Hugh Dundas became fascinated at a young age by war stories of WW1 aces. He left Stowe school in May 1939 to join the Auxiliaries of 616 'South Yorkshire' Squadron. He was rather taken aback when war broke out but it did not affect him much until 616 flew to Rcohford to relieve 74 Squadron in late May 1940. His encounter with the recently-blooded pilots of 74, including the hard, business-like Malan, somewhat dampened his schoolboy spirits, but still did not fully prepare him for his first action, which was over Dunkirk. He had no idea what was going on, except that there were others trying to kill him:

"With a sudden, sickening, stupid fear I realised that I was being fired upon and pulled my Spitfire round hard, so the blood was forced from my head. The thick curtain of blackout blinded me for a moment and I felt the aircraft juddering on the brink of a stall. Straightening out, the curtain lifted and I saw a confusion of planes diving and twisting.
At some stage in the next few seconds the silhouette of a Messerschmitt passed by my windscreen and I fired my guns in battle for the first time - a full deflection shot which, I believe, was quite ineffectual.
I was close to panic in the bewilderment and hot fear of that first dogfight. Fortunately instinct drove me to turn and keeping turning twisting my neck all the time to look for the enemy behind. Certainly the consideration uppermost in my mind was the desire simply to stay alive.
..When, at last, I felt safe enough to staighten out I was amazed to find the sky was not quite empty. At one moment it was all you could do to avoid collision. The next you were on your own. The melee ha broken up as if by magic. The sky was empty but for a few distant specks.
It was then that the panic took hold of me for the second time that day. Finding myself alone over the sea, a few miles north of Dunkirk, my training as well as my nerve deserted me. Instead of calmly thinking out the course to fly to the Thames Estuary, I blindly set out in the rough direction I felt to be right. After many minutes I could only see the waves of the North Sea.
At last I saw two destroyers. The sight of them restored to me some measure of self control. I forced myself to the simple task of working out a course, which panic had prevented earlier. After a couple of orbits I set off to the West and soon the cliffs of North Foreland came up to meet me.
Soaked in sweat I flew low across the estuary towards Southend pier. By the time I came in to land a sense of jubilation had replaced my earlier cravenness. Now a debonair young fighter pilot sat in the same cockpit that has so recently been occupied by a terrified child."


The first thing to make the 19 year old Dundas aware that he was in an air battle was the sight of tracer bullets around him. Totally confused he reacted defensively pulling hard round and this was the right thing to do, keep on turning. Mitchell had seen to it that his Spitfire would keep him alive for as long as he did. That inner wing with its warning stall judder, so hard to build, saved many a fightened young man's life. Dundas reached his physical limits before the machine and would have blacked out between 4-5g. The Spitfire could withstand twice that. Very few novices were able to use this.
When Dundas straightened he saw his attackers for the first time and was passively presented with a target. Firing at full deflection there is no doubt that he would have missed completely. Very few pilots ever mastered any degree of deflection shooting and the overwhelming majority of kills were from with 15 degrees of dead astern.
Suddenly he was alone. At 300 mph an aircraft travels a mile in 12 seconds. A bit of cloud could obscure a furious dogfight a few hundred yards away. Despite claiming to be alone he was still very much in the battle area and was at very great risk of an unseen bounce. When he circled to work out his bearing he was also in great danger from any prowling pair of Messerschmitts in the area.
His recovery, which he treats with irony, is also significant. Mercifully he did not know how much danger he had been in. Novices had a 50% chance of being hit in their first fight and a 50% chance of then being hurt. The self-delusion of youth is also key in enabling him to be able to go back into danger possibly less than an hour later on the same day. Pilots simply had to believe in themselves or they could not go on.
Dundas was lucky to have a large dogfight as his first taste of battle, as the novice is much less likely to be singled out in these. Overall casualty rates were much lower in big fights as well.


Sorry to be a BoB bore... From "The most dangerous enemy".

Still a gripping read.


"Ah yes, Michael (Parkinson)," Bader replied, "But these Fockers were Messerschmitts..."

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