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

three Me 110s bearing down on him. Fortunately, he had managed to escape
unscathed – but he had not seen what had happened to Peter, of whom there
was still no sign.
As soon as their Spitfires were rearmed and refuelled, six of them took
off again to look for Peter, but they saw nothing. Just a wide empty sea.
Inexperience, and over-excitement at seeing the Stukas, had almost
certainly led Peter to leave his R/T in transmit mode too. It had proved a
fatal mistake.
Having returned to Warmwell, they then took off once more for Middle
Wallop just before dusk. Arriving back, David went up to the room he had
shared with Peter. Everything looked exactly as it had been left; Peter’s
towel still hung on the window where he had hurriedly left it eighteen hours
earlier. ‘But he was dead now,’ noted David. ‘I could not get out of my head
the thought of Peter, with whom we had been talking and laughing that day,
now lying in the cockpit of his wrecked Spitfire at the bottom of the English
Channel.’
Just two months earlier, David had flown his first flight in a Spitfire
with barely a care in the world; war had seemed so far removed from the
experience. Now, however, the reality was beginning to bite. The next
morning, before David had left for London, Pip Barran, the ‘B’ Flight
commander, had been called to the telephone. It had been Peter’s wife; the
telegram had not yet reached her so she was ringing wondering what the
arrangements were for his leave that afternoon. Of course, Pip had then had
to tell her the news. ‘It all seemed so awful,’ wrote David. ‘I was seeing for
the first time at very close quarters all the distress and unhappiness that
casualties cause.’
Later that day, David bade farewell to the rest of ‘B’ Flight and headed
up to London on his own. He would not see either Pip or his other good
friend, Gordon Mitchell, again. The following day, while David was with
his wife, ‘B’ Flight was scrambled to go to the aid of another Channel
convoy that was being attacked twenty miles to the south of Weymouth.
Just five aircraft against a massive formation of Stukas and protective Me
110s never had much of a chance, although it seemed that once again, as
three of the five had dived down on the Stukas, the pilots had not heard the
warnings of the other two that Me 110s were diving down on them. What
happened to Gordon Mitchell, no-one was sure. Pip had headed back to the
coast, smoke trailing and his airscrew stopped. Bailing out, the surviving