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

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СКАЧАТЬ and we had one or two aircraft destroyed, and we found what it was like to be under fire. You get machine-gun fire when you’re in the mess and you sort of burrow under the carpet – it’s as simple as that. Bullets whistling through these wooden walls made one duck. However, we survived those all right.

      We saw the battle going on, the day battle up above, and we knew what the base squadrons were tackling. We didn’t know a great deal more than the civilian population; we could see what was going on, and we heard from pilots who came in and our pilots who visited base squadrons nearby, Tangmere Airfield and others. We knew, as the time went on, how grim things were; Fighter Command was strained to the limit. Sir Keith Park – he wasn’t Sir Keith then – was not getting the support he needed from his friend Leigh-Mallory to the north, who insisted on holding his squadrons back until he’d got them mounted into wings of three or five squadrons. The Hun doesn’t wait for that sort of nonsense. Park’s theory was to attack every time; even if he only had three aircraft, they would get out and do their best. It’s amazing how much a single attack by a small number of aircraft diving down through a lumbering flotilla of bombers, shooting down two or three of them on the way through, is effective in diverting the attack or splitting it up, and Park never missed the opportunity. He’d get aircraft from somewhere and make sure that the Hun got some sort of reception.

      Of course, we were aware that everybody’s nerves were getting frayed when the attack on the airfields was at its height. We weren’t getting the same plastering as they were getting at the sectional airfields where the Day Squadrons were. Biggin Hill, Tangmere, Manston and others were getting it all the time. It was not the actual bombing so much as the constant day and night attacks, and nobody was getting any sleep. It was the exhaustion that was wearing out the aircrew, the ground crew, the controllers, the WAAF staff, everybody. Had that gone on for another week I don’t think Fighter Command would have survived, and there was nothing to stop the enemy coming across except Fighter Command’s air supremacy. However, it’s doubtful to me whether we had air supremacy, but at least with the help of radar and the system that had been set up by Dowding in the few years before the war, and the systems like the short service commissions getting in young fellows from around the Empire, then the British, mainly British, getting them trained just before the war, that was the only reason that Britain survived, I think, the Battle of Britain. It wouldn’t have survived if Hitler hadn’t made the mistake of switching the attack away from the airfields and concentrating on London; it gave the airfields a breathing space and the aircrews, everybody, time to get a little bit of sleep and catch up and get operational again.

      Then I think it was just after that, when the Huns thought they had Fighter Command finished, that late in their raid a big wing from 12 Group arrived. When the German pilots saw this, their morale suffered accordingly. By this time the enemy had started night raids on London, and there was much more enemy night activity for the night fighter squadrons, and we were often out every night patrolling, more or less, across the track of the bombers, because radar hadn’t reached the stage where it was making too many interceptions and there was more chance of combat by visual sightings. There was one night, when we were patrolling at about 20,000 feet across Southampton or that area, and there was a huge blaze in the sky, it seemed like at least 100 miles to the north, and it was a good night, and what I was watching from that distance was the blitz on Coventry – we read about it next day.

      Because of that, it was decided that the Squadron should mount layer patrols from 20,000 feet down to about 12,000 feet at intervals – four aircraft at intervals of about 3,000 feet. The first pilot off was the Sergeant Pilot, I was Number Two, the Squadron Commander, who was then Squadron Leader Haycock, was Number Three, and I forget who was Number Four, but it doesn’t matter because he didn’t take off. The weather started to close in and Sergeant Dann was first and I was listening to his report about how he was in cloud at 5,000 feet, 7,000 feet, and the controller kept asking him and he kept saying he was still in cloud, and he got up to about 10,000 feet. Sergeant Dann obviously wasn’t happy, so the controller called him back to base and asked me where I was. I said I was at 10,000 feet by then and still in dense cloud; he kept me going up and reporting periodically while he tried to get Sergeant Dann down.

      Meantime the Squadron Leader had taken off. He listened to the radio, and kept under the cloud, which was about 3,000 feet when we started and was down to about 1,500 feet; then the Squadron Leader decided the sensible thing was to get back on terra firma, so he landed. Then the controller was fully occupied trying to get Sergeant Dann down, but as there were hills in the region of several hundred feet not far from base, the controller couldn’t get him to come below the cloud to land. I had plenty of time to think, well, I’ve still got to land, and when I got to 17,000 feet and reported that I was still in dense cloud, no sign of the moon, he called me in also. I acknowledged and, as we were flying over the South Coast, I just pointed my nose to France and kept going until I got below the cloud.

      By that time the cloud was about 600 feet, so I just kept coming in to the north. I kept a bit to the right of the airfield because I thought, well, if I get very far right I will see the White Cliffs of Dover, even on a cloudy night – in moonlight you’d see those cliffs and have time to do something about it. When the controller asked me where I was, I told him I’d made landfall to the east of base. He was still trying to get Sergeant Dann down; by this time I think he’d got him below the cloud base, so I kept heading for the base and if the weather was descending fairly rapidly I thought, well, I’m not going to muck about with the circuits when I get there – I’m going in to land. As luck would have it, Sergeant Dann got there just ahead of me, and when he was landing I was sort of coming over the eastern boundary of the airfield and Dann called out, reporting that he had landed. I didn’t wait for any acknowledgement from the controller or anything else, I said, “Get off the bloody runway because I’m right on your tail,” and I landed within half a minute probably of Dann landing. He’d moved off all right – we didn’t collide on the ground. The weather was such that one did not feel like staying up there any longer than was absolutely necessary.

      Well, the patrols carried on until December 1940, when No 23 Squadron was selected to do Intruder Patrols.’

      Robert Hugh Barber was serving in the Metropolitan Police Force when, in 1939, he joined the Royal Air Force:

      ‘Having completed my training I was sent as a Pilot Officer to Hawarden where I learned to fly Spitfires and Hurricanes and was posted to 46 Squadron at Digby; 46 Squadron was in 12 Group, and we were there till towards the end or middle of August 1940, when we moved from Digby down to the North Weald’s Wing to an airfield, one of the satellite airfields. We operated from there and, on 4 September 1940, the CO told me to be the Weaver, who watches the rear of the squadron. We set off on a flight and I could hear a lot going on on the RT, and as I went down the sun I could see it was clear, but I was suspicious, so I turned very quickly, and as I turned I saw a 109 approaching me. Before I could take much action there was a bang on the side of the plane and the plane was hit and my right leg slightly. I immediately dived and was covered with glycol, because he’d hit the glycol tank and it came out and it was all over me, hot and sticking. I lost considerable height and finally managed to sort of wipe the screen a little and see exactly where he was. I didn’t see any more of him but I’d lost a lot of height, so I decided that the only thing I could do was to bring it down with wheels up in a field somewhere.

      So I looked around for a field, finally saw a field and landed the plane successfully with wheels up. Unfortunately, with no engine, the impact was very considerable and I was laid out. I don’t remember anything of that particular moment, but the next thing I remember I was getting out of the plane and a man was walking across the field towards me. This gentleman took hold of my parachute and carried it for me, and he led me over to his car and I was taken into Maldon in Essex to a lady doctor’s. She had a look at me and rested me up, but she had to leave and left me alone and, in the meantime, I phoned up North Weald and spoke to them, and they said, “Will you be all right for tomorrow?’

      I said, “Well, I’m a bit shaken up but I should be OK.”

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