We Were Looking for Trouble & Found It!

Here, in his own words, is the dramatic account of an aerial dogfight from the point of view of a fighter pilot. Told by an R.A.F. Squadron Leader who won the D.S.O., it appeared in the American magazine "Life."

WE got a "Stand by" early in the morning of the first day of the Dunkirk evacuation, and at 9 a.m. we got our orders. There were 12 of us and, climbing to 20,000 feet, we headed across the North Sea.
We kept well together, but, of course, kept radio silence. We knew every inch of the coastline to which we were heading, but even without that knowledge there was no mistaking Dunkirk. Only a few minutes after leaving Britain and at our height we could see the pillars of smoke rising from the burning town and the villages all the way up from Calais.
At 4,000 ft. we were beetling along still looking for trouble when 1 saw a Hun formation of about 60 machines, 20 bombers and 40 fighters at about 15,000 ft. and. cursed the height we had lost.

The fighters, mostly Messerschmitts, heeled over and came screaming down at us and the next second we were in the thick of it. That attack developed like most dog-fights into individual scraps. It was at about 10,000 ft. that I found myself on the tail of my first Hun, a Messerschmitt 110.
Most of my instruments I remember had gone crazy in the course of the violent manoeuvring. I remember particularly that my gyro was spinning wildly and the artificial horizon had vanished somewhere into the interior of the instrument panel, calmly turning up its bottom and showing me the maker's stamp and the words Air Ministry Mark IV or something like that.
Down went the Messerschmitt again with me close on his tail. With the great speed of the dive my controls were freezing solid, and I was fighting the stick hard to bring the Hun up into the centre of my sights. When you get them there they stick, in fact, it's hard to get them out. Once there you can hold them for ever.
I thumbed the trigger button just once, twice. I smelt the cordite fumes blowing back from my Brownings as the 1,200 squirts a minute from each of them went into him. I saw the little spurts of flame as the tracers struck. For a fraction of a second I saw the back outline of the .pilot's head half slewed round to see what was after him before, presumably, he ceased to know.
I looked around for the rest, but they were gone. My own scrap had brought me about 50 miles inland, so I turned and headed back, noticing with a shock that my petrol reserve was just enough to get me home, provided that I ran into no more trouble.


Out over the North Sea and on the way back to the station I clicked on the radio and called up the pilots of my squadron one by one: “How are you? Did you get any'?â€￾ The first one came back jubilantly he had got one. Then the rest… all of them had got one or two.' "Two didn't answer…
The next day I saw some Junkers guarded by Messerschmitts bombing a torpedo boat and some small rescue craft packed with troops far below. Chancing the anti-aircraft fire from the torpedo-boat, we plunged in. The Huns never saw us coming. Every one of us got one in that first dive.

Stick back and screaming up again, we re-formed and then down once more. This time the Huns had scattered, and it wasn't so easy. I got on to one Messerschmitt who was scramming for home and got a squirt in. There was the usual burst of smoke from his engine as he went down. I followed and im glad I did. Biding my time I let him have it. .
I didn't know then how the rest of my squadron had got on with the Messerschmitt swarm they had got into above Dunkirk, but on the way back the first to answer my radio call said that he had got four. Then he suddenly said, "Oh, hell, my engine's packed up." Then, "I'm on fire."
There was silence for a second or two and he said, "Yippee! There's a destroyer downstairs. I'm baling out" A second later I heard him mutter, "But how?"
It is, as a matter of fact, not easy to bale out of a Spitfire. The best way is to turn her over on her back and drop out through the hood if you can. That, we found out later, was exactly what he had done.

 

Yes the title sure did sum this one up. You definitely found what you were looking for. It is good to know that many people did what they were suppose to and risked a lot to do it as well.