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

pillars of smoke rising into the sky. He began to pull out, huge forces
pressing him into his seat, and his vision beginning to grey. Slowly,
gradually, he straightened out, and caught back his breath. He was still
alive.
It was time to go home.
The yellow-nosed Messerschmitts were from JG 52; almost every German
fighter was in the air that late Saturday afternoon. Ulrich Steinhilper
thought it an unbelievable sight. Flying top-cover, he marvelled to see the
sky thick with German aircraft, the various levels stacked up one upon
another as far as the eye could see. By the time he was within sight of
London, he could see many oil tanks already burning brightly with huge
clouds of smoke reaching high into the sky. He was also surprised to see so
many Spitfires and Hurricanes – if the intelligence being told them by the
High Command was correct, he reckoned there should have been minimal
fighter opposition. As it was, he soon realized he could not afford to take
his eye off the ball for a moment. ‘Everywhere was danger,’ he noted, ‘from
the British fighters, from the heavy flak and from loose barrage balloons.’
One had become detached and was now floating around near their altitude,
burning brightly amidst a cloud of thick, dark smoke.
Also in the thick of it was Siegfried Bethke and his 2nd Staffel. Diving
down on to a squadron of Hurricanes that were attacking the bombers,
Siegfried managed to get on to the tail of one. They had nicknamed the
Hurricanes Hurenkähne, literally ‘whore barges’, and now he opened fire
and saw bullets and cannon strike and then it burst into flames. He watched
the pilot bail out and float downwards as the Hurenkähne dived, scything
through the air, a mass of flame and smoke.
Also entering the fray were the Hurricanes of 303 Ko ciuszko Squadron.
The Poles had impressed in the first few days in action, but much to his
great frustration Jan Zumbach had still to open his account and had begun
to worry that he was somehow jinxed. Ordered into the air around the same
time as 249 Squadron, they had climbed to 20,000 feet, patrolling the north
of London. It was the cotton wool bursts of flak over the Port of London
that had alerted Jan to the attackers. Beneath them, to their right, he now
saw the large formation of bombers and their fighter escorts. Jan expected
to dive down upon them immediately in an effort to break up the bombers