DOGFIGHT TO THE DEATH

IN JULY 1940, fears that Nazi Germany would invade Britain were very real. On July 2 Hitler ordered his military chiefs to draw up plans for an invasion. He knew Germany’s superiority in the air would be crucial, and intelligence officers told him that RAF Fighter Command could be destroyed in a month. The RAF were heavily outnumbered, with just 504 fully operational Spitfires and Hurricanes against the Luftwaffe’s 1,200 fighters. The Battle of Britain — where men with an average age of just 20 risked their lives — lasted 114 days. Here, JONATHAN MAYO gives a fascinating minute-by-minute account of the first days of the battle over the skies of Britain.

WEDNESDAY, July 10, 1940

7am: At RAF Middle Wallop near Salisbury, Wiltshire, Pilot Officer David Crook is waking up. Yesterday, his friend Peter Drummond-Hay was shot down and killed by a Messerschmitt off the coast of Dorset.

Because Crook couldn’t bear to sleep in their shared room with everything just as Peter had left it, he slept next door.

‘I could not get out of my head the thought of Peter, with whom we had been talking and laughing that day, now lying in the cockpit of his wrecked Spitfire at the bottom of the English Channel.’

Today, he and Peter had planned to drive up to London on a day’s leave and meet up with their wives.

7.35am: The Luftwaffe are beginning the first of their almost daily ‘nuisance raids’ over the South-West of England, looking for weak spots in Britain’s defences.

A Junkers bomber drops ten 50kg bombs on Plymouth docks, setting fire to a jetty and warehouses. One frustrated RAF pilot described their defensive role as like being in ‘a tennis match in which you never got to serve. You were always playing back what the other man was doing to you’.

10.10am: A large British convoy codenamed Bread, made up of 25 merchant ships escorted by Royal Navy destroyers, is sailing south along the Kent coast. The ships are spotted by a German Dornier reconnaissance aircraft and its radio operator sends an urgent message back to base — this is the perfect target for their bombers.

The Luftwaffe are engaged in what they call Kanalkampf or Channel Battle — a strategy to close the waterway to British shipping, thus cutting off food and essential supplies to Britain.

10.15am: On the cliffs at Cap Gris- Nez, the closest part of France to England, a telephone rings in a converted bus that is the temporary headquarters of the man in charge of the Kanalkampf strategy, Oberst Johannes Fink. He is informed about the convoy and immediately orders an attack.

10.20am: A Junkers bomber is approaching Swansea docks on another nuisance raid. It drops four high-explosive bombs, killing 12 workers outright and injuring 26. Twenty miles away, 44-year-old Ira ‘ Taffy’ Jones, the head of the RAF training airfield Stormy Down, is watching the attack through binoculars.

He was a flying ace in World War I with 40 kills to his name, and is desperate to take on the bomber — but Stormy Down has no fighters.

In desperation, Jones jumps in a Hawker Henley, designed to tow targets for gunnery practice, and heads for the Junkers bomber.

‘When I got near enough to see the black crosses on the Hun’s wings and rudder, I felt the old joy of action coursing through my body,’ he said.

The only weapon he has with him is a flare gun but, undaunted, when only 100 yards away, he fires it. The startled German pilot veers off course towards the sea and Jones follows ‘just to have the fun of seeing him run away’.

11.40am: Four bombers suddenly appear over Cardiff and drop bombs on ships in the docks and near the main gates of the nearby Royal Ordnance factory, killing ten people.

The death toll would have been higher if the raid had been an hour later when workers take their lunch break in the open air.

Noon: At RAF Middle Wallop, David Crook is having lunch with his Flight Commander Pip Barran when Barran is called to the phone. After a few minutes Crook finds him standing by the phone looking distressed.

Peter Drummond-Hay’s wife had called; the telegram informing her of his death yesterday had not yet reached her and she wanted to know why she hadn’t heard from him. Barran had to break the news that her husband is dead. The following day Flight Commander Barran is killed in action.

1.15pm: Twenty-six German Dornier bombers are crossing the Channel in a series of V-formations — the biggest number of bombers yet seen approaching. Mid-Channel, they rendezvous with 50 Messerschmitt fighters, and head for their target, the large Bread convoy.

1.25pm: The convoy’s escort ships open fire from below while six Hurricanes do their best against the massive force of fighters and bombers. The first wave of Dorniers drop their bombs over the convoy then dive to sea level for the return home. Fighters from Manston, Biggin Hill, Croydon, Hornchurch and Kenley arrive.

‘Suddenly, the sky was full of British fighters’ said Luftwaffe pilot Hannes Trautloft. ‘Today, we were going to be in for a tough time.’

1.30pm: Nine Hurricanes launch an intimidating head-on attack at the Dorniers. The British pilots can see German crews panicking, faced with a hail of bullets.

Twenty- three- year- old Flight Officer Tom Higgs targets the lead bomber but he misjudges his manoeuvre and clips it, losing a wing. Higgs bales out at 6,000 ft but is drowned.

His body is washed ashore in Holland a few weeks later.

1.35pm: More than 100 aircraft are now involved in the battle. From the cockpit of his Hurricane, 22-year- old Flight Officer Henry Ferris watches the bombs fall from the German planes.

‘The sea down below spouted up to a height of 50 ft or more in two lines alongside the convoy,’ he recalled. An eyewitness watching from the shore described the planes over the ships being ‘like bees round a honeypot. Now and then you would see a machine come away, go down in a steep dive and crash into the sea thousands of feet below.

‘Hundreds of bombs must have been dropped. The noise was deafening.’

1.40pm: Henry Ferris is just 50ft over the sea chasing a Messerschmitt fighter at 400mph. The cockpit of his Hurricane is full of the smell of high- octane petrol, hot metal and cordite. Ferris fires his machine guns and the Messerschmitt dips towards the sea and crashes. It is his eighth kill.

But then, suddenly, it is Ferris who is being hunted. Three Messerschmitts are on his tail and he feels a pain in his leg and knows he has been hit.

Every time he senses he is in range of their guns, Ferris makes a series of sharp right turns. Eventually, the Germans give up the chase, and Ferris points the nose of his Hurricane for Croydon aerodrome 20 miles away.

2pm: The battle over the Bread convoy is over, a victory for the RAF. The Luftwaffe sank just one ship and all its crew have been rescued. Two Dorniers and ten escort fighters were shot down. Flight Officer Tom Higgs was the only RAF fatality.

2.15pm: Henry Ferris lands at Croydon in his damaged Hurricane, runs over to an operational Hurricane and takes off on another patrol. Five weeks later, he will be killed in a head- on collision with a Dornier.

2.25pm: Across the Channel, six Blenheims from Bomber Command are approaching a Luftwaffe airfield on the outskirts of Amiens in northern France. The German anti-aircraft gunners manage to hit several of them and the formation disintegrates.

Messerschmitt fighters pounce on the remaining bombers and Flight Lieutenant Harold ‘ Flash’ Pleasance, a Canadian leading the mission, dives and weaves to escape them.

‘The compass was going round in circles and I really did not know which way I was heading,’ he said. Luckily, Pleasance finds the coast and dives over the cliffs to sea level ‘ frightening myself and the