Spitfire Read online

  For Sophie

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Introduction

  ONE Birth of a Fighter

  TWO The Fall of France

  THREE The Battle for Britain

  FOUR Rhubarbs, Ramrods and Circuses

  FIVE Spitfire Women

  SIX Malta

  SEVEN Dieppe, August 1942

  EIGHT North Africa

  NINE The Relentless Fight in Europe

  TEN Italy

  ELEVEN Spitfires out East

  TWELVE A Foothold in France

  THIRTEEN The Beginning of the End

  FOURTEEN The Last Salute

  Acknowledgements

  References and Notes

  Bibliography

  Picture Credits

  List of illustrations

  Index

  This book is dedicated to all those men and women who designed, built, serviced, flew and loved the Spitfire

  PROLOGUE

  JUNE 2016

  Mornings were a struggle for Ken Farlow; the cocktail of drugs softened but did not kill his pain. But the Yorkshireman was made of sterner stuff and a night of broken sleep wasn’t going to stop him relishing every last detail of the sight that he had travelled so far to enjoy. He had lost many good friends to a different battle many years before and he knew life was precious. The cancer had been discovered a few months earlier and he had given his daughter a wish list of things he wanted to achieve before the end. Crucially, he wanted to see his beloved Spitfire one last time.1

  The young Ken Farlow had left his Yorkshire roots seventy-six years before, in 1940. Life had been tough in the poverty-riven mining community he’d been brought up in, where a mere apple core could be an item of trade. He had left school at fourteen because money was needed to sustain his family. Still, he’d enjoyed a loving upbringing with his parents and sister Renée, in a house that had been full of fun and laughter. Until 1939, when the world around him changed forever and it became time to grow up and to give something back. His beloved country and very way of life were under threat and it would be up to teenagers like Ken to fight back. He joined the Royal Air Force as a mechanic and served around the world for the entire war.

  It had been both the best, and the worst of times. He had dodged U-boats in the North Atlantic, and had lived in trenches in the baking heat of day then the freezing cold of the desert night. Fresh drinking water was rare because of the dead bodies, animal and human, the enemy dumped in the wells.

  He had formed lifelong friendships forged in the teeth of conflict that only those who had been there could understand. He had been strafed by low-flying Messerschmitts and watched his mates die next to him, blown apart by Nazi bombs. He had seen their shattered bodies wrapped in canvas ready for burial. He had helped to rescue stricken aircrew from burning aircraft and recovered their mangled bodies from catastrophic crashes. Of course, like most of his generation, he didn’t talk about the horrors he’d witnessed or how they had affected him. Not until the end was near. Then the long-buried memories would easily bring a tear to his tired eyes. But he had loved his time in the RAF, working on the likes of Wellington bombers and Hurricane fighters. And, of course, the Spitfire.

  Now, at ninety-five, he was reliving the happier days of the war that had been the making of him. He sat silently in his wheelchair, gazing through the chain-link fence at Gloucester airport. Here she was, the iconic Spitfire, sunlight glinting on her long, slender nose and distinctive wings. He marvelled once more at the sleek, elemental beauty of the machine which, perhaps more than any other, had secured our enduring freedom.2

  His ground-crew friends no longer swarmed around the airfield working on her, ensuring she was ready for battle. Her engine cowling was screwed shut, her cockpit canopy secured, her ammunition long ago removed and stowed elsewhere. Yet he could still hear the beat of her propeller blades, the throb of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine at her formidable heart. Some described it as Wagnerian; others, a roar of defiance.

  He could feel her accelerating giddily down the runway, lifting off, the gentle clunk of the wheels tucking themselves away beneath her leaf-shaped wings as she reached again for the sky. It didn’t take long to fall in love with the Spitfire. Pilots, mechanics, land girls, civvies – they all fell under her spell. Ken certainly loved her. And once you were smitten, she never let you go. It was different for her enemies, of course. For them, she was beautiful but unobtainable. And deadly.

  As Ken stared through the fence, he gave a sigh of happiness tinged with melancholy. It was also a sigh of satisfaction. He had done his bit; though he always denied he’d been a hero, he was an honourable man who’d led a good life and fought for his country.

  Now he had fulfilled his final wish to see his beloved Spitfire one last time before he died. He was ninety-five; it wouldn’t be long now. The tears and sadness turned to a smile.

  Ken Farlow died in November 2016.

  Ken Farlow

  INTRODUCTION

  What is it about the Spitfire? Why do people stop and gaze in awe at her sleek lines? Why do eyes turn skywards when the distinctive growl of her engine is heard? Why, over eighty years after she first flew, is the Spitfire regarded as the very symbol of Britishness; of tenacity, courage, dedication, faithfulness? Why is this particular aircraft loved so much?

  To be honest, I hadn’t thought about these questions until I had a chance meeting with an elderly Second World War Spitfire pilot. My background in the Royal Air Force had been on more modern aircraft: the Tornado Ground Attack and Air Defence jets. My post-RAF writing career had concentrated on the aircraft of Bomber Command during WWII – the legendary Lancasters and Halifaxes, and the staggering bravery of the men who flew them. The Spitfire had never been on my radar. This all changed during a visit to the Imperial War Museum at RAF Duxford, where my eyes were opened to the legendary status of an aircraft that had first flown in March 1936.

  Children and adults alike were experiencing the awe of the mighty warplanes close up. The mammoth B52 bomber, the menacing outline of the Stealth bomber, the hedgehog spikes of machine guns covering the B17 Flying Fortress, the power of an F15 fighter and that great British warplane, the Vulcan bomber. The visitors to RAF Duxford were gripped by the aviation giants, eager to absorb as much detail as possible in the limited time they had available.

  As I stood on the airfield, away from the public areas on grass that had once seen scores of Spitfires take to the skies during WWII, I watched in amazement as an astonishing phenomenon unfolded. For a moment, the cough and splutter of an engine went unnoticed – like the preliminary chords of an orchestra – and people carried on their conversations. Then the stammer turned into a roar as soothing as anything philharmonic. Chatter stopped, cameras pointed away from the domineering aircraft – even from the majestic Concorde – and towards the sound humming from the runway. People began to pour out of the exhibition halls and move, some even running, struggling to release cameras from their bags, towards the barriers at the edge of the airfield. The aircraft they sought out was small, one of the smallest on the Duxford track. They had recognised the distinctive notes of a Merlin engine and, yet to actually see the aircraft itself, they still knew what was to come. A few heads nodded in recognition; enthusiasts squinted, trying to identify the variant. Parents pointed and whispered to children: Spitfire.

  The hum turned to the glorious crescendo of the Merlin engine at full power as the fighter streaked down the grass runway mere yards away from the admiring crowd. In seconds its curved, leaflike wings were outlined above as the wheels tucked neatly into its lean belly. Cameras tracked skywards. It was a wonderful treat to see a Spitfire in flight. Something to show those back home. As the fighter disappeared into the Cambridgeshire sky, the vis
itors turned back to the other displays with broad grins, happy that they had seen a legend, no, the legend, take to the air. Some had frowned at a slight deviation in the Spitfire’s usual elegance. A second canopy sat behind the first, for this was one of the few two-seat versions which carried passengers. What they couldn’t have known – the reason I was there, the reason this book came about – was that a ninety-year-old veteran, who had not flown a Spitfire for nearly seventy years, sat in the rear cockpit, grinning like a schoolboy.

  * * *

  After a frantic last few months fighting the Germans in Italy, Brian Bird had eventually landed after his final operational flight and jumped down from his trusty Spitfire on 28 June 1945. It was a sad moment, turning his back on the finest aircraft he had ever flown. As the postwar years went by, the sound of a single-engine aircraft would often turn his head, just in case the distinctive shape of the ‘Spit’ could be seen overhead. But the years passed and memories of his beloved fighter seemed to fade.

  Then one day in August 2014 the phone was brought to him at his British Legion veterans’ home in East Sussex. Brian was recovering from a hip operation and was on enforced bed rest.1

  The caller was a television producer I was working with on an aviation documentary. When she told me she’d found a Spitfire veteran we might be able to take airborne again I was delighted. Knowing little about the incredible history of the aircraft, I presumed it would be a veteran of the Battle of Britain. No, she told me, Brian had flown Spitfires in Italy during WWII in 1945. I was confused – Spitfires? In Italy? In 1945? I asked her to check the facts again. They were correct and it transpired I had much to learn about the war record of the Spitfire.

  Initially, Brian was doubtful about the reality of taking his beloved aircraft into the skies again. He was ninety, relied on a wheelchair and walking frame, was on a cocktail of drugs and fitted with a catheter – how could he possibly fly again? But his wartime spirit shone through and a few days later his GP had passed him fit to fly once again. The no-nonsense matron from his care home, understandably concerned about the risks involved and the number of disclaimers that had to be signed, took it on herself to supervise the whole trip. So it was she who had the honour of wheeling Brian across the hallowed Duxford airfield to stare again at the fighter he had loved so much.

  Scrambling out of his wheelchair, he grabbed his walking frame and slowly, painfully, made his way around his beloved Spitfire. The joy, and perhaps a little sadness, on Brian’s face were clear to see, and those of us gathered around were more than aware of the significance of this reunion. We stood back and allowed them both some time together.

  While ageing had marked Brian’s face, the Spitfire’s perfect lines remained smooth, polished and unchanged since their last meeting in 1945. He recorded his memories of the day in a letter he later sent to me; they are a testament to both him and the Spitfire. ‘The sight of a Spitfire gracefully sitting there – no one will ever experience the degree of thrill I felt at that moment; it boosted my resolve to overcome my disabilities and get airborne.’

  He marvelled at the deadly beauty of the aircraft he had loved and flown so many years before. He was twenty again, smitten by her curves and allure. She too was a veteran of WWII, having been delivered to the RAF in 1944 and flown on many operational sorties towards the end of the war.2 Refurbished, maintained and loved by an endless array of engineers and enthusiasts, she had been converted into a two-seat aircraft and, at the tender age of seventy, was still flying regularly, now worth many millions of pounds. She is one of just a handful of WWII Spitfires still flying today.

  Brian was a fount of information about the Spitfire; it was he who educated me about its incredible history and set me on a path to discover more about its fabled status. He was among some of the few surviving Spitfire pilots to have fought in the war, flying during the conflict’s closing weeks, hitting the Germans on the ground as they retreated from Italy. He had flown a Mark IX; in his opinion, the greatest of all Spitfire models. It could fly high, fast and turn on a wingtip. The Mark IX had evolved from the original Spitfire Mark I which, at the outbreak of war, had seen off raiders over the North Sea, helped protect troops over Dunkirk then established itself as a national icon by fighting alongside the sturdy Hurricane to keep the Luftwaffe at bay during the Battle of Britain.

  The aircraft was constantly improved, getting stronger, faster and more deadly as the war progressed. Every time the Germans fielded a competitor or developed a new threat, our scientists and engineers came up with a new mark to counter the Nazi challenge. It evolved, grew and adapted during the war; the final version of the near-23,000 Spitfires, and its naval counterpart the Seafire, built would be the Seafire Mark 47.3 The Spitfire had fired its first shots in combat in October 1939 when 603 Squadron brought down a German bomber off the Scottish coast near Edinburgh. The last time a Spitfire fired its guns in anger was during the Malayan conflict in 1951.

  By the time Brian was flying a Spitfire, it had long evolved from its legendary status as a fighter in the skies during the Battle of Britain, and he was tasked to use it to strike targets on the ground, increasing the danger to pilots, bringing them well within reach of the Germans’ anti-aircraft guns and small-arms fire. This fact had been made brutally clear to him in the briefing before his first operational flight in April 1945. Hence his nerves as he waited for the pre-dawn take-off, the Spitfire’s engine ticking over.

  ‘I can still remember the collywobbles I had at the end of the runway at 5am, and I tell my family this – sometimes, if you get nervous, just switch off; ignore the fears and you will become lethal. And that is exactly what happened when I got to the end of the runway, I turned the fear off and I became lethal.’

  On the Duxford airfield Brian was surrounded by former and current RAF fliers, including myself, who had experienced similar dangers in later conflicts. Air Marshal Cliff Spink had volunteered to take Brian flying again. Cliff had been my Station Commander at RAF Coningsby and had commanded part of the Tornado Air Defence force during the first Gulf War in 1991 when I’d been shot down over Iraq. He had also amassed huge experience on countless aircraft – Spitfires, Hurricanes, Mustangs, Hunters, Lightnings, Phantoms and Tornados, to name but a few. A renowned aviator himself, he was keen to ask a WWII pilot what it had really been like to fly the Spitfire in action.

  ‘Did you take any hits?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes, one or two during strafing runs,’ Bird replied, shrugging his shoulders as if seeing bullet holes appearing in your aircraft was as common as ice on the car windscreen. ‘But generally only in the wings,’ he added, almost apologetically. Having taken a ‘few hits’ myself when I was shot down, I couldn’t help laughing at his nonchalance. And, in a further nod towards just how much times had changed, he added, ‘When you came down with holes in your wings, you just went off to breakfast and by the time you came back the mechanics had mended them and you were airborne again.’ Sticky tape and filler; with such meagre items battles had been fought for our nation’s survival.

  It was time for the next part of Brian’s adventure as Cliff asked him, ‘How would you like to fly a Spitfire again?’ His smile of unbridled delight said it all. ‘I’d love to! Absolutely love to. Yes, yes I’m game. I have not lived this long not to have another go!’ Despite his ailments Brian was already trying to clamber back on the wing as Matron carefully moved to restrain his enthusiasm.

  Getting Brian, who could not stand unaided, into the cockpit was something of a battle itself but six of us managed to lift, carry and push him up some hastily found steps and lower him over the side of the fuselage and down into the cockpit where he was securely strapped in. Although Matron wisely wondered how he might get out in an emergency, Brian wasn’t about to wait for the answer.

  Brian knew the drill from here. As Cliff went through start-up checks, he secured the hood, then his eyes roved over the instrument panel and settled on the oil temperature gauge.

  ‘Cliff,’
he spoke into the microphone to the former senior RAF officer piloting the plane. ‘Should it be showing fifty degrees before engine warm-up is complete?’

  ‘Not bad for a ninety-year-old memory!’ the retired air marshal replied as he opened up the throttle.

  As the remarkable song of the Merlin engine, that spoke of power, endurance and consistency, filled the cockpit, Brian instinctively checked left and right, above and behind. He was back in April 1945, on that early morning in northern Italy, a line of Spitfires assembled in front of him, propellers blurring amid the collective sound of their Merlins’ dominant roar.

  ‘I had two 250lb bombs under me and guns full of ammunition. At the age of nineteen I was flushed with nerves as I sat at the end of the runway awaiting instruction to take off.’

  It was Brian’s first operation against an enemy who had developed a canny skill in using anti-aircraft fire to bring down ground-attacking Spitfires. He looked down the dusty runway and up to the brightening sky. He was struck by the sudden anxiety of going into the unknown, where the law was kill or be killed. His grip tightened on the stick. Bloody collywobbles. He opened the throttle and he felt his nerves calm as the plane gracefully lifted into the air. His instructor’s words came back to him: become absolutely lethal.

  ‘Immediately I was airborne those nerves had evaporated, never to return. Thus it was no surprise to me at Duxford that, once the Spit was in the air, I felt no nervous emotion at all.’

  He felt a bump as Cliff let the Spitfire rise from the grass runway and into the friendly skies above Cambridgeshire. Seventy years on, the fighter was still as doughty and reliable as it had been during the war. For twenty glorious minutes the present became the past as Brian swooped and roared around the airfield. The aching bones, the painful hips, the failing body were all forgotten. He had waited for this moment since 1945. Sergeant Brian Bird, Spitfire pilot, was back.