Flak

by Michael Veitch

  After a couple of hours in a Miles Master trainer seated next to an insouciant ex Battle of Britain pilot, Ken was given his first flight in a Spitfire, albeit a fairly clapped-out example, a retired Mark I which had worn itself out a year before in the skies above Kent. There were no dual-control Spitfires, so your first flight in Spitfire was taken alone. ‘Magnificent’ was how Ken remembered it, eyes sparkling.

  In November 1941, Ken was posted to an operational squadron, the well-established number 124, flying out of Biggin Hill, then the best known airfield in Britain. I suggested that the atmosphere in this RAF bastion must have been stuffy, but was quickly corrected. ‘It was great,’ Ken said, a multicultural melting pot: four Norwegians, four Czechoslovaks, a Pole, a Frenchman, a Dutchman, a New Zealander, a Canadian and a couple of Belgians. Ken was the only Australian. ‘At one stage there were thirteen nationalities flying, including a chap from Mauritius.’

  Starting operations at the beginning of winter, flying for 124 was fairly limited by the weather. During this time the RAF were restricting themselves to what were really only nuisance operations over occupied France, luring the Germans up for a fight or strafing their airfields with various combinations of bombers and fighters. The casualties were high, and the results limited at best. In six months, no fewer than ten of Ken’s fellow pilots were killed on these types of operations, which were given fittingly ineffectual codenames such as Rodeo, Rhubarb and Circus.

  But then, in February 1942, something very dramatic happened in the English Channel. Three big German warships, the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen, had been docked in the French port of Brest, and regularly attacked from the air. At some stage, the British knew, they would need to return to Wilhelmshaven to be re-equipped and re-fitted to then go out and wreak havoc among the Atlantic convoys. Everyone expected them to take the long, safe route back home, around Ireland, across the top of Britain and down through the North Sea. Instead, they decided on a shortcut.

  The weather was so dreadful that day that most fighter squadrons, including Ken’s, had been stood down. But late on the morning of February 11, the pilots were assembled and told that ‘something was up’ in the Channel. Under cover of filthy weather, and escorted by a small fleet of destroyers, mine-sweepers, flakships and fighters brought in from as far as the Russian front, the three ships had decided to make a dash for it, up the English Channel, an incident the papers quickly coined the ‘Channel Dash’. Incredibly, and to much subsequent scandal and inter-service recrimination, the ships nearly made it through undetected, only being sighted by chance just off Dover. But then, it was as Ken put it, ‘On for young and old.’

  The squadron was ordered to rendezvous with a formation of Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers and escort them to their target, the big ships right at the centre of the convoy. The cloud was dark grey overcast with visibility down to 300 feet (90 metres). The squadron CO looked up into the murk and turned to Ken, the new boy.

  ‘Right. You’re my number two. Stay on my tail.’

  Ken had undertaken a couple of bomber escorts into France, but had never seen anything like this. Then again nor had anyone else. What he did see, however, and for the first time, were lots of aeroplanes with black crosses on the wings.

  It was chaotic. Visibility was so bad they never even saw the Swordfish and Ken immediately lost his CO as well.

  ‘It was impossible to maintain any sort of formation at all. Aircraft [were] coming from everywhere,’ he recalled. He got his first real taste of combat, in the form of a bullet in his engine head. It was all a melee of confusion, aircraft appearing and disappearing inside a great grey soup. Shaken, he made it back to base, only to be yelled at by his CO: ‘I told you to stick to my bloody tail!’ He didn’t seem to care that he’d brought back a bullet in his engine.

  In retrospect, Ken was probably grateful for the bad weather that day. With his lack of experience, separated from his formation and in the face of so many of the enemy, he would under almost any other circumstances have been an easy target.

  At least Ken had the advantage of an excellent aircraft. Spare a thought for the crews of the Swordfish. Yet another in the pantheon of second-rate Allied aircraft, these slow, ungainly and truly antiquated bi-planes should have been retired long before the war, and had no chance whatever against such concentrated defences as they met that day. Not only did they never reach their target in this heroic, tragic engagement, but not a single Swordfish returned that day and a VC was won, posthumously.

  Ken was a widower now, but it seemed life has been kind to him nonetheless and his mind was sharp and clear. I was keen to know if the mythical image of the cool and collected fighter pilot stacked up against reality.

  ‘Often it was just a shambles,’ he told me.

  Flying in formation of ‘finger four’, the mutually dependent system whereby each aircraft looked after the other ones’ tail was one thing; being attacked by German fighters was another. When that happened, the system tended to break down somewhat. In seconds, the formation was gone and it was simply a matter of wheeling the aeroplane around the sky and shooting at anything that passed in front of you (hopefully the enemy) or being shot at yourself. Sometimes you didn’t even know you were being attacked. Then, seconds later, you’d look around and the sky was suddenly empty. The ‘dogfight’ was it seems, a term that largely expired with the First World War. A more appropriate term for fighter engagements of the second was usually ‘melee’.

  On one occasion, Ken’s squadron was visited by the king, and Ken handed me an old cutting to prove it.

  ‘What did he say to you?’ I asked.

  Nothing profound, just mumblings about ‘good luck’ and ‘safe return’, etc. But the effect on the men’s morale was astonishing.

  ‘After meeting the king, you’d go out quite happily and die for king and country,’ Ken told me. ‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ he added, slightly astonished. Then he smiled. ‘I’m not sure if the present royal family would have the same effect.’

  Peter and I quizzed him about what it was actually like flying a Spitfire on a patrol over German-occupied France. ‘What did you do when attacked?’ I asked.

  Ken went into the role of instructor: ‘Always turn into the attack. Never try and outrun or out-dive a Messerschmitt in a Spitfire – your advantage is manoeuvrability. When he tries to follow you into the turn, he’ll either overshoot or black out.’

  You had to be constantly on the alert, one hand on the throttle, the other on the control stick. Constantly looking around, sweeping every possible corner of the sky from inside your cramped little cockpit.

  ‘That’s why we had those silk scarves. It looks like a bit of an act, but it wasn’t,’ Ken explained. In the forties, men wore shirts with starched, detachable collars that would chafe the neck. In life or death situations neck rash was the last thing you needed to worry about. The scarves not only eased the problem, but added a touch of élan to the fighter pilot image as well.

  ‘What about formation flying?’ asked Peter.

  ‘If you’re under attack, forget it. You didn’t fly in any pansy formation any more, you broke up. You’re on your own and the fight is on.’

  On one sweep into France, Ken was in a section of four, and three of them were shot down.

  ‘I was the only one to make it back that day. Just luck.’

  ‘Did you ever encounter the Abbeville Boys?’ asked Peter, referring to the nickname given to two famous German fighter units, JG (Jagdgeschwader meaning fighter squadron) 26 and JG 2, stationed around Abbeville in northern France. They were the only two German units to fly exclusively in the west for the entire war. They painted the noses and spinners of their aircraft yellow and were regarded as an elite unit, boasting such famous commanding officers as Adolf Galland.

  While the Messerchmitts and Focke-Wulfs of the Abbeville Boys commanded a good deal of respect, you also had to watch out for your own side. This was a theme that was to recur again and again thr
oughout my interviews with aircrew of all types and in all theatres. That is, no matter where you were or at what time of day or night, some American would probably be shooting at you. Towards the end of his European tour, Ken was escorting Douglas Bostons, an excellent American medium bomber flown by the RAF, and later the B-17 Flying Fortresses of the United States Army Air Force. The difference in approach between the British and the Americans says it all. With the British-operated Bostons, Ken would be just a couple of wings’ lengths away, but when flying with the Americans, the Spitfires would quietly fan out to a mile or more once over the English Channel. If you were within range of the Fortresses’.5-inch guns (and the Fortress was bristling with them), you could expect to be fired at by trigger-happy gunners whose talent at aircraft recognition left a great deal to be desired.

  Once, escorting B-17s over France, a lone Focke-Wulf 190, high above the bombers, swooped down on the formation, firing as he went. Not one of the escorting Spitfires moved. Instead, in his headphones, Ken heard the Spitfire pilots chuckle, then, amazingly, cheer the German on with a ‘Go get ’em!’ It’s a wonderfully black story. Ken still laughs at it today, although somewhat guiltily.

  ‘That was just how we felt,’ he admitted. ‘It was bloody terrible for a while there.’

  Often, the Americans’ penchant for self-aggrandisement left a cold taste in the palate of the British and Commonwealth pilots as well. On the first raid by the Americans Ken escorted, the target was Brest, just across the Channel.

  ‘They dropped their bombs right on the coastline then came back and were all awarded DFCs!’ he said with a hint of bitterness, but was quick to acknowledge the dreadful casualties the Americans subsequently sustained over Germany.

  In early 1943, Ken came home and joined number 452 Squadron about a month after it had settled into its new base in Darwin. This was a wholly Australian unit originally formed in England, in fact, the first RAAF squadron in Fighter Command. To meet the Japanese threat, however, it was brought home, together with number 457 and an RAF squadron, 54, in June 1942 to form a new larger unit, Number 1 Fighter Wing. Its job: to repulse the Japanese air attacks on the north coast of Australia. Ken remembered mixed feelings about his transfer back home. Europe, it was felt, was where the important work of winning the war was really happening, and morale at his old squadron was, despite the casualties, sky-high. But come home he was ordered, and come home he did, to the most dramatic day of his life.

  The wing leader of this all-new, all-Spitfire unit was none other than Group Captain Clive Robertson Caldwell, Australia’s number one fighter ace and already a legend. Caldwell was truly one out of the box. Born in Sydney, he learned to fly before the war, and at twenty-nine was officially three years too old to be trained as a pilot, so he forged his birth certificate to get in.

  Later, in the Western Desert, flying P-40 Tomahawks, he devised his own brand of deflection shooting by firing at the ground shadows of the low-flying aircraft in front of him. He quickly learned how to shoot down real aeroplanes. Lots of them. On one occasion, in December 1941, he tore straight up and into a formation of Junkers 87 Stukas, clipping the wings of several, and shooting down five in about a minute and a half. On his way back from sorties, he acquired a taste for shooting up any ground target that looked like an enemy and usually came home with his ammunition boxes empty.

  By the time he was posted to Darwin, Caldwell had already accounted for twenty of the astonishing total of twenty-eight enemy aircraft he would eventually destroy and had acquired the nickname Killer, which he detested, but which for obvious reasons, stuck.

  On 2 May 1943, Caldwell got to meet a new enemy for the first time. Flying with him that day was another pilot, Ken Fox, also on his first trip in the Pacific. It was an active time up north, with the Japanese air force although passed its zenith, still a formidable force.

  Prior to Ken’s arrival, 452 had had some awful luck, losing its commanding officer, Ray Thorold-Smith, on March 15, killed in an earlier action over Darwin. His replacement was inexperienced on Spitfires and so this day Caldwell, as the overall wing leader delegated him as his number 2 wingman to gain some valuable experience. However, engine trouble forced the new CO to drop out of formation and return to base at Strauss. Ken was called into the now vacant position as Caldwell’s number 2.

  High over the Arafura Sea, about 50 miles off Darwin, the wing had scrambled to intercept a formation of eighteen bombers and thirty fighters on their way back from a high-level attack on Darwin. The first two attacks were made from positions of height, but by the third they were mixing it with the Japanese Zeros on their own terms and it was not a good idea. The Spitfire, brilliant in its conceived role as a short range defensive fighter over England, was often found to be wanting in the thick tropical skies of northern Australia. It tended to overheat, and mechanical failures increased dramatically. And although it could out climb and outrun a Zero, it was no longer the most manoeuvrable aeroplane in the sky.

  Two Zeros now attacked Caldwell’s Spitfire. Ken, as his wingman, moved in and fired at one of them. Then he himself came under attack as the Zero turned. At this point he made a fatal mistake. This was not Europe, and these were not Messerschmitt 109s, and the Spitfire couldn’t outturn the very light, very nimble Mitsubishi Zero.

  ‘I used the wrong tactics,’ he admitted. ‘I should have half-rolled away and joined the fight later.’ However, in doing so, he had diverted the enemy’s attention away from Caldwell. I saved his bloody life, actually, which he was very grateful for!’

  Ken knew he had been hit, but didn’t know where. Then the whole aircraft began to shudder like a stalling car and the temperature gauge soared. He knew then what had happened. The glycol engine coolant had been hit and was now smoking inside the cockpit. Then the engine stopped, and the propeller windmilled to a halt.

  He remembered what he’d been told about how to get out of a doomed Spitfire: undo the safety harness, roll and just drop out. The forward thrust of the prop will carry the aircraft away and you’ll be free to deploy your ’chute. All very well, provided the propeller is still turning, but with the engine seized the aircraft was simply a dead weight with no forward momentum, falling at the same rate as its pilot towards the surface of the ocean.

  ‘I had to push the aircraft off me,’ he recalled. In mid-air, he bumped his way along the fuselage to the cowling and literally pushed himself off one of the now motionless propeller blades. Man and machine at last parted ways. Free, Ken now pulled his ripcord and watched his aircraft fall into the sea below.

  I have to pause for a moment to consider this truly surreal scene: in mid-air, miles out to sea, an air battle raging above, watching the aircraft you have just left hit the water, knowing you would soon be floating in it yourself. Peter and I are silent as Ken tells us his story in a detached, strangely serene voice, as if describing the most beautiful scene he had ever witnessed. Perhaps it was.

  ‘You don’t notice the rate of descent, you’re just sort of floating around. But the last 50 feet or so rushed up towards you.’

  ‘What was the water like?’ I asked him.

  ‘Warm. Fortunately.’

  There was no seat as such in a Spitfire. The pilot instead sat in a scoop that in flight was filled up with his parachute pack and inflatable dinghy. Once in the water in his Mae West inflatable life jacket, Ken turned the cock on a little bottle of carbon dioxide and the one-man inflatable boat opened up. He was now in the water, alone, and the silence was deafening.

  It was about 11 am, and Ken was in for a long wait. At the time, he had no idea how long. All he could do was to sit and watch the hours pass by and hope.

  At one stage, he saw a fin go close by. As warm as the water was, his blood ran cold. Then he saw it joined by another, then a third. Then, a flood of relief. They were porpoises. He strained his ears for the sound of an engine.

  ‘I started paddling, but gave that up very quickly.’

  Ken knew he was being looked
for. Number 2 Squadron operated Hudsons, which he could see doing large circuits around him. At one stage, one was heading straight towards him but turned 90 degrees away about a mile off. Ken had done plenty of air–sea rescue flying himself in England and knew just how hard it was to spot a lone man in the water even when nearly on top of him. Eventually, however, one went right overhead and dropped a smoke marker nearby.

  It was just on dusk when he was rescued, seven hours after being shot down.

  ‘It’s a long time when you don’t know you’re going to be picked up,’ he said.

  A week later, Ken was back flying and continued to do so until the completion of his second tour. He then did a stint with transport aircraft and finally enjoyed a long post-war career as an airline pilot.

  Before leaving, Ken drew our attention to a big aviation art print. The scene is of a Spitfire Mark VIII in Australian livery, with a parachute floating down below while an air battle with Japanese Zeros rages around. Ken points to the small figure in the ’chute.

  ‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘This is my Spit.’ It’s the very scene of his most dramatic day, lovingly depicted by a dedicated aviation artist, and a source of immense pride for Ken.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  In truth, I’ve never been much of a fan of these type of prints, having always found them rather gaudy.

  ‘Wonderful, Ken. Just wonderful,’ I replied.

  18

  John McCredie and Lewis Hall

  Pilots, brothers-in-law

  The flak was heavy enough for you to wonder if you

  were wise to be doing this sort of thing.

  We never felt it was hopeless or that they

  were going to win.

  Istood outside a very smart inner-suburban house, about to conduct my first double-header interview with two blokes who had flown against the Japanese. I was thrilled.