Once More the Hawks

by Max Hennessy

  There was some sympathy among other senior officers.

  ‘Like all services,’ Sholto Douglas said, ‘the RAF’s full of regulations thought up by people with nothing better to do. You have to learn how the machine works to beat it. In the meantime, you’d better start looking for a new job.’

  Everybody was still working much as they had before the war, with Wednesday and Saturday afternoons for football and Sundays off altogether. Sometimes it was hard to believe the war was on, especially in the areas away from the Channel where the peace seemed deeper even than in peacetime. Landing a Blenheim at a small aerodrome in the West Country with a dud port engine and therefore no flaps or undercarriage, as Dicken touched down there was a bang; one wheel collapsed and a wing-tip scraped. He climbed out to find there was no sign of life anywhere.

  Everybody was clearly at lunch and, since it was a warm day, he sat down alongside the aircraft. When still no one appeared, he stretched out in the sun. Eventually an airman on a bicycle came past and out of the corner of his eye Dicken saw his jaw drop as he saw the lopsided aircraft and the prostrate figure, neither of which had been there when he had gone for his meal. Hauling his bicycle round, he pedalled off at full speed.

  Soon afterwards Dicken heard the fire engine and the ambulance screeching to a stop alongside him, followed by other vehicles and finally the car of the squadron leader in command. Dicken didn’t move until everybody had worked themselves up into a state of panic then he came violently to life. ‘Is this how you usually run your bloody station?’ he demanded.

  The incident symbolised the whole attitude to the war. Although it had started, nothing much was happening, and apart from the odd skirmish there were few signs of hostility. After the first violent attack on Poland it seemed as if Hitler had gone to sleep.

  There were a few sinkings, and a naval battle in the South Atlantic when a trapped German battleship was scuttled in the River Plate, but nothing on the ground and little in the air except for patrols across the frontier in France and odd sneak raiders slipping over Scapa Flow to look at the navy. With transatlantic appositeness, the American correspondents christened what was happening as The Phoney War.

  And that was how it seemed, with the newspapers even beginning to talk about a negotiated peace.

  It was in this atmosphere that Hatto appeared in Dicken’s office with a rueful grin on his face. ‘The bastards are after us,’ he announced. ‘St Aubyn wants Cotton’s recce and photographic unit taken out of his hands and put in the hands of a regular RAF officer, while I’m for the north of Scotland, where nothing’s happening.’

  That evening, Dicken went round to Hatto’s flat for a farewell drink. Hatto’s wife greeted him with a kiss.

  ‘I suppose eventually things will begin to happen?’ Dicken said.

  ‘For me they’re happening now,’ Hatto’s wife retorted. ‘They’re taking Willie away.’

  Hatto’s family were growing up and it was obvious that she had realised long since that if the war lasted more than a year or two, they would be involved.

  ‘At least,’ Dicken pointed out, ‘they’re girls.’

  She wasn’t deluded. ‘Girls marry soldiers and sailors and airmen, Dicken,’ she said soberly. Then she smiled and patted his arm. ‘Don’t be afraid to call while Willie’s away. We might be glad to have a man around the house.’

  Dicken said nothing because he had a feeling that now that Hatto had been disposed of, he would be the next to go.

  He wasn’t far wrong. The following week he was ordered to report to RAF HQ in France.

  Four

  The RAF in France consisted of four Hurricane squadrons, four squadrons of obsolescent Blenheims, and four army co-operation squadrons flying the small single-engined Lysanders whose chief claim to fame was that, because of the forward sweep of their wings, they always appeared to be flying backwards. In addition there were ten light bomber squadrons of the Advanced Air Striking Force flying Battles which had passed beyond obsolescence and were definitely obsolete. Carrying a three-man crew, they were heavy machines powered with the same engine as the lightweight Hurricane and they were said to be so slow the observers had to stick out their arms and paddle. Nobody gave much for their chances.

  Crossing the Channel in an Anson, another of the RAF’s obsolete machines that looked like a greenhouse and, according to its crews, flew like a London bus, Dicken found the pilot gesturing at the interior which was cross-strutted with what looked like bicycle frames.

  ‘Wouldn’t advise moving about much, sir,’ he suggested. ‘It’s a bit gusty today and those things are just the right height to hit you in the face if the plane lurches.’

  They became airborne at a speed at which most other aircraft were just getting going, and the wings began to flap up and down like a bird’s.

  ‘We leave the undercarriage down, sir,’ the pilot explained. ‘It’s easier. Unless of course you fancy turning that rather stiff wheel there a hundred and eighty-six times.’

  The Anson floated badly as they came into land and the pilot grinned. ‘I’m told,’ he said cheerfully, ‘that if everybody jumps up and down it helps to push her earthwards.’

  Air Marshal Sir Arthur Barratt, who was running the RAF in France, was a balding man with a good reputation but it seemed he was being very badly advised. With the approach of spring it was clear something was bound to happen in the only place other than the sea where the opposing forces faced each other, but there seemed no sense of urgency anywhere among the French who were running the show. Even when the balloon went up, they felt, there would be ten to fourteen days to prepare their defences.

  The feeling expressed by the Prime Minister that the Germans had missed the bus appeared to have seeped through all ranks down to the very bottom and, to Dicken’s eyes, every unit seemed overloaded with the sports gear and wireless sets they had gathered round them during the winter. They all seemed more concerned with sleuthing after spies than battle and the technical wing commander went out every night looking for lights which he was convinced were being directed towards Germany to attract bombers. Certainly, there were a few odd personalities about, one of them a blind professor who, despite his affliction, somehow needed to rush into the road to peer after every RAF convoy that passed. Strange fires were reported in the middle of woods and occasionally a man complained that he had been shot at, while rumours came in that four RAF officers had been found with their throats cut. When Dicken investigated, he could find nobody who knew anything about them.

  It was a strange eerie period when, despite the self- satisfaction of the politicians in London, it was obvious to everybody that the Germans weren’t merely sitting still. Remembering Udet’s faith in his Stukas and the way they had finished the Polish campaign in record time, Dicken could imagine their crews practising, practising, practising, knowing perfectly well that when the day came they would be needed. It had been found that ground troops couldn’t stand up to them and that anti-aircraft fire was virtually useless once they started their dives, and he knew that German efficiency wouldn’t allow their skills to deteriorate.

  When the invasion of Norway started, everybody with any sense started hitching at his sleeves, knowing that when the holocaust had swept Norway it would arrive in France. Dicken’s duties were vague and he was used as dogsbody for anything that required doing. When the Hurricane squadrons complained they weren’t shooting down the enemy aircraft they should, he was sent to investigate, and found they had been instructed to harmonise their guns for 400 yards to compensate for aiming error.

  ‘Try 250,’ he suggested. ‘We found in the last war that the ranges suggested as suitable were put up by people who knew nothing about it.’

  Almost immediately the squadrons reported success and they were so pleased they were even encouraged to complain about the painting of their aircraft.

  ‘One win
g black, one white,’ the CO said. ‘It makes us stick out like a sore thumb. Whose idea was it?’

  ‘I can guess,’ Dicken said, thinking of Diplock. ‘Why not try duck-egg green like Sidney Cotton. He’s found it makes them virtually invisible.’

  They were also worried about the lack of back armour and when the Air Ministry experts had maintained it would affect the Hurricane’s centre of gravity and lead to difficulties of flying, they had simply stolen a plate from a written-off Battle and, fitting it into a Hurricane, had found it made no difference at all.

  As far as the intentions of the Germans were concerned, nobody seemed to know very much, chiefly because the concept of air reconnaissance was that the Lysander would look after the short range work at low level while longer range cover would be supplied by Blenheims flying at 12,000 feet, the maximum height at which it was believed cameras could give acceptable pictures. The Blenheims, in fact, were suffering casualties in their attempts to get information.

  Barratt was at a loss. He was being pressured by the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force for photographs because he didn’t agree with the French, who, assuming that their Maginot Line defences would present an impassable obstacle, were convinced that the German attack would come across the Belgian Plain between Namur and Antwerp. Fortunately, at that moment Cotton turned up, a huge bespectacled man full of Australian self-confidence, and when Barratt asked for proof of his suspicions that the Germans planned to use a southern approach, he immediately offered a Spitfire he had made faster by replacing the thick dope with a hard semi-gloss.

  ‘With all the holes blocked up and all projections streamlined,’ he said. ‘We can push the speed up by thirty or forty miles an hour. The Germans won’t ever catch it. Especially with the guns out.’

  A fortnight later, with the weather improving, the Spitfire arrived. When Dicken wanted to mount the camera behind the pilot’s seat, the engineer officer promptly objected that it would upset the balance of the machine.

  ‘You’d better see Number One Squadron,’ Dicken said dryly. ‘They were refused back armour because one of you lot said it would affect the flying qualities so they fitted it anyway, and it made no difference at all. Besides, in case you haven’t noticed, to compensate for the heaviness of the new three-bladed steel propellers we’re fitting, lead weights have been let into the tail.’

  The red-faced engineer officer had to admit this was true and the camera was mounted in place of the weights and, at the beginning of May, with the weather improving all the time, Dicken flew along the wooded country of the Belgian- Luxembourg-German border.

  Taking the photographs into Barratt, he indicated what they had picked up. ‘Tanks,’ he pointed out. ‘Hiding among the trees in the Ardennes.’

  Barratt frowned. ‘The French regard the Ardennes as impassable for armoured troops,’ he pointed out. ‘Allied strategy’s based on that assumption. It’s the whole basis of the French Plan. When they come, we’re to advance to the River Dyle to cover Brussels and Antwerp. I think we’d better have a low-level for confirmation.’

  The following day was bright as Dicken climbed into his seat. The Merlin engine’s crackling roar filled his ears as it started up in a cloud of dust and streams of white smoke from the exhaust stubs. The Spit was a difficult machine to taxi and oversensitive to fore and aft control so that lifting the tail tended to dig in the prop while a correction tended to dig in the tail.

  As he howled over the ground at low level he saw faces turned up to watch him, so that woods that had appeared to be empty were suddenly sprinkled with white spots. The forests of the Ardennes were in full leaf but it soon became obvious that there were army units hiding there and he could see men running for cover and occasionally lorries lurching out of sight. It seemed worth taking a risk to double check so, heading beyond the German frontier, he swung round in a wide arc and headed south just inside the German border. At once he saw tents, lorries and tanks. As he swung round for a second look, he spotted two dots in the sky and realised that the Germans had picked him up. The machines were 109s and he pushed the boost through the barrier so that the stripped-down Spitfire leapt away from the Germans as if they were standing still.

  Barratt was delighted with his report. ‘I’ll send a man to London at once and ask for Bomber Command’s help,’ he said.

  The following day, with the Spitfire on its way back to England, Dicken was called to Barratt’s office. French attachés in Switzerland were saying that the German attack would come near Sedan some time between May 7 and May 10. Barratt had also discovered that, despite what the French claimed, it was felt by the British that the Ardennes would not present the barrier to an armoured force that had been thought.

  Nevertheless, Bomber Command could offer no help. ‘They get their orders from the Air Staff after they’ve been approved by the War Cabinet,’ Barratt said. ‘And their plans are laid days, weeks and even months ahead. They expect to be bombing the Ruhr, not targets along the border.’

  The countryside was gay in the full bloom of spring. Trees were in blossom and the grass wore the young yellow-green of its first appearance. The French villages were bright and clean in the sunshine and the only fly in the ointment was the arrival at Headquarters of Diplock. His duties seemed to be nebulous but he seemed to have furnished himself with the authority to interfere as he liked, and his interest in aerial photography soon convinced Dicken that he was there to check on Cotton’s activities. Cotton was only a reserve squadron leader with the temporary rank of wing commander but, with his natural Australian bounce, was running his own show and it was obvious that Diplock was watching for any misdemeanours which would enable him to be put in his place.

  On May 9th, Dicken was sent to talk to the French commander in Metz. Despite the reaction in London, Barratt was still worried and felt the local commanders should be warned of what they had discovered. It was a warm day with a soft breeze and the city was full of soldiers. The little lime trees towards the Ile de Saulcy showed glimpses of the tall steep-roofed mansions on the wooded slopes beyond the Ban St Martin, and the lace-like stonework of the cathedral spire stood out against a blue cloud-flecked sky.

  Sitting at a pavement table under a gaily-striped awning in the Place de la République, it was pleasant to relax in the sunshine. Booted and spurred French officers strolled by, with pilots of the Armée de l’Air and Troupes de Forteresse from the Maginot Line.

  Dicken watched them with interest. He had heard disquieting rumours that, despite their supposed élan, they were not what they seemed and, while some of the regular units were excellent, many reservists were indifferently equipped and badly led. Like the British, they had spent all the years between the two wars being ruled by the same old political gang and they seemed curiously apathetic and not very impressed by the posters he saw everywhere, ‘Nous vaincrons parce que nous sommes les plus forts.’ We shall win because we are stronger. It seemed a curiously uninspired way of putting the point across.

  As he left the city in the evening, the setting sun was touching the turrets and spires with golden fingers. As the car climbed the hill from the Porte Serpenoise, Dicken stopped it and turned to the driver.

  ‘Can you hear anything?’ he asked. The sound was faint, a mere murmur from the east.

  ‘There’s something, sir.’

  As they listened, the sound came again, more distinct, and they looked at each other. Then it came a third time and this time it sounded like distant thunder.

  ‘Guns,’ the driver said.

  ‘And big ones at that! Let’s go!’

  It was a perfect night and when he reached base Dicken strolled towards the airfield. The stars were bright and sharp and there were a lot of aircraft about overhead. This was nothing unusual because there was always activity along the frontier, but this time he could hear the whango-whango-whango of French anti-aircraft guns, a
nd a piece of shrapnel struck the ground nearby. In the early hours of the morning he woke with a start to see his batman standing in the doorway, his hand on the light switch.

  ‘You’re wanted at headquarters immediately, sir.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I think it’s started, sir. Number One Squadron’s already in the air, patrolling towards Metz. The Germans are coming through Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. There are plots all over the board!’

  Five

  Already the panic messages were arriving. The uncanny quiet of the previous day was sharply contrasted by the reports that were coming in now of the most modern army in the world on the move. By evening, the airfields at Lille and Nancy had been bombed and Barratt had lost a lot of precious aeroplanes.

  The Allied army’s plan to swing north through Belgium was already in operation but there were reports of a gigantic phalanx of armour breaking through the Ardennes, just as they had suspected they would. Within forty-eight hours they were all involved.

  The Germans seemed to be everywhere, both on the ground and in the air, and the Advanced Air Striking Force with its pathetic Battles had lost half its numbers. The Dutch army was collapsing and they all knew that the Belgian Army would go the same way. Their machines, Fiat biplanes with a single machine gun firing through the propeller, were worse than the RAF’s and the replacements were even older. As attrition wiped away their squadrons, the Battles took over from them the attempt to destroy the Maastricht bridges, but four out of the five that were sent were shot down and the fifth crashed on the way home. Within two days the AASF had shrunk to seventy-two machines.

  ‘I wish to God we’d developed a few of Udet’s dive bombers,’ Barratt growled, ‘instead of concentrating on those wretched Battles.’

  The Stukas were everywhere. To capitalise on the natural scream of an aircraft diving at speed, the Germans had added sirens to the undercarriages. They called them Jericho trombones and the name had somehow crossed the frontier, and it was found that the sound was numbing to unseasoned troops.