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

three had signalled his position, but by the time a naval launch found him,
he had been in the water a long time, with bad burns and bullets through his
legs. As he was lifted aboard, he died. Gordon’s body eventually washed up
on the Isle of Wight some ten days later. For David Crook, this had been a
further double blow. Both men had been close friends; Gordon had been at
school with David, while he had known Pip since first joining 609. Three of
his best friends had been killed in as many days. All had been hugely
popular. ‘In a squadron,’ David pointed out, ‘there are so few pilots, and it
really seems more like a large family than anything else, and therefore three
deaths at once seems very heavy indeed.’ The whole squadron, let alone ‘B’
Flight, seemed to have had its heart ripped out.
George Darley had been right, however. The squadron had not learned
from Dunkirk. ‘Beware the Hun in the Sun’ was a mantra that would be
drummed into every Fighter Command pilot, but was a lesson that the pilots
of ‘B’ Flight had failed to adhere to during their first week of action on the
south coast. That would all have to change very quickly. So, too, would
operating in such small formations. Sending penny packets of fighters was
neither an efficient nor an effective way of protecting the Channel convoys
– but many of the ground controllers were inexperienced too. Like the
pilots, they were learning on the job. Yet pilots also had to understand that
three or five aircraft could not take on fifteen, twenty or even thirty enemy
aircraft; they would have done well to follow Oberleutnant Kühle’s more
cautious approach with 3/JG 52.
This Darley recognized fully, and complained vociferously about the
use of his squadron in such a way. Another problem was the method of
attack. Pre-war practice had led the RAF to develop six types of formation
attacks. They were based on the assumption that they would be made
against unescorted bombers flying straight and level, but as France had
shown, this scenario rarely occurred. When they had spotted the Stukas
over Portland on the evening of 9 July, Peter Drummond-Hay had ordered
Michael Appleby and David Crook into a classic Fighter Attack No. 1,
calling them first into line astern, one behind the other, from which they
were then supposed to peel down, one after the other, have a crack at the
target, then pull up and climb again, ready for another attack if necessary.
Neither Peter nor Michael had looked behind and above them and had paid
the price. The other five Fighter Attacks were progressively more
complicated and time-wasting, and completely inappropriate. Pilots were