Luftwaffe ace Helmut Wick shot down over Poole Bay

Helmut_Wick_shot_down_Poole_Bay_Gary_Eason_Flight_Artworks sm

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!

—————————

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

Heroic struggles against overwhelming odds

The Few Gary Eason Flight Artworks sm

"The Few" © Gary Eason: available in the Battle of Britain gallery on the Flight Artworks website

Colchester, 8 April 2020

I was wondering how to start this article when Hylton Murray-Philipson came up with the answer. 

Mr Murray-Philipson spent 12 days in Leicester Royal Infirmary and five days in intensive care with coronavirus disease. Speaking to the BBC as he was finally discharged, he compared the NHS staff to "the Spitfire pilots of 1940".

Any of us with even a passing interest in historic aviation will be well aware that 2020 marks the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, characterised by "The Few" Spitfire and Hurricane pilots fighting a heroic struggle against apparently overwhelming odds for months on end. 

That conflict would have been my own main focus for the next few months, but events have rather overtaken us all. 

It's striking how the crisis engulfing the country – indeed the world – has left people struggling for comparisons, and typically falling back on WWII in terms of the scale of this, its life-threatening nature, and the indiscriminate impact on ordinary people. 

We're living through probably the most extraordinary times most of us have ever known, and obviously this has had a huge impact on businesses of all sorts. 

I am extremely lucky – and well aware that I am – in that I work from a home studio anyway, mostly on my own, and lead a rather lockdown sort of life in that respect, so I can carry on doing so (health permitting) without too much interruption. 

The print companies who supply my customers however have been impacted to a greater or lesser extent. Some of them have lost a huge amount of regular trade from larger clients. So I am keen to support them where I can by continuing to send them orders.

I'm acutely conscious for close family reasons that many people have less money at the moment, and possibly uncertain futures. But an ideal pastime if you're stuck at home is to browse through this blog and the Flight Artworks website. They're not just pretty pictures: most of the stories they tell involve specific people, aircraft and events, and contain lots of interesting information – and of course they're all free to read.

NEW IMAGES

It might appear that I have not produced much new work recently but I have been steadily busy behind the scenes. 

Anyone belonging to the RAF Memorial Flight (BBMF) official club would have been getting their yearbook through the post shortly. Instead, publication has been postponed because of the pandemic. 

Having created a couple of new pictures for it and seen advance copies of the articles they illustrate, I know it'll be well worth waiting for. But I'm continuing to respect their embargo so I haven't published the pictures myself yet. 

Recent licensing deals include two of my pictures for the end pages in a forthcoming book about a certain well-known aircraft type. I am reliably told by someone who's read a proof copy that the book is "completely brilliant". 

Another features an aerial melée from November 1940 (after the official end of the Battle of Britain) which involved some very famous names. I had not known about it until I began researching it for the picture I've been making for a client, but it's a fascinating story. Still, that's for a forthcoming blog article.

For now: stay home, keep safe – and if you are one of the frontline NHS staff or other key workers who are putting yourself in harm's way to look after us and keep things going: thank you, on behalf of all of us. 

  • I always like getting emails from people but now especially, if anyone reading this is stuck in on their own and wants to drop me a line, I'd be delighted to hear from you on gary@easonmedia.com.

—————————

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 ReadingHeroic struggles against overwhelming odds

Two for the Hawker Hurricane fans

Hawker Hurricane deflection Gary Eason _GE07328

Hawker Hurricane deflection shot © Gary Eason 2018


Colchester, 24 October 2018

I have been aiming to publish one or two blog posts a month – so I can only apologise for taking six months off!

I was mostly enjoying the long, hot English summer and keeping well out of the sweltering studio. So it is not only the writing that has been neglected but also the picture-making. But as the days shorten, I am back at the desk and have a few things to catch up on.

Members of the RAF Memorial Flight Official Club will have seen a couple of the images I did produce in their autumn journal: a commission to illustrate a book extract about baling out of a doomed Lancaster, and another to accompany an article about the tricky skill of deflection shooting.

MOVING TARGET

It is not always immediately apparent to the uninitiated that unless you are right behind (or right in front of) your target at very close range, if you point your aircraft at another and fire – you will miss it.

You are moving, it is moving, and time will elapse during which your ammunition is flying through the air and falling under gravity. You have to shoot at where you anticipate it will be when your bullets reach it.

In my picture (top), the Hurricane pilot has positioned himself in just the right place that if he fires now, he probably will hit the crossing Messerschmitt Bf 109.

Eventually the RAF woke up to the importance of the issue and set up a gunnery school in 1942, but widespread success really only came to most fighter pilots with the introduction of complex gyro gunsights in 1944.

HELP YOURSELF

Until then, only a small percentage of fighter pilots managed to hit anything consistently. During the Battle of Britain, this was not for want of targets.

The Few Gary Eason

"The Few" © Gary Eason 2018

My second Hurricane offering is one of those pictures I had had in my mind's eye for some time. It shows a pair of the eight-gun fighters turning in line astern onto a mass of attacking German bombers, a scene typical of the intense combats in the summer of 1940.

No visible markings under their wings? The RAF's twisting and turning policies on the subject of camouflage on the top and bottom of their different aircraft types have filled books.

My depiction is of fighters of No 1 Squadron RAF over the south of England on 16 August. Underwing roundels had been dropped in June, when the Air Ministry ordered all fighters to have 'sky' colour undersides. They were reintroduced officially on 11 August but that does not mean to say they instantly appeared overnight and, in the absence of definitive information, I decided to omit them.

THE FEW

The squadron's operations record book reported: "In the afternoon the squadron was engaged in its most successful action in England to date."

Squadron Leader David Pemberton made the first attack, bringing down one of the Heinkel He 111 bombers in flames with his first burst. His own engine then caught fire – possibly because of returning gunfire – but before he had decided to bale out the flames subsided, and he landed safely.

Pilot Officer Peter Matthews followed him in, picking out one of the Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighter escorts for his attack.

This was the day on which Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited the headquarters of RAF Fighter Command's 11 Group at Uxbridge and saw that at one point during the heavy aerial combat, all the Group's fighter squadrons were in action, with no reserves.

As he left, Churchill said to his chief of staff, Hastings Ismay: "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few."

—————————

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 ReadingTwo for the Hawker Hurricane fans

Topsy turvy new Flight Artworks picture published

 

Spitfire PS915 Clive Rowley inverted Gary Eason 1000

Spitfire PR XIX PS915 inverted


Colchester, 24 April 2018

It is always a bit of a strange feeling when pictures that you finished some months previously under embargo are finally published and suddenly now in the public eye.

I was delighted to find a copy of the latest RAF Memorial Flight Yearbook waiting for me on my return from a wonderful week in the remote Mani peninsula in the Greek Peloponnese – there'll be more photos from there on the photography side of my website shortly.

I was asked to make two pictures for the 2018 Yearbook. One is a fairly straightforward depiction of a Battle of Britain Spitfire – except that, of course, every picture has a story to tell.

In this case it's about "nine lives" Al Deere, the New Zealand fighter pilot who, one way or another, by his own account should have lost his life in multiple scrapes.

I was called on to portray the Spitfire he named "Kiwi III" during one of those sudden lulls in a hair-raising aerial combat maelstrom, off the North Foreland of Kent in the summer of 1940.

IN THE CAN

The reason for it, I was told last October, was that one of the BBMF's Spitfires, venerable P7350, would be going in for a major servicing and would emerge in a new colour scheme: Al Deere’s 54 Squadron Battle of Britain Spitfire Mk1 R6981, which carried the codes KL-B.

 

Al Deere Spitfire Kiwi III North Foreland Gary Eason

Al Deere in Kiwi III

As usual, they would not have any photos of the new scheme until the Yearbook had appeared, which is where I came in. And of course – no surprise – there were no actual photos of the original aircraft. Got that T-shirt.

By a brilliant bit of happenstance, from my point of view, I had shot some photographs of that precise location at about the right altitude a few months earlier – rather bizarrely (in the circumstances) as my wife and I were returning from … Deere's home country, New Zealand.

Background sorted, with the addition of some weather to suit the reports from that day, I screwed the rivets and painted the codes onto his Spitfire – along with my best guess at what his Kiwi logo might have been like. You can find the finished version here on the Flight Artworks website. 

The next request was, technically, much more interesting. It was to illustrate a very personal anecdote by the memorial flight's sometime commanding officer, now historian and publications editor, Squadron Leader (Rtd) Clive Rowley MBE, about the time he was displaying Spitfire PR XIX PS915 in the Isle of Man and the undercarriage jammed up.

Cutting it short: the techies advised that he would have to fly straight and level upside down to get it to deploy.

I learnt more than I thought I would ever need to know about Spitfire landing gear in making this one. For example: those little loops sticking out from the main "oleo" legs? I had never really noticed them before – but those are where the locking pins go that hold the gear up when retracted. And thereby hangs the whole story.

OLEO LOADING

Gear deployment? It's a close thing but the port wheel travels first, then the starboard – so it needed to be shown "legs akimbo". I hope I got the differential about right.

And artistic licence, frankly, on what the oleos look like when not under load but upside down and therefore under their own, unaccustomed, gravity loading.

Short of getting someone to do it again so we can watch, I daresay no-one knows what this actually looks like so my picture might be unique in that regard.

In other details: at the time, PS915 was wearing the 152 Squadron South East Asia Command (SEAC) colouring of UM-G, which had the squadron’s leaping black panther on the fuselage.

I love those five-bladed props, by the way. 

Well, probably not a best seller as a picture but a fascinating one to work on. Here is my finished version.

Enjoy the Yearbook: it's a terrific read.

—————————

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 ReadingTopsy turvy new Flight Artworks picture published

Downed in the Channel: Kanalkrankheit played out

Screen Shot 2016-04-12 at 10.36.46

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. 

—————————

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 ReadingDowned in the Channel: Kanalkrankheit played out

Flight Artworks pictures published in RAF Memorial Flight Yearbook

Headlong-attack-v2

 Colchester, 2 Jun 2015 

As prefigured in a previous post, the Battle of Britain Day 'big picture' I was working on in February has duly appeared across two full pages in the Official Royal Air Force Memorial Flight Club Yearbook 2015, which has now gone to club members. 

I won't reproduce that picture again here but you can find it, and order prints, here on my website. One of the articles inside the yearbook is 'Spitfire or Hurricane? (… or Me Bf 109?)' – which was the best fighter? This features two more of my pictures.

The one at the head of this blog post, 'Headlong Attack' – which itself is quite a big scene, about events over Weymouth on 25 August 1940, which I have written about before – and this one below, illustrating the shooting down of a 109 on 8 October 1940 by Ronald 'Ras' Berry of 603 (City of Edinburgh) Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Airforce:

  Berry-shoots-down-Boche-Gary-Eason-sm

It's a thoughtful article from the perspective of a former fighter pilot, Clive Rowley. I think the pictures look great, and I am delighted to have had them chosen for such a prestigious publication. 

And if you have any interest at all in the historic aircraft so superbly maintained by the Flight, then I recommend joining the Official Royal Air Force Memorial Flight Club.

If nothing else, you get a copy of the Yearbook!

—————————

 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 ReadingFlight Artworks pictures published in RAF Memorial Flight Yearbook

Battle of Britain Spitfire for magazine

Pied-Piper-Spitfire-Gary-Eason-sm600

Picture © Gary Eason. Licensing is via Alamy; for prints see www.flightartworks.com

High Wycombe, 10 May 2015 

Apart from all that spring stuff the month of May brought with it issue 16 of History Revealed magazine - whose cover features one of my Flight Artworks aircraft.

The Spitfire was commissioned by them to fit a rather precise slot in that front page, as you can see if you click on the link – after attempts to source a ready-made one had taken them to my Alamy account. There, they found things they liked but they were not quite at the right angle.

Creditably they were also anxious to be sure the details were authentic for the period. So I worked with them to get just what they wanted – which was as near to a "standard" Battle of Britain Spitfire as they could. 

I chose Spitfire R6891, DW-Q of No 610 Squadron, based at Biggin Hill, as flown by Sgt (later Wing Commander) Ronald Fairfax Hamlyn DFM. This was in part because there were some reasonable (for the time!) old pictures around of his aircraft, so I knew it was just the ticket. 

Hamlyn – "The Pied Piper of Harrogate" – became the RAF’s first 'Ace in a Day' of World War II, shooting down five enemy aircraft during three sorties on 24 August 1940. 

I also subsequently adapted this for my own purposes in the picture you see at the top of this page.

—————————

 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.

Related articles
Turning point: Battle of Britain Day, 15 September 1940
Continue ReadingBattle of Britain Spitfire for magazine

Turning point: Battle of Britain Day, 15 September 1940

Battle-of-Britain-Day-Gary-Eason-sm

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.

—————————

 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

Gas patch soup: making Flight Artworks accurate

Spitfire Mk I R6596 flat_pr_blog
Allan Wright's Spitfire R6596, August 1940 

High Wycombe, 12 Feb 2013

Someone saw this picture on Facebook and asked what the yellow diamond shape was on the port wing.  A gas detector patch. 

His further comment prompted me to write this article. He said: 

"Of all the time I have studied, built, and cherished this time in History – this is the first time I have seen this! Thank you!"

When I was commissioned to make this Spitfire portrait I found, in one of the splendid Alfred Price Aces… books a (typically low quality) contemporary black and white side view of R6596, which is how I know that it had such large QJ-S lettering – and that peculiar big and non-standard fuselage roundel with its acres of white. Although not unique, this was unlike even the one on the aircraft alongside it. I've not seen any other profile of R6596 that gets this right.

The wing surface is indistinct in the picture so to an extent the gas patch is an educated guess. But they were on very many military aircraft and vehicles/equipment of all sorts in 1940. And see, for example, the still flying Spitfire P7350 of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. Sometimes placed as a diamond, like this one, other times square on to the fuselage, typically attached with red doped strips.

The aerial wires are also deduction. The new type of VHF equipment did not go into general service until September onwards, and this is August. So the aircraft retains the aerial wire from the mast to the fin. It would not yet have wires for the IFF equipment running from the fuselage roundel to the outer leading edge of the tailplanes. See info on The Spitfire Site.

Spitfire wing variants are a bit of a nightmare for modellers of any kind, but fairly straightforward on this aircraft (I think!). Elevators: older type without the 'horns'; and like the ailerons at this time, fabric covered (the details are in my picture though you probably cannot make them out at this resolution).

Incidentally, looking at the tail fin in that old photo of R6596, it does appear that the red-white-blue flash colours are reversed, i.e. blue-white-red. This is a guess from the greyscale picture. This would not be unknown but certainly very odd, so in the end I stuck with convention on that detail.

Why bother with this level of accuracy? Because that is what Flight Artworks is all about. So please do let me know if you see something in a picture that you think I have got wrong. I will thank you for it.

—————————

 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.

Related articles
Focus on specifics
Seeing the lights
Continue ReadingGas patch soup: making Flight Artworks accurate

Focus on specifics

Headlong-attack-v2-sm

"Headlong attack" © Gary Eason / Flight Artworks

High Wycombe, 11 Jan 2013

I have been remiss in updating the blog but that is partly because I've spent time getting a Flight Artworks page on Facebook off the ground. It has accrued some 200 'likes' as I write. 

There have been some very nice comments and so far as one can tell some resulting picture sales, which is a bonus. People have been kind enough to share some of the pictures on their own pages too, so that it has apparently touched the lives of more than 71,000 people, according to the statistics I get.

The other reason for not having written more is that I have been making more pictures! The process of researching and making these can take weeks because I like to portray specific incidents, and if I am going to do that I like to get the details correct. 

Take the Battle of Britain picture at the top of this post. The idea for this arose from reading No. 17 Squadron’s Operations Record Book for Sunday, 25 August 1940, which mentioned:  "F/O Count Czernin attacked a bunch of Me.110s head-on and destroyed three of them.”

He did what? Further reading on the subject revealed that Czernin allegedly achieved this in less than one minute. 

Guns

Following my usual approach I wanted to 'be there' in the skies above Weymouth in Dorset on the south coast of England on that August day. Portraying Czernin's Hurricane was relatively straightforward once I had decided on the point of view – and I figured that if I was going to convey the most powerful impression of a head-on attack I needed to be right with the attacker. 

For the first time in a picture I found myself with guns blazing. This raised a whole new set of challenges. For one thing, guns generally do not actually blaze, or not in daylight anyway. Hollywood fakes it. 

I could not think of a way to ascertain for certain what the ammunition load might have been in his particular Hurricane. Reading around the subject – not least Air Chief Marshall Hugh Dowding's review of the Battle - I reckon there would not have been any tracer bullets as such. Artistically, though, I was keen to have some visible acknowledgement that the gun button was being thumbed. 

It seemed most likely to me that the smoke trails from the incendiary ammo would give the desired effect without necessitating bright streaks through the sky. 

Secondly I had to have spent cartidge cases coming from the Hurricane's wings.  I based these on the firing rate of the eight .303 calibre guns. Reckoning that this was about 1,150 rounds per minute or 19 per second, you would see about 76 spent casings being ejected from each wing. 

Models

I then had to consider whom he was shooting at. Aside from being Bf 110s this was not clear, although I did know the Luftwaffe units involved.  Hough and Richards in their history, The Battle of Britain, note that he "had a field day with the Me. 110s of I/ZG2" and this would accord with the various German casualties noted in that remarkable catalogue, The Battle of Britain – Then and Now. 

Portraying these raised another obvious problem that required a departure from my accustomed way of working to date: there simply aren't any 110s flying around to form a photographic basis for the picture. I turned to models instead, and reworked my photos of them to add greater detail, colour, digital 'noise' and some motion blur. 

The rest of the aircraft in the wider scene were more straightforward but I still had to figure out who did what to whom at about the same time that afternoon, and recreate their roles. 

The background was one of my handy stash of cloudscapes.

I worked carefully on the overall composition – as usual rearranging elements and even flipping the whole thing to see it in a different light. I'm pleased with the overall effect of aircraft flying everywhere. 

As for the principle of portraying a specific incident: I think this is the right way to go. I know others produce generic scenes and these can look splendid and be really emotive.

But for me, if I'm going to show, say, a Spitfire, then to be at all realistic it has to be a particular type and it has to have some code letters on it at least, and as soon as you do that you are into depicting an individual aircraft and, more than likely, pilot.  In any case, the specific can also be generic ("a Battle of Britain dogfight", to take the example above) but it cannot readily work the other way round. 

The upshot of this approach in the case of one of my pictures was a phone call out of the blue from the current owner of one of the aircraft featured in it – the Mk IX Spitfire MH434.

This venerable aircraft is still flying. My picture showed it as it would have been in December 1943. The owner, Sarah Hanna of The Old Flying Machine Company, wanted to use the scene as their Christmas image for 2012 and it duly appeared on the mh434.com website. 

Here's to a happy and successful 2013.

 

Continue ReadingFocus on specifics

End of content

No more pages to load

Older Posts