by John Nichol
‘My black stockings were a bit short too, leaving off just above my fat knees, so my wartime panties, being made of silk from old parachutes, didn’t come down to meet the stockings, leaving a large gap of me in between. The parachute harness also chafed the inside of my legs anyhow so I thought that not only will it hurt when I bail out but it will really look silly floating down in a hitched-up and very tight navy serge uniform skirt. I was very modest.’
Diana simply could not accept putting her bare legs and knickers open to view.
She settled on the second alternative – to very slowly turn round and head back, setting a minimum ‘safety break-off height’ at which to abort. Diana put this at 800ft then began a very gentle descent. After a few minutes the altimeter showed 800ft and she was still in zero visibility. She pulled back on the stick. Skirt or no skirt, it was time to abandon the brand-new Spitfire.
‘So that was it! Poor little Spitfire, that could be the end of you or me. I’ll have to go up again and do some more thinking about bailing out. Oh, if only I wasn’t wearing a skirt!’
In the back of her mind she knew she was seconds and a few feet from impact.
The Spitfire lurched in turbulence and the altimeter jerked alarmingly to 600ft. She stiffened. By her dead reckoning ground level was supposed to be 750ft. She was seconds away from death.
‘At that very moment I came out of cloud at treetop height. The trees flashed by with cloud sitting on the topmost branches and rain simply pelting down. As I crabbed in and out of the stuff beside the trees, I caught a glimpse of an aircraft on a bit of grass.’
She pulled a tight turn then her spirits sank. The landing strip was flooded. Nose-heavy Spitfires had a tendency to flip over in puddles. Three days earlier a very tall ATA pilot had done just that and drowned while strapped into his open cockpit.
But Diana had no choice. ‘I was thinking of all this but I knew I had to put down there no matter what because I wasn’t going to be able to anywhere else.’
Mud and water spewed over her as the Spitfire slewed and dragged through pools of rain before finally coming to a halt.
She taxied over to the parked aircraft she’d seen. As she stepped out of the cockpit her legs collapsed beneath her. A tall RAF man in a rain cape came over. Still shaking, she pretended to be kneeling, looking in the cockpit for maps.
‘I say, miss, you must be good on instruments!’ he said, gallantly covering her with the rain cape.
‘I can’t blind fly.’ she croaked.
The airman threw back his head and roared with laughter, thinking she was joking. Not wanting to disappoint by asking where she was, Diana walked with him into the base hut where she found the answer on a sign: RAF Windrush. Navigation and Blind Flying Establishment. Altitude 560 feet.
Windrush was somewhere between Oxford and Cheltenham and six miles from her destination of Little Rissington.
She phoned the ops room at White Waltham and was put straight through to the commanding officer.
‘Stay there!’ he said curtly. Then, after a pause, he quietly added: ‘I’m glad you got down safely.’
He explained that there had been an unusually high ‘dewpoint’, the moisture content in the air, with central England swallowed by rain-cloud. Several ATA aircraft had crashed. Two pilots had been killed.
With the help of Aitken and Clyde’s advice, and a large slice of luck and skill, Diana had managed to survive. But it reinforced her view of the authorities’ poor decision not to train them in blind flying. ‘I think the powers that be made a hash of that decision. I am certain more ATA pilots would have survived had blind flying been a requirement of training. If nothing else, we would have grown far fewer grey hairs above our worried brows.’
* * *
By coincidence Ray Holmes – who had brought down the German Dornier heading to Buckingham Palace during the Battle of Britain – found himself temporarily attached to the ATA during the harsh January of 1941. Hundreds of aircraft had been rolled out of factories but could go no further due to the weather. Packed together, they presented a perfect target for the Luftwaffe, who with a stick of bombs could wipe out a month of factory production. When the weather cleared, experienced RAF pilots were seconded to clear the backlog. Holmes, who was flying Hurricanes with 504 Squadron, reported to ATA headquarters at Whitchurch, near Bristol, on 5 February 1941.7 ‘Our duties were clear-cut. We would collect an aeroplane from A and fly it to B. That we had never even seen that type of aeroplane before, let alone flown one, did not matter. This was the challenge of the job. My first day there I climbed into an Avro Anson with twelve other pilots, clutching a chit authorising me to collect a Spitfire Mark II from Yeovilton in Somerset and deliver it to Llandow in the Vale of Glamorgan.’
It was an ideal opportunity for him to compare the two iconic British fighters.
‘My forms authorising me to collect my Spitfire were in triplicate because I could have been a shot-down Luftwaffe pilot stealing an aircraft to escape back to France.
‘It was my first introduction to the Spitfire. Basically, it was similar to the Hurricane and half an hour studying the pilots’ Handling Notes sorted out the differences. The Spitfire handled beautifully. It was lighter to loop than the Hurricane yet heavier to roll. This was a proud moment and would give me the laugh on the boys at 504, none of whom had ever flown a Spit.’
While men ferrying planes was regarded as perfectly normal, the ATA ‘girls’ came in for a degree of sexist comment, usually along the lines of ‘the hand that rocked the cradle wrecked the crate’, but it was rare. With the Nazis knocking on the door, gender had become an irrelevance; this was war and everyone was in it together. The ATA women went some way to promoting equality. They were initially paid £230 a year, considerably less than the £310 enjoyed by male ATA pilots. The point was firmly made that if both sexes were flying the same planes to the same places, why were the women getting less? The authorities agreed. In 1943 the ATA women became the first in British history to receive equal pay.8
By flying aircraft from factories to their bases the ATA freed up pilots needed for combat, relieving the pressure on frontline squadrons.
Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Aircraft Production, had high praise for their work: ‘The ATA sustained and supported the RAF in battle. They were the soldiers fighting in the struggle, just as completely as if they had been engaged on the battlefront.’9 And that support was vital; both Spitfires and aircrew were in high demand in ever-increasing numbers around the world.
CHAPTER SIX
MALTA
A Spitfire Mk V destined for Malta
The aircraft carrier’s cavernous hangar vibrated to the roar of the Spitfires above. Michael Le Bas might have amassed 182 hours flying the fighter but nothing had prepared him for this.1
In a few minutes he would be raised from the gloom of the ship’s bowels into the sunlight of the deck and make his first ever take-off from an aircraft carrier.
His destination was 660 miles away, at the end of the Spitfire’s range. His route would require him to fly close to enemy airbases teeming with fighters. He’d have little fuel and even less ammunition for a dogfight. And at the end of his flight he was to land on a small Mediterranean island surrounded by the enemy. Malta. It was 20 April 1942 and the island was nearing the end of its resistance to the Nazi-led onslaught. Spitfires were needed urgently.
A Merlin engine increased its revs above him. The first Spitfire was about to take off. Le Bas, twenty-five, felt his heartbeat quicken.
Already there had been one fatality: a mechanic had stepped backwards into a Spitfire’s spinning propeller, which had sliced through his upper torso, removing his head and shoulders. As the remains were gathered up, the blade was simply wiped clean, checked for damage then cleared for flight. This was war. There was no time for sentiment.
Le Bas could not see what was going on behind but he could hear his boss’s engine burst into life before being rolled onto the flat, square platform
of the aircraft lift. Le Bas was happy to be behind Squadron Leader John Bisdee, the man he’d heard described as a ‘cheerful, blond mountain of confidence’. Bisdee, twenty-five, had fought relentlessly during the previous summer, recording six kills.
Le Bas was next in line. His Spitfire Mark V, fitted with its new ninety-gallon drop tank, was heavy with all the extra fuel. Along with the other forty-six pilots, he had heartily tucked into the USS Wasp’s generous supply of Coca-Cola and ice-cream. He was struck by a sudden thought. Bisdee weighs three stone more than I do. If he gets airborne, I’ll be all right.
He craned his neck round in time to see Bisdee’s aircraft move backwards onto the lift. US sailors in denim trousers gathered on Le Bas’ wings and pushed him to where Bisdee had been seconds earlier. They stepped back and one ordered the engine started. No sooner had the Merlin settled than the lift was on its way back down. Le Bas was pushed on and ascended towards the sunlight of the flight deck. A foot before the top he received the signal to taxi forward. The deckhand timed it perfectly. As the lift slotted into place the Spitfire’s tail wheel was off and the great slab of steel was already descending. Ahead, Bisdee’s aircraft was climbing.
The deck officer rotated his chequered flag. Le Bas pushed his Spitfire’s throttle forward to maximum revs.
* * *
For three months, three weeks and three days, 641 Knights Hospitaller had fought off 30,000 Turks during the Great Siege of Malta. It was 1565 and the Ottoman Empire was trying to seize control of the Mediterranean. Four centuries later a similar campaign was being waged in the same place for the same reasons.
Strategically important, Malta was located in the perfect spot in the Mediterranean where Axis shipping crossed from Italy to supply Rommel’s campaign in North Africa. Hitler’s grand strategy of sweeping through Egypt, cutting off the eastern half of the British Empire and seizing Arabian oil fields was being held up by an island of 290,000 people and an assortment of RAF aircraft.
By the end of 1941, air and naval attacks from Malta had sunk 64 per cent of ships carrying fuel, tanks and personnel destined for Rommel’s Afrika Korps.2
Malta was a menace and a sore and had to be eliminated. Hitler had originally entrusted the task to Mussolini and his bombers of the Regia Aeronautica. Infuriated by the island’s obduracy and the Italians’ inability to succeed, late in 1941 Hitler ordered Goering to do whatever necessary to take Malta.
Confident that the Luftwaffe would not be required for much longer in subduing Russia, Goering sent a frontline force of 600 fighters and bombers to Italy under the command of Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring.
Bull-faced, determined and forceful, Kesselring was the man to get the job done. An artillery officer in the First World War, Kesselring had been entrusted with building up the Luftwaffe. He had learned to fly at the age of forty-eight. He was a general who genuinely cared for his troops, and the ranks gave him their devotion in return.
Taking Malta should have been straightforward. The early Maltese air defences had pretty much shrunk to three Gloster Gladiator biplanes nicknamed Faith, Hope and Charity. Somehow these obsolete biplanes flown by flying-boat pilots and others managed to shake off the first Italian attacks in 1940.
They had been reinforced by handfuls of Hurricanes either requisitioned when en route to North Africa or flown in from aircraft carriers. But the Hurricane, which had had a hard fight against the ‘E’ version of the Me109, was outclassed by the ‘F’ mark. Only the Mark V Spitfire could meet the 109F on equal, if not superior terms.
Britain was not having a good war in early 1942. Aside from the Rhubarb, Ramrod and Circus losses, there were setbacks in almost every theatre, culminating in the disastrous loss of Singapore to the Japanese in February 1942. Ominously, Erwin Rommel was beginning to make inroads towards Egypt.
Only belatedly had Britain’s commanders woken up to Malta’s importance, that it gave the navy a fighting chance of getting convoys through to Egypt, saving freighters 15,000 miles and forty-five days off the journey round South Africa.
Malta was also a vital, unsinkable aircraft carrier that could be used as a naval and RAF base to strike against Axis supply lines. If Malta fell, North Africa would most likely follow. Then the Middle East would be threatened and the consequences after that were unimaginable. India? Turkey? Russia’s southern underbelly? It was clear – Malta had to be saved whatever the cost. And yet again, the Spitfire would be called to the forefront of the action.
* * *
The islanders’ allegiance to Britain had endured since Admiral Lord Nelson ousted Napoleon’s haughty French troops and made Malta part of the British Empire. That loyalty was about to be tested as Kesselring ordered his men to smash Malta’s air defences as the prelude to invasion.
The Germans stuck to their well-used script, flattening homes and damaging Malta’s three airfields in a wave of bombings.
The ageing Hurricanes were simply no match for the agile Me109Fs. At times, Luftwaffe pilots deliberately flew their fighters in front of the Hurricanes to demonstrate their superiority. They needed a fighter that could hold its own. A frantic signal was sent to London: SPITFIRES NEEDED STOP MOST URGENTLY STOP.
The call for Spitfires was heeded and the first batch of thirty-one fighters was flown off HMS Eagle on 7 March 1942. They immediately entered the fray, giving an instant boost to morale. But they were hopelessly outnumbered.3
‘The most heroic sight was to see about half-a-dozen of these fighters in the air, taking on all comers,’ one anti-aircraft gunner wrote. ‘They were frequently shot down, but seldom without first having scored a success against their opponents.’
The enemy, used to easier pickings, were distinctly unnerved by the new arrivals. One RAF listening post on Malta reportedly heard a Luftwaffe fighter leader’s dismay on spotting the fighter. ‘Christ, Spitfires! We weren’t told that there were Spitfires on Malta. Back we go!’4
Handfuls of Spitfires were not enough. Malta was approaching the point where it would have to surrender and was too weak to resist invasion. The basics of wheat, flour, oils, coal, fodder and ammunition were urgently required.5
Meanwhile, German paratroop commanders, in preparation for a possible invasion, were examining maps of south-east Malta, where they planned to jump in. Warships and landing vessels were readied for the main assault.
The bombing was relentless. The tonnage that fell on Malta in March and April 1942 exceeded that of the bombs dropped on London during the whole of the Blitz. One thousand civilians were killed in air raids and 10,000 homes destroyed.
More Spitfires trickled in. But they were not enough. When the Germans mounted eighty bomber raids with fighter escort, all that could be thrown at them were between four and six Spitfires. The pilots were tiring against insurmountable odds.
By the end of March a ragtag collection of between twenty and thirty British fighters was the only air defence that stood against the 600-strong German and Italian air force.
On some days the island was entirely defenceless. Undeterred, the veteran fighter controller Group Captain ‘Woody’ Woodhall, whose soothing voice had provided much-needed reassurance to pilots during the Battle of Britain, developed a clever ruse.
With a shortage of aircraft but an excess of airmen, ‘Woody’ came up with the idea to put pilots in cubicles with transmitters simulating flights of Spitfires, giving each other false targets while on the German wavelength.6 ‘Officer Humguffery’, as the ploy became known, caused considerable uncertainty among Luftwaffe pilots and intelligence gatherers.
When one bomber force approached, Woodhall put a Canadian with a distinctive voice on a spare microphone and began issuing false orders. The Canadian responded convincingly and it was not long before a cry of ‘Achtung! Spitfire!’ came over the radio. In the resulting chaos, two German pilots shot each other down in the mistaken belief they were firing at Spitfires.
But it was the Germans who were proving the masters of the air, if n
ot the airwaves.
* * *
In early April 1942, Churchill was told that the navy had no carriers available to transport Spitfires for at least another month. To avoid disaster there was only one course left: the Americans.
Churchill wrote a long personal telegram to President Roosevelt giving details on why there were no British carriers available. He then concluded:
Would you be willing to allow your carrier WASP to do one of these trips? . . . With her broad lifts, capacity and length, we estimate that WASP could take 50 or more Spitfires.
Thus instead of not being able to give Malta any further Spitfires during April a powerful force could be flown into Malta at a stroke and give us a chance of inflicting a very severe and possibly decisive check on the enemy.7
Roosevelt proved a worthy ally. The British could use USS Wasp. It would arrive in Glasgow on 10 April.
Over the next few days pilots and aircraft were assembled. The operation was almost scuppered after it was found that the streets to the Clyde were too narrow for the Spitfire’s 36ft wingspan. Nerves were calmed when a mechanic suggested they remove the wingtips and eventually forty-seven fighters were moved by truck through Glasgow and stowed in the Wasp’s spacious hangar.
A hotchpotch of hastily gathered pilots came aboard. They were formed into four squadrons as they stood on deck, being picked like a school football team. Within four days, the Wasp was steaming towards the Mediterranean.
Six days later, on 20 April, she turned into the wind and came to full speed.
Michael Le Bas was grateful to the captain for giving the fliers a good headwind for take-off.8 As his engine vibrations increased he glanced skywards. Squadron Leader Bisdee’s plane was climbing despite the drop tank bulging under its belly.
Les Bas’ thoughts again turned to his weight. The extra fuel meant the Spitfire was 770lb overloaded. But Bisdee got off and he’s three stone heavier than me.
He was out of time to dwell on the possibilities. The American deck officer was rotating his chequered flag.
