Pilot Officer Tim Vigors 222 Squadron
On the last day of August I came close to getting killed.
We were diving from 25,000 feet on to a big formation of bombers. There was a lot of cloud and we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of them. I blazed away at a Dornier and then, like a fool, pulled up into a sharp left-hand turn without checking what was behind me.
Suddenly there was a crash as a cannon shell fired from a 109 tore broadside into my engine. The next one struck just behind the cockpit and exploded with a bang, sending most of it's particles whistling round the armour plating at my back. My instrumernt panel disintegrated in front of my eyes. The control column was nearly torn from my hands as the third shell hit the tail unit. Smoke and glycol poured from the engine and for a moment I was sure that I was on fire.
I was just reaching for the harness release when I found myself in thick cloud. There were no flames so, protected from the enemy for a moment by the enshrouding cloud, I decided to stay put until I could better assess the damage. My blind flying instruments had all shattered, so I had no way of telling whether I was flying upwards or downwards, or if I was the right way up. A moment later I slithered into clear air once more to find that I was diving straight for the centre of London.
I started to pull out of the dive. The controls felt funny, which was not surprising as more than half of the control surfaces on my tail unit had been shot away and most of my port aileron was missing. But the aircraft was still controllable and although there was a lot of smoke, there was no flame.
My immediate reaction was to bale out. Two things stopped me. First the ground was still about 7,000 feet below me and while there was no reason to believe that the parachute wouldn't open, it did look an awful long way to fall. Second, and more important, I was still smack over the middle of London. My aircraft would almost certainly crash on to a populated area, which might easily kill a lot of people, and I could end up maiming myself if my parachute landed me among buildings.
I decided to sit tight and try and land the aircraft in one piece. I started to glide in an easterly direction and, while losing height, searched desperatlely for a suitable landing site. I had already turned off the petrol and, although there was a lot of white smoke from the broken glycol leads, I assessed the danger of fire as reasonably remote. The controls, particularly the fore and aft reactions, felt very sloppy. Also in order to see in front of me, I had to crab the aircraft to make the smoke fly off to one side. When I was down to about 2,000 feet I spotted a large field about 300 yards square, surrounded by small suburban houses.
Although the field was certainly not an easy place to land a Spitfire under the very best of conditions, by now I had no alternative and was too low to bale out. I was going to need a lot of luck to pull it off. I only had, at the most, 300 yards of landing area and, because of the damage done to my elevators and port aileron it was virtually impossible to get any guidance from the stick and rudder. If I allowed the speed to drop too low I would stall, dive into the ground and almost certainly be killed. On the other hand if I came in too fast, I would not be able to get the aircraft to stall and would fly straight into the houses at the far end. Because my instruments had all gone, the only way I had of making that vital assessment was visually, by watching the ground passing beneath me.
Crabbing my way along to keep the smoke away from my forward line of sight, I glided down towards the houses which lined the near side of my landing area. Passing a few feet above their roofs, I flung the Spitfire into a steep sideslip to drop off height. In order to cut down my landing run, I had left the wheels retracted in the wings. Now leveling off above the vegetables, I started to kick the rudder right and left so as to drop off speed.
About two thirds of the way across the field I realised I was going too fast and wasn't going to make it. Emergency action was needed, otherwise I was going to end up in the drawing room of the red brick house which was rushing towards me.
I muttered a quick prayer and took the only course open. Flinging the stick over to the left, I drove the port wing tip into the ground. There was a grinding noise as the wing dug into the soil and then I was cartwheeling.
Landing on it's belly, facing back the way we came, the aircraft was now slithering backwards. The tail struck a hedge dividing the field from the small garden of a house in a cloud of dust and branches, we came to a juddering halt. There was a sudden and complete silence - one of the most welcome I have ever known.
As I heaved myself from the cockpit, a lady appeared through the gate from the garden. In her hand she bore a mug. 'Are you all right dear?' she cried. 'I thought you might like a cup of tea to steady your nerves.'
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