For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II. Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ off and I remember hanging it on the hook in the cockpit. “Right, now undo the straps,” because we always went into action with the hood open because if a bullet went by, one could not get the hood back, so the hood was already back, so I just undid the straps, said, “Right, here we go,” and turned over. The next moment I knew I was out; I didn’t remember going out, I could feel air coming past my face and then no air. Ah, I’m turning over and over – I’d better find that D ring, which is underneath my left arm, and I just gave it a quick pull and then all went dead quiet and I just sat and I went out at about 16,000 feet.

      Everything was quite happy and I saw where I was going to land and I landed in the marsh just out from Eastchurch airfield. Of course, what I didn’t know was that I had a hole in my left leg; I hadn’t any pain, I hadn’t noticed anything. When I landed I really did fold up, thinking I’d got two legs and I only had one, so that was that. Then I looked up and there was one of these Home Guard people coming along and he stopped before he got to me with his .303 rifle and loaded it, so I swore at him and I did everything I could to him, and he approached me with this .303 and I knew it was loaded and he just didn’t say a word, just stood about 10 yards off me and kept me covered with his .303. Well, by this time I looked across and I could see the little van arrive from the RAF, people coming, and they came along and all was well and he just walked away.

      Then I ended up in the hospital there and that was the end of my flying career as far as the Air Force was concerned because my left leg was there but I couldn’t stand on it. There was a hole at the back of the knee and the tendons had gone. After they had fixed me up and I was out of hospital I badgered them to keep on flying and they said, “Well look, you can go into Training Command,” so I said, “Yes, I’ll go into Training Command,” and so they gave me an instructor’s course up at Montrose. I could fly a little aeroplane all right, but I had to be very careful, I had to keep the leg absolutely stiff, I couldn’t put any pressure on it. I could bend the leg and walk on it, but I couldn’t stand on it – a little moment and the knee would give way.’

      Also flying Spitfires was Roy McGowan, who had joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve and, with war considered imminent, was undertaking six months’ training and was posted to 66 Squadron as a Sergeant Pilot:

      ‘In those early days the Spitfire still had a number of teething problems. The manufacturers, who were both the Supermarine, who built the air frame, and Rolls Royce, who were builders of the Merlin engine, were always with us and sorting out some of these problems. That first Spitfire 1 was very, very different from the later Marks. It had an enormous two-bladed wooden propeller, low revs on take-off and a long, long take-off run on the grass airfields, and a lot of rudder to offset the torsion of the engine and of the propeller. Immediately the aircraft got unstuck you had a big hand pump on the right-hand side at the top bit, which you used to pump up your undercarriage because your left hand was on the throttle holding that wide open. What you saw, having opened up the throttle, was an aircraft taking off in a series of rises and falls because pumping this hard hydraulic pump meant that you had movements on your stick as well, so the aircraft was going up and down, quite an unusual sight but everybody did it.

       Roy Andrew McGowan

      We started building up hours with the Spit, a beautiful aeroplane, but in May of that year I was commissioned. In those days one couldn’t remain with the same squadron if one moved up from Sergeant Pilot to Pilot Officer, so I was posted to 46 Squadron at Digby in Lincolnshire, where we flew Hurricanes, also, of course, another monoplane fighter. No difficulties in moving out of Spits into Hurricanes. It, too, was a very, very pleasant aeroplane.

      I continued with them, and should have returned to civilian life in July, but by then it was very clear that war was a matter of weeks away. We went up to Yorkshire to do our liaison two-week operation with a bomber squadron – Whitley bombers. After one week we were recalled because in late August war was going to start any day, as it were. As soon as we got back to Digby we lived under canvas in Bell tents, alongside our aeroplanes, in what was known as a dispersal point. We started digging slit trenches and really doing 24 hours a day on the job.

      We were somewhat relieved to hear on the morning of 3 September that war had been declared. As soon as that announcement had been made we got on to a wartime arrangement of one flight being released, another flight available, another flight at standby, so of course we had more time off immediately after war started than we had before.

      Early days in Digby in wartime, our main commitment was convoy patrols. We used to fly out, and the operations room guided us out to a convoy moving either northwards or southwards on the North Sea off Norfolk and Suffolk. We would patrol seawards of them; they usually had an escort of a couple of destroyers or armed ships of some sort. We patrolled for probably an hour, three of us in a loose formation, and then we’d be relieved by another section, as they were called, and we’d go back and refuel and wait for our next turn. We were told by the Navy we mustn’t come within, I think it was, 1,000 metres otherwise they would open fire and, yes indeed, they did from time to time. During clear air we didn’t see any hostile aircraft. In poorer weather, with a lot of comparatively low cloud, yes, you would see that there was something going on, because the Navy opened up; we might get a sight of a hostile aircraft, but it would immediately disappear into cloud.’

      Although Roy McGowan doesn’t mention it in his tape, the Squadron was sent to Norway in late May 1940 and lost many of its men and planes when, during the evacuation shortly afterwards, the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious was sunk.

      ‘Anyhow, later – I guess by mid-June – things started hotting up. We were very much outnumbered in those days. The Operations Room controller would scramble us and climb us to 15,000 feet or something like that. Initially in sections of three, and then a flight of six aircraft and eventually, because of the numbers of enemy aircraft, whole squadrons and later the whole wing. It took time to form up but of course you had to get some numerical strength.

      I made many interceptions; I fired my guns on pretty well every time we took off. I didn’t get any confirmed victories, but we were very involved. We would see aircraft smoking, we would see pieces coming off. The pattern was that we in the Hurricanes would attack the bombers whilst the Spitfires, with their ability to climb faster and higher, they would go higher and get involved with the escorting Luftwaffe fighters.

      We were still operating from Digby in Lincolnshire and the Air OC of 12 Group, Leigh-Mallory, Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory, conceived this “big wing” theory. The problem was getting it formed up in some kind of order before we went south to make an engagement. It wasn’t anything like as manoeuvrable as a smaller operation of 12 aircraft. We would go down and most days often go down to an 11 Group airfield in the immediate London area, land there and refuel, and do operations from there, and then we’d return to Digby in Lincolnshire.

      However, in September some time we were posted to a little airfield called Stapleford Tawney, which was a satellite of North Weald, which was one of the well-known Sector Fighter Stations. Stapleford Tawney had this sloping grass airfield and I recall Hillman Airways, a pre-war small Civil Airline, they used to operate London-Paris out of Stapleford. With our Hurricanes it was a little bit of a problem; irrespective of wind direction you certainly couldn’t land downhill, so often you had to make cross-wind landings and monoplane fighters weren’t too happy with a strong cross-wind landing. However, we coped.

      On one occasion, I guess it was the Sunday before 15 September, which was also a Sunday, I got shot up quite badly. I was losing glycol, the engine temperature was going up pretty rapidly, we were down somewhere in the Kent area, I had to get down quickly before the engine packed up, and I landed at Biggin Hill. Looking down at Biggin I saw all kinds of bomb holes; I selected a line between bomb holes, landed safely and I quickly taxied in, because by then the glycol was well СКАЧАТЬ