Thursday, 18 July 1940

56 Squadron, North Weald

S/Ldr Knowles, now a ‘Whitehall warrior’, borrows one of No. 56 Squadron’s Hurricanes. He flies to Ringway in L1764, taking off at 1200. The flight lasts about an hour. He returns between 1805 and 1905. There are obviously enough spare fighters for him to borrow an operational fighter aircraft from a front-line station during the battle.

There’s a gap in the Ringway ORB between the 17th and 22nd. It appears that bad weather prevents any parachute training drops over Tatton Park.

On 30 September Knowles’s borrowed Hurricane will be crash-landed on Chesil beach by P/O M.H. Constable-Maxwell, after 56 Squadron intercepts a raid by He111s on the Westland factory at Yeovil.

Saturday, 13 July 1940

56 Squadron, Dover Straits

At about 6.30 p.m. Flt Lt John Coghlan is flying as No.2 in Red Section, ‘B’ Flight. Near Calais they sight between nine and twelve Ju87 Stukas crossing the coast near Calais at about 7,000 feet. They are escorted by Me109s, though Coghlan believes they are Heinkel 113s. (Nazi propaganda has succeeded in persuading everyone, even ‘Jane’s’, that these fighters are in the front line. In truth they do not exist except as prototypes.)

The section forms into line astern and attacks the Ju87s, which drop their bombs into the sea and dive to sea-level, about three miles off Calais. Each pilot in Red Section picks a Stuka.  Coghlan and F/Lt Brooker, who is leading the section, open fire first, but all three Stukas continue diving, straight into the sea.

The Hurricanes now come under attack from the Me109s/He113s. Coghlan sees a Hurricane being attacked, and gives the Me109a long burst from about 1500 feet above it;  it turns and falls into the sea. As so often happens during the battle, one minute it is a general melée of swirling aircraft, the next the enemy has disappeared. Coghlan sees several large splashes in the sea but cannot identify the aircraft, but he does see Geoffrey Page shoot down one ‘He113’. Coghlan may have thought they were He113s was their paint scheme: black on top with white crosses, just as in a propaganda photo in ‘Jane’s’. While attacking one of the ‘He113s’, Coghlan notes three streams of tracer from each wing, assuming a similar layout to the Hurricane, but he doesn’t see any cannon-shot. (Nor would he have seen anything, even though Me109s had cannon. But cannons didn’t fire tracer, so it would have been invisible.)

Coghlan combat report, NA AIR 50/22

Wednesday, 10 July 1940

The Battle of Britain is deemed to have been started on July 10 with large-scale attacks on convoys in the English Channel. There had been smaller-scale convoy attacks before, but historians will later require the Battle of Britain to have a neat beginning and end.

English Channel, ten miles south of Lydd

At about 2.30 p.m., John Coghlan is in ‘A’ Flight — it’s not clear whether he is leading the Flight — when they encounter about 50 enemy aircraft above the Dover Straits, a mix of Do217s, He111s, Me109s and Me110s. Coghlan’s narrative is worth reading verbatim:

“I sighted a number of bombers, Do.215 and He 111’s and a fighter escort of Me 110 and 109’s. The bombers were attackin a convoy. Before attack commenced the Me 110’s formed a large circle at 10,000 feet and the me 109 formed a similar circle at 14,000 ft. I attacked one of the Me 110’s from 1000 ft above, but some Me 109’s came down, and after a short dog fight I eluded them. I then again attacked one of the Me 110’s which had by now broken up. I saw bullets burst on fuselage and wing between pilot and rear gunner and the port engine burst into flames, and the e/a broke away downwards and to the right. I was then attacked by a number of the Me 109’s and I became aware of their presence behind me by red cannon shots over my port wing. I pulled up and throttled back and they shot underneath me and I then dived down on two of them and got a good three second burst in on each, from 50 to 30 yards range. I saw my bullets, in each case, enter the fuselage in front of the pilot. I was then attacked head on by a Me 109. After this, all the Me 109’s had disappeared and I feel certain that the engines of the two Me 109’s attacked by me must have been severely damaged. I found that I could better out-manoeuvre the Me 109’s and 110’s with 5 to 10 degrees of flap lowered. The loss of speed to my Hurricane was not appreciable Engine revs were 28.00 on my rotol airscrew.”

TNA AIR 50 / 22
Coghlan claims one Me110 (confirmed) and two Me109s damaged.

No. 2 Service Flying Training School (SFTS), RAF Brize Norton

Sergeant John Austin takes up Airspeed Oxford No. 1932 for a 40-minute flight, with Sgt Blair as crew, for Exercise No. 10 – ‘Air to Air’. Later his logbook is marked, his training is complete, and he is signed out of No. 2 SFTS with an ‘Average’ Rating. (For readers used to present-day school assessment gradings, an RAF pilot’s rating of ‘Average’ was a solid pass. ‘Above the average’ was rare, and ‘Exceptional’ really was.)

Wednesday, 3 July 1940

France

After refusing an ultimatum to sail out of the reach of German capture, the French fleet is attacked by the British Mediterranean Fleet at Oran (Mers-el-Kebir). It sours relations with the French forces still in England. General de Gaulle finds it difficult to recruit French forces in Britain to the Free French cause. Most are returned to France under the Armistice.

No. 24 Squadron

Flying Officer Boris Romanoff, of the Russian royal family, cousin to the late Tsar, is posted to Ringway from No. 24 Squadron.

No. 56 Squadron

At 4 p.m. F/Lt John Coghlan is about 9,000 feet over Felixtowe with another Hurricane. They have been sent up to investigate an unidentified intruder, an ‘X-raid’. As Section leader, he has ceded control to Red 2 as his R/T is not working. A third Hurricane has become lost in the clouds, so they are now only two.
Over Orfordness Coghlan sights a Dornier 215 through a gap in the clouds and waggles his wings to catch the other’s attention. He loses sight of the Dornier in the clouds but spots it again in clear air. Coghlan attacks from the sun but can get in only a quick burst of two or three seconds; his approach speed is too great. The other Hurricane attacks while Coghlan does a loop to get back on the Dornier’s tail. This time he gets in a 10-second burst, again from 200 yards. As he passes ten yards away he sees the Dornier’s port engine and wing-root burst into flames about two feet long. Coghan enters cloud and sees the Dornier no more. His report says it may be linked to a mass of flames and a trail of smoke which crashed into the sea off Burnham at about 4.20. He claims an unconfirmed victory.

Monday, 1 July 1940

Ringway

Pilot Officer Louis Strange, DSO, MC, DFC* takes command of the Parachute Training School at Ringway, as Acting Squadron Leader.

London


Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, calls a meeting in which he requires a centralised control of all the clandestine operations.

France

A French motor torpedo-boat (MTB) returns at night to a beach near Brest and picks up an unidentified agent it had landed on 20th June.