into action.
On sighting the Junkers 88s, the Hurricanes, dived into the tight German bomber formation. The bombers broke formation and split in every direction, diving and jinking, some making for the nearest clouds, while their fighter escort entered combat in their defence.
The Spitfires now entered the fray, engaged the Messerschmitts, and a series of ferocious fighter-to-fighter dogfights erupted. The reality of aerial combat, with the high speeds of the fighter aircraft involved, meant that the majority of actual engagements lasted only seconds. It was important to get in close, fire in short bursts, then disengage, using speed to escape the scene. The enemy fighters had descended from above, having peeled off in ones and twos, and opened fire; they dived continuously, climbing up to regain position for a similar manoeuvre.
The RAF Spitfire pilots addressed the Messerschmitt threat while the Hurricane pilots concentrated on the destruction of the German bombers. The main objective was to knock them out of the skies.
One of these RAF pilots, newly qualified with less than ten hours flying time on Spitfires, found himself separated from his squadron leader. Acknowledging his lack of experience, the squadron leader had instructed the ‘novice’ to stay close; only in the midst of the heightened moment, he had not. Now alone, albeit in a crowded sky, the pilot wondered at the intensity and lightning speed of exchanges, and the manoeuvrings of the individual aircraft. Instinctive reaction was required, and to his horror he realised that he was way off tempo, completely out of sync and hopelessly out of his depth. Discouraged, mixed up, confused, too much was happening too fast; everything was too quick to take in, and by the time he had regained focus, what he was confronted with had changed, and then changed again.
He could not mentally process what was constantly changing in front of him. It was even difficult to tell friend from foe. His inexperience was likely, at any moment, to see him killed, and he was suddenly all too aware of this probability. Then, shockingly, he became conscious of an enemy fighter lining up to make a head-on attack at him, opening fire with his cannons at long range to knock him out of the sky. Wide of the mark with his opening salvo, the enemy fighter gave up his line of attack and broke off overhead. Alarmed and relieved all at once, the pilot’s respite was fleeting; in the next instant, he heard the sound of firing. From somewhere in his mind, he remembered his flight instructor once telling him that if he ever found himself in this situation, he was to turn the aircraft immediately – the sound almost certainly came from an enemy fighter attacking from astern. He had the wit to turn sharply and slightly downwards in the recommended evasive manoeuvre; the Spitfire had markedly responsive handling, and it was this instantaneous response that kept him alive as the Messerschmitt cannon shells tore past him. Nonetheless, the Messerschmitt followed, the experienced pilot applying patience in overcoming his aircraft’s marginally slower sharp turn to the right. Once executed, the Messerschmitt was on him again.
‘Do not fly straight,’ an inner voice screamed.
Resisting level flight now became his uppermost thought and he half rolled his Spitfire to the right. The mismatch in experience and skill was not long in telling, and try as he might, the youngster could neither outfly nor outmanoeuvre his pursuer; it seemed that nothing he tried could shake him. He decided his only hope was to outrun him, and even this was not proving successful. His anxiety mounted as his options more or less exhausted themselves. Strain had given way to angst, fretfulness to fear. Almost overwhelmed, he was consumed by an overpowering dread that these were his last moments. This dread reached its extreme when he again heard the sound of firing; he felt certain of the disintegration of his aircraft and him along with it. Instead it was the Messerschmitt that began emitting a trail of dark smoke, and then flames began bellowing from its engine. His squadron leader had picked up on what was happening and positioned himself to the rear of the pursuing Messerschmitt – he got in close behind him, kept his Spitfire’s nose on the enemy, and approached its blind spot; when the golden opportunity presented itself – a two to three second window – he fired all eight of his .303” machine guns, recording a further ‘kill’. The youngster was spared to live and fight another day. Thoroughly shaken but all the wiser for the experience, he all too readily realised that the day’s sortie nearly had a tragic end.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Flight Officer William Moore, an Irishman, married Cecilia Beck at St Peter’s Church, Over Wallop, Hampshire on 4 July 1940. Moore was a pilot of 236 Squadron and operated Blenheims throughout the Battle of Britain.
Among serving pilots and airmen, and later historians, the start and end date of the battle is disputed. Officially, it was from 10 July to 31 October 1940. There were 2,938 British, Allied and other airmen awarded the Battle of Britain clasp for having flown at least one sortie with an accredited unit of RAF Fighter Command during this time. The twin-engine Bristol Blenheim Mk IF aircraft, even then obsolete, were used as fighters by the RAF. These carried an observer and gunner in addition to the pilot – hence the term ‘airman’ is sometimes used as a catchall denomination. This is certainly the case for those named on the Battle of Britain Monument at Victoria Embankment, London, unveiled in 2005. Interestingly, William Storey Moore is not listed among the names of those coming from Ireland; instead he is found with those listed as coming from Australia. When the names of all Battle of Britain airmen were being drawn up for inclusion on the monument in 2004 and 2005, it was believed that he was an Australian from Melbourne.
However, in late 2012 Australian author and historian Kristen Alexander provided information that William Moore was born in Dublin on 21 November 1916, and educated there until 1932, whereupon he moved to Australia, continuing his schooling there until 1936. His father, William Moore, was from Dundrum, and his mother was from Dartry Road. However, he, ‘William Junior’, moved to England and joined the RAF on a short service commission in June 1937. During the Battle of Britain, 554 RAF airmen lost their lives; a further 795 were to die before the end of the war. William Moore was among the latter. He was killed on 24 December 1943 acting as squadron leader with 143 Squadron. His Beaufighter XI JM160 (the replacement for the Blenheim) broke up in the air – the cause unknown – while attacking a German Heinkel He 177 bomber over the Bay of Biscay. His widow, Cecilia Moore, moved to Melbourne sometime after his death.
In June 2019 I met with Edward McManus, a significant member of the organising committee behind the Battle of Britain Monument. During the course of collating the names of the participants to feature on the monument, he was relied upon to become familiar with them all through the records available. Today the monument’s website provides valuable biographical data, and even photographs, of these airmen; it is a highly useful source of information. With the goodwill, guidance and enthusiasm of Edward McManus, both of whose parents come from Ireland, it was possible to expand the list of Battle of Britain participants with connections to Ireland, and indeed those connected to the wider Irish diaspora, beyond the ten names which are presented on the monument itself under ‘Ireland’; it is this enlarged involvement that is presented here in this book.
RAF Fighter Command, symbolically represented in the public mindset by the Spitfire fighter aircraft, in fact possessed far more Hurricanes than Spitfires; the Hurricane was responsible for 80 per cent of enemy kills during the battle. Defiants, Blenheims and the airmen who crewed them also played their part. Fleet Air Arm Gladiators and Fairey Fulmars were involved, too. It also has to be remembered that there were far more RAF men and women on the ground than in the air; specialists of all kinds supported the airmen: ground maintenance crew, technicians, armourers, airfield defence, the RAF Police, the fire service and a host of others. And then there was Fighter Command itself, its own staff and those of the radar stations, anti-aircraft batteries, barrage balloons, the Royal Observer Corps and, eventually, air-sea rescue. The defence of Britain’s air space was multi-faceted and heavily populated.
Perhaps then, many of the myths ought to be seen for the fables that they were, and none more so than that there was little or no Irish contribution of note. There was, and this book is an acknowledgement of that truth. This book, for the first time,
