Night Hawk

Flight Lieutenant Karel Kuttelwascher DFC and BAR, the RAF’s Greatest Night Intruder Ace

by

Roger Darlington

Draws not just on official RAF records, but the personal log book and combat reports of the ace plus family records, letters and the recollections of many personal acquaintances

Provides a detailed account of a uniquely dangerous and little-known type of operation called night intrusion at which this ace was the supreme exponent

Handsomely illustrated with high-quality photographs from the author’s personal collection

Karel Kuttelwascher may have had a German surname, but he was a Czech who became the scourge of Luftwaffe bombers operating from France and the Low Countries in 1942. Flying with the RAF’s legendary No. 1 Squadron, his destruction of fifteen aircraft in only three months brought him the DFC twice in a mere forty-two days and made him the RAF’s top night intruder ace. After his daring escape from German-occupied Czechoslovakia, he flew in the ferocious Battle of France and was then in time to participate in the final weeks of the Battle of Britain as one of Churchill’s ‘Few’.

During the early circus operations, he clocked up his first three kills and then played a part in the famous Channel Dash. However, it was in the lauded but lonely night intruder role that his individualistic skills came to the fore. Flying a long-range Hawker Hurricane IIC armed with 20-mm cannon, the man the wartime media dubbed the ‘Czech Night Hawk’ unleashed a reign of terror that included the knocking out of three Heinkel bombers in just four minutes.