Our heroes, so brave even to take off let alone fight

TAKING to the skies in a Spitfire for a documentary on the Battle of Britain, Dan Snow experienced the true horror of what a young British pilot fighting the Germans faced.

Historian Dan, 41, was petrified when he climbed into the cockpit and, once airborne, he experienced debilitating motion sickness, then disorientation and exhaustion when the plane landed.

“There’s a power to the Spitfire that you’re not expecting and when you go down that runway, it gives you a real kick,” says Dan, co-host with Kate Humble of The Battle of Britain: 3 Days That Saved The Nation.

“But I got very sick. I was thrown around all over the place but I guess the art of combat was really about pulling very tight turns.the G-force was crazy and I got very bad motion sickness. It was like being on the biggest, baddest roller-coaster I’ve ever been on.

“I was terrified because I was sitting on top of this engine chugging away.the plane was built very lightly – bullets could easily whizz through the aluminium – but it used its steam, grace and skill of the pilot to get out of trouble.

“However the pilots were very vulnerable; especially in a Hurricane, notorious for cockpit fires.the fuel tank was right next to the cockpit and it was easily set ablaze when hit. A jet of flames would go right into the pilot’s face and body and they suffered the most terrible burns.

“The planes became blazing death traps and, if the pilots did survive, they needed plastic surgery to rebuild their faces and bodies.

“I’ll never forget how pale, shaky and sweaty I was when I landed and I was exhausted for a day. All I kept thinking about was these 20-year-old pilots who had to go up five times a day and were so knackered they would fall asleep on the runway as soon as they landed.”

In the three-part series, Dan and Kate follow a handful of pilots during the tense summer of 1940 and hear astonishing stories.

One Spitfire pilot was teenagerwilliam Hopkin, a vicar’s son. He was at RAF Hornchurch in Essex and shot down a German bomber on one of his four sorties on August 15.

This was the biggest encounter, when the Luftwaffe tried to overwhelm the RAF.THEY lost 76 aircraft to the British 34 – the Germans called the day “Black Thursday”.

“I metwilliam’s son and we talked about the fatigue and the overwhelming fear that he must have experienced,” says Dan. “Life expectancy was four weeks –William actually survived and died in 1971. It was amazing to learn about the human cost of their heroics and, along with the photos and action reports, you really got a sense of the personal battle being waged.”

‘I’ll never forget how pale, shaky and sweaty I was...’

● The Battle Of Britain: 3 Days That Saved The Nation, Channel 5, 9pm, Tuesday