Dan Snow's History Hit - The Battle of Britain

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

15 September marks Battle of Britain Day when the Luftwaffe sought a final decisive final battle over the skies of Britain with the RAF. In a day of costly fighting, nearly 60 German aircraft were shot down and over 100 aircrew lost. From this point onwards the Luftwaffe, unable to sustain such heavy casualties, would only attack at night and it became clear to German High Command that air superiority over Britain was out of reach. Two days later Hitler indefinitely postponed Operation Sealion the planned invasion of the British Isles effectively ending the invasion threat. To mark this anniversary we have gone back into our archive and dug out a very special podcast with Wing Commander Thomas Neil. Tom, who sadly passed away in 2018, was one of the few to whom so many owed so much, and he talks to Dan about his experiences in the Battle of Britain.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. It is the 15th of September and this podcast is first broadcast and that means it is Battle of Britain Day. It's the day on which a particularly large-scale battle took place between fleets of German fighters and bombers and British interceptors over London in particular. the Luftwaffe launched its largest and most concentrated attack of the Battle of Britain so far against London in the hope of drawing out the RAF, in the hope of teasing out what they thought were those last few fighters and annihilating them. It's that classic German doctrine, have them on land or in the air, seek decisive battles, seek battles of annihilation. With the RAF destroyed, then Britain could be brought to its knees, forced to a political compromise or perhaps invaded before the autumn weather made that impossible. Something like 1,500 aircraft in all took part in the battle making one of the

largest aerial battles at that point in history. Around 60 German aircraft were destroyed, 20 or so were very badly damaged, and they lost over 100 aircrew killed, captured, and wounded. It was simply too high a price to pay for the German Luftwaffe. And a day or two later, Hitler formally postponed his invasion of Britain, and his thoughts were already turning to the East 1941 and his great showdown with Stalin's Russia. Britain would live to fight another day. Now, to mark this anniversary, I'm going to replay one of the old podcasts, way back from the archive. I haven't had this one on for years.

It's very special because it's an interview with Tom Neill, a.k.a. Ginger Neill. He won two Distinguished Flying Crosses in in the second world war he was one of the last of the few he was an ace who fought in the battle of britain and he became something of a spokesman for the pilots of fighter command the few i'll be posting pictures of his logbook later on my social media feeds so check out the history guy on instagram and twitter we'll stick up on the history hit facebook page as well. His logbook for these days is absolutely extraordinary. Tom fought in the Battle of Britain.

He then went to Malta and ended up having, well, actually an interesting little postcode to his Second World War career on D-Day as well. A fascinating human being, a wonderful man who very, very sadly died just a day or two short of his 98th birthday in July 2018. Sorely missed. You can watch my interview from which this podcast is taken at History Hit TV. It's the world's best history channel. You simply go over there, you watch documentaries all about history made for proper fans of history like you and me, folks. Go to historyhit.tv, sign sign up now you get 30 days for free

and you can watch tom neill taking me around his house showing me some of his mementos his logbook and his pictures and telling me what it was like in that long summer of 1940 extraordinary thing so head over to historyhit.tv but in the meantime have a listen to the wonderful Tom Neill. Did you always want to be a fighter pilot when you were young? No, no. I was born in 1920. The only son, indeed the only child of Thomas and Florence Neill, who were born 1890s 1991

they died in the 70s so they were married for 60 odd years I was the only child as I say and we had the most loving wonderful family and

we lived in those days in the north part of Liverpool, the rather fashionable Bootle as it was then. It's less fashionable now, which was full of big ships, the Mauritania, the Aquitania, the Titanic, Lusitania, that sort of thing. And they all moved in 1927, I think it was to Southampton, because you couldn't dredge the Mersey to allow people to go ashore from other than lighters going backwards and forwards from the ship. So the White Star Line and the Cunard Line moved all their ships to Southampton.

So a lot of the town was lost in terms of business. And I loved the town at Liverpool in those days. And I was fortunately or unfortunately in Bootle when it was bombed in 1941. They had seven nights of terrible bombing when the place was razed to the ground. And I well remember it indeed because we were going out to Malta. We didn't know we were going out to Malta in those days, but to the Middle East. And we were going on board the Furious,

the aircraft carrier Furious. We were going to transfer to the Ark Royal, but what it ends. We didn't know we were going to do that because the thing about being in the RAF services or indeed any British service, you're never told what you're doing. And it's all a great secret.

The Germans know exactly what you're going to do, but you're never told. But anyway, that's about Liverpool. I loved Liverpool, Bootle, and then… But why an aviator? What was it about flying? Just coming to that, the first ten years of my life, obviously, we got to 1930, which was Amy Johnson went to Australia in 1930, as I remember, or perhaps you don't remember, it was before your time. But she did it on a Gypsy 1 MOF, a Gypsy DA-60.

It took her nine days and some hours. She was a wonderful girl. Actually, she was no spring chicken because she was 37 and a schoolteacher at the time. And I met her many times during the war. And she killed herself, you probably know, or people should own her, on the Thames Estuary in 1940. I well remember it because I was one of the people in horrible weather who spent some time trying to find her because he was in a little two-seater.

I can't remember what it is. Anyway, so she went. And I suppose that raised my interest in flying. And I was also a choir boy. My parents were quite religious in a sort of quiet sort of way. They were never pious. But I was at the local choir, Christ Church Choir. And we were a wonderful choir there.

And we used to sit in the choir stalls eating our milk flakes and Mars bars because they'd just come out in the early 30s. Topham Seach. And we used to talk about aeroplanes, about SE-5s and Bristol Bulldogs and all sorts of things like that. And I became interested in aviation,

so much so that I let my parents know that I wanted to join the Air Force when I was old enough. And Hitler came round in 1932, which you will know or perhaps you don't know. And the Spanish Civil War happened in 1932, which you will know or perhaps you don't know. And the Spanish Civil War happened in 1936 or thereabouts. And I was 12 in 1932. But I remember quite distinctly Hitler being voted as Chancellor in Germany and beginning to take an interest

in air forces and things like that because Germany wasn't allowed take an interest in air forces and things like that because Germany wasn't allowed an air force in those days. And then I let my parents know that I wanted to join the air force. My mum, my one woman, would hear of it because she said she'd met a lot of our Royal Flying Corps officers in 1914, 16, 18, and they were all drunks. And he didn't want his son to be a drunk. I went in the Air Force.

That was absolutely verboten. I would forget about that. I then wanted to go into the Air Force as a short service commission, which was four years later, six years. But they wouldn't hear about that because what was I going to do when I'd finished in the Air Force with my four-year commission? It's 22. It's a ridiculous proposal.

I then said, well, I wanted to join the Auxiliary Air Force, which was 611 Squadron at Speak or John Lennon Air Force, as was 611 Squadron at Speak, or John Lennon Air Force as it is now. And I went down to an interview, but they didn't think I was posh enough. I didn't think because I didn't have a car. There's a reason for that. And that was a rule out of order. And I joined the Volunteer Reserve in 1938 when I was 18. Was your mother happy about that or not?

No. They knew nothing about airplanes. The only relationship with anything to do with the air was my father was in the artillery. He was a Scottish regiment before the war. He watched a German crash to his death and managed to purloin his flying boots, which appeared in the top room of our house

for many, many years in a tin box. And until, I think it was 1941, when my parents' house was bombed in London and my father complained that he thought it was the Fritz coming to reclaim his football. But he wished he didn't have enough of the house about so much in the so doing. So that's just by the way. So I joined the Volunteer Reserve in Manchester on my 18th birthday. And I was inducted, or whatever the word is.

I think it's in October. And I was told that my flying career had begun. And I went down to a place called Barton Airfield, which still exists. It's a little 500-yard patch of grass. And we were flying Gypsy 1, the same aircraft that Amy Johnson flew to Australia in 1930. So it was a pretty inauspicious arrival into the Air Force. inauspicious arrival into the Air Force. And eventually we transferred into Tiger Mots after a long time.

And having joined in July, the weather was so bad. And this is neat bringing up because people this day and age with the Clean Air Act and things like that, they have no idea what Britain was in 1938, 1939. First of all, 5,000 engines smoking chimneys into the air all over Britain. Everybody had no teeth to remember that. You probably don't.

Because when people, you know, achieve the age of 21, their parents bought them a set of false teeth because all their teeth had gone, you know. Too many sweets. Absolutely. Whatever it was, they were chewing. But nobody had good teeth in those days. All you see on television nowadays

is people with beautiful teeth, and all somebody else's teeth. But in the 30s, and of course if you went in the train, of course you had to go everywhere by train, you got in the train and you were ankle deep in fag ends. Everybody smoked. Pipes, cigars, fag ends, everywhere. Britain was filthy, and particularly in the north. And that is one of the recollections of my early childhood, how Britain was beautiful because there was no minerals in those days.

You had to rotate your crops so that four out of five heap frills in Britain was a pasture which made all the difference to Britain as it then was. But anyway the reason I'm telling you these little stories is that between October 1938 and the summer of 1939, I flew nine hours. No. Because we used to fly every weekend and the weather would be bad. You wouldn't be able to fly for 16 different reasons. And we very rarely got any flying at all. So by the time we come to the summer of 1939,

I'd done about, I was able to go solo. And it took me 16 hours to go solo. And then, of course, the war came. Poland was invaded. And the war started in September. I remember standing, there were 60 of us in the VR in Manchester, on a Sunday morning, listening to Mr. Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, saying in sepulchral terms,

we are now at war with Germany. And the war started. And everybody, you know, put their fingers in the air expecting the bombs to occur. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. You were all young men. How old were you at the outbreak of war?

Well, when I joined the Air Force, I was 18. Yeah. And I was 19, 1939, just. Were you excited? No. You weren't excited? Well, yes, we were. But we didn't know quite what we were excited about. We were young people, as you were, and 19.

And as you were in 1919 and as you'll hear in a moment, I'm not going to speak about it, I was had achieved my first interception when I was 19 in Spitfires, or in Hurricanes. That was in July

1940. But in September 1939, you must have felt well, I wanted to be a fighter pilot, and here I am. I can't believe it. Now, this is rather interesting because when the war started, first of all, our flying training that period had been absolutely primitive. So we were sent up to Montrose in Scotland to number eight FTS at Montrose. And Montrose Airfield was just about as old an airfield as you can possibly find, a grass airfield.

And we were flying Hawker Harts, Hawker Furies, Hawker biplanes, you know. And we had six months, wonderful months there. And even then, I think I then had done 156 hours total. But I wasn't in any way well trained. I wasn't trained at all. I could just fly an aircraft and that was that. I forgot what I was talking about. The excitement of, I said, did you always want to be in the Air Force?

I was delighted to be in the Air Force. And, oh, it was a great thrill. I always wanted to be in the Air Force. I wanted the uniform. I wanted to look smart. I wanted to look like the RFC episode, like, you know, like Ball and McCudden and McManick and all these exciting people.

Oh, it was a wonderfully exciting time. We didn't know why we were excited, being excited, but it was a great thrill, great thrill. Were you aware of the big strategic? Do you think, oh, those Germans are an absolute menace? Or did you care about it? No, no, no., they're an absolute menace? Or did you care about it? No, no. No, I'm interested in, you should ask that,

because in 1937, I went with, we had a reciprocal arrangement for a school in Germany. And I went to Germany in 1937. And I thought it was a wonderful, wonderful place because you went by boat to Ostend from Dover and you went through a bit of France and Belgium, which I thought was terribly crummy. And suddenly you got to Germany at Aachen and you went into Aachen, and the place was transformed. Everybody looked smart with long gray coats, and the girls looked absolutely delightful in their blouses and skirts. It was a wonderful thing.

Everything looked like a clean, clean place, and there were soldiers everywhere. All the officers, you know, all with their tall hats and dirks by the side, swinging along the pavement. They're all very courteous, getting off the pavement to let you pass. It was a wonderful, wonderful place. And, of course, at the time of the year, the grapes were in full flood, and there was scenery, and everything was so lovely about it.

We'd heard about Hitler, and we'd heard about books being burned in the streets, but we didn't see any of that. And I met a delightful chap called Karl Heitzmoor, a very ordinary chap, but he was roughly the same school as me. And he could speak English. I couldn't speak a word of German. And we went up and down the Rhine and the Rhine sealers, and I met a delightful girl who was a student at Heidelberg. And it was a great, great time.

We went down from Wiesbaden to Plens or Kamprad to Wiesbaden, round and about the Rhine-Anh and it made a wonderful, wonderful impression to me. And there were aircraft flying in the sky. I think the Junkers 86s and things and fighters. It was wonderful, wonderful. I even joined the Hitler Youth and I ran ran with them and upheld the honor of England when I won in a equivalent of 200 yards or something like that. But it was a wonderful time.

I came back to England and kept in touch with my friends, male and female, for a time. Until the war intervened, we stopped writing to each other. But I wrote some stories about those, and I wondered how they fared, you know, during the war, where they killed. And I wrote some wonderful stories about how I imagine them to be fair. The young lady became a doctor. And Karl Heinz Moore, I put down as going to the SS. And anyway, if you buy the book, 20 quid, you'll learn all about it.

And so when war broke out, you and your mates were training up in Montrose. You didn't hate the Germans. You just... No, in fact, I first saw my first German, believe it or not, off Montrose when I was flying training. We were doing some instrument flying out to sea, which we're not supposed to do. And I was about eight or ten miles out to sea, which we're not supposed to do. And I was about eight or ten miles out to sea,

and I flew out of the middle of a Toulouse airplane alongside me, which happened to be a Heinkel 111. I didn't recognize this. I instructed it and tore the airplane out of my hands and dived for safety to the ground. The airplane was later shot down by people, spitfires from Montrose, but that was the first aircraft. What was it like seeing the Germans for the first time in the air?

No, it was of interest, interest. We're much interested. And in fact, when we first came across the first fighters, I was much, much more interested in the colors on the fighters and the fact that they were very close over in, distant or whatever it is. It was a wonderfully interesting period. I wasn't particularly concerned about being shot down. I ought to have been, of course. But no, it was a wonderful period of interest when you meet the enemy for the first time

and, you know, you see the airplanes you read about in books and so on. It's a wonderful period. When you were training, did you all say to each other, oh gosh, I hope we don't miss the war, I hope it's not over? No.

The selection of those who were going under fighters and they weren't called fighters they were single engine aircraft you were going on to or you had twin engine aircraft and the first day of our arrival of montrose we were lined up on the airfield and we were going to be inspected by the chief flying instructor. And he was a very tall chap called Loudon

and he wore a big black moustache and moustaches were very fashionable in those days, a big black moustache. And he came down with his minions, people writing him books and things, and to inspect us in the whole line. Now, normally you're lined up according,

tall and the shortest on the right, smallest on the left. But on this occasion, you were lined up according to your name. So Neil, being the adage starting from N, I was halfway down, three quarters of the way down the line. So we were lined up all in a single line and the chief flight instructor arrived and he

got to the beginning when his name was Abel or something, I can't remember what. And he said, right, now tell me, what do you want to do, on the single engine or twin engine? And Abel said, oh, I want to go on the fighters, sir, because I'm pretty good. I see. Now, why do you want to go into fighters? Well, because I'm this, that, and the other. And he came up with a string of replies, why he particularly wanted to go on the fighters. And then the T-flying instructor looked at him and said,

Bombers, and walked down. And he went down the list, and there were about 20 people before me of N. And I was listening to all the little stories being related as to why people wanted to go on the fighters or bombers. And next door to me was a little tiny chap, a jockey, or at least a boxer, knee-high to a duck. And I was six feet three, and he was next door to me. And they came down the list, and it became obvious to me,

and other people too, that of the 38 people on the course, 15 were going on to fighters and the rest were going on to bombers, whether they liked it or not. But the problem arises, what little argument were you supposed to provide in order to seal the lot, so to speak? So he came down to me and this mountain of a chap with a black mustache turned and said, now why do you want to go into fighters?

And I said, I don't know. I said, I'm good at aerobatics. And I remember saying, well, I'm the sort of chap who would be good. Why would you be good at fighters? So I made my reply and then I stood there on tenderhooks waiting for reply. And the chief flier said, looked me straight in the eye and said, fighters. And I could have screamed with laughter. Had there been bombers, I'd have gone straight down to Montrose, to the station, and stood

in front of a train. It made so much noise. But then, and I was considering my good luck, the chap next door to me was being posed the same questions. And Jock, who's a little Scots fellow, he was asked whether he wanted to go and fight us or bomb us. And he said, I want to go and to fight us, sir. Why? Well, I'm not prepared, he said, to bomb defenseless women and children.

It's just no more style. And there was a terrible silence. And the CFI, he from Six Feet Three, bent down, looked him through his nose, was touching him. You will be armed, defenseless women and children. I like it, you see. Bombers. So he got bombed.

Jock Nickel, his name was. Poor boy. He put on to Hampton and was killed almost immediately after he left FCM. But that was

the joy of my life was I was put on to fight. But you were keen to, were you keen to get into the action or do you think the war might finish? No, no. I just wanted to fly whatever it was.

We'd never seen a Spitfire or a Hurricane or anything like that. We were on biplanes. But it was the thing to do. It was the thing I wanted to do more than anything else. When did you first see a monoplane? When did you first see a Hurricane? Oh, well, they came out in 1936, of course. No, but sorry, when did you first fly one? Well, there were some Spitfires, Montreuxs, that they were the offshoot of 603 or 602 Squadron, which was a city of Glasgow, city of Edinburgh, auxiliary squadron.

So they had an attachment of three or four. So we touched the sides of them and looked inside the cockpit, you know, but they were a magic piece of equipment. And you'd touch them with a handkerchief and that sort of thing. But that was as close as we got to the modern aircraft. When did you sit in one for the first time and take it up the runway flying? Ah, good question. first time and take it up the runway, fly?

Ah, good question. In May 1940 or so. I'll come to that bit in a minute. So I left Montrose with 158 hours, as I say, because I'd been commissioned in the meantime. And I went down and everything was in first class now, other than third class. And I was posted, first of all, on the 10th of May, 1940. I, on leave, was sent home in my brand new uniform. And I'd been home a day.. I was posted to 249 Squadron in Church Fenton in Yorkshire. I had no idea where Church Fenton was. I was posted to 249 in brackets H Squadron,

with effect from whatever it was, 10th or 14th of May 1940. And I had no idea what H stood for, but I assumed it was Hurricane. I didn't mind. Hurricane was as nice as any other aircraft. But I didn't know where Church Fenton was. I had to take my school outlist to try and find out where it was. I went by train. And I got to Church Fentonon and nobody had ever heard of me.

And I got into the officer's mess and sat down. And I spoke to a pilot officer next to me. And I said, are you in 249 Squad? What? He said. I said, are you? I've never heard of it. He said. I said, I've heard of it. It must be a new one forming.

So I sat there on headhooks wondering whether or not I'd come to the wrong place. So eventually a chap came in. He was about 40 or so, and he spied me in a corner and came and said, Are you 249? You're the first chap to arrive, he said. And that was my introduction. We have no airplanes, no people. You're brand new, brand new. And then we were sent to Leckenfield, which is up the road from Church Fenton,

which is roughly all, you know, Kingsford, Pongall, Beverley. And instead of hurricanes arriving, Spitfires arrived. 18 Spitfires arrived. And nobody's ever been near a Spitfire. And nobody knew anything about them. So I being the first one, I was entitled to a little seniority because I was the first one in the squadron. I didn't know who my friends were or who other people were,

who the commanding officer was. And then think about them. And a chap called Nicholson arrived. And he's a flight lieutenant, tall chap, bushy hair, he never could comb, things like that. And nice, nice sort of chap. And he took me to see my first Spitfire, which we had in the hangar. And we had it on trestles.

And he said, now I want you to get into the cockpit, and I'll tell you where all the tits and bits are. And you need to work them and see how they work. I'll explain what was going on, raise the wheels, lower the wheels, flaps, et cetera, et cetera. And he said, I'll put a blindfold around your eyes and you'll do that for half a day. And when you think you're au fait with more or less what's going on

in the cockpit, you can go away and fly it, which is what happened. And I stood on the airfield at Leck and Peebles, an all-grass airfield, lots and lots of damp spots. Nicholson and Annick had 42 things they didn't have to do about it. I wasn't to do this, I wasn't to do that. A whole catalogue of things which were verboten. But now I've told you all that, now go ahead and fly it. And I got into this airplane, flew to the throttle, and the thing took off like an eel.

I was into the air before you could say night. I didn't attempt to close the hood because I didn't want to be claustrophobically enclosed in the hood, climbed up, waiting for the engine to stop, which it didn't. Then I was up at 8,000 feet doing this, doing that, and suddenly I'd never been before above 150 miles an hour. I was doing 400, 400. It was a new experience. I came in, landed, it was a couple of bumps. The important thing is not to let the engine boil because the radiator was on one side of the aircraft and outside the cover of the air score in front. It boiled before you can say knife, but you weren't allowed to let it boil or the steam

would come up the front end, et cetera, et cetera. So I got back, and not to do the brakes, otherwise there was a tip on the nose. There must have been all sorts of things, but that was my first go. And then, believe it or not, that was my 20-minute trip. And over the next four weeks, three weeks, I flew 100 hours on a Spitfire. The engine was just a black mass up front. I didn't know the equipment that I had in my hand. I had a Mae West arm.

I used a radio, which I'd never used before in my life. I had all sorts of funny bits about the ocean I'd never heard of. And it was all suck and see, you know. We just didn't know. And eventually I was sufficiently well trained to take it off and land without breaking it, to fly through a cloud, to fly in the miserable weather conditions we were having at the time. And suddenly on the 13th of June 1940, and I'd be flying it because Dunkirk had happened in the meantime, which was the end of May, and the Germans were running rampant all over for Europe, having defeated France and Norway, et cetera, et cetera, et

cetera. We had a war on our hands. Nobody knew anything about it. And my training on the Spitfire was really new. I could fly it. I could climb through cloud when I had to and, you know, keep up with my leader and not either lead in standing, flying past him or do things he didn't want me to do. But I was completely untouched.

I was wondering about it. I couldn't shoot to save myself. And I went up to Acclington with the rest of my squadron, which was our arm and practice company. And I flied something like 30,000 rounds against a towed drogue or a flag or whatever it was. I didn't hit the target with one bullet. Well, we were all firing out of range, for the most part. Well, we were all firing out of range, for the most part.

And we would talk by diagram deflection shooting, which we didn't attempt to do. And it became apparent to us that unless we got within about 50 yards of an enemy aircraft, almost close enough to touch, you couldn't hit it at all. We were totally untrained as far as marksmanship was concerned. And in fact, after the war, long after the war, when I was at the School of Land and Air Warfare, or School of Air Support, we did a close inquiry with all sorts of boffins and Air Ministry and Farnborough on our effectiveness during the Battle of Britain. And it was finally a report was produced

that of all the thousands of rounds fired during the Battle of Britain, only 3% were effective. The rest, 97% missed. And that was our marksmanship during the Battle of Britain, and my marksmanship in particular. Well, I was going to ask you, the Spitfire has become such an extraordinary icon of aviation, of British life. Flying it for the first time, were you aware that you were in something quite magical? Well, I've been told there was, but actually it wasn't as magical

in those days because nobody knew it very well. But I was conscious that I couldn't hit anything in it, firing the gun. We had the eight-gun thingamabob. And in those days, our early Spitfires would only fly on 87 octane fuel, which we didn't have 100 octane until later in the Battle of Britain. We were fairly the primitive type of aircraft because some of our sights on some of our aircraft were old ring and bead of the First World War. And it was all fairly primitive stuff. But I was very much aware that the nose was too long.

You couldn't take any deflection shooting because as soon as you were in a steep turn, in order to fire in front of your intended enemy, of course, it was lost underneath the nose. And so you couldn't do anything except from deadline stern or from about 15 degrees deflection. So it had its problems. And of course, it only had 85 gallons of fuel, which didn't give you much time in the air, about an hour and a half.

And our engine was 27 liters, as opposed to the 109's engine of 39 liters, a much bigger engine. And we knew that they had fuel injection, whereas we had SU carburettors, which every time you lowered the nose, the thing flew to the top of the tube and you've got a surface of fuel into the engine and the engine stops. And you've got lots of black smoke either side. And as long as you've applied negative D, the engine didn't work. And it was just for one, two, three, four, five seconds, something like that.

But when you're fighting an urgent enemy, those four or five seconds are deadly. And of course, they can make 100 yards, 200 yards in front of you. So, Tom, so your engine would just cut out? Yeah. It would billow black in front of you. So, Tom, your engine would just cut out? Yeah. Billow black smirk out of it. It was too rich. It was flooded with fuel. And then

you'd have to restart it? No, no, no. It would just... It'd bring itself back on again immediately. But it was just a hiatus that just didn't work that length of time you sound to me like you're saying the Spitfire

might not have been as great as everyone now thinks no no I've always said it I've always said it it was, I'll go on to say this a little later as an effective fighter it was less good than the 109 less good the 109.

Less good. The 109 had better armament, injection fuel control, not an SU carburetor, a better supercharger. It was lighter. It was more nimble. It could do a lot of things that we couldn't do in the Spitfire. The Spitfire had the slight edge of a 109A in terms of speed, but you have to work up that speed in order to catch it. No, it wasn't the be-all and end-all of fighters.

I don't think any of us were telling them as we thought we was. We really thought the 109 was, in many ways, had more effect on America. I suddenly remembered, you mentioned Dunkirk. Did it affect morale? Did word go around amongst the lads that Britain had suffered this great reverse? No, no, no.

The only thing that came out, a lot of down south, 74 squadron, etc., etc., etc., they were closer to the enemy. And they did fairly well at Dunkirk, which is about 90, 100 miles away from Pickenhill. Up north in Yorkshire, where we were, we weren't involved at all. We just heard about it. It never occurred to me for a moment, nor indeed to any of my colleagues, that we were inferior to the enemy. We didn't know. We were British. We were better than anything else in the world. We were the British Empire. We would never be beaten, no matter what. We were just blank-minded.

We couldn't be beaten. It never occurred to us. There were 55 squadrons. And even though during the Battle of Britain we only had 650 aircraft available to us total, the Germans had 4,000 bombers and fighters. They were better than us in almost every respect. The only problem they had, the Luftwaffe was not built in order to invade England. They were just built to operate with the German army, which was perfectly good over land. It wasn't so good over the seas. So they had very short endurance periods. 39 liters would only give them about an hour and a half. So when they were in even a northern France, attacking, escorting bombers as far away as London, they would have to turn around and go back in about three quarters of a minute through the

flight. And the red light would come on in their cockpit, which must have been very upsetting for them because they'd be 100 miles away from base with the red light coming on. They had their problems and of course they were over enemy territory. If they conked out, they had a lot of problems with their aircraft, really, one way or another. And they would fall into the channel before they got home. That's a lot of people in the channel who have never spoken out. But they had their problems. But as fighting organizations, they were better than us.

We didn't have an army that was worth a damn. Our regular army was first class. We didn't have the equipment, we didn't have the guns, we didn't have the tanks. Our army was a rifle and bayonet army. It was a 1914-18 army. We could cope. The Germans were altogether modernized in every respect. And, of course, they'd fought in Spain two years in the Spanish War. They had their tactics.

They knew what they were doing. Their people were experienced. How we won, I do know. We were better organized over our own country. Our maintenance aircraft was wonderful. One of the things that was most noteworthy that when there were 18 aircraft in the squadron of which we would fly 12 as a formation,

sometimes at the end of the day, having flown two, three, four, five times a day. We'd be down to three aircraft. And then by 12 o'clock, 1400 hours the next day, we went back to square one with the business of replacing Ergo, a system we had, was absolutely festive. Mainly due, not entirely due to him, to a little Canadian fellow who did Daily Express. Beaverbrook. Beaverbrook, absolutely.

A horrible little man, but nevertheless, he and Churchill together got things done. Action this day. So tell me about being deployed to the front line for the first time. After your training up north, tell me about coming down to the southeast for the first time. Well, first of all, there is a dotted line between Liverpool and Hull. You don't know this, sir, but as soon as you go south, you notice it.

I'd never flown south of the dotted line. And when I went to Boscombe Down, which is Salisbury, roughly, and I wouldn't have recognised it even with a map. I just followed my leader and we landed at Boscombe Down, which is a big grass airfield. And we were parked away in one small corner of it. And the war was going on above us, above cloud. And we lived either under the wings of our aircraft in order to shelter from the rain or the sun or whatever it is.

We had big offices. We had camp kits, sort of Indian style, you know. We didn't have people giving you cups of coffee or anything like that. But the airmen were in tents. We didn't know to sit down. We sat on railing next door to us. Everything was so primitive. And war was going on about us for the first two days.

The airfield next door to us was heavily bombed. Almost as we watched. And we watched it with fascination. People were killed. The hangars were brought down. And then on the second day we were there, I remember that I was a duty officer. Duty officer, young chap's pilot officer.

I was a pilot officer in those days, that particular time. And you lived in a hut or a tent all night with one telephone, a wind-up telephone like that. And you kept in touch with an organization. We didn't know where it was, but a woman answered the other end of the line. And she kept in touch with what was happening in the rest of England. And I remember that all night, having a chat with her and listening to what was going on. And then the following morning on the 16th of August, I think it was, I got up and I had my own aircraft, GNF.

My aircraft was always F because my middle name is Francis. I had GNF, always had GNF. because my middle name is Francis. I had GNF, always had GNF. And I got up early and put my parachute in the way I wanted to be put on, not in the cockpit, but on the back tailplane so you could strap it on. I had a routine and a system. We all had routines and a system.

The following morning, in order that we were going to have a full day fighting. This is going to be my first full day fighting. And I turned up at about seven o'clock in the morning, eight o'clock in the morning, and Nicholson, my flight commander, he was 23, I was just turned 20. He said, I had ginger hair in those days, he said, Ginger, you're not flying today. And I said, don't be silly, of course I'm flying. We were on very, very personal, friendly terms. So I argued with him a lot.

He said, no, no, you've been on duty all night. I don't want you to fly today. Go into Salisbury and go to the films or something. But I don't want you to fly. So we argued. And I was very cross with him. I really was. And he handed my airplane over to a fellow called King, Martin King.

He was actually, what's his name? Nicholson was six feet three. I was six feet three. King was six feet three. And we're all very tall people. And we used to fly in threes in those days. And he handed my aircraft GNF, which I loved like a brother. And I polished it, you know, to him.

And I cautioned him very severely. I said, don't you dare damage this airplane. And anyway, lunchtime came and I went to the mess. I was just in the process of eating my first whatever it was. And suddenly they scrambled. I went back to the scramble point and heard news that they'd intercepted over Southampton somewhere, and we had lost three aircraft. So then an aircraft arrived back in a shambolic state,

and it was one of the people, the other third person of the flight, who was also, his name was King, a squad leader King. He was a supernumerary who was coming to be with us to learn how to fly more. He went to command, 141 squad, 151 squad.

So the two missing were Nicholson and King, the other King. They'd both been shot down. And then we heard what had happened to them. And the story was that they'd been bounced by enemy 110s over Southampton. They'd both been shot down. Nicholson had been shot rather badly and wounded. His aircraft

had been shot and caught on fire. He bailed out, but in the process of bailing out, he had his aircraft, which very often did, who had shot at him, overshot him because of the increased speed, and suddenly appeared in front of him. So very bravely, according to Nicholson, he climbed back into the cockpit and shot it down. And then he bailed out and disappeared by his parachute, came down by parachute, heavily, hideously burned about the hands and the feet and the face. And he said, when he talked to me about it afterwards, he said,

you know, Ginger, when I was coming down, you know, there was a distinct smell of roast pork. He said he got down to the ground and then, of course, people had been watching from the ground. Parts of the army have been watching, people from the civilian life have been watching. And then the army decided that they were going to be invaded and the aircraft coming down was invasion by paratroops, troops. So they fired at Nicholson, badly wounded him again.

Fortunately, in the backside, they had to have a backside pointed towards them. And he fell to the ground in a heap, his parachute around him, and horribly wounded and hideously burned. The people who had shot him down or shot at him argued between themselves as to what they'd done because they realized to be shooting at a friend, not the enemy, came to blows. The sergeant in the army who'd shot him was felled by another man who hit him. The ridiculous situation arose when eventually Nicholson, when the ambulance first arrived with him, was taken to hospital in the same ambulance that the chap who shot him down. Can you imagine?

It only happened in England. And then Myer-Croft, whatever happened to Myer-Croft, Myer-Croft was also shot down. It only happened in England. And then Myercroft, whatever happened to Myercroft, was also shot down. And King came down, in Myercroft, came down out of Myercroft, he bailed out, and he floated towards the ground. And the army did a better job on him. A better job. And they killed him. They shredded his parachute. He fell into somebody's back garden and died in somebody's arms. I lost my aircraft. I lost two of my friends.

The third member of the flight, a little section, Squadron Leader Whizzy King. We used to call him Whizzy. He was five feet old, 30, you know, that sort of age. And he went off to do his quarters and immediately began to write a book about how to deal with the enemy. And he was posted to 151 Squadron Northwild a few days later and was killed within a week.

If you listen to Dan Snow's history, it's Battle of Britain Day. was killed within a week. If you listen to Dan Snow's history, it's Battle of Britain Day. So we're talking to one of the few, Tom Neill. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in

Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week It's very hard for people who have never been in combat to understand what that must be like. When you lose, on the first day of battle, you lose two friends.

How did you cope with that? How did you keep getting up every morning and coping? It may surprise you today that when Nicholson was shot down, we thought it all a bit of a joke. First of all, it happens 30-odd miles away, so you don't see it happening. You don't see the blood and the guts and the horrors of landing and people being killed.

Because usually it happens next county or 50 miles away. And Nicky Nick, a great, great friend, I knew him all his life, had been telling us how, he'd tell him he had a Spitfire for a start. He'd tell him how to do this, do that. And there he was in his very first flight being shot down. And we thought it was a great joke. And it was only when a day or two later, a letter came from him written by his nurse, very, very brief, just a whole line. He said, I have been shot down. I am not dead more or less, but I'm recovering. And nothing more was said than that.

The adjunct went down to see him and came back and said, oh my God, he's in a terrible state. He's black from head to foot. He's horribly burned around the face and the hands. And he didn't come up very slowly. And then as Nick got better by the day, his letters got longer, you see. And finally we made a whole joke of the hit. And of course you probably know from your history, that was in August 1940 and on November

the 17th, 1940, he was awarded the Victoria Cross. Poor old Martin King, he just disappeared into obscurity, he was just shut down, just a casualty. And did that not make you... No, it didn't worry us a scap. It's just the things that happen. You're so busy concentrating what goes on, the business of taking off, climbing up through a cloud, fighting, doing the things you've got to do, that you're preoccupied by the main things, not the trivial things like people being killed.

August 1940 was a rather dramatic moment, but certainly not for me. I did a lot of flying in August 1940, but we didn't see much in the way of the enemy, which is rather surprising because a lot of action was taking place in Bristol and Southampton and the south coast of England. But then we moved up to Northweald in Essex, which took us into the area of fighting, which is rather dramatic fighting. And they'd lost a lot of people up there. So we came up to Northweald and we replaced 56 Squadron, which is a very famous squadron in the RAF. And we found that we couldn't operate from

there initially because we had to change the radios because we were going to transition from VHF to high frequency. We had a high frequency. We didn't have VHF. So we changed our aircraft and we had 56 squadrons aircraft. We had VHF and our aircraft, which were rather nicer than theirs, had to be flown by

56 back to Boscombe Down. And that's why you see a lot of pictures of 56 Squadron flying when it really is 249 Squadron flying, but not to worry. We got there on the 1st of September, we were thrown into the maelstrom of the Battle of Britain and it was right on our doorstep and we had flying against us in Romford and up to Thames and Northfield itself. Northfield was very badly bombed on the 21st of September.

And I came up on the 2nd for some reason or other. I can't remember. And the 3rd of September was the day I remember most because it was my first day of action. And I was John Granney. John Granney was the squad commander. And he wasn't a very good fighter pilot, and he admitted himself. But he was a nice man, very good administratively.

And I was flying with him, and we were scrambled from North Wales. We climbed up over Essex to 18,000, 19,000 feet and the enemy didn't appear which we felt was rather surprising. We flew back to North Wheel, landed, we're getting refueled

and we were scrambled again and we took off immediately and this time, my goodness me, the enemy did appear. We were getting refueled and we were scrambled again. And we took off immediately. And this time, my goodness me, the element did appear. So 30 or 40 Dornier 17 bombers, each carrying four or six bombs, appeared at about 16,000, 17,000 feet, escorted by about 100 Messerschmitt-Wallnerers. And I was at the leading edge of the formation because flying with a squadron commander. And suddenly I find myself looking at these German aircraft,

the first really I'd seen, with the ugly marks on the side of the aircraft and so close that you could see their propellers churning round and we eventually got so close that I could almost reach up and touch them and I remember thinking why are we here why are we not doing this or that because very shortly I'm going to be killed I'm almost within feet of these things. Then suddenly things happened.

People were diving. I was diving after them. Mustn't be left, mustn't be left. Aircraft were all around me. And we'd done nothing. And suddenly I looked over the side of my aircraft and we were all over North Wheel. And the airfield had disappeared completely and utterly.

The enormous clouds of black and brown smoke, they bombed 34, 300 bombs on the airfield. Our airfield had disappeared. And I remember thinking, oh, gosh, the city of Blythe has bombed our airfield. How are we going to land now? And I don't remember what happened then. The bombers turned away, but were engaged by other chaps from the squadron who had taken off separately with them.

And we went down. What to do? Well, there's nothing in King's regulations that tells you what to do when your airfield has just been bombed and written out completely. And we landed, weaving between the bomb holes like dirt track riders, hoping we'd not fall into the holes. And there were 300 or so holes on the airfield. But we took it all on our stride

we stopped, turned into wind or turned on our hard standing and the airmen appeared off from the depth shelters came to refuel our aircraft we took off again straight before even our aircraft had been refueled

and were off down south and then I found myself looking at London for the first time in my life, over the Thames, climbing off 15, 16, 17, 18, 20,000 feet down towards Dover. And the balloons at Dover, I'd never seen balloons over Dover. I'd never seen balloons over London before, even though there were thousands of balloons over London to prevent low German attacks. We flew over Dover, and then a 30, a 40, a 50 German fighters appeared. So close flew over the top of us, and I was fascinated by them, all the interesting colors

on the side of the aircraft. I was fascinated by it. I didn't think of being shot down or anything like that. We didn't attack them. We couldn't because they were too high up. They didn't attack us. We flew around for a bit and we circled over Kent, Canterbury, that sort of thing. Finally we were brought back to North Wales and wefield up on an island three quarters.

And that was my first introduction to German bombers and fighters en masse. But I was not a bit frightened at all, not a bit frightened. Although it was badly damaged our airfield, we couldn't live on the airfield for a time. We had to go live down the road in the local town and get barred. We didn't have any water.

We didn't have any gas or electricity. It was a day to be remembered. And that was the 1st of September. We lost two or three people the day before on the 2nd of September. We shot down a couple of... I hadn't shot them down. I was just not flying that particular day.

But we were introduced to the war proper. And then for the 30 days of September, or throughout the Battle of Britain, I flew 141 times against the enemy. Sometimes twice a day, sometimes three times a day, sometimes four times a day, even five times a day, starting at 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock in the morning, dawn, half an hour before dawn, going on until 11 o'clock at night. There were no Union hours in the Eurofighter command. We lost a lot of people.

Sometimes we were down to three or four aircraft to the end of the day. And we'd be replaced with aircraft by lunchtime the following day. It was a moving picture. And you were so busy with the events at hand. You were too busy to be frightened or upset. You just got on with the job. And you were apprehensive, of course, but particularly when you heard information coming over the telephone

because of the radar showings on the radar screen, 50 of the enemy building up over Calais, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500. And you knew they were all heading for you. Did you survive because you were a good pilot or because you were lucky? No, I don't. We flew in formation. And lots of things happened by chance.

First of all, the flak, our own flak, kept on flying whether we were flying or not. So we had to contend not only with the response from the enemy, but the fact that our own AK-AK were busy firing at the same time. And you took off, you climbed up, not forgetting that Britain is seldom without cloud. You had to climb up through clouds, sometimes 1,000 feet thick, sometimes 5,000 feet thick, 10,000 feet thick, keeping in close formation before you got through to the end and suddenly you were above the cloud.

And in stark contrast to the white cloud underneath, the enemy could see you from miles around. And it was all the time you were busy, you would see the enemy and you'd go towards the flak, clouds and clouds of flak, our own anti-aircraft. You wouldn't see the enemy. And suddenly in the midst of the flak, 30, 40, 50 of the bombers over Canterbury, over Maidstone, and you see the fighters behind them, 100 fighters, 200, 300. And the 50th of September, there were 2,000 of us in the air at the same time.

It's hard to imagine, but they were there all the time. Not in great numbers, 100, 150, but there all the time, attacking our airfields. And eventually, of course, when they changed their system and changed their general plan, they attacked London as well. But it was a constant. I flew somewhere 56 times, I think, during September 1940. I'll tell you one or two of the incidents. On the 7th of September, we lost half the squadron of 12 aircraft in about two minutes. They were all shot down by fighters. Because we attacked the bombers, which we were briefed to do as our main

task, we would be attacked by German fighters behind us, sitting 100 yards behind us and shooting us down like pigeons. Absolutely. And we caught fire very, very quickly in the hurricane because of the positioning of the fuel tank, as soon as the fuel tanks were pinched, they would catch fire. And the pilots, as I say, used to be enveloped in flames. So you had to get out of the airplane within a minute, two minutes, otherwise you were burnt to death. More hurricanes were shot down as a result of fire than any Spitfire that was.

Spitfires, by and large, were because their fuel tanks were in front of the pilots. They were comparatively immune from fire in the air, although they were shot down for other reasons, but the hurricanes were especially prone to fire. As young pilots, did you get angry? Did you think, why are they sending us up in these aircraft? We're going to burn to death. No, it was, I always hesitate to say this, it was a huge game.

It was a huge game, like a vicious game of rugby. You could possibly have a leg broken or an arm broken, whatever it is. The penalty of not succeeding was to lose your life. But it was a huge game. When you're actually in the fighting, you're so engaged in what's going on around you. You're so engaged in climbing through the cloud, weaving, fainting rather like a boxer, avoiding this, doing this, fighting the enemy, breaking away, coming back, looking for the enemy, where has the enemy gone?

And it's an exciting business. And then you find yourself over Maidstone now, south of the Thames, doing this, doing that. And if you had somebody's success, and it's success would come in an unusual way. I remember the first time I shot down an aircraft, I didn't really shut down, shoot it down. It flew in front of me. And I remember seeing a 109 literally within yards of me,

almost reach out and touch it. You almost see the pilot in the cockpit, all the various colors on the side of the aircraft. Most of them had yellow noses at that stage. Yellow was more observable from the air. This chap just flew in front of me, and I didn't have to do anything except fire my gun. And he was smoking.

And then, of course, that is at 15,000, 16,000 feet. You don't know whether he crashes or whether you don't. If he bails out, you know it's a victory. But otherwise, it could be aircraft on fire or smoking or whatever it is. But that's at 16,000 feet. You turn away, you lose him. And then he comes down from 16,000 feet towards the ground. And he's attacked by four other aircraft with four different hunts.

Sixteen other squadrons also take their turn. So there are five aircraft shot down, whereas there are only one. How many seconds of machine gun bullets did you have if you just held the trigger, pressed it? Well, you had 300 rounds per gun, and you had eight guns, 2,400 rounds per gun. And roughly at about 1,100 rounds per minute, you had 14.7 seconds of ammunition,

assuming you fired them all in one burst. But you didn't. You fired them in two-second bursts or three-second bursts because the guns got too hot, usually, and it would be a great propensity to fire if you did that. But normally the machine guns worked perfectly. They were Colt machine guns made by Browning in our country. They worked perfectly. We didn't have any cannons before. But sometimes, you would hit an aircraft with two 303 rounds, which was nothing. Sometimes you would have

to hit it with 20, 30, 40, 303 before it went down. The aircraft themselves reacted in different ways. The Junkers 88s were very, very tough indeed. Very difficult to shoot down. The Dorniers, strange enough, rather more simple. The Heinkel 111s, rather big, slow, sluggish aircraft. We found all easy, but the Junkers 87, 87 very agile get away very very quickly each aircraft was different. Did you feel like as September was going on did you feel like Britain and the RAF were winning or was it just completely? We knew well we had we had we didn't know. On the 7th of September, we only learned much later that Hitler issued an edict

that they weren't to concentrate on us in the air. The original plan was to shoot us down in the air, attack our airfields or the points of which the aircraft were built. our airfields or the points at which the aircraft were built. But he changed the plan because Berlin was bombed by just a few aircraft, almost by mistake. And he ordered it differently because they're very conscious of the fact that they didn't want to be attacked. They could attack everybody else in Europe, but they didn't want to be attacked at all. They weren't designed, really, the Air Force was not designed to defend the country.

They were designed to attack all the time. And because Berlin was attacked, the plan to be changed, London was going to be attacked. And of course, they concentrated their minds and effort on London. And London was attacked with the results we know. The East End was actually flattened. And simply other towns throughout the country. But this is, it is said, was their undoing. They changed the plan.

What you don't do in war is change the plan in the middle. But did you feel when they, were you aware that they changed that plan? No, no, nothing at all. Nothing at all. And so were you aware that... We just got on with the fighting. We were doing it two, three, four, five times a day. And we're concentrating, weaving. You know, it's the job at hand.

We didn't talk about strategy or anything like that. We don't even know where we're going. All we heard at the end of each day was the 6 o'clock news of 54 aircraft have been shut down, 26 of our own have been forced down, et cetera, but 14 of our pilots escaped by parachute, that sort of thing, until on the 15th of September, which was a rather unique day, we shut down apparently 185 aircraft in one day. In fact, it was not true.

In fact, we shot down, in fact, on that day 60, 65, 70, it was enough to deter absolutely Hitler, because he was going to… the plan, Hitler's plan called for the invasion to take place on the 15th of September 1940. He had to postpone that. Two days later he postponed it again, and a little later again he postponed it indefinitely. So he made up his mind because he couldn't achieve his aim on the 15th of September 1940. But we didn't know. We went on flighting just the same as he did, back into September, into November,

and October, November. And if you count the November tailing off because of the bad weather, I flew 157 times against the enemy. I bailed out once. I had a couple of very nasty crashes. I lost four hurricanes, one way or another. On the 15th of September, a rather unique occasion, I was attacking a Dornier over Maidstone.

Very very close indeed. I learned by experience the only way to hit an aeroplane was to get so close as to touch it. I mean, probably, I was, what, 50, 75 yards from it. And you complained, he said, 75 yards, you literally lean out and touch it with your hand. And as I was firing it and drew back for a second go, so to speak, suddenly two bodies detached themselves from the aircraft

and came floating past me. They're parachutes, not furled at all. And I thought from my mind, of course, they were going to crash into my escrow. They didn't quite, but whirling arms and legs, they went past me a few yards away left and right. And later, that aircraft was crashed into the Thames estuary 15,000 feet below, but I only knew that later. Years later, in fact, who it was, or who the pilots were. And of the four crew, three of them were killed.

One remained alive. Then almost as I turned away, I saw another Dornier 17, which cut across me going eastwards down the Thames. And I flew after it hard because you couldn't catch people very quickly in a hurricane. It didn't have the difference in speeds, noticeably difference in speeds. And I was joined by another Spitfire with EB on its side, which was 41 Squadron, and a chap called Eric Locke. Sonoff Locke we used to call him, a very small fellow. And we flew in pursuit of this

darned, firing at it from time to time in and out of cloud as it gradually reduced height and eventually dived to the ground or dived to the sea. We followed it right down to the sea and I remember following it very close. We damaged it so badly that we were in despair

that we were going to lose it. We went out to sea, crossed a convoy of ships, out to sea, and just when we got to the point where we thought we would lose it, we suddenly saw it getting slower and slower. And gradually it slowed down sufficiently. It touched the ground and it landed in a splurge of water, sank, came to the top, which most of them did.

And we circled around looking for survivors. There weren't any. And then we flew home full of grey. And we shot down, according to our reckoning, 22 aircraft that day. But it was an exciting day. And that was the day the whole of Sussex and Essex, Kent, that's about Hampshire, 2,000 aircraft took part in battle. It was a great day. I think I flew four times.

I can't remember. So what's it like flying four or five times? Give me a sense of what's the sounds and the smells. I mean, are you sleeping under the wings? Are you refueling? No, we slept between flights. We didn't sleep at night because of noise. The bomb was going out at night

going to either bomb London or bomb cities throughout the country Leicester various other places and

and I remember being on television with David Jason you know and he said I don't know when where did you sleep? And I said, well, as a matter of fact, we just slept in our clothes.

We ate in our clothes between flights. And I've trained myself, I said, to sleep at every convenient time of the day. And I grabbed him by the lapels and said, is there just a possible chance I'm not off as I'm talking to you? Which raised a bit of a laugh. But that's it. We just slept between flights in our clothes. Sometimes we didn't even take our clothes off at night. Sometimes we flew in our pyjamas.

Sometimes we flew in our pyjamas. We did everything that was necessary at the time. It was a great occasion. You didn't have time to be upset about it. You just got on and did the job. And were your mum's fears justified? Were you all drinking too much? No, not that.

We very seldom had the day to ourselves. We'd go down to the local pub and the boys would drink beer. I didn't drink beer. I couldn't cope with beer. And any time I showed sign of drinking whiskey, the agent would prevent me from doing it. So I was a goody-goody. I didn't smoke. I didn't go out with girls. I didn't drink. So it stood me in good stead. Some of the boys must have done. Oh, yes, they did. But there were no wives around.

There were no girlfriends around. We didn't see any women or anything like that. It was before the days, although there were rafts around, they were not on Northfield. And we had a very staid existence, contained absolutely with hour-to-hour excitement. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. We flew all these occasions, four or five times a day, over Kent, Sussex, not Sussex, well, Sussex as well, but Kent, Essex.

And you don't see the ground except in vast expanse of space and this green panorama underneath your eye. But you don't spend time looking at the ground, and you don't see it. You see the Thames and the curling estuary in the distance. The other day, last year, when I went to Goodwood… For the big fly pass? flypast. I flew in the Spitfire. They came to the centre helicopter up for me. And we took off from Seating, which is our next

to Warfield here. And we flew down at about 900 feet. And we flew down over the Dartmouth crossing across Kent and Sussex. And for the first time, I looked at my own country and how beautiful it was.

I'd never seen my own country before. It passed very slowly underneath. You could look down in a helicopter right underneath your eyes. And I thought, what a beautiful country this nation is. And I saw it then, but I'd never seen it before. Even though I'd flown over a hundred, literally a thousand times. But you get completely involved in what you see at 20,000 feet, 25,000 feet, 30,000 feet. And there's always the point to be remembered that the Battle of Britain was fought at 20,000 feet mostly. And sometimes it took 20, 30 miles or more for the aircraft to hit the ground,

the bomber, whatever it was, or the fighter. Sometimes they bailed out. Sometimes they landed in the channel. But you didn't know. You long since lost track of them. So, you know, precise information, you never know. You never know. When the young pilots came into your squadron,

by the end of the battle, the youngsters coming in, were they properly trained? No. Was I properly trained? No. I've asked this question many times before. Were you? No, of course we weren't.

We couldn't shoot to save ourselves. There's a saying in Liverpool, you know, we couldn't hit a pig in a jigger and we couldn't shoot. We did very badly and we had pretty poor weapons but we improved. We improved. And so what did you tell

the youngsters coming in? What, what, what, after you'd flown in? There weren't any youngsters. There were people like me. Yeah, but the ones who were just coming straight from training,

what were you able to tell them by the end of the month? They went straight from training normally. Either they'd come from another squadron because you tended to tell them by the end of the month? They went straight from training normally. Either they come from another squadron, because you tended to get rid of your worst chaps, the chap next door.

But they didn't come straight. They usually went to the OTU, Operational Training Unit. They've had 15, 20, something like hours, on a Spitfire or a Hurricane. Very, very few people came new to that aircraft. And they would simply fly as number twos or number threes or number fours. Just follow your leader.

Follow your leader. Don't do this and don't do that. And just maintain exactly the same in the First World War. Von Richthofen was shot down by people who'd never been airborne before. So it happened all the time.

You've got people, you've got used to it. Between the years of 19 and 25, the heart and the mind can put up with anything. It's when you get to 25 and more, you suddenly begin to think, why am I doing this? What is the effect? I remember when I was in the Americans,

I was asked to go and attack a new Mustang to go down to Cornwall, get refueled there, and fly 600 miles down to the Spanish border, attack some flying boats, and then in the event, shoot down about four or six of them, come all the way back. And I remember thinking before it happened,

why am I doing this? Is it going to affect the war? What am I going to achieve? And as you get older, you become a little more circumspect about what you're doing and a little more cautious. But when you're young, it doesn't really matter. You're just told what to do, and you do it. And you do it with excitement and joy.

And you just get on with it, that's all. Where do I start? In fact, I was thinking, only the other day, my three sons, two of them were in the services, and... Land a Viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to

conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. They've been in positions when I was worrying about them. And I realized for the first time what it is for a parent to suddenly think of her nearest and dearest or your nearest and dearest being killed and to lose a son or a daughter

to be on leave. I think it must be particularly difficult actually nowadays because Afghanistan was such a you know, a mission where at least the Battle of Britain you knew what was at stake. Whereas I think it'd be very tough if I was a commanding officer

telling a young widow why her husband had been killed in Afghanistan. And then when we've just pulled out... It's horribly interesting. I was going to Buckingham Palace some months ago. It's not an important one. And I was being entertained

in the barracks next door. What is it? Guards places, by a young lady who was delightful. She looked about 16. And she was the pilot officer or whatever it is in the Air Force. She was chatting me up and giving me coffee and biscuits and things like that. And when she turned away to speak to somebody else, I spoke to somebody, one of her friends, and I said, who is the girl over there? She's very young.

She tells me she's part of three squadron. He said, yes. She's a flight commander in three squadron. She's not 16. She's 27. She's got three children. That sort of thing. Goodness me.

And I thought, my God, to have this lovely child being thrown into a bottle. You know, the possibility of being pounded to destruction. This is just too horrible to think about. It's horrid.

Can I ask about your bailing out? Yeah. The station commander of North Wales was a wonderful chap. He was Irish. Irish. He knew no rules at all. And he used to fly with us in 249s.

And he had one of our aircraft painted in his colours. But he never lead. He always flew number four in the box, the first four in the colors. But he never lead. He always flew number four in the box, the first four in the box. And invariably, because I was a senior flight commander then, age just 20, in front of me.

And we'd had a traumatic day. We shot down about three aircraft over the Thames Estuary that morning, lunchtime. And we were going in the afternoon about four o'clock, and it was getting towards the end of the day. We were above cloud, and we were going backwards and forwards over Maidstone.

And he decided, because he was Irish and he didn't obey the rules, that he would go somewhere else because there was news of activity elsewhere. So he disappeared. And I, being an orderly sort of guy, just filled up the gap and we'd left. And we flew around. And then by 4 o'clock came and I was thinking of tea and, you know,

current cake and things like that. My wife was on other things. And suddenly there was a heck of a bang at the back end, and the airplane was just torn from my grasp. It stood on its tail and went straight up in the air, turned over on its back and began to spin. I could do nothing about it. But you're very loose to get rid of an aircraft

and get out of an aircraft that still has the engine running. And I sat there upside down being spun around like a squash ball being thrown around, going backwards and forwards. And then I got down to 7,000 feet. feet and I remembered on the way up, I know that we started at 18,000 feet, that we'd gone into cloud at seven and come out at top at eight. I was going down the other way and it was eight going down to seven and I had to do something about getting out of the airplane. I was having great trouble. And eventually I got out of the airplane and I was lying along the front fuel tank in the direction of the propeller

with my head about 10 feet away from the propeller with everything whirling around in front of me with my toes around the windscreen. The only thing that was holding me in position was my long tube of my oxygen thing, which was holding me in position. Suddenly it broke, and there was a heck of a bang on my head on the wing,

and suddenly I was floating free. And I came to, heck of a bang on my head on the wing and suddenly I was floating free. And I came to and my first thought was is my parachute opened or not? And then I looked up as far as I could and I

went down, you're always instructed to go down the buttons of your apparel, whatever it is, to look for the ripcord. And it was in position, so obviously I hadn't pulled it out of position, pulled the ripcord. The parachute developed, and everything was silent, and that was about a thousand feet. about a thousand feet. I fell into a wood, quite tall trees, fell out of the wood onto my head, damaged myself and saw feet,

two pairs of women's feet and two pairs of men's feet, and they were discussing who I was, whether I was the enemy or whether I was a friend, and they couldn't quite decide, and the men were not about to give me the benefit of the doubt they would treat me as enemy and string me up

because there were lots of bits of nastiness done on enemy pilots the two women felt that I might possibly be friends and they should hold their hand for a moment.

Then, by the grace of God, a car came up and two army officers appeared and identified me as being on their side and prevented me. I tried to do the wrong thing. You never pick a wounded chap up from the ground and try to stand him up because he could be very badly wounded. You leave him there to start with and find out what the hell is wrong with him. I was left on the ground. They tried to stand me up, but they couldn't. I was put back on the ground like a fish on the slab. And eventually I got sufficiently able to stand and I was taken to a local Ak-Ak battery in order to wash and make contact with my

squadron that I'd come down safely. But I wasn't able to do that and I, because the whole the telephone system had been put out of action until about 10 o'clock that night, by which time my family had already been written to and they were packing my kit, that sort of thing. Anyway, I reached Northfield with another bit of transport and I was taken in I was put on the billiard table that was the only flat place that was around and it was decided

I had damaged my hips and leg and I'd been sent home. I didn't want to be sent home. I didn't want to tell my parents that I was ill or you know damaged in any way. So I went home by train,

trying to disguise a very nasty limp, but they never knew. It was only months later that I went on a tour of the mills in Lancashire, talking to the girls, telling them how wonderful they were making parachutes and so on. That Lord, who was his name? I can't remember.

It was the chap in charge of publicity. He wrote to me at my home. The letter was opened by my parents who read for the first time that their son had been badly damaged in Bernhardt, which took me to task immediately. Why would I tell? But no, it was an amusing experience. A lot of people were badly treated when they landed in this country and, of course, in Germany, where our chaps were landed there. It wasn't all sweetness and light. The pearly kings you know, the jolly happy chaps like you see on television, they were vicious buggers they've been on again. And so speaking of other myths of the battle, what other myths

were there? There's a book about it. There's a chap called, who came up the other day, had a Jewish name, very famous writer, and all about the nastiness behind the scenes, things that happened during the Battle of Britain. I could try to find out. In fact, I'll keep in touch with him and I'll tell you about it. It's an eye opener, this whole nastiness went on. In terms of corruptness and everything else, it wasn't all sweetness and light.

Why did we win the battle? Just briefly, so why did we win the Battle of Britain? As soon as the mishaps, I suppose, the Germans weren't suited to the job they were up to. They were much better trained than us. They had better equipment. They had radar in exactly the same way we had. It has been noised about that they didn't have it, but they had. Of course they had. Their radar on those ships was wonderful, but they didn't have the defense system that we had. The defense system was wonderful, first class.

And the supply system was wonderful, absolutely first class. And the replenishment, we were never short of aircraft, never short of aircraft. But we were short of pilots towards the end. And those of us, and don't forget in Fighter Command, there were 80% volunteer reserves by the end of November 1940. We were all there, untrained, learning on the job, learning on the job. We got better and better.

The aircraft, pigs and troughs, sometimes we were better than the Germans. Sometimes we weren't. Sometimes they were miles ahead of us. The Focke-Wulf on 90. It was far better than anything that we had for a time. But then we would do this, do that to our aircraft and

improve. Peaks and troughs all the time. But no, there's so much happened in my life that it makes me think that there is a chap up there, pulled a string. Because in June 1940, we were beaten into a pulp in Malta. And suddenly the Americans upsticked and went to Poland and took on the Russians on the

1st of June 1941. They came within an ace of winning in the West, in the East. They were stopped, nobody knows, but they were. We lost a mountain of people in the West because Joe Stalin was forever telling the Western governments to ask, because there was nobody else, to attack in the West, do something in the West, relieve the pressure on us in the East. And a lot of people in Fighter Command

doing useless jobs in France and Belgium, a lot of senior officers being shot down, attacking warehouses, attacking things with 303s, waste of time, and a lot of bad decisions were made, a lot of bad advice given by such people as Barda, or dare I mention it. given by such people as Barda, dare I mention it. Sometimes you wonder, I don't know how we won.

I really don't. I really don't. It's just a series of events, but by the grace of God, I can only say. So do you think the victory in the Battle of Britain was due in large part to the fact you were fighting over friendly territory? Much of it, absolutely so. Absolutely so. We did so despite the Spitfire being lauded.

Above all things, it wasn't the best aircraft in the world. The Germans in the main had the better aircraft. They used them in the world. The Germans in the main had the better aircraft. They used them the wrong way. They did the wrong thing at the wrong time. They attacked the wrong targets at the wrong time for them. And mistakes were made on both sides, and their mistakes were probably greater than ours. That's a brilliant summary.

When did you personally think to yourself, I think we're going to win this? I never, it was never in my mind that we would not win. The only, look at it the other way. The day that I thought we weren't about to win it was the day the Prince of Wales was sunk by the Japanese because the forces against

us were so great. And I didn't see how we would even possibly win it. And we lost the naval elements of the Navy that were our pride and joy. We were doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. And that saddened me. I remember discussing it in Malta and me achieving a certain amount of acrimony with my fellow mates around the dinner table when I said, we are at a perilous point. That was the first time ever. Thereafter, before and after that, I never thought for a moment we'd ever lose.

So during the Battle of Britain, in the summer of 1940, you never thought you were going to lose? Never for a moment, no. No, never ever. I was aware of our deficiencies, but I was surrounded by wonderful people, some of whom were not very good,

because every fighter pilot, every bomber squadron, those people are superlatively good. The ordinary run-of-the-mill chap and the people who are downright poor, but they all have them. James Holden wants me to... You have to ask a story about D-Day. Just tell me quickly,

what did you do on the 6th and 7th of June, 1924? I was at the 100th Fighter Wing and the chap who commanded the ring was Homer L. Sanders. And Homer L. Sanders was the archetypal bad general. He bit the end off his cigar and he spat out things. He was a tough guy. He looked like a Mexican hitman.

He used to go around and start walking on hot coals, hands by the side of his six-and-six gun. In fact, he was a delightful man. He was walking on hot coals, you know, his hands by the side of his six-gum. In fact, he was a delightful man when you know him. He knew all about history. And I got to know him very well. And eventually I knew him for years. And I was with him when he died in New Mexico 20 years later. But anyway, I used to fly his Mustang.

That's the one that you see behind you. And that was a wonderful aircraft. And because he didn't fly it himself, I did. And I had carte blanche to fly where I liked, doing what I liked in his airplane. And on the 6th of June, 1944, I think I was airborne that day. We'd heard that it had taken place the following evening, or the previous evening.

And I remember I saw on the 6th I went over the landing area, Omaha. We had two, or the Americans had two landing beaches, Omaha and Utah. The British had three. I flew over Omaha, which was one of the big ones, but I was deterred by the fact that 18-inch shells were whistling past my ear from HMS Rodney and whatever it was. I thought, I'll get out of this place immediately. I flew back, and I was operating from Headcorn in Kent.

And the following day, I took off the following morning and did the same journey. And even then, I didn't think it was safe to go anywhere near the Omaha beaches, because there was a lot going on underneath. And I came back and I landed and I remember I thought I'd have a cup of coffee. So we were living in the field in Headcorn, in the field next door to Headcorn Village. And I was going past Homer L. Sanders' caravan and the opened, and Homer L. Sanders, another general, came up. I just happened to be passing. They picked me across, and I was introduced, and we had a chat about what was going on.

This extra general said, well, he was going to Omaha Beach. I said, you can't go there. I've just been there. And there's nowhere to land. He had his own poison C-45. He had his own aircraft. And he'd been instructed to go and land at Omaha Beach. So I said, all brave and dashing, well, if the generals from mission are,

I'll escort you. Would you like me to escort you in my P-51? Oh, that'll be fine. So we took off together, him in a Dakota and me in a, what's his name, circling around, figures around him. And we got to the Omaha beach.

There were masses of everything all around, ships, things trundling backwards towards the shore. And lo and behold, a whole tribe of C-45s, or Dakotas, were landing. And I couldn't think where they're landing. And I noticed that on the Omaha beach, there was just a single strip on the side of the water. These C-45s were landing and unloading. My general in his C-45 was about to do the same thing.

So I circled with him or around him, watching all the excitement taking place underneath me. And because my family said I'm the sort of person I am that rules are for everybody else but not for me, I just circled with them. And I thought I would better land there too. So I put the wheels and my flaps down, and I landed at my P-51 on the single track.

And I got to, it was just over 1,000 yards long. The water was literally feet away. And I then taxied back along the side of the strip, stopped my aircraft, and to watch what was going on, purely because it interested me. I was not there to do anything. I just wanted to watch what was going on. And there was a mass of things going on. Aircraft were unloading, piles of stuff being loaded everywhere. And in the middle of it all was a chop standing on a mountain of luggage, waving his hands and blowing a whistle. So I thought I'd get out.

It sounds ridiculous to even talk about. I then got out of my aircraft and I walked towards him and I stood underneath him looking up. I thought, well, I ought to tell him who I am, why I'm here. I'd be rather decent of him to report my presence. I said, are you the chap in charge? And he had no answer. I shouted up several times, are you the chap in charge? And he had no answers. I shouted up several times, are you the chap in charge? No answers. So I turned away in order to walk back to my aircraft.

And suddenly he said, no, no, he wasn't. So I said, well, who is? He said, well, he's under that tarpaulin just next to us at the place you're standing. He's the duty pilot or something. I don't know what he called himself. I said, what, he's underneath here? He said, yeah, the sniper just got him. So I said, where was he?

He said, well, that's where you're standing. So I just backed away. And I thought, well, I'm just wasting my time here. So I walked back to my aircraft, which was the nicest thing to do because you have to start up in the internals. And if the battery had been flat, I'd been stuck there for a long time. So I climbed back in, started up the engine, went back to the beginning of the run and took off.

Climbed away into the North Sea, out to the channel, and flew back across the channel, landed at Head Corn. There was nobody around. And I just went to my base, or the place I had my bedroom, et cetera, et cetera. Didn't talk to anybody about it until about a week, 10 days later, Homer L. Sanders rang me up and said, Hey, I hear you've been talking to Al Hill, your roommate, that you landed at Omaha Beach. You didn't tell me. So I said, well, it was an odd event. Nothing but happened. I landed there and took off again.

Yeah, but you, whatever. I said, well, people were being, you're the first chap to land at Omaha Beach. So I said, no, there must have been others. But they were shot down. They didn't land on their own accord. And I never mentioned it to anybody. It's now 2017. You're among the last of the few.

What's that like? I don't think about it at all. I speak of it familiarly because I've written about it so much and I've talked about it so much and I talked about it so much so all the facts are engraved in my mind. But I don't think about it. I don't have nightmares. I'm not in any way affected by it.

I don't have an injury or people who were injured during the battle or indeed later. People see things, you know, in the films, particularly American films, all they do, somebody hits them on the head with a bottle and all they do is shake their head and get on with the job. Sort of thing, in exactly the same way. When you're injured, believe me, it's with you for the rest of your life.

And you never forget it. And I was very fortunate. I was comparatively unscathed. I had a lot of scrapes. I had lost another aircraft. But it left me unfazed. And it meant a lot to a lot of people. John Beasley, he's in that photograph,

is a great friend of mine, delightful chap, slightly older than me, served in 249, and lived with his delightful wife down in Ware in Hertfordshire until the other day.

And he died, he's two years older than me. And his wife, just before she died, very shortly afterwards, said, you know, John suffered terribly, terribly, terribly from nightmares. He was badly, I knew he bailed out several times in 249 Squadron.

And he'd been shot down with me on the 15th or 27th of September, I think it was, or 15th, I can't remember which. And he was shot in the foot. And that foot, bad foot, laughed at me all his life. And apparently all his life he'd been hounded, or at least, well, it was hounded by nightmares. Struggling to get out of bed at 3 o'clock in the morning, scratching or screaming. And a lot of people were so affected. To me, it didn't.

Nothing happened. I'm a survivor. A survivor survivor nothing more than that it's i'm not unaffected are you proud of what you and your three thousand i don't know i'm not proud of what i did in fact i i have a lot i must tell you my sons probably don't know this i lay awake at night and I think for a long period of time I didn't do anything. I ought to have done better. I should have done more. I was, according to government and my decorations, I did reasonably well, but I should have done more.

I should have done more. but I should have done more. I should have done more. And not only during the war, also during my mother's life. And we had a very, we were married for 70 years, my wife and I.

I had a lovely, beautiful, competent wife, but I wish I'd have done better. I'm, well, I'm looking for a word what is I tend that is indeed my father I remember after my father's he was a livable Scottish

before the war the first world war but he was a watcher on life and I've inherited his characteristics I I think. I'm sorry about that. I would have done more during the war and after.

So when you said, this is my last question, in that case, you've just made me think of it. What advice, when you see young pilots, when you see young people now? Well, I have to give lectures every now and again to children. And what do you tell them? I tell you, set a good example. No matter what you do, set a good example. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thank you for making it to this episode of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast. I love doing these podcasts. It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done. And your support, your listening is obviously crucial to that project. If you did feel like doing me a favour,

if you go to wherever you get your podcasts and give it a review, give it a rating, obviously a good one, ideally, then that would be fantastic and feel free to share it we obviously depend on listeners depend on more and more people finding out about it depend on good reviews to keep the listeners coming in really appreciate it thank you you