Tides of Valor

by Peter Albano

  Freddie “Coop’’ Hansen’s voice responded, ” This is Wolf Yellow Leader. Got the bastards. Am engaging.”

  Randolph keyed his microphone, “Wolf Red, this is Wolf Red Leader. Disengage bombers. Follow my lead. We have some work upstairs.”

  “Roger. Let’s go oop an’ stuff their arses with twenties, Major,” McBride said.

  “Roger,” came from Hart.

  With his wingmen formed tight again, the section screamed skyward. Randolph’s confidence and exhilaration of the kill had melted, replaced with an amalgam of anxiety and dread. Yellow Section was outnumbered two to one. And Preston Donovan was a new man. He could see a tangle of contrails at twenty thousand feet. Anxiously, he threw a switch on his radio. The fighter frequency was alive with the shrill voices of near-hysterical men fighting for their lives in aerial combat.

  The first voice he heard was Coop Hansen’s: “One-oh-nines overhead. Donovan, do you see them?”

  “I can’t see ‘em. And your RT (radio transmitter) sounds bloody awful.”

  Sturgis came back with his usual obscene bluntness, desperately trying to jar the new pilot, “Bugger all, man. They’re at two o’clock high. Open your bloody eyes.”

  “Donovan! Do you read me?” Hansen asked.

  “Affirmative. Tell me when to break.”

  “Aircraft above and behind. Muck in everyone—tight.”

  “Six o’clock. The buggers are on our arses!”

  “I can’t see ‘em in my mirror,” Donovan pleaded.

  “Bonk your bloody mirror. Are you blind?”

  “Break right! Here they come!”.

  “Turn hard! Hard right, Donovan. Those bastards can’t turn with us.”

  Staring upward Randolph could see the trails weave and entwine like a deadly, burgeoning spider’s web.

  Sturgis’s shriek of victory: “I stuffed the bugger! Fry, you bloody bastard.”

  High above his cowling Randolph saw a bright orange flame trailing a black ribbon of smoke. A funeral pyre. Sturgis’s kill? Maybe it was a Spitfire. He punched the instrument panel. Urged the fighter on with, “Come on you bloody bugger.’’ But he knew the fight would come to him. Dogfights inevitably deteriorated into a series of altitude-killing turns, banks, and rolls, with every pilot dropping his nose to maintain and regain speed. The melee was bound to plunge downward as he climbed.

  Pointed straight down and twisting slowly into a spin, the burning plane plunged past far to the east like a meteor. Thick nose, deep-set cockpit. Peaked tail and low-slung wing line. A ME 109. Then he saw the Luftwaffe insignia on the fuselage that had almost been blacked-out by soot and the crosses on the wings were clear. A glimpse of the tail and a black and white chevron on the vertical tail plane identified it as a member of Jagdstaffel Four. Kochling’s squadron.

  The frantic voices returned. Coop Hansen was screaming:

  “Donovan! Behind you. Two of ‘em. Break left!”

  Sturgis broke in, “No! No, Donovan. You can’t dive with the buggers! Pull up! Pull up!”

  “Sturgis! Look out! Two behind and below.”

  “I see ‘em, Coop. Turn with me you gutter tiffies.”

  Hansen’s funereal voice: “Donovan’s bought it. Save your own arse.”

  Now the combatants were very close, distinct. They would be in range within seconds. Randolph switched off his receiver and spoke into his microphone, “Wolf Red, this is Wolf Leader. Individual combat. Break! Break!”

  A Spitfire with two Messerschmitts on its tail snapped into a half roll and dove directly at Randolph. The Germans were split and converged on the Englishman like the arms of a Y. The ME to Randolph’s right led his companion and was ruddering into a near-perfect killing angle. He had a bright yellow propeller boss. Blood-red flames winked and leapt from his wings and cowling, tracers smoked into the Spitfire. The canopy dissolved and two cannon shells nearly blew the pilot in half. The fighter began its final spin. There was a big NK painted on the side of the fuselage. It was Coop Hansen’s new wingman, Preston Donovan. Dead at nineteen.

  Randolph felt hatred seethe deep down like bitter acid. He wanted the yellow spinner. A touch of rudder brought the glowing red dot to the Messerschmitt. He knew Hart and McBride would see his move and take port and the other ME. Anyway, at a combined closing speed of over seven hundred miles an hour, there was no time to give orders.

  The German was no coward. He banked to meet the major head-on. The corner of Randolph’s eye told him the other German was busy, veering off desperately as Hart and McBride raced upward to meet him.

  Randolph and the German began firing simultaneously. Tracers whipped past. Thumped into his wing like a pneumatic hammer. Ripped a long tear in his fuselage. He saw his shot strike home, chunks of metal fly free like paper in a gale from the leading edge of the ME’s wing. The German’s engine filled his windshield. The yellow spinner was going to spear him between the eyes. He would ram the Hun. Why not? Could there be a better way to die? He was old. Tired. And Preston Donovan would be avenged.

  The Jerry lost his nerve. At the last instant, he pulled back on his stick and passed over so close that Randolph’s canopy was sprayed with glycol and the turbulence caused the Spitfire to bounce as if it had hit a runway with its wheels up. He had shattered the enemy’s air cooler. Without glycol, the Daimler-Benz would overheat. The German had to turn for home or burn. Trailing a misty white banner, the ME half rolled into a dive and headed for the coast of France. Pursuit was useless. A Spitfire could not dive with a Messerschmitt. Donovan had found that out. Anyway, Major Erich Kochling was up there somewhere. He had a score to settle.

  A bright flare caught Randolph’s eye. The ME to port had exploded into flame. Hart and McBride hosing it with bullets and shells. The burning fighter rolled over on its back and a brown-clad form dropped out of the cockpit, tugging on the D-ring of his parachute. Too soon the white umbrella opened, caught a mere tip of flame from the plunging fighter, and then flared into orange flame of its own like a struck match. Trailing his shrouds and a thin trail of black smoke, the German tumbled head over heels, arms extended as if he were trying to slow his descent. Randolph shook his fist. “Wave your arms. Fly! Fly! Think about it all the way down, you bloody killer.” His laughter was uncontrolled.

  The laughter stopped abruptly. McBride was in trouble. His engine was backfiring orange flames from its exhaust ports, leaving oily black gouts of smoke like pockmarks in the sky. The Scotsman banked slowly toward the English coast. “Wolf Leader, this is Wolf Red Two,” came through Randolph’s earphones. “I’ve a bit o’ trouble with the ol’ mare. Caught soom Kraut lead in the balls, I did. Sorry to quit this lot.”

  “Take her home, ol’ laddie,” Randolph said, ruddering alongside and waving. “But hit the silk if she quits on you. Don’t be a hero.”

  “No hero here, Wolf Red. I’ve a lassie waitin’ for this lad’s joystick. Wouldn’t wanna disappoint her now, would I? Roger an’ out.” Trailing smoke, McBride’s fighter swooped toward home.

  Craning his head back, Randolph searched the sky to the east. Then he saw him. Erich Kochling trailed by his wingman. High and far to the east his garishly painted orange-and-green-striped Messerschmitt was locked in a duel with Coop Hansen. Sturgis was far to the south fighting a single 109. Randolph keyed his microphone, “Wolf Red One, this is Wolf Red Leader. Join the scrap at three o’clock, I’ll take the one at ten o’clock. Break!”

  Kicking left rudder and pulling the stick back and to his left, Randolph peeled away from Hart who banked to the south. Using the superior acrobatic ability and speed of the Spitfire, Coop Hansen was holding his own. Closing on the dogfight, Randolph could see Kochling’s wingman darting in after Hansen while Kochling, in his usual manner, lurked above looking for a chance for an easy kill; preferably, a shot at a cripple.

  Suddenly the wingman broke away and headed for Ran
dolph. Kochling dove on Hansen who turned to meet him in a sharp climbing turn. Desperately, Randolph pulled back on his stick. Altitude. He needed priceless altitude. Now the approaching ME was slightly below him. An almost imperceptible movement of the stick to starboard, balance with rudder, and the German came into his range finder. One quarter above and at six hundred yards. He would chance it. He squeezed the tit. The fighter shook with concussions and his tracers ripped into the 109’s fuselage and tail. He cursed. Too far. He wanted the engine. The man.

  He kicked left rudder but the German half rolled brutally into a dive. Randolph knew he could not dive with the Messerschmitt, but he already had the advantage of speed. He had a good chance. He stood on his wingtip and flipped the fighter over into a near-vertical dive and turned like a corkscrew until he could see the Jerry only seven hundred yards ahead. But he was pulling away already. Streaking downward, engines screaming like berserk banshees, the two fighters turned on their axes slowly, the Englishman trying for a shot, the German turning away. England, France, Belgium, and England again revolved about Randolph’s cockpit. The Channel rushed up.

  The German gradually flattened his dive as he began to run out of altitude. Bringing the glowing bead to the wing of the ME, Randolph broke into the leering grin of a death’s head. Six hundred yards. Pulling back hard on the control column, he ran the chord of the German’s arc, cutting the range quickly. He had his killing angle and he was close. He punched the button at a hundred yards. With centrifugal force draining blood from his brain, his vision was cloudy and blurred. But his shot struck home, winking red and orange as strikes ripped the enemy’s port wing and marched toward the fuselage. The hood flew off and the canopy dissolved into a glittering cloud. But the Jerry was still under control and actually pulling away. “Die, damn you. Die. I’m burning out my guns!”

  The wing root. The ME’s weakest point. A seesaw touch of rudder pedals with delicate balancing of ailerons and elevator moved the nose of the fighter back and forth in flat turning movements. The German was sprayed as if he had been caught by a garden hose. Three, four explosions and the entire wing bent up at the wing-root fillet and broke away, exposing ripped ganglia of broken control wires and color-coded hydraulic lines’. Red fluid sprayed into the slipstream. Immediately the fighter wrenched violently to the right, cart-wheeling wildly. No longer a graceful creature of the firmament, it tumbled and corkscrewed across the sky, a stricken bird stripped of its power to fly, dying in agonized gyrations and coming apart as if it had been assembled with bailing wire and paste. It hit the Channel, bouncing and disintegrating in a huge column of water, spray, and flying debris. The severed wing splashed into the sea a mile away.

  No cheers. No joy. Before the German was dead, Randolph already had the control column horsed back into the pit of his stomach, clawing for altitude. Kochling and Hansen had drifted far to the north and their fight had carried them below five thousand feet. Coop was in trouble. Climbing, he trailed a thin ribbon of black smoke. “Coop! Break left! Break left!” Randolph screamed into his microphone.

  Hansen half rolled and turned toward Randolph. At that moment, he was caught by a half-dozen twenty-millimeter shells that blew the heads off an entire bank of cylinders and sprayed his hot exhaust manifold with raw petrol. Blowtorch orange flame roared back and enveloped the cockpit. Gracefully, the fighter rolled to its back and a lone figure dropped out of the cockpit. Instantly, the bright white canopy of-a parachute blossomed overhead. Swinging like a pendulum, Hansen descended slowly toward the Channel. Kochling turned toward the parachutist.

  “No!” Randolph screamed.

  The ME bored in like a shark for the kill. Hansen raised his pistol and fired. There were bright red flashes on the cowling as the ME’s pair of synchronized machine guns fired. Hansen’s body jerked and quivered like a man jolted by high voltage, great thirteen-millimeter bullets ripping his chest and stomach open like invisible meat cleavers. Broken ribs, torn lungs, and heart exploded from the carcass in a red storm of blood, to fall like a gory rain. His intestines dropped and hung between his legs like a tangle of swaying gray snakes. Chin down to his chest, arms hanging straight down. Coop splashed into the water.

  Sobbing, filled with horror, hate, and grief, Randolph Higgins pounded his instrument panel and raced after the orange-and-green-striped ME 109. In the strange way of aerial combat, the sky appeared to be suddenly empty of aircraft. The Spitfire and Messerschmitt seemed to have all of the heavens to themselves. Randolph wondered—as all fighter pilots wondered—how a sky that had been churning with dogfights in one moment could be completely empty a moment later.

  Kochling had turned for home and was picking up speed in a shallow dive. He was very close to the surface, perhaps under a thousand feet. Randolph was higher, had superior speed, and was closing the gap. Randolph flashed over Hansen’s body, trailing his chute that had stretched the shrouds full length in the water like a sea anchor. The butchered section leader was floating on his back, held on the surface by his Mae West. His arms were outflung like a cross. A huge red cloud stained the water around him like a dye marker.

  Higgins hunched forward, set-his jaw, choked back the sobs, and wiped the tears off of his cheeks with the back of his glove. This was David A. Reed again. His best friend in 1917 murdered by Bruno Hollweg as he sideslipped his burning Nieuport. He seemed to be repeating his life. The same enemies, the same dead young men, the same hunger for vengeance. Was this some kind of hell? Maybe he had died back there during the first one. Maybe he was destined to repeat the agony of seeing his best friend killed over and over. Certainly, God in his infinite mercy could not devise a more hideous punishment. God! Infinite mercy! He had turned his back on the Western Front and abandoned the Channel, too.

  Kochling was in trouble. He could dive faster than his pursuer but was running out of altitude. His 109 was slower than the Spitfire and could not turn with it. He was desperate and made the move of a desperate man. He pulled back on the stick savagely and half rolled at the top of his loop, executing a perfect Immelmann turn. It was the move of a veteran and a brave man who would not allow himself to be caught from behind by an enemy and butchered with impunity.”

  But Randolph already had set up a one-quarter deflection shot from the left and above. At two hundred yards the Englishman opened fire. The bead was on the Jerry’s cockpit, but the strikes hit along the fuselage and tail, blowing off the aerial mast and blasting a chunk of plywood out of the wooden tail fin. Fabric streamed from the rudder.

  Banking hard, the German fired. But he only had a two-second burst as the Spitfire rocketed past. He missed. Both pilots pulled back hard on their control columns and Immelmanned back toward each other. At nearly four hundred miles an hour, each aircraft devoured miles, even in the tightest of loops. Finally, spinner to spinner they charged each other like two knights trapped rigidly in the lists, lances lowered, intent on disemboweling their enemies.

  Both were low on ammunition, both held fire, thumbing their buttons at only two hundred yards. Randolph felt joy leap as a cannon shell blew off the ME’s starboard ejector exhausts and cowling fasteners. The right side of the cowling bent up like wet paper and tore off. Flame and black smoke exploded from the Daimler-Benz.

  There was a thump, then a jar as strikes ripped a huge chunk from the top of the Spitfire’s port wing, exposing the two spars, ribs, braces, the breeches and ammunition trays of the two Browning machine guns. Then a single hit on the wingtip from an Oerlikon shot out the aileron control pulley. The aileron flapped in the wind on its hinges like a loose shutter in a gale and immediately the left wing dropped. For the first time, fear flowed in Higgins’s veins and a cold claw clutched at his heart. He throttled back and the jarring vibrations lessened.

  Horror and fear turned to joy as the ME slowed and dropped below the Spitfire, to bank sharply to Randolph’s left side—to the side pulled down by his damaged wing. Holding the control column
dead center and countering the drag with slight right rudder, he allowed the damaged wing to pull the aircraft to the left and down toward the ME. Kochling turned his fighter directly into the Englishman’s sights. Not believing his good fortune, Randolph screamed, “Gotterdammerung, you butcher!” He jammed the button down hard. There was a hiss of compressed air. “No! I can’t be out of ammunition.” The guns remained silent.

  The German passed only fifty yards ahead. Carefully, Randolph eased the Spitfire alongside. He had to see this man—this insensate killer, the focus of his existence. Curiously, Kochling turned and stared directly into the Englishman’s eyes. He was blond, young with a yellow fuzz on his cheeks as if he were a first-year-man at Eaton trying to grow his first beard, but too young to make it good. He waved a hand overhead making a zero with his thumb and forefinger to indicate he, too, was out of ammunition. Randolph waved a fist, “I’ll kill .you next time, bloody killer.” The German threw up a mocking salute and laughed. Then trailing smoke he banked for France.

  Randolph was in too much trouble to bother with Kochling further. Carefully working his rudder pedals and control column, he turned the nose of the fighter toward England and the coast of Kent. There was an irregular beat in the Rolls and oil streaked the fuselage and splattered the windshield. He turned on the windshield washer but the blade served only to smear the oil. Cursing, he turned it off.

  Trying to restore trim and gain altitude, he was forced to use right rudder and the stick to counteract the terrible drag of the damaged wing that was trapping the airflow and pulling the port wing down. Another chunk of aluminum skin ripped off and he could see the breech of the cannon, ammunition drum, more formers, stringers, ribs, control wires. His airspeed dropped. Knowing he was in danger of stalling, he increased power, dropped his flaps ten degrees, and pushed the pitch control to full increase; Nevertheless, the trapped air sucking at the gaping hole in the port wing still dragged like a loose anchor, forcing him to rudder hard to the right and ride the control column in the same direction.