'Battle of Britain - The Gathering Storm'
Another highlight from the new history of the battle, with links to some of the other volumes featured this year ...
During the past few months, I have been able to post several excerpts from different volumes of Dilip Sarkar’s eight-volume history of the Battle of Britain. This work is the culmination of many years of research and consolidates Sarkar’s perspective on the unfolding battle across its many stages. It reflects his deep understanding of the period, drawn from so many interviews with the men who were there, alongside documentary research.
One omission was an excerpt from Volume One - The Gathering Storm, which provides an excellent introduction to the situation that the RAF faced in the late 1930s, alongside the political and strategic context. The fate of the RAF - and the fate of Britain - rested on some very fine decisions made at a very late stage before battle commenced.
Had Britain gone to war in 1938 without the pause created by the Munich Agreement, the RAF would likely have been obliterated by a much stronger and better-equipped Luftwaffe. The war-winning Spitfire and Hurricane were only just coming into service in numbers; there were not enough pilots to fly them, and the ‘Dowding System’ to use them effectively in the defence of Britain was still in development. It was - “a very close run thing” to be ready by the summer of 1940 - and makes for a fascinating story.
As in every book in this series, there are many personal stories from the men who served. Sergeant Bill Green had been a ‘Fitter’ in the RAF before being accepted for pilot training. His experiences of being trained in radio procedure and of his first flight in a Hurricane are very revealing about how the RAF went to war:
He said, ‘With the rapid increase in numbers of aircraft, the wavelengths are completely overburdened and becoming jammed because people are using an undisciplined form of communication, everybody saying what they think they need to say, and without the person at the other end having the slightest inclination of what to expect he will say.
For instance, one person might say, “Oh, this is Fred Jones, and I’m from so-and-so, so-and-so squadron, and I’ve just been here, and I’ve just been there, and I want to come in to land”, or whatever. Now I’m going to play a record, and I want you to tell me what it is.’ So he put this record on, and it played for about a minute, and it sounded just like a chipmunk. Having stopped, he said, ‘Now, does anyone know what it says?’ And, of course, we all laughed, because there was no way. So he said, ‘I’m going to play it again.’ He duly played it again, and, of course, nobody knew what it was, although one or two had a wild guess.
He said, ‘Now I’m going to tell you what it says before I play it for the third time: “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?”’ Then he put the record on at the same speed, and it sounded crystal clear. And it was a wonderful demonstration of how, if the brain is, through the ears, searching for something that is being transmitted, there are a billion items that it might be, whereas if one has some idea of what it might be, then one has a lesser field to cover, and therefore the brain is more likely to interpret the message.
He then went on to say that in selling this idea to the senior echelons of the RAF, he picked up, in their presence, a telephone which had loudspeaker attachments, and a female voice said, ‘Number, please!’ And he said, ‘The gentlemen of Wembley are a motley assembly.’ She said, ‘I’m sorry, Sir, what was your number?’ He said, ‘The gentlemen of Wembley are a motley assembly.’ She said, ‘I’m very sorry, Sir, I didn’t get your Wembley number.’
He then said, ‘I am not saying a number,’ repeated it, and then got the answer that he would have got the first time, if she hadn’t been trying to identify a number from the words he was using. I thought that was an absolutely wonderful demonstration of the need for a disciplined jargon in communications.
Anyway, this was all quite cleverly done in retrospect, because at one end of the football field were three ‘Wall’s Ice Cream Stop Me and Buy One’ tricycles. Each had a TR9 radio set, identical to those used in fighter aircraft, with a helmet, earphones and plug. And at the other end of the field was a solitary bicycle, of similar type, but with no radio. The field had been marked out in white chalk, with sections like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 or whatever, and we were asked to participate in an exercise.
One of us would go onto the roof of a little hut with a Verey flare pistol, and three of us would be on a bicycle each at one end, and one at the other end; the rest would be either the controller or plotters in the plotting room. The exercise would begin when the participant on the roof would fire a Verey cartridge, and the controller would ‘scramble’ the three bicycles by communicating through the cyclists’ headphones. When the Verey light had been seen, the person riding the solitary tricycle at the other end had already received instructions that he was to cycle towards the opposite end of the football field, changing course now and again.
The controller would then give the leader of the three bicycles a course, to intercept the intruding ‘bomber’ tricycle, worked out from information supplied by the rooftop observer. This would then be plotted on the field, and the whole interception recorded. This was quite ingenious, because it provided participants a complete picture of how the whole radar and interception technique worked, and at the same time enabled Professor Lloyd Jones, Lloyd Williams or whatever his name might have been, to criticise the voices or diction we were using. This lasted for three days, or thereabouts.
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[Instead of being sent to an Operational Training Unit Sergeant Bill Green was one of the many newly qualified pilots who had to be trained to fly operational aircraft when they arrived at their frontline Squadron. His experience was probably typical for the time: ]
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And the next morning I presented myself to the training officer and told him that I’d just done the one dual circuit. He said, ‘Well, what aeroplanes did you have in 501 then, when you were a fitter?’ I said, ‘Well, we’d just got one Hurricane.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Well then, you know all about them. Look, there’s one out there on the tarmac,’ which he pointed to; ‘Go and sit in it, and when you feel happy, just take it off.’
‘Well, just a minute,’ I said, ‘What speed does it lift off at, and what is the approach speed, and what speed would I need for a loop, etc?’ So he told me these things. So I did as I was told, went and sat in it, and familiarised myself with the taps, and off I went.
I dived this Hurricane down to about, 250, 280, 300 mph, pulled back on the stick as I would with a Hawker Hart, and immediately blacked out.
And I thought, ‘Right, I’m going up high to do my first loop,’ and up I went to about 20,000ft, adding about 50 per cent to the speeds he’d given me, for safety purposes. Well, bearing in mind I’d only flown Hawker Harts and Magisters, with a top speed of about 110 mph, I dived this Hurricane down to about, 250, 280, 300 mph, pulled back on the stick as I would with a Hawker Hart, and immediately blacked out. And, when I came to, I was hanging in my straps and I looked over the side and saw sky, and realised I was upside down, so put the stick over to the normal position, and spun.
I didn’t know much about spinning, having done my spinning training in Magisters and Harts, but I had heard say that with these new-fangled Spitfires and Hurricanes, you didn’t get into a spin because, if you did, you couldn’t get out. So anyway, away I went, spinning away, doing the corrective action that I’d been taught, and, lo and behold, it worked. The aeroplane came out of the spin, but I was so relieved I forgot to centralise, and off it went again, spinning in the opposite direction!
By the time I managed to resume the normal flying position, I was down in the clag, very humid, hazy weather, with no clear and defined horizon, and all the instruments were going round in the cockpit like hummingbirds. Nobody ever told me that you had to lock the gyroscope of the artificial horizon before you spun, and as a consequence, the gyrations I had been through had toppled the gyroscope – the artificial horizon was going round and round like a washing machine!
Anyway, I felt a little bit nauseous, but managed to get back to Biggin Hill. The air was full of dogfighting activity, warnings and shouting and so on and so forth. I approached Biggin Hill, made my approach, and realised a little bit late in the game that I had overshot, by which time I was holding off well up the runway, probably halfway, so dropped down and realised that I was going to run out of runway – and hurtled towards the Hurricanes of 32 Squadron, or some of them anyway, which were scattered about the place.
Using my brakes judiciously, eventually, and somewhat miraculously, and thankfully, I came to a halt without damaging my aeroplane, any other aeroplane, or myself. I had done over 170 hours at that time, and this first Hurricane flight was on 8 August 1940, in P2549.
Anyway, having screamed to a halt, I was sat in my cockpit feeling very relieved, when Squadron Leader Worrall, the CO of 32 Squadron, hurtled out of his office, jumped up onto my wing and gave me the biggest telling off of all time, confining me to camp for two weeks and ordering me to report to his office immediately, which I did.
He there tore off a second strip, asked me what on earth I thought I was doing etc; I told him that it was my first flight, and related my lack of experience. At that he relented, and said ‘OK, in that case forget about being confined to camp, but for heaven’s sake don’t ever do such a thing again, you could have written off several aeroplanes and killed yourself, and other people, in the process.’ So, that was that.
© Dilip Sarkar 2023, ‘Battle of Britain - The Gathering Storm’. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd.
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