Australians in the Battle of Britain. 17 August 1940

The last few days had been busy for Fighter Command with many casualties. 17 August provided some welcome relief. There was some routine flying—Pat Hughes, for instance was in the air carrying out a base patrol—but no enemy action around the south coast. Squadrons took the opportunity to relax in the summer sun.

17 August was a rare day indeed during the hectic weeks of the Battle of Britain. No casualties were recorded. But many had been lost beforehand: 78 pilots had been killed and 27 wounded, mostly experienced airmen, in the last eight days. In addition, some had been taken prisoner of war. And all that on top of the losses during the Battle of France. The OTUs could not keep up with this rate of attrition, even with courses slashed to push men through to operational squadrons post haste. Ken Holland, for instance, went through what had once been a four week course in eleven days. At this point, Fighter Command called for volunteers from the ranks of bomber pilots and the Fleet Air Arm. Two Australians who had flown the Fairey Battle in the France heeded this call, Flight Lieutenant John Hewson of 142 Squadron (who, although English born had an Australian mother and after the war would migrate to Australia and take out Australian citizenship) and Robert Bungey of 226 Squadron, who had been born in Fullerton, South Australia on 4 October 1914.

Robert took his last flight with 226 Squadron, in Battle L5498 with Sergeant Sullivan, to Carlisle and return on the 17th. He was then posted to 145 Fighter Squadron. He took his first flight in Hurricane R4177 on 22 August 1940, doing circuits and landings. He spent the rest of the month on training flights, familiarising himself with the local environs and converting to the Hurricane.

Robert had been a cadet at RAAF Point Cook, and was in the same class as Stuart Walch and Jack Kennedy and Battle of France star (and sad victim) Leslie Clisby. Robert graduated 31st in his class with 69.47%. He joined the RAF on a short service commission on 26 August 1937. He may have been in the RAF for almost three years by the time he joined Fighter Command, but he still proudly clung to his Australian service uniform. He carefully nursed it, darning it himself, and, despite sleeping in it for weeks on end during the blitzkrieg on France and the low countries, where ‘a year’s peace-time wear was crowded into a week’, he clung to it and its tangible connection to home. Despite its increasing dilapidation he did not replace it until June 1941 when he was promoted to command 452, the Australian Spitfire squadron—almost five years after he first donned it as an RAAF cadet.