[Joseph Alder] I am meeting with RAF veteran Lieutenant Daniel Sykes, a Spitfire pilot during World War 2. He
has had some interesting claims about his service and I offered to do an interview to listen to his story, and
the story of his Squadron.

[Joseph Alder] So, Lieutenant, tell me about yourself...

[Daniel Sykes] Not much to say honestly, I was uh...born in Bristol in 1917. My father was a pilot during the 
first war, and that I feel got me very interested in aeroplanes and flying aeroplanes. I was a young man when the 
second one started, and I remember hearing about how the nazis were doing dreadful business in Poland and other places,
and I thought that it was terrible, decided it was my turn to step up and serve, so I joined the Royal Air force on my 22nd
birthday.

[Joseph Alder] So the war with Germany was on, and you were a young man that had just joined the RAF. Were you scared of going
and fighting the German airforce?

[Daniel Sykes] (laughing) Actually I didnt think I would become a fighter pilot at all. Originally from what I understood, there
were already a great number of experienced lads that had flown an aircraft before, and I hadnt. It was disheartening but in war,
everybody has got to do their bit, so I bucked up and marched forth. Even If I couldnt do the job I wanted I could still at least 
help my mates and brothers in arms that were pilots, and fight the Germans i..in that way.

[Joseph Alder] So how did you become a fighter pilot?

[Daniel Sykes] It was uh...(he pauses, and looks out the window of the room we are conducting the interview in, over the sea)...It was
an awful time during that war, in the opening years. We had lost so many flyboys to the luftwaffe it was becoming a challenge to 
keep putting men in the air because there were so few left, we were, throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the Germans, so to speak. (laughing) Eventually the situation had gotten so bad, yanks had started showing up in droves to join the Royal Airforce, it was astonishing seeing all these American guys trying to get their chance to fight. And I met a few, they were always bristling with a kind of ferocious energy. Anyway, I had met an American whose job it was to fly aeroplanes and dust off crops with chemicals..a uh...a crop duster.

[Joseph Alder] Yeah..

[Daniel Sykes] And I told him about how I wanted to be a pilot and how proud I had been of my father and all, and he grabbed my shoulders, and I was a shorter man by a margin and a half (laughing) and he looked at me with such a fierce sort of determination in his eyes, and he told, me, and ill never forget this, he told me, "You wont get a damn thing done by wanting something, If you want to be a fighter pilot, then you get out and you do it." So I uh...I did (laughing)

[Joseph Alder] Was the training rigorous?

[Daniel Sykes] Not in the way that those poor bastard in the Infantry's training was rough, but it was taxing in a different sort of uh...different sort of way. I tell you, when I had told my flight sergeant that I wanted to become a pilot, he looked at me as if I had walked in with an axe in my bloody hands covered in gore, oh my, oh dear did he (laughing) did he look at me with such a shock. But, he submitted my name and I was accepted into RAF flight School that very same month. And that was uh, that was in September, and we had already given the krauts a good spanking, and whether or not I would make it in time for the Battle of Britain, I would still be a pilot and thats really all I wanted to be.

[Joseph Alder] Describe the training camp...

[Daniel Sykes] RAF Halton is a training base in Buckinghamshire and I had a marvelous time there, I really did. It was a strange feeling having such a right enjoyable service when there were others who were really losing their lives in the thick of it. Inside, I felt as if I wasnt doing my part, or at least wasnt doing enough. So when we arrived I was damned determined to get my wings and get to fighting the nazis wherever they were. It was my duty.

[Joseph Alder] What kind of things would you do at the camp?

[Daniel Sykes] Other than plundering the local town of their women? (laughing) We did marching, we learned about air combat and tactics on how to really get behind the Germans and give them a taste of our guns and all that. We uh...we learned that the German fighters those yellow nosed bastards, those ones, had some weaknesses here and there, and how to exploit them. We memorized photos of various nazi aeroplanes and the like. Beautiful birds in the hands of absolute bastards,it was a shame such pretty planes had to be destroyed but thats what the war was all about I guess.

[Joseph Alder] Did you ever get to see one of these German fighters in person?

[Daniel Sykes] More times than I care to bloody mention! (laughing and coughing) But uh, yes, at Halton they did show us a captured German aircraft, not the yellow nosed ones, but the Stuka, insidious little plane that one is. It would descend on you straight down with that godawful siren whooping and wailing making all sorts 
of terrible racket. It looked rather goofy when I first laid eyes on it, and there was a battle to get into the pilots seat to get he full experience. I was small and had managed to make my way to the top when uh...I....(trailing off, looking out the window)

[Joseph Alder] Sir?

[Daniel Sykes] I had gotten on the wing and had opened the canopy when I saw that the glass had been pierced by a bullet. And although the RAF boys had cleaned all the horrible bits of skull and brain, there was still this big red stain in the cracks of the windows and on the seat and on the controls. Just awful stuff. I sat there like a goon looking at it for a while before I jumped off the wing and let the other blokes have a go.

[Joseph Alder] Didnt like the sight of blood?

[Daniel Sykes] No lad, that I can take, I could handle seeing death and such, but the sight of all that blood kind of uh, hit it home for me that a man had died inside that thing, first time I had actually seen any death and killing in the whole damn conflict, was at Halton.

[Joseph Alder] Any interesting stories from the camp?

[Daniel Sykes] Well, theres the story of how I was able to trick a woman into falling in love with my sorry arse (laughing)

[Josephs Alder] Oh do tell sir!

[Daniel Sykes] In town there was this bang on bar called the Old Tumble, and this place I tell you it really was a dive. A place mostly occupied by the RAF for all the  time it was open. Not that we were keen on it closing either. the lads had stolen the bar bell so many times that they eventually bolted it to the bloody ceiling so we would stop making off with it so they couldnt call it a night! Anyway, there was a girl that worked there, came up to about the base of my neck, brown hair that was all frizzy and the best set of green eyes anyone could see or will see, and I swear by that son

[Joseph Alder] She sounds beautiful...

[Daniel Sykes] Oh she was, had me melted and in pooling up in the palm of her hands. I was dead set on making this woman my bride, and I remembered what that American bloke told me all that while ago. So I had to figure out how to make this absolute bloody bombshell want to talk to me, in a room full of strapping young fighters. So I figured, the best way to start a conversation with someone in England in a bar, is to start an argument.

[Joseph Alder] (laughing) you thought it would be best to start an argument? About what?

[Daniel Sykes] I had said uh, I had gotten her attention and pointed to the wallpaper behind her which was a sort of...wheatish yellow color, dreadful, and said something along the lines of uh "Yellow is a bit s**t of a color for wallpaper isnt it?" And oh, oh boy, I was not prepared for what I had just started. In that moment I realized that I would have been more comfortable, taking on the whole bloody luftwaffe by my self because I do tell you son she lit my arse up like a bloody German fighter pilot. She, oh god, she wrinkled her little nose and glared at me, and snapped something along the lines of uh "I guess you graduated from f*****g art school did you, you snot nose little prick, regular Leonardo are you? What color would you have it then, you maestro?"

[Joseph Alder] Jesus

[Daniel Sykes] I uh..I had not heard something that fierce before, even my mates were absolutely dumbfounded by her hold on the profane. I had not even gotten the response out of my mouth before she tore into me again, and That was when I knew that I had found the one. She was absolutely bar none perfect in every way. I asked where she got her s**tey mouth from, and he hit me with this line, and I wont forget it, as long as I live, "Me father was in the Navy being a real man unlike you, you hoighty flying
poofter with your c**ty scarf and your c**ty goggles"

(both laughing)

[Joseph Alder] So how did you salvage this whole thing, how did you spin it your way?

[Daniel Sykes] I said... I had said "You can insult me but you wont insult my scarf you fleet brat! Ill have you know that this here scarf if a guaranteed night in the sack with any woman I so choose!". This didnt blow over well, as she said "well you look like an absolute bloody goon about to get up to some buggery ta' me!". So I retaliated by telling her that I could charm any woman into the bed, and she was no exception. Naturally she challenged me on this, so I made a wager, that if I could manage this, she would remain
mine, but if she won, I had to get a tattoo across my arse that said that the Navy was the best with a little battleship.

[Joseph Alder] So were you confident?

[Daniel Sykes] Christ no, I was buggered. I had never even spoken to a girl before then.

[Joseph Alder] So what did you do?

[Daniel Sykes] Well lad, I had chosen what battleship I wanted on my arse and went forth honestly. I met her two nights from that one, and we went out on a date. We had gone to see a movie at the local cinema, all about the war going on, and by that time the Battle of Britain had ended but the war kept churning on. I did all the typical moves and tricks and I completely bombed the whole thing, I was a clumsy mess.

[Joseph Alder] Oh no, what happened then?

[Daniel Sykes] Well, before I dropped her off at her place, she had stopped me and asked why I got up to the whole stupid wager, and I told her, honestly of course, that I thought she was pretty and wanted her to be mine, and, she uh, she laughed right in my face, dug the nail right in. I was almost out of training at that time, about to be a full on fighter pilot so I had figured maybe it was for the best.

[Joseph Alder] Oh...Im sorry sir.

[Daniel Sykes] She told me that I got an A for effort, and I didnt have to get anything tattooed on my arse if I didnt want to, and I made my wa back to RAF Halton a defeated man.

[Joseph Alder] So sir, if you dont mind, what happened after that, with the war?

[Daniel Sykes] After my training was complete, we were shipped to Africa to join in the war effort against the Desert Fox. I was placed with Harpy Squadron, 7 Spitfire Mk.Ia fighter planes done up in this desert camoflauge. Our job was to provide air support to our boys on the ground, and at the time we were getting a right thrashing from the Germans. When we arrived, we found out one thing about the African sun, It will either melt you, or it will make you stronger.

[Joeseph Alder] So what happened to you?

[Daniel Sykes] Well, our first combat action came rather quickly, we were scrambled into the air maybe a month after we arrived to provide ground support for a bunch of tanker boys that were pinned down by the Germans. So we loaded up into our airplanes and we took off towards the sky. We were being led by Captain Ian Spalding, who had been in Africa for a while before us, and knew the enemy rather well. We looked sleek, I tell you, we were proper sharp. We could have taken on the entire Afrikacorps at that point.

[Joseph Alder] So how was your first combat action?

[Daniel Sykes] It took a while for us to arrive on the scene of the attack, but when we did, we had seen a bunch of little tan shapes on the ground kicking up a load of dust, the Captain identified these guys as our tanks, and there were little plooms of exploding sand and smoke all around them, there were a few uh, burning tanks behind them, and we saw all the zig zags they were doing. About a half a kilometere from them was a small raised cliff with a German position there, artillery was being fired down onto the tanks trying to move through the little uh, the little valley. There was one line of German anti tank guns, and a small bed of flak, it was just a scrappy outpost, but the tankies ran right into it, and we had a job to do. The Captain gave the orders that we had to suppress the base so the tanks could get through, we started receiving this big screen of flak fire that made a bunch of small black clouds pop up all around us, and every time one would appear, you would hear this loud cannon blast that would shake you up. We dove down, below the flak fire, so low they couldnt actually see us, so low that if you looked behind you, you could see your plane was churning up a big blanket of opaque sand. We flew right over the tank lad's turrets, and I could see one commander cheering us on, pumping his fist as his tank rolled forward. They depended on us and we were not about to let him and his boys down. No sir.

(Lt. Sykes clears his throat and continues)

[Daniel Sykes] We rose and descended on that German base like a tidal wave, we really tore them up. I was not thinking about killing men, but rather I was just trying to help those poor soldiers in the tanks. When I got into position, I pressed the trigger button on my control stick and watched those machineguns light up, I felt the vibration and heard the old din of the guns in my wings when they went off, it was quite a feeling. I practiced before, but this was for real. I looked down on the ground and watched my tracers disappear into kicked up sand and dust, any car or piece of equipment, or uh...or man that got in the way disappeared into the kicked up sand screen. It was...It was like the desert just swallowed them up.

(he takes a moment to collect himself)

[Daniel Sykes] We banked around and went in for another pass. The Germans couldnt even squeeze off a single flak shell at us, we attacked so quickly. On the second go, we buzzed the base from a different angle and continued doing our work. I saw...I saw one group of Germans running away, but one tripped right in front of my line of fire, the last I saw of him, he was trying to get up and reached out towards his comrade, who had stopped and looked like he was about to make a go. The bullets and sand swallowed them both.

[Daniel Sykes] The third pass, one of the mates in my squadron, a man my age named Nicholas Gallivant, must have hit something important, because when he had completed his pass, the ground underneath him swelled up like a balloon and exploded outwards. Blasting man and metal everywhere. I was at his 8, and saw the whole thing. It was a fantastic explosion, I could swear I felt the heat, and I saw the fragments from the whole thing tear through the German camp, flipping cars, tearing up tents, rendering men and horse. 
At the time it was a fantastic sight, but now I feel sorry for those poor bastards. But it was a war, people die in war.

[Joseph Alder] An ammunition bunker?

[Daniel Sykes] Must have been, with so much fire and shrapnel and all...

[Daniel Sykes] Soon enough, the tanks had climbed the hill around the cliff and starting really laying into the surviving Germans with a vengeance. Taking out artillery and machinegunning survivors that were trying to get away. The Captain had said we did our bit, and it was time to return home. That uh...that was the end of my first combat engagement in the whole war. I was on a sort of high for the rest of the day, all of us were really. We sat for hours giving our accounts of the fight, and the boys in the squadron called it "The Battle of Buggery Hill". (laughing) we were all kids at the time, so, we thought it was funny.

[Joseph Alder] There was a retaliatory strike after that, wasnt there?

[Daniel Sykes] Yes, a few weeks after the 'battle', luftwaffe planes began ferociously attacking our bases and battle lines, and they were racking up quite a large amount of kills. So this couldnt continue, and we were scrambled on a combat mission after a convoy had come under attack. Harpy Squadron and Vampire Squadron, 14 spitfires, flew over the desert like those crusader knights of old, charging forward swinging swords and jeering insults at our enemies. When we found the convoy, it was....god...it was a killing field, and there was so much smoke and fire it was hard to see anything on the ground. We could see dead, burnt, bodies everywhere. It was terrible, I wont be able to forget it. The Captain had called our targets, and we saw them, 12 or so German fighters shooting up and attacking trucks that were trying to get away. The krauts had spent all their energy on their dive when we arrived, so this was a prime time to go ahead and lay into the rotten bastards with everything we had. My wingman, a Lieutenant like me, George Bradford was his name, we followed the Captain in and picked our targets, two German fighters that were desperately trying to climb up andaway from us, but it was a hopeless gesture, we had them. Boy did we have them then...

(Daniel calms down, and looks out the window at the sea again, and then back to me)

[Daniel Sykes] We dropped in behind them, with Georgey at my 6, and I lit up one of the fighters as he got into my crosshairs and drifted right to clip his buddy as well in one swoop,then old George would come in behind me and hit them right after me, a double whammy. I pressed my trigger button and felt my plane shake as my guns erupted, spittingbullets downrange at the German fighter, the first one, I didnt hit so good, I had misjudged the angle, but the second one...the...the second one well...

(Daniel stops, and takes a moment to think)

[Daniel Sykes] The second fighter, I had hit him just in front of the cockpit, I was aiming for his yellow nose and I hit my mark. As I was hitting him, his nose exploded and erupted in fire, I kept shooting and he tried to turn away, ripping his wing off. I watched him turn through the air, on fire, falling towards the ground. A few seconds before he hit the sand, his plane erupted into a big fireball, and kept burning after it hit the ground. Captain Spalding hailed me on the radio and congratulated me on my kill, but I was turning my head like a madman trying to find ol' George. I found that he had managed to clip the wing of the other German and was positioning to finish him off as we
were turning.

[Daniel Sykes] The scuff got a little more intense, one of the Germans had managed to shoot down one of our men, from Harpy squadron, he was able to parachute out before his plane hit the ground. Although it looked like he hit the ground rather hard, properly broken legs for him I had guessed. But there was more to focus on. the rest of the engagement was rather short. The men from Vampire squadron had given the germans a right bollocking after us, and they turned tail and retreated, rather like a bunch of poofs.

[Joseph Alder] And this was the end of that engagement?

[Daniel Sykes] We stuck around for a bit, making sure the survivors got out okay. We spotted our boy, Michael McMullin, the most sour man in the world he was, we watched him get plucked from the sand like a bloody mushroom, it was terrible for him but it ah..it (laughing)..it was so funny to the rest of his, I slowed down and waved to him, and he looked at my cockpit, and shot up his two fingers in a V sign, telling us to piss off in the only way he could, and we had a rip roaring laugh on the way back.

[Joeseph Alder] During your deployment in Africa, sir, when was the erm...the incident?

(Daniel's smile disappeared, he looked a lot more serious this time, and he leaned in)

[Daniel Sykes] That is a discussion for tomorrow son, and you will need to come in with an open mind, Im plum wore out.

(The next day, Daniel and I meet, and I could tell that Daniel had been drinking moderately, we were doing the next segment of this interview outside.)

[Daniel Sykes] Fancy a spot of whiskey son? Or are you old enough?

[Joseph Alder] Oh, thank you sir, yes, Im 18.

[Daniel Sykes] Now, as for your question yesterday. By the time that happened I was two years into the war. Monty and Patton had given the krauts and italian a proper buggering. Pushing them all the way back beyond Tobruk. Loss was inevitable for them, and I had been able to rack up quite a substantial amount of victories, 8 Germans and 4 Italians.

[Joeseph Alder] 12 planes shot down? That would have made you twice the ace.

[Daniel Sykes] Aye, it did, and I was proud of it too. I had gotten over the killing part of the war at that point, and I had become quite adept at hunting the enemy down and doing away with him like a sort of, sort of uh, sort of great big game hunter.

[Daniel Sykes] Anyway, I was involved in a pretty severe dogfight in Libya between me and uh, a Focke Wulf pilot, you know those fighters with the swirly noses. We had done our tangle in the air for what seemed to be hours. And we had long since drifted away from our respective squadrons, combating eachother to see who was best. I was youthful and arrogant. I was a warrior then, and I couldnt disengage, by the time one of us broke the stalemate, our planes were throughoughly ravaged by gunfire, and I myself had numerous problems controlling the aircraft. I avoided another dive of his by aileron rolling out of the way, then rolling on my back and diving after him. This was a mistake, after I did this, my engine burst into bloody flames like a 5th of November celebration and I lost all thrust. I was crestfallen, my plane was on fire, and the German had beaten me because of my maneuver.

[Joseph Alder] What did you do? What did the German do?

[Daniel Sykes] I had to bail out of my plane, and I watched the hun do a turn off to the left to observe my aircraft hitting the sand and I fell with a particular style struggling with my parachute. The German could have killed me at that moment, but he disengaged and flew away. When I watched my plane hit the side of a rocky hill and explode into a million bloody pieces, I knew that the radio wouldnt have survived, and I was buggered with only the items on me at the time. Which were a canteen, a map, a couple ration tins, and my Webley revolver.

[Joeseph Alder] What happened when you hit the ground?

[Daniel Sykes] Apart from the feeling of having my knees pushed up through my bloody ribs, I had come down off my combat high and started being a kid again And I panicked. I was alone in the middle of the desert with a pistol, some ration tins, and a quart of water. I had though, alright, what is my next move? I had to get moving you know, or I would be spotted and then who knows what the Germans would do.

[Daniel Sykes] I gathered myself, and everything I said. I was on the top of a sort of rocky sort of uh...rocky sort of hill about 300 meteres from my downed aircraft. I had been able to recover rather well. and thats when I heard an engine on the ground revving up. I looked further away and saw a small dust cloud was kicked up. I thought, you know, Bloody hell, there they are, they are probably hunting for me, I need to get going.

[Joeseph Alder] Did you see your pursuers?

[Daniel Sykes] Aye, bunch of nazis on one of those...uh...halftrack bikes, a kettenkrad. There were 3 of them, one in the drivers seat and 2 in the back. They dismounted their vehicle to inspect my downed plane and search for me, so I wasted no time in legging it out of there.

[Daniel Sykes] That was when one of the more uh...unpleasant parts of the war, even more than getting shot down.

[Joeseph Alder] What...what happened?

(Daniel takes some time to consider)

[Daniel Sykes] I was sneaking away, and had sat down to rest behind a rock. Try to uh, collect myself, because my legs were right screaming. Thats when I heard boot steps crunching rocks and twigs. right next to me, walking on a patrol, was a nazi with a rifle, looking in the complete opposite direction of me. I knew that if he spotted me, he would pop me with that rifle of his, So I...I crept up behind him and he must have heard me a little bit, because he was turning around when I grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground. He was going to holler out so I headbutted him right in his gob to shut him up while grappling with him. He had managed to roll me over and pushed his weapon on onto my throat to try and strangle me, but he left his right side open, so I gave him a good wallop right to his ribs. He fell over, and found my chance, I took a rock, and I smashed him in the head with it. He tensed up and I...I hit him again, and again in the head with this rock. I hit him so much that the skin on his skull had been peeled away and I had managed to...managed to break it. I sat there, with the rock, and I was just...covered in his blood and the...the rock...it had little bits of skin and h...Jesus Christ....

[Joseph Alder] You dont have to share that part sir, if it would make you uncomfortable...

[Daniel Sykes] Its quite alright lad. I had never spoken about that part before so I took some...some uh, some "nutting up' to say it. Anyway, this nazi was...different.

[Joseph Alder] Different? How so?

[Daniel Sykes] He wore these black, black collar tabs with a weird device on them. Looked like two V shapes with a line joining one side. The top chevron was smaller than the bottom one, and all the angles were sharp. The symbol was askew too, and we had briefings on the SS and seen all their symbology and runes but I had never seen the symbol in any intelligence book. So I figured he was part of a new Afrika Korps unit.

[Joseph Alder] What did you do?

[Daniel Sykes] I nicked his binoculars and his water I also took some German chocolate tins off him, and I started going North. In Libya, if you get lost, you need to get stepping North, I figured if I headed that way, I could maybe get to Tobruk or another village where I could find some help. So I set off.

(Daniel got up, and looked down at me with tired eyes)

[Daniel Sykes] You will need to come inside for this one, lad.

WIP