Fighter pilot “Ginger” Neil, 95, recalls the bodies flying at him in combat
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Version 0 of 1. The most ghastly thing Pilot Officer Tom “Ginger” Neil saw during World War II’s Battle of Britain happened on the ground, not in the skies over England where he and his comrades fought the German Luftwaffe. A British pilot trying to take off was hit in a German bombing raid. His plane caught fire, skittered across the airfield and came to rest not far from Neil’s quarters. Neil, then 20, rushed out to see what was going on. “His aircraft was burning alongside our dispersal hut,” he said. “We stood around watching with our hands in our pockets. I said, ‘Where’s the pilot?’ Somebody else said, ‘Well, he’s sitting there in the cockpit.’ ” “I watched him burn to death,” Neil said. “He got smaller and smaller and smaller, [became] a little doll of a person, and eventually disappeared. It was a horrible sight.” Neil, 95 and one of the last survivors of the legendary 1940 air battle that saved Britain from Nazi invasion, spoke Wednesday at a hotel in Washington, where he was participating in a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the battle. Tall, white-haired, dignified, he told the story of his role in the epic fight in which the Royal Air Force defeated a better-equipped, more experienced German air force that was bent on conquering Great Britain, as the Nazis had much of Western Europe. “They thought they were going to walk it,” he said. “They started out with 4,000 . . . bombers and fighters. We had 650 fighters. . . . They conquered Western Europe without even blinking an eye. And they were going to do exactly the same for us.” [A flight aboard Devil Dog, a World War II B-25.] He remembered encountering his first German airplane over the North Sea “as though it were yesterday.” It was about 30 miles off the coast. The enemy plane bore the classic German black crosses and swastika insignia. He was fascinated. “Instead of shooting it down, I looked at it,” he said. “And it got away.” He told of attacking a few days later a German Dornier 17, a twin-engine bomber, from about 60 yards away. “I could reach out and touch it almost,” he said. As his bullets tore into the enemy aircraft, two of its crewmen bailed out, and their bodies came hurtling toward his plane. “I was suddenly faced with whirling arms and legs [coming] straight at me,” he said. “And I ducked, I remember, in the cockpit . . . but they flew past” and deployed their parachutes. The plane crashed in the Thames Estuary. “You don’t know the blokes you’ve been shooting at,” he said. “That’s the only occasion it became a personal business, these sort of chaps flying towards you. They’re men. They’re people. Otherwise, you’re firing at an airplane.” Neil, who lives in Norfolk, in southeastern England, was in Washington for the commemoration at the Mayflower hosted by the Washington-based Royal Air Force Museum American Foundation. He has just written a memoir, “Scramble!” The event featured a dinner Wednesday evening whose attendees included U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and Britain’s Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Pulford. The foundation aims to promote ties between, and celebrate the history of, the U.S. and British air forces. It often invites noted historical figures to speak, said foundation president Frederick F. Roggero, a retired U.S. Air Force major general. In Britain, Neil “is a national treasure,” Roggero said. “Maybe not a lot of Americans realize the history or the significance of the Battle of Britain these days,” he said. “But that’s part of the good thing about bringing him over here and giving him a chance to tell that story.” The bulk of the battle went on from July to October 1940, when Britain stood almost alone against the Nazi onslaught. France had been conquered that June, and the United States and the Soviet Union would not enter war until 1941. It was in tribute to the Royal Air Force during the battle that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Neil, nicknamed “Ginger” for the color of his hair, said he was born “where the Beatles were born, Liverpool.” He later lived in Langley, Va., for a time when he was attached to the British Embassy here. After the war, he was a test pilot. He and his wife, Eileen, who died last year, raised three sons. As he spoke in his hotel room Wednesday, he often turned his blue eyes upward, as if seeing the scenes anew in his mind. He said he flew 157 combat sorties, shot down 14 enemy planes and was decorated for his actions multiple times. He often flew four, sometimes five, times a day, occasionally in his pajamas, if the mission was early in the morning. He spoke of the British fighter plane he flew most often: the Hawker Hurricane Mk. 1, which was partly covered in fabric and was prone to catching fire when hit. “The [gas] tanks were disposed in such a way that the two tanks to the left and right of the pilot’s feet caught fire immediately,” he said. “And people in Hurricanes, in the main, got hideously burned. The fire used to come from behind the dashboard and right into the pilot’s face.” Neil said his squadron, No. 249, had 12 planes, and the pilots flew in groups of three. He said he had to bail out once when his plane collided with another British plane, shearing his plane’s tail. He landed unconscious amid jittery British citizens who were not sure at first if he was German or English. They finally realized he was friendly. When he returned to his base, he followed the pilots’ tradition of paying his parachute packer 10 shillings for doing a good job. Neil became adept. He learned not to attack the middle of a German formation but to pick off the planes around its edges. He came to be called “hawk eye” in his squadron. He said it was not his eyesight that was good but his ability to sense the presence of the enemy. The fighting could be desperate. Neil told of a friend, Percy Burton, who, wounded and out of ammunition, rammed a big German fighter-bomber. Both planes were destroyed. All aboard were killed. Burton was recommended for a Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for valor, Neil said. “He didn’t get it,” he said. “He got a ‘mentioned in dispatches,’ which you get for cleaning the aircraft.” “That’s the sort of thing that happened in the war,” he said. “People were expendable.” Other stories that may be of interest: [World War II love letters tell of romance and tragedy] [Harlem Hellfighters: In WWI, we were good enough to go anyplace] [Stories of grief,love left at the Vietnam Wall] |