Seventy years ago the skies above Britain were the battleground for the deadly fight for the pilots of the RAF and the Luftwaffe.
The Battle of Britain pushed young men – some only 18 – into risking their lives almost every day in the squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes.
Mark Smith retells the stories of some of the pilots from one of the most successful squadrons: Glasgow’s 602.
HECTOR MacLEAN
If the stereotype of the typical Battle of Britain pilot is of the foppish English toff, then Hector MacLean is the opposite: a Glaswegian who proved his remarkable toughness daily, but particularly on the day of August 26, 1940.
Hector was following German bombers over the English Channel. After breaking off from a head-on attack, he heard a loud thud, then felt a terrible pain above his right ankle. He looked down and realised his right foot was hanging loose.
Blood began to gush from his foot, but Hector made it back to base, where he crash landed his Spitfire (a pilot needs both feet to control it).
As he lay on a stretcher he told one of his crew: “I’ve got a new pair of flying boots … one of them is still in the plane.”
When the crewman lifted the shoe, he realised Hector’s foot was still in it. He fainted.
Old colleagues of Hector’s remember him as a sometimes intimidating character.
Joe Parker, from Shettleston, who served as part of his groundcrew, said: “He was a gruff character and I was a bit afraid of him.”
But fellow 602 pilot Nigel Rose says there was a softer side to the him, adding: “Hector had a very dry humour. We took notice of what he said but he had a lovely twinkle in his eye.”
Hector had his leg amputated below the knee and went on to become a fighter controller.
MERVYN SPRAGUE
The Battle of Britain is not just a story of bravery … it is also a story of grief.
Of the 2917 men who fought in fighter command during the Battle, 544 were killed. Another 795 died before the war was over.
Most were aged in their early 20s, and many left behind young wives or girlfriends.
Mervyn Sprague, of 602 was one of the 50% who didn’t return from a mission.
On September 11, 1940, he was in an air fight over the Channel when his Spitfire was hit and he crashed into the sea.
He had returned from honeymoon just four days before this incident.
When the news came through that Mervyn was missing, his wife arrived with a caravan and she parked it outside the squadron’s base on the Sussex coast.
She kept a vigil there, gazing at the B Flight huts, until – one month later during a storm – her husband’s body was washed up on Brighton’s beach.
HARRY MOODY
The pilots of 602 Squadron were loved and celebrated by the people of Britain … not least the young women.
When Harry Moody was forced to bail out from his Spitfire after a fight in the clouds above England’s south east coast, he landed in the grounds of a girls’ school.
A teacher took him, and his parachute, back to 602’s base at Westhampnett, four miles away.
Harry’s fellow pilot Nigel Rose remembers: “Harry received a letter about four days later from the head girl who said that they’d held an emergency meeting on the evening of the day he’d landed there and they elected to make him an honorary member of the school … this was received with great envy by the rest of us.”
Harry failed to return from combat over the Biggin Hill air base in Kent on September 7, 1940 and was reported “missing”. He was 30 years old.
FINLAY BOYD
Finlay was from Glasgow and had a strong local accent, something that got him into trouble when he bailed out in London.
So strong was his twang that the Londoners who discovered him thought he was German and nearly strung him up!
For many of the fighter pilots, their motivation was defending their homeland, but for others, including Finlay, it was hatred of the Germans.
Exactly why he hated the Germans so much is not known, although one theory is that when he arrived at 602’s base at Westhampnett, there was a bombing raid nearby which hit a cinema and killed a lot of children. Finlay never forgot it.
He was one of the Battle of Britain’s top-scoring pilots.
“He was our best chap in 602,” said Nigel Rose.
“He hated the guts of the Germans. If he could have got hold of any German pilot, he would have shot him on the spot.
“There were several people like that, and they felt that way chiefly through losing friends and relations in air raids.”
ARCHIE McKELLAR
Not only did Archie McKellar once shoot down five Germans in a day, he was involved in one of the earliest dog fights of the Second World War.
Above Edinburgh he shot down one of the first German aircraft to fall victim of the conflict while over British soil.
Joe Parker, who now lives in an Erskine Veterans’ Home ward named after Archie, drove out to the Pentland Hills to examine the wreckage after the incident on October 28, 1939.
“The crew were still alive and had their hands up,” said Joe.
“We asked for their guns and they handed them over. One of them said to me ‘for me the war is over … for you the war goes on’.”
SANDY JOHNSTON
Sandy was Commanding Officer of 602 during the Battle of Britain and was awarded the coveted Distinguished Flying Cross.
He said people went about their business with little idea of what was taking place in the sky.
“Usually, all they saw was the ever-changing patterns of our white vapour trails,” he said, “but sometimes they would see us as a number of tiny specks.”
