by John Nichol
Ken French visited the area after strafing it from the air.13 ‘The aftermath of the fighting in the Falaise Gap was horrendous. We had witnessed it from the air but down here was the reality. Mile upon mile of destruction, quite literally the death of an army. As far as you could see, burnt-out lorries and tanks and the bodies of soldiers and horses lying about everywhere. The weather was hot so you can imagine the terrible smell and this was going to get worse before time was found to bury all the dead.’
As the advance continued, so the airfields moved deeper inland. French’s 66 Squadron arrived five miles north of Caen in late August as the British attempted to push eastwards.
When not flying, Ken French took every opportunity to explore the countryside and meet the locals. On one occasion lorry loads of German prisoners trundled past. ‘They looked very weary and frightened and I am sure most of them were glad to be out of it as they must have had a very hard time. Even though they were under guard it put a shiver down your spine seeing them at close quarters.’
After a week of Spitfire sorties, French was given a day off to do as he pleased. He wanted to experience more of the ground campaign he had observed so much from the air. He and a couple of pals hitch-hiked their way forward, driving past pleasant woods and hills until the peace was shattered by the crack of artillery. ‘It was a sharp reminder that we were getting close to the action. We saw a number of soldiers in various poses of readiness. When one found out this was our day off he said: “Blimey, when we get a day off we go in the other direction!” ’
The troops were from the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, who took in the RAF sightseers, giving them a briefing on the battle situation.
The Spitfire pilots found themselves on a ridge of high ground just west of Lisieux, a small town twenty miles east of Caen. ‘The enemy down in the valley were at that moment counter-attacking to try to throw our troops back across the river, which was a bit alarming as they were less than half a mile away. It would have been very embarrassing if we had been captured! The CO said the enemy force was about 200 men, which was roughly the same as ours. They were putting down mortar fire in the area of the river crossing so our troops were having difficulty in getting supplies across but he assured us everything would be all right in the end. The major then took us out into the orchard where the noise was deafening with a constant whistle of shells going over which, he informed us, were ours, which was comforting. He then picked out another sound which he said was mortar shells falling just the other side of the hedge about 100 yards away. If we would like to crawl under the hedge we could watch the battle going on down at the river.’
The Spitfire pilots decided they preferred war in the air rather than on the ground. ‘We were mindful of the mortar shells landing just the other side of that hedge so made our excuses that it was getting late and we had to get back before dark. We took our leave and thanked our host for going to so much trouble to make our visit interesting.
‘Before we had gone very far along the road our progress was stopped by a staff car from which a general emerged. He expressed surprise at seeing the RAF up near the front and when we explained ourselves I think he thought we were daft, but we also felt that he was pleased we were showing an interest.’
On the same day, 25 August 1944, Paris was liberated. The German army was on the run, albeit in its usual orderly fashion, managing to extricate nine out of eleven panzer divisions from France.
But the Allied air-to-ground attacks had hampered supplies getting to the potentially devastating panzer divisions. The Allies’ overwhelming numbers had also kept the Luftwaffe at bay and away from the huge supply stockpiles on the beaches.
As the Allies began to rapidly push forward through France and into Belgium, growing evidence of German atrocities emerged.
Ken French’s Spitfire squadron had advanced with the rest of the Allied forces to an airstrip outside Lille. Still eager to explore his surroundings, French found himself at a fort where eighty men, women and children had been taken hostage then executed in retaliation for Resistance activity. ‘I had noticed a very unpleasant smell and saw a number of people in the vicinity of the graves and an ambulance standing by. A Frenchman approached and told me the bodies were being exhumed to be given a proper burial. One grave was open, hence the smell, and he asked me to see for myself so that, when I went back to England, I could tell people what the Germans had done to them. I went with him to the graveside and it was a horrible sight, the bodies of four men with their hands tied behind their backs. It was a most unpleasant experience but they were right to involve me as these things should not be forgotten.’
* * *
By September, the Belgian capital Brussels had been liberated. Derek Walker flew again into Hamble with a proposition for his wife, Diana Barnato Walker. A photo reconnaissance Spitfire was needed in Brussels to take pictures of the German lines fifteen miles away but he had no spare pilot to fly it. As Diana had four days’ leave, could she bring it over?14
It was music to Diana’s ears. While ATA men were now allowed to ferry aircraft over the Channel, the women, who had proven they could fly anything from a Tiger Moth trainer to heavy bombers, were not.
‘Oh no, girls can’t go! There aren’t any lavatories for them,’ had been the excuse.
Anticipating her answer that she wasn’t permitted to go, Derek told Diana that as she was on leave it was an RAF job not ATA. He then produced a letter from his boss giving her permission to ‘travel to Brussels’.
For a moment Diana was speechless. This was truly a momentous opportunity. As far as she was aware, never before in the history of aviation had a husband and wife couple flown together into a country at war. It would be truly unprecedented, and the fact it was in the most sleek, beautiful and seductive aircraft made it doubly so.
‘Of course,’ she blurted out, her eyes shining with excitement.
On 2 October 1944, Diana turned up at Northolt where she was given the Wing Commander’s personal Spitfire Mark VII, the model fitted with the early pressurised cockpit for high-altitude flying to intercept high-level reconnaissance planes over Britain and Egypt. She was about to embark on a truly astonishing adventure.
As Derek sat in his idling Spitfire, under the gaze of RAF mechanics Diana gingerly slid open the cockpit canopy and slipped in behind the controls. The mechanics looked on with doubting expressions as she crammed her weekend bag in the cockpit, complete with a make-up carrier. The apprehension left their faces as she expertly fired up the Spitfire then waved them away.
As the two Spitfires soared into the air, Diana remembered Derek’s last words to her. ‘Whatever happens,’ he warned, ‘don’t land anywhere else. If anything crops up, get yourself back to England.’
Flying wingtip to wingtip over southern England on an easterly heading to Brussels, a grin of sheer elation swept across Diana’s face. ‘As we headed out over the Channel I marvelled at the scene. This had to be a unique event: a husband and wife flying two operational Spitfires across to the continent in wartime. Other husbands and wives may have flown together, but our set of circumstances left them all standing.’
After just an hour’s flight in clear weather over liberated Europe, the two Spitfires came in to land at Brussels. There were a few baffled looks on the ground as the two Spitfire pilots landed in perfect formation then left their aircraft together holding hands.
The husband and wife then entered Belgium’s capital city which was still revelling in the joy of liberation, exactly a month earlier. Diana was quickly gripped by the party spirit. ‘Everyone hugged and kissed everyone else, while the streets were full and noisy. There was the near-distant rumble of guns but no one seemed to take any notice. I kept bumping into all sorts of friends from the army as well as the RAF.’
The next day Derek agreed that Diana should be allowed to fly the Spitfire around Brussels and the surrounding area for a ‘test flight’. With the front line not too far away, she decided to see it from 20,000
ft up on her side of the line. ‘I had a look at where I was told the Germans would be. It all seemed quiet to me and I couldn’t make out from high up where the so-called front line lay. Nobody took a pot shot at me.’ She came back safely then returned to the capital to enjoy its legendary hospitality.
‘We had glorious days of fun and food. The Belgians had sugar, sweets, wine – all sorts of things that we in Britain hadn’t seen for years. They had leather shoes and handbags in the shops and no clothes rationing – their war was over.’
With her flight home delayed by persistent fog the couple extended their stay. ‘Derek and I had now been together for longer than on our May honeymoon. In fact, this whole episode seemed more like a honeymoon for us, in a foreign country, foreign city with friendly foreign and British friends.’
Despite the fog, after six days’ holiday the couple took off for RAF Northolt with Derek promising that if things were bad they would turn back. Derek flew at high speed on the RAF’s high fuel consumption rate rather than the ATA’s more restrictive, fuel-saving one. Unaccustomed to the speed, Diana found herself struggling to keep up in the tricky weather. ‘I could scarcely see anything except now and then a flash of light underneath from the water when we crossed a dyke or canal. All the rest was just yellow muck. I was unable to map-read so I kept hoping Derek would stick to his word and turn back, now he had had a look at the weather. But he plunged on so I had to stay beside him.’
Diana concentrated furiously on keeping up with her husband’s Spitfire. Suddenly, the glamour and romance of their week away was being swallowed by the dangers of the dense mist. After twenty minutes the visibility worsened and then the worst happened. ‘Derek disappeared into dense muck beside me. When I looked again he wasn’t there.
‘Suddenly I was on my own but where in heaven was I? I went down low to circle, trying to pinpoint my position, but there were no features, only open farmland. I didn’t dare stay in one place very long because I didn’t know where the Germans were. I certainly didn’t feel like being shot down.’
Diana had flown in harsh weather before and now recalled the advice given by her two Spitfire pilot friends a year earlier. Think.
She throttled back to conserve fuel then set off on a north by north-west course, estimating that within seven and a half minutes she’d hit Dungeness on the south Kent coast. Then she flew into thick sea fog. Not being good on instruments she went up to 4,000ft into glorious sunshine. She spotted a plane and turned towards it, thinking it was Derek. It was a Dakota.
Like Hugh Dundas after his first dogfight over Dunkirk, Diana thought she might now be totally lost and heading into oblivion. Fighting back the panic, she readjusted her course to due north. After fifteen minutes of flying low she experienced a feeling of utter joy as she spotted a beach running east to west. ‘There, right behind it, looming up beside me with a rusty grin, was the huge gasometer of Bognor Regis.
‘I flew round the gasometer, crept up the river to Chichester then turned right into Tangmere circuit. My, it was foggy! All the runway lights were on, while green and white Very flares were being fired up through the murk. “Just my luck,” I thought, “they’re bringing in a squadron and I’ll have to wait my turn.” It was now so thick that I stayed quite close to the circuit while keeping a good lookout for other aircraft, which I thought would jump out at me from the muck at any moment.
‘After a few minutes, not having seen any sign of other aircraft I decided it was now my turn before I ran out of petrol.
‘Feeling the ground beneath my wheels was terrific. I taxied in, parking next to the watch office, where, to my amazement, I saw Derek’s Spitfire. He came running out, his face as white as a sheet. With an air of wonderment and relief, he said: “How on earth did you get here? Do you know that this is the only airfield in the whole of the south of England that is open?” ’
He had also sent up the cascade of Very flares in the desperate hope his wife would see them.
That night she slept soundly in a Chichester inn. Derek heard the church clock strike every fifteen minutes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Jimmy Taylor
The cavern of deep blue blanketed the sky above Jimmy Taylor’s head. He reached up to the cockpit canopy to touch it. He smiled. The blue was everywhere but untouchable.
Taylor was happy. He was flying a sky-blue Spitfire Mark XI that had been lovingly polished by his mechanics to give it an extra few miles per hour. To be in a Spitfire and on operations had been a boyhood dream. As a teenager, he had first seen a Spitfire’s alluring shape as it swept over the bracken of Aldershot in 1938. Now he was flying one of its most graceful models. After two years of training, which included a stint in America, by September 1944 Jimmy Taylor had left behind Eton and his fleet of model aircraft to fly the real thing.
Better still, he was in a clean war. The photo reconnaissance Spitfire of 16 Squadron carried no weapons. Just four formidable cameras which some argued were more effective than any gun or bomb.
Taylor’s gaze lingered over the sleek wing then checked the rear-view mirror for the umpteenth time. His eyes went beyond the plane’s elegant tail, ensuring there was no giveaway condensation trail or that a ‘bandit’ was about to jump him from the rear. The sky was clear, pure and beautiful.
What an exotic bird of prey rather than a weapon of war. Taylor was happy in himself. This is a really good job. The cleanest way to fight.
He checked his altimeter again. It was steady at 30,000ft.
Time to commence another run.
Below him was the key road artery around Salzwedel that linked Berlin to the cities of Hamburg and Bremen. The order had come from Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) to photograph forty miles of the highway. They wanted to know its condition and who or what was using it.
Taylor lined up the Spitfire for a straight run and pressed the exposure button. Every two seconds the two sophisticated F52 cameras, mounted just behind him in the plane’s belly and pointing vertically down, took pictures.
The 36in focal-length lenses were capable of taking 500 photographs. On a good day the cameras could snap 1:12,000 scale pictures, allowing the photo interpreters to spot a man on a bicycle from the 8 x 7in prints.1
Taylor’s 500 frames would each be minutely examined by the expert photo interpreters at RAF Medmenham, in Buckinghamshire. It was whispered that his Photographic Reconnaissance Unit provided a better form of intelligence than that which came from secret intercepts, giving commanders almost real-time intelligence of precisely what the enemy was up to. The Germans knew the PR Spitfire’s strategic importance and were determined to stop them. Taylor had to take his chances with radars, radar-guided flak and jet fighters.
He checked the sky as he finished the run then looked down at his map. The reconnaissance pilots were very much on their own, deep over enemy territory, so their navigation had to be superb to find and photograph the target.
Taylor nodded to himself then turned to the west, heading back to friendly airspace.
He looked overhead, behind, then glanced below. His eyes instantly caught double contrails disappearing under the Spitfire’s nose 2,000ft lower. His mouth went dry and his heart raced.
Messerschmitt 262.
The jet fighter with the long sinister nose and twin jet engines had developed a grim reputation since appearing in the skies a few months earlier. Its reputation was earned from the sheer power of its jets which thrust it to 560mph, a good 100mph faster than the Spitfire XI. It also came with the awesome firepower of four nose-mounted 30mm cannons.
It was Taylor’s first encounter with the enemy. He took deep breaths of oxygen to control the adrenaline rush. The jet was speeding off to his right. Perhaps it hadn’t spotted him? No. Slowly the German began to turn in a big circle, homing in on the Spitfire.
‘This is where young James starts for home,’ Taylor said to himself.
The clouds were a go
od twenty miles away. He had no choice but to climb up as fast as possible and hope to hold the jet off before he reached safety. The enemy aircraft started climbing up in pursuit.
‘I felt a horrible dread in my stomach when I imagined the cannon and machine guns he obviously packed in his nose. I opened the throttle wide and climbed at the fastest possible rate, heading for distant France and using up precious gallons every minute. Meanwhile, “Joe” swept from side to side, but never really dropping far below. And so it went on for five minutes.’
Suddenly the confident roar of his faithful Merlin engine subsided into silence. Taylor’s eyes swept over the stilled propeller then his instrument panel. He thought frantically. Thirty vital seconds passed as the Spitfire slowed.
Got it!
The wing fuel tanks had run out. ‘Frantically, I turned onto mains and it seemed ages before the old Merlin picked up again. Then on I went, scared to find the German getting closer behind. At 37,000ft I levelled off and turned slightly to see how “Joe” was coping. The devil was still coming on, so I had no alternative but to go on climbing and found myself at 39,000ft. Here I levelled off again, thinking that “Joe” could not make it, for it was devilish high and I’d turned my oxygen on to full. I was too excited to feel or notice any ill-effects, but I got a shock when I turned to look for “Joe”.
‘Now he looked most menacing, being just underneath my tail about 1,000 yards behind but still fortunately 2,000ft beneath. His speed brought him level with me. Then he turned to the right and made off into the distance. I expected him to come back again but the last I saw of him he had put his nose down and was losing height, soon becoming a speck then invisible. I suspected a trap – it was too good to be true – but, though I searched the sky in all directions, I could see no sign of him or any compatriots.’
