The Changing Face of Aerial Warfare E-Book

Anthony Tucker-Jones

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 331

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Can air power alone win a war? That has been the question since the Second World War. Air attacks failed miserably in Vietnam: Operation Linebacker had little effect, while bombing Hanoi just increased hatred for America – yet air strikes in both Iraq and Libya helped bring about regime changes. No-fly zones may have worked in the Balkans, but they might as well not have been there for Saddam Hussein's Iraq. From the Luftwaffe's massed attack on Britain to NATO's interventions in Libya, aerial warfare has changed almost beyond recognition. The piston engine has been replaced by the jet, and in some cases the pilot has been completely replaced by the microchip. Carpet bombing is now a global positioning system and laser pinpointed strikes using precision-guided munitions. Whereas a bomber's greatest enemies were once fighters and flak, the threats have now morphed into smart missiles from half a world away. In this compelling study, celebrated defence expert Anthony Tucker-Jones charts the remarkable evolution of aerial warfare from 1940 to the present day.

Leseprobe

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony Tucker-Jones spent nearly twenty years in the British Intelligence community before establishing himself as a defence writer and military historian. He has written extensively on aspects of Second World War warfare, including The Desert Air War 1940–1943, The Eastern Front Air War 1941–1945 and The Normandy Air War 1944.

Front cover illustration: A Royal Air Force Reaper RPAS (Remotely Piloted Air System) at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan. Sergeant Ross Tilly (RAF)/MOD. (OGL v1.0)

First published 2018 as Spitfire to Reaper: The Changing Face of Aerial Warfare, 1940–Present Day

This paperback edition first published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Anthony Tucker-Jones, 2018, 2023

The right of Anthony Tucker-Jones to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

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

ISBN 978 0 75099 021 9

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Introduction – Herr Hitler’s Messerschmitt

  1     Eagle Day

  2     Luftwaffe Losses

  3     Striking Pearl Harbor

  4     Midway to Victory

  5     Sodom & Gomorrah

  6     Slaughterer at Kharkov

  7     Pointblank

  8     Typhoons over Normandy

  9     Target Toulon

10     Death over the Reich

11     MiG Alley

12     Day of the Helicopter

13     Nam ‘Mud-Movers’

14     Downtown Hanoi

15     Niagara

16     Bandit Country

17     Stinging the Bear

18     Storm in the Desert

19     No Show

20     Call Sign Ugly

21     Bombing Tripoli

22     Modern Combat Trends

23     Killing Helicopters

24     Rise of the Drone

Appendix 1: Battle of Britain Bomber

Appendix 2: Defender of the Reich

Appendix 3: Bomber Command’s Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies Heavies

Appendix 4: Bomber Command’s Medium Bombers

Appendix 5: Normandy Tank Buster

Appendix 6: Air Combat Trends 1948 to Present Day

  Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

HERR HITLER’S MESSERSCHMITT

Leutnant Johann Böhm was flying his Messerschmitt Bf 109 over Dover with three others when they were pounced on by Supermarine Spitfires of No 74 Squadron. Their formation scattered in a desperate bid to escape. Böhm dived down toward the Elham valley with a Spitfire piloted by Sergeant Tony Mould in hot pursuit. No matter what he did, Böhm could not escape his pursuer nor their blazing guns. In his combat report Sergeant Mould recounted the dramatic encounter:

He immediately dived to ground level and used evasive tactics by flying along the valleys behind Dover and Folkestone, which only allowed me to fire short deflection bursts at him. After two of these bursts smoke or vapour came from the radiator beneath his port wing and other bursts appeared to enter the fuselage. He eventually landed with his wheels up as I fired my last burst at him in a field near Elham. The pilot was apparently uninjured and I circled round him till he was taken prisoner.

A dazed Böhm, who had crash-landed on Bladbean Hill, clambered from his stricken aircraft having received a nasty blow to his head. His damaged grey-green camouflaged Bf 109 was adorned with a shield decorated with a comic crying bird with an umbrella under its wing. Two of the propeller props had been bent back by the impact of the hard landing. Böhm looked at the trail of devastation left behind as he had ploughed through a flock of sheep. A farmer was later to complain he lost ten ewes. The date was 8 July 1940 and Böhm’s Messerschmitt from Jagdgeschwader 51 had the dubious honour of being the very first German fighter shot down over Britain. It was first blood to the Spitfire.

Across the English Channel, JG 51 and JG 26 deployed in the Pas de Calais had been placed under First World War fighter ace ‘Uncle’ Theo Osterkamp, known as Kanalkampfführer or Channel Battle Leader. His job was to secure air superiority over the Straits of Dover and prevent British convoys using the Channel by attacking shipping with bombers. For the first time in early July 1940 German bombers had started flying inland on armed reconnaissance missions and by hiding in the cloud some had even reached the London area. The Battle of Britain had begun.

From the Luftwaffe’s Eagle Day massed attack on Britain to NATO’s assault on Gaddafi’s Libya, aerial warfare has changed almost beyond recognition. The piston engine has been replaced by the jet and the pilot in some cases completely replaced by the microchip. Carpet bombing became global positioning system and laser pinpointed strikes using precision-guided munitions. Whereas a bomber’s greatest enemies were once fighters and flak, these threats morphed into air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles delivered from beyond visual range.

Nonetheless, The Few of RAF Fighter Command continue to capture the popular imagination and admiration of successive generations. The idea of these gallant young fighter pilots rising up into the skies over southern England in 1940 to save the nation is compelling. The Spitfire and its cousin the Hawker Hurricane became national icons of this desperate struggle. The fact that Adolf Hitler never really intended to invade Britain is immaterial to their incredible courage. They showed that Britain would not be cowed and that the Luftwaffe could be defeated. American pilots did exactly the same at Midway when they proved the Imperial Japanese Navy was not invincible and decisively avenged Japan’s surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor.

The development of the aircraft into a weapon of war occurred during the First World War with the emergence of the fighter and bomber derived from early reconnaissance biplanes. This gave rise to the very first fighter aces, who became national heroes. Men such as Theo Osterkamp, who claimed thirty-two kills. However, the conflict came to a close before the aircraft could be developed into a truly war-winning instrument. By mid-July 1940 Osterkamp had claimed six victories, making him one of the few pilots to achieve air-to-air kills in both world wars.

The nature of the air war changed during the Second World War as did the public’s perception of what it could achieve. After the Battle of Britain the ‘Bomber Barons’ such as ‘Bomber Harris’ and General Spaatz became the focus with their campaign to bring Hitler’s Germany to its knees by bombing his weapons factories into oblivion. This gave rise to the notion that bombers could win wars. Instead, Hitler’s factories were eventually overrun. The cruel irony was that Germany would have run out of raw materials and manpower before the efforts of the bombers ever began to have a real effect on weapons production.

In the meantime, the crews of RAF Bomber Command in their Lancasters risked their lives night after night, while the crews of the United States Army Air Force in their Flying Fortresses did the same by day. Their combined sacrifice was enormous, the results questionable. However, they took the war to Hitler at a time when there was no Second Front and the Allies were still struggling in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Likewise, RAF Coastal Command took the fight to the enemy during the Battle of the Atlantic, when the U-boat menace sought to strangle Britain.

At sea during the Second World War a fleet’s role was to protect its carriers so that their naval aircraft could attack enemy ships. The epitome of this was the Battle of Midway, fought by American and Japanese carriers in the Pacific. This single engagement was a turning point. However, by the late twentieth century a carrier’s role was increasingly to conduct littoral warfare or coastal warfare, whereby a carrier’s aircraft attacked land targets in the support of an army. The Korean, Vietnam, Falklands, Gulf and Balkan wars were prime examples of how naval air power had become subordinate to the ground war.

There is a general view that the air war in 1940–45 was a very crude affair and that it was not until the Korean and Vietnam conflicts that pilots became reliant on more advanced technology. Actually, the Battle of Britain started a brains arms race. There was a rapid evolution in air war science that significantly impacted on the course of the Second World War. Most notably, Britain had an early warning radar system that greatly assisted RAF Fighter Command to intercept Hitler’s bombers.

In turn, the Germans used a fairly sophisticated beam system to guide their bombers to their targets. They also employed both short- and long-range radars to counter the Allied bomber offensive. The latter’s bombers were fitted with airborne radars to warn of approaching enemy fighters and detect enemy towns. Either side’s night fighters made use of airborne radar to track their foes in the darkness. For every scientific measure the boffins came up with there were countermeasures. Radars and navigation aids had to be jammed or even better deceived. The Germans also developed flying bombs and ballistic rockets.

The role of massive air forces remained all pervasive throughout the Cold War. Both sides were armed to the teeth, with their bomber fleets poised to strike at a moment’s notice. Stanley Kubrick’s movie Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb epitomised the paranoia of the Cold War and the threat posed by long-range bombers carrying nuclear payloads. The film culminates in a B-52 bomber pilot riding his nuclear bomb rodeo style to its target. Fortunately, this never happened for real. However, the B-52 was to inflict appalling death and destruction in Laos and Cambodia using conventional bombs in a bid to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War. Similarly, it was later used to pulverise targets in Afghanistan and Iraq. The use of the helicopter as a weapon of war also came of age during the Vietnam conflict.

While the fundamental experience of combat pilots may be very similar, technology has increasingly moved to distance them from their mission. No longer do pilots shoot at each other using cannons; since the 1960s it has been via missiles that use targeting radar. The last air combat where pilots visually engaged each other with cannons was in Korea. The real impetus to make aerial warfare clinical and stand-off was the Vietnam War, where Second World War-style heavy bombers jostled alongside precision-guided munitions to deliver their old-fashioned ‘iron’ free-fall bombs. Thanks to the constant glare of the media, public opinion finally made carpet bombing unacceptable.

By the twenty-first century some pilots were often operating from air-conditioned offices tens of thousands of miles away while their unmanned aerial vehicles or drones did the dirty work. The driving factor behind the rise of the deadly Reaper and Predator and the so-called ‘Drone Wars’ was the war on terror and the hunt for 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. These were designed to deliver bunker-busting missiles into terrorists’ lairs with pinpoint accuracy. They are now the future of aerial warfare.

The aim of the game has become to kill your enemy both in the air and on the ground with clinical precision and as little collateral damage as possible – that euphemistic phrase for civilian casualties, the spectre of which has haunted every air force commander since the days of the Second World War and the terrible firestorms of Dresden and Hamburg. Inevitably, though, civilians still get caught in the crossfire or are mistakenly targeted.

Ever since the Second World War, argument has raged over whether air power alone can win wars. Bending an enemy’s will with the application of only air power is no easy feat. The likes of Operation Linebacker and attempts to strangle communist forces in South Vietnam failed miserably. Likewise, attempts to force North Vietnam to the negotiating table by bombing Hanoi were only partially successful and simply fuelled hatred for America. While no-fly zones may have influenced the Serbs during the Balkan wars, they did little to curb Saddam Hussein in Iraq when it came to crushing a widespread rebellion against him. Air strikes did, though, help facilitate regime change in both Iraq and Libya. Governments around the world continue to resort to ‘bombs away’ as a forceful policy option when all else fails.

1

EAGLE DAY

In the clear blue skies over southern England in the summer of 1940, Royal Air Force and Luftwaffe pilots were locked in a deadly struggle that was eventually to spill back across, Europe, North Africa and the Balkans. Radar-assisted RAF Fighter Command took six minutes for its planes to intercept the lumbering twin-engine German bombers and their far more dangerous fighter escorts. One can only imagine the sense of sickening apprehension that must have filled the young pilots as they lounged in their easy chairs, waiting for the inevitable alarm that would cause them to dash across to their planes. They would then leap into the cockpit and hurtle up into the air to stop Hitler’s air force from smashing Fighter Command’s airfields and Britain’s vulnerable cities.

From 10 July to 8 August 1940 the Luftwaffe tried to force the RAF to fight by attacking exposed British convoys in the English Channel. Then from 8 to 18 August it bombed airfields, radar stations and shipping. The Heinkel He 111 bomber was in the forefront of Operation Adlertag (Eagle Day) on 13 August 1940, which was the opening of Alderangriff (Eagle Attack) designed to destroy the RAF once and for all. The Heinkels of bomber group KG 26 were tasked to attack RAF Dishforth, while KG 27 struck Bristol, Birkenhead and Liverpool. KG 53 attacked RAF North Weald and KG 55 hit Feltham, Plymouth and RAF Middle Wallop. Despite the size of the raids, Adlertag failed to crush Fighter Command.

In the air battle that was to follow Britain had one key technological advantage: early warning radar, known as Radio Direction Finding or RDF for short. This was RAF Fighter Command’s eye in the sky. Edward Fennessy, a radar expert at the Air Ministry, knew the network was at risk – ‘General Martini, the Luftwaffe Chief Signals Officer, had by this time a pretty shrewd idea that we had an RDF system operational and he had to argue very forcibly with Göring to allow the Luftwaffe to attack the RDF stations.’

These attacks started on 12 August, however it proved difficult to damage the RDF sites. ‘The lattice masts can’t be seen from the air,’ noted Ernest Clark, a wireless operator at one of the stations, ‘and they were so designed that they could stand up on any two of their gimbals. And the blast used to go through them.’ Only Hitler’s Stuka dive bombers were able to do any real damage.

The death toll amongst pilots and aircrew during the Second World War was appalling. Survival during the 1939–45 air war often depended on lightning reflexes plus the mechanical reliability and robustness of the aircraft. It not only pitted man against man and man against machine, but also man against the elements, and once out of the aircraft the chances of survival were slim to say the least. On the ground or at sea, wounded soldiers and sailors at least had a fighting chance.

For the pilots and their aircrew fighting this deadly dual in the sky, the odds were simply stacked against them. Under these hugely dangerous conditions the basic instinct for survival takes over in crisis situations and enables an individual to escape death or face their fate. On 15 August 1940 Flying Officer Roland Beamont, with 87 Squadron, RAF, found himself in the thick of it:

I fired at a Ju 87 [Stuka dive bomber] at point blank range, and I hit it. I don’t know what happened to it. But I could see my tracers going into it. Then I came under attack from directly ahead and below. It turned out to be a Me 110 [twin engine fighter], doing a zoom climb straight up at me, firing as he came. He missed me. I rolled away from him straight behind another of his mates, a 110. I fired a long burst at him and his port engine stopped and started to stream smoke and fire, and pulled away from me.

For a fighter pilot, his battle for survival was not just a matter of skill operating his plane, but also intuition. His greatest fear was not so much being shot at or shot down, but rather failing to bale out in time, the failure of his parachute or, possibly worst of all, being burned alive trapped in the cockpit or whilst dangling from the parachute. Flying Officer Hugh ‘Cocky’ Dundas was over Folkestone at 7.15 p.m. on 22 August 1940 looking for an unidentified aircraft when his Spitfire span out of control. He recalled after being able to regain control desperately trying to open the hood:

I stood up on the seat and pushed the top half of my body out of the cockpit. Pressed hard against the fuselage, half in, half out, I struggled in a nightmare of fear and confusion to drop clear, but could not do so. I managed to get back into the cockpit, aware that the ground was very close. A few seconds more, and we would be into it. Try again; try the other side. Up, over – and out. I slithered along the fuselage and felt myself falling free.

Seconds after my parachute opened, I saw the Spitfire hit and explode in a field below.

Squadron Leader Tom Gleave, 253 Squadron, found himself in just such a terrible situation, which tragically seems to have been an all too common occurrence amongst fighter pilots. On 31 August 1940, he was returning to Kenley when his Hurricane was attacked from behind by a Jagdgeschwader Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter. His enemy swooped up behind him, and after a burst of machine gun fire, the squadron leader’s instrument panel was shot out.

Perhaps far worse, the reserve gasoline tank, located between the panel and the engine, was also hit. Horrifically, Gleave was sprayed with some of the aircraft’s 28 gallons of aviation fuel and his stricken aircraft burst into flame. Pilots were warned that if their clothing was soaked in fuel they must switch off the engine and leave the throttle open, as this would help minimise the danger posed by exhaust sparks.

Miraculously, Gleave managed to wrench his canopy back and bale out. As he plummeted earthwards he realised his clothes were burning, so he did not pull his ripcord for fear of his parachute also catching alight. He fell several thousand feet before finally opening his chute. Unfortunately, he had broken his flying goggles the previous day and, as the flames licked up his body, his face was burned, sticking his eyelids together. This prevented him seeing an approaching Messerschmitt, although thankfully he could hear it being chased off.

By the time he had hit the ground Tom had been terribly burned, his face, eyelids, legs, hands and the underside of his right arm and elbow being badly affected. Despite his severe injuries, Gleave had survived and as he sat waiting for help, he concluded he would need the attention of a doctor after all!

Later he described baling out of his blazing Hurricane as ‘like the centre of a blow lamp nozzle’. He was dangerously ill in Orpington Hospital, Kent, when his frantic wife Beryl arrived. She asked, with true English understatement, ‘What on earth have you been doing to yourself, darling?’ Tom replied, ‘Had a bit of a row with a German.’

Only the previous day he had shot down four Bf 109s, though the RAF had lost a total of twenty-five fighters with ten pilots killed. Tom Gleave, despite his injuries, could count himself lucky, as 31 August was a particularly bad day for the RAF. Its losses were the heaviest to date with thirty-nine aircraft shot down and fourteen irreplaceable pilots killed.

That same day Messerschmitt 109s and 110s also pounced on Squadron Leader Peter Townsend of 85 Squadron. An Me 110 riddled his aircraft with bullets and gasoline gushed into his cockpit. His Hurricane, trailing smoke, dived and by good fortune did not catch fire. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, he baled out with a wounded left foot. At RAF Hornchurch, 54 Squadron was caught taking off as some sixty bombs fell along the dispersal pens to the gasoline dump. The Spitfires of Flight Lieutenant A.C. Deere, Sergeant Davis and Pilot Officer E.F. Edsal were all caught in the blast, but while the aircraft were destroyed, the pilots escaped with their lives.

Flight Lieutenant Deere recalled his unpleasant experience of being bombed while still on the ground:

On 31st August, I was held up taking off by a new pilot who’d got himself in the take-off lane – didn’t know where to go. He delayed me. By the time I’d got him sorted out and around, I was last off, and caught the bombs – and was blown sky high … But I got away with it – we all got away with it. I got pretty badly concussed – my Spitfire was blown up. I finished on the airfield in a heap.

For some that day it was sheer ingenuity that saved their lives in these extreme and confused combat conditions. Flying Officer Jimmie Coward was piloting one of the few cannon-armed Spitfires over Cambridgeshire when disaster struck. Coward was leading his flight in an attack on a group of Dornier 17 bombers when his guns jammed and his plane juddered as something struck it. He remembered feeling a dull pain, ‘Like a kick on the shin in a rugby football scrum’ and to his horror saw, severed from his left leg save for a few bloody ligaments, his bare foot lying on the cockpit floor. His flying boot had been blown clean off.

Coward succeeded in escaping his stricken aircraft, but with his foot spinning from the torn muscles the pain drove him crazy. Desperately he pulled his ripcord at 20,000ft and his chute jerked him up as it opened. His blood, though, was spurting from the tibial arteries. To make matters worse, the slipstream had sucked off his gloves, so his frozen hands could not shift the clamping parachute harness to reach the first aid kit in his breast pocket.

Most men would have passed out from shock. Coward, using the radiotelephone cable in his flying helmet, lifted his damaged leg and bound the thigh to stem the loss of precious blood. He drifted back over Duxford airfield (home to 19 Squadron) and was rushed to Cambridge hospital. Coward lost his leg below the knee, but not his life.

Fellow Spitfire pilot Desmond Sheen was almost not so lucky. He had a very close shave and it was only his presence of mind that saved his life over the aerial battlefield of southern England. Having fainted over his control column because of a leg wound, he came to and found his aircraft hurtling towards the ground at 500mph. At such a speed there was no way he could level out. In an instant he was sucked from the cockpit through the open hood and ended up straddling the fuselage. With his feet trapped by the top of the windscreen, he only just managed to leap free in time.

Flight Lieutenant Robert Stanford Tuck, of 257 Squadron, also had a similar close shave. His Spitfire’s fuel tanks were ruptured, covering him in hot black oil. Luckily, he was not burned and parachuted down at Plovers, the estate of Lord Cornwallis, who had him escorted to the bathtub stating, ‘Drop in for a bath any time, old boy.’

William ‘Ace’ Hodgson, a Hurricane pilot, risked life and limb by staying with his blazing plane. The reason for his selfless gallantry was that down below him were the Shell Oil Company tanks at Thames Haven on the Thames estuary. What would have happened if his Hurricane had crashed amongst them one can only guess. Hodgson switched off his engine to keep the flames in check and successfully made a dangerous wheels-up landing in Essex.

The constant nagging fear for RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain was undoubtedly fire. Whereas Luftwaffe pilots reached the English coast with their fuel tanks almost exhausted, the Hurricanes and Spitfires were often fully laden. This gave them a longer but potentially dangerous combat period. Flying Officer Richard Hillary, 603 Squadron based at Hornchurch under Squadron Leader George Denholm, suffered a similar fate to that of Squadron Leader Gleave on 3 September 1940.

Having pursued a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter for too long, Hillary was attacked from behind. His Spitfire burst into flames and for several nightmare seconds he was trapped in the blazing cockpit. Fortunately his aircraft broke up, throwing him clear to open his chute. Advice to fighter pilots stated, ‘If you are on fire DON’T open the hood until the last moment, as it will draw flames into the cockpit.’ This, of course, was easier said than done when in a burning aircraft.

Sergeant D. Fopp, 17 Squadron, was also burned on 3 September. He attacked a large formation of Dornier 17 bombers from the unfavourable head-on position and found himself engaging their fighter escorts. Fopp succeeded in scattering three attacking 109s despite having run out of ammunition, but one of them got below and behind him. A burst of German rounds punched through his plane, hit his radio and Fopp found himself sitting in a ball of orange fire. He quickly baled out and managed to extinguish his smouldering tunic and trousers. Many RAF pilots and Luftwaffe aircrew were not so fortunate.

Spitfire pilot Sergeant Jimmy Corbin, with 66 Squadron at RAF Kenley, made an important decision:

By early September it had become clear the squadron was taking a hammering. Two days previously Peter King … had successfully baled out of his Spitfire only to find that his parachute wouldn’t open and he plummeted to his death. It was stories like these that led me to promise myself that I would never bale out even if it meant going down with the plane.

The tough Polish volunteers fighting with the RAF rapidly gained an aggressive reputation. Squadron Leader Zdislaw Krasnodębski of the Polish 303 Squadron (stationed at Northolt – the other Polish 302 Squadron was at Church Fenton) had a very remarkable escape. His squadron engaged a huge formation of German bombers and their escorts on 6 September 1940. With the sun in their eyes, the Poles recklessly attacked on the climb, never a very favourable position.

In the following aerial melee, Krasnodębski’s Hurricane was hit. Shattered glass showered his instrument panel, face and hands. Furthermore, the petrol tank was holed and gasoline slopped into his cockpit with fire spreading quickly. Over Farnborough, Kent, Krasnodębski jumped out, but with 100 planes around him there was the extreme danger of being hit in the crossfire, so he fell 10,000ft before pulling his ripcord. This act saved his life. Krasnodębski’s legs were smouldering and were beginning to glow. Had he pulled at 20,000ft the fire would have spread up his body to the chute lines. When he hit the earth the flames had only reached his knees, though it was to be a whole year before he flew again.

German fighter pilots endured exactly the same deadly experiences as their RAF counterparts. In one instance, fate conspired to add a tragic twist to the survival of Oberstleutnant Hassel von Wedel. At Hanns Farm, Bilsington, above the Romney Marshes, Alice Daw was getting her 4-year-old daughter Vera ready for a family outing. Her husband, William, was in the barn getting their car ready. Way above them were the rattling sounds of battle and the telltale vapour trails of accelerating aircraft.

Wedel, flying a Messerschmitt Bf 109, was hit at 6,000ft over Maidstone by a pursuing Hurricane. Struggling with his controls, Wedel felt his plane suddenly plunge from the sky at great speed and he crashed into the roof of Daw’s barn. William Daw was knocked unconscious by the impact, whilst poor Alice, running from their cottage, had her skull fatally fractured by debris and little Vera was tragically killed outright. By some miracle, Wedel was hurled uninjured from his smashed aircraft.

The local fire brigade found him almost in tears in a pile of manure. All he could say over and over again was, ‘I’ve killed a woman.’ A kindly fireman went to the cottage to make Wedel a cup of tea and no one had the heart to tell him about the dead child.

2

LUFTWAFFE LOSSES

During the Battle of Britain what pilots needed from their fighters was agility, speed and armament that packed a punch. If the combination was right then it produced a deadly machine. This meant that both British and German aircraft were constantly fine-tuned and upgraded. By the start of the Battle of Britain the Bf 109E was armed with two 20mm cannon and two machine guns. The initial Hurricane which appeared in the late 1930s was equipped with eight machine guns, the subsequent model built in 1941 was up-gunned with two 20mm cannon and two machine guns. Likewise, the Spitfire had eight machine guns until they were supplemented by 20mm cannon. The German fighter had a fuel injection so did not lose power in a steep dive. In contrast, the engines on British fighters would cut out due to the carburettor being flooded with fuel, so had to be rapidly modified.

Such work did not often go smoothly. Fred Roberts was an armourer with the ground crew of 19 Squadron at Duxford, which was the first to receive the Spitfire in 1938. When the squadron gained some of the experimental Spitfire Mk IBs armed with 20mm Hispano cannon in late June 1940 no one knew how to maintain the guns and they kept jamming. Roberts recalled:

We still had some eight-gun Spitfires on the Squadron, which was fortunate because the cannon stoppages seemed unsolvable. We took a lot of stick from the pilots over the stoppages. For a while, they wanted to blame the armourers for the trouble and then, when a full magazine of 20mm ammunition was expended, the pilots complained they only had six seconds of firing time against eighteen seconds with the old Browning guns.

On 31 August 1940, 19 Squadron lost three Spitfires as a result of cannon stoppages. Two of the pilots baled out but one was killed crash-landing his aircraft.

The Luftwaffe’s Heinkel He 111 medium bomber became a very familiar sight to Londoners. This aircraft was the main type used in most of the raids against Britain in the summer of 1940. At the start of the Second World War the He 111 bore the brunt of the Luftwaffe’s tactical bombing campaigns in Poland in 1939, Norway and Denmark in April 1940, France and the Low Countries in May 1940 and then against Britain in July–August 1940. Like the Dornier Do 17, the He 111 by 1940 was already facing obsolescence. It was too slow against modern fighters and slightly slower than the Do 17 and less manoeuvrable. However, it could carry twice the bomb load. As a result, a total of six German bomber groups (KG 1, 4, 26, 27, 53 and 55) equipped with the He 111 were involved in the battle.

On 22 February 1940 two fighters from RAF Drem, East Lothian, including a Spitfire armed with cannon, almost captured an He 111P intact. It was intercepted just before midday off St Abb’s Head, damaged and the rear gunner wounded. The pilot managed to make a forced landing at Coldingham but after the crew got clear they set fire to it before they could be stopped. This act deprived the RAF of valuable intelligence.

Although the He 111 acted as a reliable workhorse for the Luftwaffe in the early Blitzkrieg campaigns, in the Battle of Britain it proved vulnerable to the RAF’s agile fighters. The German bombers’ radius of operation in daylight was limited by the distance their fighter escort could cover. Although an excellent fighter, the Bf 109 was designed for close support not long-range escort duties. Its pilots had just minutes in the combat zone before they were forced to fly back across the English Channel. The twin-engine Me 110, designed primarily as a long-range escort, was almost totally outclassed by the RAF’s Hurricanes and Spitfires. Ironically, the Me 110 had to rely on the 109s or fly defensive circles when engaged, leaving the bombers to fend for themselves.

In an effort to stave off RAF Fighter Command, the He 111 and other German bombers flew in very tight formations to provide mutually covering fire with their machine guns. Luftwaffe pilot Ernest Wedding recalled, ‘I flew my Heinkel 111 bomber in formation and I had to keep to my station. Even when British fighters started attacking me, I couldn’t do any intricate manoeuvres within the formation or else I would crash into the other bombers … A bomber pilot had to be as steady as a bus driver.’

During July 1940 the Luftwaffe lost thirty-two aircraft and three damaged. The following month eighty-nine were shot down and another fifteen damaged. Squadron Leader Sandy Johnstone, commanding 602 Squadron, noticed a change in German tactics on 31 August:

Findlay led the squadron on a patrol over Biggin Hill and Gravesend this afternoon and tangled with a bunch of Ju 88s [bombers] and Me109s all mixed together. This was unusual, for the escorts normally fly well above their charges. However it didn’t stop the boys from claiming three 109s and a Ju 88, although Sergeant Elcome got shot up and had to make an emergency landing at Ford.

The Luftwaffe launched its first massed raid on 7 September 1940. Squadron Leader Johnstone was amongst those scrambled to intercept them:

I nearly jumped out of my cockpit. Ahead and above, a veritable armada of German aircraft was heading for London, staffel [squadron] after staffel for as far as the eye could see, with an untold number of escorting fighters in attendance. I have never seen so many aircraft in the air all at one time. It was awe-inspiring …

They spotted us at once and, before we had time to turn and face them, a batch of 109s swooped down and made us scatter, whereupon the sky exploded into a seething cauldron of aeroplanes, swerving, dodging, diving in and out of vapour trails and the smoke of battle.

Pilot Officer Tom Neil, with 249 Squadron, had been on two fruitless patrols that day when on his third late in the afternoon he recalled:

We were in the area of Maidstone and at 18,000 feet when we sighted the tell-tale ack-ack bursts and immediately after, an armada of Huns: a thin wedge of Heinkel IIIs, then Dornier 17s, all beneath a veritable cloud of fighters, 109s and 110s.

The cry went up, ‘Tallyho!’ After which we slanted towards them purposefully. Twelve of us against 100, at least. Dear God! Where did we start?

Mary Smith, daughter of the village postmaster, in Elham, Kent, recorded succinctly in her diary on 7 September, ‘Terrible. Attack on Hawkinge in the morning. Masses of raiders over 5–6pm. Terrible night attack on London.’ That day Flight Officer Crelin ‘Bogle’ Bodie, 66 Squadron, after tangling with Bf 109s, decided not to abandon his stricken aircraft:

I heard the bullets strike the side of the kite, but when I opened the throttle to try and escape the machine didn’t respond. Then suddenly she seized up altogether. The propeller stopped dead with me 15,000ft in the air. I knew then I had no choice but to try and land the plane quickly.

He made a successful belly-up landing in a farmer’s field.

The Telegraph’s special correspondent, Harry Flower, was at Lympne in the Folkestone area on 11 September and watched as the RAF pursued the retreating Luftwaffe after another raid on London:

A dozen Heinkels and Dorniers were heading back seawards in half a dozen different directions. On the tail of each was a Hurricane or Spitfire. And then they began to fall. Three Dorniers with tell-tale wisps of smoke showing from their engines as they came lower dived for the sea in the hope of reaching the opposite coast … A great Heinkel passed over my head flying low and in obvious distress following a rattle of machine gun fire up in the sun. A Hurricane slipped over some tree-tops on a hill, poured a short burst into the Heinkel, which caused the bomber to lurch wildly and then ‘hedge hop’ across field after field trying to find a safe landing.

Piloted by Heinz Friedrich, the bomber crash-landed on Romney Marsh. Four crew, including Heinz, climbed out carrying a fifth after setting their aircraft alight. Harry Flower and his photographer got an exclusive, including a photograph of a Spitfire circling the burning bomber.

By the end of the year Flight Lieutenant Peter Brothers, 257 Squadron, was feeling relieved. ‘The sporadic raids went on into December, when they reverted to 109s carrying bombs. … The winter was coming and clearly there was not going to be an invasion. The Battle of Britain had been won.’

Heinkel losses during the Battle of Britain forced the Luftwaffe to have a serious rethink and the bomber was switched to night operations and a variety of specialised support roles. Along with the Ju 52 transport aircraft, the He 111 also found itself bearing the burden of resupply operations on the Eastern Front. Most notably they were used to throw a lifeline to the German army trapped at Stalingrad between November 1942 and February 1943. Almost 200 were lost attempting to ferry ammunition and supplies into the German pocket. By the end of the war the He 111 had been relegated almost solely to a transport role, its Blitzkrieg glory days long past.

The Spitfire, with its superior speed, climb rate, operational ceiling and range, inevitably stole the limelight. It could get to 10,000ft much quicker than the Hurricane. Due to the obscured visibility with the Hurricane’s panelled canopy some pilots flew with it open. Neither fighter had any heating. Pilots felt the Spitfire was elegant while the Hurricane was more rugged. Certainly the latter was easier to maintain and the Spitfire was not without its faults. Taking off in the Spitfire required flying left-handed while the undercarriage was retracted, and the long nose made landing tricky.

Flight mechanic Joe Roddis, with 234 Squadron, said, ‘Everyone thought the Spitfire was the most marvellous thing on wings but without the Hurricane, we’d have been in real trouble. There were twice as many Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain as there were Spitfires.’ Pilot Officer Thomas Neil, 249 Squadron, noted with good humour, ‘Every second German pilot who was shot down by a Hurricane will say that he was shot down by a Spitfire. That was the folklore that went on.’

In reality they both played an important part by complementing each other’s different capabilities. Flying Officer Jeffrey Quill, 65 Squadron, reasoned:

I took the view myself that it took both planes to win the Battle of Britain. Neither would have succeed on its own because the Hurricanes required the Spitfire squadrons to attack the Messerschmitt 109s while the Hurricanes concentrated on the bombers. … You sometimes hear people saying, ‘The Spitfire won the Battle of Britain.’ Well, that’s absolute rubbish. The Spitfire and the Hurricane won the Battle of Britain.