Luftwaffe ace Helmut Wick shot down over Poole Bay

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Wick jettisons the cockpit canopy on his Messerschmitt Bf109 © Gary Eason / Flight Artworks

Colchester, 8 October 2020

I know, months have passed since an update! I've been busy. So I have several new images to talk about.

In making this picture as part of a commission for a commercial client, I learnt about an extraordinary encounter between German and British fighter aircraft in 1940; and about how the cockpit canopy jettison mechanism worked on the Messerschmitt Bf 109 – which might not be what you think. 

In the foreground, Major Helmut Wick, arguably* the most famous Luftwaffe fighter 'ace' at the start of WWII, prepares to bail out high over Poole Bay off the Isle of Wight on the south coast of England, after being shot down by a Spitfire.

His downfall came during an aerial melée on 28 November 1940 as he led Jagdgeschwader 2, of which he was the Kommodore, in its second cross-Channel attack of the day and came up against defenders from 609 and 152 Squadrons.

It is late afternoon; the weather is fine but it is winter, they are high over the sea, and the sun is about to set. The chances of this ending well were never good. Sure enough, despite a huge search by German air and naval units, Wick was never seen again. 

WHO KILLED HELMUT WICK?

The story as typically told is that Wick was hit by the RAF ace John Dundas of 609 Squadron, who was heard to call over the radio, "I've finished a 109 – whoopee!", before he was himself shot down by Wick's wingman and also lost without trace. 

However even Dundas's own squadron doubted that version: 609's operations record for that day says, "No. 152 Squadron was also engaged at the same time and place, and it is considered possible that either one of their pilots, Sgt. Klein (Poland) or Dundas may have been responsible for bringing down the German Ace…". 

You can see why I have fudged the issue of which Spitfire it was by opting for an angle that doesn't show its markings.

A few other people have raised doubts over the years. The most thorough investigation I have seen is by Franciszek Grabowski and is published as an electronic pamphlet by Air War Publications: The Demise of the Luftwaffe's Top Gun.

I'm persuaded by his analysis and my own sketch map of the events that the Spitfire that shot down Wick was indeed most probably that of Sgt Zygmunt Klein from 152 Squadron – and it was he who was then killed by another member of the Luftwaffe schwarm, Wick's old friend Rudolf Pflanz. Pflanz was not actually his wingman on that operation: that was Erich Leie. 

RAF LOSSES

Incidentally if you are interested in Wick, I'd recommend getting a copy of the definitive work on him: Helmut Wick, An Illustrated Biography, by Herbert Ringlstetter (Schiffer 2005), which has a quite remarkable collection of photographs of Wick, his evolving aircraft markings, and fellow pilots. 

That book is based on the writings of his friend Franz Fiby, who flew 110 missions with him. Fiby was in the fateful final dogfight but did not know for certain what had happened – presuming that Wick must have had engine trouble for anyone to have caught him out.

Wick's was the only German aircraft shot down, but he was not the only one to take to his parachute or end up in the water. As well as Dundas, another 609 pilot, Paul Baillon, also "failed to return"; his body was recovered later on the French coast. 

And as well as Klein 152 Squadron also lost Arthur Watson, who bailed out over land but whose parachute failed to deploy properly. He fell near Wareham in Dorset with his aircraft, Spitfire R6597, coded UM-V.  

COCKPIT CANOPY JETTISON

Which brings me to the cockpit canopy on Bf109s. In normal use, the main part of the hood hinges to the right, in a rather ungainly fashion, where it is held open by a wire. 

Attempting to do that in an emergency, in a slipstream, and have it stay there while you clamber out is all but impossible. I had always wondered about this. I couldn't find any depictions of the event – but there are written accounts, the oldest I could find being an RAF report on a captured 109, written in late 1939: 

"The cockpit hood does not slide back. It is hinged at the starboard side for entry and exit, and cannot thus be opened in flight. … The hood jettisoning arrangements for emergency exit are interesting. The hood is spring loaded, and on pushing the jettison lever the whole of the hood and the wireless mast behind it are flung clear backwards."

RAF gun camera film screenshot by Gary Eason with permission of the IWM

RAF gun camera film screenshot by Gary Eason with permission of the IWM

So the windscreen remains in place at the front, but the hinged part of the canopy and the rear glazed part behind it are thrown off, the latter complete with the antenna. 

The bail-out procedure in the 109's operating notes urges pilots to bend forward as they do this, so their head isn't hit by the canopy as it comes off.

REMARKABLE CINE FILM

Having read about it, I realised that many of the photographs of crash-landed 109s from the war show the cockpit with the whole caboodle absent, presumably because it had been discarded by the pilot in case he had to make a rapid exit once he was on the ground. 

My picture is the only artwork I am aware of that shows this (do correct me if you know of any!). So I had to imagine what it would look like. But I have just this week seen some remarkable footage from the gun camera of Hawker Hurricane pilot George Smythe as he shoots down a 109 in August 1940, in which you can see this as it happens.

The spring loading of the canopy is clear from the way it is ejected rapidly several metres above the airframe before falling down behind it, in two obviously connected but separate parts – almost exactly as I've shown it. 

If you would like to view his film it is in a compilation of RAF gun camera clips on the Imperial War Museum website: spool through to about 9'07" and look for the title frame announcing Combat Film No 86. 

Much of the other footage on that reel is well worth a look as well, bringing these historical descriptions vividly to life.

* Bring it on!

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To buy prints of any of my works please visit www.flightartworks.com.

As well as commercial assignments I also do private commissions, for individual aircraft or bigger scenes.  To get in touch visit the Contact page on my website. Find Flight Artworks on Facebook, on Twitter @flightartworks, and on Instagram @flight.artworks.

Continue ReadingLuftwaffe ace Helmut Wick shot down over Poole Bay

Desert camouflage Spitfire EN152

Spitfire EN152 over Gulf of Tunis Gary Eason

Spitfire Mk IXc, EN152 / QJ-3 with No 92 (East India) Squadron

Colchester, 30 January 2017

Maybe it is the relative unfamiliarity but I think there is something undeniably cool about the desert camouflage the RAF and Allies used in their combat operations in North Africa and the Mediterranean during WWII. 

Dark earth and mid stone paintwork, scuffed by the sand and faded by the heat and dust, blends perfectly with the landscapes they were operating over. My latest picture highlights it by isolating the aircraft over water, but with complementary light on the horizon. 

The guys who had to fly, maintain and live alongside these aircraft in such inhospitable conditions might take a different view but to me, the grit of their endeavours as the battle ebbed and flowed across North Africa only adds to the drama.

You might have seen my picture on the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (Official) page on Facebook.

My commission was to recreate a particular Spitfire: a Mk IXc, EN152 – QJ-3 as it was coded with No 92 (East India) Squadron in the Desert Air Force. This is the scheme that their IXe, MK356, is going to be repainted to represent – while retaining its very different broad chord rudder and cannon configuration. 

As so often I was working with a fuzzy, black-and-white photograph as the basis for my artwork. But it did mean I knew for sure what the aircraft looked like. Anyone familiar with the tropicalised "lantern jaw" Mk V Spitfires, with the hulking great Vokes dust filters under their chins, might be surprised to find that these Mk IX variants had nothing like that, just the short carburettor air intake tucked under the fuselage.

Their impact on the air warfare was inspirational though. Whereas the Allied pilots had found their mounts completely outclassed by the latest German Me 109 and Fw 190 fighters, they were now right back in the game. 

Having a photograph also meant educated deductions could be made about colours – but a red herring (or should I say, yellow one) had to be dealt with too. 

YELLOW

From what I can glean, 92 Squadron used either red or a sort of blue-grey colour for its identifying letters, QJ, depending on the flight of aircraft. In the photo they were obviously dark, so much so they are all but illegible. Probably red, then. The '3' on the other hand was clearly white.

In Tunisia in the spring of 1943 you might expect the airscrew spinner to have been red. But it very obviously is much darker than the grey shade of the known reds: those in the red, white and blue (and yellow) fuselage roundel and fin flash in the photograph. Almost certainly it was black – or more likely 'night'.

The only caveat was that the photo had no date but there is another photo of another 92 Squadron aircraft,  EN458 (QJ-10) captioned Bou Goubrine, Tunisia, spring 1943, which has the same colouration. 

The yellow herring: the standard C1-type RAF roundel these aircraft wore at this time had a yellow outer circle. The trouble was that in our fuzzy photo there was no sign of it. Had it been omitted for some reason?

In the end I reckoned a more likely explanation was the nature of the film and/or the filtering used in the camera or processing, making the yellow invisible. I soon found other photos of 92 Squadron aircraft in which the same thing had happened – including two photos of one particular aircraft, Squadron Leader Jefferson Wedgewood's Mk V, BR476, both taken in Libya in late 1942. In one of these there is almost no discernible yellow and in the other it is plain as day (albeit in monochrome obviously).

CAMOUFLAGE PATTERN

The overall desert camouflage scheme itself was not something I have had dealings with before. Having looked into the subject, it throws up the old familiar can of worms you get with almost anything about WWII aircraft. A reasonable assumption would be that EN152 had had its desert colours applied at the factory, in what was known as the A fighter scheme.

Yet that very obviously did not fit with what I could see in the photo, and it soon became apparent that various desert schemes were in use: not just the A scheme but with its colours reversed (that is, swapped over – not mirrored, as in the defunct B scheme). The key, as so often, was to have a photo of the aircraft in question. I had one, so I went with what I could see.

For now I am offering a solo portrait of EN152 as QJ-3, depicted over the Gulf of Tunis. It is available in the WWII Fighters gallery on my website, and through authorised print outlets. A bigger picture will follow in due course. 

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To buy prints of any of my works please visit www.flightartworks.com.

I do private commissions, for individual aircraft or bigger scenes.  To get in touch visit the Contact page on my website. Find Flight Artworks on Facebook, on Twitter @flightartworks, and on Instagram @flight.artworks.

Continue ReadingDesert camouflage Spitfire EN152

Polish ‘boxing bulldog’ Spitfire TD240

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RAF Spitfire Mk XVI TD240 / SZ-G of No 131 (Polish) Wing © Gary Eason 2017

Colchester, 4 January 2017

Let's get the new year off to a flying start with this new depiction of what is going to be the new paint scheme for the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Spitfire TE311.

When eventually their Mk XVI emerges from its repaint it will be sporting the colours of TD240 when it was the aircraft usually flown by the Officer Commanding No 131 (Polish) Wing, Group Captain Aleksander Gabszewicz VM KW DSO DFC, during the last weeks of the Second World War and into the summer of 1945.

It was common practice among RAF officers of his rank to have their own initials on 'their' aircraft, but his was coded SZ-G as if it were still part of his old unit, 316 Squadron.

It did have his group captain's pennant on the side of the cockpit, and the red and white Polish checkerboard emblem (szachownica lotnicza), with the word POLAND beneath it, on the nose.

But far and away its most striking feature was the colourful boxing bulldog artwork alongside these, the last and largest of similar artworks he had on his various aircraft.

DISNEY

I had been under the impression until I researched this that the "boxing bulldog" – wearing Polish national team colours and a flying helmet – had been created by a member of Gabszewicz's ground crew, Sgt Wojciech Milewski, who was an accomplished boxer.

But the story has been muddied by the existence of another, celebrated and very similar artwork by none other than Walt Disney, of the legendary cartoon studios.

It seems Disney created a boxing bulldog in an almost identical pose, and set up a team that made numerous other insignias, as a contribution to the US war effort – in this case as the emblem for the 62nd Fighter Squadron, 56th Fighter Group, as this Luke Air Force Base article shows.

Gabszewicz flew with the 56th on secondment in late 1943/early 1944 when it was suffering from a shortage of pilots.

I cannot say at this stage who first came up with the design. I am sure the BBMF will have the full story in due course.

But another version of the nose art was adopted by No. 135 (Fighter) Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force as its emblem.

PREVIOUSLY

I believe TD240 was next flown by Squadron Leader Boleslaw Kaczmarek with of RAF No. 302 (Polish) Squadron, until August 1945, whereupon it was re-coded as WX-V.

Those with longer memories might recall having seen a version of the scheme before on another Spitfire, MH434 operated by the Old Flying Machine Company. It carried a smaller artwork and SZ-G codes for just over a year between 1997 and 1998.

Now the full size, final iteration will be appearing on the same type of airframe as Gabszewicz's original: the Memorial Flight's clipped wing LF Mk XVIe (MH434 is an elliptical wing Mk IX).

I am portraying TD240 as it was in 1945 in this air-to-air depiction; in keeping with their usual practice, I believe TE311 will continue to bear its own serial number. I am sure many other images will follow once the real thing is unveiled later in 2017.

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To buy prints of any of my works please visit www.flightartworks.com.

I do private commissions, for individual aircraft or bigger scenes.  To get in touch visit the Contact page on my website. Find Flight Artworks on Facebook, on Twitter @flightartworks, and on Instagram @flight.artworks.

Continue ReadingPolish ‘boxing bulldog’ Spitfire TD240

The Halifax, the night fighter ace, and the crew that got away

Halifax III above clouds Gary Eason

Handley Page Halifax III HX334 / NP-C of 158 Squadron © Gary Eason

Colchester, 3 December 2016

My latest picture features a Handley Page Halifax III of 158 Squadron. On the night of 12 May 1944 it headed for a target in Belgium – and did not come back.

But the crew all did, eventually.

The story was not one I knew about when I started making the picture, which is the opposite of how things normally go.

More often than not I am either working on a scene that I have had on my lengthy 'to do' list for a while, or I have been commissioned by a relative or an editor to make a picture focusing on a particular event.

In this case there was a peg of sorts – just a suggestion from someone whose parents were both in 158 Squadron during the Second World War. As she put it, "my dad was with the 'u bend em we mend' group, and mom was a cook in the sergeants' mess".  

In that sense they were not affiliated with any particular aircraft. As I was minded to make a Halifax III anyway I set about browsing my books and the internet for a likely candidate.

HARRIED

By and by I stumbled across HX334, based at RAF Lissett in Yorkshire, which carried the NP-C codes of 158 Squadron.

It was shot down by a Luftwaffe night fighter over Belgium early on 13 May 1944 after bombing the railway yards at Hasselt – one of some 15 attacks on the same target in less than two months, as the Allies attempted to degrade the transport infrastructure in German-occupied Europe ahead of the planned invasion a few weeks later (D-Day, 6 June).

This was not the most successful operation as much of the ordnance apparently landed in adjacent fields and only a few bombs hit the marshalling yards.

Halifaxes formed the majority of the 111 aircraft taking part, and of the losses. Unopposed on the way to and over the target area, the bombers were however harried on the way out.

HX334, piloted by Fl/Sgt John Haydn Evans, was one of three shot down by a Messerschmitt 110, the others being LK883 of 426 Squadron and LV919 of 466 Squadron. Their attacker was not just any night fighter, but that of Oblt Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer, recently appointed Gruppenkommandeur IV./NJG 1: the Evans Halifax was I believe his 63rd victim.

Schnaufer would go on to nearly double that number of 'kills' by the end of hostilities in 1945. As an aside, he became a wine merchant after the war until he was seriously injured in France a few years later when his car was hit by a lorry which spilled its cargo of metal gas cylinders. He died from a fractured skull two days later.

On the Hasselt operation the crew of HX334 all took to their parachutes. They were gathered, fed and sheltered by members of the Belgian resistance – a number of whom were subsequently arrested by the Gestapo.

The gunners, both Australians, were picked up by the Germans and became prisoners of war.

The other five, four Brits and a Canadian, all continued to evade capture until the advancing Allied forces swept over them.*

So there you go. It started out as 'just' a portrait of a Halifax. But as we know, every picture tells a story.

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*If you want to know more about the pilot's story there is a book by Greg Lewis called Airman Missing: The True Story of WWII Bomber Pilot John Evans' 114 Days Behind Enemy Lines. Newman Books (April 2008). ISBN: 978-0955869907. Out of print but available secondhand. 

To buy prints of any of my works please visit www.flightartworks.com.

I do private commissions, for individual aircraft or bigger scenes.  To get in touch visit the Contact page on my website. Find Flight Artworks on Facebook, on Twitter @flightartworks, and on on Instagram @flight.artworks.

Continue ReadingThe Halifax, the night fighter ace, and the crew that got away

The shooting down of Whisky Hotel 799

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Colchester, 2 August 2016

When was the last time that an RAF aircraft was confirmed as being shot down by an enemy in an air-to-air engagement?  

It was during the Suez crisis in 1956.

I call it an engagement rather than aerial combat because the casualty was an unarmed photo reconnaissance 'plane: a 58 Squadron English Electric Canberra PR 7, WH799.

Two of the crew ejected safely; the third – the navigator, 26-year-old Flying Officer Roy Urquhart-Pullen – was killed.

The Canberra was crippled in its starboard engine by cannon fire from a Syrian Air Force Gloster Meteor F8. The British-built fighter was one of two small batches that had been sold to the Syrians by Britain in the early 1950s.

I was unaware of any of this until I was asked to make a picture to mark the 60th anniversary of the encounter this November.

Stripes

The Canberra was a superlative aircraft, conceived in the 1940s as a jet successor to the equally brilliant De Havilland Mosquito.

In continuous service with the RAF for more than half a century, Canberras were also licensed to Australia and to the United States of America (as the B-57) and subsequently used by almost a dozen other countries.

Through a succession of improvements the PR 7 had evolved from the B 6 bomber version.

Suez – an embarrassment in British history – is not a conflict that brings any cause for celebration, aside from the fact that the RAF pilots did their job efficiently and bravely as usual.

The photo reconnaissance Canberras were stationed at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Like all the allied aircraft in the region they were given a hasty, D-Day type treatment of high contrast fuselage and wing bands, in this case yellow and black – although a shortage of the correct paint meant the ones in Cyprus wore more sandy coloured 'yellow' stripes.

Observer corps

The Syrians were not directly involved in the conflict but were very closely allied with Egypt – their pilots trained there – and British commanders were very keen to know what was happening in the Syrian airfields amid reports of Russian MiG fighters being delivered.

An earlier overflight on 6 November had been thwarted by cloud cover but it had also been intercepted by the Syrians. It had been fired on – unsuccessfully, at extreme range, but you might think it surprising that a repeat mission was ordered in another unarmed and unescorted Canberra.

Syria had limited air defence resources but had devised a basic system involving ground observers telephoning in aircraft sightings. Centrally-controlled fighters could then be scrambled to intercept the intruders. Sound familiar?

So it was that as WH799 did the rounds of target airfields – and because the Syrians were already alert it was caught, in the vicinity of Homs, in a break in the cloud cover that had cloaked its mission.

In a diving stern attack one of the Meteors set fire to the Canberra's right engine.

Ejected

The normal crew on the photo reconnaissance aircraft was two. In this case the pilot, Flight Lieutenant Bernie Hunter, who was sitting in an ejector seat. His navigator-cum-photographer, Flying Officer Urquhart-Pullen, lay in the transparent blister in the aircraft's nose, but also had an ejector seat in a compartment behind the pilot.

On this occasion however there was a third man aboard: Flight Lieutenant Sam Small. The PR Canberras at Akrotiri had received a field modification that had installed a periscope in the nav station so its occupant could look backwards to watch for attackers. You can just make this out in my picture. Sam Small was in the nav seat to do this.

Realising the aircraft was doomed the pilot ordered Small to eject, which he did. Hunter said he did not know what became of Urquhart-Pullen – possibly he tried to bail out through the normal forward entrance hatch. His body was found with the wreckage, which came down just inside Syria, and now lies in the Anglo-American Cemetery in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

Hunter and Small landed on their parachutes just on the Lebanese side of the border. They were taken to a Syrian border post but after a tense few days they were repatriated.

At midnight on the day they had been shot down, Britain declared a ceasefire.

Details

Making the picture presented a number of challenges, as always. Checking the details of the aircraft proved tricky and I had to make a number of educated guesses. 

For example, I went with the widely accepted version that a lack of yellow paint for the detachments on Cyprus resulted in a more sandy mix for the identification stripes. 

And on many of the Canberra bombers the stripes around the fuselage were centred on the RAF roundel. However on another of the PR aircraft at Akrotiri I know they were painted further back, so I went with that as being the more likely. 

The trickiest thing to depict was the metallic sheen of the aluminium paint scheme. I settled on a mix of brightness and dark areas, with a partial overlay of reflected sky blue and clouds, as looking most effective to my eye.

As so often, it's all about the light.

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To buy prints of any of my works please visit www.flightartworks.com.

I do private commissions, for individual aircraft or bigger scenes.  To get in touch visit the Contact page on my website. Find Flight Artworks on Facebook, on Twitter @flightartworks, and on on Instagram @flight.artworks.

Continue ReadingThe shooting down of Whisky Hotel 799

Downed in the Channel: Kanalkrankheit played out

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Colchester, 12 April 2016

The English Channel can make for some delightful sailing on a balmy summer's day, as it was when I shot the background for this latest headline image: Bf109 down in the Channel. I'm not sure I would want to swim far in it though. 

As so often the picture is one I have had in my mind's eye for some time, and in fact I began it ages ago and have been playing around with variations on the theme. 

Finally I had a little time between commissions to complete it. I lit and posed the 109 specifically for this scenario, while the Hurricane overhead is an adaptation of a photo that I had on file but had not used before: the lighting on it was just right already. 

As you can see this is one of my 'generic' images: the aircraft are not identified and I have not in this case researched a specific operation, but they stand for those that saw daily combat during the summer of 1940. 

TO PARACHUTE OR NOT

It prompted me to revisit things I had read about the horrors of the Channel for Luftwaffe fighter pilots in particular, obliged to operate at the limits of their fuel range when attacking Britain.

The Germans called it Kanalkrankheit: Channel sickness, a condition that could spawn a range of reasons for returning to base rather than having to cross the miles of water between France and England with the ever-present risk that you would not make it back. 

Come the following year of course the tables began to be reversed, driving the widespread adoption of long-range drop tanks by Allied air forces to extend their fighters' reach onto the Continent. 

I vacillated for a time on the inclusion of the parachute: has the German pilot escaped certain doom or not? In the end I have shown him having bailed out, but now descending for a swim.

Later advice to such pilots from the veteran fighter leader Adolf Galland was to stay in the aircraft and ditch it if necessary, because you would then have an inflatable life raft for some protection from the elements – but obviously that works only if the aircraft is still capable of a controlled splashdown. In this case, with the hydraulics shot up and one of the undercarriage legs deployed, it would not be an option. 

So the pilot had to jettison the canopy, unstrap himself and jump out. Incidentally, I keep seeing references online to aircrew "ejecting" from WW2 aircraft. Maybe it is just sloppy use of English. Do some people really think they had ejector seats? 

CONTROVERSY

What might happen next opens up a host of other possibilities. Assuming the pilot is not too badly hurt he might last in the water for a time. Would he be picked up? If so, by which side? 

The Germans, certainly in 1940, had a far more organised air-sea rescue operation or Seenotdienst. In comparison the British response was lamentable: to begin with there was no organised rescue service. 

As an aside, British standing orders (Air Ministry Bulletin 1254) were that all enemy air-sea rescue aircraft were to be destroyed on sight. The Germans protested this was a violation of the Geneva Convention on recognising military field ambulances and ships. UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill later justified the policy on the basis that rescued pilots might come back and bomb British civilians again. 

Even in the height of summer the temperature of the water makes survival highly time dependent. Even if a pilot were picked up he might succumb to 'secondary drowning': collapsing later. 

All sobering thoughts for a sailor like myself, and one of the reasons yacht crews practise "man overboard" drills so everyone knows immediately what to do in an emergency. That was something I was grateful for when I went over the bow 35 miles south of the Irish coast on a crossing from the Scilly Isles. But that's another story. 

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I do private commissions, for individual aircraft or bigger scenes.  To get in touch visit the Contact page on my website. Find Flight Artworks on Facebook, on Twitter @flightartworks, and on on Instagram @flight.artworks.

Continue ReadingDowned in the Channel: Kanalkrankheit played out

Turning point: Battle of Britain Day, 15 September 1940

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The Luftwaffe's afternoon attack on a day that changed the course of the war. Picture © Gary Eason. Licensing is via Alamy; for prints see www.flightartworks.com

High Wycombe, 16 Feb 2015

My latest picture portrays some 128 separate aircraft on what we now know was a decisive day: 15 September 1940.

The picture, which I have been working on for much of the past couple of weeks, was commissioned as a double-page spread for the Official Royal Air Force Memorial Flight Club Yearbook 2015 – currently in preparation – as part of a series of articles on the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

I was given pretty much a free rein on what to depict by the editor, and settled on the 15th almost inevitably. On that day the Luftwaffe mounted two major attacks on London – as Prime Minister Winston Churchill happened to be watching in RAF Fighter Command's 11 Group Operations Room at RAF Uxbridge. 

In the morning, a relatively small force of Dornier Do 17 bombers, with numerically greater fighter support, tested the defences. This was followed a few hours later by a much bigger operation, involving some 114 bombers, in three main columns, escorted by several hundred fighters. That is what became my focus.

Cloud cover

I have tried to give a realistic snapshot of a moment relatively early on when the afternoon's attackers are approaching London. They are beginning to run into the fighter defences brilliantly orchestrated by 11 Group's commander, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park.

This involved a good deal of reading to try to get a 3D picture into my head of what was going on. The clouds had built up during the day to between 7/10ths and 9/10ths cumulus, from about 3,000ft base to 12,000ft tops in places. Wind was from the northwest.

The clouds were a factor in the Luftwaffe crews' subsequently failing to find their targets, hitting alternates where there was a gap in the cloud cover, scattering bombs indiscriminately – or giving up and running for home.

I then chose specific actions with enough documentation to be able to portray the actual aircraft involved, cross-referring sources to get as much accuracy as I could.

So the result is a composite, putting us in the thick of the action at roughly 1430 that Sunday afternoon as two dozen Heinkel He 111s of Kampfgeschwader 53 'Legion Condor', forming the central column of bombers, cross Kent heading for London.

Details

Fighter Command begins to break up the formation: Nine Spitfires from No 66 Squadron attack head-on from below. Hurricanes from No 1 (RCAF) Squadron swoop from above. They are being challenged by Messerschmitt Bf109 fighters from JG 3.

Where there are identifiable aircraft I have based them on squadron records and published accounts of the actions. So for example, 66 were led in their upward-sweeping attack on the Heinkels' most vulnerable aspect by Sqn. Ldr. Rupert "Lucky" Leigh in Spitfire R6800 LZ-N (lower right) – closing to point blank range before firing then rolling away for another attempt. 

The foreground Heinkel He 111 is an H-2 of 3/KG 53, coded A1+EL.  As an aside, this had two MG15 machine guns in the nose blister instead of the usual (for the type) single gun. The Luftwaffe progressively beefed up the armament on these aircraft in response to their Battle of Britain losses.

It did not help Ltn Hermann Boeckh and his crew much: after dropping their bombs they were attacked by eight Spitfires. With both engines on fire and the airframe riddled with bullet holes, Boeckh made a forced landing on a farm in Orsett, Essex.

The flight engineer, Friedrich Grotzki, was killed and three of the other four on board were wounded – the pilot reportedly by his own revolver, which discharged after being struck by a machine gun bullet. Nevertheless the crew stuck to military discipline, torching what remained of their aircraft and refusing to give any information when interrogated.

Below them in the picture, another 3/KG53 H-2, A1+GL, is going into a dive after being hit by Spitfire bullets. It will be shot to pieces by up to a dozen Spitfires. Two of its crew died and two were wounded when it crashed on farmland at Sandhurst Cross.

Wounded

The RAF's priority on the day was to knock down the bombers. To get at them they had to run the gauntlet of a fighter escort from the pilots of at least six gruppen, who put up a formidable defence but were rapidly at the limits of their cross-Channel fuel range.

In the forefront in my picture are some of the experienced pilots of Jagdschwader 3 'Udet': the most successful gruppe in the Battle of France and now veterans of the Battle of Britain. Among the yellow-nosed Messerschmitt Bf109s coming in above is an E-4 piloted by Hptm. Hans von Hahn, recently appointed Gruppenkommandeur of I./JG 3. Already an ace, he will account for another Spitfire this afternoon.

Above him in another E-4 from Stab I./JG 3, Ltn. Detlev Rohwer's shells are taking chunks out of Hawker Hurricane L1973 of No 1 (RCAF) Squadron and the left shoulder of its pilot, Fg. Off. Arthur Yuile, who later cursed his forgetfulness in not having maintained eyes in the sides and back of his head as he dived to attack the Heinkels. He managed to get the damaged aircraft back safely to RAF Northolt.

Off to the left in the distance, starting to attract 'ack ack' bursts from the anti-aircraft guns below, are the 19 Dorniers of II./KG3 followed by more Heinkels from I. and II./KG 26. They are about to be hit by the first of a string of fighter squadrons, Spitfires in line astern catching the sunlight as they dive from high above.

This pattern was to be repeated throughout the afternoon as wave after wave of RAF aircraft harried the attackers all the way in and all the way out, with increasingly devastating effect on the materiel and morale of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe.

This was a time-consuming but fascinating picture to research and to make. I hope I have done justice to the events and to the bravery of those involved. In the process I have been learning a lot about Luftwaffe units and aircraft. As usual, please let me know if you spot any howling errors.

I heartily recommend membership of the BBMF Club. The Yearbook is due out at the beginning of April.

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 TO BUY PRINTS  of any of my works please visit www.flightartworks.com.

I do private commissions, for individual aircraft or bigger scenes. Publishers' enquiries are also welcome: many images are available already to license through the Alamy agency.

To get in touch visit the Contact page on my website. Find Flight Artworks on Facebook, and on Twitter @flightartworks.

Continue ReadingTurning point: Battle of Britain Day, 15 September 1940

A DFC and a shoal of Hurricanes

Kain-over-France-2-March-FB

'Crossing the Siegried Line' © by Gary Eason / Flight Artworks

High Wycombe, 31 Jan 2014

These pictures began life at an airshow.

I did not set out with the idea of making a 'Phoney War' picture, let alone two – in fact I knew little about that early period of World War Two.

What triggered the research that led to the pictures' being made was having the beautifully restored Hawker Hurricane P3351 in my camera viewfinder at the Imperial War Museum's  'Flying Legends' airshow at Duxford in July 2013.  

This venerable crate has had a remarkably colourful life but is now resplendent in the black/white/bare metal undersides it began with in 1940. One could write a book about the aircraft itself – somebody probably has – but it was the camouflage scheme (if camouflage is quite the word) that piqued my interest.

I knew already – witness the logo I use on social media – that the RAF had some peculiar ideas about how to paint the undersides of its fighter aircraft at the onset of hostilities with Nazi Germany. Captivated by the black and white scheme in my pictures of the Hurricane, I started reading up on its history and that of the two RAF Hurricane squadrons attached to the Advanced Air Striking Force near the Franco-German border, No 1 and No 73.

This led to my learning about the short but remarkable fighting career of Flying Officer Edgar James 'Cobber' Kain of the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF).  Kain's squadron, No 73, was based at Rouvres-en-Woëvre, a village about 35 miles from the frontier.

'Finest fighting spirit'

This phase of the war was characterised by aerial skirmishes – which is not to minimise the deadly nature of what the pilots were engaged in. On 2 March 1940, Kain and another pilot (Donald Sewell) gave chase to seven Heinkel bombers but after a few minutes they were pounced on from behind by a pair of Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters.

What resulted was an action for which Kain was awarded the DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross). The official citation read:

"In March, 1940, while on patrol with another aircraft, Flying Officer Kain sighted seven enemy bombers about 5000 feet above him, and while giving chase well into Germany, he was attacked from behind by an enemy fighter. Showing the finest fighting spirit, this officer out-manoeuvred the enemy and although his own aircraft was badly damaged he succeeded in bringing the hostile aircraft down. Thick smoke and oil fumes had filled his cockpit and although unable to see his compass, he skillfully piloted his aircraft inside Allied lines in spite of being choked and blinded by the smoke."

I wanted to know more about what had happened. At this point let me plug a book: Cobber Kain, by Richard Stowers, a terrific read and a beautifully produced publication with plenty of photographs from the time. I e-mailed Richard in New Zealand with some detailed queries and he was as helpful as he could be in reply.

For example, I knew I needed to tweak the Hurricanes' appearance to restore them to Mk I configuration and earlier roundels. But I was wondering whether I should be rendering them with the early two-bladed props or the three-bladed ones that were being introduced. H

Richard said: "My research tells me Kain was flying L1808, which was a three-blader as Sewell stated he couldn't keep up with Kain because he was flying a two-blader (L1958)."

Cockpit filled with fumes

So back to the story: Kain did not immediately realise that Sewell, with his less powerful  airscrew, was no longer keeping station behind him. Glancing back he saw an aircraft where he expected the second Hurricane to be and assumed that was him. He got a rude surprise, as Richard Stowers's book recounts:

"'The next thing I knew was 'wang' and I saw the tip of my wing disappearing into the blue.'"

It had been hit by cannon fire. Kain then realised that Sewell had already been shot down (he managed to land safely – in my picture you can just see him far below, trailing white vapour).

Kain was now in a twisting dogfight with the two 109s. Eventually he was able to fire "a longish burst from behind" into one of them, sending it down in black smoke. But the other got on his tail and blew a big hole in his Hurricane's engine – sending oil all over the windscreen and fumes into the cockpit.

He tried to chase the 109 as it flew past him but had lost engine power. He expected his foe  "to come back and teach me to play the harp" – but for whatever reason, perhaps lack of ammunition, he did not.

Collapse

So there was Kain, far behind enemy lines with a dead engine and a cockpit filling with smoke. He opened the canopy to jump out – but realised his parachute harness had come off his shoulder.

So he got back in and, incredibly, glided some 30 miles to Metz aerodrome where he made a force landing. He clambered out of the badly damaged Hurri – and promptly collapsed, to be rescued by some French soldiers.

Quite a tale, and that is was I decided to make a picture about. Happily I had in my collection of cloudscapes a suitable background photo taken in roughly the same area and altitude.

I also had a lower level photo of the French countryside for the other picture in this sequence. This began as a sketch about events on 26 March when there was a bigger aerial combat - during which Kain, with shrapnel in his leg,  did bale out of his burning aircraft:

Combat in France sketch idea

You can see how this overlaps with the finished item at the top of the page. But in playing around with compositions I had already decided that I really liked the effect of a 'vic' cluster of the black and white Hurricanes – reminding me for all the world of a shoal of tropical fish we used to have in a tank when I was a child:  

Phoney-War-Hurricanes

'Rising to the challenge' © by Gary Eason / Flight Artworks

So rather than carve out a dogfight I thought I would show the beginnings of the action, and that is how the second picture came to be made.

Soon Eddie Kain had notched up five aerial victories becoming the RAF's first "ace" of the war, feted in the British newspapers and interviewed on the BBC.

In May the Battle of France began. Kain rapidly achieved further combat successes and his total had risen to 17 when, exhausted, he was ordered back to England in early June.

Kain said his farewells to his squadron but as he was leaving decided to do some low-level aerobatics over the airfield. He slammed into the ground doing a third flick roll, was flung out of his exploding Hurricane and killed outright.

He was a few weeks short of his 22nd birthday.

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 TO BUY PRINTS  of any of my works please visit www.flightartworks.com.

I do private commissions, for individual aircraft or bigger scenes. Publishers' enquiries are also welcome: many images are available already to license through the Alamy agency.

To get in touch visit the Contact page on my website. Find Flight Artworks on Facebook, and on Twitter @flightartworks.

Continue ReadingA DFC and a shoal of Hurricanes

Aerial views

Action on 31 August 1940 flat4_pr_blog

Battle of Britain dogfight, featuring F/O Harold Bird-Wilson in his Mk 1 Hurricane

High Wycombe, 27 Sep 2012

Alongside my regular photography, taking in trips to the North East, the sailing Olympics in Weymouth and the Edinburgh Fringe, I've recently been putting a lot of effort into my new aviation project, Flight Artworks.

It is currently hosted on my main photography website but my intention is to spin it out into a separate venture with its own clear identity.

One of the responses to the pictures on my Facebook page asked,"Is this a Photograph or computer art?"  Well, given that I shoot and process digitally, you could say everything I make is "computer art".

But I know what he meant. In that sense – no, it isn't. All the elements of the pictures are photographic. They are then combined on a computer, and adapted to a greater or lesser extent as the scenario demands. So in that sense – yes, I suppose so. However I still need the photographs to work from.That picture of the Kent landscape? I took it from an aeroplane over Kent!

Hats off to those clever people who understand 3D software and can carve aircraft out of a block of digits entirely on the computer. But there's more to it than that. Almost all the purely digital creations that I've seen look like what they are. You can just tell. So it does please me when people look at mine and ask, "How has he done that?"

Spitfire Vb in progress_blog

Spitfire Vb in progress

I think a crucial aspect of this is my photographic background. Any photographer is a student of light. Light, not the camera, is the primary tool. What makes a thing look real is the play of light on its surfaces. The corollary being that an unrealistic play of light will make the whole look unreal.

When I think of a scenario I immediately think about how I can find and combine the elements that would be needed to real-ise it. In fact it can work the other way round: having the elements to hand suggests a scene that I might portray.

Half the fun is then in the research. As an aside, although I'm modelling virtually it turns out I have a lot in common with those who work in plastic to recreate past events – who do seem to exhibit a  passion for getting the minutiae correct.

I have also learnt just how easy it is to get it wrong. Spitfire wings? Don't get me started.  Ironically, often the wonderful old aircraft that are still flying around today, thanks to the tireless efforts of those who restore and preserve them, are not at all what they appear to be. 

But that's where the computer art takes over – and makes it possible to recreate them as they were in their heydays.

Everything from changing code letters and registration numbers, to bigger elements such as the cannon and wheel blisters on the wings, armament, props and exhausts – even the shape and size of the nose and cowling.  And in the case of a Type 464 Lancaster (for the Dambusters series), the bomb bay and mid-upper gun turret as well as numerous details such as fuselage windows, exhaust shrouds, aerials and pitot tubes.

I use primarily Photoshop. So, for those familiar with how it works, I typically would have dozens of separate layers going on which makes it easy to tweak various aspects or indeed re-use parts and change the coding or the extent of weathering or whether the guns have been fired and so on. 

 

Continue ReadingAerial views

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