by Lee Jackson
Eagles Over Britain
Lee Jackson
EAGLES OVER BRITAIN
Copyright © 2021 by Lee Jackson.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Severn River Publishing
www.SevernRiverPublishing.com
This is a work of fiction based on actual events. Names, characters, places, historical events, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Although many locations such as cities, towns, villages, airports, restaurants, roads, islands, etc. used in this work actually exist, they are used fictitiously and might have been relocated, exaggerated, or otherwise modified by creative license for the purpose of this work. Although many characters are based on personalities, physical attributes, skills, or intellect of actual individuals, all of the characters in this work are products of the author’s imagination.
ISBN: 978-1-64875-071-7 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-64875-072-4 (Hardback)
Contents
Also by Lee Jackson
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Epilogue
Join the Reader List
Thanks for Reading
Next in Series
Read Turning the Storm
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Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Lee Jackson
The After Dunkirk Series
After Dunkirk
Eagles Over Britain
Turning the Storm
The Reluctant Assassin Series
The Reluctant Assassin
Rasputin’s Legacy
Vortex: Berlin
Fahrenheit Kuwait
Target: New York
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This book is dedicated to the memory of the British people who stood alone against tyranny during the early years of World War II after the fall of France.
Also, to their brave military on land, at sea, and in the air during their darkest hours that extended through the Battle of Britain, through the Blitz, and continued until the US joined the war in November 1941. Included among the Royal Air Force ranks were fighter pilots from Poland, France, Czechoslovakia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and our own Eagles from the US, listed below:
Pilot Officer Arthur Gerald Donahue, 64 Squadron
KIA September 11, 1942
Pilot Officer John Kenneth Haviland, 151 Squadron
Lone American Pilot Survivor of the Battle of Britain
Pilot Officer Vernon Charles Keough, 609 Squadron
KIA February 15, 1941
Pilot Officer Phillip Howard Leckrone, 616 Squadron
KIA January 5, 1941
Pilot Officer William Meade Lindsley Fiske, 601 Squadron
Died of battle wounds, August 17, 1940
Pilot Officer Andrew Mamedoff, 609 Squadron
KIA October 8, 1941
Pilot Officer Eugene “Red” Quimby Tobin, 609 Squadron
KIA September 7, 1941
Pilot Officer Hugh William Reilley, 66 Squadron
KIA October 17, 1940
(Listed as Canadian in the 1940 RAF roster)
Also to be remembered:
Flight Lieutenant Jimmy Davies, based at Biggin Hill, squadron unknown. Fought in the Battle for France preceding the Battle of Britain. Killed June 1940. Believed to be America’s first WWII ace and first casualty.
To all of these incredible people go my profound thanks for their courage, dedication, and tenacity without which we would not enjoy the freedoms we have today.
Winston Churchill said of the pilots who flew in the Battle of
Britain that never had so many owed so much to so few.
That remains as true today as it did then. They
hold in our hearts and memories a debt
that can never be repaid.
Prologue
September 15, 1939
Washington, DC
The man codenamed “Intrepid” walked with a measured pace behind the Secret Service agent escorting him through the back halls of the White House. He was a small man, but he carried himself with quiet confidence that commanded respect. As they reached an intersection of corridors, the agent motioned with his hand to pause. Intrepid faced away from their direction of travel. Someone ambled across their path, a late-working staffer deeply engrossed in a document while nibbling on a donut.
Ahead of them, another agent signaled all clear. They entered a passage leading past a bevy of senior advisers’ offices and, short of reaching the Oval Office, turned into a secluded dining room. It was empty and dark, as it should be at this hour of night.
Continuing through the room, the agent opened a door in the opposite wall and stood aside to allow Intrepid to pass into President Franklin Roosevelt’s private study. He heard the president greet Intrepid with his signature enthusiasm.
“Hello, Little Bill.”
“Good evening, Mr. President.”
Then the Secret Service agent closed the door and took up his post next to it.
Less than an hour later, Intrepid emerged through the same door. Behind him, the president called out, “Thanks for coming. Please give Winnie my warmest regards.”
As the agent closed the door, he caught a glimpse of FDR. He had been on this protection detail for two years, had seen the president under myriad, often daunting situations, and thought he knew the president’s attitudes and facial expressions.
However, on this night, the great man looked haunted. The blood had drained from his face, and despite his cheery farewell, his eyes lacked their customary spontaneity, and his smile looked forced, with no cigar.
The agent escorted Intrepid to a concealed back exit where he watched the small man climb into a waiting limousine and depart into the night. He could not know that he ha
d stood guard on perhaps the most momentous meeting of World War II and possibly of the twentieth century.
1
July 3, 1940
Mers-el-Kébir, Algeria
Barely perceptible above the blaring sirens, French Navy Lieutenant Phillippe Boutron, watch officer of the day aboard the dreadnaught FS Bretagne, heard a hissing sound speeding through the air. He whirled and mashed a button to set off the ship’s klaxon, but he was too late. Two projectiles hit at once, the first striking at the seam of Turret No. 4 where it met the deck, crumpling it and canting its barrel uselessly toward the water. Flames shot into the sky above the mast and blew a cavern in the ship’s side.
The second round hit the Bretagne’s hull above the waterline. It penetrated the center engine room and detonated. The klaxon went silent. The ship lost power and communications. The shockwave lifted Phillippe into the air and dumped him in the brine fifty feet away, probably saving his life.
He hit the water stunned, his body numb. When finally he could look up through blurred eyes, hear with ringing ears, and cough against air thick with gun smoke and black fumes of burning oil, he heard the hiss of yet more projectiles closing on their targets to once again shake the earth, toss the waters, and blot the sky.
Thirty salvos from a British fleet stationed over the horizon flew above Phillippe’s head, their thunderous explosions ripping into the French ships, including two more projectiles that struck the Bretagne, igniting its ammunition magazines in ear-splitting detonations and causing it to capsize.
Operating more on instinct than rational thought, Phillippe tried to swim away from the ships, managing barely to tread water. A piece of debris floated by, and he grasped it, clinging to it as the onslaught continued, watching in despair as the FS Strasbourg slid by to open waters, the only battleship to escape.
A half hour earlier, the sirens warning of imminent attack had pierced the quiet over the French fleet lying at anchor as a motorboat carrying Captain Cedric Holland of the British Royal Navy passed below the Bretagne’s stern. Phillippe had snapped a sharp salute.
Taller than most of his peers, Phillippe was light complected with dark hair and discerning eyes. We surrendered to Germany in five weeks. That bitter thought had weighed on him as he watched Captain Holland go by. Phillippe’s usual no-nonsense countenance, taut in reaction to the blaring sirens, tightened further as he watched the small boat carry Holland out to sea.
He had never met the captain, but rumors of the British officer’s mission had flown around the fleet to the extent that crewmen craned their necks to see him. Amid the high-stakes negotiations that had taken place aboard the nearby FS Dunkerque during the aftermath of the formal French surrender only ten days before, Holland was a known figure. Phillippe knew him by sight and hoped the negotiations had gone well.
He had been furious at France’s surrender and unleashed his fury in statements to peers and superiors. “We are not beaten,” he had shouted at his ship’s captain. “Is the Bretagne beaten? The Provence? How about the Dunkerque and the Strasbourg? They’re brand new, bristling with guns and shells—are they beaten? What about the rest of our navy?”
“The armistice is a catastrophe,” his captain agreed grimly, “but it is our duty to accept and comply.”
Phillippe’s eyes bulged as he thrust a finger in the air. “I am not beaten, and I am not going along with this. Our duty is to France and it would be better for our country if we scuttled the fleet.”
“You are close to insubordination,” the captain said sternly, his eyes glinting.
“So, on behalf of sacred discipline,” Phillippe replied scornfully, “we are chained to a defeat for which we are not responsible.”
As a child, Phillippe had grown up reading and fantasizing about vast oceans, epic battles, and heroic naval figures. In his young mind, he had developed an insatiable desire to serve at sea. Thus, on reaching military age, he joined the navy, trained as a gunnery officer, and was assigned to the Bretagne. Reading the tea leaves of international affairs over the years of Adolf Hitler’s rise in Germany, he had foreseen the war winds blowing across Europe.
Barely a month had passed since the Nazis invaded France. They had descended through Belgium in a lightning strike into the northern provinces, driving a million soldiers of the combined British Expeditionary Force and the French 1st Army south to Dunkirk. In an epic operation, the British Royal Navy had rescued three hundred and thirty thousand soldiers from there. Over the next two weeks, they had evacuated a hundred and thirty thousand more from French ports on the Atlantic coast.
During that time, the German army had occupied Paris. French authorities had fled to Tours, capitulated, and then moved the capital to Clermont-Ferrand. The negotiated surrender agreement granted Germany occupation rights to the industrial north and the entire Atlantic coast with its busy ports, many within sight of England—roughly sixty percent of the country. It had left the French government in merely titular control of civil matters in all of France.
Then two days ago, the government had moved again, to Vichy, a spa resort one hundred and seventy miles farther southeast. “Our ‘hero,’ Pétain, must need more massages,” Phillippe had muttered derisively of the former Great War general who took charge of the government and promptly orchestrated France’s capitulation.
Left in profound uncertainty was the status of the French navy, then second in size only to that of Great Britain. A provision of the Franco-German armistice required the French navy to decommission most of its fleet, in particular its battleships.
Mindful of Hitler’s perfidy in dealing with Neville Chamberlain, his predecessor, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had no confidence in the German führer’s commitment to written agreements. He determined that under no circumstances would French warships be allowed to fall into German hands.
Captain Holland had come to Mers-el-Kébir to negotiate that specific matter. France and Great Britain had long ago set aside historic differences and had allied together for more than a hundred and seventy years. The German invasion had upset that relationship. Franco-British goodwill lay in ruins. Churchill’s terms for the French navy boiled down to a few simple alternatives: surrender the fleet to the British Royal Navy for internment or use against the Germans, sail the ships to America or other suitable neutral ports for safekeeping, scuttle them, or be sunk.
Captain Holland’s motorboat carried him to the aircraft carrier he commanded, the HMS Ark Royal. It waited ten miles over the horizon in a fleet that included battlecruiser HMS Hood, battleships HMS Valiant and Resolution, several destroyers, and the supporting vessels that made up British Force H, with guns primed, under the command of Admiral Sir James Somerville, whose headquarters was also on the Ark Royal.
Holland, a thin-faced man with penetrating eyes that brooked no nonsense, boarded the Ark Royal and reported to his waiting commander with a shake of his head. Somerville, a person of similar timbre and countenance, though fleshier, ushered him into the admiral’s quarters.
Neither Holland nor Somerville wanted to attack the French fleet, but their orders were specific. Upon French refusal becoming equally firm, their course was set.
When the British stopped firing, the destruction had rendered the French fleet inoperative, with burned-out hulks lying at odd angles and thick smoke billowing skyward and spreading the putrid odor of burning fuel and spent explosives. In addition to the loss of the Bretagne, the battleships FS Dunkerque and FS Provence had run aground, as had the destroyer FS Mogador.
Finally making his way to shore dripping and blackened with soot and oil, Phillippe crawled up a steel ladder built into the long dock. Wails of the wounded and the stench of death almost overcame him. He hurried to render first aid and help recover the fallen.
Sir Winston Churchill stood before the British Parliament and announced the attack, which included boarding French ships anchored in Portsmouth, Plymouth, as well as in the port at faraway Alexandria, Egypt. Further, Churchill said,
the Royal Navy had fired on a modern French battleship in Dakar.
His eyes filled with tears, and in his legendary stentorian tones, he told the membership gathered in the House of Commons, “The action we have already taken should be, in itself, sufficient to dispose once and for all the lies and rumors… that we have the slightest intention of entering into negotiations in any form and through any channel with the German and Italian governments. We shall, on the contrary, prosecute the war with the utmost vigor by all the means that are open to us until the righteous purposes for which we entered upon it have been fulfilled.”
