It takes two to Tangmere.

Thursday August 8th, 1940 Part 2, the afternoon....

....Further down the coast, the convoy ran into better weather, the low cloud had dispersed and the waters of the Channel were bathed in brilliant sunshine. Sperle had ordered Stuka and Bf109 Squadrons from his Luftwaffe 3 bases to attack and destroy "Peewit" just off the Isle of Wight........    
 

Convoy Peewit off the Isle of Wight

 The continuation of the defence of convoy Peewit had five of us scrambled from Tangmere, along with a squadron of Spitfires from Middle Wallop, to intercept a large formation heading in to the convoy from the SW.

On Patrol

We quickly spotted a large formation of Stukas, approximately 150+ heading in. Seeing such a large formation of aircraft is a daunting sight. With targets everywhere there was a feeling of futility in trying to stop them with just 20 aircraft in total.

Splash was lost to a lag induced collision, whilst the remainder of us attempted to bring down some of the Stukas.

I quickly ran out of ammo and headed back for Tangmere, forming up with WB.

On approach to Tangmere a couple of the escorting fighters had broken off from the main force and came in low over the airfield. Splash scrambled and took off after them with Whiskey. The pair of them quickly dispatching the 109's within sight of Tangmere.

We scrambled again as Marsh returned from baby duty.

"on your five"

We lost Swoop at this point to a disco, right at the point of seeing another formation of around 90+ Stukas heading in to the convoy. We gave chase as they headed towards Poole harbour.

South of the Needles

Concentrating on a few sections of aircraft, we had more success this time. With several aircraft catching fire.20 seconds isn't much ammo and we were soon heading back for Tangmere.

Heading home

Overall we faced around 270 aircraft. Just over 150 Stukas in the first wave and 30 109's, 90 Stukas in the second wave. Aside from the two to overfly Tangmere, we didn't see the fighters, but the boys from Middle Wallop were engaged for quite a while. Of all those aircraft, the numbers dispatched were quite low and realistic.

Scores on the doors

With various system capabilities, I think the first wave induced low levels of stutter on most machines. The second wave was much better, so as a guideline I'll leave the formations at around 90. I'm not sure how it looked visibly to you chaps, but I couldn't tell too much difference between the first and second wave.

Good fun all.