During the buildup for D-Day in 1943 and 1944, nearly two million Americans would be stationed in the British Isles. There would be Yank servicemen in virtually every corner of the country; even the smallest village seemed to have one or two. But in 1940, not many people in Britain had ever encountered a real, live Yank. Everybody had heard about them, but few people had actually encountered one (except in films, and that did not really count). The members of 71 (Eagle) Squadron gave the British their first look at these New World citizens.
The story of the Yanks in the RAF is essentially the story of the relationship between Britain and the United States that existed in 1940 and for a good many years afterward. Each country had an attitude toward the other that can best, or at least most tactfully, be described as “wary.” This wariness came out of mutual distrust as well as almost complete ignorance.
Because of language similarities and historical links, many Britons had the idea in the backs of their minds that Americans were actually an eccentric kind of Englishman. Even renowned Anglo-American interpreter Alistair Cooke admitted that he once thought of Americans as Englishmen gone wrong. But when the first Americans arrived in England, this way of thinking quickly changed. A resident of a London suburb remarked that the Americans seemed to have come from another world, not another country. A fellow countryman seconded the motion: “If they’d dropped from Mars we couldn’t have been more surprised.”1
The Eagles shared the base at Kirton with two all-British squadrons: 255 Squadron, which flew two-man Boulton Paul Defiants; and 616 Squadron, which flew Spitfires. The British pilots were absolutely amazed to discover that Americans came from a widespread diversity of backgrounds and nationalities—it seemed to them that there was no such thing as “the American people,” just a hodgepodge of ethnic groups and religions.
After meeting the Eagle Squadron pilots for the first time, an officer in 616 Squadron declared that the Americans were “a very odd assortment.” The Yank unit included “a Hollywood set designer [actually, a makeup man], a professional parachutist…a Mormon from Salt Lake City, and an officer who spoke fluent Polish.”2 (The noted Yanks were Gus Daymond, Shorty Keough, Chesley Peterson, and Mike Kolendorski.)
This “odd assortment” was just the opposite of what anyone would have found in a British squadron or in most British towns. In English country districts, families lived in the same village for generations. A “foreigner” was someone from the next town. Everyone came from the same racial stock and background. Even those from different social classes—and class barriers were wide and deep—were still British.
The idea that people could come from such diverse national and cultural backgrounds as the members of 71 Squadron and still be citizens of the same country was a very foreign concept to the British of the 1940s. They soon discovered that Americans were not “Englishmen gone wrong” but rather a completely different species, not like the British at all.
Some RAF officers at Kirton took one look at this group of independent and disparate souls and predicted that the Eagle Squadron would never make a team. “These Americans differ among themselves as much as they differ from us,” said Kirton's station commander. “They're not a unified group in their background, or in their ways of living, or in their thinking.”3 So much for the “typical American.”
If the British were amazed by the Americans’ mixed background, they were absolutely appalled by their behavior. The members of 71 Squadron seemed to go out of their way to be as loud, ill-mannered, and irritating as possible. They refused to show any discipline or military courtesy, such as saluting, and displayed barnyard table manners in the officers’ mess, shouting for “some goddam water” and eating with their hands.
Some observers have pointed out that Americans tend to react in one of two extreme ways when they come to England. They either become “more English than the English,” acting as much like their hosts as possible (or, at least, acting the way they think their hosts act), or they exaggerate their American mannerisms. Most of the Eagles chose the second course, carrying on like cowboys and behaving like characters in a bad Hollywood western.
The official historian of 71 Squadron seemed proud that one Eagle “could make more noise, day or night, than thirty Englishmen or ten Australians.”4 It was no wonder that the members of 255 and 616 Squadrons thought of the Eagles—and probably all Americans—as loudmouthed adolescents. The RAF pilots just watched in silence. They knew that the Yanks’ immaturity would instantly disappear after their first contact with the Luftwaffe.
But the Eagles were not ready to meet the Luftwaffe yet. Some of the pilots had been rushed through training school so quickly that they would be useless to an operational fighter squadron. They knew how to perform takeoffs and landings, but could not do much beyond that. Number 71 Squadron's operations record book noted that the first pilots from the training course had been “pushed through in record time.” They were certainly no match for the veteran German fighter pilots, some of whom had been flying combat operations since the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).
The Eagles continued their training at Kirton right through 1940, learning how to shoot, how to take evasive action, and how to attack an enemy airplane without being spotted, and they were also taught other skills that they would need to survive in combat. Not until the end of January 1941 was 71 Squadron pronounced “operational”—fully trained and qualified to join Fighter Command as a fighting unit.
The first casualties were not long in coming, although they did not come at the hands of the Luftwaffe. The squadron's early deaths were caused by air crashes. In the first instance, Pilot Officers Zeke Leckrone, Edwin “Bud” Orbison, and Shorty Keough were flying a tight “V” formation when Orbison and Leckrone collided in midair. Leckrone was knocked unconscious, either by the impact or by the lack of oxygen. Shorty Keough followed him down, shouting to him over his radio, but Leckrone made no attempt to bail out. Bud Orbison brought his Hurricane back to Kirton with a badly mangled right wing. Pilot Officer Leckrone was buried in a Lincolnshire village churchyard with full military honors. His coffin was draped with both a Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes.
Bud Orbison was killed just over a month after his collision with Leckrone. No one was able to determine what caused him to crash. He probably became disorientated in some low cloud and flew his Hurricane straight into the ground. Six days later, the squadron also lost Shorty Keough. His official epitaph only mentions that he “did not return from a scramble” to protect a coastal convoy. Nobody actually saw Keough crash, but coastwatchers found the wreckage of an aircraft near his Hurricane's last-known position. Among the debris found in the wreckage were the tops of size 5 flying boots. “Nobody but Shorty could wear such small boots,” noted the squadron's logbook.5
Three deaths in just over a month did nothing to boost morale. The loss of Zeke Leckrone and Shorty Keough had a special impact. If these two veterans, both Battle of Britain survivors, could come to such an end, what chance did anyone else have?
The accidents did not improve the opinion of senior RAF officers concerning the Eagle Squadron, either. The Air Ministry had hoped that Keough and Leckrone would give the upstart squadron some badly needed leadership and maturity. But now both of them were dead, before 71 Squadron was even close to being ready for combat.
The station commander at Kirton-in-Lindsey thought that the Eagle Squadron should be disbanded and given up as a bad idea. The Eagles certainly were not helping the war effort, he protested. There was no point in keeping them on just so that they could kill themselves at the government's expense.
Air Marshal Sir Sholto Douglas, the chief of Fighter Command, was inclined to agree. Unless they showed some improvement, and soon, Douglas recommended that 71 Squadron be dissolved and the pilots sent back to the United States. They were “a wild lot,” in his opinion and not worth the RAF's time and effort. He thought that all the publicity had turned the Eagles into “prima donnas.”6
Douglas did not mean his remarks as compliments. By “prima donnas,” he was saying that the Eagles were swellheaded and undisciplined, and that they did not fit into the RAF. But the Eagles, typically, laughed off Douglas's comments. When he heard what Douglas had to say, Pilot Officer Chesley Peterson snapped, “if the Old Man thought we were prima donnas, why, let's be the best prima donnas there are.”7
But there were some in the RAF who might have taken the Eagles’ side and argued that their wild behavior was actually in the very best RAF tradition. The RAF's prewar flyers had also been a mob of colorful individualists who had no use for order and discipline. During the early days of the war, a group captain called one auxiliary squadron the moteliest collection of unmilitary young flyers he had seen in a very long time. So instead of being wild and irresponsible, as Sholto Douglas had charged, it could be said that the Eagles were actually conforming to RAF tradition by being reckless and unconventional.
Squadron Leader Walter Churchill did his best to change Sholto Douglas's opinion. Churchill did not think that the Eagles were beyond redemption and said that they should be given a chance. “He had to take this mob of wild cowboys, bronco-busters most of them, and with infinite patience and tact, weld them into a fighting unit without destroying…their individual bravery and initiative,” according to the squadron's historian.8
The Eagles appreciated Churchill's attitude of tolerance. Gus Daymond had a high opinion of Churchill and his “intelligence, enthusiasm, and outstanding personal leadership,” saying that “if the Eagles ever amounted to anything, Churchill played the major role…”9 But Churchill was replaced by Squadron Leader Bill Taylor at the end of January 1941. Taylor was the American who had been Churchill's “co-commander” during the Squadron's first weeks. He had gone to the Air Ministry to complain that the Eagle Squadron was rightly his, since they themselves had promised it to him (which they had). The British sense of fair play prevailed, and the Air Ministry made good its promise, although a few months late. S/L Churchill was promoted to the rank of Wing Commander and posted elsewhere. Bill Taylor finally inherited the Eagles—warts, discipline problems, and all.
A few days after Taylor assumed command, 71 Squadron finally became operational. The Eagles’ first operational flight took place on February 5. They were assigned to patrol above a convoy of merchant ships in the North Sea, protecting the freighters from attacks by marauding German bombers.
Bill Taylor turned out to be much more of a disciplinarian than Churchill had been. He had served as an officer in the US Navy and had picked up the Navy's way of enforcing rules and regulations. Among other things, he believed that a commanding officer definitely should not be friendly with the pilots—trying to be everyone's buddy would take away from his authority. But this was only the first step in his new way of running the squadron.
Following Churchill's low-key approach to leadership, Taylor decided that sterner measures were needed to curb the Eagles’ unruly manners and lack of discipline. He knew all about 71 Squadron's reputation for being disorderly and “bore down on the lads hard.”10 Pilots had to be at readiness at least thirty minutes before first light, “shaved, buttons shined, uniforms pressed, shoes or boots shined and inside their pant leg…”
The free spirits of 71 Squadron did not take kindly to this sudden crackdown. There was no doubt that the newly imposed discipline was making a better and more efficient squadron, but the pilots still did not like it. Another thing that irritated the pilots was Taylor's rule about unbuttoning the top button of their tunics. They read that fighter pilots in the First World War had done this, but Taylor would not allow anyone to unbutton their top button until they shot down their first enemy plane. Whenever anyone disregarded any of the new rules—which was often—Taylor would tell off the offender in loud, ringing tones.
At the root of the discipline problem was the RAF's low standards for accepting American volunteers. “The requirements into what became known as the Clayton Knight Contingents were considered lenient,” admitted Leo Nomis, a pilot with 71 Squadron.11 And most of the incoming pilots exaggerated their actual flying hours, which meant that even these minimal standards were frequently not met. It might have helped if Clayton Knight had been able to increase the number of flying hours for his pilot candidates before turning them over to the RAF.
Standards for an American joining the Royal Air force were a lot less demanding than the requirements for enlisting in the US Army Air Force. The RAF accepted men with 20/40 vision, correctable with goggle lenses, and allowed their pilots to be married. The USAAF insisted that their pilots be unmarried and have 20/20 perfect eyesight. There were many other differences as well.
General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, chief of the US Army Air Force, told Clayton Knight: “According to the rules I'm working under, if a cadet gets fractious, goes in for low stunt flying, gets drunk even once, or we discover he's married, we've got to wash him out. If I was fighting a war, they're the kind I would want to keep. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of our washouts look you up.”12 And a lot of US Army Air Force washouts did, in fact, look him up—much to the alarm of senior RAF officers.
Another Eagle Squadron pilot who found the RAF's entry qualifications too lenient, if not almost nonexistent, was William R. Dunn.13 Originally, Dunn had joined the army—he went to Canada in 1939 and volunteered for the Seaforth Highlanders, a regiment of the Canadian Army. When enlisting, he told the sergeant that he was from Moose Jaw. Dunn had no idea where Moose Jaw was, but it was the first Canadian town that came to mind. The Seaforth Highlanders departed for England a short while after the war began, and Dunn, wearing regimental kilts, went with them.
In the spring of 1940, just after Dunkirk, the Air Ministry invited anyone with 500 or more flying hours to transfer to the RAF. Dunn did not have anywhere near 500 hours—he had more like 160 hours. But, he said, his pen must have slipped when he was filling out the application, “with my 160 looking like a 560.” The Air Ministry did not say anything, so Dunn did not say anything, either.
Dunn and his 160 hours were accepted into the Royal Air Force, and Dunn was posted to Service Flying Training School. Because of the urgent need for pilots, SFTS was an “accelerated” course. Pilots were rushed through like quick-lunch hamburgers. In SFTS, Dunn learned Morse code, navigation, and the basics of military flying. It was a very elementary course, not meant for producing fighter pilots. Because of the food shortage in Britain, each student pilot also learned gardening; when the weather was too bad for flying, Dunn worked on his vegetable garden.
In April 1941, Dunn was informed by his flight lieutenant that his SFTS training was over, and he would be posted directly to an operational fighter squadron: 71 Squadron. This came as a rude surprise to Dunn—he only had 56 hours flying time with SFTS, and this was limited to trainers. After SFTS, he was supposed to go on to an Operational Training Unit, which would qualify him to fly Hawker Hurricanes. But Dunn was told that there was no room for him in any OTU. He was also told not to worry—when he arrived at 71 Squadron, the Eagles would get him checked out on the Hurricane. This, however, was news to S/L Bill Taylor. He told Dunn that 71 Squadron was too busy flying convoy patrols to spend time training new pilots. Taylor arranged a place for Dunn at the Hurricane training unit at Debden.
Pilot Officer Dunn spent a grand total of 7 hours 40 minutes flying Hurricanes at Debden. At the end of this abbreviated training stint, he was pronounced “operational” and sent back to the Eagle Squadron. Dunn was no more enthusiastic about joining 71 Squadron than he had been the first time—only four days before. At this point, his total RAF flying time came to about 64 hours, mostly in trainers. At Debden, he had fired his Hurricane's machine guns exactly twice.
Luckily for Dunn, his flight instructor at Debden telephoned a British member of 71 Squadron to explain the situation. The British pilot, Flight Lieutenant George Brown was asked to take Dunn “under his wing a bit” and show the new boy a few of the things he would need to survive in combat—aerobatics, simulated attacks on bombers, mock dogfights, and the like. F/Lt. Brown did what he was asked and did a very thorough job. Dunn credits Brown's teachings as a prime reason for his having survived the war.
When Bill Dunn arrived at 71 Squadron, he thought the other squadron members were “somewhat cool” toward him. He really did not know why. It could have been because he was a new arrival, he thought, or because he had been an enlisted infantryman “who had crawled from the muddy trenches into their blue heaven.” But Dunn had seen a lot more combat with the Seaforth Highlanders than any of the Eagles and had even shot at two Stuka dive bombers that had attacked the Seaforth camp, so he did not feel awed by their presence. One of the few pilots who did strike up a conversation with him was Red Tobin, a veteran of the Battle of Britain. The two had a great deal to talk about.
Before leaving Debden, Dunn's flight instructor had a few words about 71 Squadron. “That's a crazy outfit you're being assigned to,” he said. “They all lack proper training.” Which could be taken as another example of British understatement. A more tactful term than “crazy” might have been “overeager” or “reckless.” The Eagles were certainly both—and slightly crazy, as well.
Most of the American volunteers had not given a great deal of thought about what they would be getting themselves into when they joined the RAF. They were keen on flying but had no idea what it took to be a fighter pilot. They had not reckoned with the training and discipline they would encounter before they saw any combat. And they had not thought about the fact that they would be entering a country at war and would not have all the liberties they had enjoyed in the United States.
On top of these realities, another problem presented itself—boredom. Flying convoy patrols over the North Sea tended to be long and tedious, a far cry from the First World War “knights of the air” stories they had read about or seen in the movies. “Convoy patrols were monotonous,” Bill Dunn said, “just boring a hole in the sky over and around the ships for a couple of hours two or three times a day.”14
Once in a while, the air controller would report a “bogie,” an unidentified aircraft, in the area: “Red section. One bogie approaching from the east, six miles. Vector 090, Angels 10, Buster.” When the four Hurricanes of Red section reached the interception point, what they usually found was not very exciting—a Coastal Command flying boat or a large flock of birds. Once in a while, though, a bogie turned out to be a German bomber on the prowl.
In the course of one typically boring convoy patrol, P/O Gregory “Gus” Daymond spotted a Dornier Do 17. The Dornier was well beyond machine gun range, but was already beginning its bombing run on the convoy. Daymond pushed the throttle all the way forward and opened fire on the convoy. When he saw the Hurricane, the Dornier pilot broke off his attack and began to dive. He very quickly began to pull away from the single-engine fighter.
Daymond's Hurricane was already at full throttle. The only thing to do now was to apply emergency power boost—to “pull the tit” (so named, according to one wit, “because of its appearance and effect when pulled”).15 Daymond pulled, but the Hurricane did not respond, and the Dornier got away.
When he returned to Kirton, nineteen-year-old Daymond was angry and frustrated. He was even angrier when he found out why his fighter was not able to catch the Dornier. The ground crew explained that the Hurricane's emergency power boost had been wired shut. The crew chief told Daymond that he had taken the Hurricane that was normally flown by Mike Kolendorski. Mike was more than a little enthusiastic when it came to chasing the enemy and would frequently charge about at full boost whether he had a target or not. This placed more than the normal amount of stress on the engine. The ground crew became tired of constantly rebuilding it so they decided to impose their own brand of restraint on Kolendorski's enthusiasm.
Daymond was not satisfied by this explanation and complained to S/L Taylor about the mechanics’ actions. But even though he did not shoot down the Dornier, Daymond did have the distinction of firing the Eagles’ first shots in anger. The operations record book entry for August 17, 1941, states that P/O Daymond “got the squadron's first burst” at an enemy aircraft.16
The squadron got its “first blood”—as noted by the squadron logbook—just under a month later. Unfortunately, the blood belonged to another member of 71 Squadron and was the result of a near-fatal comedy of errors.
Near Calais on May 15, P/O John Flynn was attacked by a Messerschmitt Bf 109. While the German pilot was concentrating on Flynn's Hurricane, Flynn's wingman, P/O James Alexander, managed to get behind the Bf 109 and started shooting. He held the firing button down for a full thirteen seconds, spraying everything in front of him with .303 machine gun bullets. Quite a few of the bullets hit the Messerschmitt; it flew off, trailing smoke. But Flynn's Hurricane also received an ample dose from Alexander's guns. He managed to bring his badly shot-up fighter back to England, landing at Manston on the Channel coast. When the ground crew examined it, they found that the Hurricane had been riddled by .303 bullets.
When word got round to the other squadrons that the crazy Americans had nearly shot down one of their own planes, the reaction was predictably sarcastic. After the big media buildup by the press, radio, and newsreels, the Yanks responded to all the publicity by nearly killing one of their own pilots. The incident did not do anything to raise the stock of the Eagle Squadron in Fighter Command.
Mike Kolendorski in the cockpit of his Hawker Hurricane early in 1941. He was shot down on May 17, 1941, the first Eagle Squadron pilot to be killed on active service with the RAF. (Courtesy of the National Museum of the United States Air Force®.)
Two days later another incident took place. This one involved Mike Kolendorski. Kolendorski was one of the squadron's leading rugged individualists. None of the Eagles had much use for discipline, but Kolendorski was wild even by Eagle Squadron standards. Over France, he would throw empty beer bottles out of his cockpit at any German installations that happened to be near. He burned up so many engines that his ground crew wired shut his Hurricane's emergency boost—as Gus Daymond found out the hard way. Everybody in 71 Squadron predicted that Kolendorski would either be the first to win the Distinguished Flying Cross or the first to get himself killed.
On May 17, during a fighter sweep, the Eagles encountered a formation of Messerschmitt Bf 109s. Two of the Bf 109s broke formation and wandered off on their own. It was obvious “sucker bait,” a trap for some overeager RAF pilot to go after them. The RAF flight leader called over the radio for everyone to stay in formation.
The worst possible breach of air discipline, as well as the most stupid thing a pilot could do, was to go off on a lone attack. Breaking formation not only jeopardized the other pilots, but was also a quick way to get killed. Experienced RAF pilots tried to drum the importance of air discipline into the green American volunteers: “You're in for a surprise if you don't look to see what's waiting in the sun”; “It's the man you don't see who shoots you down”; and “Always report your intentions to your squadron leader and wait for his orders.”17
But the temptation was too great for Mike Kolendorski; he broke formation and charged after the two Messerschmitts. Before he could even get close to them, a second pair of Bf 109s was right behind him, firing their cannon and machine guns. A warning was shouted over the radio, but it was too late. Kolendorski's Hurricane was hit several times. One bullet must have killed him outright. Bill Dunn watched Kolendorski spin into the Channel. On the following day, the Germans broadcast that his body had washed up on the Dutch coast.
By this time, Fighter Command were probably wishing that they had never heard of either Charles Sweeny or Clayton Knight. In the eight months that they been in existence, the Eagle Squadron had accounted for three of their pilots killed, either in flying accidents or other unfortunate circumstances; had lost one of their pilots through lack of air discipline; and had nearly shot down one of their own aircraft. Nobody had any idea what the Eagles were going to do next. But it would be certain to come as a surprise, and probably an unpleasant one.
One of the few bright spots in 71 Squadron was Chesley “Pete” Peterson. Peterson was the first Eagle pilot to be promoted above the rank of pilot officer; he was given the acting rank of flight lieutenant. (In the US Army Air Force, it would have been the same as being promoted from second lieutenant to captain.) “Acting,” according to Bill Dunn, means “temporary, on probation, unpaid.”18
The rest of the squadron probably would have been abandoned if the need for pilots had not been so desperate, with the better pilots being posted off to other squadrons and the others sent back to the United States. In spite of the fact that they had been in the RAF for months, the Yanks were still civilian pilots at heart.
Few of the pilots had any experience with instrument flying, formation flying, or anything in navigation beyond the basic rudiments. In other words, they did not know much beyond what was necessary for flying around California. They also did not seem to care very much about learning, at least not in Fighter Command's view. Sholto Douglas was in complete agreement with General Claire Chennault of the Flying Tigers for refusing to take crazy barnstormer stunt pilots into his American Volunteer Group.
But in spite of all misgivings, 71 Squadron was moved south into 11 Group, the area in England that was closest to the Continent and had the most contact with the Luftwaffe. The Squadron had already been moved south—from Kirton-in-Lindsey to Martlesham Heath on April 9. Mike Kolendorski had flown from Martlesham Heath when he was shot down, and so had John Flynn when his Hurricane had been damaged by squadron mate James Alexander.
On June 22, the squadron moved again. This time they went to North Weald on the northeastern fringes of London. The first reaction to North Weald was that it was not all that impressive. “Rather a disappointing move as regards to buildings and equipment,” says the squadron logbook, “but apparently a good station.”19
Now that they were at a sector airfield in southern England, the Eagles realized that they would be seeing a lot more of the enemy and would be taking part in fighter sweeps over the Continent. The squadron members were excited and wondered what the next few months would be like. Top-ranking officers in Fighter Command and the Air Ministry, including Sir Sholto Douglas, also could not help wondering.