Flames over France

by Robert Jackson

  Armstrong risked a glance back over his shoulder; as yet, there was no sign of the incoming bombers. He opened the throttle to its fullest extent and the Hawk gathered speed, bouncing across the grass past the yellow smoke marker. With no wind to shorten its take-off run, the aircraft remained firmly glued to the ground. The airfield boundary was looming up ahead of it. With the throttle hard up against the stops, Armstrong seized the flap lever and pulled it. The big flaps went down and the Hawk suddenly bounded into the air. With relief, Armstrong saw the airspeed beginning to build up. He pulled up the flaps and raised the undercarriage, hauling the fighter round in a steep climbing turn. The cockpit canopy was still open and he decided to leave it that way for the time being, so as to provide an unobstructed all-round view.

  Armstrong brought the aircraft round through 180 degrees, still climbing, and wished that he was in a Spitfire; the Hawk climbed like a brick, the altimeter needle, calibrated in metres, creeping round the dial with painful slowness. Squinting into the sun, he saw the enemy bombers; they were Dorniers, like the one that had dropped the marker, and he counted six of them, flying in two tight ‘vics’ of three, one behind the other. They were flying at about 3,000, half a mile from the airfield.

  Armstrong levelled out at the Dorniers’ altitude and went head-on for the middle bomber in the first flight. The Curtiss was fitted with an old ring-and-bead gunsight and the bomber grew larger in it with frightening speed. Armstrong unconsciously crouched lower in the cockpit, making himself as inconspicuous as possible, and squeezed both triggers on the control column.

  The Hawk shuddered as all four machine-guns opened up and the rapidly expanding silhouette of the Dornier trembled in the windscreen. Grey smoke trails speared out towards it, converging on it. In the bomber’s glasshouse nose, a light twinkled; the German gunner was returning fire. Then the nose fragmented and shattered as Armstrong’s bullets found their mark.

  There was no time to see the end result of his shooting. A collision was a hair’s breadth away. Pulling back frantically on the stick, he leapfrogged over the German aircraft, catching a glimpse of its upper-surface camouflage: angular patches of dark and light green, forming a pattern like splinters of broken glass.

  Then he was bearing down on the second flight of Dorniers, guns hammering again as he repeated his attack. The leading bomber pulled up suddenly in a climb, exposing its pale blue belly. Its companions on either side broke away sharply to left and right and Armstrong saw his bullets hit the Dornier’s underside in a series of sparkling flashes. Then the sky ahead of him was filled with a great fiery balloon of red and black, surrounded by whirling debris, as the Dornier’s bomb load exploded.

  He shut his eyes and flew straight into the inferno. There was a moment’s consciousness of searing heat and of choking, oily fumes mingled with the acrid smell of explosives. Something struck his aircraft with a thud. Then he was through into clear sky, coughing violently.

  He opened his eyes and looked outside. The first thing he saw was a dark, sticky mass, glued to his left wing root by the airflow. It took him seconds before he realised that he was looking at a man’s entrails.

  Armstrong’s stomach rose into his mouth and he stuck his head out of the other side of the cockpit. Madame Bessodes’ egg breakfast whirled away in the slipstream. Shaking violently, Armstrong risked another look; the glutinous mass was still there. He remembered reading an account of the battle of Trafalgar, when sailors on Nelson’s flagship, the Victory, had used shovels to prise the remains of men off the bulwarks …Still trembling, he forced himself to concentrate on the job in hand and turned, heading back towards the airfield. Smoke was rising from it, and from clumps of debris that lay in a field just short of it, the remnants of the Dornier he had destroyed.

  There was no sign of the other bombers. Armstrong looked behind him to make sure that there was nothing sinister on his tail, then throttled back and began his descent towards the aerodrome. Lowering his undercarriage and flaps, he looked ahead and saw to his surprise that the smoke was coming from a crashed aircraft, its tail sticking out from a clump of trees some distance away. From its twin fins he identified it as one of the Dorniers, presumably the first one he had fired at.

  He landed safely between a scattering of fresh bomb craters and taxied in, coming to a stop close to his original dispersal. Wearily, still feeling queasy, he switched off the engine and climbed unsteadily from the cockpit, carefully keeping to the starboard side to avoid the mess on the port wing.

  He was only half aware of the ground crew clustering around him, congratulating him. Someone thrust a bottle of cognac into his hand and he raised it to his lips, drinking deeply, washing the bile from his throat.

  A few minutes later, the reconnaissance squadron and its fighter escort returned from its mission over enemy territory. Two of the Potez 63s were missing. One of them was Le Roy’s.

  *

  BATTLE SITUATION, 13 MAY 1940: THE MEUSE

  The German assault troops had been moving down through the woods towards the river crossing points throughout the early hours of the morning. Most of the soldiers were red-eyed through lack of sleep, exhausted after their long forced marches through the Ardennes and soaked through by the dripping vegetation of the forest, for it had rained heavily during the night. Nevertheless, there was to be no respite for them; the momentum of the German assault could not be allowed to falter.

  During the morning of the 13th, which dawned bright and sunny with a few tendrils of mist drifting over the Meuse and the woods on either side, the heavy artillery of the French X and XVIII Corps opened up on the river crossing points, strategic road junctions and the approaches to the Meuse. The bombardment lasted until midday, and then the French began to run out of ammunition. Apart from the general confusion that prevailed, fresh supplies coming up from the rear were subjected to incessant air attacks by the Luftwaffe. Requests for further supplies of ammunition sent through urgently to HQ Second Army never arrived, or if they did they were ignored.

  Up until noon, the Luftwaffe attacked the French defences on the Meuse in relatively small numbers, the forward positions being hit by groups of half a dozen Stukas or medium bombers. Then, in the afternoon, the full weight of two Fliegerkorps was hurled against the real pivot of the battle, in support of the armoured thrust at Sedan. Luftwaffe orders were to pin down the French defences while German ground forces established a bridgehead.

  The first phase of the assault unfolded on schedule at 1600, with a highly effective precision attack by Stukas on French artillery positions on the west bank of the Meuse. This was followed within minutes by a second raid, this time by Dornier 17s — and so it went on for hours on end, with successive waves of bombers droning over the river, unloading their sticks with deadly accuracy, and turning for home in almost leisurely manner. French fighters tore gaps in their ranks, but more often than not, the Messerschmitts prevented the French fighter groups from coming anywhere near the bomber formations.

  For the defending French troops, the air attacks were a nightmare. Most of their air-raid shelters were only half completed and afforded hardly any protection from the onslaught. Even before the air attack was over, four brigades of German 105-mm guns opened up a heavy fire on the French X Corps sector. Under cover of the bombardment, the German infantry launched themselves across the Meuse on river boats and rafts, sheltered to some extent by the vast cloud of dust and smoke that swirled across the river from the bombing on the opposite bank.

  Dazed and bewildered, the French defenders began to emerge from their shelters to be confronted by the first waves of German shock troops, storming up the river bank towards them. One by one, the French positions collapsed under the relentless pressure, many of them being taken from the rear by the speed of the German thrust. Shortly after 1800, ten batteries of X Corps artillery fell intact into German hands. They had been abandoned by their crews as soon as German troops approached to within half a mile. While 1st Panzer’s, assault troo
ps and the Grossdeutschland Regiment crossed to the west of Sedan, 10th Panzer’s assault group stormed the river banks at Wadelincourt, to the south-east of the town. Progress was slow here, for the air attacks and shelling had not succeeded in destroying many of the defensive bunkers, and these put up heavy machine-gun fire against the attackers.

  The main problem for the Germans here was the lack of artillery support, and flanking fire from the Maginot Line fortifications was giving them trouble. There were delays, too, in the assault of the 2nd Panzer Division, which was to have stormed the Meuse at Donchery to the west of Sedan. In fact, only the advance elements of 2nd Panzer, the reconnaissance battalion and the motorcycle battalion, together with the division’s heavy artillery, saw action on 13 May, and these did not succeed in forcing a crossing. Most of the division’s tanks were still on the Samois river, and would not arrive until after dark. These setbacks, however, were more than compensated for by the rapid thrust of the 1st Panzer Division. By nightfall, the German assault troops had torn their way through the French defences in the Marfee Wood region, two miles inland from Sedan. By midnight the division’s rifle brigade was pushing still deeper into French territory, while a battalion of the Grossdeutsehland Regiment mopped up around Wadelincourt.

  At Gaulier, German engineers built a bridge across the river, enabling the 2nd Panzer Division to begin moving across at dawn, the tanks rolling past thousands of French prisoners herded into pockets on the river banks. Since the Luftwaffe would not be able to lend its full support to the battle on the Meuse until the following day, its bombers being needed elsewhere, it was vital that the Germans got as much armour as possible over to the left bank to meet an anticipated French counter-attack. When this developed, the French ran headlong into the tanks of the 1st Panzer Division, blasting its way into France, and in the brief, one-sided battle that followed the French lost eleven out of fifteen Hotchkiss light tanks.

  The lightning speed and the relentless push of the German attack threw the French into total confusion. Frantic troops streamed back from the front with wild reports of masses of German armour converging on the French posts from all sides. Panic swept through the whole of the 55th and 71st Divisions, and the trickle of men abandoning their positions quickly became a flood. In fact, the rout began even before the first German tanks crossed the Meuse.

  The total breakdown of morale spread through all sectors like an inferno and could not be stopped. Corps and Divisional headquarters, their lines of communication with the front shattered by the German bombing, were incapable of exercising the slightest control over the surging hysteria. On the morning of 14 May, the roads leading back from the Meuse were crammed with struggling columns of French troops, officers and men alike. In their haste to get away, they abandoned well-prepared defences, artillery batteries, rifles, webbing, sometimes even boots.

  “Suave qui peut!” the cry hung like a cloud over the retreating columns. French colonial African troops took it up and mimicked it, their accents turning the French words into “Shof ki po!”

  Sauve qui pent; shof ki po. That was the motto of the French Army of the Meuse on this thirteenth day of May, 1940. Every man for himself.

  Chapter Four

  On the day after the German attack on Martigny the remainder of the Curtiss Hawk group moved to the airfield from its more usual location at Saint Dizier to be ready for large-scale escort missions over the Meuse. With it came the group commander, Colonel Villeneuve, a man bearing a celebrated name in the annals of French history. Lean and pipe-smoking, with a weatherbeaten face and thoughtful grey eyes that seemed to focus on something a long way off, Villeneuve had no hesitation in authorising Armstrong to fly with the group until such time as he could be returned to the RAF.

  “We are short of pilots,” he said, “and you seem to have acquired an aircraft for yourself. Perhaps we might discuss tactics to our mutual advantage?”

  Armstrong hesitated to explain that he had been flying an unarmed photo-reconnaissance Spitfire for the past nine months, and that the fighter tactics he had learned on a frontline fighter squadron might now be out of date. From what he had seen so far, there didn’t seem to be much difference between the combat formations used by the French and the British; both were much too tight to provide adequate room for manoeuvre, forcing the pilots to concentrate more on keeping station with one another than on keeping a good lookout. Like the RAF, the French used a ‘weaver’, a solitary aircraft bringing up the rear of the formation, weaving back and forth to keep an eye on the sky above and behind. Armstrong thought that there was little benefit in the method; all the weaver did was use up fuel faster than the other aircraft in the formation, and run the risk of being shot down first in the event of a ‘bounce’. It would make far more sense to adopt a fluid fighter formation such as the Germans used, based on a pair of aircraft, with the number two watching out for the leader all the time. Two pairs of aircraft, flying in a formation that resembled the outspread fingertips of one’s hand, could cover one another constantly, their pilots having a good view of all quarters of the sky.

  Armstrong flew three sorties with the French during the next couple of days, and saw nothing. The action, it seemed, was further north; the RAF’s Air Component, supporting the British Expeditionary Force, must be having a busy time. Then, early on the morning of 14 May, a grim-faced Villeneuve called all the pilots together for an open-air briefing. A map had been pinned to an easel and he referred to it now, pointing to the relevant places as he spoke.

  “The enemy has broken through in strength here, at Sedan,” he told the men. “The British are already attacking the pontoon bridges that have been erected across the Meuse, and have suffered many losses.” He glanced briefly at Armstrong, who wondered how bad the losses really were.

  “Now it is the turn of the French,” Villeneuve continued. “The bridges and the troop concentrations in their vicinity will be attacked later this morning by eighteen Amiot 143 bombers from la Ferte-Gaucher and Nangis.”

  The pilots exchanged glances, and Armstrong knew why. The twin-engined Amiot 143, an angular, slab-sided aircraft that carried a crew of five, had already been out of date when it made its first flight in 1935. With a top speed that barely touched 150 miles per hour, it was completely unsuited to daylight operations against heavily-defended targets. If ever there was a suicide mission, this was it.

  Villeneuve noticed their expressions. “I understand that all the bomber crews will be volunteers,” he told them quietly. “Close fighter escort will be provided by twelve Moranes, twelve Bloch 152s and nine Dewoitine 520s. We shall provide distant cover, and our task will be to keep the Messerschmitts at arm’s length. Our orders are to patrol the Luxembourg border and intercept any enemy fighters heading for Sedan from the south-east; the RAF will be patrolling to the north. I need not tell you that we shall be close to the limit of our combat radius and that consequently it will be very important to conserve fuel. Take-off will be at 0800.”

  But the take-off was delayed, and delayed again, and it was well after eleven o’clock before the Hawks were ordered into the air. They formed up into four ‘vics’ of three, with Armstrong — very much the new boy as far as the French were concerned, despite his success over the airfield a couple of days earlier — flying on the right-hand side of the last formation. As they would not be flying fixed straight-line patrols in the combat area, Villeneuve had decided to dispense with the ‘weaver’.

  A hundred and fifty miles away, the lumbering Amiots had left their bases a while earlier and were cruising towards the target area. Over La Fère airfield they picked up their close escort of twelve Moranes; the other fighters were sweeping the sky a few minutes ahead, at high altitude.

  Far to the south. Colonel Villeneuve took the Hawk formation up to 15,000 feet and crossed the Meuse, the fortress town of Verdun over on their left. Villeneuve brought the Hawks round in a gentle turn towards it, then flew north towards Luxembourg, twelve pairs of eyes anxiously scannin
g the sky. They saw nothing; but they could tell by the shouts and screams over their radios, tuned to the same frequency as those of the bombers and their escorts, that a murderous battle was developing in the sky over Sedan.

  Just how murderous, they would not discover until later.

  At 1215 the bombers and their escorts passed to the south of Mezières. A few minutes later they reached the Meuse, and a turn to starboard brought them in towards Sedan from the north. So far, it was like a peacetime training flight; the sky was absolutely empty.

  Suddenly, the air was filled with flak bursts and glowing trails of 20 mm shells. An Amiot was hit and began to drag a long ribbon of flame. It was an aircraft of Bomber Group 11/34, and it carried the unit’s commander, Commandant de Laubier. At the last moment, as the machine had been taxying out for take-off, de Laubier, defying orders to stay behind, had jumped aboard and taken the place of one of the gunners. Now, thirty minutes later, the other crews watched in horror as the Amiot plunged earthwards like a torch. Three of the crew bailed out and were taken prisoner; de Laubier was not among them.

  At that moment the six aircraft of the second group, GB 11/38, broke formation and turned in the direction of the Meuse bridges. The manoeuvre presented the fighter escort, which now had two separate formations to cover, with a problem. The Moranes split into two flights of six, one of which chased after 11/38. The other six Amiots continued their run-in and unloaded their bombs on the congested roads north of Sedan, lurching as the flak hit them again and again. One machine turned away, trailing smoke, and began a descending turn towards friendly territory. Despite being attacked by an enemy fighter the pilot, Lieutenant Foucher, managed to regain his base after flying the whole way at treetop height.

  As the bombers roared out of the flak zone, throttles wide open, the Messerschmitts pounced. A pair of Me 11 Os fastened themselves on to the tails of the surviving Amiots of 11/34, one of which was quickly shot down in flames. The five-man crew bailed out. Another aircraft received three 20-mm shells in its port engine, which began to stream dense white smoke; a fourth shell shattered the port undercarriage, a fifth ripped the pilot’s parachute pack to shreds and a sixth tore away the co-pilot’s control column. The pilot, Adjutant Milan, made his escape into a bank of cloud and crash-landed in a field a few minutes later. The crew all got out safely, but the aircraft was a complete wreck.