First Air Raid of WWII – 34

15:30 – Fending off the fourth wave of bombers

 
At approximately 15.30 hours Pilot Officer Hector MacLean of 602 Squadron intercepted a Ju88 at 5,000 feet over May Island. During MacLean’s pursuit of the German bomber, his Spitfire nearly collided with one of 603’s which had also latched onto the tail of the Junkers. The two fighters missed each other by inches.

Two Spitfires flown by 602’s Douglas Farquhar and Ian Ferguson approached the Forth Rail Bridge, where Farquhar’s attention was drawn by the anti-aircraft fire to an enemy aircraft approaching from the north-east and set off in pursuit.

It had been tracked by the Observer Corps before approaching Rosyth and as the anti-aircraft shells burst in the airspace around his aircraft, the German pilot would have been unaware of the token gesture being made by the Earl of Elgin to bring him down with rifle fire from the garden of ‘Broomhall’, near Limekilns.

The Ju88 was pursued towards Bo’ness where it dropped its bomb load near the burnt out wreck of the former naval depot ship HMS Caledonia (once the Cunard liner Majestic which had been taken to the Forth to be scrapped in 1937).

The German pilot then tried to make good his getaway and turned east towards the sea.  As he flew over Turnhouse Golf Course, his aircraft was met by another token effort to bring it down. The Reverend James Rossie Brown, the 603 padre, was manning a machine-gun post on the airfield at Turnhouse when the aircraft flew over. Later, in the mess, one of the pilots said to Rossie Brown: ‘Padre, that was a very short burst you fired at that Hun.’ It is said that in reply he uttered the now immortal line: ‘Yes, it passed too quickly out of my diocese!’ An official release later referred to ‘The Fighting Padre of the RAF’.

Meanwhile, in the Edinburgh Castle military hospital 603’s P/O Graham Hunter, who was still awaiting a visit from the padre, rushed to the windows along with his fellow patients in response to the sound of anti-aircraft gunfire in the distance but also the sound of small arms being fired by the Argylls from the castle itself at a passing Ju88. With the windows open, the temperature in the ward dropped and the army nurses herded the patients back to bed.