The Battle of Athens

20th April 1941: Roald Dahl survives the last defiant patrol by RAF Hurricanes as they are hopelessly outnumbered by Luftwaffe fighters

Dornier bombers over Athens in April 1941.

As overwhelming German forces approach the Greek capital, the Allies begin to evacuate, cheered on their way by the local population who faced a grim future. The order is given for the last twelve Hurricanes in Greece to patrol over Athens in formation as a ‘morale boosting gesture’. No. 80 Squadron was led by recently promoted Squadron Leader Marmaduke ‘Pat’ Pattle, already a legendary pilot, having scored many victories over the Italians in North Africa.

Squadron Leader Pat Pattle (1914-1941). Pattle is sometimes noted as being the highest-scoring British Commonwealth pilot of the war. If all the claims made for him were correct, his total could have been more than 51, but official RAF records were lost during the evacuation from Greece.

For a young and inexperienced RAF fighter pilot, the exercise in flying wingtip-to-wingtip was in itself a nerve-wracking affair. Roald Dahl¹ had only resumed flying duties and rejoined his Squadron earlier in the month, following a serious crash which had left him with a broken skull and temporarily blind. He had only seven hours of flying experience in the Hurricane. His first aerial combat had been on 15th April, when he shot down a Ju 88.

On that morning of 20 April, Flight-Lieutenant Pattie, the ace of aces, who was leading our formation of twelve Hurricanes over Athens, was evidently assuming that we could all fly as brilliantly as he could, and he led us one hell of a dance around the skies above the city. We were flying at about 9,000 feet and we were doing our very best to show the people of Athens how powerful and noisy and brave we were, when suddenly the whole sky around us seemed to explode with German fighters. They came down on us from high above, not only 109s but also the twin-engined 110s. Watchers on the ground say that there cannot have been fewer than 200 of them around us that morning.

Roald Dahl in 1941. He qualified as an Ace with five victories before severe headaches forced him to relinquish flying duties. He was appointed Air Attache in Washington, where his career as an author began with an article for The Saturday Evening Post about his flying experiences.

The sky was so full of aircraft that half my time was spent in actually avoiding collisions.

It was not until 1986 that Dahl published his account of the ‘Battle of Athens’: