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

warnings, these two flew steadily on, apparently quite oblivious of the fact
that they were going to be struck down from the rear in a few seconds.’
Now the leading Me 110 opened fire and David saw cannon shells and
machine-gun tracer hurtle over his head ‘jolly close’. Turning violently left,
he dived through a layer of cloud just below. As he emerged, now travelling
at more than 400 mph, he saw a Ju 87 just ahead of him, and so opened fire.
It was his first shots in action, but to his surprise, the Stuka seemed to fly
straight through his bullets and then disappeared. Somewhat shaken and
bemused, David now climbed back up through the cloud and spotted
another Messerschmitt some distance above him, so pulling himself into a
steep climb he opened fire again. He was too far away, however, and the Me
110 turned away and vanished into cloud.
But David was now aware of a spectral outline of another aircraft in
cloud flying parallel to him. Stalking him through the cloud, as they
emerged David saw it was a Stuka and that it was now directly in front of
him. He pressed down on his gun button and pumped his remaining rounds
at the machine. To his amazement, bits of the aircraft began flying off,
smoke burst from the engine and then a great lick of flame. Just as
suddenly, the Stuka began plummeting from the sky. David watched it
tumble until the whole machine was engulfed in flames and eventually hit
the sea with a great burst of white foam. The two crew had obviously been
killed; David had often wondered what he would feel should such a
moment ever occur, and was now rather surprised that a sensation of elation
had swept over him – and bewilderment that it had been so easy.
Now out of ammunition and with the Messerschmitts seemingly having
disappeared, he headed back to the coast, repeatedly calling up Peter and
Michael over the R/T, but with no response. Then he suddenly spotted
another Spitfire flying a very erratic course, the pilot obviously desperately
looking behind him. Catching up, David saw it was Michael and together
they dashed back towards Warmwell.
David made a poor landing, overshooting the runway badly and nearly
flipping his Spitfire. When he finally unbuckled his leads and harness and
jumped down on to the ground, he discovered his hands were shaking and
that even his voice was unsteady. Catching up with Michael, he learned
what had happened. Michael had left his radio on ‘transmit’ instead of
‘receive’ and so had not heard David’s warnings. Remembering just in time,
he had heard David shout ‘Messerschmitt’ and had whipped round to see