Part 15.

July, 1940

A NIGHT FIGHT

BY AN AUXILIARY SQUADRON LEADER

The following story of a night combat is told by a young Squadron Leader of the R.A.F. who was awarded the D.F.C

Night fighting is a fascinating game. It is rather like a game of rather noisy hide-and-seek or, better still, it is just like a game my brother and I used to play some years ago. We used to climb down into a large maze of stone quarries near our home and then start stalking each other. Our ammunition was sharp stones and the loser the first one to be hard hit. We used to play for hours wriggling on our stomachs slowly gaining a good position and then a hard throw. My brother could throw a cricket ball almost a hundred yards, so the tension was considerable.

The other night at midnight the operational phone rang and I received orders to patrol a certain line. As I ran out to my fighter plane I could hear the sirens wailing in a nearby town. There was no moon and quite a lot of cloud.

I took off and climbed through the clouds. I was excited, for I had waited for this chance for the previous three nights, sitting in a chair all night dressed in my flying clothes and one of those yellow painted rubber life jackets which we call Mae Wests. They are painted yellow so that if we are swimming for hours we can be more easily seen in the water. I had waited from dusk to dawn but nothing whatsoever would come our way, but this night they obviously were coming.

I climbed to my ordered height and remained on my patrol line. After about an hour I was told by wireless that the enemy were at a certain spot flying from N.W. to S.E. Luckily I was approaching that spot myself. The searchlights which had been weaving about beneath light cloud suddenly converged at a spot. They illuminated the cloud brilliantly and there silhouetted on the cloud flying across my starboard beam were three enemy aircraft.

I turned left and slowed down slightly. One searchlight struck through a small gap and showed up the whole of one plane. I recognised the plane as a Heinkel 111. One of the enemy turned left, I lost sight of the other. I fastened on to the last of the three. I got about one hundred yards behind and below where I could clearly see his exhaust flames. As we went out of the searchlights and crossed the coast he went into a shallow dive. This upset me a bit for I got rather high, almost directly behind him. I managed to get back and opened my hood to see better. I put my firing button to fire and pressed it. Bullets poured into him. It was at point-blank range. I could see the tracer disappearing inside but nothing seemed to happen, except he slowed down consider¬ably. I almost overshot him, but put the propeller into the full fine and managed to keep my position.

I fired again in four bursts and then noticed a glow inside the machine. We had been in a shallow dive and I thought we were getting near the sea, so I fired all the rest of my ammunition into him. The red glow got brighter. He was obviously on fire inside. At five hundred feet I broke away to the right and tried to follow but overshot, so I did not see him strike the water. I climbed and at a thousand feet pulled off a parachute flare. As the flare fell towards the sea I saw the Heinkel lying on the water, a column of smoke was blowing from his rear section. I circled twice but there was no movement; no one tried to climb out so I turned and flew for home.


A Hurricane night-fighter taxis to take off.