Flames in the Sky: Epic stories of WWII air war heroism from the author of The Big Show (Pierre Clostermann's Air War Collection Book 2)

by Pierre Clostermann

  Bay, who had just pulverised a Sally, was rash enough to chase after a Zero who was doing a shallow dive. Just as the Spitfire opened fire at 300 m.p.h. the Zero did a perfect loop of 200 yards radius, which brought him on the Spitfire’s tail. Bay, flabbergasted, by sheer reflex action luckily flicked over on his back and got away by a vertical dive, from 23,000 feet to practically sea-level. On that day seven Spitfires were shot down, and only two Zeros could be added to the score.

  These few examples show that the Zero was a very worthy opponent, in the hands of quite average pilots. What was the Japanese designers’ secret?

  Colonel Hayward, from the test centre at Wright Field, has given the answer in one sentence: ‘The Zero?—it’s a light sports plane with a 1300-h.p. engine!’ And it is true that the unladen weight of the Zero was under 4000 lb., while the Spitfire IX, same size and with an only slightly more powerful engine, weighed 6500 lb. Yet both had the same main armament, two 20-mm. cannon, and carried much the same number of shells.

  The Zero, 1942 version, climbed to 10,000 feet in three minutes dead, and at the absolutely phenomenal angle of 45 degrees, while the two standard 1944 American fighters, the P-47G and the P-38G, took four minutes to reach the same height. At 23,000 feet the Mustang P-51, the fastest U.S. Army fighter in 1944, only had a margin of 65 m.p.h. over the 1942 Zero. But in 1944 the Zero had been replaced in the front line by the George, which batted along perfectly happily at 425 m.p.h.

  The real secret of the Zero lay in the method of construction. Instead of being built in separate units—wings, fuselage, tail-unit, engine-housing, engine, etc.—and assembled afterwards, the Zero was constructed all of a piece, or, rather, two pieces. The engine, cockpit and fore part of the fuselage combined with the wings to form one rigid unit. The second unit consisted of the rear part of the fuselage and the tail. The two units were fixed together by a ring of eighty bolts.

  All our engineers will tell you that from the point of view of rational construction this was fantastic. Perhaps, but the fact remains that a single factory at Nagoya turned out 7000 Zeros in three years.

  The saving in weight was in the region of 45 per cent, and yet the structure was very strong. Special light alloys—in whose manufacture the Japanese were past masters—were used to the extreme limit of stress.

  The engine was the 14-cylinder radial Nakajima Sakae—a development of our good old Gnome-Rhône K-14, which deepens the impression that we French were the only ones who could not get the best out of our own designs. It was stepped up from 1020 to 1315 h.p. at take-off between 1940 and 1943. By then it had a two-stage supercharger, an inverted flying carburettor and a three-bladed Mitsubishi-Hamilton propeller with a diameter of 10 feet 6 inches. With this last engine the Zero reached 340 m.p.h. at 20,000 feet altitude, computed from tests on Wright Field on a Zero captured in reasonably good condition. And this one, it must not be forgotten, was a carrier-borne plane, with the consequent handicaps of landing-hook, water-tight compartments in the wings and so forth.

  On the other hand, the construction of a fighter plane being essentially a compromise, the Zero had one grave weakness. The Japanese designers had only an attacking plane in view and no thought was given to defence. The German designers of 1939 thought on much the same lines and they were to pay dearly for it.

  The idea behind the Zero was that it would sweep away all opposition before the enemy had time to hit back. It had no self-sealing tanks, no armour-plating for the pilot. It was a death-trap. While the heavier Allied aircraft could sustain tremendous damage and still preserve the pilot’s precious life, the Zero, although it stood up to the tightest and most violent aerobatics—it withstood up to 12 g[7]—crumpled up when hit, its petrol tanks burst into flames and it literally tore to pieces in the air like tissue paper.

  The correct combat technique against such a plane was to keep out of range and fight on the dive and the climb, avoiding horizontal turns. (The Focke-Wulfs used the same tactics against us when we had Spitfires, but the British fighter’s speed enabled it to hold its own.) Once the Allied fighter-pilot had assimilated this, assuming that he was still alive, he could convert his plane’s greater weight into speed and, resisting the temptation of trying to out-turn the enemy, end up by getting him in the sights. A single burst of 20- or 13-mm. was then enough.

  The general characteristics of the Zero were very orthodox. A wing-span of 34 feet, a length of 30 feet. A comfortable wing area of 235 square feet gave it a loading of a mere 20 lb. to the square foot, compared with the 55 lb. of my Tempest. The workmanship was very sound, and the cockpit was comfortable, though rather a tight squeeze for the normal European pilot. The instruments were well laid out and within easy reach. The accessories were of good quality and for the most part American, manufactured under licence. The only exceptions were the petrol gauges, which were unreliable—very unpleasant for pilots who did nearly all their flying over the sea—and the hydraulic system, which constantly developed leaks.

  The armament comprised two 20-mm. Oerlikon cannon, light model, in the wings with 100 shells each, and two 7.7-mm. machine-guns firing through the propeller with 600 rounds each. Under the wings were permanent racks for either two 60-kilo phosphorus bombs with barometric fuses for aerial attacks on Super-fortress formations, or two ‘fixed’ 250-kilo bombs for Kamikaze missions. In the latter case it was obviously impossible to indulge in manoeuvres involving negative g.

  The Zero had three internal tanks with a capacity of 150 gallons, plus a drop-tank—it was the first fighter in the world to be so equipped—with a capacity of 100 gallons, slung between the two legs of the undercarriage. With these it had a radius of action of about 300 miles, a useful one for the time.

  A special model of the Zero was built for the Japanese Army. To increase its lateral manoeuvrability the wings were clipped, rather like the Spitfire V-D. Its first code-name was Hap, after General Henry ‘Hap to his friends’ Arnold, C.-in-C. of the American Air Force, but not for long. It appears that at a Staff meeting in Washington an officer was describing the battle of Leyte, explaining to a group of delighted generals that large numbers of Haps had been brought down in flames. Arnold went up in smoke and demanded to know who had thought up the name. The officer, not knowing quite what to say, lamely said that the name was being changed and, without even knowing whether Arnold really was annoyed, sent an urgent signal to T.A.I.U. So Hap became Hamp, but two years later, when the, armistice came, T.A.I.U. were still rocking with laughter.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A DAY IN MALTA

  1942

  ‘When I wrote in my diary: “Odd sort of war, and odd sort of way of starting it,” I had in mind all that immense waste of money, equipment and human lives, all that chaos of haste and confusion.

  If we had prepared for the war in time, the cost would have been a drop of water instead of the ocean. And then we in the Services, with only the pittance they deigned to give us to defend our country with, we fail, and the politicians want our heads on a charger, because they have to find scapegoats.’

  Air Marshal Sir Hugh Lloyd

  A.O.C. Malta in 1941

  ‘I hope the lessons of Malta will not be forgotten. I trust that never again shall our unpreparedness lead to our men having to face such odds or be stretched so near to the ultimate limit of endurance.’

  Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder

  Chief of Air Staff

  * * *

  A Day in Malta

  I met S/Ldr. George Beurling, D.S.O., D.F.C., D.F.M. and Bar, for the first time at Catfoss at the end of July 1944.

  I had finished my tour of operations on 7th July with escort flights over the Normandy landing. Catfoss was the advanced gunnery school where the R.A.F. collected pilots who were experienced and successful, to try and evolve and perfect new shooting and fighting techniques and new weapons and sights.

  I had arrived that morning with a group of other pilots drawn from all the corners of the earth where fighting
was going on. After dumping my kit in the room allotted to me, I went over to the Officers’ Mess for lunch.

  In one corner of the empty anteroom, slouched, or rather draped over an arm-chair, there was a type in battle-dress with no badge of rank and no ribbons, and with an old pair of ladies’ stockings wound round his neck. To my rather embarrassed greeting—I was wondering what the hell this bloody erk was doing here—he responded with a vague grunt.

  I buried myself in the latest number of Punch and then, tired after my journey, I went fast asleep. I was soon awakened.

  ‘Who are you? Stand up! What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

  It was a newcomer, also in battle-dress, but whose badges of rank were hidden by an Irvine jacket. I only saw his back view and did not at first recognise his parade-ground voice. Without shifting his position in the least, but merely raising his head, my friend the erk answered with two short pithy syllables. The man in the Irvine jacket absolutely exploded, and this time I recognised him as Group Captain ‘Sailor’ Malan, D.S.O., D.F.C.—thirty-two enemy aircraft to his credit—who was in command at Biggin Hill when I was a sergeant-pilot in the ‘Alsace’ squadron, and who must now be the Big White Chief here at Catfoss.

  ‘Get out of here and come back when you’re properly dressed.’

  There was no mistaking the note of command in the angry voice. This time the Canadian realised who was the boss and, with an exasperatingly insolent leer, he got up in a leisurely way, picked up a battered oil-stained cap with a ragged peak from under his arm-chair and sauntered out of the room. I had got up too and Malan turned round and recognised me. He came over and shook hands.

  ‘Hullo, Clostermann, glad to see you again. Do you know who that was? Beurling, you know, the Malta type. I soon saw what his little game was. He was just waiting for some sprog P/O to tick him off so that he could tell him where he got off. He’s been doing that every morning for a week in the waiting-rooms at Air Ministry. But this time he picked the wrong bloke. I was shooting Jerries down when he was still in nappies. Anyway, it was a good lesson for him, and it’s better it should have happened on the first day, in private. He’ll know now that he’s got to behave himself here. But don’t get him wrong, he really is a remarkable type.’

  I soon saw why Malan wanted it understood straight away that he was going to stand no nonsense. His crowd at Catfoss were an extraordinary bunch of crack fighter-pilots of all nations: Kingaby, D.S.O., D.F.M. and two Bars, who had brought down eighteen Messerschmitt 109s in three months over London; ‘Timber’ Woods, D.S.O., D.F.C., from Malta; Jack Charles from Biggin Hill; two Czech night-fighter pilots with twenty-five successes between them; the Pole, Salsky, D.S.O., D.F.C. and two Bars; and some Americans, including the famous Richard Bong from the Pacific. I felt pretty small beer in this company with my mere D.F.C.

  Bong and Beurling stood out very sharply from the rest. The Englishmen, and also the foreigners who had been trained by the R.A.F., were usually modest and unwilling to talk about themselves. Above all they had a horror of ‘line-shooting’.

  Bong, who at that time had thirty-seven successes against the Japs in his Lockheed Lightning, had arrived from the States a week before with the firm intention of showing those poor R.A.F. boys how to shoot down enemy planes.

  Bong and Beurling soon became inseparable; it was inevitable. They were both outstanding shots, remarkable flyers, and they both had an excellent opinion of themselves. I know that fighter-pilots are given to that, but they certainly were extreme cases. With Beurling it was just youthful high spirits, and also the result of the incredible difficulties he had had to surmount to become a pilot at all. With Bong it was simply congenital.

  As birds of a feather flock together, I soon made up the trio. Jacques Remlinger, who arrived a few days later, added himself to the group, and we were soon known as the ‘Catfoss Quads’. Our unvarying talk of planes, cannon, shooting and tactics and our long stories of what we had done, illustrated by much waving of the arms, quickly created a vacuum round us. I kept notes of our talk, and they are full of valuable gen about Malta and the Pacific.

  Bong was killed at the beginning of 1945 while on a training flight in a Shooting Star, after he had got three more scalps in the Pacific. He was the only Allied pilot—with the possible exception of ‘Killer’ Caldwell, the Australian—to have brought down forty enemy planes for certain.

  Beurling, ‘Screwball’ to his friends, crashed in 1947 as he was taking off from Rome with an old American war-surplus plane crammed with ammunition for Israel during the war in Palestine. Poor George, he had an organic craving for danger and excitement and he had been unable to re-adapt himself to civilian life.

  * * *

  Beurling, like a number of other R.A.F. pilots, had volunteered for service in Malta. All those who were due to go out there called Malta ‘the fighter-pilot’s paradise’. As very few of those who went ever lived to tell the tale, the name stuck.

  Malta, a small island with an area of about 90 square miles, isolated by the fall of France in 1940 and the lack of vision of the military chiefs in North Africa, was a painful thorn in the flesh of the Axis powers. That thorn produced a malignant abscess and the Afrika Korps, in spite of the genius of Rommel, died of it.

  The importance of Malta as a strategic base lay in its capacity for offensive action, lying as it did half-way between Africa and Italy. Its strength in numbers of aircraft was always tiny, but its twenty-odd Blenheim and Beaufort torpedo-bombers, eight Glenn Martin Baltimores and thirty Wellington night-bombers, scattered on the six miles of runway at Luqa and Safi or hidden in underground shelters, played the major part in strangling the supply route to the Germans in Libya.

  These few planes, flown by brave and determined crews, and suffering 30 per cent losses per trip, were constantly replaced; they succeeded in seven months of 1941 in sinking 56 per cent of the merchant tonnage available to the Germans and Italians in the Mediterranean.

  In June 1941, 34,000 tons were sunk, 25,000 tons severely damaged and to all intents and purposes put out of action, 27,500 tons damaged. For July the figures were 83,000, 64,000 and 37,000; for August 122,900, 28,800 and 25,200.

  Ciano wrote in his diary at this time: ‘This Rommel campaign is becoming sheer madness. Our merchant fleet will not last a year at this rate.’

  In the Proceedings of the Fuhrer’s Naval Conferences, translated by the Admiralty, Doenitz admits on page 1231 (September 1941): ‘Even with all the Spanish tonnage and the ships we could seize if we invaded Southern France, even by increasing construction tenfold in Italian shipyards, we could not keep up another Rommel campaign for one year. Malta must be destroyed.’

  On page 1412 the Reich Commissioner for the Merchant Navy says (9th November 1942): ‘Marshal Rommel has informed me of the havoc and confusion caused among merchant shipping by the planes from Malta.’

  At about this time Rommel wrote to Hitler: ‘I have personally warned Marshal Kesselring of the tragic consequences for my lines of communication between Italy and Africa if he does not succeed in establishing air superiority over Malta.’

  The Germans and Italians certainly tried. For two years Malta was plastered with bombs. Two Fliegerkorps—i.e. 600 Junkers 88s and Messerschmitt 109s—were kept massed under Kesselring in Sicily, hardly eighty miles away. Malta became a death-trap. For ‘the 300,000 prisoners’, as the German radio used to call them, there was no refuge. Even London could at a pinch have been evacuated elsewhere.

  Relations between Rommel and Kesselring got more and more strained. Rommel hoped Malta would be pulverised within three months, and at the beginning of 1942 he was fuming at the non-arrival of his 600 planes immobilised in Sicily. They would have turned the scale in Libya.

  Malta, starving, with little petrol or supplies, with A.A. gun barrels worn smooth, could put in the air to defend itself an average of twelve to eighteen Spitfires in the morning. By 6 p.m. this number was generally down to four. Often, for two days on end, Mal
ta only had five Spitfires airworthy.

  The Germans never succeeded, in spite of desperate efforts, in preventing the torpedo-planes from operating. They were never in a position to launch a landing operation like the one on Crete, although there were only seventy-five miles to cross and the garrison consisted of a mere 14,000 badly armed troops. What do the French chiefs in North Africa think now as they try to explain away their inaction by arguments about a hypothetical German landing?

  On the other hand, it was possible to bring supplies into Malta only in dribs and drabs, by air. Every attempt to get a naval convoy through to the beleaguered island ended in heavy losses.

  Takali airfield alone, in April 1942, got thirty-two times the weight of bombs that fell on Coventry.

  Aircraft maintenance—there are very nearly half a million components in a Spitfire—was a perpetual problem. If a 20-mm. shell made a hole in the wing of one of the remaining aircraft it was a major calamity. The fitters worked day and night, in appalling conditions. The pilots, worn out, and all a prey to ‘Malta dog’, a kind of acute dysentery brought on by eating the island’s vegetables, had to do up to five trips a day.

  Luckily, as in the Battle of Britain, the radar warning system and cast-iron discipline of the squadrons enabled the few available aircraft to be put to the maximum use.

  Kesselring later said: ‘I have never been able to understand how and where the R.A.F. on Malta managed to hide its eight or ten Spitfire squadrons.’ Eight or ten! What would have happened had he known there was only one squadron of Hurricanes and two of Spitfires, with on an average only 15 per cent of their planes serviceable?

  As fighter reinforcements could not be flown in direct because the planes’ range was too short, they had to be brought on aircraft-carriers to within 120 miles of the island. In these operations Britain lost the carrier Eagle, sunk by a submarine on her third trip, and the Illustrious, which was so badly damaged on her fourth trip that she had to be sent in convoy to the United States for refitting. The American carrier Wasp later did the trip three times, but then gave up. At that time aircraft-carriers in the Pacific were invaluable.