TO CAPTAIN WOLFGANG FALCK, these would always be “the golden days.” As a Gruppe commander in Fighter Squadron 26, he flew an Me 110—a new two-engine fighter said to be even better than the fabled Me 109, but nobody really knew because there was so little opposition. So far the campaign had been a picnic: knocking down obsolete British Fairey Battle bombers … shooting French planes as they sat in neat rows on the ground … protecting the Stukas, the Heinkel 111’s, the Dornier 17’s from attacks that never came.
The only problem was keeping up with the panzers. As the army advanced, so did the squadron, and it required superb organization to keep fuel, spare parts, and maintenance flowing. Usually the ground personnel would move forward during the night, leaving a skeleton crew to service the planes before taking off on their morning missions. These skeleton crews would then move on too. When the squadron completed its mission, it would land at the new base, where everything would be set up and waiting.
Food and lodging were always the best. The squadron’s administrative officer Major Fritz von Scheve was an old reservist who had a real nose for finding decent billets—and where a good wine cellar might be hidden. He usually selected some local chateau whose owner had fled, leaving everything behind. Falck forbade any looting—the place must be left as they found it—but there was no rule against enjoying life, and the pilots found themselves eating off Limoges china and sleeping in canopied beds.
There was even time for nonsense. Near one captured airfield some member of the squadron found a number of French baby tanks, abandoned but full of petrol. Pilots tend to be good at tinkering, and they soon had the tanks manned and running. The men spent a glorious hour chasing and ramming one another—it was like a giant dodgem concession at some amusement park.
May 27, and the German flyers got their first inkling that the golden days would not last forever. Now the target was Dunkirk itself, and as the Stukas and Heinkels went about their usual business, a new throaty roar filled the air. Modern British fighters—Hurricanes and Spitfires—came storming down upon them, breaking up the neat formations, sending occasional bombers spinning down out of control. These British squadrons had been considered too valuable to base in France, but the fighting was in range of England now, and that was different. Taking off from a dozen Kentish fields, they poured across the Channel.
It’s hard to say who was more surprised—the Tommies on the ground or the Germans in the air. The ordinary British soldier had almost given up hope of ever seeing the RAF again; then suddenly here it was, tearing into the enemy. For the Luftwaffe pilots, these new air battles were an educational experience. Captain Falck soon discovered that the Me 110 was not better than the Me 109—in fact, it wasn’t as good. On one mission his plane was the only 110 of four to get back to base after tangling with the RAF. He landed, still quivering with fright, to find General Kesselring making an inspection. When they met again years later, the General still remembered Falck’s shaky salute.
Like many pilots, Falck was superstitious. On the side of his plane he had painted a large ladybug—the lucky symbol of his squadron in the Norwegian campaign. A big letter “G” also adorned the fuselage. G was the seventh letter of the alphabet and “7” was his lucky number. With the Spitfires around, he needed every talisman he could get.
Even the Me 109’s had met their match. The Spitfires could make sharper turns, hold a dive longer, and come out of it faster. They also had a way of appearing without warning—once so suddenly that Captain Adolf Galland, a veteran 109 pilot flying wing on his skipper, lost his usual cool. Momentarily shaken, he made a false turn, leaving the skipper a wide-open target. In anguish, Galland managed to shoot one of the Spitfires down, then returned to his base fearing the worst. But the skipper, a veteran World War I pilot named Max Ibel, turned out to be an indestructible old bird. Run to earth by the Spits, he managed to crash-land and “walked home.”
Happily for the Luftwaffe, there were never enough Spitfires and Hurricanes. The RAF’s Fighter Command had to think ahead to the coming defense of Britain herself, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding refused to allocate to Dunkirk more than sixteen squadrons at any one time. Even stretched thin, these planes could not provide full-time cover, and the Luftwaffe took full advantage of those moments when the beaches were without fighter protection. When the score for the 27th was finally added up, there were conflicting claims on British and German losses, but on one point there was complete agreement: the port of Dunkirk was wrecked.
May 28 promised to be an even more productive day for the Luftwaffe. The Belgian surrender, the crumbling French defenses, the capture of Calais—all released additional planes. But the weather turned sour; Fliegerkorps VIII, responsible for Dunkirk, remained on the ground. Its commanding officer General Major Wolfram von Richthofen (distant cousin of the famous Red Baron) had more than the weather to contend with. Hermann Göring was constantly on the phone. The General Field Marshal was now worried about his assurances to Hitler that the Luftwaffe could win the battle alone, and seemed to think that Richthofen could somehow chase away the clouds.
May 29 dawned even worse. A steady drizzle and ceiling only 300 feet. Fliegerkorps VIII steeled itself for another barrage of calls from Göring. But around noon it began to clear up. At 2:00 p.m. Richthofen gave the long-delayed orders to attack.
Gruppe leaders were summoned and briefed. The main point: by agreement with Army Group B only the beaches and shipping would be attacked. No targets inland. There was now too much danger of hitting friendly troops. At 2:45 the planes began taking off from various fields: Major Oskar Dinort’s Stukas from Beaulieu … Major Werner Kreipe’s Dornier 17’s from Rocrai … Captain Adolf Galland’s Me 109’s from Saint Pol … and so on.
It was no ordinary raid. Fliegerkorps VIII had been specially reinforced: planes from four other Fliegerkorps … a wing of new Ju 88’s from Holland … another all the way from Dusseldorf. Altogether some 400 aircraft headed for Dunkirk, led by 180 Stukas.
By 3:00 p.m. they were there. So far no sign of the RAF. Circling so as to come in from the sea, Corporal Hans Mahnert, a gunner-radio operator flying with Stuka Wing No. 3, looked down on a remarkable sight. Ships were crowded together everywhere. It reminded him, oddly enough, of an old print he had once seen of the English fleet gathered at Trafalgar.
Other more practiced eyes were also scanning the sea. They may have missed the eastern mole before, but not today. The smoke was blowing inland now, and there—directly below—was a sight no one could overlook. Clustered alongside the mole were a dozen ships. It was hard to imagine a better target. …
Lieutenant Robin Bill could easily see the bombs falling. They looked about the size of 15-inch shells as they tumbled out of the diving Stukas. No more time for comparisons: he threw himself face-down on the mole, as the world exploded around him.
One bomb landed squarely on the mole, twenty feet in front of him, hurling slabs of concrete into the air. A chunk sailed by his ears, killing a soldier further down the walkway. Shaken and covered with dust, Bill felt something oddly moist: it was a stray puppy licking his face. He glanced to his left, where his six trawlers were moored. They were still all right. But this was just the start. The planes seemed to attack in twos and threes, dropping a couple of bombs every time. There were occasional lulls, but the attack never really stopped.
May 29, 2:45 p.m., the eastern mole (drawn at the time by Lieutenant Robin Bill)
Lying at the very end of the mole, the destroyer Jaguar managed to cast off. Packed with troops, she headed for home as the Stukas dived on her again and again. They scored no direct hits, but several near misses did fearful damage. Shrapnel riddled her port side, slashing open fuel tanks and steam lines. Jaguar quickly lost headway and drifted toward the shore. Just in time the destroyer Express raced over, towed her clear, and took off the troops. Listing seventeen degrees, Jaguar ultimately crawled back to Dover empty—out of the evacuation for good.
At the mole it was the
destroyer Grenade’s turn next. Standing by the forward capstan, Chief Stoker W. Brown watched a Stuka pass overhead, turn, and race in from the sea. It scored a near miss on the mole, spraying the Grenade with shrapnel. Brown fell wounded, and just as the ship’s medical officer finished patching him up, along came another Stuka. This time the aim was perfect. One bomb landed aft, another on the bridge, exploding in an oil tank below. A great sheet of flame shot up through the deck as Brown managed to clamber onto the mole.
Seaman Bill Irwin was on the Grenade just by chance. One of his mates had been wounded on the mole, and Irwin brought him aboard, looking for medical attention. As they waited in a small compartment on the upper deck, a sudden blast threw them off their feet. Somebody’s tin hat—turned literally red-hot—rolled crazily around on its rim as Irwin dodged out of the way.
He managed to get his friend back onto the mole, but had to leave behind a badly wounded petty officer lying in a bunk. Irwin promised to come back for him, but it was a promise he couldn’t keep. Already Commander Clouston’s men were loosening the ship’s lines so that she wouldn’t go down at her berth. Still blazing, Grenade drifted into the harbor channel. But if she sank here, it could be even worse. She might block the harbor completely. Finally one of Lieutenant Bill’s trawlers towed her out of the way. Grenade burned on for several hours … then blew up, vanishing in a mushroom cloud of smoke.
Able Seaman P. Cavanagh managed to scramble from the burning Grenade onto the mole just before she cast off. Momentarily he was safe—but only momentarily. A German plane swooped down, machine-gunning the troops that crowded the walkway. A quick-thinking soldier pushed Cavanagh down, then lay on top of him. When the plane had gone, Cavanagh asked the soldier to get off his back, but there was no answer—he was dead. He had given his life to save a man he never even knew.
Cavanagh now went on board the Fenella, a large wooden steamer lying on the other side of the mole. “If this gets hit,” someone observed, “it will go up like a box of matches.” With that, a bomb landed alongside, splintering the ship’s hull. Cavanagh hopped off, crossed the mole again, and decided to try one of Lieutenant Bill’s trawlers. He picked the Calvi, but before he could climb aboard a bomb landed on her, too. She went down at her berth with stately dignity, resting on the bottom completely upright. Her funnel and masts remained above water, her battle ensign still flying from the foremast.
Cavanagh moved on to another of the trawlers—he never knew the name—and this time nobody dropped anything on him. Bombed out of three ships and machine-gunned once (all in 45 minutes), he sat down on the deck for a moment’s rest. “Get off your arse and give us a hand,” someone called, and he went wearily back to work.
On the Fenella, riddled by the near miss alongside the mole, Gunner Mowbray Chandler of the Royal Artillery sat below-decks sipping cocoa. He had been in Commander Clouston’s queue since early morning; now that he was at last on board a ship, it was time to relax a little. Not even that near miss could interrupt his cocoa. Then someone looked out a porthole and noticed that the mole seemed to be rising. Since this was impossible, the ship must be settling. So it wasn’t time to relax after all. Chandler and his mates hurried back to the mole, as Fenella sank at her berth.
Three ships gone—the mole strafed and damaged—it was all very unnerving. This long arm jutting out into the sea, once the goal of everyone, was no longer so popular. Some of the troops waiting at the seaward end wavered, then surged back toward the land. Commander Clouston was at the shore end talking to Lieutenant Bill, but his quick eye caught the movement. Taking Bill with him, he pulled his revolver and hurried out to meet the mob.
“We have come to take you back to the U.K.,” he said quietly but firmly. “I have six shots here, and I'm not a bad shot. The Lieutenant behind me is an even better one. So that makes twelve of you.” A pause, and then he raised his voice: “Now get down into those bloody ships!”
That ended the incident. The men turned back again, most of them boarding the steamer Crested Eagle, which lay just astern of the unlucky Fenella. A big wooden paddle-wheeler, the Crested Eagle was a familiar sight to many of the troops. In happier days she had taken them on excursions up and down the Thames. Going aboard her was almost like going home. By 6:00 p.m. her decks were packed with 600 men, including a number of bedraggled survivors from the Grenade and Fenella.
Commander Clouston gave the signal to get going, and Crested Eagle’s big paddle wheels began churning the sea. Swinging clear of the mole, her skipper Lieutenant-Commander B. R. Booth headed east along the coast, planning to go home via Route Y.
It didn’t take long for the Luftwaffe to find her. Standing by one of the paddle boxes, Chief Stoker Brown, safely off the Grenade, once again heard the familiar screech of a Stuka’s bomb. It landed with a crash in the main saloon, sending tables, chairs, and bodies flying.
A deck below, Gunner Chandler, just off the Fenella, was watching the engines when the explosion came. It blew him along the deck until he hit the end bulkhead.
On the bridge Commander Booth noted that the paddles were still working, so he tried to hold his course. Maybe they could get out of this yet.
No such luck. The whole after end of the vessel was burning, and the engineer Lieutenant Jones came on the bridge to report that he couldn’t keep the paddles going much longer. Booth decided to beach the ship, and turned toward shore opposite the big sanitarium at Zuydcoote, just short of Bray-Dunes. On the beach the troops momentarily forgot their own troubles as they watched this blazing torch of a boat drive hard aground.
“Get off, mate, while you can,” a seaman advised Gunner Chandler as he stood uncertainly by the rail. Chandler decided it was good advice; he took off his shoes and jumped. There were other ships around, but none near, so he swam to the beach. It was easy; he had a life jacket and even managed to tow a nonswimmer along.
Once ashore he discovered for the first time how badly burned he was. In the excitement he hadn’t noticed that the skin was hanging in shreds from both his hands. He was bundled into an ambulance and taken to the Casino at Malo-les-Bains, currently serving as a collection point for the wounded. It’s hard to imagine a fuller day, yet he ended up only a few hundred yards from where he had started in the morning.
Except for the mole, the most inviting target this perilous afternoon was the 6,000-ton cargo liner Clan MacAlister. Loaded with eight assault landing craft and their crews, she had come over from Dover the previous night. Her skipper Captain R. W. Mackie felt that the prescribed route was unnecessarily dangerous, but when he complained to Captain Cassidie, in charge of the ALC’s, Cassidie simply replied, “If you don’t like to go, Captain, give me a course to steer, put the boats in the water, and I’ll take them over myself.” Mackie took this as a challenge to both his courage and his ability. On they went.
By 9:00 a.m. on the 29th they were lying off Dunkirk Roads discharging the boats. Two were damaged in lowering, but the other six were safely launched and soon hard at work. Clan MacAlister herself was told to wait around for further orders.
She was still waiting when the Luftwaffe struck. At 3:45 p.m. the Stukas scored three direct hits and set fire to No. 5 hold. Nearby the destroyer Malcolm dodged the same attack, and came alongside to help. Lieutenants Ian Cox and David Mellis leapt aboard the Clan MacAlister and began playing the Malcolm’s fire hose down the blazing hold. Everyone ignored the fact that the hold was full of 4-inch ammunition. If it went off, it would be certain death for both officers—and probably both ships.
Luck was with the brave. The ammunition did not explode—but neither could Cox and Mellis put the fire out.
They finally returned to the Malcolm, and the destroyer cast off. With her went the Clan MacAlister’s wounded and a number of troops who had ferried out to the big steamer on the mistaken assumption that size meant safety. Captain Mackie stuck with his ship, still hoping somehow to get her home. But the Stukas kept attacking, knocked out her steering, and finally Mack
ie called for help.
The minesweeper Pangbourne eased alongside and asked if he wanted to “abandon ship.” The sensitive Mackie refused to swallow that phrase. “Well, ‘temporarily abandon,’” the Pangbourne’s captain tactfully suggested. That was all right, and Mackie crossed over.
There was no need to feel ashamed or embarrassed. The Clan MacAlister was just beginning to play her most useful role. She sank upright in the shallow water off the beach, and for the next several days the Luftwaffe would waste tons of bombs on her deserted hulk.
The Clan MacAlister was an especially tempting target, but no ship was safe this May 29th. As the minesweeper Waverley headed for home with 600 troops around 4:00 p.m., twelve Heinkels plastered her with bombs. For half an hour Waverley twisted and turned, dodging everything, but the Heinkels were insatiable. Finally a near miss tore off her rudder; then a direct hit blasted a six-foot hole in the bottom of the ship. The Waverley sank by the stern with a loss of over 300 men.
Now it was the Gracie Fields’s turn. Formerly a much-beloved Isle of Wight ferry, she left La Panne in the evening with some 750 troops. Forty minutes later a bomb exploded in her boiler room, sending up a huge cloud of steam that enveloped the ship. It was impossible to stop the engines, and with her helm jammed, she began circling at six knots. The skoots Jutland and Twente rushed over—one on each side—and for a while the three vessels waltzed around and around together, while the troops were transferred.
The minesweeper Pangbourne, already loaded with survivors from the Crested Eagle and riddled with holes herself, joined the rescue effort. She got a line on Gracie Fields and began towing her home. They never got there. With her crew safely removed, “Gracie” finally went down during the night.
The raid tapered off at dusk, and on the mole Commander Clouston surveyed a doleful scene. There was not a sound ship left. The Fenella and Calvi were sunk at their berths, and the rest of the vessels were gone—some to destruction, others to England with what troops they already had aboard. The bombing and the shelling were over, and the only sound was the barking of stray dogs. Abandoned by their fleeing owners, “half the canine population of France” (as one man put it) had joined the BEF. Some were smuggled on the transports, but many had to be left behind and now forlornly prowled the waterfront—a continuing and melancholy phenomenon of the evacuation.