bentley priory - Spink

THE BENTLEY PRIORY BATTLE OF BRITAIN TRUST APPEAL CHARITY AUCTION
The ones who now set to work on me were prime examples.
They cobbled my face together within the limits of their
dubious skills, which fell far short of those of Dr.
Frankenstein. Then they consigned me to the sick-bay for six
weeks with my jaws wired together.... True to their
reputation, the superannuated surgeons of the air force had
more or less put my face back together back to front. The
sinuses were rendered useless, the nose was flattened and
inoperative. Worst of all, my left eye had floated halfway
down my face, leading to double vision.’ (ibid)
Fighter Command
Fortunately for Kingcome he was subsequently operated on
by Harold Gillies (later Sir Harold) a pioneer of plastic
surgery and by Gillies’ cousin Archie McIndoe (later Sir
Archibald), who was to become the founder of the world
famous Guinea Pig Club at East Grinstead; after six months
of recuperation Kingcome returned to Cranwell; towards the
end of his final term he had to state his preference for
posting, ‘I was already clear in my mind which command I
was going to aim for. I had not joined the R.A.F. to make
myself into a sitting target. If shooting there was to be, then
I was determined that I would be among the shooters, not
one of the shot at... I therefore put Fighter Command down
as first choice, with Coastal Command listed second. Since
there were only five vacancies in Fighter Command that year,
several days of nail biting followed as I waited for the lists to
be posted up. When the list was revealed I found to my deep
content what my new home was going to be: No. 65 Fighter
Squadron at Hornchurch, a front-line fighter station on
London’s eastern rim.’ (ibid)
Kingcome, a newly appointed Pilot Officer, initially flew
Gloster Gladiators with the Squadron, ‘I remained at
Hornchurch from the late summer of 1938 until the Dunkirk
rescue operation in early summer of 1940... The most
significant event at pre-war Hornchurch came about when we
re-equipped from Gladiators to Spitfires, somewhere between
six and nine months before the war began. As one of the first
squadrons to be re-equipped, we gained the huge advantage
that we were already experienced Spitfire pilots by the time
we came to the outbreak of war, and most importantly by the
time of the Dunkirk evacuation. Dunkirk was, indeed, the
first occasion on which the home-based fighters saw any
sustained action.’ (ibid)
Tasked with home defence Kingcome was not sent out with
the BEF, for the battle of France, ‘At Hornchurch the taste
of war at last began to tingle our palates as we anxiously
followed the desperate retreat of the Allied troops as they
were slowly driven into a coastal trap around Dunkirk... My
vantage point for the unfolding epic was in the air above the
beaches... As I sat in the relative safety of my Spitfire cockpit,
it was the clouds that were my main problem. Our orders had
sent us in at 30,000ft, too high for the best of the action,
whereas the Hurricanes were patrolling at 15,000 feet.
Needless to say we cheated and kept slipping down to see
what was happening... the task of providing air cover was
hampered not only by the extent of the cloud cover but also
by its nature. It stood in patchy layers from about 1,000ft
upwards - ideal for marauding bombers but not for our
purposes... allowing little time for interception...
Nevertheless I managed to fire my guns in anger for the first
time, and had the basic fact brought home which I tried to
forget: namely, that while the aircraft in your sites was an
inanimate object, the human beings it contained were frail
flesh and blood. In those early days the German bombers
carried little or no armour, and one of the first indications
that you were registering hits (especially on the Heinkel 111)
came with the spectacle of the guns arching suddenly
upwards as the unfortunate gunners died and slumped
forward on to their weapons.’ (ibid)
On the 2nd June Kingcome shot down two Heinkels and
damaged another over Dunkirk.
92 Squadron - My Squadron
As a result of the rescue operations at Dunkirk 92 Squadron
had lost their CO and two Flight Commanders, ‘Meanwhile
Bob Tuck from 65 Squadron, who was a Flight Commander
by this time, had been further promoted to Squadron Leader
to replace Bushell as CO of 92 Squadron. It was through his
invitation that I now went to fill the gap in leading 92’s A
Flight that had been left by Paddy Byrne. To my mind 92
Squadron always had the special ingredient which sets certain
people or groups apart from the rest - a small, indefinable
quality in the alchemy that gives an edge, a uniqueness. This
quality can never be duplicated or planned for, but somehow
it comes into being and is aptly called ‘spirit’. It always begins
at the top, and 92’s exceptional spirit undoubtedly had its
origins in the outstanding personalities of the original
squadron and flight commanders. It then continued to
flourish in the fertile soil of the rich mix of characters who
made up this exceptional fighting unit: determined,
committed young men, intent on squeezing the last drop of
living from whatever life might be left to them at the same
time as they refused to take themselves or their existence too
seriously.
They came from all walks of life... there was Neville Duke and
‘Wimpy’ Wade, both outstanding airmen who survived the
war with distinguished and much-decorated careers and
became household names as test pilots. There was also Allan
Wright, an ex-Cranwell cadet, extremely bright and
professorial even in those far-off days, but a determined and
successful pilot, and then the youngest of them all Geoff
Wellum, aged 17 and known as ‘Boy’ because of his age. And
there were Don Kingaby and ‘Titch’ Havercroft, two of the
R.A.F.’s most successful NCO pilots, both of whom finished
up as Wing Commanders, Don having a unique distinction in
earning a D.S.O... and three D.F.M.s... Above all, there was
Bob Tuck, extrovert and flamboyant... In the air he was a
total professional, none was more highly respected.’ (ibid)
In June 1940 Kingcome moved with the Squadron to
Llanelli in Wales, for a rest and to look after the West
Country ports and installations; the squadron remained in
South-Wales until the end of August, by which time
Kingcome had another shared destroyed Junkers 88 and one
unconfirmed, ‘early one morning I was out on patrol leading
a section of three of my aircraft from A Flight when we ran
into a lone Junkers 88 on the approach to Cardiff, looking
suspiciously as if it was on a photo-reconnaissance flight. It
was a clear morning without cloud cover, and three Spitfires
coming in on its rear end, the unfortunate German aircraft
never stood a chance. We watched the pilot as he took his
plane down in its terminal dive southwards, pulling up just
before he hit the water and scraping the top of the cliffs on
the north Devon coast, not far from Minehead, before
crashing on to the headland above. He finished up on a fairly
level stretch of scrub and grass, so after we had returned to
base, I climbed into a Magister... and re-crossed the Bristol
Channel to land in the field next to the devastated hulk...
One of the crew still lay where he had died, an enormous
young man... both blond and beautiful. So much of a type
did he seem that I thought at once he must have come
straight off Dr. Goebbel’s drawing board... The recent action
over Dunkirk had borne in on me uncomfortably the human
side of aerial warfare that I preferred to forget, hypocrite that
I was: the signs of German air gunners collapsing over their
weapons as my bullets hit home. Here, on the north Devon
coast, the lesson should have been rubbed in even more
vividly, yet whereas over Dunkirk I had felt genuine remorse
for the lives I was taking and families I was bereaving, here I
felt none.
We had by this stage seen many newsreels of such young men
in action, and here was this perfectly formed young demigod,
apparently personifying all we had gone to war to fight...
faced with this corpse, perhaps I should have brought myself
to feel more Christian, more tolerant, more compassionate, I
could not manage any of these qualities.’ (ibid)
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