Listen To RAF Pilots Tell The Story Of The Battle Of Britain

"I was lucky because I had the unique experience of being one of the very few pilots during the Battle of Britain who had flown both the Hurricane and the Spitfire. They were both lovable, but in their different ways – they were delightful airplanes. I tend to give an example of the bulldog and the greyhound, the Hurricane being the bulldog and the greyhound being the Spitfire. One's a sort of tough working animal and the other one's a sleek, fast dog. But I think their characteristics were comparable to the dog world. If anything the Hurricane was slightly easier. It wasn't as fast and didn't have the rate of climb. But during the actual Battle of Britain itself, what really evolved was that the Hurricanes would attack the German bomber formations and the Spitfires, because of their extra capability of climbing, they would go up and attack the German fighter escorts. But in the earlier stages I found that we were getting involved with both bombers and fighters when we were flying Hurricanes." 

"During this period we were constantly patrolling and intercepting. The weather by and large had been very, very good during that summer but there were days when it was poor. On one particular occasion, we had climbed to cloud level… I suppose was certainly not much more than 1,000 feet above Northolt when we took off. I was formatting on the starboard side of the squadron commander and we climbed up through something like 18,000 feet of cloud – just the wingtip. And that was how cloud flying was in those days and so you relied up on your section leader to be leading you because you couldn’t watch your instruments, you just watched his wingtips through the mist. And we came out eventually into brilliant sunshine – I've never forgotten it – and as we came out, one of the chaps of the six of us who got up there (it was a flight) as we came out in that very position, down came half a dozen Messerschmitt 109s slap onto us! So, into the cloud again we went – a highly successful trip that was! But that sort of thing happened."

"I could see the rest of this formation still up above. I thought, ‘Right, I'll climb back up and see if I can pick up a straggler.’ But before I did that, a target presented itself because right down across my front came a single 109. I rolled in after this Messerschmitt half thinking for a moment that it might be a Spitfire because it was so unusual to see a single Messerschmitt by itself. Whether he'd been hit or not, I don't know: he wasn't showing any smoke, he was travelling fairly fast just diving towards the sea as if he was getting the hell out of it and going home, which is probably just what he was doing. Anyway, I got onto his tail, fired a long burst. He slowed up and then he rolled very violently up to the right. As he came out of his roll I was back on his tail close in for another burst, when I could see that his undercarriage was coming down. He was also streaming grey smoke, might have been coolant. We were down to about 1200 feet then over the fields of Dorset, the Purbeck Hills. He started to side slip fairly violently. He did another roll this time with his wheels down and then did a diving, dirt turn down towards the ground. I thought either he's going to go in or he's actually aiming for a forced  landing. I held off and he went round a field, lost speed, side slipped quite sharply and he was obviously a very capable pilot. Eventually he went in to land on this field…"

"I was at about 20,000 feet and I suddenly saw this lone Dornier, how he was on his own I'll never know, but he was off home. So I went after him. Now the drill against the Dornier was that he had a dustbin rear gunner, a dustbin hanging down below the fuselage and you had to fix him first and then close in for the aircraft. This I did cleverly of course, I could see him shooting at me and I closed in and gave him a burst and shut him up, at least I thought I had. I never know to this day whether I did or I didn't or whether someone took his place because as I closed right in on him and started shooting, I suddenly saw his rear gunner shooting back at me with little red sparks – you can see. I didn't pay much attention to it, I just thought he would stop another one and carried on firing for quite a while, quite a long burst, when suddenly I was covered in smoke. To my horror a hole appeared, I was leaning forward of course, as one did, to the gun-sight and a hole appeared in this thing in front of my face. I thought, ‘Good God, I must be dead or something, no blood, no nothing but I'm covered in smoke.’ I thought I was on fire. So I whipped the hood back, undid my straps and started to get out. By this time I'd broken away and was going down-hill. And I was halfway out of the cockpit, when I suddenly saw that smoke was coming from the top of the engine, through the engine cowling, which is where the glycol pipe is, the coolant pipe. It was a really browny colour, it wasn't black smoke and I could smell it too, it was glycol. So I got back in and strapped myself in again, left the hood open and still went rapidly down-hill in case somebody was following me and then started looking for a field and I found a field to land in. I waited until I'd found my field and got down to about 1,000 feet, dropped the undercarriage and did a forced landing in this field no trouble at all. I hadn't even got out of the cockpit before an army jeep with a young subaltern and two soldiers with fixed bayonets came roaring through the gate in a jeep and as soon as they saw it was one of ours they changed their attitude. I got a screwdriver from one of the soldiers and we took the top off and there it was: a bullet had gone through the glycol pipe, the top – the header – there was glycol all over the place." 

"I was flying by myself a thousand or a couple of thousand feet higher than the rest of the squadron and slightly behind, weaving like mad, looking right, left, centre, up, down, mostly back. When suddenly I, out of the corner of my eye, saw a flash over my left wrist and the next moment of course the cockpit was full of flames. The heat was enormous and I'd done two things absolutely instinctively. My left hand had gone to the handle of the hood, my right hand had gone to the pin of my harness and I was pulling with both hands and the next moment I was out in the open air. I'd made no attempt to jump out of that aircraft and of course I was straining back from the flames and the heat. And what I think had happened was, I was doing a left hand turn and my aircraft had gone on turning over on its back and I'd just fallen out! Anyway, there I was falling away and I did actually remember my parachute drill which was of course to wait before pulling the rip cord for two or three seconds. And I pulled it and there was a jerk and there I was floating down with a marvellous canopy and about a couple of miles inland. I could look down and see the land, so I thought at least I won't be going into the sea. Something seemed to have happened to my face – there were bits of skin flapping around my eyes! And my mouth felt very uncomfortable. Of course, I'd been burnt. Well, very shortly after that, I was over the coast and a few minutes later I was a mile out to sea, and a few minutes after that I was two miles out to sea. Well the sea gradually approached and I wasn’t a bit worried because I was coming down, going to splash down, only a couple of hundred yards from a little fishing trawler. Well the splash happened and I got rid of my harness and looked round and there was the trawler and I waved like mad and it eventually arrived and they hauled me on board."

"The first few weeks I don’t remember much about it, really. I was very concerned, very upset, feeling rather annoyed with myself for having been shot down so decisively and… I felt, I don't know, awful feeling really, terribly isolated. I couldn't see, I couldn't hear very well. I couldn't recognise people unless it was somebody very close to me. I felt so deflated just as though half my life had been taken and the half wasn't worth bothering with. It was, I think, the worst period of my life, my friend, the chap I'd joined up with from school, he was in ward three at East Grinstead. He'd been shot down flying a Hurricane. He was in ward three. He'd heard that I'd been admitted to the hospital. He'd sent a message along, 'Could I go and see him?' As I opened the door in ward three I saw what I can only describe now as the most horrifying thing that I have ever seen in my life. That was this chap who had been badly burnt, really badly burnt. His hair was burnt off, his eyebrows were burnt off, his eyelids were burnt off, you could just see his staring eyes. His nose was burnt, there were just two holes in his face. His lips were badly burnt. And then when I looked down his hands were burnt. I looked down at his feet also. His feet were burnt. I got through the door on crutches with a bit of a struggle. This chap started propelling a wheelchair down the ward. Halfway down he picked up a chair with his teeth. That's when I noticed how badly his lips were burnt. Then he brought this chair down the ward, threw it alongside me and said, ‘Have a seat old boy.’ And I cried. I thought, ‘What have I to complain about?’ From then on everything fell into place."

"That was a fight which I ever regretted, because there was a friend of mine. We became friends while in the squadron and he said to me, ‘John, I think that I'm not coming back.’ I said, ‘Look mate don't talk about this, because you put it in your mind. Don't talk about it, you will be back.’ He had a watch and a wedding ring and he took it off and gave it to me because I was, not on standby, I was there just in case, as a reserve. Eventually the four planes, I flew one of them, were called up to standby and eventually scrambled. Anyway he never came back." 

"We were desperately short of pilots. At that stage in the Battle of Britain, August into September, the aircraft had started coming in again and we were having them flown in. But we were short of pilots. We were getting pilots who had not been on Spitfires because there were no conversion units at that  time. They came straight to a squadron from their training establishments. Some of them did have a few hours on the Hurricanes, a monoplane experience, but not on the Spitfire. For example, we got two young New Zealanders into my flight. Chatting to them I found they'd been six weeks at sea coming over. They were trained on some very outdated aircraft, I can't remember, out in NZ. They were given I think two trips or something in a Hurricane, something of that sort of order and they arrived at the squadron. We were pretty busy and so we gave them what was known as a cockpit check. We had by that time a monoplane and we’d give them one trip in that. One of the pilots would take them up to see the handling and brief them on the Spitfire. Then they'd go off for one solo flight and circuit, and then they were into battle. The answer is of course that they didn't last. Those two lasted two trips and they both finished up in Dover Hospital, strangely enough. One was pulled out of the Channel. One landed by parachute." 

"Any pilot that wasn’t fairly experienced was called a sprog, because you weren’t one of the boys. Anyway then you, after a bit you'd done a few hours flying and done a bit of formation flying either with two or three or maybe more and then eventually with the squadron and then they called you operational: that meant you were fit to be killed! The first aerobatics I did was in a Spitfire. Told by squadron commander, ‘Corbin! There’s your aircraft, go and do one hour’s aerobatic flying.’ I thought, ‘Christ almighty! I've never done any aerobatic flying.’ So I thought the loop must be the easiest thing. Of course, in my bloody ignorance and stupidity I went up in this loop and I stalled the bloody thing at the top through going around too fast, it spun out the top…! That was my first experience." 

"Well they were grim: they were grim. I came back one day – I'd landed at Tangmere, I don’t know why – and they’d… they used Stukas in those early days and they caught the whole WAAF contingent changing from one watch to another and they killed a lot of girls. Which really upset people, as much as anything. They were quite nasty attacks; they were very well planned and deliberate attacks, they were hitting hangars, buildings, everything and, of course, personnel. And of course you see there again, this happened more than once in the history of the Battle of Britain. Unfortunately, Leigh Mallory was supposed to patrol our airfields while we were refuelling and quite often busy forming these stupid Big Wings, which meant that a lot of kids were killed unnecessarily really. This is one of these occasions, when the German Stukas had just dive-bombed Tangmere with disastrous effect and killed lots of WAAFs and wounded… and one of the Germans [prisoners of war] was seen to smirk. And the RAF commander hit him very hard to stop him laughing."

"One was called about four in the morning and you went down to dispersal in the half light, and breakfast was brought down to one. And then you generally scrambled about seven or eight o’clock for the first raid. And then you came back, refuelled and rearmed, and they brought sandwiches down to one at the dispersal. And then you got scrambled again and had another battle, and probably a third in the afternoon or evening. And then towards dusk you would ease up and you were on readiness until just after dark. At the end of our tour when there were only three or four of us they were even asking us to night fly which was very hard because we really weren’t getting enough sleep. And this was very hard. In fact one night I went off after a raid and I think I went to sleep in the cockpit because, the next thing I knew, the speed was building up and there were lights in front of me, and I couldn’t make out what it was and I realised I was upside down and diving hard to the ground. And this was entirely due to fatigue. I think the evening raid was the worst in that one had already flown three or four sorties and probably lost three or four pilots, and you were reduced down in numbers. Then you had another go and one was getting tired." 

"You read many stories nowadays of pilots saying they weren’t worried and weren’t frightened when they saw little dots in the sky, which gradually increased in numbers and grew in size as they came from the French coast towards the English, over Kent and towards London. I maintain that if anybody says that they weren’t frightened or apprehensive at such an occasion then I think he’s a very bad liar, because you cannot help but get worried. I openly admit that I was worried and I was frightened at times. As the battle went on and on, we were praying for bad weather – it's the only time in England I think anybody ever prayed for bad weather. But somehow during the whole of the battle we had beautiful weather – sunshine and blue skies. And we prayed mighty hard. And fatigue broke into a chap’s mentality in the most peculiar ways. Some really got the jitters and facial twitches and stuff like that. Others, as I did, I had nightmares at night. I admit it that I used to wake up in my dispersal hut, sleeping near – within 25 yards – of my aircraft and I was night-flying my Hurricane. This went on for quite a long time."

"Oh the great day, the 15th. We went off in the morning. There were two raids that day: the lunchtime and the teatime. They said the Germans were trying to spoil our Sunday lunch and tea – which they effectively did. This was midday and we – the wing – intercepted a raid just south of London. Again, we were taking the Messerschmitts, 109s, on. And after the first pass or two I suddenly saw a Dornier below me. I made an attack but he got into cloud. I had plenty of ammunition, so I flew south a little bit and to my right I saw six single engine aircraft, which I thought were Hurricanes. And we’d always been told that you shouldn't fly around on your own, you should always try and join up with any friendly aircraft. But it was the angle I was looking at: they turned towards me and I turned towards them and suddenly found they were six 109s. Which you might say was slightly embarrassing! We were on about the same level, but four of the 109s dived away – I saw nothing more of them. Of the other two, one climbed up behind me and one climbed up above me in front and the one behind attacked and I turned very violently and he just carried straight on and I didn’t see him again. But the  one who’d been above me I turned and he was coming at right angles and I fired with a 90-degree deflection, saw strikes on his aircraft and he then went down through some broken cloud and crashed near Crowborough."

"I do know that when I saw Heinkels just unleashing their load onto the poor populace of London, it had the effect on me of making me hopping mad. And I think that from that moment on, I had the feeling that there was something much more serious than just having dogfights in the air going on. And perhaps from then on I think it sunk in a bit more solidly than it had done before at that sort of bombing. I would think there's a word you get into it: bloodlust, I suppose. I think that some people don’t like killing anybody. I never thought of killing anybody. I just wanted to shoot them down. That’s how I felt about it."

"I think you'd got this extraordinary morale. I mean, the Germans had the target of 'Deustchland Über Alles and we'll push the Brits into the sea'. But it was an offensive, they were in France, they'd beaten France and the Low Countries, now they were going to attack the hated enemy across the channel but it was still an overseas operation. They'd got to push over and steamroller their operation across this country, which had never been done before. We on the other hand could see it very, very clearly. We were young fighter pilots: we were scarcely schoolboys, but the cockpits of our fighter aeroplanes were all that stood between the invasion of this country by the Germans. We'd seen what they'd done to the nationals abroad. We all lived in this country. Some of us had our homes within sight of our airfields. I used to fly often over Portsmouth in the Battle of Britain and looked down on my home where my family were at Chichester. Tangmere was being bombed ten miles away. It's all a very personal thing. You got into your aeroplane, you felt the fears that everybody fears when they're going off to fight something. But overpowering all that was this feeling that, if you and all your chaps didn't do your damnedest on every operation you took off on, then all these Germans were going to be  flooding over your country, over your homes and destroying everything that you thought was worth preserving. That's what it was all about."