Cardboard Chairs

 

CCXCIII

The tight confines of a Spitfire cockpit equipped with a “cardboard” seat 

 

Although both the Spitfire and the Hurricane were artfully designed flying machines down to their last details it is important to remember that they were first and foremost killing machines. They had every possible advantage built in to ensure that they could do their jobs well, and they were spartan in the extreme. Every ounce of weight they could trade off meant another fraction of a mile per hour in the air, another few seconds of flying time, and a little more maneuverability.

An RAF “draft notice” 

 

The cockpits of both British fighters (and the Bf 109, their German counterpart) were narrow and tight, providing just enough room for a young, wiry mid-sized young pilot to fold himself down in front of the controls, so narrow indeed that the pilot had to wriggle into the cockpit half-sideways and slide himself around once his shoulders were under the cockpit coaming. A pilot could move his feet and move his hands with fair freedom, and he could just about twist around to shoot a quick glance over his shoulders --- which were practically rubbing the sides of the cockpit. 

 

The very cramped cockpit of the Supermarine Spitfire

 

A large man simply could not be a fighter pilot. The Spitfire and the Hurricane had a pneumatic mechanism to adjust seat height, but the canopy imposed a strict height limit on the pilot. As for weight, a man of any girth could not fit inside the plane comfortably and would have in fact changed the flying characteristics of the aircraft. 

The equally cramped cockpit of the Hawker Hurricane

 

The backrest of the pilot’s seat was about four feet eight inches high, and the width of the seat was about 32 ¼ inches. The average fighter pilot in 1940 was about 5’8” and weighed 165 pounds. Most were arguably not full grown, with an average age of 21 ½. One pilot, an American volunteer named “Shorty” Geyer was reportedly only 4’10”.

Three young Hurricane pilots. Some of the men who flew these planes were mere boys indeed, aged 18. Their elders might be the age of 26. The average age of a RAF fighter pilot in World War II was just 22 . Note the combat damage to the fuselage

The original seat in the Spitfire and Hawker was a bare aluminum bucket seat with a lip around its edges. A thin cushion kept the pilot from having the front edge of the seat dig into the backs of his legs. This was just about the aircraft’s only concession to comfort and it was made only to allow the pilot to operate the plane more efficiently. Under combat conditions the pilot’s own parachute pack served as his seat cushion. 

Germany had a number of different aircraft at the beginning of the war, but its main single-seat fighter was the long-nosed Bf-109, sometimes called the Me-109. While the Bf-109 easily outmatched the Hawker Hurricane in dogfights, it had a wider turn radius than the Spitfire, which made the British warplane far more maneuverable. Otherwise, the Bf-109 and the Spitfire were essentially evenly matched. However, the Germans had had real-time combat experience with their fighter during the Spanish Civil War and were familiar with it, unlike the unblooded Spitfire and Hurricane

 

In May 1940, the aluminum seat was replaced with a seat made of the inelegantly named Synthetic Resin Bonded Paper (SRBP). SRPB was one of the first composite materials, a kind of plastic pressboard. The “cardboard seat” saved a few pounds and it saved aluminum for other more important uses in the aircraft. The weight savings of the seat was traded off for armoring around the seat to protect the pilot --- a timely addition made just weeks before the start of the Battle of Britain.

For all the romanticism attached to being a fighter pilot it was a deadly calling. The act of flying a plane in combat was physically and psychologically exhausting, leaving aside the emotional drain of facing death every time one went aloft. Even if the Hawker and the Supermarine were ‘pilots’ airplanes’, and there is every indication they were, they operated at stratospheric heights where the air temperature hovered around thirty below zero. Pilots couldn’t wear anything heavy and warm within the narrow confines of the cockpit --- instead they “layered”, wearing two shirts and an undershirt, their pajamas, and long johns beneath their flight suits. Since they needed a deft hand at the controls, and on the weapons, few pilots wore gloves of any kind. The metal of the plane was icy cold at altitude, and it was mostly adrenaline that kept a pilot awake, alert, and supple.

A very lucky RAF pilot watches his plane as it burns after a crash

Adrenaline --- and the fact that the crate rattled from the moment she was switched on to the moment she was switched off. The uninsulated fuselage did nothing to dampen engine noises, pump noises, aileron and flap noises, and the various creaks and groans an aircraft makes while being put through its paces.  The radio, from which emanated sounds ranging from the ridiculous to the tragic, added another layer of intrusive sound.

For Allied pilots in the Battle of Britain their aircraft’s paces began just about as soon as they lifted off and reached altitude. It was rarely more than a few minutes and often much less before a British patrol intercepted a German patrol, and after that anything might happen. The one thing that was certain was that nobody would be in straight and level flight. To fly straight and level was to die. Any kind of routine flying would make a man a target and targets were shot down. And that was it.

Combat flying was anything but routine and it required all kinds of movements --- jinks and Immelmans and barrel rolls and splits, breaks, Chandelles, and yo-yos --- that would carry an airplane across the sky and from one altitude to another as it was engaged with an enemy.  With all that maneuvering it seems shocking to think that pilots could draw a bead on their enemy for an average of just two seconds at a time.

Trained civilian pilots would seem to have had an advantage over green recruits who just decided to join the RAF with little or no flying experience. But it took a man time to unlearn all kinds of cautious habits and the one thing RAF pilots did not have a surfeit of in 1940 was time. Many a young man climbed into a cockpit with less than 150 hours of training --- and just 10 hours of solo flight in some cases. If they were lucky enough to survive their first five sorties there was a good chance they’d survive their next twenty --- and then the chances of their long-term survival fell off a cliff.

Only the very best pilots survived for very long. It was far too easy to become disoriented as the sky revolved madly around you. G-forces would drive blood to your head (“redouts”) or away from your brain (“blackouts”) as you jerked the controls this way and that desperate to survive and always straining at the natural limitations of your plane’s design. Hurricanes and Spitfires were solid well-tested planes and rarely came apart under stress, but it could happen. Or you might forget where you were in the sky and go roaring right into the ground or splash yourself in the English Channel with the force of a locomotive hitting a mountain.

And lest you forget, all that air combat maneuvering wasn’t for show. There was someone out there, more than one someone, who was set on killing you. No matter how good you were, a stray round from a 20 mm cannon could end you --- just like that. Or a bullet might hit an oil line, spraying you with hot black goo and blinding you, so that even if you had the skill to set down you couldn’t see anymore where down was. A German round might pierce your gas tank, turning you and your plane into a torch randomly flinging itself across the cold blue sky while you prayed for a quick end before the flames reached you. Or you might just collide with another equally unlucky pilot in the clouds or in the low-hanging mist. Or perhaps none of this would happen and you’d get off a skillful and lucky burst from your guns and send a yellow-nosed airplane with black crosses on its wings spiraling downward trailing smoke behind it. A fire bloom rose would blossom far beneath you and there was one less someone to worry about, one less enemy left to kill.

 

British pilots did have a home field advantage. Most of the fighting took place over Britain itself or over the Channel. If a RAF pilot bailed out the odds of his survival were very good. The Hurricanes and Spitfires acted as classic interceptors in that instead of patrolling, they rose, engaged the enemy, and landed again. A sortie might last all of seven deadly minutes. On the whole, the British used less fuel and less ammunition and were in the air much less time per sortie than their German counterparts who had to fly back and forth to airbases in France, Belgium, or The Netherlands. The British also used American-supplied 100-plus octane fuel which provided better performance than the lower octane fuel used by the Luftwaffe. 

 

 

These advantages though were offset by the severe shortage of RAF resources. While a Luftwaffe pilot might make one sortie a day, there and back again perhaps three or four times a week, British pilots were forced to take to the air much more frequently. The Germans could afford to send waves of fighters across the Channel several times per day, while the same RAF pilots would be forced to respond to each wave. RAF fliers might be going airborne five or six times a day. Pilots often found themselves being scrambled just minutes after landing, with just barely enough time between sorties to reload the guns, top off the tanks, and, if possible, choke down some tea and a few mouthfuls of food. It was quite literally a killing pace. 

Ray Holmes of the 504 Squadron saved Buckingham Palace from destruction on September 15, 1940 when he broke up a flight of three Dornier bombers en route to bomb the royal residence. The first German bomber broke off after Ray made a dangerously close pass to it and opened fire. The second was abandoned by its crew who bailed out; one German airman actually snagged his parachute on Ray’s wing and was only dislodged when Ray made some violent maneuvers, throwing the man clear. When Ray closed on the third bomber he realized his guns were inoperative and so he rammed the Dornier. It crashed. Miraculously, Ray was able to bail safely out of his own damaged Hurricane. He was lauded by the Press and by many Londoners who’d witnessed his selfless deed, and after the war he was made a King’s Messenger, responsible for carrying messages between the Sovereign and the Prime Minister. He died in 2005, aged 90

 

During the Battle of Britain the average lifespan of a fighter pilot was four weeks. And woe betide you if you were a green replacement ordered to scramble before you could even unpack your kit. Commanders would have to rifle through your things after the battle, looking for identification so they’d find out who you’d been. Your Mum and Dad would get a sad letter that was like so many others your brief Commander had written on behalf of other young men who’d lived and died like you. You were a hero. You’d done it for King and Country. For England.  Yes, you were one of The Few. But even Fewer survived.

Although the Spitfire and the Hurricane are most closely associated with the Battle of Britain in the public mind they also fought a pitched air battle over Dunkirk, driving off or knocking down the many Luftwaffe Stuka dive bombers sent to kill the British Expeditionary Force men waiting for rescue on the beach. This piece of history is less than known; although the battle was fierce, most of it took place high above the low-hanging cloud cover and so went unseen. Indeed, many men on the beach asked themselves, “Where is the RAF?”