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

surge towards him. Now he was firing, the noise like thick, coarse fabric
being ripped, the guns shaking the aircraft. Smoking fronds of tracer sped
towards their target and he saw the De Wilde bullets sparking as they hit,
and then he was speeding beneath their pale, curved bellies.
Turning on his back, dust from the cockpit floor falling around him, he
pulled hard and then began climbing back up, searching the sky. Aircraft
were now moving in every direction. He pulled harder on the stick, turning
and climbing. Suddenly the bombers had gone, but there were the 109s.
One was away to his right, heading towards him but from the opposite
direction. Tom turned towards it and fired but the Messerschmitt curved
away in a slight dive. Following, Tom dived after him, straining the
Hurricane and willing it to catch up. Giving it another burst, he again saw
bright sparks and then a brief puff of dark smoke, followed by a thin plume
of white and a thicker trail of grey.
The Messerschmitt suddenly looked tired as Tom fired again – and
again. Lilting almost lazily, the aircraft appeared to give up. A puff of
debris exploded into the air, and then, like a dying animal, the
Messerschmitt fell away, the angle of its dive steepening, the trail of smoke
thickening. Tom had his first kill.
But he had been guilty of watching his victim and not his back, a
cardinal sin. Realizing this with a start, he began to climb once more and
spotted a squadron of Hurricanes, Canadians of the newly operational 1
Squadron RCAF. Tagging on behind, Tom followed them as they climbed,
flying north-east. Then, roughly parallel and heading in an easterly
direction was another huge formation of enemy aircraft, the bombers some
1,500 feet below, the fighters about the same level. They were now flying
on a convergent course. Drawing closer, Tom sensed the Canadians were
about to attack but then suddenly half a dozen yellow-nosed Me 109s
peeled off to the right and came around the rear of the Hurricanes.
The Canadians now dived, and Tom followed. He felt as though he were
part of a cavalry charge of the wildest kind, hurtling in a thirty-degree dive
towards the bombers, and then, as they drew near, all the Hurricanes
appeared to open fire at once. ‘Then, when a collision seemed inevitable,
we were through,’ recalled Tom, ‘a chaos of wings, engines, and fuselages
with black crosses.’ In an instant, the bombers were gone and so were the
yellow-nosed 109s, and Tom was diving, the engine screaming, the controls
rattling in his hand, his ammunition spent. Below him the Thames, with