by John Nichol
In 1942, Singapore and then Burma had been lost in the swift and ruthless Japanese conquest. Counter-attacks by the Allies the following year had held the line against a potentially disastrous invasion of India. By 1944, the British had finally managed to work out how to fight jungle warfare, with its challenges of supplies and good preparation.
Alan Peart’s 81 Squadron had been posted from Italy to India to join the campaign. Memories of lost friends and the near-misses in Italy and North Africa were left behind as he enjoyed the privileges of British imperial India.3
‘I had my first encounter with the life of wealth and opulence enjoyed by some members of the community, when I visited the swimming complex in Calcutta. I had just started undressing myself in a changing room and had my shirt over my head, when I felt fingers fumbling with my belt. Expecting to find a rogue about to rob me, I ripped my shirt off to find a uniformed bearer protesting that the Sahib was undressing himself and it wasn’t done in this club. I explained to the bearer that I preferred to undress myself.’
However, Peart was at least able to celebrate the Christmas of 1943 with some indulgence, even if Calcutta was within striking range of Japanese aircraft. ‘At Christmas we had a wonderful party, at which everyone got blotto, or at least nearly everyone. Four of us were on early morning readiness so we had to go to bed early. The rest of our group came in during the early hours of the morning carrying one of our four, in an alcoholic comatose state. When we tried to get him up at dawn we couldn’t rouse him. Walking him around the room just elicited his comment that his “shank” wouldn’t work. Finally we put him back to bed and got some other poor blighter. Later, when we returned we found out that he had a broken leg. Thereafter he was known as “Shanks” McLean.’
After a few weeks’ acclimatisation, 81 Squadron, equipped with the formidable Spitfire VIIIs, moved forward to support the Chindits.
Like many independent units, such as the SAS, the Chindits had been born under a charismatic leader intent on inflicting maximum damage behind enemy lines. With the Japanese counter-offensive looming in early 1944, Orde Wingate was given the task of harassing the enemy’s rear in north Burma, to hamstring their assault on India. Wingate decided to create fortified bases from which he could send out raiding columns to wreak havoc. Unlike the first Chindit incursion, when they infiltrated the front line on foot, this time they would fly in gliders then be supported by Dakotas.
To protect the vulnerable transport aircraft, it was decided that a half-squadron of six Spitfires should fly from the 14th Army headquarters at Imphal 200 miles behind enemy lines into the main jungle base, codenamed ‘Broadway’. Here they would refuel and if necessary rearm then defend the base from air attack during the day before flying back to Imphal after dusk.
81 Squadron was selected for the task. The pilots, led by the strong-willed twenty-two-year-old ‘Babe’ Whitamore, were already chipper. In their first combat in February 1944 they had intercepted a mass of Japanese fighters and, by using their superior climb rate, damaged a number. While the Japanese proved very aggressive, several were subsequently lost on the way home either from damage or running out of fuel.4
* * *
Peart checked his compass heading, map and watch. By his calculation they should be four minutes out. How the hell are we going to find the strip? And what are we going to find down there?
The idea of joining the vaunted Chindits seemed at first rather glamorous but the Spitfires would be far from any help. They were just six aircraft 200 miles from the nearest friendly base and now a damn sight closer to the enemy.
In the end, Whitamore gave it to them straight: You’re going to be out there on your own, with no reinforcements. Get on with the job as best you can. You’re all experienced and in Spitfire Mark VIIIs, the best aircraft about.
Whitamore also told them a Dakota had just brought into Broadway a new mobile radar set which would be capable of picking up an enemy raid from up to forty miles out. That would at least give them eight or nine minutes to scramble. Enough time to get off the ground and gain some height.
Peart’s eyes readjusted momentarily as his gaze switched from green to the deep blue as he scanned the sky. He saw Whitamore waggle his wings and head down to the treetops. They’d found the landing strip.
The six Spitfire Mark VIIIs did one circuit then took the steep approach to land. Peart held his breath as he came in sharply over the teak trees, half-expecting his tail to catch a branch in its wake. He bounced then braked hard. Thick green foliage dashed past him on either side. Ahead he could see glinting patches of the swamp’s brackish water. He came to a halt a good 100 yards short of the runway’s end and allowed himself a brief grin. Whitamore had halted fifty yards ahead.
Peart taxied over to what looked like dispersal, shut down and jumped out. The heat on the ground immediately closed in on him.
‘Breakfast over there, sir.’ One of the ground crew pointed towards a green tent, a trestle table outside with chopped logs for seating. Broadway had been used as an advanced base in a previous operation, making the engineers’ work less onerous.
Peart looked down at the plate put in front of him. It was insipid fare. A couple of anaemic soy link sausages sat next to something white and lumpy. He sniffed a sausage. It smelt of sawdust. He took a bite. Tastes like sawdust. He reached for the mug of dark tea. Thank God. At least that tasted half-normal. For once he looked forward to the dinner they’d have after flying back the 200 miles north to headquarters at Imphal that night, after their day spent protecting Broadway.
‘Sir, you have to move your aircraft.’ The corporal had a thin bead of sweat on his brow. ‘Immediately, please.’
Peart looked down at his plate then stood up, his back already wet with perspiration. What was the problem?
His Spitfire was parked on top of an unexploded bomb. Probably one from a previous attack.
Peart looked over at his friend, Whitamore, then down at his spartan breakfast. He was sure it would still be there when he got back.
The fin protruded from the ground by a good few inches and was right under the Spitfire’s belly. A couple of bomb disposal men were already leaning over it. Peart asked if he needed to move the plane. He was told not, so went back to ‘breakfast’. The tea was lukewarm but someone had added sugar to it, which helped as Peart felt sapped by the humidity.
Peart and Whitamore had just found the shallow trench that had been dug for urinals when they heard a shout behind them. A Royal Artillery soldier stood panting.
Radar had picked up four enemy aircraft thirty miles out.
They both began running towards their Spitfires, doing up their button flies as they went. Peart made a quick calculation in his head. If the Japanese were doing 360mph that would be six miles a minute which gave them five minutes to get some height. Still, at least it was only four Japanese. We’ve got six Spits.
He looked across at Whitamore as they strapped in. The squadron leader pointed at him, then upwards. The two of them were to go up to check the radar was right while the other four waited on the ground, saving fuel.
They taxied fast towards the teak tree end then threw their throttles wide open. Peart watched Whitamore’s wheel go up seconds after lift-off. He glanced down at his speed indicator. The needle hovered just below 90mph. He pulled back on the stick. As he did so a shadow swooped over the cockpit canopy. He looked up in time to see the distinctive red sun painted on the wings of a Japanese Oscar fighter just a few feet overhead.
Followed by three other fighters, it streaked towards the four stationary Spitfires, its guns already chattering.
Ahead, Whitamore did a very risky stall turn, virtually off the ground, to try to follow the Oscars. Peart pushed his throttle right through the gate for absolute maximum engine power and tried to follow. Neither managed to get sufficiently round to attack the Oscars so they clambered for height.
Pushing the Merlin engines to the extremes they managed to gain some altitude. At 2,
000ft they rolled out from an inverted position then looked around.
They were surrounded. Peart scanned left and right, above and behind. The smooth outline of Oscar fighters was everywhere. He felt his mouth go dry. Despite the heat and the clammy sweat, he felt himself shiver and go cold.
There must have been at least another sixteen Oscars undetected by the radar. They were the top cover for the four initial attackers. Peart swore softly. They had been taken completely by surprise and they were deep in the mire.
‘Green One to Green Three to Green Six, get off. Repeat, get off the deck!’
Whitamore’s order was half-pleading, half-scream. Peart reached for the transmit button but the squadron leader was still speaking.
‘He was obviously aware that we had more company than the originals and he was firing at an Oscar right in front of him, unaware that three more were right on his tail firing at him. In terms of time there were fractions of a second to assess the situation and act.’
Peart turned hard to come in behind the three assailants on Whitamore’s tail. Despite the panic gripping him, he did not neglect the basics.
He craned his neck round to quickly sweep his ‘six o’clock’.
Shit!
Not only were three Japanese locked on Whitamore’s tail, but Peart had his own three Oscars for company, lining up to take the shot.
‘One was so close that I could see the yellow strips along the leading edges of his wings and smoke dribbling back from his guns as he fired at me. Before I could even get close to Babe the aeroplane he was firing at burst into flames.’
Peart tried transmitting again to Whitamore. There was no answer. He searched the sky. Nothing.
He tried the radio again. There was no reply. In that moment he knew his friend and leader had been killed. He had no time to dwell on it. There were twenty enemy fighters in the sky around him, all bent on his destruction.
Peart was about to embark on the most intense combat of his life, where both pilot and aircraft would be tested to the furthest limits. If he was to survive he would need every skill he had ever learned and for his Spitfire to serve him as faithfully as she ever had.
‘The Japanese seemed to be everywhere, above, beside and more importantly behind. I felt acutely aware that I had nowhere to go and hoped that the superior performance of my machine would see me safely through.’
While the Spitfire could outdistance the opposition by going high, that became irrelevant as the Japanese were already above and in great numbers. It would have to be a classic low-altitude dogfight with the Oscars more manoeuvrable but not nearly as fast as the Spitfire.
Peart’s advantage was power and speed. Plus, with his mixture of cannons and machine guns, he carried better armaments. Only if I get the chance to use them. It was going to be far tougher than the twelve Me109s he’d faced alone in North Africa.
The battle was to take place at little more than between zero to 2,000ft. The enemy had him hemmed in.
Within a few seconds an Oscar was lining up for a head-on attack. Peart peered over his gunsights and fixed his stare on the approaching enemy. They were closing at a combined speed of more than 700mph and a few hundred feet above the treetops. He had to time his shot to perfection. Too early and he’d as likely miss; too late and he’d either collide or the Japanese would be past him.
Whites of their eyes, boys, he remembered Whitamore’s advice. Peart’s thumb lingered over the firing switch. Ahead, the Oscar’s cannon twinkled. Peart braced himself for the strike of rounds on the fuselage. There was nothing.
The Oscar was closing to 400 yards, 300 yards.
The silver fuselage loomed. Now 200 yards.
Peart’s right thumb pressed down hard on the firing button. His eyes followed the stream of cannon shell and bullet strikes that thudded into the Oscar. A split second later it was over his head, streaming smoke. He pulled up and looked over his shoulder to see it hurtle down into the green canopy. That one’s for Babe.
But there were another nineteen enemy planes in the sky.
‘I was flying by instinct but you were also thinking at a tremendous rate in combat. I was always trying to work out how to make myself a bad target and how to change the situation to my advantage so I could bring my guns to bear. These thoughts happen in fractions of a second.
‘I was in mortal danger and there was not a fraction of a second to think about anything other than flying for survival and to kill the enemy.’
Downing one enemy fighter had a negligible effect on the others intent on destroying the Spitfire. Peart knew the chances were stacked massively against him. He had bought a few seconds of respite but knew the reality of death could be close at hand. He was determined to survive.
‘I really felt as though I was facing death. It would have been such a waste to die this way after everything I’d been through. I fought the rising panic. There was no hope and I had no chance of survival. I just fought that panic and did everything in my repertoire to stay in the air.’
Peart’s top priority was to prevent anyone getting on his tail. One telling burst and he’d be finished. His predicament called for desperate measures. He would have to fly the Spitfire beyond all known limits if he was to get out in one piece.
‘I hauled my Spitfire into a steep, spiralling climb whilst skidding and slipping to make myself a hard target to follow. At the top I flipped over into a steep dive at full power. At the last moment I pulled the aeroplane out at maximum G-force and with satisfaction saw that I had lost the chap on my tail. But each time I attempted to out-speed them others came from altitude to latch onto my tail again. The same occurred when I tried to outclimb them.
‘The whole combat became a melee of mad flying on my part with no chance of hitting back.’
He felt as though he was in a boxing ring fighting nineteen other opponents. He was using every bit of inner strength to stay on his feet, but the physical exertion was draining him of the will to continue. If the enemy bullets did not get him then a mistake through exhaustion almost certainly would. ‘As in a boxing ring with no round breaks, fatigue began to set in. The business of such combat took considerable physical effort with the use of arms, legs, eyes and head. It wasn’t long before I began to feel really tired. I worried lest through fatigue I finally became a victim to the enemy efforts.’
Then he began to contemplate the only other route left to him – a landing in the jungle that, one way or another, would almost certainly prove fatal.
‘I preferred a possible escape from a crash-landing in a clearing rather than through sheer fatigue have some Japanese achieve the thrill of shooting me down, so I began to watch for a suitable gap in the jungle.
‘But before seriously contemplating such an escape, I decided to attempt one last desperate shot at my opponents but couldn’t see any. They had simply called the whole thing off and disappeared, probably because of fuel shortage.’
Peart pulled back the canopy and stripped off his oxygen mask, gratefully drawing in great lungfuls of air, like a drowning man who had just broken the surface.
A sudden panic gripped him as he looked down over the endless acres of green for the Broadway airstrip. It did not take long. Long streaks of smoke threaded up into the blue sky where the Japanese had hit the Spitfires on the ground. He searched the surrounding area for any other smoke plumes that might give away Whitamore’s location. There was nothing.
He was running low on fuel and there was nothing more he could do. He took a few deep breaths and, with the canopy still open, he set up the plane for the precautionary let-down. Again he gave the brakes a hard dig, just as he had done so an hour earlier, but this time as he came to a halt all around him was the smoke and fire from burning Spitfire wrecks. Of his old friend and Squadron Commander, ‘Babe’ Whitmore, there was no sight.
‘I returned to the airstrip to find fire seemingly everywhere. I landed without mishap and got out of the cockpit in a very tense condition which I relieved by running
around until my nerves quietened down.’
He had spent an exhausting forty minutes fighting in the air. The four Spitfires on the ground had been destroyed, with one pilot mortally wounded.
A feeling of exhaustion gripped Peart as he returned to his aircraft to check for damage. He then saw the stress he had put the aircraft under. Both wings were bent, scores of rivets had sprung free from the sheer G-forces he had been forced to pull. The engine was damaged by the power demanded of it and, last of all, he saw that a cannon shell had entered the cockpit but by luck or otherwise had struck nothing vital.
In a few hours it would be dark. Peart looked around at the destruction and the encroaching jungle that he knew would probably keep the secret of his friend’s final seconds for eternity. He had no desire to stay. And his Spitfire was still flyable. Just.
Peart was now going to fly home to Imphal in his Spitfire alone.
As he climbed into the late afternoon sun he contemplated the loss of his friend and leader. For the last two years, the twenty-two-year-olds had shared the same dangers, the same birthdays, the sadness and intense camaraderie of frontline warfare.
Peart looked wistfully towards the softening afternoon haze. He felt very alone in the Spitfire that had taken such a beating for serving him so doggedly. His eyes flicked down to the northerly bearing on his compass then fixed on the horizon. He knew it would be down to him to pack Whitamore’s kit and write to his family. He blinked away a tear.
Whitamore had seemed godlike and indestructible and now he was gone.
Peart had just survived one of the most astonishing feats of aerial combat witnessed in the entire war. A lone Spitfire had managed to dodge the bullets of twenty highly agile enemy fighters. Reliving those events from his retirement home in New Zealand, Alan was sanguine as he related his incredible feat. ‘I still don’t understand how I survived that fight,’ he told me. ‘I suppose I was lucky and this was a case of divine intervention.’
