by John Nichol
Broadhurst had flown eight hours during four sorties, destroyed one Fw190 and damaged three others. He was given a ‘bar’ to his Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for bravery in the face of the enemy. ‘I was no longer in the doghouse,’ he noted drily.
In contrast to Dunkirk, the navy was effusive in its praise of the air force. ‘The RAF gave us a wonderful defence, but for them there would have been more casualties and greater loss of shipping,’ said one naval officer. ‘They put up a grand show.’20
For the Germans it was more than a grand show. ‘It was one of the happiest days since the Battle of Britain,’ recorded one Luftwaffe pilot.21
He had a right to be pleased. In just twelve hours the RAF had flown 2,500 sorties and lost 108 aircraft, including sixty-two Spitfires. The Luftwaffe lost just forty-eight aircraft and only twenty of those were Fw190s.22
At the time the RAF claimed ninety-six enemy aircraft and a significant victory. It was not the case and the Luftwaffe was back at full strength a few days after the raid. After the Rhubarbs of the last two years there was still no knockout blow against the Luftwaffe.
On the ground the losses were appalling, with 900 dead, 500 wounded and nearly 2,000 captured among the 5,000-strong Canadian force. A quarter of the 1,000 British commandos were also lost.
By dusk the last ships limped towards the coast, watched by crowds who lined the clifftops from Eastbourne to Newhaven. Some cheered, while others looked on sombrely as the exhausted troops came ashore alongside the wounded. To some it seemed like a grim reminder of Dunkirk, from two years earlier. However, in the press it was reported as a great, albeit short-lived, victory.
One of the boats contained a scene that spoke of those strange moments of peace sometimes found amid the brutality of war.
Peter Scott, a renowned naturalist and artist who had joined the navy, commanded a gunboat that had picked up both a German Luftwaffe and Norwegian RAF pilot. As he approached England, Scott went below decks to check on the fliers. The German was sitting with the ship’s cat on his lap next to the Norwegian pilot ‘who only hours before would have quite happily killed him in the air’. The German’s armed guard was sitting on the other side of his prisoner, fast asleep with his head on the pilot’s shoulder. ‘It is sights like this that makes one wonder why people go to war with each other in the first place,’ Scott noted.23
Most of those involved thought Dieppe had been a victory at least for the RAF. But a number felt the frustration that without the most modern Spitfires, they weren’t fully in the fight.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NORTH AFRICA
As he sped in his Spitfire over the Mediterranean towards the Algerian port of Oran in the late afternoon sun of 8 November 1942, Harry Strawn smiled broadly.
Even if it was the Spitfire Mark V rather than the latest Mark IX model, he was still in a glorious aircraft and about to enter a campaign in the exotic deserts and mountains of North Africa. It would be something he’d tell his offspring round log fires back in the States. Indeed, the idea of children made him grin again. In his pocket was a letter from the lovely Marjorie Asquith, the stunning brunette with sparkling eyes and coy smile he had met during flight training in Oklahoma. She promised she would wait for him.1
His smile did not change when he saw something glint over the harbour at Oran. He squinted and spotted four aircraft a short distance away. Must be our Corsair fighters from the carriers.
Strawn gave them a second glance then concentrated on following his section leader onto the airfield. As he pushed back his canopy and lined up for landing, the unmistakable ‘rat-ta-tat-tat’ of machine-gun fire filled the air. Clearly one of the more nervous guys had goofed up and let go with his guns.
Then he heard the sound of gunfire again. Much closer this time. He turned round and saw his wingman, Joseph Byrd from Texas, plummeting towards the ground, trailing smoke.
Jesus, where did that come from?
He looked again. The ‘Corsairs’ were in fact a flight of French Dewoitine 520 fighters and they were looking for easy Spitfire kills. The Vichy French clearly did not look upon the Americans and British as allies.
The Spitfire-flying American pilots of the 309th had as yet to experience a sustained campaign, the few short hours over occupied France during the Dieppe raid being the sum of their experience. Along with US ground troops, they were about to be tested in the unfamiliar terrain of North Africa. They were entering a crucible where they were pitted against unpredictable weather, the hardened men of the Afrika Korps and the Luftwaffe’s latest planes.
But they did not expect to be fighting the French.
Strawn frantically considered his options. He was committed to landing. He just prayed the other flight coming in had seen the French ambush. He pushed the Spitfire hard down onto the tarmac and braked even harder. He spotted a ball of fire at the other end of the airfield where Byrd had gone in. Then he looked up to see the flight of four American Spitfires streak down on the French. Three Dewoitines were sent down in flames. Strawn smiled grimly.
As part of the French surrender in 1940, the Nazis allowed the government to administer the southern half of France and the colonies in North Africa under the ‘Vichy regime’. Before the invasion, covert contacts had been established with the Vichy French and the Allies were under the impression Algeria would be taken without a fight. Clearly, some of the French thought otherwise and were unwilling to break with the Nazi regime.
As Strawn walked over to meet with the pilots who had landed he heard the crack of gunfire and a bullet zipping overhead. Jesus! He dived under a Spitfire, trying to shelter as best he could next to its wheels. Other rounds thumped into the runway around him. They were coming from the scrub, a few hundred yards away. The French snipers, it seemed, did not want the Americans there either. He heard a chatter of machine-gun fire and an infantryman shout, ‘Got him!’
* * *
While Malta might have diverted a few hundred German aircraft and the 8th Army’s campaign in Libya was tying down the Afrika Korps, the Soviet leader Stalin demanded much more. With 180 German divisions pressing down on Russia, he wanted diversions elsewhere to relieve the pressure.
Fending off bullish US commanders demanding an invasion of Europe, Churchill and his generals had argued instead to seize the French-held territories of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. If the entire North African coast were in Allied hands, this would tighten the navy’s grip on the Mediterranean and allow for an invasion of southern Europe in 1943.
It would also be a good testing ground for US troops going into action in a western theatre for the first time, among the shrubland, forests and deserts of North Africa, set to the dramatic backdrop of the Atlas Mountains.
The plan was for the Anglo-American force to push from the west while the 8th Army drove from the east. Between them the Afrika Korps and Italians would be squeezed.
* * *
Shortly before dawn on the day after the invasion, Strawn was ordered back into his Spitfire at Algeria’s Oran airfield, close to the city’s Mediterranean port. It was 9 November 1942 and a signal had been received that a column consisting of a score or more French Foreign Legion tanks was heading up from the desert in the south to retake the airfield.
At 5.30am Strawn was revving his Merlin behind three other Spitfires ready to take off. He was eager to get at the French. The shooting-down of Byrd had been a dastardly act. The scores had to be evened.
He released his brakes and shot down the runway into the lightening sky.
The French column was not difficult to find. A large plume of dust thrown up by the tank tracks signalled their position at a pass a few miles short of the airfield.
The Spitfires carefully lined up on the column then one after another dived down, pouring fire into them as they went. ‘They were little, bitty one-man tanks in the front. They looked like World War One vehicles. They just flew apart in pieces. We got those and their supply trucks and oil tankers and motorcycles
. We caught them in a little narrow pass and it was like shooting duck pins, it was that easy.
‘I saw this motorcycle guy coming towards me. He jumped off the motorcycle and hid behind it.’ His flimsy machine would provide little defence. ‘When you’ve got eight .303s with converging fire, that thing just went sky high.’
The Spitfires swept down again and again, coming in extremely low, so low that when Strawn got back to the airfield he found telephone wires wrapped around the fuselage.
It took another day for the Vichy French forces in Algeria and Morocco to realise that continued fighting against the US and British force of 100,000 troops was pointless. To Hitler’s great fury the French surrendered. His anger was such that he ordered his troops into Vichy France, taking over the whole country. German and Italian reinforcements were rapidly sent to Tunisia.
But for Strawn and his pals it was a time to celebrate. Despite not changing clothes or shaving for four days, they went into Oran and bought some wine off the Arabs for twenty-five cents a quart, plus oranges and tangerines. A pig was killed and pork tenderloins joined the feast.
The German presence was not threatening enough to stop the men of the 309th from having a good time. A week into the operation was long enough to go without a party. Christmas was looming and who knew how long they would be around?
Strawn had heard that a few of his ground crew had served alongside some of the American big bands. He was delighted to discover that several of them had played with the likes of Glenn Miller and Henry Busse. There were saxophonists, drummers, trumpet players – enough to form a fifteen-man band of their own. Inside the former French Officers’ Mess, a row of tables and chairs was formed at one end of the room and a small stage built for the band at the other. Strawn and a few other officers grabbed a couple of French trucks and drove into the city of Oran. They found it well stocked with both drink and women. They packed the trucks with crates of champagne and fine wine then came back for the women. At least forty Allied nurses and thirty French women giggled coyly as they found themselves trucked into the airbase. The French women were in pretty polka-dot dresses; the Allied nurses had time to throw on a bit of lipstick but were still in their smart white uniforms. Everyone was in good spirits. The Americans certainly knew how to throw a party. The band played the latest numbers from across the Atlantic, while the aviators quaffed champagne from the French flutes and chatted to the women. As the night wore on, people found their partners and danced. With most of the French now throwing in their lot with the Allies, a handful of French officers sheepishly joined in the fun. ‘Everyone had a good time,’ Harry Strawn reported.
The next morning Strawn’s fug quickly cleared when the mail came through and he spotted a letter from his sweetheart, Marjorie Asquith of Muskogee, Oklahoma. ‘It was a swell letter and I believe she still likes me some,’ he wrote, thinking back again to her lovely smile and the short dance they’d had after they’d first met. It had been a blind date but they’d hit it off straight away, even if some of his flying tales had been a little embellished. He certainly had some stories to tell Marjorie now. ‘I shall have to keep writing for I think a lot of her, she would make a swell wife for me. I know I could love her more than enough.’ He knew the thought of seeing Marjorie again would sustain him and push away memories of the loss and destruction he’d witnessed. And would inevitably witness again.
But as the Americans partied, the Allies were slow to push forces eastwards to take Tunisia. Hitler was determined not to let Tunisia go and began pouring troops in by air and sea over the short hop from Sicily.
* * *
Alan Peart (back left) with 81 Squadron in North Africa
Alan Peart was still itching for action. His only combat experience had been over Dieppe and even then he hadn’t seen the Fw190 firing at him. North Africa was not going to disappoint.
81 Squadron was ordered to provide support from the coastal town of Bône (now Annaba) which had just been taken by the Allies. Bône was a delightful Mediterranean port city lined with boulevards overlooked by French colonial architecture, and the Roman ruins of ancient Hippo Regius lay on its outskirts. It was fifty miles to the Tunisian border and hence much closer to the front line. Peart carefully packed his personal possessions and clothing into the Spitfire’s ammunition bays and the storage behind the cockpit.
He flew down the Algerian coast, delighting in the changed landscape of desert, mountains and sea.
Aware that he was still the squadron novice, he carefully aligned the Spitfire’s nose on the long, rain-darkened strip at Bône, with the odd shell hole either side of the runway, and made a perfect landing. No one took any notice as he jumped down into the mud and headed towards the dispersal tent.
He had taken only a few steps when a Bofors anti-aircraft gun fired two rounds. He needed no second warning that a raid was inbound and sprinted to a slit trench fifty yards away.2
Peart looked over the lip in time to see three enemy bombers appear out of the clouds with their bomb-bay doors already open. They levelled out and then the bombs fell. A crump of explosions was followed by a blast of heat as Peart cowered in the bottom of the trench, hands over his head, willing the stick of bombs to stop short of his position.
The attack was over in less than a minute. As the drone of German engines faded, Peart stuck his head over the parapet and saw that the Spitfire he’d just flown into Bône was now a burning wreck with all his kit inside.
He was shocked at the proximity of death. ‘The bomb hit the cockpit. I’d brought that Spit all that way and now it was gone. A few seconds before I’d been in the cockpit – this was the narrow gap between life and death I was learning about and one of my closest brushes with death. We had been pitchforked into real activity and this phase was to be the most vicious form of fighting I would encounter.’
It was indeed an abrupt introduction to frontline squadron life. The promise of African sunshine, palm tree oases and dashing Arab warriors had also not yet materialised. Instead, rain pounded down on the bleak and featureless aerodrome, where the only shelter was an old dull concrete passenger terminal. The pilots huddled inside, trying to stay out of the rain and wind that blasted through the windows. Chatting was the only pastime until a raid came in, then it was a race for the nearest waterlogged slit trench. The only relative comfort was sitting strapped into their cockpits.
Peart and 81 Squadron were also still flying the outclassed Spitfire Mark Vs, painted a desert sand colour and fitted with a large, ugly protuberance under its belly. The fine dust of desert conditions meant that aircraft had to be fitted with a filter to stop engines clogging up and so preserve them. The engineers came up with the Vokes filter, an intake mounted under the nose that prevented much of the sand getting in but badly affected aerodynamics and led to at least an 8mph drop in speed.
Sitting in a replacement Spitfire, Peart looked up ruefully at the low clouds overhead. Just like home. For a moment his thoughts went back to his mother carefully arranging a neat row of dough to bake in the oven at their house in New Zealand. He had just turned twenty and was 12,000 miles from home. Operations were tough, his family and friends were at a great distance and there was no certainty he’d ever see them again. There had been very little news, just a handful of letters in the two years since he’d left New Zealand full of excitement, drive and hope. He pushed the thoughts of family and home away as he caught the familiar hum of the Spitfire warming up. He examined the clouds again and felt rising excitement as he waited for the signal to take off in pursuit of enemy bombers. It was 1 December 1942.
How the hell they were meant to find the enemy bombers somewhere up above was anyone’s guess. He felt cold and hungry. They were surviving off the fourteen-man ration packs, whose delicacies included tinned meat or fruit and a powdered milk and tea mixture, with the edge taken off by chocolate and cigarettes. But he didn’t mind. He was in his beautiful Spitfire, fully fuelled and loaded with bullets ready to take on the enemy.
And virtually smack into the middle of a formation of five Italian SM.84 bombers. Peart opened the throttle and dived towards the clouds into which the Italians had just disappeared. As he came out of the grey mass he saw the bomber immediately ahead. It was time to track down his prey.
Peart carefully placed his fighter in the mist at the base of the cloud then steadily began to overhaul the triple-engine bomber. The gap closed to 400 yards. He concentrated furiously as the turbulent air bounced him around, threatening to expose the hunting Spitfire. Then he began to pull in the SM.84, getting the distance below 300 yards. He knew within a few seconds he would be able to open up. He got to 250 yards. Still he held off. This would be his first kill and Peart wanted to make certain.
