Piece of Cake (99 page)

A lone Hurricane stooged over to join him. He recognized Fanny Barton. For a few seconds they flew side by side, high above the bomber stream. Down through the haze they could make out docks and warehouses. A sudden avenue of explosions sprang up as the first stick of bombs struck. Nothing could save London now.

“Got anything left?” Barton asked.

“Couple of squirts, maybe.”

Barton put his nose down and CH3 followed. At once, tracer pulsed up at them, crisscrossing: it was like diving into a network of lights. CH3's neck-muscles stiffened, and the tremor in his left leg began kicking again. Blood thumped in his temples and in his wrists: the old familiar drumbeat of fear. Then they were through the net and hacking at the bombers' flanks.

With a story like
Piece of Cake
the reader is entitled to know how much is fact and how much fiction.

Hornet squadron is fiction. The places where it was based do not exist. All the characters in the story are invented. Everything else is as authentic as I could make it.

By this I mean that the story is broadly true to the way the war went in 1939–40, and all the minor events are at least feasible. For example, the event I have called “the Battle of Southend Sands” is based on a confused episode known at the time as “the Battle of Barking Creek” when, on September 6, 1939, a formation of Spitfires shot down two Hurricanes, while anti-aircraft gunners destroyed a Blenheim fighter. Mistaken identity remained a constant hazard: on August 11, 1940, a Hurricane on convoy patrol was shot down by a Spitfire, and a month later No. 73 squadron lost three Hurricanes, all reportedly shot down by Spitfires (the pilots survived). Similarly, my account of the massacre of Defiants from Hawkinge is substantially accurate, as is the earlier description of the Maastricht raids.

References to aircraft performance—speeds, armaments, rate-of climb, operational ceiling, and so on—are as accurate as I could make them. Hurricane squadrons did enter the war with wooden propellers, canvas-covered wings, and no armor behind the pilot. References to tactics and combat procedures-are also based on fact. British fighter squadrons flew in tight, inflexible formations and used the cumbersome Fighting Area Attacks until well into 1940. After the fall of France, some squadron commanders changed their tactics, opened their formations, and flew in pairs, like the
Luftwaffe;
but many others persisted with the obsolete textbook approach. As Air Vice-Marshal Johnnie Johnson has said: “These formation attacks … were useless for air fighting” because “the tempo of air combat did not allow time for elaborate manoeuvers in tight formation” and as a result “the last words too many splendid fighter pilots heard were ‘Number … Attack, go.'” (
Full Circle
, pp. 118–19) Moreover, aircraft in tight formation were always vulnerable to getting bounced from behind. “Ass-end Charlie” was indeed a dangerous position: the fate of Nugent and McPhee was not uncommon.

Several American pilots served in the RAF. Biggin Hill's first kill
of the war—a Dornier 17—was shared by an American flying officer, Jimmy Davies, and a British flight-sergeant, Brown, on November 21, 1939. By June 1940 Davies was a flight lieutenant credited with six kills: he died in combat on the day he was to be awarded the DFC. At least seven Americans flew with Fighter Command in the Battle; of these, six were killed later in the war.

Although September 15th is now celebrated as Battle of Britain Day, the massive German raid that forms the climax of
Piece of Cake
actually took place a week earlier, on Saturday, September 7th, 1940, when the
Luftwaffe
sent a thousand aircraft against London. This was really the turning-point of the battle. As Group Captain Peter Townsend (then a squadron leader in command of 85 Squadron) was to write: “On 6th September victory was within the
Luftwaffe's grasp.”
In 11 Group, defending southeast England, six out of seven Sector airfields and five advanced airfields had been severely damaged. Fighter reserves were at an all-time low. The output of new pilots—hastily trained though they were—lagged behind losses. In the words of 11 Group's commander, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park: “… an almost complete disorganisation of the defence system made the control of our fighter squadrons extremely difficult … Had the enemy continued his heavy attacks [against airfields and the control system] … the fighter defences of London would have been in a perilous state.” Instead, on September 7th, Germany switched targets and attacked the capital itself. The RAF pilots intercepting that vast formation could not know it, but the
Luftwaffe
had made a fatal mistake. Fighter Command was given time to recover and it was never again seriously threatened.

One small point: I have not used the word “radar” in
Piece of Cake.
At that time, radar was called “RDF” more often, secrecy was such that it was not referred to at all. Another small point: British fighters carried cine-guns both during and after the Battle. As late as the Dieppe Raid of 1942, analysis of film taken by these cameras revealed the average fighter pilot's low standard of gunnery.

On two occasions in the story, the views of Air Chief Marshal Dowding, C-in-C Fighter Command, are quoted: once when Rex describes the “Dowding Spread” and once when he comments on the “long-burst-long-range” attack. These references are based on Dowding's own statements. Dowding had no faith in close-range attacks. At a meeting of the Gun Sub-Committee of the Air Fighting Committee held on July 5, 1939, Dowding insisted
that “it was by no means axiomatic that the closer they [the fighters] got to the bomber the more bullets would hit it.” Others disagreed; nevertheless the recommended range for opening fire (and therefore for harmonizing guns) was agreed to be 400 yards.

This meeting also discussed German Air Force involvement in the Spanish Civil War. In April 1939 an Air Staff officer had gone to France to interview Spanish Republican pilots in exile. They strongly emphasized the skill of German pilots, the destructive powers of the cannon-armed Me-109, and above all the absolute necessity for back armor. Dowding's meeting was also told that Messerschmitt pilots used cannonfire at long range but they came in close—200 meters for light-machine-gun fire. “This was noted … ‘say the minutes,' but it was generally agreed to be unwise to base any very definite conclusions on this report, as the conditions of air warfare in Spain were unlikely to prevail in a general European war.” On the whole the RA Fignored the lessons that the Condor Legion taught the
Luftwaffe.

I have tried, in
Piece of Cake
, to paint a fair and honest picture of a squadron in RAF Fighter Command in the first twelve months of the war. The popular image of those men represents them as invariably gallant, brilliant and indefatigable, rather like Churchill's famous description in August 1940: “… undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger …” This was good backs-to-the-wall rhetoric but it gave a false impression of the way the Battle went. In reality there were times when pilots were daunted by the overwhelming odds they faced day after day; and far from being unwearied they were often at the point of exhaustion. Which brings me to the controversial matter of claims.

After the war it was accepted that RAF claims during the Battle had been far too high. Indeed they were challenged, during the “Battle,” by the American press. American newspapermen refused to believe that the RAF was shooting down all the German planes it claimed. On August 17, 1940, Churchill showed that he too was not entirely happy: he inquired how many German aircraft had crashed on British soil during a recent day's fighting, and he asked Dowding what proportion of that fighting was over land. “This,” Churchill wrote, “would afford a good means of establishing for our own satisfaction the results which we claimed.” Dowding replied that there had been eleven fights over land and eleven over the sea. “If the total day's bag was 180,” he said, “we might expect to pick up 90 on land.”

Evidently Churchill was not satisfied. On August 29, 1940, he called for another check: a tally of German aircrew taken prisoner. He asked: “How does this square with our claims of German aircraft destroyed over Britain?” I couldn't trace a reply to this, but a few days later Dowding submitted an analysis of enemy losses in the period August 11–August 24th. In all, Fighter Command claimed 636 enemy aircraft destroyed. However only 113 of these had come down on land. Where were the others? Fighter Command said they were in the sea—most of them, anyway.

An assessment of combat reports (Fighter Command said) showed that 80.8 percent of all enemy aircraft destroyed fell in the sea. Thus, of the 636 claimed destroyed, 514 were in the sea. That was the explanation.

Not everyone at Fighter Command accepted it. A week later, Dowding's headquarters staff completed a secret analysis of five weeks' air activity, from August 8 to September 11. It showed that for every six enemy aircraft claimed destroyed, only one wreck was found.

The pilots were not to blame for the inflated scores. They made their claims in all honesty. Given the whirlwind nature of air combat, it was all too easy for mistakes to be made—for instance when two fighters attacked the same bomber without being aware of each other. The real fault was elsewhere. Fighter Command accepted squadron returns far too readily, as if the Battle could be won on paper. By contrast the
Luftwaffe
scrutinized its pilots' claims very carefully. As a result, its score of RAF losses was much nearer the mark.

Dowding has, quite rightly, received credit for his handling of the Battle. He must also take the blame for Fighter Command's unwillingness to check claims more rigorously. Wildly exaggerated totals made punchy headlines, but to treat them as truth did not help Britain beat Germany. Some claims can be explained only by the heady stimulus of combat. On one occasion the Duxford Wing (with Douglas Bader leading 242 squadron) intercepted a raid and claimed to have destroyed 57 German aircraft; it is now known that all but eight of those raiders returned to base. On another occasion (September 9, 1940) Bader's Wing attacked a formation of Dorniers over southwest London and claimed 19. German records (which may be incomplete) say none was lost. More to the point, British ground observers did not confirm any of the claims, and not a single crashed Dotnier was found.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that, in this area, Dowding
was not the best of judges. When, on July 21, 1940, the American press cast doubt on his pilots' claims, he retorted: “If the Germans were correct they would be in England now”—a spirited reply but no real answer: proving German figures wrong did not prove British figures right. Well after the Battle, Dowding remained indignant. His
Battle of Britain Despatch
(1941) said: “The German claims [of losses] were of course ludicrous; they may have been deceived about our casualties, but they knew they were lying about their own.”

Indignation is bad for objectivity. An Air Ministry account of the Battle, published in 1941, declared that between August 8 and October 31, 1940: “2,375 German aircraft are known to have been destroyed in daylight,” and a footnote emphasizes that this figure includes “only those actually destroyed” and not those damaged. “The Royal Air Force,” the account adds, “lost 375 pilots killed …”

This is the stuff of which myths are made, and even today—after so much work has been done to put the record straight—anyone who tries to write honestly about that period risks the wrath of those who prefer the simpler version. It was never my intention to debunk the Battle or to belittle the men of Fighter Command. On the contrary: the more I learned about the faults and deficiencies with which they had to contend, the greater became my admiration for their courage and resilience.

All war is an untidy and inefficient business: the weapons are never completely adequate, the plans go awry, there are faults of leadership, clashes of temperament, blunders caused by jealousy, stupidity, over-ambition. This was true, to a lesser or greater extent, of RAF Fighter Command, just as it was true of the
Luftwaffe.
To pretend that Dowding was a genius and Goering a fool is to see the struggle in comic-book terms; and to believe that Dowding's pilots were undaunted, unwearied and unbeatable is to wish to create supermen out of ordinary flesh and blood. Nor does their human fallibility make their efforts any less admirable. It took at least as much courage for a young, inadequately trained, inexpert pilot to go into combat as it did for an ace; and at the climax of the Battle there were very few aces left alive.

There was a lot more to the Battle of Britain than the legend suggests. By exaggerating the triumph of the RAF, and by deflating the performance of the
Luftwaffe
, the legend has given Fighter Command both too much and too little credit. The truth is fairer to everyone.