CHAPTER 5
By early August, on the Nazi-occupied side of the Channel, the Germans were confident enough to finalise planning for the aerial assault on Britain proper. On 30 July, Hitler told Göring to prepare his forces for ‘the great battle of the Luftwaffe against England’ and two days later a directive was issued with a view to undertaking ‘the final conquest of England’. Strengthened German forces would now turn from the convoys to a direct contest with the RAF, with a view to overpowering it ‘in the shortest possible time’. Hitler hoped that within a fortnight after the commencement of the air battle he would be in a position to issue orders for the invasion. The forces of Kesselring, Sperrle and, to a lesser extent, Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen Stumpff’s Luftflotte 5 in Norway, would undertake attacks ‘primarily against flying air units, their ground installations and their supply organisations, also against the aircraft industry, including the manufacturing of anti-aircraft equipment’.[1]
On 2 August, Göring issued his orders for the 14-day battle, dramatically dubbed Adlerangriff (Eagle Attack). Confidence was high, as the Luftwaffe believed that, after offsetting Fighter Command losses and new production, the RAF only had 450 single-engine fighters on hand—in reality it was closer to 750. The campaign’s commencement, Adlertag (Eagle Day), was dependent on a three-day clear-weather window. On 12 August, the meteorologists confirmed the good weather was upon them and Göring pencilled in the next day as Adlertag. In preparation, the Luftwaffe was tasked with blinding Fighter Command by knocking out the radar towers running along the south-east coast from the Thames Estuary to Portsmouth. In addition, forward RAF bases at Lympne, Hawkinge and Manston, which had been used so effectively in defending the convoys, were to be raided.
The day broke clear on 12 August but with some mist patches. An early decoy attack was followed closely by the real objective of the morning, the radar network. It was the first real test of Dowding’s carefully planned and prepared defensive system. Dowding, like many of those walking the corridors of power in the RAF in the early 1940s, had been an airman in the Great War and witnessed the attacks by massive Zeppelin airships and Gotha G.V. heavy bombers. Inter-war strategists drew two differing conclusions from the German aerial assaults.[2] On the one hand, some commanders believed fighters offered the best possibility of thwarting bomber offensives, while on the other hand, many theorists believed the Zeppelin-Gotha raids indicated the best form of defence was a bombing offensive.
Of these two views, the latter gained ascendancy in the inter-war era and became the received wisdom among many air-power thinkers. While the results of the bombing had been relatively modest, they did feed into public fears that, in a future war, larger, higher flying and more heavily defended bombers would wreak havoc on dense urban populations and destroy morale. The influential Italian Giulio Douhet suggested that victory in future wars could be attained by air power alone. As already mentioned with regard to Olive’s failed attempt to get assigned to bombers, this theory accentuated the role of the bomber over the fighter in any future contest.
Spearheaded by Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, Britain’s Independent Air Force (the forerunner of the RAF) initially emphasised the need to build up a potent bomber striking force. Yet, with the growth of Germany’s own aerial capabilities in the 1930s, it was recognised that Britain needed to balance this bomber strategy with an effective system of air defence around fighters. As part of a total reorganisation of the air force, Fighter Command was established in July 1936 under the command of Dowding. In contrast to Trenchard’s myopic bombing mantra, Dowding suggested that:
Dowding’s appointment ushered in a four-year period of intense work in which he threw himself into the creation of an integrated air defence system. Nicknamed ‘Stuffy’, Dowding was an austere man with few close friends, but his organisational skills, technological knowledge and flying experience all combined to produce what became known as the ‘Dowding System’.[4] The result was a complex but resilient network that incorporated, among other things, radar; the rapid filtering and dissemination of large amounts of information; the devolution of tactical control to local commanders; and the plotting of enemy and RAF aircraft across a widely dispersed geographical area.
Dowding was one of the first airmen to recognise the importance of radar. At the turn of the century it was already known that solid objects reflected radio waves and in the early part of the twentieth century work began on military applications of this knowledge. When in 1935 a bomber was observed by the displacement of a radio signal, Dowding was reported to have declared that this was a ‘discovery of the highest order’.[5] At his urging, a chain of transmitter-receiver stations that could pick up aircraft 100 miles away was established along the coastline from southern Britain to the Shetland Islands. Codenamed Chain Home, this was supplemented by the Chain Home Low system that was capable of detecting aircraft flying at lower altitudes. In the hands of a skilled operator, data from radar—known at the time as Radio Direction Finding—made it possible to assess the range, bearing, strength and, with some qualification, the altitude of intruders.
Once aircraft passed over the Chain Home, aircraft were visually tracked by the Royal Observer Corps, numbering some 30,000 personnel. Information from radar and the observers was phoned through to Dowding’s Filter Room at Fighter Command’s Bentley Priory HQ and then to the relevant operational commands of the four regional Groups. These Groups were in turn divided into sectors. By way of illustration, Park’s south-east 11 Group contained seven sectors controlled from, and including, Tangmere: Kenley, Biggin Hill, Hornchurch, North Weald, Debden and Northolt. These sector airfields were in charge of smaller outlying airfields. A sector would generally contain two to three squadrons but on occasion as many as six. The decision on how these squadrons would be tactically utilised was not made by Dowding but by the relevant group commander, who determined what targets were to be attacked and by what units in his inventory. The local sectors vectored pilots to the intruders and home again by the use of radio. Plotting the movement of enemy and friendly aircraft at each level—Fighter Command HQ, Groups and the Sectors—was carried out on large map tables on which wooden blocks representing enemy formations were shuffled around with croupier’s rakes in the hands of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. Operational decisions were made by the officers on a balcony above the table.
The advantages of the system were considerable and made possible the successes of the RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain. First, men and machines could be more effectively utilised. Without the Dowding System, Fighter Command’s only means of protecting Britain would have been the employment of costly and impractical standing patrols. Dowding’s scheme allowed for pilots and machines to be employed at the right moment and with the greatest impact. Second, the system enabled the centre to oversee the whole enterprise but gave control of the fighting units to local commanders. This overcame the impossibility of Fighter Command HQ controlling all the various elements at one time and allowed for tactical flexibility at the point of contact. Third, adaptability was inherent in the system. For example, as it became clear that a sector was about to come under assault, the local sector commander could bypass the Filter Room at Bentley Prior to communicate directly with the observer network in order more rapidly to determine the location of the intruders.
It was also possible for a Group to call on fighters from another Group, and fighters taking off from one sector’s airfield might find themselves landing in another sector’s airfields as the need arose. What all this meant, in the words of one Battle of Britain biographer, was that the ‘Spitfires always seemed to turn up at the right place and at the right time’.[6] ‘From the very beginning,’ noted Major Adolf Galland, a leading pilot and commander in the German campaign,
The initial assault put the southernmost radar stations out of action for some six hours. They were not, however, destroyed. The skeletal wood-and-wire construction dispersed the bombs’ blast and facilitated quick repair. Nevertheless the damage created a gap in the Dowding System and it meant that the attacks on the convoys by Ju 87s a little after 10.00a.m. were carried out without interference.[8] It was nearly a full hour before 65 Squadron operating out of Manston was alerted to the need to get into the air. As the airfield closest to the French coast, it would become a constant target of German efforts. Olive and the men of the squadron were some of the first to feel the effects of the new German initiative.
Soon after midday the pilots were woken out of their half sleep by the urgent order to scramble and within a few minutes Olive was jumping into his Spitfire:
With that the 12-cylinder Merlin spluttered into raucous life. Olive led a six-aircraft flight as he taxied to take off into the wind. The day was sunny and warm and the departure routine no different from hundreds he had undertaken over the preceding months. In the small space before opening the Spitfire up and roaring down the runway, the Australian awaited the takeoff order to crackle through the radio. The machines began to roll forward, only to be interrupted by explosives smashing the aircraft hangars.
To the Australian’s complete shock he realised German raiders were laying down a heavy blanket of bombs on the base. Within moments he was in a field of earthen ‘geysers’ spewing dirt and massive sods of grass. More buildings disappeared as bombs crept towards to the fighters. Shockwaves buffeted the light-framed Spitfires, rocking Olive in his cockpit. When two bombs landed nearby, he and the Spitfire were hit by the blast like a ‘huge invisible hammer’. Racing down the runway, he glanced over his shoulder to catch sight of nearly 200 bombers attacking in formation at barely 500 feet—close enough to see the distinctive black crosses polluting the sky.
The real danger, he realised, was the prospect of being swamped by the rapidly advancing sticks of bombs. A tsunami of ordnance was gaining on the last aircraft. To his left the other flight was engulfed in a wall of bombs. As they emerged from the smoke and airborne debris, remarkably only one aircraft was incapacitated. Mercifully the ground gave way to flight; Olive was airborne. Behind him he saw another Spitfire claw loose from the smoke. Travelling at twice Olive’s speed, two blunt-nosed Me 109s overshot his flight as they climbed out of the carnage. He was amazed to see his wing men still in tow unscathed. The bombers were by now some distance ahead, making for the gathering cloud cover that would thwart any attempts to get even with the raiders, though two Me 109s that chanced into the flight path of the squadron were shot down.[10]
Returning to the airfield gave all the pilots a bird’s-eye view of their narrow escape. Dipping the Spitfire’s elliptical wings, Olive circled Manston. He saw what would prove to be over 600 craters disfiguring the airfield, and the detritus of various buildings cast far and wide. Most sobering were the two lines of craters bisecting the length of the runway, a deadly furrow under which he had almost been ploughed.
‘From start to finish,’ he recalled, ‘the bomb lines were over a mile and a half long. Just one of those bombs, had it dropped in front of us, could have destroyed our entire team.’[11] ‘Miracles’ could happen, Olive concluded. A pockmarked Manston was out of action and the raids on Lympne and Hawkinge were similarly effective.
Further attacks augmented the assault on the radar towers, convoys and airfields. Kesselring and Sperrle’s plans called for a renewed assault on the naval base at Portland, with Portsmouth’s naval port and industries, a bombing run against the important Spitfire factory at Woolston and attacks on the Isle of Wight’s Ventnor radar station thrown in for good measure. Among the airmen Park’s 11 Group dispatched to meet the intruders were the New Zealanders McGregor and Wycliff Williams, 266 Squadron, and John Gibson, 501 Squadron. The indefatigable McGregor was set to even the score after losing one of his flight commanders and four pilots only the day before.[12] With the sun near its midday apex the elder statesman of the squadron ordered his men to attack the swiftly fleeing machines. McGregor latched on to an Me 110 approximately 20 miles south of the Isle of Wight at 4000 feet. Dismissive of the pilot’s attempts to evade his fire, the Kiwi pilot released a series of short bursts from his Hurricane: ‘After the third burst the enemy aircraft dived steeply into the sea. No one got out.’[13] In spite of his efforts the squadron lost two more pilots and the radar station was knocked out.
‘Wick’ Williams’ previously uneventful war took a decidedly eventful turn. Williams, who hailed from Dunedin, and his Tangmere-based squadron were faced with a force advancing on Portsmouth. The thirty or so Ju 88 bombers were intercepted and he found himself in a whirling dogfight. ‘Wick’ had latched on to an enemy machine when ‘two Spitfires and one Hurricane came from the starboard side between [the] target’ and himself.[14] The twenty-year-old grappled with the controls, breaking off the engagement to avoid imminent collision. Catching his breath, he observed a single Ju 88. Climbing to 11,500 feet he delivered a stern attack. ‘I saw my tracer bullets contacting ... [with the] fuselage, [and] almost at once,’ the relieved South Islander noted, ‘silencing the rear gunner from whom tracer bullets had been coming towards me.’ He fired again and red flames leapt from the engine. The undercarriage was prematurely released by the damage inflicted and he saw the glow of fire burning brightly in the empty cavity. Fighting for its life, the bomber exacted its revenge, and machinegun fire punctured Williams’ oil system and the windscreen was covered in a poor imitation of black icing.
The tables had been turned and over the next few heart-stopping minutes Williams oriented himself and brought the Spitfire into a level descent over the Isle of Wight towards Bembridge Airport. With a massive jolt, the machine landed wheels-up and skidded along the runway as flames fingered their way across the engine cowling towards the cockpit’s young occupant. Wrestling himself loose from the harness, he scrambled free from an eager funeral pyre. The Spitfire continued to burn until the fire found the petrol and it promptly exploded. It had been an eventful day for Williams, who only two years previously had been leading the rather staid life of a bank clerk. Two Royal Navy men who had been watching the tussle saw the stricken enemy bomber dive into the sea and Williams claimed his first victory of the war.
Gibson had already been in action that morning, destroying one Ju 87 and damaging another when he was scrambled just after 3.00p.m. to intercept enemy intruders near Lympne. Although born in Brighton, England, Gibson had emigrated with his parents to New Zealand as a four-year-old in 1920. A fine marksman and successful sportsman in the pre-war period, he made contact with the enemy twenty-five minutes after taking to the air, destroying two aircraft.[15] In spite of the best efforts of Gibson and his fellow Fighter Command pilots, the three airfields had taken a good hammering. The New Zealander managed to bring the Hurricane home unscathed, only to park it gracelessly in a bomb crater.
By the end of the day it was clear that the campaign had entered a new phase. For Park the fighting had shown that when radar was operable, the Dowding System worked remarkably well. The speed at which airfields were repaired and the radar stations put back in action demonstrated a high degree of resilience. On the tally-board Fighter Command had come out ahead with thirty-one Luftwaffe machines shot down for the loss of eleven pilots and twenty-one RAF machines.[16] Nevertheless, concern was merited with regards to the intensity of the fight and the demand on Park’s air units. Of his eighteen squadrons, a full thirteen had to be called upon and, of these, most were scrambled more than once. In total, 500 sorties were undertaken by Fighter Command and it was uncertain that this level of operations was sustainable with the resources on hand.
On the other side of the Channel, Göring gave the order for the commencement of the great Adlerangriff the very next day.
The weathermen of the Luftwaffe’s meteorological arm had informed their leader of fine flying conditions, but the morning was overcast and England was wreathed in broken cloud. The main event was therefore pushed back until the afternoon of 13 August. Confusion and an inability to call back some Luftwaffe units resulted in Anzac skirmishes with the enemy before the principal raids of the day. Two Australians, Mayers and Glyde, were involved in the battle.
Mayers had joined the Hurricane-equipped 601 Squadron only ten days earlier. With this posting, the Australian found himself in one of the more colourful RAF units. The so-called ‘millionaires’ squadron’ was well known for collecting pilots from the ‘well-heeled’ ranks of society. This menagerie of the wealthy and famous came about in the 1920s when aristocratic young amateur aviators came together to form a squadron in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, London—a voluntary active-duty force for supplementing the RAF. Airmen of 601 distinguished themselves by their distaste for the usual discipline of other units. Disdaining the regulation black silk that lined the uniforms of the RAF’s hoi polloi, the ‘millionaires’ favoured a gaudy bright-red silk lining.
Hayter, who was in a sister auxiliary squadron for a period, noted that the well-connected pilots had a gold ‘A’ on each lapel, though pilots like himself were only given a single ‘A’ because they were simply there to ‘bolster the numbers’. Even so, some of the Anzacs were beneficiaries of the squadron’s largesse. ‘In the auxiliary squadron, Walter Churchill was my first CO,’ recalled Hayter, and since ‘we were just poor colonial boys ... he paid our mess bills. And free cigarettes too.’ This was too good to last however, and when a replacement commanding officer appeared, he declared that ‘if you bastards think I’m going to continue paying your mess bills you’ve got another thing coming’. It was, in Hayter’s words, ‘a hell of a shock’.[17]
The pilots’ car collection was the envy of Fighter Command, with glittering examples of the finest automotive grace and power on offer. Long-nosed sports and touring cars were mandatory accessories for the red silk and gold lapel-badge wearers. Many sidestepped fuel restrictions by utilising the 100 octane gasoline from the aircraft bowsers. An illegal activity, but poorly monitored. Some pilots even owned their own aircraft.
Mayers’ squadron’s other claim to fame was its unusually high number of American pilots, including the famous ‘Billy’ Fiske. The son of a New England banking magnate, he had won two Olympic gold medals: the first at the 1928 Winter Olympics, at the tender age of sixteen, as part of the United States’ five-man bobsled team; the second as a member of the four-man team in 1932. Like most Americans in the Battle of Britain, Fiske misled British authorities by claiming Canadian citizenship. The handsome Sydney-born pilot Mayers was not an altogether unnatural fit in this glittering array, with his high forehead topped with swept-back blond locks and a background that included a considerable amount of time spent in London prior to the war and a University of Cambridge degree in his back pocket. As managing director of a London-based firm, he was more suited to this company than might ordinarily be expected. Moreover, as the campaign stretched into September and the squadron’s losses mounted, its lustre diminished as more decidedly middle-class citizenry entered its ranks.
By Adlertag, Mayers could look back on only a handful of days in action, but thanks to his training in the Cambridge University Air Squadron he was better equipped than many who entered the battle midstream.[18] He began 13 August with an early-morning scramble from Tangmere, knocked out a Ju 88 and heavily damaged another. Just after midday, the Sydneysider was once again ordered up as part of A Flight against thirty Me 110s south of Portland. His first attack on the formation was a six-second burst as he closed from 400 to 150 yards, but it ‘appeared to be ineffectual’. In the second attack,
Mayers’ first reaction was to yank back on the control column, but the fighter was now only a lifeless metallic carcass. ‘The next thing I remember,’ wrote the Australian the next day, was ‘falling through the air at light speed, and feeling my helmet [being] ... torn off.’ He had baled out at 19,000 feet and, suffering from oxygen deprivation, clawed his way back to consciousness in the course of a 12,000 foot free-fall, finally able to open the parachute at 7000 feet. He survived the wayward peppering of an Me 110 and landed in the chilly waters three miles off Portland.
He was hopeful of rescue, since in his descent he had spotted a Motor Torpedo Boat (MTB) a mile distant. The vessel was moving in to pick up a downed Luftwaffe pilot not 200 yards from where Mayers was bobbing up and down. His confidence dissipated over the next twenty minutes as it became evident he had not been seen. His saviour arrived in the form of a baronet: Flight Lieutenant Sir Archibald Hope. The aristocrat was Mayers’ flight commander and had returned to locate the wayward Australian. From his cockpit,
Mayers was right; the vessel’s commanding officer, having rescued the desperate and exasperated airman, lamented the fact that the small vessel only gave him a relatively limited range of sight.
The medical staff at the Portland Naval Hospital X-rayed him and treated his shrapnel injuries, which proved to be superficial. A flight in a Fairey Battle delivered him to Tangmere nine hours after his adventures had begun. In his lengthy after-action report, he suggested that pilots ‘carry marker flares’ and that organised air searches be required after an airman is shot down over the sea. His experience had confirmed once again the potential lethality of being shot down over the Channel.
Mayer’s heart-stopping brush with death was not shared by Glyde. The Western Australian, who had been awarded a DSO in June, was scrambled with his Hurricane-equipped colleagues on the same morning. The sortie was too late to meet the main challenge, but an isolated twin-engine bomber was spotted and attacked. As the stricken invader made its death plunge into the Channel, other 87 Squadron pilots noticed that Glyde’s machine was leaking copious amounts of glycol, a sure sign of successful enemy defensive fire.[21] When they next checked on the pilot’s status, the ace with seven victories to his name had vanished. Neither Glyde nor his machine was located in the subsequent aerial search. Glyde, who, thanks to operations over France, was more experienced than Mayers, had been hit by a lone bomber and lost his life for it, while Mayers with only ten days in combat had cheated death in the air and then at sea by a hair’s-breadth.
The next day the pace of Luftwaffe operations diminished somewhat and assessments were being undertaken on both sides of the Channel of their respective progress to date. Significantly, the events covering 12–14 August had revealed that the Luftwaffe was operating under a handful of important constraints centred on poor intelligence. First, the importance of the radar system was never fully understood by the Luftwaffe high command, with the result that future attacks were sporadic and unconvincing. The 100-mile gap that had been created on 12 August had been quickly repaired. Consequently, when raids were made that evening in the belief that they would not be picked up by radar, the Luftwaffe was hit hard. This in turn led the Germans to mistakenly downplay the potential advantages to be had from all-out operations against the radar chain.
Second, attacks were made on targets that had little impact on the operational capabilities of Fighter Command. For example, the 13 August raid on Detling airfield, near Maidstone, had killed sixty-seven men and destroyed twenty-two aircraft on the ground.[22] By all accounts a decisive blow, were it not for the fact that the field was part of Coastal Command’s inventory, not Fighter Command’s.
Third, the Germans were never fully aware of the vulnerability of the Spitfire manufacturing facilities. In addition to the Hurricane and Spitfire Rolls-Royce engines being built at only two factories, the airframes for the latter fighter were by and large produced at one plant: the Vickers-Supermarine factory in Southampton. Dangerously close to Kesselring and Sperrle’s airfields, this factory was falsely identified as manufacturing bombers.
Finally, Kesselring and Sperrle were overestimating Fighter Command losses. Tall tales of confirmed kills prevailed on both sides. Some pilots falsely boosted their successes, but most of the inflation was due to multiple claims on the same kill in fast-moving combat. One pilot might hit an enemy aircraft only to have others hit the machine before it was destroyed. An August interception by 54 Squadron of a lone Me 110 highlighted the potential for confusion and multiple claims.
The combat report chronicled the unusually protracted assault: ‘P/O Gray attacked from 100 yards. Firing long burst setting both engines on fire.’[23] The German machine refused to surrender to Gray’s salvos, though it rapidly shed its speed. In fact, the low velocity of the Me 110 made it difficult for the other pilots to finish it off. The flight leader was only able to hole the fuselage. A flight sergeant ‘fired third and set the engines alight again ... This time the enemy was diving steeply towards the French Coast.’ Further ‘bits and pieces fell off the machine’ from the efforts of a pilot officer, but still the Me 110 sputtered eastward losing altitude. The fifth and last to hit the aircraft was a sergeant. George Gribble, as flight leader, signed off the document, noting that although the ‘machine was not actually seen to crash in the water by this time it was fully ablaze’.[24] Sometimes it was possible to accurately attribute success to lone pilots but often in the heat of a dogfight multiple claims were impossible to avoid, especially if more than one squadron was involved.
While the resulting exaggerated claims were troubling for Dowding in assessing the progress of the battle, it was an exceedingly serious matter on the other side of the Channel. The RAF was in the business of simply surviving; the Germans on the other hand needed to destroy Fighter Command to facilitate the invasion. Göring was certain, based on the vastly inflated figures, that Dowding must have stripped his other defensive forces, 10 Group and 12 Group, to reinforce the struggling 11 Group. How else could he account for Park’s continued resistance in the south when his Luftwaffe pilots had allegedly destroyed the greater part of the RAF’s fighter stocks?
The Luftwaffe hoped to exploit this apparent weakness by attacking Britain across a broad front, drawing the northern Norwegian and Danish-based Luftflotte 5 into the fray. The Greatest Day—15 August—saw the largest collection of aircraft gathered together over Britain. Göring’s three Luftflotten had a dizzying 1790 bombers and fighters to hurl at Dowding’s 351 serviceable Hurricanes and 233 Spitfires.[25]
The German assault would be delivered across the broadest front of the campaign thus far, incorporating the Scandinavian-based units of Stumpff to take advantage of the alleged dearth of men and machines in the north. Fighter Command’s Commander-in-Chief, however, had maintained the numbers of squadrons in 13 Group and had continued to use it to circulate units that were in need of a break and refit from the rigours of battle. Consequently, 13 Group had six fighter squadrons on hand and many were manned by some of the RAF’s most seasoned fighter pilots. With regards to radar, Luftwaffe planners assumed it would be less well monitored, giving greater opportunity to surprise the defenders. As bad luck would have it for the Luftwaffe, a convoy was moving north from Hull around midday and radar operators had been ordered to maintain extra vigilance in view of its significance. Added to this was the much greater distance between the German-occupied Norwegian and Danish airfields and targets in Britain. This worked to the defenders’ distinct advantage. The time available between radar picking up intruders and having fighters at the right altitude to intercept was much greater than for Park’s 11 Group.[26]
For Stumpff, the distances involved also hamstrung his forces. Missing from the raid would be the most potent weapon facing Fighter Command airmen: the Me 109. The single-engine Messerschmitt simply did not have the range to make it to Britain from Scandinavia. Sixty-three He 111s from Norway were to raid the Dishforth and Linton-on-Ouse fields, with Newcastle, Sunderland, and Middlesbrough as secondary objectives. Protection was to be provided by twenty-one Me 110s fitted with bellydrop fuel tanks to allow them to complete the nearly 1000-mile mission. The Danish component was made up of fifty Ju 88s to attack the Driffield, East Yorkshire, airfield. These would fly without fighter escort, though a modicum of protection would be provided by a handful of Ju 88s fitted out as fighter-bombers.
Stumpff hoped to bamboozle the northern radar by undertaking a feint employing twenty floatplanes. This flight was designed to deceive the defenders into thinking that the German targets were heading for the Firth of Forth, well north of the bomber targets in Dishforth and Linton-on-Ouse. The enterprise was a complete fiasco as a three-degree error in the following bombers’ course in fact placed them on the same course setting as the decoys that had left Norway thirty minutes earlier.
‘Thanks to this error,’ noted a staff officer within Luftflotte 5, ‘the mock attack achieved the opposite of what we intended. The British fighter defence was not only alerted in good time, but made contact with the genuine attacking force.’[27] Among the defenders were a good smattering of Anzacs.
First into the air was Australian Desmond Sheen of 72 Squadron operating out of Acklington. The Heinkel crews, belatedly aware they had been flying off-course, turned south towards their targets—and right into the path of Sheen’s unit. At 12.45p.m., contact was made thirty miles east of the Farne Islands. The twenty or so bombers turned out to be approximately five times the size of the anticipated force. Facing nearly 100 bombers and Me 110s, the twelve Spitfires had more than a handful to deal with. The squadron leader continued out to sea in order to come in behind the large formation, hoping to dive out of the sun on to the bombers cruising at 18,000 feet. Sure that the Spitfires should by now have made contact, the controller asked the squadron leader, known for his stutter: ‘Haven’t you seen them?’
The reply, which was subsequently widely reported throughout the RAF, came through: ‘Of course I’ve seen the b-b-b-b-bastards. I’m trying to w-ww-work out what to do.’[28] In the end the separation of the German force decided the matter and, while some of the squadron attacked the bombers, Sheen, as leader of B Flight, took his Spitfires into the escorting Me 110s. While some twin-engine fighters formed up into a defensive circle, Sheen latched on to a straggler. The young Australian misidentified the drop-tank on the machine as a large bomb. Many of the German pilots had already divested themselves of the dangerous tanks but it appears that at least one pilot had not. Sheen hit the ‘bomb’ and the enemy aircraft disappeared in minute fragments.’[29] One of the Me 110 pilots recorded his own frightening run-in with Sheen and his colleagues:
Sheen followed his first run with another on an Me 110 and he hit the port engine, which was soon sprouting flames and smoke. With another aircraft dispatched, his action for the day was complete. Seven Me 110s had been destroyed—a third of the force. Although on returning from their ill-fated sortie the dejected German airmen went on to claim that they had shot down eleven Spitfires, none had in fact suffered this fate. While the remaining enemy fighters fled for cloud cover and home, the main body of bombers continued tenaciously towards their targets.
Having identified a much larger force, 13 Group unleashed further squadrons. First on the scene was another Acklington formation, 79 Squadron, with New Zealander Owen Tracey and Australian William Millington each at the controls of a Hurricane.[31] The former, a Dunedin store-hand, had been turned down three times for a short commission in the RAF and was finally informed that he did not meet the educational requirements for the service. Determined to achieve his dream, he undertook private tuition. The latter pilot’s English parents had made the voyage to Australia when he was a young child and put down roots in South Australia at Edwardstown near Adelaide. Millington returned to England and took up a short service commission in 1939. Both men were now pilots in a unit that had a heritage stretching back to the Great War. The fighters fell mercilessly on the Heinkels. Tracey claimed one and Millington three.
Close to 1.00p.m. the Hurricane squadrons that had been scrambled from Drem, in the north of the Group’s area, and Catterick in the south, arrived on the scene. New Zealanders James Samuel Humphreys of Greymouth, formerly a clerical cadet in the Government Audit Office, Wellington, and John Mackenzie, the son of an Otago farmer, were pilot officers in 605 and 41 Squadrons respectively.[32] The airmen of 605 squadron boasted they had taken down four bombers, although the boyish Humphreys, a veteran of the fighting in France, was not one of the claimants. Mackenzie, on the other hand, did get to put in a claim. In an interview years later, Mackenzie still vividly recalled the events: ‘We had a bit of a to-do on the 15th. They came in from across the North Sea. I fired my guns but don’t know what happened. It was a real mess-up and the Germans went in all directions.’[33]
In an impossible situation, many of the He 111s simply jettisoned their bombs and limped back to Norway as quickly as possible. The more southerly attack from Denmark was somewhat more successful and though they destroyed ten Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bombers at Driffield, Yorkshire, they were heavily mauled in the attempt. Seven of the fifty Ju 88s were shot down and a further three made crash landings on the Continent. In all, Luftflotte 5 lost a full fifth of its raiding force while Fighter Command had lost only one Hurricane. This was the first and last time the Luftwaffe attempted to raid Britain from Norway and Denmark in the Battle of Britain.
Meanwhile in the south, major raids were continuing against the RAF.