Dr. Campbell-Begg - For Five Shillings a Day - Personal Histories of World War II

James Chilton Francis Hayter

Bernard Brown was another Royal Air Force pilot involved in operations over France during those fateful days:

‘During the evacuation of Dunkirk I was a Pilot Officer and I was detailed, on one occasion, to go out to Ghent in Belgium to try and find the British Army because they didn’t know where they were. So I knew about the British Army, how extremely dangerous they were, and it was necessary always to fly at least 3,000 feet above the Army, because they would like as not give one a pannier of 303 and you’d see the shells coming up and curling down behind the aeroplane – they were very bad shots. But anyway, I did find the British Army and I found the Germans too, and they were busy riding along quite happily in their trucks and they didn’t fire a shot. So that was that little episode.

Then while the Dunkirk operation was progressing, they discovered that there was a German artillery unit in a chalk pit in Calais firing at the British Army, so they decided that we should go along and drop some bombs on them. So the Squadron – I think there were about nine of us – we left from Manston in things called Hectors, that they used to use on the North West Frontier of India to keep the people there in order. Anyway we had two bombs loaded underneath the wings and on the way over across the sea I thought I’d better try the guns, which fired through the prop. I did all the necessary bits and pressed the button and there was a mighty bang, and the next moment there was petrol in my face. I had actually ruptured the main fuel tank. I released the bombs and turned what I thought was back to England – I could barely see because the petrol was burning my face. Fortunately I had my goggles on and I flew in a general westerly direction.

Eventually I saw land, and by this time the engine was nearly sort of stopping, but I switched over then to the gravity tank and as the petrol sort of drained away from the aeroplane, no more petrol was in my face and I saw this land and I saw the Heme Bay Golf Course. I was pretty good at landing an aeroplane in those days, so I popped it on to the golf course, then got the map out and found out where I was. So I turned round and away I went, took off again and landed back at Manston, which was just up the road. At a subsequent investigation, when I got back to base, they discovered that the split pin on the front of the machine-gun, which operated a gas-operated thing, had not been fitted and the piece had blown off and gone right through the side of the aeroplane and into the petrol tank, a great big hole 3 or 4 inches across. The other Hectors were all right and had come back. They thought I had been shot down.’

Bernard Walter Brown

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