by John Nichol
At the last minute the German rear gunner must have called ‘break’ and done it with perfect timing. The Dornier had banked hard to starboard just as Peart was about to fire.
As the Spitfire again chased it down, the pilot weaved from side to side. They would know he’d flown from Sicily and had limited fuel. If they could stay out of harm’s way for long enough they’d survive.
But the Spitfire could easily outmanoeuvre a twin-engine bomber, albeit a fast one. Peart closed again to within 300 yards. A yellow flicker came from the back of the Dornier. A split second later Peart saw tracer rounds zip over his canopy. Damn close. He’d not come up against such a skilled crew before.
He flipped his Spitfire left then right, throwing off the gunner’s aim. Then he straightened up and set himself up for a quarter flank attack on the Dornier’s port side. He grimly focused on the target, aiming a deflection shot fired from 300 yards. He’d have liked to have got closer but the distance was well within his capability.
He pressed down on the firing button, letting go with his two 20mm cannons and four machine guns. The Spitfire juddered and slowed marginally as the guns forced their projectiles out of the wings. For a second the Dornier flew on untouched. Then Peart spotted flashes of bursting cannon shells pucker the port wing. The Dornier dived hard to starboard. Peart saw his two colleagues’ Spitfires flash overhead, their guns spurting bullets towards the bomber.
They missed.
Peart cursed at their inexperience then hauled himself round for a second approach. This time the rear gunner was firing almost constantly but now with little accuracy.
‘I then made my second attack adopting the same approach tactics while the bomber pilot did his best to dodge. I opened fire again with both cannons and machine guns and this time my fire hit the bomber solidly. A large piece flew off and there was a big bang as my aeroplane flew into it.’
Slowly the Dornier began to lose height, the pilot fighting at the controls to find stability. He managed to nurse it down towards the ground and make a good crash-landing on the side of the hill. Peart waited for flames followed by black smoke. Nothing came. There was a good chance the crew had survived. They had fought well. He was pleased.
A transmission from a wingman requesting a strafing run on the downed Germans broke into thoughts.
Peart denied the request.
The wingman argued that they were behind enemy lines.
Peart again declined. ‘The bravery of the crew in carrying out an operation unescorted by fighters in the face of overwhelming odds was most impressive. They had defended themselves with great determination and skill. They deserved the chance to live.’
Before they could argue further an urgent voice came over the radio.
‘Mayday! Mayday!’
It was Bill Fell, the twenty-year-old who had recently joined the squadron. Peart knew panic would be seizing hold of the pilot trying to exit the small cockpit with the growing terror that he could be trapped inside and burnt alive.
Abandoning an aircraft was a procedure that had to be precisely sequenced. They practised it almost every day, especially with the new pilots, and usually blindfolded. But doing it for real was entirely different.
‘When the temperature in the cockpit is searing and things are burning, it can be expected that the sequence can become a little hurried, even essential bits can be overlooked. The imminent probability of an almighty explosion could ensure a too-rapid execution of the exit procedures. Bill had all of these problems to face.’
Flying close by, Peart began to relay the instructions Fell needed to hear.
‘Trim your nose down, Dog Four. Undo helmet electrical connections.’ Peart rapidly went through the drill. ‘Unclip oxygen tube.’ He could hear Fell panting frantically over the radio. ‘Stay calm, Dog Four. Jettison canopy. Release harness. Good. Now roll your aircraft. Good luck.’
Fell rolled the Spitfire onto its back and dropped out of the cockpit just as it started to dive. Immediately his parachute caught on the tail rudder, the Spitfire dragging him down with it. Peart looked on helplessly as the plane with its pilot attached to the tail plummeted towards the earth.
‘The machine with Fell trailing behind was diving vertically to the ground. We watched in horror at the certain loss of a well-liked colleague.’
The Spitfire was just a few hundred feet from impacting with the ground when to everyone’s amazement Fell separated from the doomed fighter and his parachute spilled open.
‘Just before reaching the ground Fell broke free and to our surprise his parachute opened. His plane went in with an explosion and a great gout of flame and smoke, while Bill did one swing in his harness before his body disappeared through trees to hit the ground close by.’
Peart breathed in shock and joy at seeing his comrade spared from death at the very last moment. It was turning into a good sortie after all.
Then he looked down at his fuel gauge. Chasing down the Dornier and following Fell had left him with a fuel tank nudging empty. He glanced down at the smoke and explosions coming from the Salerno beachhead. Small, dark shapes of fighters and Dakota cargo planes buzzed around the great mushroom of dust and debris. Clearly the airstrip Hugh Dundas had landed at a few days earlier was in heavy use despite being in the midst of the maelstrom.
They were out of choices. There was at least a chance of finding a bowser of aviation fuel down there, then getting the hell out and back to the peace of Sicily.
Peart pushed the stick down and ordered his colleagues to follow. There was no air traffic control; planes were just piling into the airstrip when they could.
Peart lined up for his landing when from nowhere a Dakota suddenly filled the airspace in front, cutting him off. Peart banked hard, coming round up behind another Dakota. It was terrible flying but he was out of fuel and had no choice. He leapt over the Dakota in front and dived for the airfield.
‘I gave him my slipstream. He wobbled badly and gave way and I entered the dust pall on my landing approach.’
A seemingly clear and straight landing strip appeared ahead. Peart felt his wheels touch down on the dirt and breathed out in relief. As he began to brake, the dust cleared ahead. He gasped, feeling adrenaline pump around his body. A Spitfire that had stalled on take-off was straddling the runway 100 yards ahead. Peart jammed on the brakes. His aircraft skidded then slewed round, veered off the strip and went onto its nose. Peart braced himself for a potentially lethal overturning. The tail waved in the air then slammed back down, right way up.
Peart knew he had to move fast. He threw back the canopy, jumped onto the ground and ran to the stricken Spitfire. The sound of aircraft engines overhead was joined by something else. Shellfire.
He had no time to worry about the dangers: they had to get the fighter out of the way before someone collided with it and made the entire strip unusable. He spotted the pilot frantically tugging at the cockpit controls.
‘No time,’ Peart shouted. ‘We have to push her off. Release the brakes.’
The pilot jumped down and they took a wing each. Peart felt his flying boots skid in the dirt as they inched the three-ton Spitfire forward. He heard a plane fly low overhead. Remembering his rugby days in New Zealand, he bent low at the knees, as if in a scrum, and pushed hard. The inches turned into feet as the fighter built up momentum. He quickened his pace to keep up the speed. The aircraft trundled over some matting then slipped off the runway.
As they were tinkering with the engine, Peart could make out the distinct chatter of machine guns nearby. Bullets streaked overhead. The scream of an artillery shell pushed through the air. Two seconds later it was followed by the thump of detonation.
He could see flashes not far off in the foliage less than a mile from the airstrip. He glanced left and right. There was no fuel bowser in view and no one about. It was becoming obvious that the airstrip was close to being overrun. He had to sacrifice his machine and get out. They had been warned that it was vital that their late
st ‘Identification Friend or Foe’ device should not fall into enemy hands. Peart ignored the incoming rounds and sprinted to his Spitfire. He climbed onto the wing, leaned into the cockpit and activated the IFF self-destruct button. As he ran back into the cover of the trees he heard a small crump of detonation from the plane.
Then he heard the rumble of a Dakota’s Pratt and Whitney engines. He had an idea. He ran down the side of the runway, hugging the treeline as the leaves twitched from bullet strikes.
The chatter of machine guns spurred him on. He began sprinting, regardless of the mayhem around him. He waved frantically at the pilot, who slid back the cockpit window as Peart got alongside.
‘Where are you going, mate?’
The pilot glanced down at Peart’s flying uniform. ‘Sicily. Need a lift?’
‘Absolutely,’ Peart gasped. ‘Thanks.’
‘Jump aboard and come up front.’
Peart gratefully leapt through the cargo side door. As he made his way to the cockpit, he felt the cargo plane lurch forward. He staggered into the cockpit where the pilot’s total focus was on getting the plane aloft.
Peart suddenly realised that their direction of travel over the end of the runway would take them directly over the German lines. ‘I could just about see the whites of their eyes. At any moment I expected to see holes sprouting in the bottom of the aircraft as their gunners homed in on us. Perhaps they were otherwise engaged for no holes appeared.’
He relaxed marginally as the Dakota began its slow, steady climb away from the inferno of Salerno but could not stop himself from scanning the sky for Fw190s in the hunt for easy prey. He felt for his parachute.
When he arrived at 81 Squadron’s aerodrome on Sicily he discovered that only one of his pilots had got back. ‘Darkness came and there was no word from the others and we began to have grave doubts as to their safety. Because of the appalling operational conditions at the Salerno landing strip, what with its lack of any flying control, the dust, low visibility and the signs when I left of the enemy possibly overrunning the strip, I really did wonder.’
With a grim face, ‘Babe’ Whitamore told him that one of their pilots from the flight had been killed during a collision at Salerno shortly after Peart left. The accident had a feeling of inevitability about it.
It had not been a successful sortie. Just one Spitfire had returned intact, one had been shot down and four destroyed or abandoned.
The Allies just managed to hold off the Germans from the beaches at Salerno during three weeks of hard fighting. But only just. If Hitler had released reinforcements from northern Italy they might well have been overrun. As it was they suffered 5,000 dead, and eighty-five ships, including several hit by Fritz X guided bombs, were lost or badly damaged. In the end it was Montgomery’s 8th Army, pushing up from the heel and toe of Italy, that forced Kesselring to withdraw in the face of overwhelming numbers, as well as Allied air and naval superiority.
But the campaign for Italy was still in its early stages. Soon the Allies would find themselves confronted by a series of well-prepared defences running across the country.
* * *
The winter weather and defensive terrain slowed the Allied advance to a crawl that stalled at Monte Cassino, 100 miles south of Rome. The Allies decided to outflank the Germans by launching a seaborne landing behind German lines, just south of the capital. The beaches around Anzio were chosen and on 22 January 1944 a force of 115,000 mostly American troops landed. But they were slow to break out and German reinforcements arrived in the surrounding hills in time to bombard the bridgehead, pinning down the Americans.
A temporary airfield was laid at Nettuno, next to the Anzio beachhead, using pierced steel plating, but under the bombardment it soon became untenable, only to be used for emergency landings.
On 14 February 1944 a Spitfire IX from 111 Squadron, flown by Bamby Taylor, suffered engine failure and was forced to land at Nettuno. A new batch of ‘IXs’ had been consistently breaking down.
The Nines’ failures caused no end of worry for Greggs Farish, who had been injured in an accident in Sicily and had returned to active service as 111 Squadron’s engineering officer, based at Lago airfield, near Salerno. Farish gave another pilot some spark plugs for Taylor’s aircraft and he flew off to Anzio in the squadron’s reliable Spitfire V. The pilot returned to Lago alone and clearly shaken. Nettuno was under constant shellfire, the American engineers had evacuated the runway, so Bamby had no one to fix his plane. Furthermore, the shell holes and crashed aircraft were making the airstrip increasingly tricky. 12
Knowing that one of his pilots was stranded under shellfire on a hostile landing ground set Farish contemplating a wild scheme, something he had gone through in his mind as he sat at the controls of a Spitfire during engine checks.
As an engineer officer, Farish lived cheek by jowl with the fighter pilots, forming strong bonds that made him double-check that every Spitfire they took airborne was in the best possible condition.
‘Living with the pilots in the mess was a great privilege, even when one lost a good personal friend. Indeed it was perhaps wise, being a ground officer, not to become too friendly with the pilots. But how could one avoid that with people like Tom Hughes, Sexton Gear and Chas Charnock? It would not be untrue to say that without showing it, I loved and worshipped all pilots.’
Tom Hughes, June 1943
Farish had dearly wanted to become a flier but his poor eyesight made him ineligible. However, he had done a couple of hours’ tuition on a dual-control Italian biplane under the instruction of his friend Tom Hughes. Hughes realised Farish had talent but found landings difficult because of his thick glasses. ‘He could not see the “blades of grass” so his judgment was never very good near the ground.’13
Farish stood next to a Spitfire and rubbed his thumb along his chin. He was gripped by an urge to get Bamby Taylor off the airstrip before he was killed because an engine had failed.
‘Damn it.’ Farish took off his glasses, cleaned them with a dry rag then set off with a purposeful stride towards the operations lorry. There, he casually took out a Mae West life jacket and a parachute. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary for an engineer officer. He next visited the hut used by his ground crew to store their tools, taking a spanner, screwdriver and other bits.
As he walked over to his Jeep he passed a pilot lounging in a comfortable wicker chair in the shade of some leafy trees. ‘Spits’ landing speed is around 90mph, isn’t it?’ he asked innocently.
‘Yes,’ the pilot responded, ‘and with the flaps down you could do it at 85mph.’14
Farish mumbled a ‘thanks’ then got in his Jeep and drove to the squadron’s Spitfire V, which he knew had never broken down.
With his heart racing, and striving to appear normal, Farish slung the parachute into the cockpit, donned the Mae West then told his flight mechanic to strap him in. His men were used to carrying out orders. No one asked any questions. It wasn’t that unusual for the engineer officer to taxi a Spitfire to test its engines.
However, one or two shared the odd glance. Why was he wearing a Mae West and a parachute?
Firmly strapped in, Farish looked around the runway, taking in the light green of the olive orchard, the birds arcing in the sky out to sea. He felt a gentle breeze against his cheek and double-checked the wind direction.
The aerodrome was quiet and peaceful. There were no aircraft in the sky or coming in. All the pilots were in the mess having their afternoon tea.
If he was going to do it, now was the time.
‘I was outwardly calm but inwardly cold, shivering all over, yet clear and absolutely determined now.
‘I looked around the dispersal, nobody seemed to be taking much notice, so I started up and taxied out fast to the runway.’
One or two heads had turned at the sound of the Merlin breaking the afternoon siesta. Farish hurried the Spitfire to the end of the runway. As he turned into the wind he knew now he was committed. The Merlin’s
roar increased and people began running out of tents and the Officers’ Mess, waving their arms furiously. A flight sergeant got to within a few yards, making the sign for Farish to switch off.
‘I just looked him straight in the face and pushed the throttle open.’
The Spitfire lurched forward. Farish was thrust back into his seat by the immense, almost overpowering acceleration. He had seen many Spitfires take off, but to experience the power of the Merlin pulling him like a bolting horse down the runway was something different.
As he fought to hold the plane on a straight and steady course, he felt a lightness in the wings. He glanced at the olive grove flashing past. Must be fast enough for take-off. He pulled back on the stick. The Spitfire lifted momentarily then slammed back down, drifting alarmingly off to port. Images of the tyres bursting and the legs collapsing underneath him terrified Farish as he fought to correct the drift.
Then he was going straight and true again. Within seconds the speed built. The wings vibrated, seemingly demanding to get airborne. Farish carefully pulled back on the stick again. Instantly the Spitfire was in the air. Freed from the ground it flew skywards. And sky was all that Farish could see. He had lost the horizon. Greggs Farish, an engineer with no formal flying training, was airborne in a Spitfire Mark V.
It felt like the fighter was in a near-vertical climb, just hanging in the air by the sheer power of the propeller. The tail began buffeting violently. Farish knew he had to do something. He took a breath and pushed the stick forward.
The Spitfire responded instantly. Quicker than Farish was prepared for, far quicker than the biplane he had flown with Tom Hughes. The nose flicked down and the horizon all too quickly came into view. The engineer officer found himself hurtling towards the deck.
He did not have time to wipe a smear of sweat from his glasses. Gently, he pulled the stick back.
The Spitfire’s nose came up and she soared up again, but not as steeply as the first time. Farish glanced down at the altimeter. 1,500ft. That was good. He had some room below at least. But the aircraft still felt like it was fighting against something. He looked down to his right and saw the undercarriage lever. He admonished himself. It was still in the down position.
