1960-07-23 — Page 6

Page

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JULY 21,

SCRAMBLE!

The story of the greatest battle

of the War.

Part 1

VE were pretty satis-

WE

fied with ourselves

in 616 (South Yorkshire) Squadron, Auxiliary Air

by HUGH DUNDAS, D,S.O., D.F.C,

HUGH DUNDAS celebrated his 20th birthday during the Battle of Britain, A fall (6ft. 4in.), red-haired Yorkshireman,” he had joined 616 South York- shire Squadron leaving Ho Stowe School in 1938. become one of the RAF's mort brilliant pilots, winning the DSO and bar and the DFC. At 23 he was the youngest Group

on

Captain in the RAF. helging Braybrook paper and ÿ today the", Defence Correspondent Evening Standard. With his wife Rosamond, daughter of Lord Oaksay, and their three children he lives in Surrey.

His hobbies are shoating and

country sportS.

Twenty years after-

and now one of the Few tells of the immortal struggle

Force, when we flew selves, as some

south in our Spitfires on Auxiliary

already.

units

of the

had

other done

August 19, 1940, to re- The atmosphere at Kenley, lieve a battle weary which had been heavily and. squadron at Kenley, in Surrey.

We had behind us a fair re- cord over Dunkirk and a num- ber of isolated victories while protseling North Sea convoys. And only four days before had ripped into a mass of Ger-

we

successfully blitzed

betare,

the day WAS overlaid with weariness. Much of the station. was in ruins.

The Langled remains of pre- clous Spitfires, and Hurricanes lay around the airfield peri- meter.

man bombers during the heavy The fastest

unescorted raids

On

north-

eastern targets, shooling down

several of the enemy

loss to ourselves.

without

Now at last we were to into the thick of t

get

take-off.

placement Spitfire, was fright- ening to see.

and Now at

last we would have our chance to make a big name for our

The fierce rage of the station commander, when a ferry pilot overshot the runway while landing with a precious

MEET MR CLOGGHEAD*

* CLOG; ANYTHING THAT HINDERS MOTION

OR RENDERS DIFFICULT.

Barry App Rabij

Just once Clogghead parked his car in a side road off the main trafle route and thus saved inconveniencing other road users, But as he found that this meant walking a few yards he hasn't done it again.

re

came

I shake Churchill's hand

-and then, 12 minutes later,

I never saw what hit me!

HUGH DUNDAS

many like my own, which went into the line gay and confident, a band of close friends who had flown and trained together for many months, and withdrew as a battered remnant ten days or a fortnight later.

This was

why we won

Our arrival coincided with a short break in the battle. We waited at readiness from dawn to dusk, cager, tense, expectant.

The order to scramble came Winston one evening while Churchill Was visiting the slation. I had just shaken his

the hand when

order through,

I remember Imagining as we sprinted out to our airplanes and streamed down the runway in the fastest. take-off of the squadron's his- fory that the whole operation had been laid on for his benefit.

Panic and lerror consumed I managed to get back into That was the way most of fair needed by anyone who was me and I thought "Christ, this the cockpit, aware Twelve minutes later

that them went. The words "They to live long in action.

And of course there spore were on patrol over

Dover. I

is the end." Then I thought the ground was very close. A never saw what hit them"

we would be an appropriate epitaph fow and certainly they were "Lail-end Was

Charl'e,"

"Get out, you bloody fool; open few seconds more, and the back airplane in the last section the hood and get out."

would be into it. Try again; for many, of the fighter pilots very few-who, when they came of three position consistent With both hands I tugged, try the other side. Up, over of the RAF who died in the face to face with the truth.

bound that it was better to try Scores of the humble, with my status as the youngest the handle where

and out. I slithered along the Battle of Britain

at all costs to stay alive than to known young pilots who, in the pilot in the squadron with fewer locked on to the top of the fuselage and felt myself failing

risk death in battle,

last moments of their lives. flying hours than anyone else.

windscreen. I moved back an

never knew what hit them, had Smoke then jammed. The explosions were so unex- Inch

Some squadrons, of course, succeeded first in scoring a vic pected, so shattering, their poured out through the gap' and effect on my Spitfire $0 der

I could see again. vastating, that I thought I had been hit by our own heavy ack- sick.

I thought it

we

was the end

White smoke filled the cock pit, thick and hot, and I could see neither the sky above nor the Channel coast 12.000 feet

below.

Centifrugal force pressed' me against the side of the cockpit and I knew my airplane was spicming.

the hood

free.

now

Seconds after my parachute opened "I saw. the Soltare hit and explode in a field below. I could see the earth and the A flock of sheep scattered out sea and the sky spinning mound wards from the cloud of dust in tumbled confusion as I and smoke and flame. cursed and blasphemed and pulled with all my strength Lo open the imprisoning hood.

If I could not get out 1

It has never seemed to me that the popular picture of that epic air battle, which started

was

But at the end of it they could nearly all of them claim that they had given a little bet ter than they had got. If they had lost 10 airplanes and plots, they had perhaps destroyed 16 or 20 of the enemy.

20 years ago this month, is a were pre-eminent. That true one the picture of the usually bouuruse they were extory of tro

Because And that, in the end, was all gay group of almost in- ceptionally well let

won by vincible British pilots going of their success, they were kept why the battle, was into battle again and again, longest in the forefront of the Britain shooting down German after battle and indicted the heaviest For a few moments there was German, occasionally falling losses on the enemy. silence and peace and time for themselves only when

the come by sheer weight of num- a sense of release. Then had

ground swung up fast and I bers. remembered to bend my knees

at all costs to stop the spin.

I pushed the stick hard for opened the throttle.

ward, kicked on full rudder, and roll over and bang the No rest for

The

quick-releasU catch ΟΙ my parachute harriess,

the best.

over-

Nothing happened, carth, went, spinning on, came

I lay under a hedge at the spinning up to meet me.

side of a wood Two or three hundred yards away my Spit It is a picture of a merry again, I pulled with

Grabbing the hood toggle fire burned. My lett leg was band of aces, brilliant and de- blood all my sticky with

My left bonair, an image of squadrons might, pulled for my life, shoulder was badly dislocated full of such men as Bob Tuck, pulled, at last, with success. and hurt abominably.

the handsome buccaneer with Errol Flyyn. moustache and pencil-line scar from tample to jaw-bone; or Saltor Malan, the quiet, strong-faced South Afri- can; or Douglas Bader, stomping impatiently on his two in legs and counting every minute on the ground a waste of precious fighting time.

I stood up on the seat and

pushed the top half of my body None too

out

of the cockpit. Pressed

hard against the fuselage, half

in, half out, I struggled in &

| nightmare of fear and confusion

to drop clear, but could not do

60.

Chess News

by LEONARD BARDEN

Solut..n No. 5858 1 QAZ ch. K-R1; 2 KI-B7 ch, K...Kti: 3 KI-R6 4. Chu K-R1; Q-Kt8 ch, Rx S KL-B7 male. "Phaidor's Legacy.TM

London Express Service.

A farmer

friendly

with

You do not see in the popular: of average

old fashioned hammer-gun stood over me and I thought his at- titude none too friendly. Probably he did not much like picture the scores having airplanes making holes pilots who in fact made up the in his fields and frightening his squadrons.

sheep,

There were the very young and over-confident and ex- I was still muttering angrily perienced who had no idea of about trigger-happy ack-ack what it was really all about un- gunners as I was driven away it they heard the shells ripping in an Army ambulance to into their airplanes. Canterbury hospital. Later I

learned the humillating truth: There were the many that I had been shot down by thoroughly competent plats

a Messerschmitt 109 which I courageous and determined, who. had never even seen.

Just lacked the quickness

In such squadrons as these there existed an elite the bravest and the best, who sur- vived longest and carried indi- vidually and with great gallan- try the heaviest burden of the battle.

But most of the squadronis were not like that. There were

LONDON

NEXT WEEK

CROYDON

THE MAN WHO SAVED

THE WORLD

-{London Express Bervice),

DOVER

KENLEY

BRIGHTON

EASTBOURNE

Kaalay we were to get into the thick of it—87 last

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