by John Nichol
Farish drove back to the aerodrome to be told that the newly arrived Spitfire IXs had already downed two Germans.
Harry Strawn, who was at Thelepte when 72 Squadron flew in, was fulsome in his praise of the new fighters. ‘They are much faster than ours, have a better rate of climb and a higher ceiling. In fact they can outclimb the latest Me109 and Fw190s. They did OK too, for on their first mission they shot down two 109s and damaged two more. The Hun can’t tell them from our Mark Vs so he tries the same tactics on them that he uses on us which proves fatal, for the Nines just climb up behind them and let them have it.
‘They soon learn, though. In the afternoon we took some bombers over and the Hun wouldn’t attack us because he was afraid we were Nines instead of Fives!’
In reciprocation for the air cover, the British enjoyed the Americans’ generous hospitality, gratefully taking armfuls of peanut butter, honey, sweetcorn and fruit juices.
* * *
While the fight was raging, Hugh Dundas had arrived on operations at Souk-el-Khemis, an airstrip bulldozed from the mud in northern Tunisia, as the acting Wing Commander of 324 Wing after its boss had been injured. Aged just twenty-two, he was the equivalent of an army lieutenant colonel in rank. Dundas had demonstrated excellent leadership qualities, having recovered from Bader’s loss and the dark days of the Rhubarbs a few months previously. He had even finally proposed to his long-standing girlfriend Diana. ‘She had no qualms – she was for taking our happiness while we could. My longing to do the same was overwhelming. I would fight my private battles against fear when the moment came.’12
The wedding was planned for February 1943, but days before the event a wing leader was incapacitated in North Africa and Dundas was summoned to go back on operations.
He found the conditions of the waterlogged North African airfields a shock. He had been expecting endless stretches of sand, rolling desert dunes and a generally parched land. Furthermore, those under his command had been fighting since November and were not overly impressed with someone fresh from England. A DFC and Battle of Britain experience counted for little among those who had been bombed and strafed for four months while living in mud.
When the wing leader returned from sick leave Dundas was not left kicking his heels for long. In the midst of the Allied counter-attack of early April 1943, he was sent on a curious mission to win over a force of French airmen. The pilots were from the former Vichy regime, ostensibly on the Germans’ side, but after the Vichy surrender they had been uncertain over whose side to take or how to approach the Allies. So they took what they considered the best option – to stay put and do nothing, lying low at Bou Saâda oasis, 250 miles south of Algiers. It was understandable. This was the Africa that all the British had imagined back home. Shimmering waters of an oasis, the sun-dappled shade of palm trees, whitewashed Arab homes and veiled, exotic women. Dundas’ task was to lure the French away from this paradise and persuade them to join the fight, using Spitfires to complete the seduction.
He flew to Bou Saâda with another pilot, crossing mountains and deserts until he spotted a landing strip two miles north of the rich, green oasis. ‘A white house and massive Beau Geste fort lay like a bright splash of paint on the empty brown canvas of the desert. A couple of small, old-fashioned planes stood by a tent in one corner. As we circled I saw a man walk out of the tent and stand with his hands to his eyes, staring up at us.’
With some trepidation Dundas came in to land as his colleague circled above. The man on the airstrip, dressed in a French lieutenant’s uniform, waved in a friendly fashion.
When they were taken to the grizzled commanding officer, he did not press too hard on why Dundas was there, instead offering dinner and a bed for the night.
As the wine went round some of the younger French officers confessed their admiration for the Spitfire and their desire to get into action.
When the Spitfires had arrived, a couple of pilots had gone outside to look at the fighters from a distance. They had moved closer in, finally running their hands over the smooth lines of the elliptic wings, bending under the slender undercarriage and then stepping back to admire her from the front. There had been nods, in a Gallic fashion, which seemed to suggest approval.
The wine influenced Dundas too. He decided to tell the officers the nature of his mission, that he was authorised to ask them to join the fight to liberate Tunisia from the sale Boche – the filthy Hun.
The offer was greeted with enthusiasm and clearly called for celebration. Dundas was driven into town to a single-storey house where young women in flowing robes danced seductively.
Next, a beautiful Arab woman came in and danced, accompanied by a man playing the flute. The middle-aged female proprietor then spoke in the French commandant’s ear. The woman reappeared, only this time completely naked.
‘She danced in a voluptuous way, increasingly so as the tempo of the music quickened. The atmosphere in that little room became charged, as that desirable naked body gyrated before us in practised erotic rhythm.’
The music stopped and the girl left behind a febrile atmosphere. The commandant approached Dundas. ‘Madame’s compliments, mon colonel. The girl is yours for the night. You will be happy. She has great beauty, no?’
Dundas politely refused. ‘The vision of that voluptuous body swam before my eyes. She had great beauty, yes. And I would be happy, no doubt; but I remembered that I had come to collect a new squadron into our ranks, not to spend the night in the arms of an Arab girl. To the undisguised amazement of my hosts I declined the offer.’
However, the French went on to join the fight.
* * *
In April 1943 the Americans of the 309th finally received their own batch of Spitfire IXs, having previously watched with envy as the British got first dibs on the new mark. Four men from the 309th had flown their old Spitfires to Algiers to bring back the new planes, which had been shipped into the North African port. They were from the 5,600 Spitfire Mark IXs assembled at Castle Bromwich.
‘With a Merlin 61 engine and a four-bladed prop, we will be able to outclimb the Me109s and Fw190s,’ Strawn reported.
Within a week the entire squadron was equipped with Mark IXs flown down from Algiers. Strawn was overjoyed after his first flight. ‘What a ship it is! It has a 1,600hp engine with a supercharger which will take you up to 40,000ft or more if you need it. It is faster and has more climb than our old Fives. The Germans are scared to death of them for they know we can outclimb them.’
On 17 April Strawn sprang out of bed happy in the knowledge that he’d soon be leaping into the domineering Mark IX. Hopefully he would be able to test the new Spitfire in action. He gulped down his breakfast of a lumpy oatmeal and powdered milk mix washed down with a mug of sweetened tea. Their mission was to fly top cover at 25,000ft over southern Tunisia for a force of B17 Flying Fortresses – heavy bombers that had recently entered the campaign.
The Germans were quick to notice the new threat in their midst and were determined to inflict a big psychological blow by shooting the bombers down. They would throw everything they could at them, from 109Gs to their prized Fw190s. Strawn and his comrades knew they would have to work hard to keep the bombers safe.
It did not take long for the first interceptors to arrive. A thought crossed Strawn’s mind that finally this could be the day he got his first kill. He was desperate to prove his fighter pilot credentials. Days earlier he’d had a 109 cold but his cannons jammed. Now his flight dived down at some 109s but they got away in the melee.
In the skies above the enemy lines in southern Tunisia the American Spitfires had climbed back to their station above the bombers when a flight of Fw190s was seen streaking up to the Fortresses’ bellies. The men of the 309th rolled over and dived.
Strawn spotted a lone Fw190 below and swooped down towards him. The German saw the danger heading his way and went into a near-vertical dive. Strawn followed and the new ‘Marjorie’ held her own, matching the 190 for speed.
The gap was just close enough to open fire. Strawn gave him a burst then another burst. Cannon fire streaked towards the German, clipping his wings. A few seconds later Strawn saw white smoke come out of the fuselage.
He glanced down at his altimeter: 10,000ft. He was low, well within range of the accurate 88mm German AA fire. He had to do the sensible thing and regain height. He pulled back on the stick and searched for his squadron and the bombers. Nothing. The sky that had been full of bombers and whirling fighters minutes earlier was now empty.
Feeling a growing sense of isolation Strawn turned his aircraft in the direction of the bombing mission. As he began climbing back up to 25,000ft he looked below at the rugged mountains that gave way to flat plains. It all seemed empty and endless.
He had just climbed through 22,000ft when he felt the Spitfire lifted by a giant force and tipped over. He heard the jarring sound of metal striking metal. The aircraft juddered and shook. Above him the canopy partially disintegrated.
By pushing hard on rudder pedals and elevators he managed to drag the Spitfire the right way up. He looked to his right. Two feet of the starboard wingtip had been blown clean off. The aircraft was wobbling erratically. He started sweating as he fought to keep her stable. He looked down at his instrument panel. It was completely demolished. He felt sharps pains in his right arm. It was lacerated with shrapnel and blood seeped through his uniform. Worse, his oxygen tube was cut and he was at 22,000ft. Then the plane caught fire.
Have to get out quick before I pass out.
The terror of being burnt alive pushed him beyond the limits of pain as he used his damaged arm to get out.
‘I reached up to release my seat harness, pulling the release pin out of the right-hand side.’ He was moving faster now, the pounding adrenaline pushing aside his fears. ‘I reached up to pull the canopy release pin, which was a little ball that hung right up at the top of my head. When the canopy flew off it sucked off my oxygen mask. I took two deep breaths.’
The Spitfire inverted and Strawn fell out. Somehow, while semiconscious, he managed to pull the ripcord on his parachute. Then he lost consciousness and drifted down, a limp body hanging at the end of a piece of silk.
Strawn’s rag-doll-like body bundled into the ground. Afrika Korps troops who had seen his plight rushed over to the billowing canopy attached to the slumped American pilot. They turned Strawn over and saw he was still alive.
‘The next thing I remember is two German soldiers standing there with rifles pointing at me. I passed out again. When I came to I thought, “Oh gee! I’ve died and gone to heaven.” All I could see was all these beautiful white clouds. The soldiers couldn’t figure out how to get my parachute off so they simply picked me up, parachute and all, and put me in the sidecar of a motorcycle.’13
For the next eight hours, a German surgeon operated, skilfully sewing back together Strawn’s ulnar nerve in his elbow.
The pilot awoke on a straw mattress and under coarse sheets in a ward filled with injured Germans. The surgeon came in to see him. ‘He could speak English. He thought I was English and said he hated the English but had had to operate on me just the same. When I told him I was American his whole attitude changed and he began to talk very freely with me. He said I would soon be well and then taken to Germany where I could fish and live a very quiet life.
‘I thanked him for being so good to me and from then on we were really good friends. He came to see me twice a day after that.’
Whenever the surgeon came in the orderlies would snap to attention with a Nazi salute. It was Strawn’s first taste of the rigid control the Germans had over their men.
After more than a week in the Bizerte hospital, and as the Allies advanced into Tunisia, he was moved to another hospital in Tunis, where fifty men were packed into a room.
‘In the daytime it was swarming with flies and at night stinks of blood and sweat. Very few of us sleep. The windows had to be closed so as to have a good blackout, for at night the English bombed anything that showed light. The air raids were very frequent and more than once we could hear the bombs as they whistled overhead, dropping just across the street from us and breaking the windows. It was hell to think that one of your own bombs might blow you sky high.’
He survived by smoking strong French cigarettes. As the Allies got closer the Germans began evacuating their wounded by air, including some American pilots. Strawn was afraid. He knew his fellow airmen would pounce on the German transporters. He wasn’t wrong.
* * *
After the loss of Stalingrad two months earlier in February 1943, Hitler refused to be humiliated again. The airlift to resupply the iconic Soviet city had failed, but Tunis was different. It was not surrounded by fanatical Russians, just a gentle stretch of the Mediterranean a short 150-mile hop to the western end of the island of Sicily, where the Germans had numerous airstrips. Junkers 52 cargo planes were joined by the mammoth Me323 transporters. Tunis could easily be resupplied.
The Messerschmitt 323 ‘Gigant’ – Giant – was a further testament of German ingenuity and audacious engineering. With six engines, a 180ft wingspan, a top speed of 130mph and the ability to carry 130 troops or ten tons of supplies, they heralded a step change in airborne logistics. By comparison, the Junkers 52s could carry just 2.5 tons of supplies.
The Luftwaffe was now making 150 transport flights a day and this did not go unnoticed. Harry Broadhurst, who had demonstrated his tactical acumen in Dieppe, was now commanding the Desert Air Force with considerable success. He understood the importance of transport aircraft. Neutralising them would bring a rapid end to German resistance. Broadhurst knew too that Hitler was determined to keep the corridor to Tunisia open. The Me323s were giants and giant targets, and taking them out of the sky would not only stop supplies getting in but provide another dent to Nazi morale. A man sculpted by years of warfare had become ruthless in thought.
On 18 April, from forward bases in Tunisia, he assembled his most experienced pilots, men who for the last year or longer had fought in scorching heat, cold nights, sandstorms and whatever else the desert could throw at them. They were hardened men and grimly determined to get the job done then go home.
To some, the idea of bagging a massive transporter carrying a host of crack German soldiers was a satisfying prospect. For others, it was nasty but necessary.
From their bases in Tunisia the Spitfire squadrons assembled high in the sky, with radar vectoring them precisely onto targets over Cap Bon, the Tunisian peninsula that jutted out into the Mediterranean, pointing towards Sicily. The German transporters were flown the 150 miles from airstrips in Sicily to supply the capital Tunis. But from a long way out the giant transporters were not hard to miss, filling the sky like a flight of prehistoric birds.
Then the Spitfires and Mustangs fell upon them in their scores. It was an uneven fight, a bloodbath that even the likes of Hugh Dundas found shocking.
‘The carnage was so ghastly that our pilots had difficulty in giving coherent reports or estimates of planes destroyed,’14 reported Hugh Dundas. ‘The unfortunate Germans were helpless, like sheep caught in a pack, swiftly broken up and massacred by hunting wolves. The only return fire came from the troops inside the transports, shooting with their sub-machine guns and rifles from the doors and portholes. The convoys were flying at very low altitude and the planes could not weave or manoeuvre violently without crashing into each other or into the sea. Some men dived from the doors, without parachutes, without hope, to escape from the inferno of flame and fire. Some German pilots just pushed the nose down and crashed into the water rather than wait for the final certainty of destruction by our fighters.’
The only respite came when the fighters ran out of ammunition. Just half the transports got through.
The Luftwaffe tried to answer the threat by sending up hordes of fighters o
ver Cap Bon when the next convoy came in. Broadhurst countered by sending his wing of veteran fighters against them, allowing the slower US Kittyhawks and some fighter-bombers to tear into the transporters. This time the 323s were carrying petrol for the panzers. Plane after plane went down into the sea, streaming an inferno of burning fuel, aircraft and bodies before crashing into the water and subsiding with a hiss. ‘Thirty-one of them fell, trailing fire across the sky and burned on the calm surface of the sea,’ Dundas reported.
In a final act of desperation, the transports went in at night. And again they were slaughtered. Heavily armed Beaufighters, equipped with advanced radars in their noses, were able to track then home in on the planes. The surviving German transporters arrived singly into Tunis, the looks on their crews’ faces showing men who never wanted to take to the skies again.
Cut off in the capital Tunis, other ports and in the mountains with no supplies to continue the fight, the Germans capitulated en masse. By 13 May, 240,000 Afrika Korps and Italians had become prisoners.
The Luftwaffe lost a third of its total strength in the campaign from November 1942 to May 1943, with some 2,400 aircraft destroyed. By comparison, the RAF and USAAF lost just 849.
* * *
Fortunately for Harry Strawn he was not put on a flight to Germany. During the last few days of German resistance the fighting intensified, but then on 9 May 1943 the hospital commander surrendered to a British captain captured a few days earlier.
The surgeon Strawn had befriended handed over his Luger pistol then said: ‘I once told you the war was over as far as you were concerned but now it is over for me. However, I am glad for I am tired of it all and at least I know I will get home to my wife after it is over.’
Strawn felt the relief of surviving the campaign wash over him. At last he could seriously contemplate returning to the States for a joyful reunion with Marjorie. Ever since their first date two years earlier, he had been smitten, every minute spent in her company relived in detail during the quiet moments on operations. After a few months in hospital in England, Strawn was well enough to cross the Atlantic and return home. Their reunion was indeed joyful, the romance instantly rekindled as Marjorie threw herself into his arms after he walked down the gangplank. They returned together to Muskogee, Oklahoma, where they were married in October 1943.
