CHAPTER 8
Standing in the way of the Führer’s plans was a cadre of RAF pilots up to the task, including Anzac Brian John Carbury. The New Zealander’s entry into the annals of military aviation was by way of a rapid string of victories on 31 August, when he destroyed five enemy machines. His record was set during a particularly nasty day of enemy action when Hornchurch became the focus of Luftwaffe attention. Also caught up in the action were Carbury’s 603 Squadron colleague Australian Richard Hillary and 54 Squadron’s Kiwis, Deere and Gray.
Scotland-based for the opening stages of the battle, 603 Squadron transferred south in August just in time for the critical battles of the campaign. Hillary had only recently joined the unit, but Carbury had been posted temporarily to 603 a year earlier, to facilitate the squadron’s conversion to Spitfires. A graduate of King’s College, Auckland, the former shoe salesman was involved in putting the part-time Auxiliary Squadron on a wartime footing. When the Second World War broke out he was permanently posted to 603. At 6 ft 4 in, Carbury was one of Fighter Command’s more easily recognisable pilots. Yet he was quietly spoken and rarely seen without a pipe in hand. Beneath the calm exterior, Carbury was a gifted pilot. The inactivity in the north had chafed on the airmen of 603 and the posting to Hornchurch had been eagerly anticipated.
By 8a.m. radar operators had deduced that something was brewing on the other side of the Channel, and 603 was scrambled within the hour as the Germans made for Dover and the Thames. The lanky New Zealander spotted the enemy first and led the diving attack on the closest of twenty Me 109s. The Spitfire spat a three-second burst. The withering fire of the eight machine-guns had an immediate effect on the fighter and the Luftwaffe pilot baled out of his inverted machine. After the squadron returned to Hornchurch, a period of relative inactivity lasted until just after midday when they were once again aloft as twin waves of bombers supported by fighters appeared on glowing radar screens. The squadron was vectored onto a formation of fifty aircraft west of Southend, Essex, only to discover they were shadowing friendly fighters.
Back at Hornchurch, Hillary, who had flown all the previous day, had the morning to himself and crawled out of bed with a headache just before noon. He eventually meandered off to the mess for a late breakfast in the stifling August heat. Hillary had just turned down a lift in a lorry by the ground crew, led by a Sergeant Ross, when the controller, over the loudspeaker system, informed the airfield that an enemy formation was headed straight for them. ‘All personnel not engaged in active duty take cover immediately.’ The typically languid Hillary was in no mood to consider such a request seriously and besides, the sky was empty. More wisely, one of his colleagues, Robin ‘Bubble’ Waterston, made a dash for an air-raid shelter and Spitfires that had just been stood down were now wheeling around for an immediate take-off.
The tail-end trio of aircraft were 54 Squadron machines, one of which was piloted by Deere. His path was obstructed by another aircraft and, unwilling to be caught on the ground when the bombs started falling, he tried desperately to find room to roll down the runway. ‘Get the hell out of the way, Red Two,’ the New Zealander yelled over the radio. He determinately elbowed his Spitfire into a wedge of free space and opened the throttle. Picking up speed, he spied the main body of the squadron clear the hedge at the end of the runway. As he took off he thought, Good, I’ve made it.
Deere’s recollection of what happened next was forever lost by the brain-addling explosion that nicely bisected the three remaining Spitfires. Hillary, who had hunched over his shoulders and ducked his head, saw the effects of the blast out the corner of his eye. ‘One moment they were about twenty feet up in close formation,’ he recalled, ‘the next catapulted apart as though on elastic.’ The pilot on Deere’s right was caught in a neck-whipping spin as his wing dug into the ground, while the other pilot had both wings ripped clean off and was flung out of the airfield and over the adjacent river. The massive blast of displaced air unceremoniously corkscrewed Deere’s light-framed mount onto its back. Terrified, the New Zealander now hung trapped in the cockpit as his fighter gouged an ever-lengthening furrow into the runway. Deere habitually took off with his seat at its lowest setting, and this doubtless saved his life, as his head was pushed against the ground and his face sandblasted by stones and dirt.
As he saw the third Spitfire vault the river, and standing amongst incoming bombs, Hillary stupidly reflected on the fact that that was probably the briefest flight the unfortunate pilot had ever made. The next moment he was lifted off his feet and his mouth filled with grass and dirt. Dazed, he glimpsed ‘Bubble’ wildly beckoning him to the shelter, yelling, ‘Run you bloody fool, run!’ Belatedly the Australian took to his heels and entered the ill-lit enclosure. At another shelter one supplicant was temporarily denied entrance when his desperate banging on the door revealed that he was the driver of the base’s refuelling lorry. Without a thought to his actions he had parked the bowser right up against the shelter. ‘Sod off, and take that bloody thing with you,’ shouted the sergeant guarding the door, ‘...park it somewhere else before you blow us all to pieces.’[1] The shelters were rocked by explosions and anti-aircraft fire that simultaneously deafened and dust-coated the hard-pressed inhabitants.
Suspended in his overturned Spitfire, Deere was almost overcome by the fumes from the aviation fuel pooling around his head. Even as bombs still fell on the field his greatest fear now was fire. Pushing down panic he heard: ‘Al, Al, are you alive?’[2] It was his number three in the section, who had barely survived the explosion and, injured himself, had crawled over to aid Deere. In a fine imitation of a contortionist, the Anzac somehow freed the locks on the cockpit’s door and released himself from his parachute. The station Sick Quarters were overflowing with wounded and Deere made for the mess to clean up his head wound and then lie down in his room.
When the raid came to an end, fellow New Zealander Colin Gray was the first to visit the convalescing Deere and examine the bald patch about the ‘diameter of a tennis ball’ above his temple. Gray, who had just returned from a mission, told his compatriot that his Spitfire was a write-off, with a wing torn loose and the detached engine sitting forlornly some distance from the airframe. As for the pilot who had been blown clean off the airfield, an hour later he arrived unannounced in the dispersal hut largely unhurt. The station diary noted the survival of all three pilots as a ‘complete miracle’.[3]
While Deere struggled to free himself, Carbury had finally located the enemy raiders. His first reaction was to strike at the bombers, but upon spotting prowling Me 109s above he pulled on the controls and attacked the fighters. His first victim ‘went straight down ... and crashed into the ground.’[4] The second received a long burst and the pilot evacuated the aircraft as it rolled on its back.
At the airfield the situation was grim. Hillary gingerly emerged from the shelter to survey the damage. The runway was a mess, pockmarked with craters and dirt and grass strewn everywhere. The Australian’s machine had had a close call and he directed one of the ground crew to ask Sergeant Ross to see that his machine was properly inspected. ‘Sergeant Ross won’t be doing any more inspections,’ the mechanic replied, nodding in the direction of a lone lorry ‘lying grotesquely on its side’. Hillary felt sick as he inspected the Spitfire himself.[5]
The hiatus in attacks was soon exploited by the industrious station commander. The group captain ensured that unexploded munitions were isolated and he laid out yellow flags to mark out a temporary runway. Personnel not engaged in other essential tasks were co-opted into restoring the airfield. Shovel-wielding men were aided by the base’s traction steamroller in filling craters and flattening the surface. In shifts, workers peeled away for a quick bite to eat and a cup of tea before returning to the backbreaking work. The transformation was inspiring; over a four-hour period, order was restored and 603 was again able to use the main runway. ‘Thus, apart from four men killed in the lorry and a network of holes on the landing surface,’ recalled Hillary, ‘there was nothing to show for ten minutes of really accurate bombing from 12,000 feet, in which dozens of sticks of bombs had been dropped. It was striking proof of the inefficacy of their attempts to wipe out our advance fighter aerodromes.’[6] In attacks on other airfields in close proximity to London, the same resilience was demonstrated.
At 6.00p.m. another raid was made, but Hornchurch’s squadrons were forewarned. Like many experienced units, 603 first flew away from the incoming enemy in their initial climb in order to purchase enough height before turning directly into the intruders’ path. In the fighting that ensued, fighters came in to refuel and rearm. As they rolled to a standstill, Hornchurch ground crew ran from their shelters to prepare the fighters for a second round amidst eardrum-popping explosions. Not a single man was seen to waver in the face of the task at hand, to the unending gratitude of the pilots who were only too keen to get back into their natural environment of the sky. At one point a couple of Spitfires stalled on the airfield with empty fuel tanks. In the face of falling bombs, ground crews took a lorry out onto the field to tow the machines out of the way of incoming aircraft.
In the air, Carbury was exacting a degree of revenge when he dived to meet the enemy. He struck two fighters; the last machine was his fifth for the day.
The Auckland shoe salesman had become one of only two Battle of Britain ‘aces in a day’. Effectively, he had accomplished in three sorties what most pilots would not achieve over the entire course of the war.[7] During a four-day period he shot down eight Me 109s. His last action had badly damaged his machine. A cannon shell had disintegrated the compressed air system, but he was able to nurse the Spitfire home in spite of a foot injury. His prodigious efforts were officially recognised in early September with a DFC. He continued his assault on the record books throughout September and into October. By the end of the campaign he had 15 destroyed and a string of shared, probable and damaged enemy aircraft recorded against his name.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Carbury’s record was that all fifteen destroyed machines were the Luftwaffe’s most fearsome weapon: the Me 109. In October, the quiet New Zealander with the crinkly hair was awarded a bar to his DFC, an honour shared by only five pilots of the campaign. This second award was gazetted on 25 October and it recognised his individual flying prowess and his contribution to his unit: ‘His cool courage in the face of the enemy has been a splendid example to other pilots of his squadron.’[8] Even the cynical fellow-Anzac Richard Hillary recognised in Carbury a man who fought for more simple and selfless reasons than himself:
Across the battlefield, Australians also picked up a series of scalps. Hillary recovered from his brush with falling bombs to score a victory against an Me 109 and Mayers downed a Do 17 and heavily damaged another.[10] Millington, 79 Squadron, knocked out a couple of aircraft but was hit himself. The cannon fire from an Me 109 rocked his Hurricane as it took out the radiator and engine. A flash of pain down his thigh served notice he himself had been hit. Fire threatened to engulf the cockpit and billowing smoke filled the young Australian’s lungs. He pushed the canopy back to evacuate the dying aircraft only to discover it was on a direct path to the village of Tenterden. As flames were invading the cockpit, and in disregard for his own life, Millington regained his seat, gliding the fighter to a crash-landing on a field. With moderate burns he made his escape from the Hurricane just before the fuel tank exploded.[11]
Among the hardest hit was 19 Squadron of 12 Group. The squadron found a formation departing the scene of a bombing raid and attacked the twenty Dorniers and fifty twin-engine fighters. The latter had the advantage of height over the Spitfires. Frighteningly for the Allied pilots, their experimental cannon once again jammed on some of the aircraft. Auckland-born Kiwis Wilfred Clouston and Francis Brinsden were among the pilots scrambled, the latter only with some difficulty. Although Brinsden found the twelve-cylinder engine turning over and eager for the chase, he was delayed a full ten minutes as ground crew hurriedly worked to fix the cockpit canopy, which would not close. In the meantime, Clouston had taken to the air and was one of the fortunate ones who found his cannons worked and shared a victory with another pilot. When Brinsden arrived belatedly on the scene of the aerial battle, the Takapuna Grammar School old boy decided to make a head-on attack. However, the relatively low-speed climb and altitude disadvantage conspired against him. He was hit and baled out.[12] Although it might not have felt like it at the time, he was one of the lucky ones.
With a blood-covered ‘foot hanging loose on the pedal’ thanks to enemy fire, another of the squadron’s flying officers pushed on to attack a Dornier only to have his cannons jam. He grazed the underside of the bomber and the hood was erased from the Spitfire. In a death spiral the pilot thrashed his way out of the mangled cockpit. Covered in a cocktail of blood and fuel, he used radio wire from his helmet to put a tourniquet around his thigh as he floated towards Duxford. The pilot’s leg had to be amputated below the knee. Another 19 Squadron pilot crash-landed and the machine instantly caught fire; the ground crews could only look on in horror as they saw the nineteen-year-old burn to death.[13] In all, four 19 Squadron aircraft were shot down, with only a single Me 110 on their side of the ledger. Brinsden would not fly again in the Battle of Britain, but he was alive and intact.
The RAF had taken a hammering. North Weald, Debden, Eastchurch and Croydon were struck. Once again, damage to Hornchurch and Biggin Hill was considerable. The loss ratio between Fighter Command and the Luftwaffe had diminished to an uncomfortably narrow margin. On 28 August, Dowding lost twenty-eight machines to Göring’s thirty. It seemed the battle was tipping towards the Luftwaffe.[14]
The causes were readily observable. First, the withdrawal of the Stukas affected the ratio as there were fewer easy pickings to be had in the aerial contest. Long gone were the days of racking up impressive statistics against the slow and poorly armed Ju 87. Second, and more importantly, the Germans made it much harder for the RAF pilots to attack the bombers unhindered. With greater numbers of escort fighters flying hazardously close to the bombers, the Allied airmen were forced to engage the Me 109s directly. By at least one estimate, every bomber was now arriving with up to four bodyguards. Consequently, fighter-on-fighter combat was taking its toll on Dowding’s pilots in the swirling battles of high summer.
The Hurricane pilots suffered heavily. Between 20 August and 6 September twelve of the aces flying the Hawker-badged fighter were ushered from the battlefield by death or injury.[15] More commonly though, it was the squadron rookies who were the casualties of this unforgiving battleground. The shortened training meant that men were lost in quick succession. On one particular day, 111 Squadron, which saw five New Zealanders pass through its ranks during the campaign, received two new pilots. Fresh from their Operational Training Unit, the pilots in their eagerness to enter the fray had left their luggage in their car as they were ushered unceremoniously into battle, as noted by one of the unit’s armourers. ‘They immediately went up with the rest of the squadron since we were so short of pilots, but only one returned, badly injured. I do not even remember their names. Their car stood outside the airport building still with their baggage in it.’[16]
In Nine Lives, Deere recounted the arrival and sudden absence of two Kiwi replacement pilots. Although the more experienced hands at 54 Squadron had managed to avoid an early exit from the battle, others had been less fortunate. To bolster numbers, the RNZAF-trained Michael ‘Mick’ Shand and Charles Stewart arrived on 22 August, having disembarked from New Zealand only five weeks earlier. Shand was allocated to Deere’s Flight; the latter at first glance assessed the young man favourably as a ‘rugged, aggressive-looking New Zealander typical of the type one would expect to find in the second row of an All Black pack’. Nevertheless, Deere soon discovered that although the Wellington-born Shand was a year his senior, he was very much his junior in air warfare and terribly ill-equipped for the white-hot intensity of the August combat. Shand had received his flying wings barely five months earlier, confessing that he had only a grand total of twenty hours in a Spitfire. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he told Deere, ‘I know damned all about fighters, I was trained as a light bomber pilot.’
‘Have you fired the guns of a Spitfire yet?’ inquired Deere.
‘No, I haven’t; apart from a very little gunnery from a rear cockpit, I’ve no idea of air firing.’[17]
Deere realised that, with far fewer hours than the 100 Gray had recommended to really get to grips with the Spitfire, the newcomer’s chances of survival were not great. Hiding his concern, and in the forlorn hope of getting Shand through the combat that was to follow, Deere took him under his wing. On his first operational sortie, Deere told him to stay close and avoid German fighters. The idea was to watch and learn but not engage. Although he survived his inaugural mission, his very next sortie was less agreeable. In the afternoon fighting, Shand became entangled with an Me 109 at Hell’s Corner. Cannon-shell fragments entered his arm, severing a nerve, and he made a forced landing at Manston.
Within twenty-four hours, Stewart, another Wellingtonian, was also missing from the officers’ mess. As Deere lamented, at ‘the end of the following day neither Mick nor his compatriot was with us.’ Stewart, a former accounts clerk, had ‘hit the silk’ after his Spitfire took a pounding from an Me 109 and ended up in the drink. The initial rescue launch sent to retrieve him completely failed to locate the rapidly cooling New Zealander. A teeth-chattering forty-five minutes passed, and with all hope nearly gone, he was finally located by another vessel. Suffering from shock and exposure, the battered and bruised Stewart was plucked from the Channel and the rescue craft headed to Dover, but not before being ineffectually strafed by an Me 109.[18] Both men had survived their premature insertion into the battlefield, but others did not.
Irving Smith had been in operations extensively over August and his squadron was reduced to four pilots by 1 September. As the unit prepared to leave the frontline for the relative calm of Digby, replacements were rushed in to fill the yawning gap in fighting strength. The withdrawal north should have been routine and well within the grasp of the new arrivals. However, as the squadron took off, Smith saw one of them veer away and fly straight into a crane. ‘I knew him for only five minutes,’ the New Zealander lamented.[19]
The other factor in Fighter Command’s mounting losses was the transfer in of weaker squadrons from other Groups. At least in units like 54 Squadron, the newcomers had the advantage of battle-hardened pilots like Gray and Deere to lean upon, but when complete new squadrons were inserted into the field of battle they did so at an acute disadvantage. What was extremely concerning to Park was the rising number of squadrons that were being almost massacred in the air. His own research found the culprit in Leigh-Mallory. The commander of 12 Group was holding back some of his more seasoned squadrons and dispatching units with little readiness for battle. Included among these were 266 and 79. The former unit had started the battle with three Anzacs, New Zealanders Richard Trousdale, Williams and Frank Cale from Australia. In a secret RAF report of 26 August, examining Fighter Command losses, it was revealed that the squadron had claimed credit for nine victories for an unacceptably high loss of six pilots, one of whom was Cale. In 79 Squadron it took only three days at Biggin Hill for Tracey to see four of his colleagues disappear.
Park wanted no more of these untested units, and stated that ‘only experienced squadrons be provided when the exchanges are necessary’.[20] The latter squadron was shipped out of the combat area and replenished by a trio of inexperienced Kiwis. Their high casualty rate came about in part because they were still using pre-war formation flying. The men were accomplished airmen, but unfamiliar with combat; the techniques and lessons learnt by pilots such as Olive, who had fought extensively over Dunkirk and in the early phases of the Battle of Britain, had not been widely disseminated. Wedded to outmoded flying methods, the newcomers were easily picked off by battle-hardened Luftwaffe airmen.
By early September the issue appeared to be nearing a crisis point and two days into the month a report stated that losses were exceeding new arrivals. The rate of loss was nearly 125 a week and Fighter Command squadrons were 150 pilots short of their establishment numbers by the end of August.[21] Squadrons which had an establishment strength of twenty-six pilots were now averaging nineteen. Five days later at a top level RAF meeting it was stated that the Operational Training Units were currently pushing out only 280 fighter pilots a month, while losses for the past four weeks ran to 348 airmen. Park chipped in that the falling numbers of pilots in squadrons meant that remaining airmen were unable to get a breather from the battle and morale was suffering terribly.
Park was well aware of 11 Group’s deteriorating position as he visited frontline airfields. His air logbook bears testament to his prodigious efforts. Over the entire period of the Battle of Britain he flew on no fewer than 31 days, calling into 11 Group airfields on at least 59 occasions.[22] Park felt it was his responsibility to get a first-hand feel for the battle and listen to the men under his command, from ground crews to pilots to station commanders. For their part, the pilots appreciated a leader who understood their craft, listen to their frustrations, and sometimes cut through red tape to achieve in hours what would ordinarily have taken weeks to implement. Nevertheless, all of Park’s considerable industry was unable to rectify the dwindling reserves of pilots and the mind-numbing grind of fighting. Weariness and combat stress had become just as real an adversary as the Me 109 pilots.
Colin Gray during the last three weeks of August had undertaken a total of sixty sorties. Of these he had engaged the enemy on no fewer than sixteen occasions. ‘We were all absolutely dog-tired from the long hours of “readiness” or “availability” from dawn to dusk most days, from repeated encounters with the enemy, and the constant wear on nerves by air raids—including night-time when we should have been resting and recuperating for the next day.’[23] Over the first three days of September, Gray’s logbook documented an additional thirteen sorties of which five involved combat.
Pilots were starting to display symptoms of severe fatigue. As Deere cast his eyes over the men waiting for the next call-up, he observed that the ‘strain had almost reached breaking point’.
Heavily in action, 111 Squadron was racked by losses and burnout. ‘On one of our busy days at Croydon,’ recalled one of the unit’s armourers, ‘we were watching the return of our Hurricanes, and ready to rearm quickly, when we noticed one aircraft landed and taxied a short distance only to stop some way off with the engine still turning over. Thinking the pilot wounded, we dashed over to the aircraft, only to find the pilot ... was leaning forward ... head on his chest and asleep with exhaustion.’[25]
The cruel unrelenting intensity of the period was enough to test the strongest pilot’s resolve and judgement. Both flight commanders in 257 Squadron had been killed in a single day and the replacements found morale in the squadron was way down: ‘They were a bunch of young chaps, only two of them with pre-war experience ... Naturally they were thinking, if these two experienced chaps can be shot down, what sort of chance have we got?’[26] It did not help that the squadron leader was showing signs of what was termed a ‘lack of moral fibre’ (LMF). On their very first mission with the squadron, patrolling at 20,000 feet above Maidstone, an intruder formation was sighted but the commander refused to order an assault, arguing that they had been directed to patrol and that is what they would do until they were instructed otherwise. The transferred airmen ignored the commanding officer and ploughed into the enemy. After a couple of similar episodes, they downed some beers before phoning through to Park to request that he be dumped. Within hours he was gone.
At the height of the battle, Deere suspected a case of LMF. The New Zealander was only too well aware of the ill-effects due to an incident in the early Channel battles in which a young sergeant in the squadron gained a reputation for diving through a formation with guns firing in the general direction of the enemy only to disappear from the field of battle. ‘He’s “yellow” and there’s no getting away from it,’ Gribble had said to the commanding officer. The two New Zealanders, Gray and Deere, agreed that the sergeant in question was endangering morale, the latter suggesting he be transferred out as ‘operationally tired’.[27]
In late August, Deere remembered this incident when another pilot demonstrated a lack of enthusiasm for duty. The loss-plagued unit needed a new section leader and Deere asked Jack Cole. Surprisingly, he was rebuffed: ‘I’d rather not fly again today, Al, I don’t feel well.’
He’s lost his nerve, an annoyed Deere thought and shot back tersely, ‘What do you mean, not well? You’re probably just over-tired like the rest of us. I’m sorry but you will have to fly, there’s no one else capable of taking the second section.’
‘If you say so,’ Cole answered abruptly as he turned on his heel.
A few days later, Deere was taken aback to discover that Cole was admitted to hospital with malaria and should have been removed from the field of battle weeks ago. The embarrassed New Zealander visited him and offered his apologies. ‘So, I had been wrong about Jack; he really was ill and not just frightened, as I had smugly supposed,’ admitted a chagrined Deere.[28] Doubtless the Anzac’s false diagnosis was influenced by his own weariness. Fortunately, 54 Squadron was withdrawn from the fight on 3 September.
The Hornchurch diary summed up its efforts:
Alongside others, the two New Zealanders had done much to carry the squadron through its darkest days. Both men were prodigious fighter pilots. Deere was not only one of the squadron’s leading aces with five confirmed kills and a further three probables and one damaged since 10 July, but clearly one of its leaders.[30] Even ignoring probables and damaged enemy aircraft, Gray’s remarkable run of successes firmly placed him in the record books for the battle as he accounted for fifteen and one shared. However, the determination of the men from the antipodes was not without it limits.
When the replacement 41 Squadron arrived, its pilots were taken aback by the bedraggled collection of pilots shipping out. The New Zealanders and their 54 Squadron colleagues had barely slept in a week and were eager to depart. When talking with Deere after the Battle of Britain, the replacement wing commander later recalled ‘and you, Al, with your bandaged head and plastered wrist were an unnerving sight to our new pilots who hadn’t tasted combat. They wondered what had hit them, or was about to hit them.’[31] As the battle raged on, Deere and Gray passed on the baton to another Anzac: Australian Pat Hughes.
Contemporary photographs reveal a man with a strong jaw, piercing eyes and good looks. Hughes looked the very image of a fighter pilot. As a young man at Fort Street Boys’ High, Haberfield, Sydney, he had been a very good footballer and swimmer. Intelligent and inquisitive, as a young man Hughes had been an avid aircraft modeller and known for constructing crystal radio sets, before graduating and moving into a clerk’s position with a local jeweller. His RAAF Point Cook cadetship in early 1936 was followed by a short service commission with the RAF. When war broke out he already had over two years of flying with 64 Squadron before being transferred to 234. He was fiercely proud of his homeland and Point Cook training, and was another who insisted on wearing his dark RAAF uniform rather than switch to the lighter blue of the RAF. Like many airmen of the time, he had a dog, dubbed affectionately ‘Flying Officer Butch’, who on occasion flew with his master in non-combat flights.
Although only twenty-three years of age, he seemed older to his fellow pilots and soon slipped into the vacuum created by the unit’s aloof squadron leader, a man in his mid-thirties, who seldom flew and was devoted to the methods of the inter-war era. Hughes, as leader of A Flight, found himself the de facto commander of the entire unit. ‘Hughes was the one who taught me everything in the air,’ one of the squadron’s airmen recalled later, ‘We respected him, listened to him ... He was the real power behind the squadron.’[32] Under his informal leadership of 234, he was able to nurture inexperienced pilots and was often the voice of calm in the heat of battle.
On one occasion during the Kanalkampf, one the squadron’s two Polish pilots, Sergeant Jozef Szlagowski, was disoriented in heavy fog and running on fumes. Panic-stricken, he yelled the few relevant English words he knew down the radio. Hughes’ reassuring voice was the first to respond and brought a measure of calm to the sergeant. The machine ran out of fuel, but fortuitously the fog broke and he was able to make a forced landing in a local field. Hughes ‘knew a lot and he taught us a lot,’ said Szlagowski. On 15 August, when the squadron was hit hard by the death of Hight and the capture of Parker, it was Hughes who led by example and took out two enemy machines. Even after the arrival on 17 August of a new and more able commanding officer, Hughes continued to play a pivotal role in the cohesion and success of the squadron.
Like his New Zealand counterpart Carbury, the Sydneysider Hughes was an Me 109 hunter. An examination of his successes reveals a strong bent towards fighter-on-fighter combat. His early claims were shared endeavours against Ju 88s, but when the squadron entered the battle proper in August, his ledger was almost exclusively marked by taking out Me 109s, with the odd foray against Me 110s. On 16, 18 and 28 August he was in action and shot down a pair of the German single-engine fighters on each occasion. Four days into September he faced a large body of Me 110s. He employed a head-on attack, his aircraft spitting two-second lead bursts at the leading Me 110. The Australian’s directness forced the Luftwaffe pilot to pull up, exposing his underbelly to raking fire. Wreathed in flame, the Me 110 crashed near Brighton. ‘I attacked another 110 and from dead astern after 2 short bursts this aircraft rolled on its back and dived vertically to the ground and blew up, 10 miles N.E. of Tangmere.’ Having upset the hornet’s nest, he found himself in the cross-hairs of a trio of the twin-engine aircraft, while another circled in from behind.
A lesser pilot might well have thought better of continuing the fight, but the rugged Hughes managed to separate one machine from the pack. ‘I followed,’ he later typed in his combat report, ‘and emptied the rest of [my] ammunition. One engine appeared to catch fire and the aircraft turned slowly towards the coast heading inland and both engines appeared to be on fire.’[33] The result was a bag of three machines for the day. Over the next two days he accounted for a further three Me 109s and one probable. One of the machines shot down on 5 September may well have been that of Oberleutnant Franz Xaver Baron von Werra. Although the ‘scalp’ of von Werra has over the years been attributed to a number of pilots, Hughes, based on his ability and run of successes in early September, is certainly a strong candidate.[34]
Hughes’ 234 Squadron was on a path to Gravesend when a tell-tale sign of invaders was spotted in the distance: bursts of anti-aircraft fire. With all eyes turned towards the action on the horizon, the Hughes-led Blue Section was jumped by Me 109s directly out of the sun. In the mêlée, twelve more intruders appeared, racing up the Thames. Outnumbered, but aided by the recent arrival of two Hurricanes, the Australian pushed the Spitfire into the centre of the enemy fighters and a heart-thumping dogfight ensued. One German aircraft exploded in response to Hughes’ Browning machineguns. He latched on to another target from astern, forcing the crippled Me 109 to land in a field. Shaken, the pilot exited the foliage-garnished and dirt-encrusted Me 109. The Queenslander observed soldiers on the scene capturing the unfortunate Luftwaffe airman.
The son of a bankrupted Swiss nobleman, von Werra had a playboy image and penchant for self-promotion. The latter included flamboyantly posing for press photographs with his pet, and unit mascot, Simba, a lion cub. Though a respected pilot, it was his exploits after being shot down that lingered in the public mind long beyond the end of the war. Von Werra did not take to captivity. His first, most widely reported, escape was carried out at Camp 13 Swanwick, Derbyshire, five days before Christmas 1940. Under the cover of an air raid, the Luftwaffe pilot and four others emerged from a newly completed tunnel and bolted for freedom. The others were netted within a few days, but von Werra avoided capture by claiming he was a downed Dutch bomber pilot. The ruse secured him transportation to the RAF airfield Hucknell, Nottingham. Cool and audacious, von Werra was able to allay the fears of local police as to his identity and secure entry to the base. A squadron leader remained unconvinced after questioning the ‘Dutch’ pilot and sought to confirm the story. Realising the game was unravelling, the young German made his move, attempting to convince a mechanic that he had approval to take an aircraft up for a test run. He never made the ‘test flight’, as the squadron leader returned to arrest him. Undeterred, the indefatigable von Werra was still to make his most remarkable bid for freedom, this time from Canada.
In early 1941, he was one of a group of prisoners being transferred across the Atlantic to take up residence in a camp lapped by the waters of Lake Superior, Ontario. Werra never saw the camp because he jumped from a train window outside Montreal. He found himself close to the Saint Lawrence River and made a bone-chilling crossing of the river in a pilfered rowboat without rudder or oars into the neutral United States.[35] Cold and exhausted, he handed himself into local police, who in turn advised immigration officials who sought to charge him with illegal entry into the country. Days slipped into weeks as the Canadians negotiated for his extradition. Von Werra moved about freely, with much of his time spent enjoying the high life in New York at the expense of the German Consulate. When it appeared that the Canadians might in fact successfully secure his return, German Consulate officials moved quickly and slipped him into Mexico.
His eventual return to Germany was by no means unpleasant and included stopovers in Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona and Rome. In the second week of April he was welcomed back to the Fatherland with open arms and a Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.
Unfortunately, Hughes would only have a couple of days to celebrate his victory over von Werra. He was killed on 7 September. The Australian was once again leading Blue Section when they encountered a large force. The ensuing dogfight claimed the lives of the squadron leader, O’Brien, as well as Hughes. The death of the latter appears to have been the result of a mid-air collision. The squadron’s intelligence report was based on the observations of Hughes’ wing-man and fellow Anzac, the Kiwi Keith Lawrence, and gives an incomplete picture of the tragic events that led to the death of the squadron’s most revered pilot.
There is good reason to believe that the fatigue tormenting many Fighter Command pilots played a factor in Hughes’ death. The squadron’s intelligence officer considered the Aussie to be the ‘hero’ of the unit and he was devastated by the loss and felt some guilt over the whole affair. ‘When he came and saw me the night before he died, saying he had spots in front of his eyes, it was already too late. How could pilots cope with the tension? In a way I felt responsible for Pat’s death.’[37]
Not only was the loss of Hughes keenly felt in the 234 mess but also by his wife of only thirty-eight days. The Australian pilot had sent his wife Kay away during the intense fighting of early September to stay with her mother. She returned on 7 September to find a clutch of the squadron’s pilots awaiting her arrival at Middle Wallop. ‘I knew that Pat was missing,’ she recalled. ‘That evening I learned he had been killed. Until then I had never really known what true grief was. I had never cried so much in my life. I wept until I could cry no more.’[38]
Like many Anzacs, Hughes had met his wife in Britain. Kay Brodrick had crossed the Australian’s path when he was posted to Leconfield. She was immediately smitten by his good looks, his smart airman’s moustache and the dark blue RAAF uniform. She dubbed him ‘an Australian Errol Flynn’.[39]
Fighter Command pilots had found themselves increasingly popular and welcome in the pubs and taverns of Britain after Churchill’s speech of 20 August. As one 92 Squadron pilot later recalled with pleasure, ‘It was unbelievable. They loved us, and I mean they loved us. They brought us drinks, appreciated everything.’[40]
This celebrity status also brought with it the almost unqualified admiration of the fair sex. Having arrived at a local drinking establishment, usually in modern low-slung sports cars, the young pilots would enter wearing their trousers tucked into their flying boots, top jacket buttons undone and caps slightly askew at a suitably rakish angle. Removing the cap often revealed slicked-back hair. ‘There was no doubt about it,’ Gard’ner recalled, ‘the Battle of Britain boys were known as the Brylcreem boys ... I used Brylcreem myself.’[41] The RAF wings and blue uniform were a magnet to the eyes of many young, and not so young, women. Many of the friendships struck up were of an innocuous nature. The young men sought out female companionship which did not necessarily lead to sexual relationships. But as the battle intensified in August and September, and the chances of survival fell, more passionate liaisons were a consequence. Looking back over the excesses in the air and in the night clubs, Spurdle described relationships fashioned briefly at the height of the campaign:
A good number of the pilots sought love and companionship fashioned after the ideal of the time: marriage. However, courtship and long-term relationships were difficult to maintain when pilots were constantly in action and squadrons could be moved at a moment’s notice. As airmen and their brides-to-be were separated by the demands of Fighter Command, the best that could be hoped for were all-too-brief reunions as leave allowed, lovelorn letters and telephone conversations. The last were restricted to three minutes, and unreliable.
As Kay Hughes discovered, for those who made it to the church or registry, there was no assurance that their marriage would outlive the battle. In some cases the time between slipping on a wedding ring and entering widowhood could be horribly short. In the latter stages of the campaign, Emeny was among airmen attending the marriage of a young Scottish Spitfire pilot. Within two hours of the early-morning wedding service, the husband had been killed in action. The funeral was held that evening. ‘The Kiwi boys put what money we had into a pool,’ and Emeny was delegated to escort the grieving young woman by taxi to an aunt’s London residence. She sobbed inconsolably the entire journey. As Sergeant Emeny made his way back to the airbase, he vowed never to ‘mix marriage and war,’ reasoning, ‘I never wanted to be responsible for the grief I had just seen’.[43]
A marriage that survived the carnage was not without its own trials. Gordon Olive met Helen Thomas in his pre-war Austrian excursions. Almost immediately the Anzac took a shine to the young Englishwoman, who had been working in Germany for twelve months. In the 1940 run-up to their engagement, there had been the odd heart-stopping moment for Helen, including the occasion Olive was temporarily reported missing after a particularly nasty dogfight. Like so many weddings of the time, the June service was abbreviated and spare—a couple of Olive’s closest squadron friends were in attendance at the small church of St Mary’s, Kensington. The honeymoon was a grand four days spent in a cosy hotel on the Thames east of London—well away from Hornchurch and Manston.[44] Because Helen worked at St Thomas’ Hospital London, Olive, after returning to his unit, did not see her again until he was granted forty-two hours’ leave on 8 August. Another month would pass before he saw her again. Thus, by mid-September, he had only seen her twice in three months of marriage.[45]
The death of Hughes was just the latest in a series of grim losses besetting a teetering Fighter Command. Dowding was only too aware that the very life of his force was slowly being wrung from it. The attacks on the sector airfields had produced casualty rates greater than hitherto experienced over Britain. Over a two-week period Dowding was faced with the grim reality of 103 pilot casualties, a figure that equated to a weekly wastage rate of ten per cent of his fighting strength.[46] In the seven-week period ending 6 September, Dowding’s force shed 161 machines against 189 German aircraft of all types lost. Not only were the training units unable to keep up with the demand for pilots, but it now appeared that even aircraft supply efforts might have met their match. The bombing of the advanced airfields made them barely operable and raids on Park’s sector stations brought them to the verge of foundering:
Park was of the opinion that, ‘had the enemy continued his heavy attacks against Biggin Hill and the adjacent sectors ... the fighter defences of London would have been in a perilous state.’[48] Then, on the day that Hughes was killed and his wife left grieving, London was set on fire. The campaign had changed direction again.