John Starkey - The RAFs Cross-Channel Offensive: Circuses, Ramrods, Rhubarbs and Rodeos 1941-1942

THE RAFS CROSS-CHANNEL OFFENSIVE

THE RAFS CROSS-CHANNEL OFFENSIVE

Circuses, Ramrods, Rhubarbs and Rodeos 19411942

John Starkey

THE RAFS CROSS-CHANNEL OFFENSIVE

Circuses, Ramrods, Rhubarbs and Rodeos 19411942

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by

Air World

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright John Starkey, 2022

ISBN 978 1 39908 892 3

EPUB ISBN 9 781 399 088 930

MOBI ISBN 9 781 399 088 930

The right of John Starkey to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Pen & Sword Books Limited incorporates the imprints of Atlas, Archaeology, Aviation, Discovery, Family History, Fiction, History, Maritime, Military, Military Classics, Politics, Select, Transport, True Crime, Air World, Frontline Publishing, Leo Cooper, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing, The Praetorian Press, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe Transport, Wharncliffe True Crime and White Owl.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

E-mail: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk

Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

Or

PEN AND SWORD BOOKS

1950 Lawrence Rd, Havertown, PA 19083, USA

E-mail: Uspen-and-sword@casematepublishers.com

Website: www.penandswordbooks.com

I could not have written this book without substantial factual help. I thank all the authors listed in the bibliography, who contributed their acquired knowledge to discovering what took place in RAF Fighter Command in the Second World War, as well as in the earlier struggle of the First World War.

I was fortunate to be born late on in the Second World War, and thus have always had an abiding interest in warfare and, in particular, air warfare. To gain extra knowledge of what the fighters of the period were like to fly and fight in, I also had the good fortune to have known Tony Bianchi, of Personal Plane Services, at Booker aerodrome in England. He and his company have restored many Spitfires, among other wartime aircraft. Tony was a fount of knowledge about these aircraft.

On the American side, Rob Collings was unstinting in his comments about the handling of such aircraft as the P-38 Lightning, the P-51 Mustang, the B-17 Flying Fortress, and the Bf 109. After all, he owns and flies examples of all of them.

Rob Collings recommended I speak with Joe Schell, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of Rolls-Royce, in particular of the Merlin and Griffon engines. He was good enough to impart a lot of his observations about the operation of these engines.

I have to thank also David Kenyon, who imparted some of his great knowledge about the history of the British codebreakers at Bletchley Park. Without ULTRA and Enigma intercepts, the heads of RAF Fighter and Bomber Commands, to say nothing of all the other services, would have been even more in the dark about the movements of the German forces in Occupied Europe.

I must also thank John Grehan, my commissioning editor, for his tireless patience, and Martin Mace for helping so much with the finding of the photographs for this book.

And finally, I must thank my editor (Ive always wanted to type those words!), Karyn Burnham. Her encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter, not to mention her expertise in written English, impressed me greatly.

This book tells the story of what happened to the Royal Air Forces (RAF) Fighter Command in 1941 and 1942, when they tried to take the war in the air to the Luftwaffe, over Northern France.

The history of events concerning Fighter Command in 1941 and 1942, and what led up to them, has, until very recently in this writers opinion, been kept under the covers. Some excellent historians of air warfare, such as Norman Franks, Donald Caldwell, Tony Holmes, and others, have written accounts of this period, but I fear that few writers have taken a detailed look at what led up to this defeat, which, in this writers opinion, dates back to the decisions taken by commanding officers in the First World War.

Although this book is principally concerned with these events, particularly in relation to Fighter Command, I also consider what happened in the air war over Europe between 1943 and 1945, to explain how much the pilots, and to a lesser extent their commanders, had learned.

One other thing I have tried to do is to explain the workings of the aircraft that flew and fought in the wars. Although interested in flying, Im not a pilot and Ive always noticed, in the myriad of books written by wartime fighter pilots, that they (naturally) assume the reader knows just how an aircraft operates. I suppose that we all know about the actual flying controls, the joystick which one pulls back to climb, pushes forward to dive, and the rudder pedals which, in conjunction with moving the joystick sideways, enables the aircraft to turn and bank.

But theres more to it than that. For instance, the throttle, which was usually on the left-hand side of the cockpit. How much was applied when dogfighting the enemy. Full? Three-quarters? A half? Then theres the constant speed airscrews. They act as the gearbox/ transmission of a car does and that system also needs explanation.

Then theres tactics. Basically, climb as high as you can as fast as you can, shadow the enemy below, hopefully without him seeing you, dive on him, fire, try and follow him until hes mortally wounded but dont follow him down, or you may finish up surprised from behind, as he was by you. Dogfighting, trying to out-turn the enemy was only if strictly necessary. The real killers, the aces or experten, didnt go in for that. Too much wasted effort, and dangerous too.

One of my favourite books about the design and construction of the piston aero engine is The Power to Fly by the late L.J.K. Setright. Written in 1971, this highly erudite engineer and wordsmith told the story of the piston aero engine from the birth of flight, up to 1970.

In Chapter 5 (Si Vic Pacem, Para Bellum) he wrote:

By the time the Napier Sabre [the engine of the Hawker Typhoon October 1941, with 56 Squadron] came into service, all too many of the really good pilots of fighter command had gone, and those who had taken their places were generally of poorer quality and were given only the most hasty and superficial of training before being sent out to do battle.

The line really good pilots of fighter command had gone stuck with me for a long time until quite recently, when I bought a book on the subject of the battles over the Channel and Northern France, entitled The JG26 War Diary, Volume 1: 193942, by Donald Caldwell. In this excellent book, the author gives a day-by-day account of the fighting that this German Jagdgeschwader (fighter group) had done from 1939, in particular when it was stationed on the Channel coast in France, from 1941 to the end of 1942. The book included the groups claims, and actual, well-researched victories and losses of the group and its opponents Britains Fighter Command, with its Spitfires and Hurricanes, and Bomber Commands Blenheims, Hampdens and Stirlings in the Battles of France and Britain in 1940, and the regular sweeps of Fighter Command over Northern France during 1941 and 1942.