Hurricanes & Spitfire Pilots at War

By Terence Kelly

Most people asked to name one British Second World War airplane would say the Spitfire. Yet the Hawker Hurricane flew in greater numbers, in more variants and in more theaters than the redoubtable Spitfire.Adrian Stewart has researched the evolution of the Hurricane from its 1935 maiden flight through to victory in the Far East in 1945. He brings his story alive by letting those who flew this legendary aircraft tell it as it was.After the faltering first steps in the mid 1930s the Hurricane really 'took off' and became hugely popular in the RAF and allied air forces.They Flew The Hurricane contains numerous first hand accounts from pilots operating in such diverse campaigns as the Battle of Britain, North Africa, Russia, the Far East and North West Europe from 1940 to 1945.These thrilling vignettes combine to bring to life action in the air.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 19, 2004
• ISBN: 9781783400300

Book preview

Day.

CHAPTER ONE

The Few

Shakespeare's lines from Henry V, perhaps the finest poetry of its kind ever penned, refer, of course to Agincourt, which in the annals of British history stands out as one of the most brilliant, heroic and vital battles which were fought and won. Other battles which, however different in their nature, deserve to be spoken of in equal context are Waterloo and Trafalgar – had any of these three been lost then the whole course of British history would have been quite changed. We can be proud that one more battle may justifiably be added to the list – The Battle of Britain. Had Shakespeare been alive today he would surely have been moved to write a play with pilots amongst his actors and a leading role played by Sir Winston Churchill for whom he would no doubt have composed a soliloquy as stirring as King Henry's. And, one is tempted to think, something not so dissimilar to this thought may have passed through Churchill's mind when he borrowed from King Henry's speech and dubbed these men ‘The Few’.

Such are the awful possibilities of modern war, so complex its ingredients, so huge its possible scale, that it may well be that no future writer will be able to add another battle which merits inclusion in this list – that, in fact, the Battle of Britain will in the centuries to come be recognised as the last peculiarly British battle in which the numbers were limited, the stakes so all important, the victory so complete. To say this is in no way to denigrate the courage of Britishers in other battles be they Salerno, Arnhem, Caen, or Burma, be they on land, on sea or in the air, nor to underrate the vital importance of each struggle. But the Battle of Britain, like Agincourt, like Trafalgar, and like Waterloo, somehow stands apart, alone, in itself complete. It came at a time when a country reeling from successive defeats was in desperate need of a sign that not everything had to end in failure. It was tremendous theatre. It should not, and it will not, ever be forgotten – and just as in Shakespeare's words gentlemen in England, now a-bed, shall hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought upon St Crispin's Day, so we who were Hurricane or Spitfire pilots but took no part in that so glorious a battle, will for all our days, nurse a quiet envy that we cannot say we were of the few, the very few, the band of brothers which took on the Luftwaffe in full force over the skies of England and threw it back with a bloody nose never, by such daylight assaults, to try our strength at home again.

The immortal Spitfire.

But when all of this is said, when all due and utterly deserved credit is given to those who flew the Hurricanes and Spitfires which won the Battle of Britain and removed the danger of invasion from our shores, it should also be remembered that there were other Hurricane and Spitfire pilots, many, many times their number, who, scattered across the world, over Britain, Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle and Far East and Burma, knew exploits, equally stirring, which perhaps because they were overshadowed by those momentous events of the summer of 1940 are to some degree overlooked. For it is in the nature of things that some particular occurrence, perhaps because of its vital homeland significance or perhaps because by chance it is presented in a form which captures the public imagination, comes to be representative of a whole so that the other parts are overlooked. Such, for example is the story of The Bridge over the River Kwai, the spearhead in the mind one might say of the Burma/Siam railway, again magnificent theatre, which seems to many of the general public to epitomise the lot of the Japanese prisoner of war overshadowing equal or even worse horrors, equal or even greater suffering, equal or even more numerous casualties which occurred elsewhere – as on the march to death through Borneo, on the railway in Sumatra, on the unbelievably awful prison ships, on tiny unheard-of islets in the Banda Sea.

In a small way this book sets out to counterbalance this kind of over-emphasis and will, for example, contain no accounts of Battle of Britain combats. There may be those who will object that a book titled Hurricane and Spitfire Pilots at War which side-steps the Battle of Britain is rather like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. But there is a difference – without the Prince of Denmark there could not have been a Hamlet, whereas if there had been no Battle of Britain, Hurricane and Spitfire pilots would certainly have been at war. Had I taken part in the Battle of Britain no doubt I could scarcely have resisted including a major chapter or two about it. So, in the pages which lie ahead I have used my own wartime flying experiences as a thread on which to string the experiences of many others. I hope by this means to have achieved a more or less continuous narrative rather than ending up, as otherwise I might, with no more than a series of disconnected vignettes recounting random exploits of a few of the many thousands who were privileged to fly these two magnificent aircraft – but I have left more or less untouched a battle already told many times, and many times well told, by those who fought it.

Returning to the example of The Bridge Over the River Kwai, there is one other thing I wish to do in this account and that is to endeavour to correct the false impression (which, I suspect, is held by the majority of the general public) that it was the Spitfire which played the more important role not merely in the war in general but in the Battle of Britain in particular.

Recently my wife and I were staying with friends in Tucson, Arizona, and were taken to lunch in its massive air base and it so happened that in the cloakroom my host and I found ourselves alone with one of the trainee pilots. ‘Have you ever heard of a Hurricane?’ my friend asked, and, without hesitation, the young man replied, ‘Why, yes. That's the aircraft that won the Battle of Britain while the Spitfire got all the credit.’ It was a fascinating remark to hear from the lips of a twenty-year-old American so many thousands of miles away in distance and nearly fifty years away in time. And there was a great deal of truth in it.

Sixty-seven RAF squadrons were involved in the Battle of Britain and of these nineteen were Spitfire squadrons and thirty-five were Hurricane squadrons, the balance being made up of Blenheims, Beaufighters, Gladiators and Defiants. Moreover as Chaz Bowyer (who never writes anything without properly researching it) points out, more than seventeen hundred Hurricanes were flown in the Battle of Britain which was more than all other fighters added together and nearly eighty per cent of the victories claimed were claimed by Hurricane pilots. So far as casualties are concerned four hundred and seventy-one pilots were killed and of these two hundred and forty-two were killed when flying Hurricanes and one hundred and forty-nine while flying Spitfires.

One could go on reeling off figures for there are plenty from which to draw, but it would be to small avail. As already said, the Battle of Britain was to the British public tremendous theatre and for all her rather lesser part it was the dainty Spitfire, beautiful as a butterfly, which stole the show. But if it was (as the young American from Tucson maintained and many others have confirmed) the Hurricane that was largely responsible for victory over the Luftwaffe through the long summer days of 1940, the Spitfire played an essential role and together Hurricane and Spitfire formed a combination greater than its parts. Insofar as their separate roles could be defined, the Hurricane's was to attack the bombers, the Spitfire's to give high cover and deal with the swarms of supporting Me 109s and 110s. But to say this is to over-simplify – Spitfires attacked the bombers whenever the opportunity was presented and the Hurricane, in spite of its lower speed, was in many respects, through its manoeuvrability and its ability to accept punishment, at least as capable of dealing with Luftwaffe fighters and did so. As to which was the better aircraft of the two, well the debate will of course continue until such time (if it ever comes) when interest in the Hurricane and Spitfire dies away, but the remark of the young Tucson pilot prompted me to seek the views of a couple of outstanding fighter pilots who had flown both machines operationally of whom one should be British and the other American. The first of these was one of our best known Battle of Britain pilots, Wing Commander Bob Stanford Tuck, the second Major James A. Goodson, who, with thirty-two victories credited to him, ranks second only to Major John T. Godfrey in the list of ‘aces’ in the Fourth American Fighter Group.

‘Well’, said Stanford Tuck, ‘naturally my immediate love was for the Spitfire because I had more experience on it and it was so beautifully agile, alert, responsive to control. And faster. But the old Hurricane once you got used to it … first time I sat in it I thought I'm going to break my neck if I fall off the seat, dirty great cockpit as you know, in comparison with a Spitfire. But then I did my first flight in it and I thought it a wonderful old warhorse eventually. But hardly to be compared with the Spitfire. But I got used to it. Of course it was very good for attacking bombers because instead of the Spitfire flat nose that went right out, the Hurricane's dropped away so you had much better visibility. And one other also very important point in its favour, I thought, was the two banks of guns one either side, four in each, which gave you a remarkably good concentration of fire at say two hundred yards or whatever you wanted. That was a great advantage. And of course the amount of punishment it could take was incredible. It would come down with great lumps missing from it. And it was more manoeuvrable at low altitudes although awful if you tried to drag it up high when it wallowed around and if you tried to do too tight a turn high up it'd just drop out of it. Whereas the Spits were fine even at thirtythree thousand. No bother. Bit damn cold up there, though.’

Wing Commander Bob Stanford Tuck DSO, DFC and two bars.

Lieutenant-Colonel J.A. Goodson in US Army uniform taken shortly before he was shot down near Neubrandenburg and, as had been his friend Stanford Tuck, taken prisoner by the Germans.

Goodson's views were really pretty close to those of Stanford Tuck's: ‘The Hurricane was a much better gun platform. Of course you know the difference in performance, but when it came to shooting from a Hurricane, number one, if you were in a turn, that enormous nose [of a Spitfire] didn't blank you out. Because to get enough deflection in a very tight turn with a Spit, the nose would blank out the target. And the Hurricane was so stable. The Spitfire, you moved the stick a fraction of an inch and you were doing this …’ and the gesture was expressive! ‘The first few attacks I made, although I was right on top of the target, the Spitfire was jumping around such a lot. And if you got in the other fellow's slipstream, you had a terrible time. And I missed three or four victories which should have been a cinch simply because the Spitfire was bouncing around. You had to get used to that. I've discussed this with Johnnie Johnson [Air Vice Marshal J.E. Johnson] and he agreed. He said it takes time to get used to the Spitfire. You really had to hold it solid. But then, of course, when you'd got used to it, it was all right. Everybody loved the Spit when they got used to it. The Hurricane was an old workhorse if you like, and I loved it and it was a good gun platform and at the right altitude it was more manoeuvrable. Of course the Luftwaffe, when you talk to the Luftwaffe boys, they had more respect for the Spitfire than they had for the Hurricane because the Spitfire could catch them, but they never mixed with either of them in a dogfight. In a dogfight the Hurricane was every bit as good as the Spitfire. It was a great plane, I loved the Hurricane. You know what George Bulman, Hawker's chief test pilot, said of the Hurricane first time he saw it: Well it may not fly but it certainly won't break!’

So there it is. The fighter pilots who flew both machines preferred the Spitfire but saw quite clearly that in some respects the Hurricane was superior and in my submission one can no more put forward a logical argument in favour of one as against the other than one can as to one branch of the services against the next, for, just as the Navy, the Army and the Air Force were essentially complementary, so were the Spitfire and the Hurricane. The one was poetically beautiful and had a superior flying performance; the other was purposeful, robust and astonishingly versatile. Both could, and frequently did, engage in similar types of operations be it aerial combat, reconnaissance, strafing, bombing or tank-busting, but the particular role allotted to one or the other, at a particular time or in a particular place, especially in the early years of the war, often came about not from choice but through the exigencies of the circumstances. Here lay their greatest strength – their versatility; and operating together, as in the Battle of Britain, they formed a partnership never to be equalled by any other air force.

It is an interesting thought that whereas many kinds of aircraft ranged the skies over the battle grounds of World War II, to none could the term ‘ubiquitous’ be applied more aptly than to the Hurricanes and Spitfires. Whereas, according to the field of conflict, the Allies could expect to see different types – over Europe and the United Kingdom, Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs; over Italy and Africa, Macchis and Reggianes; in the Far East, Zeros and Hayabusas – all enemy air forces were, as we will see, to be plagued from first to last by the attentions of these two magnificent aircraft and the men who flew them.

CHAPTER TWO

Personal Involvement

The first aircraft I ever flew in was a Miles Magister, Number L.6912. I was airborne for thirty-five minutes and, fortunately for me, my instructor, one Flight Lieutenant Freeman, was the Chief Instructor at Meir Elementary Flying Training School. Chief Instructors' pupils do not fail. After I had done eight hours and nine minutes dual and was making yet another of my innumerable attempts to perform a decent landing, I suddenly heard an irate shout through the speaking tube: ‘All right, I've got her!’ and I felt the stick wrenched from my hand. ‘What's the matter, man!’ the bellowing continued. ‘Are you scared? Are you frightened when you come into land?’ ‘No, Sir,’ I managed timorously. ‘Well you bloody well ought to be because I am!’ He put her down and we climbed out. He stared at me with a long, baffled look. I knew what was in his mind. With less hours to their credit than I had, quite a number of fellow pupils had already soloed. But Chief Instructors’ pupils do not fail.

‘I don't seem to have the ability to teach you how to fly, Kelly,’ Freeman said after a pause which had seemed endless. ‘Maybe someone else has.’ And he turned on his heel and stalked off to the dispersal hut.

Thereafter I had no less than three further instructors, all sergeant pilots. By the time I had done twelve hours and forty-five minutes dual, everyone else in the course had either gone solo or been ploughed. In desperation I was given a Flight Commander's test. Theoretically this was crunch point. But Pilot Officer Plunkett understood that Chief Instructors' pupils do not fail and wisely passed the buck. ‘I think you'd better have one more try,’ he said. ‘I'll leave it to your instructor to decide.’ So it was back to Sergeant Pilot Eastwood. He gave me an hour and quarter's non-stop dual, surely a Meir record. After the umpteenth landing, he taxied in. In the slough of despond, I undid my straps. ‘Do them up again,’ I heard through the rubber tube. ‘And for my sake if not your own, try not to kill yourself.’

After Meir, I went to No 8 Flying Training School at Montrose. It was a bitter winter. There was snow on the ground when we arrived and as far as I recall there was still snow on the ground when I left for my Operational Training Unit. Our dispersal huts were, I always believed, upended aircraft crates and, never discarding any part of our flying kit, we used to huddle round a ridiculously inadequate stove with numbed hands, feet and noses with only thin wooden boarding to protect us from the howling gales and the blizzards. One night we had such a heavy fall of snow that clearly desperate measures were called for. The Station Commander was equal to the task. He had us all, every man jack: officers, NCOs and other ranks; instructors, pupils, groundstaff, lined up at one end of the airfield. We stretched across its entire width with him in the centre and a few paces ahead of us.

‘Right!’ he commanded. ‘March!’

And march we did, from one end of the airfield to the other with the Station Commander, a brave and unforgettable figure in flying boots, peaked cap and long greatcoat tails streaming out behind, leading us. We looked most impressive, a long unbroken line abreast of perhaps a thousand men. Years later I was to be reminded of our performance when in Doctor Zhivago the Whites poured from the forest across the snowy steppes to attack the Reds. When we reached the end, we turned to survey the results of our endeavours – to be rewarded by the sight of a few footprints in the snow.

We flew Miles Masters at Montrose, an unpleasant and unforgiving aircraft with such a horrible yanking twist when spinning that even the instructors were loath to demonstrate how to recover. I never forgot the sensation nor did I forget low flying. Number 19 in the ‘Sequence of Training’ was Instrument Flying. This was a boring occupation. The pupil practising it pulled a hood over himself and flew around blind on instruments while another pupil acted as ‘Safety Pilot’. My normal companion, a man named Wilson, was as mad as a hatter for whom five minutes under the hood was more than enough. Thereafter we did low flying. Summarized, this consisted of aiming at pairs of trees less than a wingspan apart and at the last moment banking steeply to fly between them or, even more terrifying, doing steep turns at zero feet. I never forgot those steep turns. The wingtip seemed almost to be boring a hole in the ground and the Master at the limit of its patience, juddering on the verge of an incipient spin. Death was half a second distant by the tiniest misjudgement. I was terrified out of my wits. I hated it. But, of course, when it was my turn to do instrument flying, I did the same. There seemed no option. Then one day instead of my usual companion, I had a man named Willis. He no more wanted to low fly than I wanted him to. But such was the form that having heard about the earlier exploits he supposed he should.

Willis's approach was gentlemanly. He found a nice level stretch of ground crossed by stone walls and these he proceeded to, as it were, hop over, like a dignified racehorse remembering its younger days at Aintree. Ahead, a long way ahead, parallel to this series of stone walls, was the edge of a forest of fir trees. As we drew nearer to them, I presumed that Willis would have seen them, as we drew nearer still, hoped he had and finally realised it didn't matter whether he had or not as we were going to go straight through the top of them. Which we did. One moment the blue sky had vanished and all was green and then we were through and all was blue again. In my ears I heard an anguished cry: ‘What are we going to do! What are