17 September 1940

At 13.50 p.m. on 17 September 1940, just after lunch, three Spitfires from 152 Squadron’s B Flight took off from Warmwell and commenced a patrol over Portland Bill. They were then vectored onto a formation of Junkers Ju 88s at 17,000 feet which was flying north over Shepton Mallet. Ken Holland was Two, and was flying UM-J. (Ken notes that this was Green Section but the squadron’s combined combat report records it as Blue Section.)

Ken, Pilot Officer Marrs (1) and Flying Officer O’Brian (3) sighted a lone enemy aircraft about a mile away. They closed and carried out a No 1 attack. The Ju 88 dived steeply into cloud cover at about 6000 feet to evade them. Ken, Marrs and O’Brian broke up and chased the Ju 88 separately, each attacking as the opportunity arose. Most of the battle occurred in the cloud cover.

They saw white smoke coming from the starboard engine but the Ju 88 was far from totally stricken; Marrs copped some machine gun fire from the top gun early in the attack. His Spitfire seized. He then bowed out and headed for Colerne Aerodrome where a bullet hole was found his Spit’s oil cooler.

Meanwhile, Ken and O’Brian continued their attack. The Junkers was taking violent evasive action, diving, slide slipping, throttling back and doing vertical banked steep turns in alternate directions. Ken and O’Brian clung to it. It tried climbing on one engine but still could not throw them. Ken and O’Brian continued to fire on the starboard engine until it stopped and the smoke had almost ceased. Then O’Brian struck with full deflection, concentrating his fire from below on the Ju 88’s right wing. There was no return fire. Ken and O’Brian continued their attack, concentrating on the enemy aircraft’s port rear quarter. Then they lost the Ju 88 as it headed through the cloud on a southerly course. It later crashed almost intact.

By this stage Ken’s engine was becoming hot so he landed at Yatesbury aerodrome where he discovered that UM-J had taken machine gun fire through the glycol header, oil pipe, starboard wheel bay and tyre. Yatesbury loaned him a Magister so he could fly back to Warmwell while the ground crew worked on J. Ken was in the air again later that afternoon; ‘another flap Bournemouth 15,000’ but he ‘saw nothing’.

In the final wash up of the post-lunch effort, it was determined that Ken had fired 1650 rounds, in five two second bursts, while closing from 550 to 200 yards. The section was credited with the destruction of the Ju 88, a 1/3 share each.

All in all, Ken thought it was ‘quite a good day’ but the ‘V!’ that topped his diary page and the double underlining of ‘shot it down’ belied the inherent modesty of those words. Ken’s inherent enthusiasm was at odds with the RAF’s traditional virtue of underplaying every achievement in an effort to avoid line shooting.

 

152 Squadron. Ken Holland, front row, right, semi kneeling.