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Back in the mid 1980s my job as an international chemical trader kept me constantly on the road and in the air. I was forever travelling so I decided that it might be a good idea to learn to fly. Maybe I could fly up to meet my customers and perhaps take them for a spin. I took lessons down at the local private airfield named Goodwood, which is located at the South Western corner of the Weald close by Chichester. Subsequently for about eighteen months, on most weekends I could be found practising my touch and goes in a flimsy two seat Tomahawk. Eventually, after 80 hours dual I was allowed to go solo. Then on one glorious day my trader friend George, flew down to the airfield in his own Cherokee with a bottle of champagne to celebrate my first solo cross country - a landmark event for a novice in learning to fly a plane.
However sadly all was not well with me.
Flying is one of those sports which either you have an aptitude for or it isn’t for you. Yes I could fly the plane but I was never comfortable sitting alone in the cockpit. I never asked to take the general flying test which is the precursor to being awarded with one’s Private Pilots Licence. The honest truth was that I was too frightened. I simply did not like the sensation of flying and especially the steep turns. Being someone who is frightened to stand on the top rung of a step ladder, it came to me as no surprise.
However the ‘glorious’ Goodwood airfield had earned its place in history other than as a base for two dozen light aircraft and for the occasional Festival of Speed. In 1940, the airfield was known as Easthampnet and was a satellite field for the nearby Tangmere air base. The area known as the Weald was the battlefield for the Battle of Britain in which the RAF denied the Luftwaffe control of the skies over SE England. The airfield at Tangmere could be readily recognised from the air by its concrete runways and the line of hangers. Only a few miles to the south was the Channel over which the Germans could approach without much fear of interception. Tangmere had been a regular target for the Luftwaffe. The fighter squadrons were all based on Tangmere but neither the planes nor the pilots spent much time on the base where they could easily be strafed from the air. Anyway Spitfires and Hurricanes did not need hard runways to land on and they could easily take off from any big flat field of grass. All that mattered in 1940 was that the planes could land, be rearmed and refuelled between sorties.
The Germans were based across the Channel in Northern France and coastal Belgium. In flying time the distance of between 25 to 80 miles could be covered in a matter of minutes. Indeed those British pilots who scrambled to intercept the Germans had barely enough time to make the height necessary for a successful attack on the hordes of bombers and their shadowing fighter escorts. The battlefield of SE England was to prove harsh on both sides. To make it home a damaged German plane had to cross back over the Channel and often the pilot must have thought to crash land in England and thereby be taken prisoner rather than take the chance of nursing the plane across a stretch of fast flowing cold water in which there was little chance for the crew member to survive. An enemy fighter pilot would be constantly looking at his fuel gauge in case he did not have enough to get back to base.
The British pilot might land in any field if he and the plane could still fly.
For the British the major problem was the lack of fully trained fighter pilots. The German air force was bigger, more experienced and arguably at the time better trained. However the rate of attrition on both sides was too great for the battle to last for long and by September both air forces were running out of aircrew. In Britain a young man would volunteer for the RAF and would be taught to fly a Tiger moth a fabric covered biplane reminiscent of the designs of the First World War which was powered by a tiny 120 hp Gypsy engine. It was a light, delicate, under powered plane prone to stall and to fly it called for a sensitive pair of hands. But at least it had dual controls so the instructor could sit in the same plane as his pupil. The Hurricane was a sturdy but doped linen covered monoplane with a Merlin engine. The Spitfire was a new, fast, metal skinned, sleek fighter plane calling for a delicate touch. The difficulty was that both planes were single seaters and the pilot had to learn to fly them by flying them. So the novice pilot of the day went over the space of a few months training from a string bag biplane to a fast 300 mph plus aerial killing machine fitted with eight x .303” machine guns.
The young trainee arriving at his squadron usually had less than ten hours flying experience in a modern fighter plane, which was barely enough time to learn how to fly it straight and level and to land it on a grass airfield. It did not help that the nose of the Spit restricted the pilot’s view of the ground when landing. Still it was expected that the new pilot would learn quickly or would soon pay the ultimate penalty.
On arrival at the squadron the replacement pilot would be allocated to a more experienced pilot for his first operational acclimatisation. On his first flight he would be told to tuck into close formation and follow his leader. Much of the time he would be concentrating on not colliding with the other planes in the outdated VIC combat formation. He could see out the front and occasionally he’d look right and left, maybe even forwards and upwards, but he could not see to the rear and above - which was exactly the direction from which his German adversary would swoop.
In such instances, his escape would be to roll the plane sharply to the left and dive down towards the ground, which was exactly what the enemy would be thinking he might do. The next thing he might feel, were the cannon shells of the Me109 hitting the plane or even himself. Then the controls of the Spit would go sloppy and unresponsive. He would find himself heading for the ground in a flat out screaming dive. He’d be grateful that the fuel tank fitted behind the control panel in front of him was not on fire. No doubt he’d panic and try to open the cockpit canopy despite the fact that the forces of motion and gravity would be working against him If the hood did slide back then he’d try to undo the harness in order to pull himself up out of the pilot’s seat so that he could escape from the plane by jumping out of it into thin air. Whilst fighting against the slip stream he would be hoping that the tail of the aircraft did not hit him if he did succeed in getting free. Then maybe he would be tumbling about in the air and whilst falling to earth he’d fumble for the ring of the parachute. If he was lucky he’d find himself floating down, praying that the German pilot who had shot him down did not return to machine gun him whilst he dangled helplessly at the end of the parachute. Finally he’d hit the ground with a thud and feel grateful that he had not broken both of his legs. His immediate need would be to escape from the chute before the wind dragged him across the ground.
The air base might have an idea that he had crashed and they might come and fetch him, if they knew where he had come to earth. The young pilot would think himself as being lucky to be alive but all the same he would be shaking like a leaf and in a state of shock. Even if not wounded he’d probably need help to stand up. There was a good chance that his classmate friend who had joined the squadron with him and who had also taken off that day was already dead. He had not been so lucky as Our Boy. Once back at base and after a day or so off for recuperation, Our Boy would find himself back in the cockpit doing it all over again.
He might not be so lucky himself next time.
However this poor novice was an essential pawn in the battle. It was the experienced regular RAF pilots who were expected to shoot the enemy down, the replacements were there to keep the numbers up. The enemy would see only a plane marked with roundels and could only guess at the expertise of the pilot. The German fighters were all armed with cannons for which the novice RAF pilot was literally fodder. The essential aim of the British High Command was to show Goering and his ilk that the RAF was not yet down and out even if the top brass themselves knew that the bottom of the barrel of pilots was being scraped. British industry was turning out the planes but the system could not match the need for trained pilots. Young lads were coming forwards to give their lives flying for their country but sadly many of them were killed within a few weeks of entering into the battle for the skies. Later in the war young men, including my Father, were shipped over to the US and Canada for longer training in more modern aircraft.
In fact the German High Command did give in and it changed tactics. There was no chance that by September 1940 the invasion army would dare try to cross the channel in barges designed to be towed by tugs up and down the Rhine river. As the winter set in, the weather would be against them and as a result the invasion was put off. In any case the RAF had not been beaten, Bomber command was still active and the Royal Navy was standing by waiting to pounce on the invasion boats. Additionally the Germans had no expertise in seaborne landings. Then there would be the problem of re-supplying the troops even if ever they reached the shores of England.
So the Germans decided that the air battle be switched from fighting the RAF and destroying the airfields to bombing the metropolis of London particularly the docks and the manufacturing areas of the East End which were easy enough to locate astride the River Thames even in the dark. It was the turn of the civilians to pay the price of war. From now onwards the area was to be lit up at night by the fires created by the incendiaries. Once the bombers started to fly in the darkness, the RAF pilots could not see them and that is exactly how the new battle, better known as The Blitz, started and continued on and off for five years until the end of the war.
The end of the nightly bombing for 8 million Londoners came in 1945 when the Russians entered Berlin which the psychopathic Hitler had refused to leave. At the very end he took his own life which few grieved about and most were deliriously happy about.
I have read stories of the flying aces and seen photos of them wearing uniforms bedecked with medals. Truly they were modern Knights of the Air but The Few whom I personally thank for their sacrifice are those young novice pilots who gave literally everything they had to give for the privilege of becoming a name on a war memorial.
As to my story, well, seventy years later I discovered that I was incapable of flying a simple but reliable two seat aeroplane, in which despite its fragility was safe enough for thousands of other novices to learn to fly. All I had to fear was my own incompetence since no enemy pilot would be shooting at me. Whereas those young men of 1940 who had only had a fraction of the airtime which I myself had accumulated, took off from the same airfield in a much more complex plane in order to try to shoot down an enemy pilot of an evil regime. Many of those novices never even got to press the gun button but nevertheless they did their bit and gave their all.
I feel I owe those young men a lot.
Dv
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