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

The only solution was to send half the squadron, one flight at a time.
Splitting the squadron in two, however, was far from ideal.
The pilots hardly needed any more disruption. As it was, the
atmosphere in 609 Squadron was not up to much anyway. As David Crook
had noticed on his return, the squadron had changed a great deal over the
past few weeks. Darley’s arrival had shaken things up. A 27-year-old
regular who had been in the RAF since 1932, he had served in the Middle
East and in France and had also had a stint as an instructor to two other
Auxiliary squadrons. Darley had been unimpressed by the low morale he
had found, and had told the pilots in no uncertain terms that they were a
miserable and ignorant bunch who needed to pull their fingers out and start
learning the lessons from Dunkirk very quickly indeed. The old pre-war
auxiliaries – the weekend fliers – had been shocked.
Now, by evening on this Tuesday, 9 July, the rain had stopped and the
weather had begun to brighten slightly. At around 6.30 p.m., Green section
was ordered to patrol Portland once more. David, Peter Drummond-Hay
and Michael Appleby took off, with Peter leading. Once again, however,
they saw nothing, and after three-quarters of an hour headed back to
Warmwell and circled the airfield. In a rather irritated tone of voice, Peter
asked for permission to land. They were told, however, to continue the
patrol out over Weymouth at about 7,000 feet as a formation of Stukas had
been reported approaching.
They did as they were ordered and David immediately saw a Stuka dive
down through cloud some two miles away. He called up Peter on the R/T,
and they manoeuvred into line astern and turned towards the enemy.
Moments later, David spotted two more Ju 87s. Turning on his reflector
sights, he switched his gun button to ‘fire’, his excitement mounting at the
chance to pounce on these slow, rather helpless-looking machines. Last in
line behind Peter and Michael, he quickly glanced behind him and was
horrified to see at least nine Me 110s some 2,000 feet above beginning to
dive down upon them.
Keenly aware that instead of attacking the Stukas they needed to get
themselves out of there quickly, he shouted, ‘Look out behind!
Messerschmitts behind!’ But to his horror, both Peter and Michael
continued heading straight towards the Stukas. ‘I have never felt so
desperate or so helpless in my life,’ noted David, ‘as when, in spite of my