1

A GERMAN FIGHTER ACE IS CAPTURED

The German High Command reckoned that the Luftwaffe would be able to wipe out RAF Fighter Command in the South of England in four days. The task of destroying the RAF entirely, which was regarded as an essential preliminary to the invasion of Britain, was to be fulfilled in four weeks.

On 13 August 1940, known as Adler Tag (Eagle Day), the Luftwaffe launched an all-out offensive against the RAF and the British aircraft industry in Southern England.

Nearly a month later the Luftwaffe was still struggling to accomplish the first part of its task, which had been scheduled for completion in four days.

The great blitz on London's dockland marked the opening of a new phase in the Battle of Britain: instead of continuing to concentrate on destroying the Royal Air Force, the Luftwaffe switched to mass attacks on London.

But on Thursday, 5 September 1940, two days before the opening of the new phase, inland fighter aerodromes were still being hammered in the last, desperate efforts to smash British air defences.

September 5th was another of the hot, calm and almost cloudless days that provided a backcloth to the drama being staged over the fields of Southern England. At one moment the glorious weather made the life-and-death struggle seem utterly unreal; at the next its very incongruity heightened the dramatic effect. It was impossible to watch the handfuls of Hurricanes and Spitfires climb into the sky to meet the massed formations of enemy aircraft, without feeling a catch at the heart.

It was days like this that gave birth to the expression real Battle of Britain weather. The countryside shimmered under an almost liquid haze. Seen from a distance, fields of bleached corn stubble looked like pools of quicksilver.

On the farms of Kent, over which the main engagements of the Battle of Britain were being fought, hop-picking was now well under way, and a start had been made on gathering the main crops of hard fruit.

Despite the battles raging overhead from time to time, families from London's East End worked with their usual cheerfulness and dexterity at stripping the hop vines. Thousands of spent bullets and cannon shell cases were scattered over the fields, giving rise to stories that hop-pickers were being machine-gunned. The children of the East End families collected these cases to take home as souvenirs. Two days later, while they worked and jested in the fields, the homes of hundreds of them were destroyed in the blitz on dockland.

On the morning of September 5th, the Luftwaffe launched an attack on Biggin Hill aerodrome. This was preceded by a feint against Croydon. Its object was to entice British fighters away from Biggin Hill and to give Fighter Command the impression that the whole weight of the German attack was to fall on Croydon aerodrome.

The ruse failed. The RAF stayed its hand until German intentions became clear. Then No. 79 Squadron set upon the main force of bombers as it was going in to attack Biggin Hill, and on this occasion most of the bombs fell wide of the aerodrome.

The formation of bombers that had raided Croydon was on its way home across Kent. Six thousand feet above them weaved their escort, thirty Messerschmitt 109's of No. 2 Gruppe, Third Fighter Geschwader.

Flying at the head of the Second Gruppe was its Kommandeur, Hauptmann Erich von Selle. Immediately behind him, to the left and right, flew his two staff officers, Leutnant Heinrich Sanneman, Technical Officer, and Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, Adjutant.

Five minutes after leaving Croydon, the Tail End Charlie" called urgently over the R/T.

"Achtung! Achtung! Four to six Tommies above and behind, coming in to attack!"

The voice of the Commander broke in: Stella Leader to everybody. Keep formation! Wait!

Stella was the radio code call-sign of the Gruppe for this operation.

As von Selle spoke, three Spitfires, diving almost vertically, flashed ahead of the formation, crashing through the top fighter screen to attack the bombers below.

He spoke again.

"Stella Leader to Fifth and Sixth Staffeln. Stay put and watch out! Fourth - attack! Tally-ho."

As the Commander dived to port, the others following, a stream of bullets hit the Adjutant's machine. Three other Spitfires, covering their comrades diving to attack the bombers, had pounced out of the sun.

Three against thirty.

The bullets were probably intended for the Commander in the leading Messerschmitt, but by chance he put its nose down just in time, and von Werra, turning and following, received the burst. His aircraft shuddered. He rolled to starboard away from his comrades and dived steeply. Then he levelled off, glancing behind. The Spitfire was on his tail. He went into a tight defensive turn, hoping to out-turn the British fighter and get it into his gun sight.

His earphones had gone dead. He flicked the transmitting switch. There was no responding click and crackle in his phones. The radio was out of action.

As though gradually, although all this happened in a few seconds, he became aware that the note of his engine had changed. It was no longer sweet, but off-key. He glanced at the instrument panel, then, eyeing the Spitfire, gingerly opened the throttle a little. The engine responded sluggishly. It was overheating and beginning to labour.

A moment later it spluttered, picked up, spluttered again. Von Werra lost height rapidly. He was completely cut off from his formation. He spiralled down in defensive turns. The Spitfire sat on his tail, now and again firing a short burst.

Shortly after ten o'clock, Mr Donald A Fairman, a schoolmaster, was standing near the back door of his cottage at Curtisden Green, in the heart of the orchard and hop country south of Maidstone, smoking a cigarette and contemplating his chrysanthemums. He was far from satisfied with their progress and was giving the matter serious thought.

The real trouble was that one could no longer get the proper plant foods, nor spend much time in the garden, owing to the war.

Blast the Germans!

This thought recalled to him the noise of distant air battles -a noise to which he had grown accustomed in the past few weeks. He looked up.

Behind the trees to the north, heavy anti-aircraft batteries along the Thames were putting up a terrific barrage. With all the noise in the sky it was frustrating not to be able to make out what was happening. Then his eye caught the silver flash of sunlight on weaving fighters. As he watched, his eyes focused unexpectedly on the ghostly outline of a bomber; the haze and the pale blue background made it appear transparent. Then he saw another bomber close to the first, and then another. Three...six... nine...twelve...

Suddenly, above the pulsating drone of the engines came the rising howl of diving fighters, followed by bursts of cannon and machine-gun fire. Confused dog-fights developed all over Mr Fairman's personal patch of sky. As the formation passed overhead he saw two fast machines spiralling down, the leading one clearly in trouble. Its engine spluttered and banged, now and again leaving a puff of black smoke behind. When the following aircraft fired a short burst, the other waggled its wings violently. They came lower and lower and then passed out of view behind the trees. A plane suddenly skimmed over the trees round the garden, the engine making a series of bangs. In the split second it was overhead, Mr Fairman clearly saw a black and white cross on the fuselage and a swastika on the fin. As it disappeared he heard a long burst of machine-gun fire, which he identified as coming from a searchlight battery just down the road on Mannington's Farm. A moment later there was a loud bump, followed by a tearing sound, and Mr Fairman knew that the plane had crashed only a few hundred yards away, probably on one of the big fields on the east side of Winchet Hill. He hurried into the house and changed into his Home Guard uniform.

His car was parked outside the cottage, but petrol was rationed and scarce. He had a nice sense of values. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and set off on a bicycle. However, by the time he arrived at the scene of the crash, the pilot, Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, who was uninjured, had already been taken prisoner by members of the searchlight battery.

The stories von Werra told later of how he was shot down varied widely, and all of them differed from the foregoing account based on official records and the testimony of eye-witnesses. Sometimes he is quoted as claiming to have shot down three British planes that morning (The Times, 27. 1. 41.) before colliding with another Messerschmitt and being forced down (New York Herald Tribune, 25. 1. 41.). To the New York correspondent of the Daily Express he claimed to have destroyed only the fighter that attacked him. But he was consistent on some points: he always maintained that his Messerschmitt caught fire when it crashed, and was burned out, he himself being miraculously thrown clear of the wreckage and knocked unconscious. He also told various tales about the manner of his arrest after crashing, without, apparently, ever remembering the right one. He usually said that members of the Home Guard with old-fashioned shotguns advanced upon him in the field from several directions. Some would creep forward cautiously while others knelt down and drew a bead on him. Then those kneeling down would get up and advance a few paces while the others covered him. Finally, he said, they all rushed at him. The German aviation magazine Der Adler, in an article dealing with von Werra's exploits illustrated by an artist's impressions, shows him being led away from the burning Messerschmitt by two sour-looking Tommies in full battle order, including steel helmets and fixed bayonets.

The truth of the matter was that von Werra was captured by the hatless, collarless, shirt-sleeved and unarmed cook of the searchlight battery, who dashed out of the cookhouse as soon as the plane crashed and was first on the scene.

The actual crash was witnessed by several men loading boxes of fruit on to a lorry in the yard of Love's Farm. They had been startled out of their workaday unconcern by a long burst of Lewis gun fire from the nearby searchlight battery. Then a plane just cleared the trees on Winchet Hill and swooped over the farm buildings in a right-hand turn. It disappeared momentarily behind the orchard a little higher up on the other side of the road, and came into view again just as it was about to land, its wheels retracted, in a field a quarter of a mile away. It bounced off the ground a few feet, then ploughed up the stubble for thirty yards or so before coming to rest in a cloud of dust.

For a few tense seconds nothing happened. Then the hinged hood of the cockpit opened and the head and shoulders of the pilot appeared. He pulled off his leather helmet and looked around him slowly, then hoisted himself out of the cockpit and jumped off a wing on to the ground.

He stood looking at the aircraft. Meanwhile soldiers from the searchlight battery were hurrying across the long fields in ones and twos.

As soon as he noticed the soldiers entering the field, the pilot seemed to pull himself together, and looked quickly in every direction, as though he were about to run away. If that was his idea, he thought the better of it. Instead, he took some papers from the breast pockets of his uniform jacket, replaced something or other, then squatted down. The men by the lorry saw a flicker of flame and a wisp of smoke on the ground in front of him. The leading soldier evidently thought the German was trying to set fire to the aircraft, for he shouted and started running. The pilot glanced up and unfolded the papers to make them burn more quickly. They were effectively destroyed.

The first to reach him was the unarmed cook. Hard on his heels came several of his fellow gunners, carrying rifles. Von Werra was thoroughly searched. Everything found in his pockets, together with his identity disc and wrist watch, was placed in his helmet and carried by one of the soldiers. Two men were detailed to guard the aircraft, and the remainder of the party set off across the field in the direction of the searchlight battery. The prisoner walked a few paces ahead, covered by the soldiers' rifles. He walked slowly, with studied nonchalance, one hand in his trouser pocket. No attempt was made to hurry him.

They passed from the field on to a path through an orchard. At the first low bough he came to the prisoner shot up one hand and grabbed an apple. He took a great bite out of it without a backward glance. The soldiers looked at one another but said nothing. Von Werra was about to reach up at the next low bough, but this time the muzzle of a rifle was jabbed in the small of his back.

Keep moving!

He moved slowly, munching thoughtfully.

High above, he could hear the Heinkels, Domiers and Junkers flying home with their Me. escorts. In little more than half an hour the pilots would be pulling off their helmets, lighting cigarettes, and strolling towards the huts and tents on the advanced airfields in the Pas de Calais.

While he, Franz von Werra, was being led along a cinder track towards the huts of a British searchlight battery. It was absurd.

The searchlight men were very pleased with themselves for they thought that it was their Lewis gun that had shot down the Messerschmitt. They were even more gratified when they saw the thirteen notches painted below the swastika on the fin of the plane, for they obviously represented victories claimed by the pilot.

There were free rounds in the Woolsack Inn at the top of Winchet Hill that night, and the next issues of local papers gave the searchlight men credit for having brought down a leading Nazi fighter ace.

In both respects, the newspapers were quite wrong.

In contrast to von Werra's stories, the combat report of the Spitfire pilot who shot him down was brief and to the point. He simply said he attacked a formation of enemy fighters and fired a good burst from 48 degrees astern into one Messerschmitt, which then rolled over and crashed near Maidstone.

He was Flight Lieutenant John Terrence Webster, of No. 41 Squadron, based at Hornchurch. He had just been awarded the DFC for gallantry in leading his flight during the Dunkirk operations and in the intensive air fighting over the English Channel. At the time of the award he had personally destroyed seven enemy aircraft and assisted in the destruction of two others. That score had been doubled during the next two weeks of the Battle of Britain.

After shooting down von Werra on the morning of 5 September, Flight Lieutenant Webster went into action again in the afternoon and was killed.

Von Werra was taken under armed escort by Army vehicle to Headquarters, Kent County Constabulary, Maidstone. Pending the arrival of an RAF field interrogation officer, he was placed in a cell under the charge of Police Sergeant W Harrington.

Sergeant Harrington's house adjoined Headquarters and his wife was responsible for feeding German prisoners passing through the station. Sometimes there were as many as a dozen Nazi airmen to be catered for at a time. This presented Mrs Harrington with a difficult problem, what with rationing and the fact that the official allowance per head for prisoners' meals was very small. Despite the difficulties, she made it a point of honour to give the Germans at least one good meal while they were at Headquarters; she felt it would show them that the British were neither half-starved nor inhuman, and provide a little object lesson on the duplicity of German propaganda.

Sergeant Harrington, who has since retired from the Force to become landlord of a public house in Whitstable, remembers von Werra well.

I saw hundreds of German airmen during those days, he says. "Some were tough and arrogant, others completely deflated by the shock of being taken prisoner. Von Werra was neither one thing nor the other. He was quiet, polite and correct and very much master of himself. He spoke English quite well.

"He struck me as being a bit conceited, though. When I asked him his rank he clicked his heels together and said he was an Oberleutnant and a Baron. As though to prove he was an aristocrat, he showed me the big signet ring he was wearing, bearing some sort of crest and a coronet. He also said he was of Swiss origin, and that his father had owned several castles in Switzerland.

"He told me the German Air Force was having a wonderful time in France, and said with a laugh that the RAF had prevented him from keeping an important dinner engagement that night.

Von Werra impressed me more than most of the other Germans I saw. He was confident, alert and highly intelligent. I was glad he would not be my responsibility for long. I wasn't surprised when I heard several months later that he had escaped and got back to Germany.

Sergeant Harrington's son was then eleven years old and a keen collector of autographs. When he learned that a German fighter ace was in the cells, he made his way unobtrusively into Headquarters on the pretext of taking a message to his father. He found von Werra's cell and handed him an autograph book and a pen through the bars, making signs that he should write his name in it. The entry was made in the comedians' section of the book: on adjacent pages are the signatures of Tommy Handley and Tommy Trinder.

Although von Werra had talked freely to Sergeant Harrington he refused to give any information other than his name, rank and number to the RAF interrogation officer. That evening he was handed over to the Army and taken to Maidstone Barracks, where he spent the night in a detention cell.

The next morning an officer and two armed guards called for him and he was bundled into the back of an Army truck. It had a canvas hood, but the back was open and he was also able to look out ahead through the windshield.

He had recovered quickly from the initial shock of being taken prisoner. His morale had been only temporarily affected and was now high. But the ride from Maidstone to London did much to undermine his confidence. Neither the guards nor the driver spoke a word the whole way, and the officer, sitting in front, gave only one or two expressionless orders regarding direction.

Von Werra smiled at each of the guards in turn, but they looked straight through him. He would have felt better if they had betrayed hostility. Their aloofness was unnerving.

He was curious, even apprehensive, about where he was being taken and what was going to happen to him, but he sensed that it was useless to ask and that his question would be taken as a sign of weakness. So he held his tongue and tried to appear as dignified and unconcerned as the swaying and bumping of the truck would allow. He concentrated on the road, looking either ahead or behind, trying to guess the direction and watching for traces of bomb damage.

All signposts seemed to have been removed and milestones had been painted over or otherwise obliterated. Tall, stout poles had been erected in rows on open fields as anti-glider obstructions. There were also anti-tank ditches stretching away into the distance. At nearly every bend of the road there were camouflaged pill-boxes, and what at first sight appeared to be a derelict roadside cafe proved at a second glance to be a concrete block-house The truck was frequently held up and checked by soldiers or police at road blocks and bridges.

Von Werra had made about ten operational flights over England before he was shot down, and he had seen the antitank ditches from the air. But the extent and thoroughness of British anti-invasion measures were a revelation to him. Camouflage netting was strung up on poles along hundreds of yards of the concrete road at one point. On the grass verges below the netting was an unbroken line of heavy tanks, armoured cars and Bren-gun carriers.

They passed a small airfield. It seemed to be untouched by bombing, but in one corner there was a huge heap of wrecked German aircraft. They passed through several large towns but von Werra saw scarcely a trace of bomb damage.

They were entering London now. Von Werra was surprised and disappointed to find the shop windows full of goods. Perhaps they were all dummies. He was tremendously impressed by the piles of colonial fruits in greengrocers' shops -oranges, grapefruit, bananas and pineapples. (It was not until the following year that imported fruits disappeared from the shops.) The pineapples, a luxury in Germany at the best of times, impressed him almost as much as the anti-invasion measures. Occasionally, when the truck slowed down, he was recognised by children. They shouted and whistled and gave him exaggerated Nazi salutes. The guards took no notice.

Eventually they came to a large park and drove through a gateway into a quiet, tree-lined, private road. The truck turned into the gateway of the second house on the left. Two Military Policemen were on guard on either side of the gate. The gate itself was surmounted by strands of barbed wire, and there were black, billowing coils of it rising twelve feet high above the garden walls.

The Military Police saluted smartly. One examined the officer's pass, the other looked into the truck. The MPs saluted again and the truck moved forward as they opened the gate, which closed as soon as it had passed through. The process was like clockwork. Not a second or a movement wasted.

The truck stopped in front of a drab, unfriendly-looking house. The guards dropped the tailboard.

Aussteigen! (Get out!) commanded the officer.

Oberleutnant Franz von Werra had arrived at London District Prisoner-of-war Cage (In Kensington Palace Gardens). And, as had perhaps been intended, he arrived in a chastened frame of mind.

The serious part of his interrogation was about to begin.

2

INTERROGATION IN THE LONDON CAGE

At that stage of the war nearly all Germans thought that total victory was not only assured, but at hand.

It was symptomatic of the optimism and success-mentality obtaining at the outset of the Battle of Britain that the Supreme Command of the Luftwaffe did not envisage large numbers of their airmen being killed or captured in the offensive against Britain. However, losses proved to be high from the beginning and mounted steadily as the offensive gathered momentum. The Luftwaffe showed acute sensitivity to the large proportion of aircrew who failed to return. Such casualty lists as were published in the German press in those days not only gave an entirely false picture of the extent of the losses, but failed to mention the names of men who had been captured. Perhaps Goering felt that live prisoners made more of a mockery of his boasts than dead heroes.

The fact is that security briefing was negligible. The Luftwaffe may have thought it would be bad for morale to draw the attention of aircrew to the possibility of capture. They may have thought it superfluous, since it was taken for granted that captives would soon be liberated.

The blind confidence and optimism with which the Luftwaffe began the Battle of Britain had many repercussions. Not the least of these was on British Intelligence: owing to the inadequacy of their security training, captured German airmen were often found to be carrying all manner of secret documents - maps, strength returns, target material, orders relating to attacks, and tactics, technical data, etc. - in addition to personal papers - diaries, address books, letters, photographs and bills. Just how important such material was to British Intelligence may be judged from the fact that it was sometimes possible to deduce, for example, the location of a particular Luftwaffe unit from a tattered bus ticket, or half a cinema ticket, bearing the name of a town, or a crumpled, forgotten receipt slip from a shop, found in the corner of a prisoner's pocket. And such was the arrogant confidence of the majority of the airmen captured that, unlike von Werra, they made no attempt to destroy secret and personal papers immediately they landed. The average German prisoner's attitude seemed to be that the odd bits of paper he happened to be carrying when captured would not enable the British to win the war, which would be over in a few weeks anyway, so why worry?

Von Werra was ushered into a small office off the vestibule and handed a form printed in English and German to fill in. Like a guest at a hotel, he thought wryly. He read the form carefully and filled in his name, rank and number. The other spaces, requiring information such as his home address, his unit and Army Post Office numbers and the nature of his mission when captured, he left blank. He wondered how many of the dimmer wits of the Luftwaffe fell for this simple trick to obtain information from the unsuspecting.

Meanwhile, the officer who had brought him from Maidstone handed two sealed, buff envelopes to the MP sergeant on duty. One of them was bulky, and von Werra guessed it contained his personal possessions. The other envelope, he thought, probably contained reports from the police and from Maidstone Barracks.

The officer obtained receipts for the two envelopes and for von Werra's body, and then left with the two guards from Maidstone.  The prisoner returned the form to the sergeant who glanced at it, then handed it back.

That's no good, he said. You speak English?

Yes.

Well, fill the form in properly, then. You left half the spaces blank.

I know. It is not permitted that I write more.

The sergeant glanced at him, then turned to two soldiers who were standing by to act as escort, and said crisply: Take him to Number Thirteen.

Von Werra was taken up two flights of steps and along several corridors. There were Military Police everywhere, erect, motionless, expressionless, all Blanco and shining brass buttons.

The party halted at a door numbered 13. The leading guard unlocked it and the prisoner entered. The lock clicked behind him. He stood listening. Only one pair of footsteps receded down the corridor: one guard had remained outside the door.

The room was fairly large, dimly lit by a small, closed window. A threadbare rug, a deal table, one chair. An unshaded, fly-spotted light bulb hanging from the centre of the cracked, grey, stuccoed ceiling. And that was all, apart from stuffiness and the dry, resinous smell of old timber.

Von Werra's mind seethed with questions: What happens next? What do they want from me? When am I going to meet other prisoners? When am I going to be sent to a permanent prisoner-of-war camp?

He racked his brains trying to remember what had been said at the one security lecture that had been given to his unit just before Adler Tag. It had been delivered by the unit intelligence officer in a half-hearted manner, almost apologetically - "a routine matter, gentlemen: the British are unlikely to take many