Inferno - Max Hastings [56]
The RAF strongly discouraged the cult of the “ace,” and of personal scores, but the Luftwaffe energetically promoted it. Such stars as Adolf Galland, Helmut Wick and Werner Molders were said by resentful comrades to suffer from “halswah”—the “sore throat” on which they were eager to hang the coveted ribbon of a Knight’s Cross—as all three did when their score of kills mounted. Galland, a supremely effective air fighter but also a selfish and brutal one, had no patience with weaklings in his command. One day on the radio net a frightened German voice wailed, “Spitfire on my tail!” and then again a few moments later, “Spitfire still behind me! What should I do?” Galland snarled, “Aussteigen, sie bettnasser!”—“Bail out, you bed-wetter!”
Air combat, unlike any other form of warfare, engaged exclusively very young men, who alone had the reflexes for duels at closing speeds of up to 600 miles per hour; by thirty, they were past it. Commanders, confined to headquarters, issued orders. But outcomes hinged upon the prowess of pilots in or just out of their teens. Almost everything they said and did in the air and on the ground reflected their extreme youth; on 17 August Lt. Hans-Otto Lessing, a Bf-109 pilot, wrote exultantly to his parents, describing his unit’s hundredth alleged “victory” like a schoolboy reporting the success of his football team: “We are in the Geschwader of Major Molders, the most successful … During the last few days the British have been getting weaker, though individuals continue to fight well … The Hurricanes are tired old ‘puffers’ … I am having the time of my life. I would not swap places with a king. Peacetime is going to be very boring after this!” One of the despised “puffers” killed him the following afternoon.
The RAF’s Paddy Barthrop said afterwards: “It was just beer, women and Spitfires, a bunch of little John Waynes running about the place. When you were nineteen, you couldn’t give a monkey’s.” British pilots partied relentlessly at night, youth overcoming exhaustion. Pete Brothers said, “We used to booze dreadfully.” One day when his squadron was stood down in bad weather, the airmen adjourned to the bar, only to find themselves scrambled when the sky cleared. “I shall never forget taking off and thinking, ‘That button … turn it that way … switch on gunsights …’ We were all absolutely tanked. Mind you, when we saw black crosses, you were instantly sober.”
They cherished their aircraft as magic carpets into the sky. Bob Stanford-Tuck said: “Some men fall in love with yachts or some women, strangely enough, or motor cars, but I think every Spitfire pilot fell in love with it as soon as he sat in that nice tight cosy office with everything to hand.” Similarly, Bob Doe on his first sight of his new plane: “Our hearts leapt! We walked round it, sat in it, and stroked it. It was so beautiful I think we all fell a bit in love with it.” Fighter Command’s British pilots fought alongside contingents of New Zealanders, Canadians, Czechs, South Africans and a handful of Americans. The 146 Poles who participated in the Battle of Britain formed the largest foreign element, 5 percent of overall RAF pilot strength. Their combat reputation was superb, rooted in experience and reckless courage. “When you seen [sic] the swastika or black cross on the aircraft,” said one of them, Boleslaw Drobinski, “your heart beat much quicker, and you decided that you must get him or you get shot yourself. It’s a feeling of absolute … vengeance.” This was not bombast. When Poles later attacked Germany, they chalked messages on their bombs—“This is for Warsaw,” “This is for Lwów”—and meant it.
Popular adulation was heaped on the aerial defenders of Britain, expressed everywhere airmen met civilians—as they often did, in evenings after fighting in the sky above towns and villages. The applause of ordinary people meant much to the pilots amid their exhaustion and losses. “There was tremendous kindness,” said one young man afterwards. “It was