15 August 1940 We Remember

THURSDAY 15th AUGUST 1940. THE CASUALTIES:

1205hrs: Deal. Hurricane P2801. 615 Squadron Kenley
Sgt D.W.Halton Listed as missing. (Aircraft crashed and burnt out. No sign of pilot)

1500hrs: Harwich. Hurricane R4075. 1 Squadron Northolt
P/O D.O.M.Browne Listed as missing. (Last seen in combat with enemy fighters over North Sea)

1500hrs: Harwich. Hurricane P4043. 1 Squadron Northolt
Sgt M.M.Shanahan Listed as missing. (Last seen in combat with enemy fighters over North Sea)

1520hrs: Dungeness. Spitfire R6990. 64 Squadron Kenley
F/O C.J.D.Andreae Listed as missing. (Last seen in combat with Bf109s over Channel)

1525hrs: Calais. Spitfire K9664. 64 Squadron Kenley
P/O R.Roberts Taken prisoner. (Forced landing after combat with Bf109s over Channel)

1715hrs: Dunkirk. Spitfire N3189. 266 Squadron Hornchurch
Sgt F.B.Hawley Listed as missing. (Believed crashed into Channel after destroying He115)

1745hrs: Portland. Hurricane V7227. 213 Squadron Exeter
P/O S.M.H.C.Buchin Listed as missing. (Failed to return to base after combat over Channel)

1751hrs: Selsey Bill. Hurricane P3944. 111 Squadron Croydon
F/O B.M.Fisher Killed. (Shot down by Ju88 and exploded. Pilot baled out of burning plane)

1800hrs: Portland. Hurricane P3215. 87 Squadron Exeter
S/L T.G.Lovell-Gregg Killed. (Aircraft damaged by enemy gunfire. Crashed attempting to reach Warmwell)

1805hrs: Portland. Hurricane P2872. 87 Squadron Exeter
P/O P.W.Comeley Listed as missing. (Shot down by Bf110 off coast and crashed into the sea)

1815hrs: Cherbourg. Spitfire N3277. 234 Squadron Middle Wallop
P/O R.Hardy Taken prisoner. (Forced landed on beach after combat over Channel off Swanage)

1815hrs: Bournmouth. Spitfire R6988. 234 Squadron Middle Wallop
P/O C.H.Hight Killed. (Collapsed and died by his aircraft after being shot down and crashing)

1850hrs: Rochester (Teston). Spitfire N3168. 266 Squadron Hornchurch
P/O F.W.Cale Killed. (Baled out over River Medway but was dead when found in the river)

1915hrs: Dymchurch. Hurricane P3941. 151 Squadron North Weald
P/O J.T.Johnstone Killed. (Shot down into Channel by Bf109. Was dead when picked up by rescue boat)

1920hrs: Dover. Hurricane V7410. 151 Squadron North Weald
P/O M.Rozwadowski Listed as missing. (Failed to return to base after combat over Channel)

Luftwaffe Losses
Destroyed 153
Probable 55
Damaged 58

RAF. 34 Aircraft, 18 pilots wounded or missing.

For more information on the actions of the day click the link below.

http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/august15.html

“The coast. The initial point. No time left for thinking – there lay England, the lion’s den. But the eagles were going to attack the lion in his lair and wound him grievously.
“Fighters to starboard…” Three specks overflew us, disappeared to the rear, and after a diving turn, hung behind us.” “Your turn now”. The words disappeared in the rattle of our machine guns. In short bursts the volleys flew towards the first fighter. He turned away and the second one took his place. This one’s fire is ineffective as well and both passed below and were shot at by our ventral gunner. Like hornets they swooshed through our formation, the roundels on their fuselage looking like eyes.

“Five fighters to port above.” reported the wireless operator calmly. “Dammit,” the pilot said, but did not get agitated. We kept on flying towards our target. Staring before us we tried to locate the airfield amidst the ragged clouds.’ “There, the field, below us.” ……

“The target at last – the fighters were beginning to be a real nuisance. The time had come now. I did not give a single Pfennig for the life of those below – drop the HEs, away with the blessing! The aircraft went into a dive, speed rapidly building up, and the wind roared and howled around us. The hangars grew and grew. They were still standing. The AA guns were firing away at us, but they were too late.

‘A jolt – the bombs were free, the steel bodies out whistling down. Below all hell was let loose. Like an inferno, steel hit steel, and stones. Bomb upon bomb exploded, destroying and tearing apart what they hit. Hangar walls and roofs crumpled like tin sheets, pieces flying through the air. Aircraft were shattered by a hail of splinters. Barracks tumbled down, enormous smoke and dust clouds rose like mushrooms. Here and there explosions and flames shot up. The airfield and the hangars were already badly hit but bombs kept falling from the bombers that followed us, kept raining down in a horrible shower. Fire from exploding ammunition burst upwards like torches. The English AA artillery had been eliminated, their firing positions turned into craters.

“The sun shone into our cabin. The enemy fighters had been got rid of. Below us lay the wide sea. How beautiful the Earth can be. Hands loosened their grip on the machine guns. What happened just a few minutes ago lay behind us and we relaxed. The engines were running evenly, we were flying home. The airfield didn’t exist any more; that was the result.” …
Oberleutnant Rudolf Kratz Stab/KG 30 stationed at Aalborg

Typical were the last desperate moments of young Josef Birndorfer, an Me 110 pilot, seeking vainly to shake 609 Squadron’s implacable Flying Officer Ostazewski off his tail.
Diving steeply for the ground in a series of S-turns, Birndorfer found himself curving, at 300 miles an hour, round a church spire … snaking perilously through the steel cables of Southampton’s balloon barrage, cheating the grey, motionless sixty-foot-long porpoise-shapes by a hair’s breadth . . . now at hedgetop level, a dark speeding shadow across the lavender shadows of evening … onwards over the Solent’s laden waters, with Ostazewski closing relentlessly from 300 yards. Then the Pole was down to 100 yards, still firing, and white stars were winking and dancing along the Zerstorer’s fuselage. At Ashley Down, on the Isle of Wight, it struck a metalled road head-on, and suddenly it was a plane no longer but a fiery, skidding projectile ripping itself apart.
Still the Germans were coming: Oberst Deichmann’s onslaught had reached juggernaut pitch by now. At 6.28 pm, the Spitfire pilots of 54 Squadron, slumped on the grass at Manston airfield, were dreaming wistfully of beer and supper at their home base, Hornchurch, when the telephone’s jangle sent their hopes plunging.
Another seventy-plus German aircraft were in mid-Channel, surging for a landfall between Dover and Dungeness.

Richard Collier Eagle Day-Battle of Britain 1996 Hodder and Staughton p89

“The sound was unthinkable, you never heard anything like it, and there, out of the sky planes were falling blazing to the ground, parachutes with little men hanging helplessly underneath drifted towards earth, even flying boots and pieces of aircraft came down hitting the tin shelter with a terrific thud. I think it was now that this war was so close to home, that we suddenly became proud of these pilots, men and young men, who we didn’t even know, yet we cheered them on in every dogfight that we saw.”
Mrs Joanna Thompson, housewife Kent England.

I was in the garden of our new home in Luton with my foster mother (Auntie Sarr) when she exclaimed, ‘Arn’t they beautiful’, pointing to some silver coloured planes flying high in the clear blue sky. A series of violent explosions followed and we discovered later that planes were German. Leon Kay.

Ben Wicks Waiting for the All Clear. Bloomsbury 1990 p48