ok back to reality....
some quotes & stuff from BoB pilots....from both sides:
Funny this was, although I worked in banking, I had applied to get into the RCAF but it appeared that they didn't want me. With the war just started in England, I felt that I had a chance over there.
At the time the RAF were taking just about anybody they could get their hands on. They had a terrific shortage of pilots, I think half of the pilots were from the Commonwealth, a lot of us were Canadians. I applied, I got called up on a Monday, had the medical on Wednesday and sailed for England on the Friday.
Pilot Officer Alfred Keith Ogilvie 609 Squadron RAF
"Look, you've got to face it, France was a shambles. Everyone tried their best, but most of us pilots were not only new to flying in combat, we were new to flying in general. If an Me was coming towards you firing all guns, you would push the stick forward, your heart seems to go up into your throat as he he flies past you. You know he's going to make a tight turn, the Me was like that, and your ticker would be pounding nine to the dozen as you looked in the mirror, looked from side to side but couldn't see him, but you knew he was there, instinct told you he was there. For the new pilot it was panic stations, okay, we were told not to panic, but it was human nature. We learnt by those mistakes, your leader might call out over the radio that the 'hun' was on your tail calling you by your code name, but in a state of panic, it was not unusual to even forget what your code name was.
Sgt G.C.Bennett 609 Squadron. (Later killed in 1941)
"We were ordered to to attack the advancing German columns around Sedan. On the 11th and 12th May, everybody got back alright. Then on the 13th May five of our aircraft went again on exactly the same course for the third day running. Only one came back. After that it was chaos. We did some leaflet dropping at night. Those of us who were left moved from field to field, half a dozen times a fortnight. A lot of people just got lost. We ended up with two other Battles from Squadrons we did not know, alone in a field somewhere in Central France...........Our aircraft was had been damaged a good bit by then, but we found another that was missing a tail wheel, we put our tail wheel on it, pushed the ground crew in the back, and took off. All I had was a cycling map of Northern France."
Sgt Arthur Power 88 'Battle' Squadron
It was hard when word came in that one of your mates was missing, another pilot may have given a graphic account of how he saw someone go down in flames and hadn't a chance to bale out. You sort of somehow found a big hole in your stomach momentarily. But you could not afford to think of such matters, you put your mind to other things, you got drunk or whatever. You train yourself to think of only one thing, and that is the job that lies ahead."
George Barclay 151 Squadron.
"We were all amateurs. Yet the young pilots lived their lives to the full because they knew that any day they'd be dead."
Gregory Kirkorian. RAF Squadron Intelligence
"The waiting was the worst part, we'd sit around playing poker with that tension pit in our stomachs - it was almost a relief when we heard the phone ring to scramble."
Group Captain Peter Matthews.
from the LW side...no names on a few:
"We were idealists with the honor of being part of the most elite fighting force in the world"
"........we listen to the spell binding words of our leader and accept them with all our hearts. Never before have we experienced such a deep sense of patriotic devotion towards our beloved German fatherland. I shall never, never forget the expressions of rapture which I saw on the faces around me today."
"It was the first time I had experienced this. . . it was a kind of ticky, ticky, tick. . but it made me feel good that it had protected me. Anyway, what I did was evade whoever was firing at me by nose-diving. Now, I thought, I've got rid of it, so I climbed up again trying to catch up with the unit. I remember thinking, Well, this isn't so bad . . . The protection had held . . . but I was still climbing and suddenly there was a second attack from behind. It was so fast that I couldn't evade before it came . . . at least, I as a beginner couldn't. Suddenly he was there and immediately I went down again. While I was diving I thought, Well, what do I do now?
Some pilots said that in such a case you just go down to tree-top level and go home . . . but I thought, Well, that sounds too easy, so I decided to climb up again.., which was a big mistake that an experienced man would not have made. Then as I was climbing again suddenly I was attacked from below to the right-hand side. Someone who was more at home playing these games had come from below from the right-hand side. In this area there was no protective armour so it was a real problem.
The glass from the cockpit was splintering, the instrument panel splattered and now I was really hit. . . or many hits. Somehow at that point I blacked out. When I came to I found myself in a vertical dive and what I noticed was lots of noise, a kind of fluid coming from the side of the plane and what struck me was that the ground was approaching very fast. I realized that I had to catch the plane immediately and get it out of the dive. I did and in doing so my blood rushed from my head and I blacked out again. When I came to I found I was at tree-top level with little power left in the machine. It could still fly but with no power. I was now very, very low and had to look for somewhere to land. At this stage I looked around and found that there were two Spitfires behind me and they were shooting occasionally, but I guess it was difficult to shoot at me because I was going so slow and was not flying in a straight line. I don’t know whether they didn’t shoot me because they saw I was in a difficult situation....anyway, I just saw an English park-like landscape, some bushes and trees. There was a group of trees ahead of me and I said to myself, Well, gee, what I have to do is to try to get enough speed by flying directly at the trees and then hope that I have enough speed to jump over them and then go down. I did this and then blacked out once more.
Bruno Petrenko ex Bf109 pilot now living in Canada
back to the uk allies
"We learned tactics pretty quickly, but there wasn’t much time during the Battle. We learned to spread the vics. One chap was put in as ‘weaver’ — arse-end Charlie — weaving about behind our formation, keeping look-out. They were often shot down, weaving behind and never seen again.
Sailor Malan was the best pilot of the war, a good tactician; above average pilot and an excellent shot. In the end it comes down to being able to shoot. I was an above average pilot, but not a good shot, so the only way I could succeed was to get closer than the next chap. This wasn’t easy Johnny Johnson was a pretty good, average pilot, but an excellent shot.
The answer was that there were was no really successful shooting parameter above 5 degree deflection. Most kills were from behind, coming down on the enemy, or head-on, or in 5 degrees deflection. The Spitfires guns were harmonized to about 450 yards, but this was spread too far across. Sailor Malan trimmed his own guns down to 200-250 yards, and we all followed suit. At the end of the day, you had to have luck, and I had my share. Once I had my watch shot off my wrist. It was my own watch, and the Air Ministry wouldn’t pay me back for it! Another had a bullet hit his headphones. His ear was a bit of a mess, but at least he was alive.”
Air Commodore Alan Deere CBE. DSO. DFC. ex 54 Sqn, 602 Sqn and 611 Sqn RAF
from:
http://www.battleofbritain1940.net/0004.html