7th Sept, 1940.. The Afternoon Raid.. The RAF radar station at Foreness was the first to detect the appearance of the enemy at 1540; the operators could not believe what they were seeing and the apparent size of the enemy formations. Within moments the radar stations at Dover and Rye also had radar contacts and were confirming the worst. At 1554 the first information reached the Operations Room at the Fighter Command HQ at Bentley Priory. At 1615 the first of the German aircraft came within visual range of the Observer Corps posts on the English coast. Some 1,100 aircraft were approaching the coastline: 300 bombers (Do-17s, Ju-88s and He-111s), 200 Bf110s with bomb loads and about 600 Bf109s flying as escorts. The phalanx of enemy aircraft covered nearly 800 square miles of sky. Once over the Kent coast, the German bombers and their escorts broke into separate groups, seemingly heading for different targets and sowing confusion in the RAF commanders’ minds. Eleven Hurricanes of No 1 Squadron at Northolt were the first RAF fighters to be scrambled in response to the raid at 1624. No 1 Squadron’s ‘Yellow Section’ was led by Sergeant Pilot Arthur ‘Darkie’ Clowes DFM, flying Hurricane Mk 1 P3395, ‘JX-B’ ('B for Beer' he said), which had been his personal aircraft for only a couple of weeks. Clowes had already flown on the two uneventful squadron patrols launched during the morning. The eleven Hurricanes of 1 Squadron climbing frantically out of Northolt on the afternoon of 7th September were led by one of the flight commanders, Flight Lieutenant ‘Hilly’ Brown DFC. He and Clowes had been flying and fighting alongside each other with 1 Squadron from the start of the war, the only two still on the unit to have done so. The Hurricanes met the enemy at 1700 – a large concentration of German bombers flanked by perhaps 100 Bf109s and 110s. After the first head-on attack, the Hurricanes almost inevitably became separated. As Clowes fought to defend himself against the Luftwaffe escort fighters and to avoid a mid-air collision in a sky seemingly full of aircraft, he fired several ‘snapshots’ at various enemy aircraft, apparently without effect. The enemy formation wheeled round over the Thames Estuary, carrying him with them as far east as Manston. Finally, he latched on to an unsuspecting twin-engine Bf 110 flying straight and level at 13,000 feet. Clowes fired two concentrated bursts of machine gun fire at the enemy aircraft from above and behind and saw his tracer rounds striking home. The stricken German fighter-bomber nosed over into a terminal dive and he saw it crash into the sea off the Kent coast in a cloud of spray. His prey was most probably Bf 110C-4 3570 ‘A2+ML’ of 6/ZG.2, which ditched off Birchington at 1720. The pilot, Oberleutnant Willi Brede, survived to become a PoW, but his gunner was killed. Clowes returned to base, fuel and ammunition exhausted. He was scrambled twice more that day, at 1800 and 1930; by the end of the day he had flown five patrols. This aircraft landing at Duxford at the Battle Of Britain Show is from the BBMF, its in Clowes own scheme.. He had been with No 1 since the Phoney War and France.. On this day, the Luftwaffe gave up mass daylight attacks.. The line had held.. He ended the war an Ace.. Sadly in 1949 he died of Cancer.. Thanks to the BBMF website for part of this as I cannot put this into such fine words.. Rob