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

aircraft. Every night they were there. Every morning the ground had to be
levelled again.’
Clearly, if anyone needed to worry about morale, it was
Reichsmarschall Göring.
The new plan devised by Park was proving inspired, because it meant many
freshly trained pilots were now being given a chance of survival, while
front-line squadrons were kept at reasonable strength. One of the
beneficiaries was Sergeant Jimmy Corbin. He and three others from his
OTU had been posted to 66 Squadron at Kenley, near Biggin Hill. They all
now had around 160 flying hours, which was a reasonable amount, but
Jimmy only had twenty-nine hours on Spitfires and no proper combat
training at all. Although Jimmy and the other sprogs were keen to join the
rest of the squadron in the air, they were fortunate that Squadron Leader
Rupert Leigh was clearly a humane man and had refused to let any of them
fly operationally. Then, the day after Dowding’s meeting on 7 September,
Jimmy and one other had been temporarily posted to 610 Squadron, now
Category C under the new system, and based in Acklington in
Northumberland. The other pilots commiserated, and both Jimmy and his
friend Nick felt very depressed about it, but it was the best thing that could
have happened to them. A few days after their arrival at Acklington, Jimmy
finally flew operationally, scrambled to intercept a German raider from
Luftflotte 5. The aircraft, when they eventually found it, turned out to be a
Heinkel 115 seaplane down on the water. Jimmy and the other pilots circled
above it, preventing it from taking off until a naval launch arrived and took
the crew prisoner. ‘I touched down on the aerodrome,’ noted Jimmy, ‘and
felt a rush of euphoria. It was good to be back. It was good to be alive.’ It
was the ideal first operational sortie. Jimmy had been given a taste of the
nerves and adrenalin rush that come with combat flying whilst not ever
being in great danger himself.
It was thanks to the new Park Plan that Pete Brothers now found
himself being sent back down to 11 Group, with the purple and white
ribbon of the DFC sewn on to his tunic. He had been lifted from 32
Squadron and posted to 257 at Martlesham, to replace one of the flight
commanders who had been killed. Bob Stanford Tuck had also joined from
92 Squadron as the new CO. It was hard on Pete, but at least he had enjoyed
a fortnight away from the fray – it was more than any of his German