Free Dogfight by Adam Claasen

of many close calls he endured during the Battle of Britain.
    While leading a Spitfire formation out of Hornchurch in his aircraft nicknamed ‘Kiwi 2’—‘Kiwi 1’ had been lost over Dunkirk—Deere spotted a German Red Cross float-plane skimming foam-tipped waves under the protective escort of a dozen Me 109s. Deere’s section attacked the fighters, leaving the float-plane to others. Firing the new explosive De Wilde ammunition, he soon saw ‘small dancing yellow flames’ running along the fuselage of an Me 109, helping Deere gauge his effectiveness. His next target was less obliging.
    About 3000 yards directly ahead of me, and at the same level, a Hun was just completing a turn preparatory to re-entering the fray. He saw me almost immediately and rolled out of his turn towards me so that a head-on attack became inevitable. Using both hands on the control column to steady the aircraft ... I peered through the reflector sight at the rapidly closing enemy aircraft. We opened fire together, and immediately a hail of lead thudded into my Spitfire. One moment the Messerschmitt was a clearly defined shape, its wingspan nicely enclosed within the circle of my reflector sight, and the next it was on top of me, a terrifying blur which blotted out the sky ahead. Then we hit.[13]
    The controls were ripped from Deere’s startled hands as his seat harness cut deeply into his shoulders at the sudden impact and loss of air speed in the glancing collision. Smoke and flames bellowed from the Merlin engineand the propeller blades bent back like a claw. The Me 109 had viciously ground itself along the top of the Spitfire at high speed and in the process damaged the canopy, trapping the New Zealander inside the increasingly inhospitable cockpit. He had no alternative but to glide towards the distant British coastline. Amazingly he made it and put the wrecked machine down in a paddock near Manston airfield. Deere used his bare hands to smash his way out of the machine as the carcass of ‘Kiwi 2’ went up in flames. Sitting well back from the conflagration, he catalogued his injuries: cut and bleeding hands, singed eyebrows, badly bruised knees and a cut lip. ‘But I was alive!’ A local farmer’s wife offered him a cup of tea, to which he replied he would ‘prefer something stronger’.
    A whisky later and he was transported to Hornchurch where two matters of interest were being discussed: Deere’s ‘brush’ with a German, and the He 59 air-sea rescue aircraft’s true purpose. Rumour had it that, having exhausted his ammunition Deere had intentionally ploughed into the German fighter. ‘I may be a mad New Zealander...,’ remarked a bemused Deere, ‘but not so mad that I would deliberately ram an enemy aircraft head-on.’[14]
    Other pilots had also come across the sea-rescue aircraft and were uncertain how they should be treated, particularly as they bore civilian registration letters and Red Cross markings, and appeared to be unarmed. What made the RAF pilots suspicious was the heavy escort some He 59s were receiving from Me 109s. After some sea-rescue machines had been shot down, the Air Ministry directed that aircraft marked with the Red Cross engaged in legitimate evacuation of the sick and wounded would be respected, but those that were flying over areas in which British operations were being undertaken would be accorded no such ‘immunity’. The Germans, however, took no chances and subsequently armed and camouflaged their aircraft as they continued to save downed Luftwaffe and, on occasion, Allied airmen during the battle.
    On the Allied side, a dedicated British air-sea rescue service would not be formed until 1941. In the meantime, Park set about organising the transfer of suitable aircraft from the Army to work with coastal rescue launches to pick up downed airmen as a stopgap measure.
First Losses
    In addition to the Kiwis, a trio