Pilot Officer Frank Carey 43 Squadron
Air fighting is a very detatched sort of warfare, being fought, as it were, between machines with the human factor very much submerged in a 'tin box'.
Once in a while for a few fleeting seconds when someone bales out, one can suddenly be aware that humans are actually involved, but as the parachute descends, machines quickly regain the centre of the stage once more.
On one particular sortie from Wick, however, the human angle predominated for quite a while. The formation in which I was flying came upon a rather lonley He-111 way out in the North Sea which we naturally proceeded to deal with.
After a few shots a fire was seen to start in the fuselage and the flight commander immediately ordered us to stop attacking it.
The enemy aircraft turned back towards Wick and we escorted it on it's way with me in close formation on it's port side where the fire was.
Being only a few feet away from the Heinkel it was all too easy to become sympathetically associated with the crews frantic efforts to control the fire and I even began to wish that I could jump across and help them.
Thus I was suddenly converted from an anxious desire to destroy them to an even greater anxiety that they survive.
We had got within a few miles of the coast and had really begun to hope that they would make it, when we were all outraged to see a Hurricane from another squadron sweep in from behind, and without a single thought about us all around, poured a long burst of fire into the Heinkel which more or less blew up in our faces and crashed into the sea with no survivors.
It was all I could do to prevent myself from spinning around and having a crack at the Hurricane in response to it's action. I felt a sense of personal loss as I stared at the wreckage on the water - what dramatic changes of attitude in such a short space of time.
Flying Officer Michael Wainwright 64 squadron
On one occasion towards the end of the battle, an aircraft came along on my port side and I sensed something - and there was this 109 and he was waving at me. Then he went off.
I thought he was letting me know that if he had any bullets left he could have shot me down, but he'd obviously run out. Nobody believed me when I told them that.
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