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

  ‘After twenty minutes’ flying over the sea I saw Cleveland and caught up with him. He was flying with difficulty, on one engine, which was constantly missing. Over the R/T he told me he had brought down two planes and destroyed a third on the ground. He asked me to write to his wife Jeanie and warn her he couldn’t get back to England. Rather than be made prisoner he was going to have a shot at making it to Sweden. I said goodbye to Cleveland and wished him luck.

  ‘I then passed a German naval convoy and used up the rest of my ammunition on a minesweeper. There was a lot of flak and my observer got hit in the right side.

  ‘Just north of Heligoland I had the sun in my eyes and ran slap into a flight of seagulls. Twenty-seven of them fouled my aircraft and caused considerable damage—aerial torn off, port engine stopped, port aileron jammed, every forward pane of perspex broken, and we were covered with blood and feathers.

  ‘We landed at our home station at 1845 hours. I asked for confirmation of five planes shot down and one destroyed on the ground, and, on behalf of S/Ldr. Cleveland, D.F.C., two shot down and one destroyed on the ground.’

  Not a bad day’s work!

  At the beginning of 1944 Coastal Command began to replace Beaufighters with Mosquitoes on some of its units. Most of these Mosquitoes were equipped with two sets of four rockets each, weighing 60 lb. apiece, and four 20-mm. cannon. The eight rockets had the same power on impact as eight 6-in. shells. The Mosquitoes under Max Guedj’s orders were equipped in this way.

  On other Mosquitoes they kept four machine-guns and, instead of the four 20-mm. cannon, they installed a 6-pounder (57-mm.) anti-tank gun in the nose and slung two more large tanks under the wings, which doubled their radius of action.

  One of these Mosquitoes had what can only be described as an artillery duel with a German destroyer off the Spanish coast. Keeping 2000 yards away from the ship, i.e. out of range of the 20-mm. automatic flak, the Mosquito fired fifty armour-piercing shells, of which thirty-eight scored hits. With its hull, furnaces and turbines all bored through, the destroyer had to heave-to, a defenceless target. The next morning two Polish Coastal Command Liberators were whistled up and sank it with bombs.

  The Mosquito XVI had a wing-span of 54 feet 2 inches, a length of 44 feet 6 inches and a wing area of 420 square feet. Its laden weight was about 11 tons and it was powered by two Rolls-Royce ‘Merlin’ engines of 1600 h.p. each, giving it a maximum speed of 435 m.p.h. at 25,000 feet. Its ceiling was 36,000 feet, fully laden, and its range nearly 2500 miles. Pretty sensational figures!

  Four Mosquitoes were transformed into civil aircraft in 1943, with three bunks in the bomb-bay. These planes, flying for British Overseas Airways Corporation, carried out a regular London-Stockholm service, carrying diplomatic mail and V.I.P.s over occupied Europe. These planes were naturally unarmed.

  Only one of these Mosquitoes was ever intercepted, and that was in February 1944. It was cornered over Denmark by several Messerschmitt 163 rocket planes. The pilot knew that his opponents had fuel for only a few dozen seconds, and that if he wasn’t brought down within two minutes he was O.K. So he hurled his plane about madly and his passengers, emerging from their slumbers with a start and numb with cold, found themselves bouncing about inside the fuselage like ping-pong balls. The pilot finally got away by diving vertically for the sea at such a speed that the plane nearly broke up. Two of the passengers had burst eardrums, and the third—a British diplomat friend of mine—swore to high heaven that nothing would ever induce him to step inside a plane again. He has kept his word, but all the same he, like so many others, owed his life to the Mosquito.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

  On the vast deserted airfield at Langenhagen a pall of soot was falling from the fires in Hanover. Nothing remained of the hangars but twisted steel skeletons. The bomb craters were in serried rows like cells in a beehive. The long runway for the jet planes was a mass of shattered blocks of concrete. It was an apocalyptic landscape of ruin and desolation.

  The dispersal tracks ran off into the woods, but they weren’t much use, as the very trees were in flames. From time to time came a crash as the tanks of a Junkers 88 or a Focke-Wulf 190 exploded, revealing the uselessness of camouflage in such an avalanche of steel and flame.

  On land, at sea and in the air the jaws of the trap were relentlessly tightening. The solid phalanxes of Fortresses kept on passing overhead. The Sherman tanks and the tank-destroyers rumbled eastwards over the dislocated slabs of the Osnabrück Autobahn. Letting loose their murderous salvoes of rockets and hollow-charge shells, the Typhoons harried the last S.P. guns and the last Panthers from hedge to hedge.

  The Lancasters with their ten-ton ‘Grand Slams’ were crushing the last U-boats deep inside their concrete pens at Bremen and in the Baltic. The Tempests and Mustangs, roaming the German air at roof-top level, picked off the last ‘Long-Nose’ Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts.

  For the Luftwaffe, April 1945 was a bloody twilight. . .

  A Spitfire XIV from the Canadian Tactical Reconnaissance Wing dived down out of the top layer of cumulus and began to describe a wide circle round Langenhagen. The pilot carefully lined up the ruins of the airfield against the graduated marks on his wings and began to take his obliques . . . 40 degrees . . . 45 degrees . . . 70 degrees . . . 90 degrees . . . click . . . click . . . click.

  The film in the camera wound round and the hand of the counter on the instrument panel clicked round. Five more . . . three more. Waste of time, thought the pilot, the airfield was dead. One left.

  Finished now. Suddenly the pilot instinctively tightened his plane’s diving turn—a Volkswagen, zigzagging between the bomb craters, had appeared between the ruins of two hangars. A second’s hesitation. The Spitfire was at a height of 1000 feet and was about to attack, when the flak started up. First only one clip of five shells, then it started coming up from everywhere.

  Climbing full-throttle for the clouds, the Canadian noticed, stuck on a wooden tower surrounded by burning trees, an automatic four-barrelled 20-mm. firing through the smoke.

  Much too accurate, that Jerry flak! Why risk your neck for one car lost in that wilderness!

  Back at Twente, the Wing’s base, the pilot made his report: ‘Not a plane left on the ground. All the airfield installations completely wiped out. I took my photos only as a matter of form. Still some flak, though, I don’t know why.’

  It was just after 5 p.m. Langenhagen had been under threat of attack or under actual attack since dawn, but things were calming down. The Spitfire had just disappeared into the clouds and the flak had stopped firing. The gun-crews surrounded by the fires caused by the last raid hastened to get their guns and ammunition out of harm’s reach. The Volkswagen started up again and emerged from behind the remains of a wall, followed by another car and a lorry.

  From among the ruins swarms of men and women appeared, carrying baskets full of earth, and spades. S.S. men were urging them on, machine-pistols at the ready. All these miserable wretches, their wasted frames covered by the striped rags of the deported, started filling in the craters on the main runway.

  At the four corners of the airfield there was a series of grassy mounds; in front of each was a carefully camouflaged cement apron. Each was an underground hangar. Two had collapsed inwards, four were hopelessly blocked by the bombing, but six were intact.

  The heavy steel doors moved aside smoothly on their well-greased runners—all except one, twisted out of true by the blast of a large bomb; this had to be forced open.

  In front of each shelter the cars deposited four men and one box marked: ‘Deutsche Waffen und Fabriken—5 mm. 5 R4M—50.’

  Somewhere a generator must have started up, for the bulbs let into the walls of the casemates came on and lit up the thoroughbred outlines of Messerschmitt 262 jet fighters.

  While the fitters got ready the system of pulleys and cables which hauled the planes up the ramp to the apron, the pilots made their preparations in s
ilence. One of them was a Major-General, though still quite a young man. Over their Luftwaffe uniforms they drew on flying-suits made of pliable black leather.

  Two miles away, on a hill in the depths of Osterwald forest, stood a shooting-box, covered with camouflage netting and branches. From its window Langenhagen Airfield could be seen.

  It was the control centre of Lehr Geschwader No. 1. There were the usual Flugmeldedienst personnel round the telephone and the maps—officers and N.C.Os. In a corner, unexpected in such surroundings, stood three civilians, a woman and two men. On the wall was a loud-speaker.

  Everyone in that room, with its walls of rough-hewn pine and its strong smell of resin, instinctively looked away from the loudspeaker as a message came crackling out of it:

  ‘Achtung, Achtung. 140 Flying Fortresses reported by Borkum radar, course 095, height 23,000 feet. Fighter escort. General anti-aircraft alert in areas Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel, Lübeck. . . .’

  The three civilians exchanged glances. For four years they had been working to perfect the most terrible of all aerial weapons, and fate had decreed that the first test should also be the last, the Luftwaffe’s final throw.

  Professor Willy Messerschmitt had built the Messerschmitt 262 jet ‘Kampfzerstoerer,’ 600 m.p.h., faster than the fastest Allied fighter. Professor Fuchs had perfected the Ez 42 automatic sight, with which the pilot was mathematically certain to hit the target. Fraulein Doktor E. Schwartz, from the D.M.W. laboratories at Lübeck, was the inventor of the R4M rocket, whose ballistic properties and 1-lb explosive charge were sufficient to pulverise the largest Allied bomber at 900 yards’ range.

  Everything was now ready. From Langenhagen six of the twelve Messerschmitt 262s sent direct from the Oberammergau experimental works—some had not even received one coat of paint—were about to hurl themselves into the fray, the first to be equipped with the Ez 42 and R4Ms. They were to be flown by General der Flieger Gordon Gollob, Commander of the Iron Cross with Swords, Oak Leaves and Diamonds, and five selected pilots.

  In the first of the underground hangars a phone had rung, giving the order to start. A sergeant had hastily jotted down the information on the American raid, and rushed over with the sheet of paper to where Gollob sat under his plane’s wing.

  Two hundred yards beyond, Oberleutnant Flans already sat in his cockpit and kept an eye on his chief. He felt uncomfortable in his special strapped parachute whose flat duralumin spare oxygen-bottle dug painfully into his thigh. But it was too late to change its position.

  When Hans saw Gollob glance at the paper and then jump into his plane, his fears vanished. For the first time since early on the previous day he relaxed. He had been shot down just as he was about to land on his home base at Lechfeld, and dragged out of the remains of his plane, miraculously unhurt. He had just sunk into a heavy sleep disturbed by the nightmares caused by delayed shock when his Colonel hauled him out of bed at midnight. The General wanted him at once. That was how he learnt that he had had the honour of being selected for a special mission.

  He had sped in a car through the rest of the night, arriving at Langenhagen just as a Fortress raid was in progress. In a shelter, shaken by the bomb explosions and choked with dust, he had been told by the General what was expected of him. All day long he and his comrades had waited, to the nerve-shattering accompaniment of walls crashing, guns firing and bombs whistling down.

  He was hungry—since yesterday’s dinner he had only had one slice of black bread and a sausage—and also very thirsty. Not a drop of water in the place, the underground pipes had all been smashed.

  Now, blessed relief, they were off. The fitters were busy round his plane. The two-stroke Riedel auxiliary starter-motor was in place and a fitter pushed a metal rod into the air-intake and then gave it a sharp pull. The irregular firing warned Hans that the tricky moment was at hand. When the engine reached 4000 revs he slowly engaged the heavy motor. The concave blades of the turbine began to spin with a crescendo of noise like a siren. He opened the fuel cocks and the cockpit filled with the sickly stench of paraffin vapour. The starter magneto crackled and the screaming of the turbine gave place to a deeper throbbing roar.

  Hans breathed a sigh of relief. There had been no back-fire. Under his tailplane stretched a long band of grass and earth charred by the burning breath of the Jumo 004B jet unit.

  Hans methodically repeated the process for the other turbine. The fuel intake pressures began to settle down. He made sure his two power-units were perfectly synchronised and then looked across to see how the others were doing. They too seemed to have started up safely at the first attempt. They never gave you properly tuned and serviced planes like this on squadron, thought Hans bitterly. At Lechfeld it was rare for two out of four Messerschmitt 262s to take off without mishap.

  Gollob’s plane began to move. Taking-off was going to be even stickier than usual. For a start, there was no question of tractors towing them to the end of the runway, and they would therefore have to taxi over half a mile under their own power along the bomb-damaged dispersal track—hoping they wouldn’t get caught and strafed by Allied fighters!

  Hans’s fitters kept his plane running straight, while he carefully stayed below the 5000 revs allowed for taxiing. The procession moved up between the rows of smoking fir-trees, stopping from time to time to allow the fitters to clear the track of branches; the smell of burning wood and hot paraffin reached his nostrils.

  The temperature was going up—450 degrees at the intake and 550 degrees at the compressor. He must not overheat, otherwise when he took off at full throttle he might easily burn out the rotor blades. And he would need every ounce of power to get his heavily laden plane off the ground.

  ‘Schnell, Jaguar, schnell!’

  It was Gollob, telling them to get a move on.

  At last the whole Schwarm was lined up at the end of the runway. Hans was too busy making sure his seat was the right height and the hood properly shut to see the first two pairs take off.

  Now it was his turn. The fitters helped him line up his plane. Brakes still on, he revved up to 8000. Then, the temperature already at 600 degrees, he let her go. The machine began to gather speed, while the strident whistle which had been drilling his eardrums began to abate.

  60 . . . 100 . . . 150 . . . 175 m.p.h. He had already covered a whole mile of runway and he still couldn’t get her off the ground. Every time a wheel went over a recently filled-in crater Hans felt the whole aircraft vibrate terribly.

  For one moment he had the impression that the plane just could not take off with the weight of those forty-eight rockets plus their rails under the wings.

  The end of the runway rushed up at appalling speed. The clock showed nearly 185 m.p.h., but every time he gingerly eased the stick back the plane’s nose would, just lift slightly and then fall back on the front wheel of the tricycle undercart with a heavy thud.

  Desperately he pushed the lever regulating the angle of incidence of the tailplane and the bumps stopped at once. He was in the air now and he wrestled with the stick to keep his plane on an even keel over the treetops. Keeping his eyes fixed on the four aircraft ahead of him, he raised his undercart and his flaps. His speed increased at once—350 . . . 400 . . . 450 m.p.h. . . . and he began to climb.

  They were now at 33,000 feet and, in spite of the numbing cold, Hans could feel his underclothes sticky with sweat.

  In parallel combat formation—flight-leaders 200 yards apart—the six jets, guided by the Bremen controller, were closing with the American bombers at the rate of 500 m.p.h. At that speed they could take it easy—no danger of being intercepted or caught napping. Hans turned and admired the aircraft; even those with the thick ochre and green camouflage on a grey background retained the purity of their lines—the thin, swept wings with their underslung turbo-jet units, the pear-shaped fuselage with its high tailplane, like the perfectly balanced lines of a shark’s body.

  ‘Noch schneller, Jaguar!’[13]

  The twelve white tra
ils from the turbines now showed a trace of black smoke. The horizon-line was slightly higher up the windshield nose in the perspex and the A.S.I. steadied at 550 m.p.h. Hans began to feel the controls vibrate under his hand. He checked up on his blind-flying instruments—you never knew what might happen at these very high speeds.

  ‘Jaguar! Caruso 240—alle nach links!’[14] The Schwarmfuehrer’s voice in the phones nearly burst his ear-drums. He started his left turn at once, while Gollob and his Katschmark turned under him. The formation of Flying Fortresses which Hans now saw was not the big square composed of rows of bright dots that it seems from the ground. It was an enormous block of planes, spaced out in the sky in layers as far as the eye could reach, and gently moving up and down and from left to right among the dark 88-mm. flak bursts. The fighters of the escort were dancing about on the fringe.

  Hans switched on his Ez 42, and in the reflector the gyroscope began to dance and hum. He then inserted a cartridge into the seat-ejector mechanism—just in case.

  Leaning forward, his left thumb on the arming switch for the rockets, his right forefinger on the firing-button for the cannon, he watched to see how Gollob went into action.

  The Messerschmitt 262 was not so fast that the classic technique—frontal attack followed by half-roll, and then break by diving—was out of the question. The 262s skimmed over the formation, corkscrewing through the echelons of impotent fighters. They then attacked the lower portion of the second box of sixty-four Fortresses.

  Hans, who was having trouble keeping up with his leader, passed a squadron of P-51 Mustangs, who quickly scattered and jettisoned their drop-tanks, but he had no time to fire at them. He half lost control of his plane as he turned with a lot of skid, and when he righted himself he found he was in the thick of the Fortresses.