Dilip Sarkar - Spitfire!

SPITFIRE!

For Squadron Leader Brian Lane DFC and all my departed personal friends who served on 19 Squadron 1938-1941.

Dilip Sarkar, 2018

THE FULL STORY OF A UNIQUE BATTLE OF BRITAIN FIGHTER SQUADRON

DILIP SARKAR

SPITFIRE!

The Full Story of a Unique Battle of Britain Fighter Squadron

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

Pen & Sword Air World

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Dilip Sarkar, 2019

ISBN 978 1 52673 281 1

eISBN 978 1 52673 282 8

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52673 283 5

The right of Dilip Sarkar 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.

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One of the most well-known photographs of the Battle of Britain which fascinated the author as a child, inspiring this detailed study. Taken at Fowlmere after a patrol during the Battle of Britain, the strain on the face of twenty-three-year-old Squadron Leader Brian Lane DFC, the Commanding Officer of 19 Squadron, is all too evident. The other pilots are (left) Flight Lieutenant Jack Farmer Lawson DFC and Flight Sergeant George Grumpy Unwin DFM.

On 21 September 1940 official photographers descended upon Manor Farm, Fowlmere, a hastily built satellite airfield to the nearby Sector Station at Duxford, near Cambridge there to photograph the personnel and Spitfires of 19 Squadron. The images arising remain amongst the most well-known of the Battle of Britain. Several show a group of pilots, clutching after-action combat report forms, clustered around their young commander. In his face is etched the physical and mental strain of flying fighters during our Finest Hour. It is a haunting image which fascinated me as a child.

Used to illustrate countless publications, invariably the photograph appeared with a generic caption failing to identify the exhausted looking squadron leader concerned. One day, I happened across a small firsthand memoir, Spitfire! The Experiences of a Fighter Pilot , by a Squadron Leader B.J. Ellan, published in 1942. Immediately I realised that B.J. Ellan and the squadron commander whose photograph had so moved me were one and the same. I also knew that this was a pseudonym, because by then I had confirmed that this was Squadron Leader Brian John Edward Lane the exceptional commander of 19 Squadron, who, by the time of the Battle of Britain, had already been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Sadly, I had also discovered that he had been reported Missing in Action on 13 December 1942, aged twenty-five. I resolved there and then to research this young knight of the airs life and times, rapidly confirming that here was an unsung hero indeed; I would soon discover that there were numerous other forgotten heroes, many of whom I was to meet personally on what became an emotionally-charged journey of discovery. What has left an indelible impression from this experience is the reverence in which all of the elderly and very experienced survivors held the twenty-five-year-old Squadron Leader Brian Lane, whose name was only ever spoken in hushed, respectful tones, the conversation inevitably condemning the wasteful circumstances of his loss.

My original work hoping to record and raise awareness of the story of Brian Lane and 19 Squadron during the early war period, Spitfire Squadron was published in 1990. The book, my first, which included the first reprint of Spitfire! , was well received. During the years ahead, however, I came to enjoy a unique and privileged relationship with both many of the Squadrons survivors from the traumatic days of 1940, and the families of casualties. Thirty years later we now have here the completely updated and rewritten Spitfire Squadron with the benefit of a vast amount of extra information and infinitely more experience as an author and historian.

This new version of Spitfire Squadron , incorporating unique first-hand accounts, seeks to locate the whole story within a much wider context, including social, political, aviation and military history. In this way, I hope that we can better understand and appreciate the experience of having served on a Spitfire squadron indeed the first Spitfire squadron during the pre- and critical early-Second World War periods. Importantly, the wartime photographs have mainly been copied from the personal albums of survivors and their families, providing an authentic and atmospheric glimpse of the ever-distant past.

Hopefully, the spirits in my rear-view mirror, ever constant companions throughout the writing of this book, will consider that I have done them, their friends, and especially the revered Brian, justice. You, my readers, can decide.

Dilip Sarkar MBE FRHistS,

Worcester,

15 September 2018

Given 19 Squadrons association with the iconic Supermarine Spitfire, it is entirely appropriate that by sheer coincidence the first incarnation of 19 was formed on 1 September 1915 at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham where most of the 22,000 Spitfires would one day be built. At that time, during the First World War, the Spitfire was unthought of, the Squadron initially equipped with Maurice Farman, Avro and Caudron biplanes. After flying a succession of different types, eventually 19 re-equipped with the single-engine, single-seat BE12, going off to war in France on 25 July 1916. No. 19 was a fighter squadron, and war would define its existence.

No. 19 Squadron was one of seven new squadrons sent to France as reinforcements during the Battle of the Somme, which began on 24 June 1916 and raged until November, claiming one million lives. On 1 August 1916 the Squadron was employed on offensive patrol and began training in night-flying in order to pursue the policy of allowing the enemy no rest. As the carnage continued, it was clear that the BE12 was outclassed by new German fighters, leading to General