Dogfight (2 page)

CHAPTER 1

John Gard'ner was blissfully unaware that he had been spotted by a German formation of fighters. Patrolling over the English Channel in his Boulton Paul Defiant fighter, this would be his first and last action of the Battle of Britain. As the twenty-two-year-old New Zealander concentrated on maintaining the close formation flying of his all-too-recent training, he suddenly felt a ‘thud, thud, thud on the aircraft'.

Mercifully the former draughting cadet with the Public Works Department in Nelson was plucked from the frigid Channel waters, living to tell me the tale of how he thwarted death.

Seven decades later, I interviewed Gard'ner—at the time, one of only four Kiwi Battle of Britain pilots still alive—by telephone; he was in Tauranga, I was in Auckland. At ninety-three, one of his few concessions to old age was a very recent withdrawal from the fairways and greens of the local golf course. But this compromise with his advancing years was nowhere reflected in his ability to recall the days of his youth as a member of Winston Churchill's lionised ‘Few'. He was one of 134 New
Zealanders and 37 Australians who took to the air to fight Adolf Hitler's intruders and was rightfully proud of their collective achievement. I voiced my desire to travel to Tauranga in the near future to meet him in person, but in the meantime I wanted to know what had led up to his watery brush with death. How, I asked him, had freshly graduated schoolboys from the farms and cities of the British Commonwealth's southernmost Dominions found themselves in a life-and-death aerial struggle in one of history's most important battles?

He told me that, like most of his Anzac compatriots, he was captivated by the flying craze at an early age.[2] As a ten-year-old, Gard'ner had seen three Great War-era aircraft land on the mudflats off Dunedin and he had bicycled a mile and a half to scrutinise the fantastic winged machines of the air, watching in awe as ‘three little gods' stepped out of their respective cockpits.

Fellow countryman Alan Deere was also touched by the heavenly vision of flight at a young age. He later recalled that one long summer's day in the small coastal town of Westport, nestled at the edge of New Zealand's Southern Alps, he heard the mechanical throb of what turned out to be a tiny biplane. He watched the fabric, wood and wire machine circle the township and land on the beach at the water's edge. Deere, with two childhood friends, ran the four miles to the landing site and for the first time laid their eyes on an aircraft at close range. ‘We stood and gazed in silent wonder at the aeroplane until eventually our persistence was rewarded by an invitation to look into the cockpit. There, within easy reach was the “joy stick” ... the very sound of the words conjuring up dreams of looping and rolling around in the blue heavens. As I gazed at these innermost secrets of the pilot's cockpit,' Deere later reminisced, ‘there gradually grew within me a resolve that one day I would fly a machine like this.'[3]

Queenslander Gordon Olive's earliest memories were similarly of an aircraft. ‘I was probably no more than two years old,' he recalled, [when] ‘this very black object making a terrific droning noise ... flew over my little world.' In the days following, in his Brisbane suburb, the future Battle of Britain ace occupied himself ‘running around with three sticks tied together ... to look like a biplane'.[4]

The young boys' interest in aviation was part of a general popularisation
of flight in 1920s New Zealand and Australia. This was in good part due to the rise of the long-distance aviation pioneers who captured the imagination of the public in general and youth in particular. In May 1928, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, a decorated Australian Great War pilot, prepared to make the inaugural commercial flight between Australia and New Zealand in his famous Fokker tri-motor monoplane, the
Southern Cross.
News of the impending trans-Tasman attempt was eagerly consumed by the New Zealand public through radio broadcasts and as reports of the impending arrival spread through the city of Christchurch, 35,000 residents flocked to Wigram airfield to greet the intrepid ‘Smithy'.

One New Zealander avidly following the
Southern Cross
broadcasts was Arthur Clouston, a resident of the tiny, upper South Island town of Motueka. As the
Southern Cross
began its final leg, Clouston made a night-time dash across the Southern Alps in an overly optimistic attempt to be on hand when the Australian arrived in the morning.[5] The eighteen-year-old was predictably late and the crowds had long dispersed from the aerodrome. Nevertheless, the
Southern Cross
was parked in full glorious view. ‘Covered with oil and dust, squashed flies and midges, the exciting travel-stains of the first flight across the Tasman Sea,' the aircraft imprinted itself on Clouston's imagination: ‘I knew as I walked slowly around the machine that I wanted to fly.' Convinced his future lay in aviation, he joined the fledgling Marlborough Aero Club and after just over four hours' tuition was flying solo in the de Havilland DH 60 Moth. Clouston was hooked and sold his prospering automotive business, casting his lot in with flying.

Richard Hillary, Battle of Britain pilot and author of the 1942 classic,
The Last Enemy,
first became enamoured of aviation at fourteen years of age. Born in Sydney, he accompanied his family to London, where his father took up a position at Australia House. There Hillary saw the eye-catching advertisements for Alan Cobham's ‘Flying Circus'. In 1932, the great pioneer founded the National Aviation Day displays which offered the English public barnstorming displays and the possibility of a joyride in the ultimate symbol of modernity and adventure: the flying-machine. In the summer of 1933, at High Wycombe, the young Australian persuaded his parents to take him to Cobham's Flying Circus. The pleasure flight, popularly known as the ‘the five bob flip,' was an all-too-short circuit of the field. Hillary was hungry for more and after much pestering, his father consented to his son sitting in the front seat of one of the aircraft for the finale of aerobatic manoeuvres involving rolls and loops.[6] Hillary was in
his element and came through the experience, like many of his generation, longing to emulate the skilled aviators.

Films, magazines and books retelling the stories of long-distance pioneers and the exploits of either real Great War aviation heroes or fictionalised aviators—most famously Captain James Bigglesworth—were consumed in vast quantities across the British Empire. The daring Biggles, created by W.E. Johns, first appeared in the 1932 compilation
The Camels are Coming,
charting his exploits in the pilot-adventurer's favourite Great War mount, the Sopwith Camel. In 1916, the underage seventeen-year-old Biggles—he had conveniently ‘lost' his birth certificate—joined the Royal Flying Corps to begin the exciting, noble and, sometimes, romantic life of a military pilot.

While the imperial mindset and racist assumptions of the novels have not stood the test of time, in their own context of the 1930s the books were immensely popular. No less so in the Empire's southernmost Dominion, where young men were pleased to discover Biggles' observer over the Western Front was a fictional New Zealander, Mark Way.

Cinematic portrayals of the war in the air, like the Academy Award-winning
Dawn Patrol,
starring Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and the Howard Hughes-directed
Hell's Angels,
starring Jean Harlow, were eagerly watched by the movie-going public of the 1930s. Hughes' big-budget project, set in the Great War Royal Flying Corps, was jam-packed with death-defying stunts, an impressive aerial battle against a massive German Zeppelin, international locales, and the ‘Blonde Bombshell' Harlow, all presented in glorious Multicolor. As was the case elsewhere in the world, the young men among its Australian and New Zealand audiences fell prey to the allure of the flickering air adventures portrayed on the big screen.

As these youths entered and exited high school, it became apparent that local opportunities for aspiring Dominion pilots were not great. The ambitions of many pilot hopefuls were shaped by the looming war clouds over Europe. In the mid-1930s, the RAF began an ambitious expansion programme in the face of growing unease about German intentions on the Continent. In the wake of rising German nationalism and militarism under Hitler, average annual recruitment in the RAF jumped from 300 pilots to 4500.[7] These
included men from all parts of the Empire. Australia and New Zealand, along with Canada, produced just the type of robust, self-sufficient, and air-minded men the Air Ministry was looking for.

Advertisements were placed in Dominion papers declaring the pilot's life would appeal ‘to all men who wish to adopt an interesting and progressive career'. Leave was described as being ‘on a generous scale', and although candidates were required to be ‘physically fit and single ... no previous flying experience' was considered necessary.[8] The accompanying picture of a Hawker Hurricane single-engine fighter and the ₤500 annual pay, plus the promise of a ₤300 gratuity at the completion of four years' service, was heady stuff for young Dominion men in search of adventure. This was how the great majority of Anzacs who flew fighters in the Battle of Britain found their way into the RAF.

New Zealander Colin Gray and his twin brother Kenneth, a schoolmaster in Wanganui, leapt at the chance offered by these short service commissions.[9] While Ken flew through the medical, Colin failed two examinations. To advance his prospects, the scrawny youth left his clerical position in Napier for a six-month stint of hard farm labouring. After this toughening-up period of mustering, milking and pig-hunting, he easily passed his third examination and in late 1938 was on his way to England. Alan Deere also saw the advertisements as his opportunity to fulfil his childhood dreams. The obstacle was his father, who resisted his son's wild flying-lust.[10] Sidestepping paternal censure, Deere convinced his mother to affix an illegal signature to the application form and begin the process for his eventual entry into the RAF. The selection board was evidently happy with the young candidate, his educational qualifications were up to the mark, and as a first-rate cricketer and rugby player his medical was a mere formality.

In addition to sporting achievements, it was believed that if an individual could ride a horse they had the delicate touch for flying. ‘Air Force people always thought there was an association between handling horses and flying an aeroplane,' noted the bemused Otago native John Noble Mackenzie years later.[11] Perhaps this equestrian factor tipped the scales in his favour. Selected from 5000 applicants, he was the ‘luckiest boy alive'.

One young man of the very last cohort to leave for Britain in this manner was John Crossman of New South Wales. Crossman, who worked for a Newcastle engineering enterprise and was studying accountancy, could only secure his father's signature on the condition he passed his accounting
exams. The top-of-the-class result procured his father's promised moniker when he was twenty. Only weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, his family and girlfriend, Pat Foley, were dockside as Crossman embarked on the SS
Orama
with a group of fellow Australians bound for Britain. ‘My feelings were awfully mixed and I didn't feel so good after I said goodbye to everyone,' he recorded in his diary. ‘Mother and Pat [were] very bright at the boat, but I guess not so bright after it sailed. Dad waved both hands and ran the wharf until I couldn't see him any more.'[12]

The New Zealanders commonly traversed the east Pacific, entering the Atlantic via the Panama Canal or the Straits of Magellan, while the Australian candidates were transported west through the Indian Ocean and the Suez. The initial excitement of being at sea soon gave way to boredom as, bundled up in rugs on the decks of their ships, young Kiwis and Australians—typically ranging from eighteen to twenty-one years of age—spent weeks gazing out into a seemingly endless ocean. Panama City was often the first port of call and for prospective New Zealand airmen it was an exotic introduction to the wider world. At the conclusion of a lecture by the ship's Medical Officer on the dangers of fraternising with the females of Panama City's less salubrious districts, Deere and his wide-eyed companions disembarked for shore leave in the early hours of the morning. The famed night life of the city did not disappoint:

The recruits passed through Panama in waves and became a regular and easily recognised sight in the city. By the time Gard'ner and Gray made landfall in Panama City, over a year later, all the girls in the red-light district were sitting in their cabins shouting, ‘Oh you New Zealand boys, you New Zealand boys come in and have a good time.'[14] For Deere, the ‘wonderland' of Panama City came to an end all too soon, but ‘the memories of our former
life' in New Zealand, he wrote, ‘had already dimmed by the revelations of this new world'.

James Paterson departed Auckland in the cargo ship
Waimarama,
rounding Cape Horn before heading north to the delights of Rio de Janeiro. In May 1939, after dropping anchor in the splendour of Rio harbour, the young New Zealander and four others hired a local guide to show them the sights, from the ‘fine pure white crystal' sands of Copacabana beach to the imposing statue of Christ the Redeemer. After run-ins with monkeys, snakes and the famous mangrove crabs, the early evening was spent sipping ‘Chopp'—the local draft beer—and smoking cigars at a cafe on the Rua Rio Blanco. Around midnight, the indefatigable New Zealanders headed off to a nightclub where they spent an agreeable hour or two dancing with ‘dainty little Spanish and Portuguese girls'. The city of one and a half million was intoxicating for the twenty-year-old from Gore, who spent the next few days swimming, sunbathing and bargaining with local shopkeepers over the price of curios and tobacco. Paterson and his companions were reluctant to say goodbye as the
Waimarama
slipped its berth and the warm embrace of Rio harbour ‘leaving behind us one of the most picturesque places one could possibly wish to see, with the many lights gradually getting fewer and fewer, soon all we could see was that huge statue of Christ ... against a tropical starry sky'.[15]