Glasgow's heroes remembered on Battle of Britain anniversary

Glasgow heroes, caught up in the most decisive air battle of the Second World War, hundreds of miles away from home, faced unimaginable challenges.

The Battle of Britain began 81 years ago today – but while the action happened mainly in the skies over England’s south coast, Glasgow and its people had a key role to play.

City lawyer-turned-Wing Commander Hector MacLean of 602 Squadron, for example, displayed enormous courage when his Spitfire was attacked by an Me109 and his right foot blown off.

Nevertheless, using his scarf as a tourniquet, he managed to steer the badly damaged aircraft back to base.

Once he had recovered, Hector turned to fighter control and he was on duty as sector controller in May 1941 when Hitler’s deputy Rudolph Hess, landed on Eaglesham Moor.

The young pilots of 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron, like Hector – who, along with their colleagues in 603 (City of Edinburgh Squadron) were responsible for shooting down the first German planes over Britain in World War Two – were part of Churchill’s ‘The Few’ in what was to become one of the most crucial turning points of the war.

Other local heroes included Archie McKellar, from Paisley, an apprentice plasterer who became an ace pilot, famous for being the first World War Two pilot to shoot down a German aircraft on British soil.

A panel of the plane in question now resides in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

Archie, who was killed in action, shot down 21 German planes – most famously five in one day, earning him the title of ‘ace in a day’.

Robert Findlay Boyd, a reservist with 602 Squadron in the Auxiliary Air Force who learnt to fly at weekends, engaged an enemy Stuka which was attacking RAF Tangmere during the Battle of Britain.

The Spitfire pilot, from East Kilbride, began firing before his undercarriage had folded away, but less than a minute after taking off, he had forced the German aircraft to crash.

He shot down a total of 12 enemy aircraft over the summer and autumn of 1940.

After the war, Boyd went on to fly charter flights for Scottish Aviation, and later became a farmer before moving to Skye. He died in 1975 aged just 59.

Former Govan High pupil Wallace Cunningham, who joined 19 Fighter Squadron in Cambridgeshire, was also in the thick of the fighting at the Battle of Britain.

He was the first Glasgow airman to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in the Second World War and the Spitfire pilot later spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war.

Squadron leader Sandy Johnstone, a former Kelvinside Academy pupil who got a job in a shoe company after leaving school, joined 602 Squadron when he was 18.

He spent his weekends learning to fly.

He was just 24 when he took part in the Battle of Britain and in later life, he recalled his memories of that day.

“All we could see was row upon row of German raiders, all heading for London. I have never seen so many aircraft in the air all at the same time,” he said.

“The escorting fighters saw us at once and came down like a ton of bricks, when the squadron split up and the sky became a seething cauldron of aeroplanes, swooping and swerving in and out of the vapour trails and tracer smoke.

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“Everyone was shouting at once and the earphones became filled with a meaningless cacophony of jumbled noises.

“Everything became a maelstrom of jumbled impression — a Dornier spinning wildly with part of its port mainplane missing; black streaks of tracer ahead, when I instinctively put my arm up to shield my face; taking a breather when the haze absorbed me for a moment . .”