ‘Too many emotions of delight, pride, fear and complete out-of-this-world strangeness blurred,’ enthused Spurdle. ‘I was alone as never before with a thousand horsepower and this beautiful little aeroplane.’[9] Hillary was equally intoxicated by his first jaunt. His flight officer, an Irishman, stood on the wing and ran through the instruments with him: ‘I was conscious of his voice, but heard nothing of what he said. I was to fly a Spitfire.’ Upon landing, a close friend enquired ‘How was it?’ to which Hillary replied, ‘Money for old rope’ and made a circle of approval with his thumb and forefinger.[10] Before his next flight, he was told to ‘see if you can make her talk’. Given free rein, he ran through his repertoire of aerobatic manoeuvres ending with two flick rolls as he made for the airfield. ‘I was filled with a sudden exhilarating confidence,’ noted Hillary. ‘I could fly a Spitfire.’
Yet the Spitfire was not without its idiosyncrasies. As Gray noted, it needed a ‘fairly delicate touch’. In particular, on take-off, it had a disconcerting tendency to swing to the left that had to be countered by applying full right rudder until sufficient speed had been built up. Nevertheless, Gray, who flew both the Hurricane and Spitfire in battle, was in no doubt which was the superior machine. To his mind the Hurricane was, in comparison, a sluggish aircraft, whereas the Spitfire, ‘being so much more responsive, handled like a high-performance sports car.’[11] This was borne out during the war as Spitfires increasingly replaced Hurricanes across Fighter Command. Although Air Ministry orders for both machines were put out in the mid-1930s, the journey from design to production was smoother for the Hurricane. The marriage of tradition and modern features meant that its production commenced as soon as the order was made. By the time Hitler invaded Poland, 18 squadrons were equipped with some 400 Hurricanes, but only nine squadrons with Spitfires.[12]
Many of the Anzacs believed that the delay afforded the RAF by the phoney war was a key determinant in their Battle of Britain survival.[13] Gray pointed out that in December 1939 he had only seven hours’ flying time in Spitfires. However, by the time he was thrust into battle five months later he had amassed many more. ‘In retrospect I consider 100 hours on type to be about right before being considered combat-ready for the first time—if only one had a choice in the matter—certainly not ten or twelve, which was about all some of our replacement pilots had at the height of the Battle of Britain.’[14] Deere went as far as to suggest that even the compromises of a year earlier in Munich were a blessing in disguise for RAF airmen.[15] Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s September 1938 acceptance of Hitler’s offer at Munich has since entered the popular imagination as utterly wrong-headed, the height of appeasement of the Nazi regime, but at the time it did delay direct combat with a Luftwaffe that had a powerful advantage over Fighter Command in machines and experienced pilots. Munich and the phoney war allowed Anzac pilots the opportunity to gain valuable flying experience outside the demands of actual combat, including the occasional life-threatening mishap.
Olive’s boredom was broken one particularly cold morning when, as one of the more experienced pilots, he was sent aloft to gauge the flying conditions for the rest of the squadron. As he pulled the Spitfire skywards the cockpit was engulfed with white smoke billowing from the engine. In order to clear his field of vision, Olive put the Spitfire into a series of violent manoeuvres. His eventual landing was a lucky escape as the antifreeze glycol running though the radiator had found its way onto the hot engine via a ruptured pipe. This could prove fatal, since glycol was almost as flammable as aviation fuel and often in such situations the pilot and machine were lost.[16]
In another unfortunate incident, the freshly arrived Gray made himself known not only to his new 54 Squadron pilots, but also higher ranked RAF officials. With only about 20 hours on Spitfires at that time, Gray made a sweeping curve on his approach to Hornchurch in order to get a good look at the field before landing—like all Spitfire pilots, he was aware of the serious forward and downward visibility deficiencies of the aircraft. At the same time he noted a large black car travelling around the airfield perimeter track as he selected his landing area. Gray judged that he would easily clear the sedan. However, he failed to observe a poorly placed sandbagged aircraft dispersal bay thirty yards inside the perimeter track. Gray’s undercarriage was sheared clean off as it clipped the top bags on the eight-foot-high bay. Unfortunately for the Kiwi airman, the large black vehicle was occupied by not only the station commander but also Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command. To make matters worse, Dowding had specifically requested that his driver slow down so they could ‘watch this young pilot land’. As he saw Gray belly-flop and plough up the airfield, Dowding turned to the station commander and exclaimed that ‘I could have sworn that the pilot had his wheels down!’[17] Adding insult to injury, Gray was battered by the full brunt of the station commander’s ire after being marched into his office. With dented ego and crash-induced black eyes, Gray was threatened with drogue-towing duty. The young New Zealander survived the threat only to face a much sterner test and foretaste of what lay ahead, when the Germans began their campaign in Western Europe on 10 May 1940.
Within four days the neutral Netherlands had been crushed and the Belgians were in disorganised retreat. Shattering the phoney war, the main German effort sliced through the supposedly impassable Ardennes forest and then pushed a sickle-cut north to the French coast. The invasion gave a number of the Anzacs their first opportunity to test themselves and their machines against the Luftwaffe. One of the few Anzac pilots on hand to meet the Germans was Edgar ‘Cobber’ Kain. The lanky New Zealander of 73 Squadron had been posted, as part of the RAF Advanced Air Striking Force (AASF), to support the British Expeditionary Force in France. He became a household name thanks to a string of victories that went back to his first kill, a bomber over Metz. Utilising the newly introduced three-blade propeller, Kain pushed his Hurricane to what at the time was an unheard-of combat altitude of 27,000 feet. The Times relayed the drama to its readers:
By March 1940, with over five victory credits to his name, Kain was the first Commonwealth ace of the war and was duly awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC).[19]
Another Anzac who acquitted himself well in the early fighting in France was South Australian Leslie Clisby. Like Kain, the twenty-five-year-old was provided with ample targets by the German invasion.[20] The Australian was an almost reckless pilot, habitually disregarding unfavourable odds when throwing his fighter into action. Fiercely proud of his ‘down-under’ homeland, he had continued to wear his increasingly threadbare and fraying Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) uniform rather than the RAF’s lighter sky-blue colours.[21] Although the records are fragmentary, due mostly to the haste in which the AASF subsequently fled France, the Australian Battle of Britain biographer Dennis Newton has estimated that in a six-day period, Clisby was officially credited with eight successes but in fact may well have accounted for fifteen German aircraft.
Kain, Clisby and other Anzacs were able to test their new fighters against the best on offer from the German air force: the Messerschmitt Me 109.[22] Significantly faster than the Hurricane (328 mph), the Me 109 (357 mph) was a good match for the Spitfire (361 mph). Although the Spitfire and the Me 109 had an almost identical climb rate, the latter could operate at the higher altitude of 36,000 feet. Like the Spitfire, the Messerschmitt was an all-metal monocoque construction. If the Spitfire was drop-dead curvaceous in the eyes of many pilots, the Messerschmitt exuded an aggressive, shark-like appearance with its yellow snub nose, clipped wings and squared-off canopy. Like the Spitfire, the Messerschmitt’s efficient lines and adaptable design meant it was still in active service by war’s end.
The Me 109’s venerable 12-cylinder Daimler-Benz engine compared favourably with the Merlin with the added advantage that it was fuel-injected as opposed to the carburettor-equipped British design. The Merlin was therefore plagued by fuel starvation when RAF pilots threw it into a dive as centrifugal forces came into action, while the fuel-injected Daimler-Benz motor did not miss a beat. Although RAF pilots worked around this deficiency by half-rolling the Hurricane and Spitfire before diving, forcing fuel into, rather than out of, the engine, it did offer Luftwaffe pilots a slight edge under negative g-forces.[23] While pilots on both sides argued that their own aircraft had the tightest turning circle—a vital performance characteristic in a dogfight—the Spitfire edged out the Me 109, if only marginally.
With regards to armament, the German fighter’s two fuselage-mounted 7.9 mm machine-guns and two wing-mounted 20 mm cannon appeared to hold an edge over the Hurricane and Spitfire’s eight 0.303 inch Browning machine-guns. The distinguishing feature was the cannon—essentially exploding bullets. Cannon was seen as the way of the future but the Me 109’s early cannon design was tempered by a relatively low velocity and rate of fire—520 rounds per minute compared with the Browning’s 1200. In fighter-on-fighter combat the machine-gun appeared somewhat more advantageous but less so when applied against more resilient German bombers. Notwithstanding these limitations, in the eventual fighter-on-fighter contest, the two machines were remarkably even in their combat capabilities.
Augmenting the Luftwaffe fighter strength was the much-vaunted Messerschmitt Me 110. A twin-engine heavy fighter with a two-man crew and powered by two DB 601A engines, the Me 110 was designed to overcome the Me 109’s limited operational radius. The result was a fighter that had a 1094 km (680 mile) range and a healthy top speed that rested between that of the Hurricane and the Spitfire. Its other strength was a forward-firing armament of four 7.9 mm machine-guns and two 20 mm cannons. This was supplemented by a rear gunner firing a light machine-gun. The Me 110 had ardent support at the highest levels of the Luftwaffe (Hermann Göring nicknamed it ‘Ironsides’) and some of the Me 109 units were stripped of their best pilots to man what was believed to be an elite force.[24]
In the early battles of the war, the Ironsides lived up to expectations. Its first stumble, however, followed in the wake of the German invasion of France when it encountered British single-engine fighters. Relatively large, the Me 110 was not only easily spotted but, when engaged by Hurricanes and Spitfires, proved unable to match the single-engine machines’ acceleration or manoeuvrability. In high-altitude escort duties it could hold its own, but in dogfights with British fighters in the Battle of Britain its limited agility would be exploited mercilessly by RAF pilots. The Me 110 found its true vocation as a night fighter later in the war.
Nevertheless, over France the aerial battles were a decidedly uneven affair. Liberally supplied with pilots with battle experience in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, and the recent annihilation of Poland, the Luftwaffe was significantly stronger than the opposing French air force—the Armée de l’Air—and the British AASF. The Luftwaffe had 3500 modern aircraft dispersed between the two air fleets, while the French had on hand 1145 combat machines, many obsolete.[25] Augmenting these French fighters, the RAF had on average barely forty Hurricanes and twenty Gloster Gladiators for daily operations. On 14 May 1940, the RAF saw some of its heaviest losses with a total of twenty-seven Hurricanes shot down, fifteen pilots killed and two fatally wounded. Clisby was among those lost. Fatigued and looking much older than his twenty-six years, the Australian was once again applying his maxim, ‘the best form of defence is offence’, when he lost his life. In the unconfirmed accounts of his last action, his flight jumped more than thirty Me 109s. In the resulting mêlée he is believed to have shot down two machines before succumbing to the enemy. He died unaware that he had just been awarded a DFC.
The period 10 to 21 May was brutal for the RAF fighter pilots, with a total of fifty-six losing their lives and a further thirty-six wounded. Eighteen who survived their aircraft’s destruction were taken prisoner.[26] By now it was clear that France would not withstand the German juggernaut and RAF men and machines were gradually retreated to England. On the ground in France, the Allied forces caught north of the German ‘sickle-cut’ were herded into a pocket on the beaches of Dunkirk. In order to save what remained of the nearly half a million British and French men clustered on the coast, an evacuation was to be attempted. The RAF’s role was to protect the lines of Allied men snaking out from the beaches into the surf off Dunkirk and the awaiting vessels. Up to this point, Dowding had been reluctant to expend his most potent weapon in France; now he put into the fray limited numbers of Spitfires operating from bases in south-east England.
The Spitfire sorties demonstrated a stark difference in air-fighting tactics, which would have a significant effect on the Battle of Britain. At 2.30p.m. on 23 May 1940, Deere was bound for France. As he closed in on the coast, a voice screeched over the radio, ‘Tallyho, tallyho, enemy aircraft above and ahead.’ A large number of German bombers were cruising towards Dunkirk. The formation leader ordered the fighters to break off into a sequenced Fighting Area Attack: ‘Hornet squadron, No.5 attack, No.5 attack.’ Deere recounts the results:
Remarkably, none of Deere’s companions lost their lives and the squadron optimistically claimed nine German fighters in the ferocious air battle that ensued. However, upon returning to base the pilots were not in a celebratory mood.[28] An Englishman voiced the concerns of the others: ‘Everyone was so damn busy making certain he got into the right position in the formation that we were very nearly all shot down for our pains.’ The strategic planning concentrated on bringing down bombers—thereby ignoring the possibility of engagement by enemy fighters. The problem lay with the heavily regimented flying patterns established for RAF units.
Each squadron of twelve machines was operationally divided into two flights—A and B—of six aircraft each, which were themselves broken down into two sections of three fighters.[29] The sections of A Flight were known as Red and Yellow and those of B Flight were Blue and Green. Once airborne, pilots were trained to fly in very tight formation around these units. The three aircraft in each section were deployed in V-shaped sections, known as ‘vics’. A single vic in turn formed up with the remaining three vics in a much larger V-formation totalling the squadron’s twelve machines. When two or more squadrons formed together they created a wing.
While excellent for parade-ground flying, tight formation flying soon proved inadequate to the demands of modern fighter-on-fighter combat. The real problem was that because pilots were required to fly in such close proximity, a great deal of effort was spent simply adjusting air speed in order to maintain formation. In other words, most of the pilots were concentrating on keeping ‘on station’ rather than the all-important job of active fighting observation. A costly measure designed to offset this cumbersome configuration was the employment of a ‘tail-end Charlie’ whose sole job was to ‘weave’ across the back of the formation to protect the squadron’s rear. These poor souls were often the first casualties when combat was joined.
By contrast the Luftwaffe’s Spanish adventure led to the abandoning of the three-aircraft vic formation in favour of a Rotte of two aircraft. The forward machine of the pair was piloted by the leader, known as the Rottenführer, who concentrated on locating and attacking enemy fighters. Two hundred yards behind, above, and slightly to the side, the wingman, or Rottenflieger, covered the leader. The formation was designed to allow the lead pilot to concentrate solely on aggressive attacks, confident that he was not going to get a nasty surprise as he closed in for the kill. In this way a number of leaders became Luftwaffe aces, accumulating successes under the protection of much lower-scoring wingmen.
Two Rotten were formed up into a Schwarm of four aircraft in which the second pair flew slightly behind and above some 300 yards distant. Known as the ‘finger-four’, this was vastly superior to the British three-machine vic.[30] A series of three Schwärme could be combined in staircase fashion to make up a Staffel, which had the ability to sweep nearly a mile and a half of air space.[31] This loose and combat-ready aerial alignment of fighters was aggressive and tactically flexible. This configuration was also harder to spot than the more densely packed V-formations of the RAF.
Compounding the weakness of RAF formation flying were the carefully choreographed manoeuvres designed to deal with intercepted bombers: Fighting Area Attacks. Having identified the formation of bombers, the fighters were then ordered to break off in formation by the squadron leader in sequence. Deere’s commanding officer’s order to ‘No.5 attack’ was just one of six such set-piece schemes composed to meet an array of situations. This particular pattern was designed to deal with a string of bombers and stretched the fighters into a line abreast formation to pick them off. Once again, this might have worked well if the bombers were unescorted, but with covering fighters the results were often disastrous. It is little wonder that the Germans described the combination of close vic flying and the Fighting Area Attacks as Idiotenreihen (‘rows of idiots’).[32]
The combination of close-formation flying and time taken to form up Fighting Area Attacks were simply too demanding and time-consuming. Unfortunately, although some squadrons were realising the inadequacy of peacetime tactics, both the Fighting Area Attacks and formation flying were deeply ingrained in RAF thinking. Consequently, both were still being taught to varying degrees late into 1940. Dunkirk also revealed the inadequacy of prewar gunnery training.
‘Looking back,’ wrote Deere in his memoirs, ‘I can see how dreadfully we neglected gunnery practice ... and what an important part it plays in the part of a successful fighter pilot.’ In these early operations covering the retreat of the BEF, he concluded that ‘squadron morale carried us safely through the early fighter battles of the war, not straight shooting’.[33] The limited amount of live training in the prewar period was in part due to a shortage of ammunition and then, after the war started, the decreasing time available to train pilots in war fighting. The ability of pilots like Colin Gray to knock out an enemy machine required a specific collection of skills. Obviously, the pilot’s first task was to manoeuvre his fighter into a favourable attacking position. Just as difficult was the need to assess the correct range at which to fire. Fighter machine-guns were calibrated in order to concentrate lethality on an enemy machine. In prewar training this was thought to be about 400 yards. Pilots over France compressed this to some 250 yards. Airmen who went on to rack up large tallies invariably manoeuvred even closer.
On 1 June 1940 highly accomplished New Zealander, Flight Lieutenant Wilfrid Clouston of 19 Squadron, knocked out two Me 109s at close range north-east of Dunkirk. In the very spare and abbreviated language of his combat report completed at his home base of Duxford, the Hurricane-flying Wellingtonian detailed the engagement:
The final requirement for success was the ability to gauge the angle of attack. Unless the RAF pilot was engaged in a direct front-on or rear-on attack, he would be required to use deflection. The calculation is similar to clay-bird shooting when required to fire slightly in front of the ‘bird’ allowing it to pass directly into the spread of lead pellets from the shotgun. Thus RAF pilots had to be able to aim ahead of an aircraft in order for it to fly into the Hurricane or Spitfire’s machine-gun fire.[35] The Anzacs seemed well suited to this, perhaps in good part because hunting was a popular and widespread pastime back in the Dominions. The accuracy of Anzac and other RAF pilots was often noted by those who came upon the wreckage of an enemy machine shot down on friendly territory, first in France and later in England.
Early in the war destroyed aircraft were magnets for story-hunting newspaper men. In Kain’s first and widely covered kill, a Los Angeles Times reporter examined the wrecked bomber, observing that ‘there were 16 bullet holes completely through the propeller of the right engine and the motor itself, mute testimony of a deadly aim’. One elderly former pilot who also explored the burnt-out machine noted, with reference to the famous Great War ace Edward ‘Mick’ Mannock, that Kain had the ‘Mannock eye’.[36]
In spite of the successes of New Zealanders like Kain, Deere, Gray and Clouston and the Australians Clisby and Olive, the fight for France in the air was a decidedly uneven affair.
The cost of the RAF undertaking was a significant drain on Fighter Command. Although the 453 fighters and 435 airmen lost in total was somewhat less than the Luftwaffe tally, the Germans were able to make good some of their losses by liberating nearly 400 aircrew POWs with the surrender of France.[37] The cost to pilots and their squadrons had been immense, particularly for those of the AASF.
In accumulating his sixteen victory credits, the Hastings-born Kain had survived a number of potentially fatal engagements in the face of overwhelming odds. His skill and good fortune meant that by early June he was the only surviving pilot of the original 73 Squadron deployment to France. On 6 June, south-east of Paris, he took off to fly to England on leave when in a slow roll over the airfield his aircraft struck the ground, throwing the airman to his death.[38] The BBC on 10 June relayed the news to its listeners touching lightly on a couple of highlights from Kain’s illustrious flying career.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Peter Fraser spoke of the sorrow felt by those throughout the country but added that Kain’s record ‘will inspire his fellow countrymen in the air force and all those waiting to go to the battlefront’.[39] Cobber and Clisby would be sorely missed, but the Anzacs who survived the ferocious battles of France and Dunkirk had gained valuable battle experience for the months ahead.