No Longer A Game (Innocents At War Series, Book 3)

by Andrew Wareham

  “I don’t much fancy having him at my side rather than you, Noah. You are right, however. We will do it that way. Would you ask him to come to me?”

  Ferrier was at the door in five minutes.

  “Captain Arkwright has pointed out to me that he should be given command of the high level Flights. If I am downstairs, he as my second should be up. He wanted it the other way around, of course, but I must take the lead in this attack. Who are the two best pilots apart from you? I have not yet made up my mind regarding individuals’ skills. I will want three of you to replace three of the experienced men. The only real way to learn is to do it, as Noah pointed out to me. You and two others of your choice to join the low level team, Captain Ferrier.”

  “Thank you, sir. I believe that will be seen as the best way of doing things. I shall draw the other two names out of the hat, sir. We have none of us any experience at low level, so we are all equally good – or bad! Should I ensure that Lieutenant Fowles is not selected, sir?”

  “The cricketer? No. I did not break him – though, by God, he came close! He is a member of the squadron and shall be treated quite equally.”

  Ferrier accepted that, indeed commented that he had been a little disturbed by Fowles’ sense of priorities – cricket, while undoubtedly the foundation of all that was best in the English nation, must take its place in wartime.

  “Do you intend to reduce the squadron to twelve pilots, sir?”

  “No, Captain Ferrier. I would prefer sixteen, so that we can launch raids of twelve machines, while giving every pilot one day off in four. We now need one more pilot. I did not want to get rid of Barker, but he forced the issue by drinking while flying. Flying to war demands the most unremitting attention, the highest concentration, Captain Ferrier, the more when the pilot is responsible for the life of an observer.”

  “Well, sir, I don’t think one needs to worry too much about the well-being of sergeants! They are paid quite well for flying, you know!”

  “I suggest that you do not say that to ranker officers, Captain Ferrier – they might get annoyed!”

  “I do not believe I have ever spoken to such a being, sir! Not my cup of tea – one would be forever worried that they might be showing the yellow flag, you know. One cannot expect the lower orders to understand courage and duty!”

  “My word! I am glad you explained that, Captain Ferrier. I had not realised.”

  They flew to Belgium next morning, able to make the field near Dunkirk in a single hop with nearly half a tank in hand. The RE7 had few virtues, but its range was definitely one. They were met by a member of Henderson’s staff; Tommy had thought that the raid would have come under Trenchard’s command, but he was not becoming involved in RFC politics and made no comment.

  “Target is distant sixty miles, sir. On the coast at Knokkeheist. We have no specific maps, but it is unmistakable. The recommendation, sir, is that you fly out to sea, as if leaving for the English coast near Ipswich, and then take a more northerly and then easterly bearing, one hundred miles or so, and finally to turn back to Knokkeheist and a direct route home along the coast. It is possible that the Germans have observers who watch aircraft coming across their lines and send warnings to possible targets.”

  “Thus, we are to appear to be performing an exercise, no more.”

  “Yes, sir. It is quite common for our planes to fly here and then return to Kent or Essex or Suffolk. We have been doing so for a month, sir, in case we should wish to mount a raid like this.”

  “Good. Have the mechanics arrived?”

  “An hour ago, Major Stark. The convoy carrying your ordnance came in this morning. We have a weather forecaster as well.”

  “Has he noticed that the sun is shining?”

  “Probably not, sir. He believes that there will be a dry, clear morning tomorrow.”

  “Good. I wish to speak to the armaments officer or sergeant, if I may.”

  “Both arrived with the convoy, sir. They are Royal Artillery.”

  “None of our own to hand?”

  “They know fuses, sir.”

  Tommy was displeased but would make do; he made his way to the canvas hangars.

  The soldiers were easily spotted, sat on a pair of three-hundredweight bombs, smoking cigarettes.

  “Good day, gentlemen. I wish to load one large bomb to each of my planes, and, in addition, six or seven twenty-pounders to the seven machines that will be making the low-level attack, at fifty feet. Fuses for the low-level planes must have a ten-second delay, to avoid blowing our own tails off.”

  “Will you be flying on this raid, Major?”

  “Stark, CO of the squadron. Yes, in the low-level section.”

  “Let us examine your planes and their facilities for releasing the bombs, sir.”

  They agreed that it would be possible to load the bombs, and to drop them; fuses were a different matter.

  “We have used modified Semi-Armour-Piercing, in the past.”

  “That will give you a couple of seconds at most, Major Stark. You want ten seconds. I have not had such a demand before. What is the speed of your aircraft?”

  “For accuracy, not more than sixty miles an hour. We may, in fact be able to shave that a little, perhaps to fifty-five.”

  “Say sixty, a mile a minute – that is eighty-eight feet a second, now… Radius of destruction of the three-hundred and thirty-six pounder bomb may be assumed to be two hundred and forty feet. A three second delay would be sufficient, you know, Major Stark.”

  “What of the blast, sir? I would not fancy a sudden gale up my tail when flying at fifty feet.”

  “Elegantly expressed, sir. Let it be six seconds. Now, how do I achieve that?”

  “You will as well wish to alter the safety propeller on the twenty-pound bombs.”

  “So I shall… When do you intend to fly, Major Stark?”

  “At dawn.”

  “That simplifies the problem, sir. Given a week, I could develop and fit six-second fuses. Overnight I can modify the SAP to give you three seconds. I cannot do better. As for the Hales bombs, I can change the detonator, perhaps, to one that is less sensitive and remove the propeller. Will you be bombing onto a paved surface?”

  “Concrete slipways.”

  “They will explode on impact, but a twenty-pounder has a limited blast.”

  “Do what you can, sir. Do not make any public statement about the nature of the fuses, if you please. I shall instruct the pilots to release their bombs and then to open the throttle to full and maintain level flight, so as to increase speed as rapidly as possible. Only when at eighty miles an hour are they to climb.”

  “Will that work, Major Stark?”

  “Quite possibly. I will tell you tomorrow afternoon; or not, as the case may be.”

  They slept in not uncomfortable billets and ate food prepared by Belgian cooks. Tommy thought it was far better than the offerings of the mess cooks at Netheravon; the old hands moaned that the food was not English.

  “Beef – sliced thin and grilled, Major Stark! Beef should be roast, in thick, rare slices. The vegetables have not been boiled properly – they are chewy!”

  Tommy made no comment.

  They breakfasted two hours before dawn on eggs and smoked salmon and various forms of brioche. The coffee was outstanding.

  “No idea of how to make a cup of tea, damned foreigners!”

  Tommy gave the details of the target and for the first time informed the navigators that some would not be flying; it was not a popular announcement.

  “Pilots will wear side-arms, gentlemen. You must always do so when flying in France. Among other reasons, it provides you with a way out if your plane is on fire at six thousand feet. Captain Arkwright, have you any specific instructions for your people?”

  “Maintain formation, gentlemen, and watch me. We shall release our bombs on my cue. If you see me wave my arm in a circle, like this…” He demonstrated, in case they were not sure what a circle looked like. “Then
you must form a ring, nose to tail on the man in front, no more than twenty feet apart. I will lead you, shifting to the south with each full turn. Observers will open fire on any enemy aircraft with no instruction from me. You will each be protecting the other, so do not break the circle except on my command.”

  “But what if…”

  “No. You will maintain height and formation. If I dive to the assistance of the low-flying machines, then you must follow, still holding formation. Barbry, you will fly number two to me; Frank, you take three. Lieutenant Fowles will be number four. Captain Templeton, your Flight is unchanged, of course.”

  Captain Templeton made his acknowledgement, a little miffed that he had no nickname and was not to be addressed informally.

  Tommy took over the briefing.

  “We take off in twenty minutes – that will put us over the target roughly two hours after dawn, by which time we can hope all of the shipwrights and engineers will be present and busy. If we can kill the skilled hands as well as damage some of the submarines, we shall do a very useful job. Drop the bombs and come home, gentlemen, that is your sole instruction for today. As always, keep your eyes open! We are still learning this game and every one of us can discover new and better ways of doing things. I will not wish you luck – that is for amateurs and we are skilled, professional, working men!”

  They could not argue, but the old hands particularly believed that gentlemen did not work, at anything. Their function was to display natural, inborn talent, not to actually seek perfection in any skill or art.

  No Longer A Game

  Chapter Eleven

  They took off, no engines failing, and laboured out to sea, a little west of north, climbing sedately and holding course until they had reached four thousand feet, by which time they were well out of Channel waters and heading into the North Sea. They were conveniently north of the convoy routes from France to England and south of the protected neutral corridor to Holland, hopefully passing unseen over uninhabited stretches of sea. The wind was light and cloud cover thick but very high, almost ideal for their purpose. Noah’s navigator led them into turns to the northeast, then increasingly southerly in a half-circle, spotting the Belgian coast from just outside Dutch territorial waters. After an hour and a quarter Noah fired a green flare, the signal for Tommy to lead his people down.

  The RE7 lent itself to slow, leisurely manoeuvre, giving the seven pilots long opportunity to scan the coast ahead of them and pick out the inlets of the Scheldt and south of that the port of Zeebrugge and then, between the two, the new-built shipyard that was their target. Tommy led them inland, very close to the Dutch border, and then brought them to the southwest, lower and lower, throttling back the while. He spotted airfields towards the coast, but saw no activity on them. There had been no raids in this area and no occasion for observers to be posted to watch the skies; he expected that would change.

  The installation could be seen a mile ahead and he made the final loss of height. The terrain was flat, to Tommy’s relief. He had worried about the possibility of coastal sand dunes or of pine forests on poor land close to the sea, but the fields were low-lying and well-cultivated, more than a half already ploughed, the rest rough pasture.

  He glanced to his right, saw all six planes where they should be, almost exactly parallel, the line wavering just a little in the turbulence close to ground. He stared ahead at the yard, trying to pick out the cranes, but he could not see the slender steel lattices with any clarity due to the bomb smoke and dust.

  He edged a little left, saw that the planes were coming across the yard at an angle, that his Flight’s bombs would bounce transversely through the slipways with a strong chance of hitting the concrete. He could see submarines, high out of the water on cradles. At two hundred yards distance he raised his hand, the signal to drop, then tugged at his own set of release levers.

  As he felt the plane lift as the weight fell away, he saw a pair of tall derricks in front of him, eighty feet high and with no more than fifty feet between them; the RE7’s wingspan was fifty-seven feet. There was no time to climb the short distance. In the few seconds available to act he aimed the nose as centrally as he could between them.

  He hit squarely, ripping off the tips of both sets of wings. For the first time he blessed the stability of the plane, which refused to respond instantly to any stimulus and kept flying, though very unhappily, bouncing and dipping one wing then the other. He could see flat pasture in front of him, rich grassland with a scattering of running cattle, wisely leaving the scene of the explosions. He opened the throttle hopefully, and was amazed to feel an increase in speed. He could not make height, must crash very soon, but he preferred to do so a substantial distance from the people he had just bombed.

  The plane was dropping, very slowly; he thought he would make at least a mile before he was finally down. The grass was flat enough that he expected to get away with a landing. Years of captivity to come, he supposed; at least he could send a letter home from the prison cage.

  Minutes before, Noah had led the high level attackers into their bombing run, dropped and watched the others copy him, the two Flights parallel, the bombs falling away, dark in the winter sunshine, rapidly out of sight. He had watched the ground, seen the first explosions on the edge of the yard and then four more very much inside the area of the slips.

  He waved to his people, one hand pumping the air in triumph. There were no enemy aircraft in sight and he took the risk of circling the yard to see what effect the low raid would have.

  Now he saw the seven machines coming in, very slowly, towards the slips where he could count four submarines and at least five of small ships, torpedo-boats, perhaps.

  The explosions showed, large and small, and he saw a submarine collapse off its cradle and one of the small ships catch alight under a direct hit. Men were running and others were down. A dockyard crane fell over the vessel underneath it.

  He looked south along the coast, saw six planes climbing slowly away; the seventh was still low, was crashing in on the flat land. There were soldiers running from a gatehouse, rifles up and firing at the aircraft and then trotting onto the flat land.

  Noah bent to the communications tube.

  “Use the Lewis, Sergeant. Get those bloody soldiers!”

  Noah took the RE7 down in an ungainly swoop and heard the Lewis crackle; seven more guns fired behind him, the Flights having kept formation on him, as ordered.

  The damaged plane was down, half a mile distant and he saw movement, the pilot heaving himself out of the cockpit.

  More men were boiling out of the shipyard, carrying rifles, dressed in blue – the crews of the ships he presumed, and distinctly upset at the raid.

  Noah looked round, waved to Barbry, the nearest of his Flight, pointing to the running men, saw him lead Frank and Lieutenant Fowles into the attack. To his approval he noticed Captain Templeton circling and then leading his Flight down as Barbry pulled up. The running sailors changed direction, dropping rifles and legging it back towards cover.

  Noah bent down to the rubber tube, shouted to his observer.

  “Hold tight. I’m landing. Heave the pilot onto the wing and hang onto him!”

  “It’s the Major, sir!”

  “Then hold him very tight!”

  Noah scanned the grass close to the downed plane, saw Tommy, Very pistol in hand, ready to fire a flare into his cockpit to destroy the aircraft. The grassland seemed flat, no rabbit holes that he could spot.

  He picked his spot and brought the RE7 in, throttled back and landed as tidily as he could, bouncing but not too severely and coming to a halt barely twenty yards from Tommy.

  Tommy stared almost unbelievingly, turned back to his plane, fired the flare and then ran across.

  “You mad bugger!”

  “Don’t be insulting, my man, or I shall leave you to walk! Up on the wing?”

  “Nowhere to hang on in the bomb carrier. I’ll lean into the observer’s cockpit.”

&nbs
p; The observer leaned across, hand out.

  “Pull one leg inside, sir, and grab hold of the Lewis. Better get a move on, them bloody sailors is coming back.”

  Noah opened the throttle as rifle shots sounded in the distance. They took off easily, Tommy weighing less than half of a big bomb.

  The Flight closed round them, waving and silently cheering while Tommy bowed and saluted with both hands triumphantly clenched over his head as the observer held on to Tommy’s legs even tighter. Captain Templeton brought his four to bring up the rear as an honour guard, even the old hands condescending to wave and shout.

  Fifty minutes, uncomfortable but uninterrupted by intruding Fokkers, saw them down the coast, taking a wide berth of Zeebrugge and the guns there, and back to their field, the two Flights holding their formation as they landed to join the other six of the squadron.

  Noah taxyed up to the waiting mechanics and General Henderson’s staff officer, enjoying their expressions as three men dismounted from his plane. Tommy pulled off his flying helmet, stretched and yawned and wandered across to the brasshat.

  “’Morning, sir.”

  General Henderson’s aide took his cue, was elaborately unnoticing of anything unusual.

  “Good morning, Major Stark. Captain Ferrier has just reported that you crash-landed outside the yard at Knokkeheist. Other than that, he believed the raid had been successful. He saw at least one submarine to sustain damage, and one small ship as well. We will receive a full report from our sources within a couple of days, but it does seem to have been a worthwhile exercise. I don’t suppose you have anything out of the ordinary to add, sir?”