Whilst waiting for the
VB book I checked the casualty records for the 28th March 42.
VB was on a fighter only sweep and tangled with FW190's (he was in a Spit
VB).
In fact the records for that period make sobering reading as our looses were truly a staggering amount. The Spit
VB was up against the new FW 190 and took a terrible toll of aircrew. As an example on Circus ops alone on the 28th April, 20 aircraft were lost out of a total of 24 for the day, and there are several repeats of those sort of numbers.
One does wonder why it took so long for FC to realise the scale of this, as the Squadrons themselves were fully aware of the situation and the fact they could loose 1/3-1/2 a squadron in a couple of days. Even when the MK 9 came along and although the loss numbers fell, the tactics in place still made it quite clear it was a very questionable 'offensive' policy. When Pobjoy was an Kenley Air Cadet operating a winch or retrieving gliders with our MK1 swb land rovers we were constantly around the peritrack and blast bays where these 'Wings' were deployed and had no knowledge at the time that so many of our home based machines had failed to return from 'offensive' missions as we thought that the BoB had been our 'active' period !!!. Kenley is quite a small airfield and would have looked very busy with over 40 machines parked around the peri track.