When Göring first made his announcement to Luftflotte (Air Fleets) 2, 3 and 5 that Operation Adler (Eagle) would commence and that they would wipe the British Air Force from the sky in early August, the message was quickly deciphered and was in the hands of the British Chiefs of Staff, the Prime Minister and Hugh Dowding within an hour indicating that Adlerangriff (Eagle day) would commence on August 10th. but because of the unfavourable weather conditions was delayed until now, August 13th
0645hrs: 74 Squadron Hornchurch (Spitfires), under the command of “Sailor” Malan, were ordered to patrol the Thames Estuary as a precautionary measure… At 0655hrs, enough enemy aircraft could be seen coming out of the cloud to confirm that an enemy formation was coming in from the Thames Estuary and flying in a westerly direction.
1140hrs: A build up of a small formation was picked up by radar off the French coast off Cherbourg. It turns out to be 20+ Bf110s who were to escort Ju88s of KG54 on a raid on Portland Harbour. KG54 had received the message that the raid had been cancelled and they returned to their base, but the message was not conveyed to 1/ZG2 and the Bf110s continued their path across the Channel.
The days are likely to be broken up into a couple of parts now due to the volume of raids and what looks interesting.
Two raids tonight. Spitfires in the first and Hurricanes in the second.
Mission start time: 9:30pm
Where: Launching from the CoD client list.
Server: EAF92_Keets, usual password.
I use to live opposite the remains of Croydon Airport and it use to be on the flight path to Biggin Hills summer airshows. Best was once seeing the memorial flight come so low the spitfire had to pop over the trees on the boundary All with me waving like a nut…I was about 12
We should go with a Croydon departure really then. Proper boys own adventure stuff. In fact we should make Swoop stay on the runway whilst we fly over in formation at treetop height.
On another note, the stats as they are at the minute in the stats thread will be active tonight and in other developments I may have active radar similar to how it’s done on ATAG - pending a late test prior to mission start.
I’m looking doubtful for tonight. Got in from work to discover my broadband is down.
According to bt it’ll be back up at 9:00
I don’t entirely believe them.
5 years with bethere and never a blip. 2 months with bt and I come home to a black out and a 30 minute wait on the phone to discover its a outage in my area. The fekkers.
Thanks lads for the Croydon take off - it was the first time I’ve taken off here and some of the building remain, especially two of the large chimneys, now signs for Ikea
It still gets me when in the distant you spot a black smudge on the horizon and then as shapes and lines start to form you realize there’s blood hundreds of them, stacked up and coming right at us. “Oh my God!!!” is the usual remark We must be getting a use to these numbers facing our small group of 5 Hurricanes as we didn’t head straight through them, but instead hit head-on at the side and went for any stragglers, guerrilla tactics.
We bore into the left side of the bombers head-on, a quick burst and I saw the small explosions light up all around the cockpit as I zipped over and broke hard right and up with Splash following. No fighters so far!! Already there were a couple dropping back and I dropped down on one and after a few slashing attacks the Dornier started to turn away and down smoking. I moved on and opened the throttle to catch with the main group. Again attacking the starboard side I could see our small brave band trying to chip away at this huge monster, trying to focus, I latched onto another pair and put a long burst in from dead six at convergence seeing the engine stop, I started onto to the next. This continued with pilots calling out of ammo and heading back to rearm and get back up.
Whiskey and I took off and headed for Dover, catching and finishing off a damaged straggler before returning home. What a crazy hour but we all got home somehow!!
