Operation Diver

by Robert Jackson

  ‘That’s all right,’ Yeoman said. ‘I can see Lympne already. The flarepath’s lit. Stand by to flash the lights as soon as I join the circuit.’

  Yeoman brought the Mosquito cautiously into the downwind leg of the aerodrome circuit, lowering the undercarriage and keeping a careful lookout for other navigation lights to make sure that no one was below or ahead of him. On his command Hardy flashed the identification lights steadily on and off to indicate to the airfield controller their urgent need to land. The urgency, in fact, was becoming greater with every break away from the aircraft’s damaged nose.

  There was no answering signal from the ground.

  ‘Give ’em a white flare,’ the pilot ordered. Hardy swiftly complied, and a white Verey signal light arced away from the Mosquito, falling slowly towards the ground. A few moments later, a green light flashed from the control tower.

  ‘About bloody time, too,’ the pilot muttered, and brought the Mosquito round on to final approach. The Merlins popped and crackled as he throttled back over the runway threshold and then the aircraft was down, settling on its sturdy undercarriage.

  A light utility car came out to meet the Mosquito as it came to the end of its landing run. Mounted on the vehicle was the illuminated ‘follow me’ sign.

  The car led Yeoman round the perimeter track to a dispersal. He shut down the engines, switched off the electrical services and followed Hardy out of the cockpit, taking a deep breath of the warm night air.

  They both stepped back a few yards, took a long look at the Mosquito and swallowed hard. Apart from the damage to the nose, in which a great chunk of metal from the V-1 was later found to be embedded, the aircraft was scorched and scarred as though a giant blow-torch had swept over it. Yeoman shuddered. ‘It looks bad enough even in this light,’ he said. ‘I hate to think what it’ll look like in the morning. Come on, Happy, let’s go and find ourselves a cup of tea. I reckon we’ve earned it.’

  Chapter Eight

  The battle against the flying-bombs went on unabated by day and night. Considerable numbers of the missiles were shot down, but the airborne explosion of their warheads and flying debris continued to be a problem.

  Then, on 23 June — three days after Yeoman’s close shave — a Spitfire pilot ran out of ammunition while attacking a V-1. In sheer frustration, seeing the bomb fly steadily on, he closed in alongside it and eased the wing-tip of his fighter under that of the missile. The airflow caused the V-1 to roll, toppling the gyroscope that stabilized it, and it plunged down to explode harmlessly in open country.

  From now on, this became the recommended method of destroying the flying-bombs. It needed a steady hand and a cool nerve, but it worked, although some pilots still preferred to take the risk and shoot the V-1s is down by more orthodox methods. During July, 380 Squadron, on average, shot down (or sent out of control) one flying-bomb a day, and the score of their sister squadron, 373, was something similar. In the beginning, shooting down a V-1 had not counted as an air-to-air victory which could be added to a pilot’s personal score, on the basis that the robot bombs could not really fight back; but in July the Air Ministry relented and a V-1 destroyed over the sea counted as one kill, while one destroyed over land counted as half a kill. This was supposed to give pilots added incentive to knock the bombs down before they reached the coast.

  Then, towards the end of July, the V-1 battle took a new turn. On the twenty-fifth — five days after the astonishing news had leaked out that an attempt had been made on Hitler’s life by some of his generals — four flying-bombs approached London from the north-east, in other words, from the North Sea.

  There could only be one possible explanation: the bombs had been launched from aircraft. This was a serious threat, for it meant that no objective in Britain — none, at any rate, that was in range of the Luftwaffe’s bombers — was safe from attack. It didn’t take a mathematician to work out that V-1s launched from German bombers several miles off the east coast of England could reach the industrial towns of the Midlands.

  Within twenty-four hours the Mosquito squadrons were on their way back from Tangmere to Burningham in a move to counter the new menace. They flew northwards in formation, landed in the early evening, and flew their first patrols that same night, probing out towards Holland and Belgium.

  They saw nothing; but several flying-bombs crossed East Anglia en route to the capital, so the launch aircraft must have been there.

  ‘This is bloody ridiculous,’ said a weary Yeoman to Clive Bowen as they ate their breakfast after returning from their patrol.

  ‘We could go on like this for weeks, chasing up and down the North Sea. It’s obvious that they’re coming in flat on the deck, so there’s no chance of our ground radar stations spotting them, and even if we locate them with our airborne gear — well, it’s difficult enough to shoot down an aircraft that’s flying over water by day, let alone at night. You’re concentrating so much on not going into the drink that you haven’t time to get lined up properly.’

  Bowen agreed entirely. ‘And if we miss them,’ he said, ‘the chances are that they’ll get through — the bombs, I mean. There’s just no possibility of extending the gun belt all the way up the east coast.’

  Yeoman cradled his mug of tea between his hands and looked thoughtfully at his table companion.

  ‘The answer, I suppose, is to clobber them on their airfields, if we can find out where they are operating from. But I’d like to bet that the crafty bastards are dispersed in ones and twos all over Holland and Belgium. If we could extend our radar coverage a bit it would help.’

  ‘What about a fighter director ship, like they used during the invasion?’ said Bowen. ‘If one was positioned, say, twenty miles off the Schelde Estuary, its radar could almost certainly pick up anything crossing the Dutch coast. At least we’d know then where to start looking.’

  Yeoman gave a grunt. ‘It might work,’ he admitted. ‘We’ve got to get something organized, though. We’ve had one wasted night, and we can’t afford many more. The whole thing is far too hit-and-miss. Anyway, I’m off to grab a couple of hours’ sleep and then I’ll pop along to Intelligence to see if Freddie Barnes has any more gen for us.’

  Yeoman found Barnes in a gloomy mood. The Intelligence Officer looked at him and said:

  ‘You aren’t going to like this. I’ve just had word that a few hours after you left Tangmere, quite a large force of enemy aircraft — Dornier 217s and Heinkel 177s, we believe — attacked shipping in Portsmouth and Southampton harbours with radio-controlled glider bombs. They caused quite a bit of damage, and all but one of them got clean away. They attacked after dark, so there wasn’t much the day fighter boys could do. It would have been a different story if the two Mossie squadrons had still been at Tangmere, though, as it’s just up the road from Portsmouth.’

  ‘Damn!’ Yeoman swore. ‘You’d almost think that they knew we had gone.’

  ‘They probably did,’ Barnes said wryly. ‘No doubt they still have plenty of agents operating in and around the south coast ports. Then, of course, there’s Nosey Joe.’

  ‘Nosey Joe’ was the nickname, probably of American origin, that had been bestowed on an enemy reconnaissance aircraft which flew over the south coast twice a day, morning and evening, as regularly as clockwork. It came over very high, at least 45,000 feet, and nothing could get near it. It was very fast and clearly jet-propelled; probably one of the new Arado 234s which were rumoured to be based at Juvincourt, near Reims.

  ‘Yes,’ Yeoman agreed, “it’s time something was done about that so-and-so. Anyway, Freddie, now that you’ve given me the bad news and cheered me up no end, what have you got on these bomb-launching Huns?’

  Barnes looked worried and polished his thick horn-rimmed glasses, as he always did when called upon to make an Intelligence assessment. He really had no need to be nervous, for he had an uncanny ability to see through a tangle of conjecture and pick out the few probable facts, piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle
.

  ‘Well,’ said Barnes, ‘we think they are Heinkel 111s and that they belong to KG 54 — the Luftwaffe s 54th Bomber Wing. They were based in Holland until the end of June, then they suddenly disappeared off the scene until last week, when they were reported to have returned. The likelihood is that they were withdrawn for modifications so as to be able to carry the flying-bombs.’

  ‘Where are they?’ Yeoman wanted to know.

  ‘Ah,’ the Intelligence Officer answered, shaking his head, ‘that’s the problem. They came back to their former base at Gilze, but now they’ve disappeared again. We think they’ve dispersed to other airfields in the Low Countries, but we don’t know for sure.’

  ‘Blast,’ Yeoman muttered, ‘that means we can’t clobber them all in one go. We’ll just have to think of something else, that’s all.’

  In the meantime, there was little they could do except patrol the North Sea constantly between dusk and dawn, hoping to catch the elusive Heinkels as they slipped over at wave-top height before they popped up to launch their V-1s. Yeoman, Bowen and Wing Commander Bentley, the OC Flying, worked out a system whereby the Mosquitos would patrol in relays of six, strung out in a line between the Hook of Holland and the coast of East Anglia. In this way, even if one of the night fighters made contact with an enemy bomber and then lost it again, the theory was that its approximate heading and speed could be passed on to the next fighter in line, which would hopefully pick it up on its AI radar and intercept it. Each night-fighter crew was briefed to fly a leg of a hundred miles, turning through 180 degrees and flying on a reciprocal course at each end. It would be boring and monotonous work, but it was hoped that it would produce results.

  It did — as far as locating the German bombers was concerned. But shooting them down turned out to be quite another matter, as Sergeant Martinsen — 380 Squadron’s Norwegian pilot — discovered to his cost.

  Shortly after 0130 in the morning of 28 July, Martinsen’s navigator picked up a strong contact heading out from the Dutch coast and steered his pilot in pursuit. Martinsen manoeuvred until he was dead astern and identified the enemy aircraft as a Heinkel 111, but it was flying so low that he could not depress the nose of his Mosquito enough to get the bomber in his sight. He climbed with a view to making a diving attack, but as soon as he did so the radar blip of the Heinkel became lost in the sea clutter on the cathode ray tube and it was some minutes before his navigator managed to locate it again.

  The next ten minutes were the most unnerving Martinsen had ever spent. Several times he closed in to within firing range, but the German pilot was no beginner and each time he sent the Heinkel skidding and swerving over the sea, his wing-tips brushing the water, so that the bomber kept sliding out of Martinsen’s sights. Once, in sheer frustration, Martinsen opened fire, but his tracers flickered harmlessly over the target and the Heinkel escaped unharmed.

  Beside Martinsen, sweating with fear, one eye on the AI radar and the other on the radar altimeter, his navigator tensed every muscle in anticipation of a brutal impact with the water. Black waves, capped with white, streamed under the Mosquito’s wings at terrifying speed, so close it seemed almost possible to reach down and touch them.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, the Heinkel began to climb.

  ‘We’ve got him!’ Martinsen yelled. ‘We’ve got the bastard!’

  The silhouette of the Heinkel was clearly visible, hanging in the night sky a few hundred yards ahead. Martinsen could even make out the dark, sinister shape of the flying-bomb, suspended under the bomber’s port wing.

  An instant later, a vivid orange glare burst through the darkness, closely followed by a string of Norwegian oaths. Momentarily blinded, Martinsen instinctively opened the throttles and pulled back the stick, sending the Mosquito bounding skywards. His navigator, intent on calling out the range by reference to his radar screen, was taken by surprise; his stomach, already rebelling against the low-level turbulence through which the Mosquito had been buffeting, finally gave up the struggle and he threw up all over the instrument panel, tearing aside his face mask just in time.

  Martinsen realized at once what had happened. The Heinkel had pulled up to launch its flying-bomb and it was the glare of its igniting motor that had blinded him.

  As soon as he had gained enough height, he put the Mosquito into level flight, still swearing and waiting for his night vision to return. He looked across at his navigator, who was retching weakly.

  ‘Sorry about that, Harry,’ he said, ‘Are you okay?’

  The navigator nodded miserably, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Clipping his face mask back into place, he bent over his cathode ray tube once more. For several minutes he carried out a fruitless search, but the Heinkel had vanished.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Martinsen, ‘we lost him, and that’s that. You have to admit that the Hun pilot had plenty of guts. I wouldn’t have sat there for fifteen minutes with a Mossie on my tail.’

  When Martinsen returned to base and made his report, he discovered that one of 373 Squadron’s pilots had had a similar experience. The Heinkel had clung doggedly to its course until it was almost within sight of the British coast and had then launched its V-1, whose bright engine exhaust had blinded the pursuer for long enough to enable the bomber to make its escape.

  Yeoman summed it up. ‘We’re going to have to get ’em as close as possible to the Dutch coast,’ he said. The question is, how?’

  A possible solution arrived suddenly at Burningham at the end of the first week in August in the shape of a black-painted Vickers Wellington. As soon as it arrived, it was tucked away inconspicuously in a far corner of the airfield and an armed guard placed around it.

  The Wellington, it transpired, came from the Telecommunications Research Establishment’s flying unit at Defford in Worcestershire, and its presence at Burningham was the result of much string-pulling behind the scenes by Wing Commander Bentley, who had a nameless but clearly very senior contact at TRE.

  The Wellington’s outline was marred by a host of protruding radio aerials and an enormous radome fitted under the nose, which quickly earned the aircraft the nickname of ‘The Pregnant Wimpey’. It was, in fact, an airborne radar control station, and had been used operationally for a short time during the D-Day landings before returning to Defford for further modifications.

  With its help. Bentley hoped that the Burningham Wing would at last be in a position to come to grips with the air-launched V-1 threat.

  The procedure looked simple enough. The Wellington would cruise high over the North Sea, flying a fixed pattern off the Dutch coast, and its airborne search radar would pick up the Heinkels as they took off from their bases; the controller on board would then steer the night fighters into a favourable position to carry out an interception.

  Eight Mosquitos, spread out at intervals, accompanied the Wellington on its first trip; Yeoman and Hardy were in one of them. They had been on patrol for just over half an hour when the Wellington made its first radar contact. Yeoman pricked up his ears as the controller’s voice came over the R/T, but the message was directed at one of the other aircraft.

  ‘Black Ball Five, this is Fisher. Have a contact for you. Steer one-six-zero. Target range is one zero miles, speed one-five-zero, course two-six-zero.’

  ‘Black Ball Five, Roger, one-six-zero.’

  The voice that answered was Terry Saint’s.

  ‘That young beggar gets all the luck,’ Hardy grunted over the intercom. ‘If he fell down a sewer, he’d come up wearing a pearl necklace.’

  Yeoman listened to the radio exchange between Saint and the radar controller as the New Zealander closed on his target.

  ‘Black Ball Five, make your heading now one-eight-zero; the range is five miles.’

  The controller was bringing Saint into position for a stern attack on the enemy aircraft. Yeoman could imagine Saint’s navigator, glued to his AI set, eagerly awaiting the first sign of the elusive ‘blip’. He must have found it, because a few
moments later Saint reported that contact had been made. The controller in the Wellington, his job done for the time being, wished him good luck. Everything was now up to the team whose call-sign was Black Ball Five.

  ‘Tally-ho!’ Saint’s call came faintly over the radio. The seconds ticked by. Then, to the south-east, something flared low down on the horizon and was almost immediately extinguished.

  The radio was silent. Yeoman pressed the transmit button and called:

  ‘Black Ball Five, this is Black Ball One. Did you get that Hun?’

  There was no answer. Yeoman tried again, and this time, distorted and strange, little more than a whisper, he heard Saint acknowledge his call.

  ‘We got him…we have some trouble. I think…stand by.’

  Yeoman waited for a couple of minutes, then called Saint again. No answering voice broke through the hiss and crackle of static.

  Then there was no longer any time to worry about the fate of Black Ball Five, for suddenly the controller’s terse voice came on the air again:

  ‘Black Ball One, this is Fisher, contact for you range five miles, course two-six-five, speed one-six-zero. Steer one-seven-zero to intercept,’

  Yeoman brought the Mosquito round sharply. Hardy bent over his AI set, muttering: ‘How the hell did I miss that one?’

  He picked up the glowing blip on his cathode ray tube almost at once, and said urgently: ‘He’s crossing from left to right, skipper, range about fifteen thousand feet now. Keep the turn going and roll out on two-six-zero — and can you increase the speed a bit, please, or I’ll lose him in the clutter.’

  Yeoman did as he was bidden, sweeping low across the sea as Hardy chanted out the diminishing range. At two thousand feet he located the target visually; it was a Heinkel all right, complete with V-1, and it was flying very slowly under the drag of its burden.

  Yeoman throttled back as much as he dared until the Mosquito was hanging on its propellers just above stalling speed, a hundred feet over the water. It was a dangerous manoeuvre but he had no intention of overshooting.