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

was accepted that Dover should no longer be used as an advance base for
destroyers. In fact, Dover was becoming so pummelled that the Air
Ministry issued Fighter Command with instructions to send its fighters out
to sea whenever possible to meet raids heading towards the port – a tactic
Dowding disapproved of.
That same day, 609 Squadron had been scrambled to intercept another
raid heading towards Portland. The pilots were getting fed up with this
shipping war. No more men had been lost since Pip Barran and Gordon
Mitchell had been killed, but convoy patrols were wearing; and when the
Luftwaffe showed up, they always seemed to come out of the sun, with the
advantage of both height and numbers. It was the same on this occasion.
John Dundas could see the enemy fighter escort high above them, but the
squadron was in no position to take them on. Neither he nor David Crook
even saw the bombers. In fact, the Stukas were below them, hidden by
cloud and attacking the destroyer HMS Delight, which had just completed a
refit and was heading to Liverpool. She would not be reaching her
destination, however, as bombs from fifteen Stukas hit her repeatedly. By
the time rescue ships arrived, she was ablaze.
Above and oblivious to this, David and Johnny Curchin were in a vic
with James Buchanan leading. Both David and Johnny were scanning the
skies, keeping an eye on the 109s some distance away and above. Then
David looked behind him and when he turned back saw that ‘Buck’
Buchanan had disappeared. Back down at Warmwell again, neither David
nor Johnny could understand what had happened, although when Buck
never showed up, they came to the conclusion that he must have spotted the
Stukas down below through a gap in the cloud and gone after them. Perhaps
he had had some mechanical failure; whatever the reason, Buck had said
nothing over the R/T and nothing was ever seen of him again. For John
Dundas, it was a particular blow. ‘It’s uncommon,’ he wrote to Margaret
Rawlings that afternoon, ‘how my own best friends in the RAF seem to
have been lost right and left.’
David Crook and Johnny Curchin took off again and searched for over
an hour out to sea, looking for any sign of Buck. They spotted something,
but on closer inspection it turned out to be a downed barrage balloon and
not a parachute. That evening, the mood in the mess had been grim.
Everyone felt depressed and discouraged by Buck’s loss. Like Günther Rall
and the men in III/JG 52, they all felt these recent losses had been