Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (32 page)

During his first week production increased by 130 new aircraft of all types, and by the end of May, after only two weeks, nearly 300 had been produced. While the Germans dithered, Beaverbrook worked, and six weeks later production had risen 60 percent, to 300 new planes per week. Nearly 450 new Hurricanes and Spitfires rolled off the lines in June, and Dowding ended the month with more fighters than he’d started with. By contrast, the Luftwaffe built just 220 new fighters and 340 bombers during the month of June.

But then the Germans didn’t have Max Aiken—they had Ernst Udet. Though he was Germany’s highest-scoring surviving ace from the Great War and a superb fighter pilot, Udet was totally out of his depth as the director of the Luftwaffe Technical Office. He’d told his old friend Hermann Goering, “I don’t know anything about design and construction. I’m a flyer and nothing else.”

Yet he remained in this crucial position, and his lack of vision would cost the Luftwaffe dearly. He was also a significant force in killing off the heavy bomber program, specifically the He 177. Heinkel had also produced the world’s first jet-powered aircraft and flown it successfully back in 1939. However, Udet blocked future development because he’d promised the contract to Messerschmitt.
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What might the skies over Europe have been like if the Luftwaffe had fielded jet fighters in time for the Battle of Britain?

Beaverbrook also streamlined and revamped the Civilian Repair Organization. This was a network of nearly a hundred civil companies that could repair damaged aircraft and return them to service. Britain was perennially short of raw materials, so anything that could be salvaged had to be. Beaverbrook reorganized the whole system and introduced three distinct types of damaged aircraft. Category 4 damage could be fixed, usually in place, within thirty-six hours. Category 5 was flyable to a repair facility, and if it could be fixed in a day, then the pilot waited. Category 6 was heavy damage that needed ground transport and would take longer than thirty-six hours to repair. By the end of the war the CRO would return some 79,000 aircraft to the sky.

Air Chief Marshal Dowding and Lord Beaverbrook saved Britain by saving RAF Fighter Command. Dowding provided modern fighters, backed by the entire Chain Home network, while the Ministry of Aircraft Production ensured a steady resupply of planes and engines. Both men knew that this was the very least they could do if brave young men were going to risk everything to defend their island—and by August it was clear that this was going to happen.

IF ONE SINGLE
image had to symbolize the Battle of Britain, it would be the Spitfire. While fully acknowledging the contributions and sacrifices of the thousands of dedicated men and women performing countless unglamorous and essential jobs, it was still the fighter pilot who took to the air. In this, too, England and the RAF owed a debt to Hugh Dowding. While serving in the Air Ministry as the Air Member for Research and Development in the 1930’s, he’d vigorously promoted development of both the Hurricane and the Spitfire.

Reginald Mitchell, Supermarine’s chief designer, created an open-cockpit, gull-winged monoplane that flew for the first time in 1933. With a top speed of just 235 mph, the new aircraft would never cut it as a fighter, so he started over. Then in 1935 the Air Ministry changed its requirement to include
eight
machine guns instead of the original four. Mitchell redesigned again and his new elliptical wing became the Spitfire’s defining characteristic.
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This prototype was powered by a Rolls-Royce engine and successfully flew during March 1936. The shape gave the wing more surface area, lowered the wing loading, and produced excellent slow-speed flight characteristics. Using a system of hollow girders, the Spitfire’s wing was extremely strong near the wing root and very light at the wingtips. It was even thinner than the Messerschmitt and provided a 242-square-foot wing area versus 173.3 square feet on the Bf 109.

The fuselage had a monocoque center with removable forward and aft sections. The first seventy-seven Mark I aircraft used a fixed-pitch, two-bladed wooden propeller, giving the plane a takeoff roll of about 1,300 feet. Subsequent production aircraft were fitted with Rotol or de Havilland three-bladed, constant-speed props. This shortened a takeoff to 700 feet and made a tremendous difference in higher-altitude air combat.

Interestingly, the Spitfire also had two step rudder pedals. This was a second “stirrup” placed six inches above the first into which the pilot would slip his feet before combat. Changing the angle of his legs and raising them increased g-force tolerance by slowing the drain of blood from the head during a dogfight.
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Spitfire Mk I’s first arrived in 19 Squadron during August 1938. The initial order of 310 aircraft was quite beyond Supermarine’s ability to produce, and slow deliveries would continue until Beaverbrook’s wartime methods took effect in 1940. Yet Supermarine listened to pilots and made other significant improvements, such as installing armor over the main fuel tank and around the seat. A thick, laminated windscreen was added to give further protection.

The belt-fed Brownings were an issue from the beginning. First, a .303 caliber was fine for rifle bullets, but even eight machine guns would only deliver 12 pounds of lethal metal during a three-second burst.
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Just 30 percent of the rounds fired would reach a target at 200 yards, and even then only 6 percent would penetrate. This was exacerbated in the Spitfire’s case because the guns were spread out along the wing. Second, ammunition was a problem, as the RAF essentially used British Army rifle shells, which contained cordite. This often caused breech explosions when the guns got hot, as they do in combat. The breeches also had a tendency to freeze up in the cold wet skies over Europe, but the peacetime RAF hadn’t really caught on to that because gunnery wasn’t practiced much. Eventually, hot engine bleed air was routed to heat the guns, but for many months a frozen breech was a real risk for pilots.

Supermarine then designed the Mark IB variant, which employed two Hispano-Suiza 20 mm cannons. But the muzzle velocity was much lower, so it only fired nine rounds per second per gun, versus seventeen rounds per second from the Brownings. In a dogfight, where a pilot usually had only two or three seconds to make a shot, you’d want as many shells as possible in the air. On the other hand, heavier projectiles meant a greater probability of kill if they actually hit the target.

The cannons also had to be installed on their sides to fit their top-mounted ammo drums within the wings. Under g-forces, shell casings often bounced back into the breech and frequently jammed. The Spitfire’s flexible, thin wing didn’t help, and there was also only room for 60 rounds per cannon—about five seconds’ worth of fire, which was not nearly enough.
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Some of these modified Spits would fight in the upcoming battle with Duxford’s 19 Squadron, but they jammed so badly that the Brownings were reinstalled. A revised Mk Ib, with four Brownings and two cannons, wasn’t fielded until after the Battle of Britain.

During the Great War, there were no wing-mounted guns, so everything fired through the propeller, over the wing, or from a rear cockpit. Wing mounts permitted more guns, which was good, and no synchronization gear was needed, since the weapons fired beyond the propeller arc. But now you have the problem of harmonization—aligning the weapons so the shells converge at a given range.

Prewar RAF regulations stipulated that 650 yards was the magic number, so all guns and sights were to be set for this. The logic, if it can be called that, was that a greater distance would produce a bigger pattern and a few bullets were likely to hit the target. This was flawed for several reasons. One is that at greater distances, aiming is much more difficult. Also, with a greater distance the target may move considerably while the rounds you’ve fired are on their way. Finally, bullets lose velocity rapidly, and at that distance they wouldn’t pack much of punch even if you managed to hit something.

Veteran pilots like Sailor Malan scoffed at this nonsense and generally agreed that 250 yards was a good range, though they’d get much, much closer if the situation allowed. Unlike their German counterparts, early RAF fighters also didn’t have rounds counters to display available ammunition remaining. So the British used Buckingham Mk IV tracer shells at the end of a belt; when the pilot saw these, he knew he was out of ammunition. Unfortunately, the Germans picked up on this too, and now knew when their Spitfire or Hurricane opponent had empty guns.

The type and mix of ammunition used was also very important. Each gun on the Spitfire, for example, could be loaded with different shells. By the spring of 1940 most squadrons loaded three guns with standard ball ammo, two with Mk IV incendiary, two with armor-piecing, and one with Mk VI incendiary. Also called a “de Wilde,” the Mk VI contained barium nitrate, which would burn as it impacted, lighting anything flammable.
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This also caused a small flash, or sparkle, which pilots immediately used for aiming.

The Luftwaffe had long decided that a mix of heavy and light armament was better. The Bf 109 was truly astounding for the punch it packed in relation to its small size. However, the German penchant for tinkering guaranteed that critical resources, especially time, were used up in experimentation when sticking with proven solutions was likely smarter. The 1940 vintage Bf 109 variants were all armed with at least two cowling-mounted MG 17 guns in addition to a mix of cannon and gun wing armament. Most common was the E-3 type, which had been retrofitted with seat and head armor.

Messerschmitt also removed the engine-mounted 20 mm cannon. It had always suffered from overheating issues so they added two new MG FF/M cannons in the wings of the Bf 109E-4. This would fire the newly developed
Minengeschoss
(mine shell), which was thinner and lighter than its predecessor. Because the casing was thinner, there was extra space for a larger explosive charge, and its lighter construction permitted a higher rate of fire.

Both fighter variants were powered by Daimler-Benz DB 601 twelve-cylinder liquid-cooled engines. One of the great virtues of this engine, which generated about 1,100 horsepower, was direct fuel injection. Essentially, this forces gas through a nozzle directly into the cylinder. Since the fuel is atomized into fine vapor by high pressure, the combustion sequence is more powerful, thus making the engine more efficient. Also, since the amount of fuel is mechanically controlled, changes in pressure don’t really affect the engine operation.

Not so with the British Rolls-Royce engines, which used carburetors that metered fuel based on air pressure. So if the throttle was wide open, then a large volume of mixed air and fuel was sucked in for combustion. This was initially done with a float, like in a bathroom toilet, which operated a valve that kept fuel levels consistent. Based on throttle position, this permitted varying amounts of the fuel/air mix to pass into the chamber. But a carburetor is susceptible to pressure, so if you nosed over or “bunted” forward suddenly, then the negative g-forces would trap fuel at the top of the chamber and the engine would sputter due to lack of fuel. If this persisted, then the float would be pressed against the floor of the chamber, too much fuel would enter, and the carburetor would flood. The engine would then lose power immediately or often cut out altogether for a few seconds. But negative-g maneuvers are only used during very critical times, such as an attack or a last-ditch defensive action, which is hardly the time you want your engine to quit.

A young engineer named Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling temporarily solved the problem with a simple and brilliant answer. She placed a small disk with a hole in the center, just like a washer, in the float chamber. This way, if the float was forced away by negative g-forces, a small amount of fuel would still make it through the hole—enough to keep the engine running but not enough to flood it. Fighter pilots loved her for this device, which was officially labeled the RAE Restrictor, but with true RAF double meaning simply called it “Miss Shilling’s Orifice.”
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By late July 1940, the Channel battles were at their height and Sailor Malan was back as commander of 74 Squadron. He’d had his pilots practicing formation takeoffs up through the weather so that they could always get up after the Germans. On the twenty-eighth Malan had been forward deployed to Manston in southeast England at what was known as Hell’s Corner. Scrambled to meet an inbound gaggle, Sailor and his twelve Spitfires ran into some thirty 109Es near Dover.

Angling in out of the sun, he pumped five quick bursts into one Emil and sent it spiraling down in flames. As the Germans broke apart to fight, Malan repositioned and squeezed off three more bursts at a 109 crossing in front of him. Thirty-six pounds of metal left the Spitfire’s guns to hit the Emil and it staggered, losing pieces, before flipping over into a tight spiral. Out of ammunition, Sailor headed back to Manston, and the German limped across the Channel. Crash-landing at Wissant, Maj. Werner Mölders, the Luftwaffe’s top ace and Condor Legion veteran, was an extremely lucky man. Wounded in the legs, the forty-victory ace and group commander of JG 51 would live to fly again.

“Vati” (Daddy) Mölders, as he was known, had left Spain with fourteen victories to his credit. Like Oswald Boelcke from the Great War, Mölders was a thinker and a great pilot. Largely responsible for refining the
Rotte
and
Schwarm
tactics, he, like most fighter pilots, was a nonconformist. Not intimidated by Berlin, he refused to compromise his principles for National Socialism. One of his best friends was half Jewish, and Mölders intervened to save him from a concentration camp. When his time came to marry, Mölders also insisted on a proper Catholic wedding and, despite Nazi disapproval, he did it anyway. Shot down by a Dewoitine 520 during the Battle for France, Mölders had been captured and beaten by a French soldier, and his Knight’s Cross was stolen. A French officer discovered this and had the medal returned. The soldier who’d beaten him was later sentenced to death, but Vati personally asked Goering for leniency, and the man was spared.