For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II. Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard
we had more time off immediately after war started than we had before.
Early days in Digby in wartime, our main commitment was convoy patrols. We used to fly out, and the operations room guided us out to a convoy moving either northwards or southwards on the North Sea off Norfolk and Suffolk. We would patrol seawards of them; they usually had an escort of a couple of destroyers or armed ships of some sort. We patrolled for probably an hour, three of us in a loose formation, and then we’d be relieved by another section, as they were called, and we’d go back and refuel and wait for our next turn. We were told by the Navy we mustn’t come within, I think it was, 1,000 metres otherwise they would open fire and, yes indeed, they did from time to time. During clear air we didn’t see any hostile aircraft. In poorer weather, with a lot of comparatively low cloud, yes, you would see that there was something going on, because the Navy opened up; we might get a sight of a hostile aircraft, but it would immediately disappear into cloud.’
Although Roy McGowan doesn’t mention it in his tape, the Squadron was sent to Norway in late May 1940 and lost many of its men and planes when, during the evacuation shortly afterwards, the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious was sunk.
‘Anyhow, later – I guess by mid-June – things started hotting up. We were very much outnumbered in those days. The Operations Room controller would scramble us and climb us to 15,000 feet or something like that. Initially in sections of three, and then a flight of six aircraft and eventually, because of the numbers of enemy aircraft, whole squadrons and later the whole wing. It took time to form up but of course you had to get some numerical strength.
I made many interceptions; I fired my guns on pretty well every time we took off. I didn’t get any confirmed victories, but we were very involved. We would see aircraft smoking, we would see pieces coming off. The pattern was that we in the Hurricanes would attack the bombers whilst the Spitfires, with their ability to climb faster and higher, they would go higher and get involved with the escorting Luftwaffe fighters.
We were still operating from Digby in Lincolnshire and the Air OC of 12 Group, Leigh-Mallory, Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory, conceived this “big wing” theory. The problem was getting it formed up in some kind of order before we went south to make an engagement. It wasn’t anything like as manoeuvrable as a smaller operation of 12 aircraft. We would go down and most days often go down to an 11 Group airfield in the immediate London area, land there and refuel, and do operations from there, and then we’d return to Digby in Lincolnshire.
However, in September some time we were posted to a little airfield called Stapleford Tawney, which was a satellite of North Weald, which was one of the well-known Sector Fighter Stations. Stapleford Tawney had this sloping grass airfield and I recall Hillman Airways, a pre-war small Civil Airline, they used to operate London-Paris out of Stapleford. With our Hurricanes it was a little bit of a problem; irrespective of wind direction you certainly couldn’t land downhill, so often you had to make cross-wind landings and monoplane fighters weren’t too happy with a strong cross-wind landing. However, we coped.
On one occasion, I guess it was the Sunday before 15 September, which was also a Sunday, I got shot up quite badly. I was losing glycol, the engine temperature was going up pretty rapidly, we were down somewhere in the Kent area, I had to get down quickly before the engine packed up, and I landed at Biggin Hill. Looking down at Biggin I saw all kinds of bomb holes; I selected a line between bomb holes, landed safely and I quickly taxied in, because by then the glycol was well over the permitted temperature, and switched off. Nobody came out to meet me, no attendants whatsoever near the tarmac. However, an airman ran out and said, “Quick, get down, we’re being attacked!” So we got into a slit trench and, sure enough, Biggin on that day, Sunday, was being very, very heavily bombed. Their transport, I recall, their Transport Section, had a direct hit; quite a number of ground crews and airmen and WAAFs were injured and killed.
I then found I had an unserviceable aeroplane and I had no way of getting a ride by a vehicle, by a transport vehicle or anything else, and certainly not by an aeroplane, to get back to my own station, Stapleford Tawney, north of London. I was south of London. The end result was I hitch-hiked; I hitch-hiked up to the southern end of London, I took a tube across London. I called my own unit from the most northerly point and they came and picked me up. That was the way of life in those days. I guess I should mention that in this journey back to Stapleford I carried my own parachute on my back, not open of course, and so was ready to get into the air again.
Moving along, that following week we were very hard worked; we were doing three or sometimes four patrols a day or flights a day, up to two hours in length, often making an interception and having an engagement.
For me, 15 September was a day I certainly will never forget. I think I was on my third flight of that day. Around midday we joined up with another squadron, probably two squadrons, of 24 aircraft climbing up into an enormous raid which was coming over. We made an interception. The pattern was with these that when you came across these bombers with the Hurricanes you could get in perhaps two good attacks, by which time the bomber formation would break up, your own comrades would break up and you’d find yourself in a sky full of single-engined aircraft of both nationalities, German and British, and you’d have to try and make some reforming if you had any ammunition left. During that act, on that day, I suddenly was shot at and in no time my aeroplane was on fire, burning merrily, and I got out very smartly. I recall that I was probably about 12,000 feet and I had in mind, right, I won’t open my chute immediately – there was some scattered cloud – I’ll wait until I get just about to the bottom of the cloud layer, which might be 5-6,000 feet, so I wouldn’t be a target, I wouldn’t be shot at, and this is what I did.
I opened my parachute around 5-6,000 feet. I looked around at myself – my trouser legs were in tatters from having been burned, I didn’t have shoes any longer. Contrary to all advice – like most other pilots, because we were searching and you can’t search with a pair of goggles on – I had not had my goggles over my eyes. I realised I had some burning in my face; the oxygen mask, of course, is round your nose, and as soon as the aircraft caught fire that oxygen burned up, so I was quite damaged with burns and so on. I saw I was coming down to land in the sea. I landed in the sea perhaps a mile, perhaps a little less, from the mouth, the southern mouth, of the Thames estuary, and I had a Mae West on and I just sat in the water and saw a small craft coming towards me, a power craft, and they pulled me aboard and they saw I wasn’t in good shape. I, too, saw I wasn’t in good shape. They got me ashore, they put me into a vehicle and took me to a First Aid Post in the Isle of Sheppey, north of Rochester, and called Rochester Hospital. They said, well, do nothing with this man, bring him here immediately. So in a private car I was taken to Rochester Hospital.
In Rochester Hospital I was immediately put in the theatre and given a full anaesthetic and had my burns worked on. The following day I learned that – I didn’t ever see him – but I learned that a Luftwaffe pilot was also a customer at Rochester Hospital. I was extremely well looked after at Rochester Hospital. I was treated with something called gentian violet, which was a dark dye, and that was put all over my face and my hands and my legs. I had a few shrapnel injuries upon my legs.
Eventually, after several weeks, I guess, a civilian surgeon was going around South East England looking at RAF casualties and evaluating them. He decided that I should go up to RAF Halton, which was the hospital near Aylesbury. I and two or three other fellows were transported up there by ambulance. I recall we drove through the centre of London, saw all the damage that was being regularly inflicted, stopped at a local pub and had a glass of beer brought out to us in the ambulance and off we went again to Aylesbury and into the Halton Hospital.
From there, the New Zealand burns specialist, Archie Mclndoe, decided that I should go to his hospital in East Grinstead for skin grafts. So I guess it was in November 1940 I went down to East Grinstead where a whole mass of mainly RAF people suffering burns, some away back to the early days of the war in France, were all being attended by Archie, as we all called him, and he did wonderful work. He recognised not only the necessity for surgical work, but also rehabilitation. He got on to all the families in the East Grinstead area – the solicitor belt as it was called – and said to them, look, you’ve got to make these fellows, who are badly disfigured, more conscious of everyday life and invite them