1941: TO COMMAND 145(F) SQDN
1941: With 41 and 145 Squadrons
It was off the Essex coast on 22nd January 1941 that Tony Lovell’s wingman spotted a lone He.IIIK in the far distance and was ordered in pursuit by Tony, who followed hot on his heels in line astern. With the early morning sun behind them (it was 0945hrs) the two carried out a head-on attack “fine on the starboard bow”, as Tony later reported:
Blue 2 broke away to port and I broke to starboard the bandit appeared to be undamaged and I saw Blue 2 turn on its tail and then the hun started to dive for 10/10 cloud below him. I saw Blue 2 firing from astern while I was approaching to do another beam attack and he appeared to be hitting it...
There was no visible return fire from the Heinkel, which hastily jettisoned a large bomb in the sea south-west of Clacton. Tony managed another quick burst, closing to 50 yards as the enemy disappeared into cloud, but felt that his wingman had done the real damage.
On 20th February 1941 Tony was posted to 53 OTU Heston. Four days later he was posted back again to 41 Sqdn, which in the intervening period had returned to Catterick from Hornchurch with 14 aircraft; four days after that (28.02.41) he was granted 14 days leave, and went home to Portrush.
A look at the records gives a possible clue to the brevity of Tony’s stay with 53 OTU, which was a new Spitfire training unit then forming.
Tony would have arrived at Heston to discover that so far there were only three other junior officers on strength, and as yet not even a C.O. (who was to be W/Cdr Ira “Taffy” Jones). [1] He would also have found out that the initial intention was to operate this new OTU at half strength, and that it was destined to move to Llandow in South Wales on the first day of April.
It is very tempting to suppose that at this point he summed the situation up as Not Much Fun, and may well have considered that despite the regulations requiring pilots to be rested, he had no wish to be sidelined away from the action. Quite how he got himself posted back to 41 Sqdn after only four days is not clear.
It is also possible that the squadron was not quite sure what to do about him when they got him back. He was either time-expired or in need of a rest; either way, despite the fact that he had had a seven-day pass only a couple of months before, he was now sent home on a fortnight’s leave.
Tony had barely been home a week when an urgent telegram arrived from the adjutant at Catterick. There was to be an investiture by the King at Buckingham Palace, at 10.15 on 11th March:
+++ LETTER OF ADMISSION AND RECEIPT CARD HELD HERE ADVISE RE DISPOSAL APPLY CENTRAL CHANCERY OF THE ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD ST JAMES PALACE FOR TWO TICKETS STEVE +++
The two tickets were for spectators at the investiture. Tony took his mother and his sister Clare, and all three were photographed with the award outside the Palace (Clare was photographed gazing adoringly at her brother, despite his pleas for her to look at the award instead). [1a]
On 30th March 1941 Tony brought down a Ju.88 over Eston Moor, a few miles south-east of Middlesborough. Taking off from Catterick at 1450 to patrol Seaham Harbour, he and his no.2 P/O Archie Winskill [2] were vectored just before 1500hrs on to Raid 65, plotted as one-plus at 24,000ft.
A minute or so later he saw the enemy aircraft above him, making a mile-long vapour trail. At 1503 the controller heard Tony’s “Tally-ho!” call over the radio as the two Spitfires climbed to attack, stalking the Ju.88 by using its vapour trail as cover:
I was ordered to intercept an enemy raid with Blue 2. We climbed through 7,000 feet of cloud and came out into clear blue sky. We climbed fast on a vector of 010 degrees and at 17,000 feet saw smoke trails on the left about 7,000 feet above, going in the opposite direction. We climbed flat out in a climbing turn and followed his smoke trail, which hid us very effectively.
When Tony saw the German bomber’s wingtips on either side of the trail, he opened fire with a three-second burst. As the aircraft dived away, Tony - who recognised it as a Ju.88 by its glass greenhouse - thought he saw his fire being returned, but later came to the conclusion that the effect was caused by his de Wilde hitting the under-gun tunnel. [3]
At 250 yards, I opened fire at fuselage and saw de Wilde hitting and bits came off. He dived steeply to the left, I saw right engine just ticking over and then one of the crew bailed out, and then it started to dive and turn, apparently out of control, and disappeared into cloud. The parachute of the crew did not open. [4]
Winskill, following, did not fire; he too saw the German crew member’s parachute “candle”.
The Ju.88A, coded 4U+GH of 1(F)123, was camouflaged egg blue beneath and dark green on top; it smashed to pieces at Eston Hills near Guisborough when its bomb load exploded on impact.[5] Uffz Hans Steigerwald the air gunner, who had not returned fire, baled out at the last moment but fell dead in trees lining Flatts Lane, Normanby.
The ribbon from his Iron Cross was sent to Tony by the interrogation officer at RAF Church Fenton, P/O L.F. Hartje. (An aerial photo of the burning wreckage in Tony Lovell’s photo album is identified on the negative as “nr Roseberry Topping“). [6]
WAAF Grace Scotchmer, a plotter in the Catterick ops room, saw Tony for the first time that day and wrote in her diary:
“Exciting - Tony Lovell brought down a Jerry. Thrilled to bits when he came into Ops when he got back. The second one our crew has brought down, the first was an Italian Condor some time ago.”
Tony talked to the controller and the CO and looked at the ‘board’. It was all very businesslike, and the plotters got on with their normal work. [7]
On 23rd May 1941 he was posted to 58 OTU Grangemouth as an instructor, being confirmed in his rank of Flight Lieutenant two days later.
Under his eye there came two Canadian pilots, Rod Smith and Buck McNair, who ultimately graduated top of their class. Tony, as their flight commander, was no doubt pleased with that result, but felt that McNair was perhaps a little too cocky; he said as much in his assessment of him, as McNair discovered on his way to his posting:
Written assessments were not for the graduate pilot to read but rather for his new squadron commander to use as a helpful tool in assessing capabilities and shortcomings. Buck's jaw dropped. He swore about his OTU flight commander and handed the report to Rod. "It had been signed by Tony Lovell," Rod recounted, "and one sentence said: 'Pilot Officer McNair is a good pilot, but wants everyone to know it.' That may be true, but Buck was one of the finest ever... he got very morose, and, of course, I really wanted to burst out laughing, but I didn't." [7a]
Tony had one of the longest records of continuous service in the same squadron from pre-war to post-Battle of Britain - certainly longer than the two years of F/Lt J.C. Freeborn, quoted by Wood and Dempster as joining 74 Sqdn on 29th October 1938. [8]
During his time on 41 Sqdn Tony gained the reputation for being, as Bill Stapleton (who often thought of him) said,
“one of the nicest people from the pre-war Air Force: well-mannered, smart, a superb pilot and a thoroughly decent person”.
A fellow flight commander, New Zealander John Mackenzie, thought him
“a very good living fellow.... I had very high regard for his skill and courage and his qualities as an officer and a gentleman.” [8a]
Mackenzie also remembered Tony helping to build a beer-only bar (with the permission of the AOC) in the dispersal hut in the trees at the edge of the airfield at Catterick:
“We acquired timber and Tony, Norman Ryder, and self were great workers on the new bar. It was well stocked with all forms of gadgetry normally seen in public houses, much of it acquired (?) by Tony, Norman, and self. We spent hours polishing a large flat top, must have been the shiniest bar in England at that time! “ [9]
S/Ldr E.G.”Ben” Bennions described Tony as “a first-class gentleman” [10] and “a very private person.... one of the finest pilots in the squadron.... my memories of Tony are precious.” [11] “A super bloke and a first-class fighter pilot,” he told author Bill Norman in the late 90s. [12]
S/Ldr R.A.(Bob) Beardsley, a fellow Sergeant Pilot on 41 Sqdn in 1940, confirmed:
“He was always quiet, rather withdrawn, but perhaps more contemplative than most, never bad tempered, and popular and respected. He was very correct and abstemious - people liked him more than he liked company. He didn’t join in the few parties we had.” [13]
Tony did not go to squadron dances, nor did he casually chat up girls - to the apparent dismay of at least some of the Catterick WAAFs. [14] Grace Scotchmer remembered the reaction of some of her room-mates to Tony Lovell. Cecilia (Lee) Granger and Win Maxwell had been to Mass in the private chapel of Brough Hall, a large private house nearby [15] and
“...had seen Tony Lovell there and were exclaiming over him and saying how good-looking he was. They were friends, Roman Catholics, and were talking in the way girls of 19-20 years old did, in those days. At that time I had never seen him but I knew about him. He was a hero.”
Mrs Scotchmer described Tony as very handsome, and boyish.
“Given the opportunity some girls might have been eager to talk to him. I did not go to the occasional dances in the hangar but I never heard that he went to them. There was not a lot of mixing between officers and airwomen. I would have heard, because one got to hear who was going out with whom!” [16]
Nevertheless at least one girl thought it worth her while to bicycle out from Ops to B Flight dispersal on summer evenings when she knew that Tony would be watching his ground crew polishing his Spitfire. Jim Maggs was junior rigger, and he remembered that after Dunkirk,
“Tony would ask if we were going out evenings and if we were not, ask would we polish the aircraft. It was on some of these nights that a Waaf used to come over and sit on the trolley accumulator whilst we were working. I think she worked in Ops but didn’t even know her first name. Tony would say “What does she want”. I would say “Not us”. He did not seem interested....
His good looks have been commented on by many who knew him: “I recall that they endeared him to the fair sex,” said Gilbert Draper of 41 Sqdn. [17]
Contemporary photos show Tony to be of middle height - 5ft 10 to 5ft 11, according to Bill Stapleton - with dark straight hair pulled across his forehead; he features in the official set of squadron photos taken at Hornchurch in late December 1940. [18]
Tony’s portrait was done by Cuthbert Orde at Hornchurch on 8th January 1941. Captain Orde had been commissioned by the Air Council to draw 150 Battle of Britain pilots of his choice, and at Hornchurch that week he also drew Norman Ryder, as well as the station C.O., Harry Broadhurst.
Tony returned to Catterick from his stint as an instructor at 58 OTU on 15th June 1941 and embarked on a spell in the ops room as a controller, taking turn and turn about with Ben Bennions. Even then his impatience for action was evident, as sergeant deputy controller Hall commented. [19]
Four months later, on a fine October day - the 22nd - Tony was posted to command 145 Sqdn (Spitfires) at Catterick to succeed S/Ldr P.S. “Stan” Turner DFC, who departed to 13 Group HQ as S/Ldr Tactics.
His takeover of 145 Sqdn was low-key and without the usual formalities. By 1420 hrs he was in the air in Spitfire IIB 8533 for an hour of local flying (described as a “sector familiarisation flight”, which he can hardly have needed) while the rest of the squadron went about their daily tasks: four aircraft up to forward base, others on GCI co-operation or locals.
Czech pilot M.A. Liskutin much later recalled that Tony then promptly shot down a Ju.88 over Middlesborough, but this is not borne out by the ORB or by Tony’s own award citations.[ 20]
The new CO was the exact opposite of his predecessor, Stan Turner, who is described by those who flew with him on 145 Sqdn as “a craggy Canuck” [21] and “a brash, hard man” [22] (and who later, as did Tony, led 244 Wing in the Italian campaign).
Tony was also the much younger man - he was then just 22, while Turner was six years older - but the fighting records of both were similar, each by then having claimed 10 aircraft enemy destroyed.
There are indications that Tony found some difficulty in adjusting to his new command on a personal basis. He had been “brought up”, as it were, on a very kosher pre-war squadron where regular officers were gentlemen, and gentlemen were regular officers.
There had been, to be sure, non-commissioned pilots - but in the early days most of these (like the bridge-playing Roy Ford) were pre-war RAFVR types, and quite acceptable, if not always orthodox.
However despite his dislike for administration and paperwork (anything that kept him away from his beloved flying he would have seen as a negative influence) Tony Lovell was nothing if not conventional when it came to the standards to be maintained by the Service.
The problem when he took over 145 Sqdn was, as far as he was concerned, twofold. First, he found a small core of experienced fliers which included some half a dozen sergeant pilots; this took some getting used to.
Second, there was also on the squadron a larger number of more newly-qualified pilots still lacking in experience, being the usual mixture of allsorts and awkward bods which wartime recruitment inevitably creates. In this environment too Tony, never the most relaxed or outgoing of souls, was not totally at home. [23]
But there was always flying. Tony took part in a scramble of two sections on 23rd October, and a convoy patrol with P/O Mackie on the 28th.
The squadron lost P/O H.L.M. Young on the 28th, who crashed while returning from an operational flight; and in the afternoon of 4th November, P/O R.M. Cooke crashed in a field half a mile south of the aerodrome while testing an aircraft, and was killed.
Tony flew whenever the opportunity presented itself. In November, for example, he flew on the 1st to the 8th, the 10th to the 13th, the 15th and 16th, the 21st and 22nd, and the 24th to the 30th: height climbs, gun tests, practice night flying, “co-operation with Halifax”. The weather was not always good:
13.11.41 Weather bad all day with rain. 1 aircraft went on weather test. No further flying owing to bad weather.
The one aircraft was the C.O., S/Ldr Lovell.
Tony shot down a Ju.88 on 16th November, some 25 to 30 miles north-east of Hartlepool. Having taken off from Catterick at 1130 to co-operate with a Halifax in practice attacks, he heard, as he approached Scarborough, the controller vector Green Section on to bogies between him and Whitby. [24]
In patchy cloud he crossed the coast just south of Whitby, dropped to sea level, and was 10 miles out heading east-north-east when he heard the controller recall Green Section and take up patrol of a coastal convoy.
At this point or earlier, the forward relay station at West Hartlepool heard Tony call up control and ask if he could investigate. Permission was given, but he was told to be careful, as the target was unidentified.
H.N. Maclean was on duty in the forward relay station:
“Within a few minutes he shouted Tally Ho, he is going down and is now in the sea. All quiet for some time, and the ground station were worried about the identity of the aircraft. The next call from Sqdn Ldr Lovell was to say the aircraft was in the sea and no survivors.
“He then went on to say that he flew under it, and saw RAF markings, but when past he saw in his rear view mirror, that the aircraft was not British. He returned from above and was attacked by the rear gunner, so he shot it down.”
Tony’s own report, from the point when Green Section were recalled, says:
I decided to return also, but on turning to port saw an A/C flying very fast at sea level. I gave chase, making a point of keeping east of it as I thought that their observation would be more concentrated on the land side.
The intruder was flying fast at around 270mph, 100ft above the waves; Tony’s Spitfire IIB overhauled it at about 20mph more, and came up level on the starboard side at a distance of some 1000 yards.
He pulled up and over to 1000ft above the bogie, saw green and brown camouflage and roundels on the wings, and the usual crosses on the fuselage and tail. He identified it as a Ju.88:
I turned to starboard and dived on him from astern. As I closed in from about 700 yds the E/A weaved to allow his rear gunner to fire and I saw his tracer missing me on my port side. I opened fire with cannon and MG at 500 yds giving two bursts and hoping to silence the rear gunner, but saw my .303 striking the sea 100 yds behind.
At this point both Tony’s cannon jammed. The port gun, loaded with ball ammunition, had fired 44 rounds; the starboard, with HE and incendiary, 46 rounds. [25] He closed to 250 yards, and as the Ju.88 was turning to starboard, fired two bursts from his machine guns - half AP and half de Wilde - with 10 degrees deflection.
The de Wilde ammunition burst around the cockpit, fuselage and engines, then two slight flashes came from both engines. Tony broke away to port and looked back. Both the bomber’s engines were blazing fiercely:
It went into a shallow dive and exploded on striking the sea. Wreckage continued to burn on the sea where there was a patch of light green substance. I also saw what I think was an uninflated dinghy floating about, but could not see any survivors.
He gave a fix to control and returned to base, landing at 1235 with a single bullet hole in his port wing, under the cannon. F/Lt Wenman of Red Section was vectored to the spot where the Ju.88 had come down and confirmed seeing wreckage, dinghy and green patch on the sea - but no survivors. [26], [27]
On 18th November Ben Bennions, a former colleague on 41 Sqdn and now a squadron leader, borrowed or was allocated a Spitfire for a 75-minute GCI co-operation flight.
December 1941 passed without much incident. There was flying on Christmas Day, and seasonal parties broke out in the evening. It was all too much for one Army captain who, unpleasantly full of drink in the sergeants’ mess, insisted that the sergeants accompany him back to the officers’ mess for more.
As much carried as walking, he arrived at the officers’ mess and began to yell for the steward as he passed through the doors. It was his bad luck, and everyone else’s, that the first person on the scene was Tony Lovell. What happened to the Army captain is not recorded. The sergeants however were taken to one side by Tony Lovell and given “an awful telling-off”. [28]
Dawn patrol the following day was taken by “B” Flight commander F/Lt C.N. “Teeny” Overton, airborne at 0815, and by Tony Lovell, airborne at 0825.
NOTES
1. Tony Lovell and Ira Jones would not have been on the same wavelength. It was Jones who made the hilarious observation that no professional footballers or boxers became famous fighter pilots, but a lot of rugger players did. Jones also observed that pilots with brown eyes usually didn’t have the bottle to be fighter pilots and were better adapted to bombers. He also wrote an awful song for 53 OTU which officers were obliged to sing. He was eventually court-marshalled and replaced (G/Capt. Stephen Beaumont, 609 Sqdn newsletter 1999).
1a. Alicia Montagu (pers. comm.).
2. Air Commodore Sir Archibald Winskill KCVO, Captain of the Queen's Flight 1968-72.
3. PRO AIR50/18, 293. Catterick Intelligence to 13 Group Intelligence, 1655 30/3/41.
4. Hits from explosive de Wilde ammunition were easier to spot than from conventional tracer, which only left smoke trails. The de Wilde was however in short supply at this time, and might only have been loaded in one of the Spitfire's eight guns.
5. PRO AIR50/18, 512. HQ 13 Group to HQ Fighter Command; and S/Ldr Chris Goss, pers. comm.
6. See Tony Lovell's scrapbook for letter from Hartje, and photo ref. 1406/THO/220. The following description of the incident appears in Luftwaffe Over the North (Bill Norman,1993 / 97):
On that day, Home Guardsman Alf Kirby was receiving practice in the firing of the Browning machine gun when he heard the distant wail of sirens. Shortly afterwards he saw a pair of Spitfires following the Tees towards the coast before they climbed to 2500 feet and disappeared into the 6/10 cloud which hung over the area....
The raider was a Junkers Ju.88 (4U+GH) of 1/Aufklärungsgruppe 123 and was crewed by Leutnant Wolfgang Schlott (pilot), Leutnant Otto Meingold (observer), Feldwebel Wilhelm Schmigale (radio operator) and Unteroffizier Hans Steigerwald (gunner). They were on a photo-reconnaissance sortie to Manchester, but when they banked left and began to fly parallel to the Durham coast they were also on what would prove to be a collision course with the fighters....
The Spitfires were able to close to within 250 yards of their target before Lovell elected to execute the attack with a three-second burst of gunfire which shot away pieces of the Ju.88 before it dived away steeply towards cloud with the fighters in close pursuit.
When the trio emerged from the cloud, they were over Redcar. Observers in that town might well have expected the Junkers to crash there, but pilot Wolfgang Schlott managed to pull out and the raider skimmed low over the roof-tops, its attackers close behind and “pumping terrific bursts of gunfire into the German aircraft”.
Although obviously crippled and with no chance of escape, the Junkers twisted and writhed its way over East Cleveland. When it approached Smith’s Dockyard, employee Jim Cox noticed that it was flying “fairly high but not very high”, and that it was being harassed by two fighters “one alongside while the other swooped on top”. Neil Jones saw neither raider nor attackers, but as he cycled along Middlesborough’s Marton Road and past St Luke’s Hospital “the roar of engines and bursts of machine-gun fire sounded very close and loud above the cloud. The sounds died away in the direction of Eston Hills.”
As it approached the hills which form Tees-side’s southern boundary, the Junkers was trailing smoke and was low enough to prompt Bradford soldier Bill Greenwood.... to throw himself instinctively to the ground: when it passed over him, Greenwood caught a glimpse of the ventral gunner, Hans Steigerwald. Perhaps against all expectations, the ailing aircraft lifted sufficiently to clear the northern slopes and the summit to the west of the Nab tower. For some moments its seemed that it might continue its climb to a safer altitude and as it clawed its way upwards the ventral gunner made a “desperate bid for life and succeeded in jumping clear”.
Thirty-nine-year-old Amy Watson was looking out of her aunt’s window in Normanby when she saw the plane “flying over the hills from the direction of Middlesborough - but then it suddenly dropped”. The withering fire had finally taken its toll: the right engine ceased to function and the raider’s nose dipped. The Ju.88 plummeted earthwards in a terrifying spiral dive which was made even more frightening by the whining screams that accompanied it.
As hikers on the summit scurried for safety when they saw the Junkers apparently about to crash on them, the plane struck the soft moorland above the Cross Keys Inn and exploded with such force that it created a huge crater and scattered wreckage over a 400-yard radius.....
7. Grace Scotchmer, pers. comm. She was mistaken about the Condor.
7a. Aces, Warriors and Wingmen, Wayne Ralph, pub. Wiley, 2008.
8. "The Narrow Margin" (Wood and Dempster).
8a. While pilots 'for the duration' tended to describe themselves as part-time officers and temporary gentlemen. Or the other way round.
9. S/Ldr John Mackenzie to Swannell. Mackenzie was said to have been a particular friend of Tony Lovell's; Norman Ryder however, when asked to comment on Tony in the early 90s, returned a surly reply ("I have nothing to add to the comments of Wing Commander Stapleton") and did not answer subsequent letters.
10. S/Ldr Frank Usmar, (pers. comm).
11. S/Ldr Ben Bennions to Pat Swannell. On the envelope I sent him in 1991 with the then full ADJL story (80pp) he later wrote: “Enclosed details of Spitfire pilot Tony Lovell of 41(F) Sqdn, my favourite no.2 during the Battle of Britain B Flight 41(F) Sqdn, Tony was one of the best of a few of The Few, a first class fighter pilot, officer and a gentleman. My son was called Tony (signed) Ben Bennions 41(F) Sqdn 1936-1941. Tony Lovell was a first class fighter pilot, officer and gentleman. One of the unsung heroes of the 1939-45 war.”. [Photo posted on 41Sqdn facebook page by his granddaughter Sue Cummins, March 2020].
12. Bill Norman (pers. comm).
13. S/Ldr Bob Beardsley (pers. comm).
14. Nor did he appear to have a car of his own while on 41 Sqdn - despite the fact that the other pilots used to scour the neighbourhood for old sports cars which, once refurbished by the squadron's erks, would bring in enough funds for a good night out at the pub for all concerned.
15. Identified by Jeremy Morrogh-Ryan, whose father Buck was married there on 25 April 1940.
16. Mrs Grace Scotchmer (pers. comm).
17. Gilbert Draper (pers. comm).
18. The Imperial War Museum holds these and other photos of Tony Lovell.
19. 932733 Sgt L.G. Hall (pers. comm). See note 16, chapter 2.
20. S/Ldr M.A. Liskutin, "Challenge in the Air", Kimber 1988. S/Ldr Liskutin refers to Tony Lovell as "a youthful and energetic aviator....we again had a first class pilot and an outstanding officer". See also PRO AIR27/985.
21. F/Lt - then Sgt - Frank Twitchett (pers. comm).
22. S/Ldr W.J.Johnson (pers. comm).
23. F/Lt Frank Twitchett (pers. comm).
24. Tony Lovell's combat report says Red Section was involved. The Catterick intelligence officer (Gissy?) in his report to 13 Group HQ says it was Green Section.
25. At that time the two drum-fed 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon had a capacity of 60 rounds each; the drums were manufactured by the Austin Motor Co. and were unreliable because the high-grade Swedish steel needed for the springs was not available. There were also problems with the swinging-mount installation in the wings; the gun had actually been designed with recoil characteristics which required it to be bolted onto a substantial base, i.e. the engine, hence its proper name of Hispano-moteur. Ultimately the optimum ordnance for this weapon, which like the de Wilde and other explosive ammunition actually contravened the St Petersburg Declaration of 1868, was a mix of HE/incendiary and the semi-armour piercing/incendiary Mk1z round (SAP/I).
26. PRO AIR 50/62. This seems to confirm that there some doubt in the controller's mind as to the identity of the aircraft shot down by Tony. Bill Norman points out (pers. comm.) that no RAF rear gunner would have expected to find a single-engined German fighter in the area; on the other hand, if fired on, an RAF gunner was likely to have returned fire first, and made rational judgements second.
27. No Bomber Command aircraft were lost in daylight hours on 16th November 1941 [RAF Bomber Command Losses.... 1941, Chorley W.R.] Coastal and Training Command records have not been checked.
28. F/Lt Frank Twitchett (pers. comm).
