The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

fire, he dropped his bombs and then crashed. Still alive, he was dragged out
of the wreckage and taken into custody. ‘You British are mad,’ his captor
told him. ‘We capture the bridge early Friday morning. You give us all
Friday and Saturday to get our flak guns up in circles all round the bridge,
and then on Saturday, when all is ready, you come along with three aircraft
and try and blow the thing up.’ Garland and his observer, Sergeant Gray,
who were both killed, were awarded the RAF’s first VCs of the war.
At Méharicourt, Pilot Officer Arthur Hughes had still not been sent out
on a reconnaissance mission; he was one of the lucky ones. Three out of
four aircraft sent out on the 11th had not returned. By the evening of the
12th, 18 Squadron had made seven individual recces since the battle began.
Of those, four crews had not been seen since, two had force-landed and the
other had been shot at. ‘And I am next on the list,’ noted Arthur. ‘I am not
really panic stricken, but at intervals a horrid fear seems to seep into my
entrails and my stomach grows hollow.’ Who could blame him?
The RAF fighter pilots were feeling slightly more upbeat: at least they
had some speed and firepower on their side, even if their Hurricanes were
not as fast as the Messerschmitt 109s nor their eight Browning machine
guns as powerful as the German cannon and machine-gun combination.
Most of the French and British fighter squadrons were putting in decent
numbers of claims. Indeed, although the Luftwaffe had not suffered
anything like the losses of the opening day, sixty-eight aircraft had been
destroyed on the 11th and fifty-four on the 12th. Another thirty-five were
shot down on the 13th. But the Allies were losing similar numbers too, and
it was not only bombers that were being knocked out of the sky.
By the 13th, Billy Drake’s personal score was four and a half confirmed
kills and one unconfirmed, making him very nearly an ‘ace’, an accolade
that was awarded after five confirmed victories. After only ten minutes’
flying, he developed a problem with his oxygen supply and so over the R/T
he told the others he was returning to base. He was on his way, at a height
that did not require any oxygen, when he spotted a formation of Dornier
17s. Getting in behind them, he fired off a short burst and saw one erupt
into flames and begin to fall away, when suddenly he heard a loud and
stunning bang and in an instant flames had started to engulf his Hurricane.
Frantically glancing round, he saw a Messerschmitt 110 on his tail and, to
his horror, still firing.