Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940-1945. Patrick Bishop

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СКАЧАТЬ to the bearing as the pilots searched for the enemy aircraft. They went quickly into the last routine of preparation, dropping the seat to get maximum protection from the engine block in front and the armour plate behind, tightening straps, switching on the reflector sight, checking the range and wing-span indicators and flicking the gun button into the firing position. In the distance, the enemy aircraft seem always to have appeared as alien and malign objects, a different species. They looked like ‘flies’, ‘swarms of bees’, ‘a milling great mass of little insects’, never like birds, though flocks of birds could sometimes be mistaken for Germans by nervous pilots. Getting closer, the sight of the black crosses, edged in white, standing out on wings and fuselages, had a profound effect on pilots looking on them for the first time, striking them as sinister, redolent of death, bringing home with unexpected force the seriousness of what they were engaged in.

      Once again, training helped to control feeling and instinct as the fighters responded to the designated attack order and manoeuvred into position. Paul Richey found that, on seeing the enemy, ‘all the tension and concentration in my body focused in a wild leap of my heart. It always made me swallow hard a couple of times.’ Then it was ‘into action, body taught against the straps, teeth clenched, thumb on the gun button, narrowed eyes intent on getting that black-crossed Hun in the sights and holding him there.’ He felt his ‘pounding heart turn into a block of ice. Not in fear. My brain became coldly clear and I was transformed into a cool, calculating killer.’²

      Shooting a smallish, nimble object travelling at more than 300 m.p.h., when you are moving at a similar speed while diving, turning and rolling, was extraordinarily hard. The difficulties were multiplied by the heavy G forces that crushed the pilots’ heads down on their chests, and turned the blood in their veins to the weight of molten metal. Pilots found that when they finally got within range and opened fire, the bullets did not fly with undeviating, linear cleanliness, but wobbled and wavered. It was no wonder that when they spoke of shooting at an enemy they talked of ‘giving it a squirt’. The process was more akin to aiming a hose than firing an arrow. The reflector sight, which replaced the old ring sight, projected a dot of red light on the angled underside of the windscreen. It was bracketed by a set of range bars which could be adjusted to the size of bombers or fighters. Kingcome found, ‘It was quite helpful in assessing distances, and the red dot simply indicated the line of flight of your bullets…if you lined it up on a static target and were also stationary, you scored a hit. What it regrettably did not tell you was where to aim at a moving target, or how much deflection to allow…Such judgements only came from experience combined with instinct.’³

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