Battle of Britain by Patrick Bishop

Author:Patrick Bishop [Bishop, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2014-08-12T04:00:00+00:00

Nicolson, ignoring his pain, the smoke and extreme heat, and with his instrument panel ‘dripping like treacle’, shot down the Me110. The next moment, he dived head first out of his cockpit. Blinded in his left eye by blood and with his hands terribly burned, he fell 500 feet before he succeeded in pulling his ripcord. As he drifted down, he then came under fire from members of the Home Guard on the ground, who shot him in the buttocks. Three months later, having recovered from his wounds, Nicolson was awarded the only Victoria Cross earned by a fighter pilot during the battle.

There were more raids during the late afternoon, preceded by German fighter sweeps designed to drag the exhausted Fighter Command pilots into the air, so that they would be back refuelling when the bombers arrived. One sweep descended on Manston, strafing the airfield buildings and destroying a Spitfire and a Blenheim on the ground. Meanwhile, Nos 1, 610 and 615 squadrons engaged a formation of Heinkel He111 bombers, escorted by Me110s, over the Sussex–Surrey border. Hurricanes of Nos 32, 56 and 501 squadrons took on another enemy raid, which appeared to be heading for Biggin Hill, successfully driving it back, while Spitfires from 610 Squadron engaged the fighter escort.

Following their visit to Bentley Priory the previous day, Churchill and his chief of staff, Hastings Ismay, were now at 11 Group’s headquarters at Uxbridge. Smoking was strictly forbidden in the Group’s underground operations room, but an exception was made for the prime minister’s ever-present cigar. ‘There had been heavy fighting throughout the afternoon,’ Ismay later wrote. ‘At one moment every single squadron in the Group was engaged; there was nothing in reserve, and the map table showed new waves of attackers crossing the coast. I felt sick with fear.’

Fighter Command was now fighting on a front from Harwich to Portsmouth, and it was inevitable that some bombers would get through. Two Ju88s penetrated all the way to Brize Norton airfield in Oxfordshire. Approaching the runway, they lowered their landing gear in the hope that they would be mistaken for Blenheims. The ruse worked, and as they crossed the perimeter the wheels went up and 32 bombs were released. Inside one of the hangars was a large number of fuelled-up aircraft. A bomb set off an enormous explosion, destroying 46 planes, the majority of them training aircraft, but also including 11 Hurricanes undergoing repairs.

As on the previous day, the Luftwaffe’s target had been planes on the ground, and as before there had been much effort wasted on attacking non-Fighter Command airfields. But the strain of opposing them had been exhausting and costly. Many of the RAF pilots flew four or five combat sorties, and 20 aircraft were shot down.

At the end of the day, Churchill, still at Uxbridge, was told that a hundred of the enemy had been shot down, though the real figure was nearer fifty. The inaccuracy was inevitable in the swirling confusion of aerial combat. Churchill was once again deeply impressed by what he had seen.

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