Kaplan - The Few: Fight for the Skies: Rare Photographs from Wartime Archives

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
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Contents

Eagles

Saturday, 17 August, was a day of sullen overcast. On both sides of the Channel, Fighter Command and Air Fleet Two reported only reconnaissance flights. At the airfields the pilots, after nine days of frenetic activity, caught up with domestic chores. In a farmhouse at St Inglevert, near Boulogne, Oberleutnant Hans-Otto Lessing, aged twenty-three, of the 51st Fighter Group, was one of several writing home for the first time since the Battle began.

My dear parents, he wrote, At last I have some time to write to you Of course, we have a lot to do every day sometimes two to three sorties usually we are in the vicinity of Londonif you look at the map, youll see the distance between the French coast and Dover. With a flying time of 1? hours and air battles as welland a fuel shortageyou can imagine how difficult it is to get back.

For all that, Hans-Otto had one triumph to record. Yesterday I shot down my fifth enemy plane not very much if you think of the many opportunities we get, but unfortunately not every plane we shoot at falls from the sky Another time I had very bad luck having got to a good position I found I had no ammo left, but one gets experience even in running away my enemy plane was the hundredth of the group.

The English pilots seem to get less these last few days, but those few are fighting very well. The Spitfires sometimes give us the most astonishing aerial aerobatic display. I watched with great interest how one tore about among thirty Mes without getting hurt himself. These are exceptional ones.

Pilots of RAF Fighter Command in 1940

Regretfully, Hans-Otto Lessing brought his letter to a close: Well, this is a short reportone would have to write a book in order to give the whole picture. But this too had to be said: For me this is the most exciting time of my lifeI wouldnt wish to change places with a king. Peacetime will seem very dull after this.

Predictably, few pilots took time from the wheeling chaos of the combat to set down their thoughts like Oberleutnant Lessing. The way they felt was more often expressed in a casual aside, a verbal shorthand shared only by initiates. Those with few doubts shared the ebullience of Pilot Officer George Bennions of No. 41 Squadron at Hornchurch: My God, life wouldnt seem right if you didnt go up to have one scrap in the morning and another in the afternoon. The more introspective felt the same misgivings as Flight Lieutenant Tom Hubbard, of 601 Squadron, Tangmere: We all knew it was like a game of roulette, backing black all the time. Our luck wouldnt come up forever

The few who kept diaries revealed little of the true emotions, in entries as terse as telegrams: Had a scramble today but they went home, noted Pilot Officer Eugene Tobin on 30 August. Did some practice flying and we were lousy. Went to Andover and drank. Then home. Pilot Officer Patrick Barthropp of No. 602 Squadron, faced on 15 September with a German armada stretching beyond the horizon, noted succinctly: Thousands of them. Following the afternoon sortie, he noted again: Still thousands of them.

Both sides were anxious to prove themselves, but the RAF were at first more conscious of their limitations. Flying Officer Dudley Williams of 152 Squadron recalled that before his first combat he had twice been allowed to fire his eight Browning machine-guns into the sea for practiceand barely ten per cent of Air Chief Marshal Dowdings pilots had undergone more stringent training. Most, unaccustomed to sighting their guns, opened fire at 600 yards, then at 200 yards, a surer range, broke from combat. All had been schooled to fly in rigid air display formation, and to home in on bombers in one of four standard Fighter Command attacks. No one had told us that was the most stupid thing on earth to do! said Bob Doe, then a Pilot Officer with 234 Squadron at Middle Wallop. The change of tactics came purely by knowing that the one laid down was wrong I learned that I had to fly an aeroplane through the gunsight; you do whats needed to keep the gunsight where you want it.

As Doe recalled it, his first victory, against an ME 110 over Swanage, Dorset, bore that lesson out. It was the first time he had ever peered through his reflector gunsight or even touched the red-painted firing button at the apex of the control column. It was then that the only advice his flight commander the Australian Pat Hughes, had ever offered him came abruptly back to himGet as close as you can and you cant missand in this moment he barely gave a thought to his adversary, the rear-gunner; hosing back fire until he baled out, only a thousand feet above the water And it was then that Doe felt suddenly invinciblealthough as a survivor he retained the knowledge that you could be shot down very easily, and youre always shot down by the one you dont see.

Another Spitfire pilot, John Burgess, recaptured the psychology of the moments succeeding the two-and-a-half minutes that it took 222 Squadron to scramble from Rochford: You got that horrible feeling down in the pit of your stomach and when you were climbing you still had that sort of peculiar tummy feeling. But once action started you were too busy and all you were interested in was avoiding getting killed or trying to shoot down the other aircraft. It was rather like a dare to some degree. You wanted to see how far you could go.