Squadron Scramble (1978)

by Jackson, Robert

  Hardly daring to believe his good fortune, Yeoman reduced speed. The shadow crept ahead, and then abruptly the Junkers popped out of the cloud and hung there, a sitting target squarely in his sights. He saw every detail in a single, vivid flash; the bottle-green camouflage of the upper surfaces, the pale grey belly, the stark black crosses.

  He fired, sighting carefully on the bomber’s port engine. A large piece of metal broke off and whirled past him. A thin trail of white smoke streamed back, but there were no flames.

  The Junkers’ bomb-doors swung open and a stick of bombs tumbled out. Yeoman, close enough almost to touch the 88, pulled aside violently, cold with fear as the falling missiles arc’d past his wingtip. The bomber, lightened of its load, shot up into the sheltering clouds once more.

  Yeoman saw the bombs curve down and explode in a field just outside the town, a hundred yards away from some farm buildings. A few seconds earlier, and they would have erupted right in the town centre.

  He looked at his fuel gauge. He had very little left — certainly not enough to search for the Junkers any more. His radio had gone suddenly dead, into the bargain. He turned south-west, following the line of the Great North Road. With Scotch Corner over on his right wingtip he looked ahead, seeking out the grass expanse and camouflaged hangars of Catterick airfield. He located it without difficulty and flew overhead at two thousand feet, dropping neatly into the circuit. A pair of Spitfires were ahead of him and more behind; Catterick’s fighter squadrons had been in action and were returning to base. No one seemed to be taking the blindest bit of notice of the light signals that were being flashed from the runway controller’s caravan; Spitfires and Hurricanes were landing all over the place.

  All right. Speed downwind 180 miles per hour, just right. Propeller to fine pitch; undercart down. A reassuring thump. Turn across wind, curving continuously to keep the touchdown point in sight. Maps down. A hiss of compressed air, a drop of the nose. Trim back for a power-on approach, not too much. Hood open, bringing a welcome rush of air against sweaty cheeks and forehead. Keep the turn going into wind. Ninety miles per hour over the fence; a slight drop as the Spitfire crossed the river and a touch of power to correct the sink. Level out, throttle back and hold off. A bump as the wheels touched, a slight bounce and then the Spit was down for good, out of her element once more. Not a three-pointer, but good enough.

  Yeoman raised his flaps and taxied towards the flight huts, following other Spitfires. An airman appeared in front of him, arms upraised, marshalling him in He joined the line of Spitfires, some of them with their propellers still turning, and braked gently to a stop. He applied the handbrake and pulled the slow-running cutout ring. The engine, starved of fuel, coughed a few times and then was silent.

  He levered himself stiffly out of the cockpit, leaving his parachute where it was, and jumped down off the wing. He suddenly realised that he was soaked in sweat from head to foot.

  He went into operations, made his report to the duty officer, and telephoned Usworth with news of his whereabouts. He asked about Hamilton, but no one knew what had become of him. He wandered outside again and sat on the grass, watching ground crews swarming over the fighters. After a while, some of the pilots who had just returned came and flopped down on the grass nearby to await the arrival of the van bearing their tea and sandwiches. Yeoman fell into conversation with them, and gradually built up a picture of the raid he had helped to break up just a short while ago.

  The German bombers, clearly hoping that most of Fighter Command would be tied up over southern England, had hit the north in two waves. The first, composed of the Heinkels of Bomber Wing 26 with their Messerschmitt escort, had made landfall about seventy miles too far north, and had been harried in turn by squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes, as well as anti-aircraft defences all along the coast. They had dropped their bombs more or less at random over the eastern part of Durham County. Eight Heinkels and six 110s had been shot down.

  The second wave, three squadrons of fast Junkers 88s with no fighter escort, had come in over the Yorkshire coast. It was three stragglers from this raid, apparently, which Yeoman had encountered. They had been slightly more fortunate in that they had reached their objectives and had caused severe damage at Driffield, a bomber airfield north of the Humber. Nevertheless, they had been engaged by Spitfires and Hurricanes from Church Fenton, and six of them had been destroyed.

  Yeoman wandered over to check the state of his Spitfire. Riggers were patching up the bullet holes in the wing, which fortunately had not caused serious damage. The aircraft would be ready to fly away in about an hour. Reassured, he wandered back to the flight huts in time to catch the N.A.A.F.I. van and a welcome mug of tea. He toyed with the idea of going off to the sergeants’ mess for lunch, then decided against it. A sandwich would do for now.

  He heard someone call his name and looked round, startled. A young pilot officer was striding towards him across the grass. Yeoman recognised him at once; his name was Fred Kirby. They had gone through the fighter conversion course together several months earlier. Six months to be exact, thought Yeoman with a shock; it seemed almost like a lifetime.

  The two men shook hands warmly. ‘Well, Fred,’ Yeoman grinned, “I see you’ve acquired a cat’s whisker.’ He was referring to Kirby’s solitary thin blue stripe. ‘I suppose that means I’ve got to call you sir, or something.’

  ‘Something’ll do,’ Kirby replied. ‘I always thought you’d have been commissioned before me. What happened?’

  Yeoman shrugged. ‘I reckon I’ve been a bit too busy to think about it. It looks as though the Powers are going to catch up with me though, because I’m in for one. I was boarded a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure whether it’s the right thing to do. Officers don’t eat peas off their knives for a start.’

  ‘You ought to see some of our bunch,’ Kirby laughed. ‘Hey, it really is good to see you. I thought you’d bought it over Dunkirk. I made a few enquiries about you among your lot at Manston at the end of May, but they said you were missing. I must have just missed you. Was it rough?’

  Yeoman nodded. ‘Rough enough. Let’s just say I was very glad to get out of it, and that a million quid wouldn’t entice me to join the poor bloody infantry. What they went through over there was nobody’s business.’ He recalled the incident in the pub, a couple of days earlier, and shuddered inwardly.

  He pulled a pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket, and packed the bowl carefully. About a month earlier he had suddenly felt the urge to smoke; he had tried a cigarette and thrown it away in disgust, but he had taken to a pipe almost straight away, fie didn’t smoke excessively; a couple of fills a day were enough. He found it an excellent aid to relaxation.

  He paused and looked at Kirby. ‘What about you? You went off to 32 Squadron, didn’t you? That was the last l heard of you.’

  ‘That’s right. We got knocked about a bit during the Dunkirk show, and just got up to strength again in time for Jerry’s attacks on the Channel convoys. That was quite a merry-go-round, but I think we came out on top. We really hammered the Stukas. The trouble was that we never operated in sufficient strength to tackle both the Hun bombers and their fighter escort successfully.’

  Yeoman nodded, lighting his pipe. ‘So I heard. By the way, do you remember Alan Porter? He went on to Defiants, poor bastard — 141 Squadron, I think, I bumped into him at Church Fenton a few weeks ago. He was a nervous wreck. Lost most of the squadron when the Huns bounced them over Dover. Just imagine — sitting in front of a bloody silly gun turret, with somebody else doing all the shooting, and no front guns at all!’

  ‘God, yes! Anyway, I hear they’ve pulled the Defiants off daylight ops altogether. Somebody said they’re turning them into night-fighters. We’re going to need a few of those, too; if we maul Jerry enough during the day he’ll start coming over in strength after dark, and as it is we’ve got nothing to stop him.’

  Yeoman grunted. ‘Same old story. I don’t suppose it would be much of a p
icnic, stooging around at night over London or somewhere with all that ack-ack belting away. They can’t tell the difference between us and the Huns in broad daylight, as it is.’ He looked thoughtful, drawing on his pipe. ‘Still,’ he continued, ‘it would be a bit of a challenge. I wouldn’t mind having a go at night-fighters, if it meant more chances to have a bash at the bombers. So long as the night-fighters weren’t bloody Defiants, that is.’

  An N.C.O. stuck his head out of one of the hut windows and shouted for Pilot Officer Kirby. The latter slapped Yeoman on the shoulder.

  ‘Well, George, I’m on my way. I came up here in a Magister to collect a replacement flight commander. It looks as though he’s ready for off.’

  ‘All right, Fred. See you around. We’ll have a beer down in the fleshpots sometime.’

  They never did. Four days later, Kirby was shot down in flames over Peachy Head. His hood was jammed and he was unable to bale out. His radio was switched to transmit and his screams jammed the frequency for the endless terrible forty-five seconds it took him to fall from seventeen thousand feet.

  Chapter Four

  Richter had never seen so many bombers in the same bit of sky. There were at least two hundred of them, flying in two waves. The first wave, strung out like a swarm of locusts across the horizon, was composed of Junkers 87 Stukas; the second, bringing up the rear, of Junkers 88s. The fighters were up in strength, too; elements of four fighter wings, dancing like silvery midges over the armada as it headed towards the English coast.

  It was five o’clock in the afternoon of 15 August. Once again, the R.A.F. airfields in southern England — already badly hit by a series of Luftwaffe raids earlier in the day — were the target. According to Intelligence, much of Fighter Command’s resources had already been destroyed on the ground. The Luftwaffe crews had been told that they could expect little opposition to this, the final major raid of the day.

  Richter wasn’t so sure. Earlier in the day, Fighter Wing 66 had escorted a squadron of Dorniers in an attack on the R.A.F. airfield at Eastchurch and an aircraft factory near Rochester, and the pilots had not sighted a single British fighter — but that, thought Richter, didn’t mean they no longer existed. He knew that other raids had been in progress all over southern England, and was inclined to believe that the R.A.F. had been busy dealing with these. With all the bombers and their fighter escort concentrated in one patch of sky, as they were now, it might well be a different story. None of the German pilots, moreover, could understand why almost the whole afternoon had been allowed to go by with no follow-up attacks.

  ‘General Kesselring and General Sperrle again,’ Major Hartwig had observed cynically, ‘tearing each other’s eyes out and fighting over whose air fleet is going to bomb what, no doubt. And by the time they sort themselves out, the Tommies are waiting for us again with their claws sharpened. I’d like to get the whole Luftwaffe High Command together and boot them out over England — without parachutes. They’re far more dangerous to us than they are to the Tommies.’

  Hartwig was right; but, as his colleague Major Meurer told him quietly, it wasn’t the kind of opinion one voiced too loudly. Walls not only had ears in the Third Reich; they also had a nasty habit of swallowing people up.

  One thing was certain; the afternoon’s delay had cost the Luftwaffe its tactical advantage. Already, as the bombers and their fighter escort approached the English coast, fourteen squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes — 170 fighters in all — were climbing hard to meet them. The fighter controllers, recalling their earlier experience when the fighter squadrons had been scattered piecemeal to counter a dozen smaller attacks, had at first been wary of committing most of their available strength to one sector — but now it seemed certain that the enemy bombers were not going to break formation and head for a series of separate targets. It was the opportunity for which Fighter Command had been waiting.

  Richter, whose fighter wing was escorting the Junkers 88 formation, heard the radio suddenly come alive with shouts and curses as the first Spitfires and Hurricanes clashed with the Stukas high over the coast. Before long, it was clear that the bombers were having a hard time of it.

  Still, that was someone else’s problem. The Junkers 88 formation was over the Isle of Wight when it encountered problems of its own.

  ‘Fighters attacking from astern. Coming in from above!’

  Richter and the other fighter pilots, weaving several thousand feet higher up, looked down as they heard the warning call from one of the bombers. Apart from the Junkers formation, the sky over the coast seemed empty. Where the hell were the Tommies?

  He saw them quite suddenly, a string of glittering pearls hurtling through the bomber formation from the seaward side. They must have manoeuvred out over the Channel to get the sun behind them.

  Colonel Becker’s clipped voice came over the R/T. ‘Attention! Two and Three Squadrons, close escort. One Squadron, top cover. Attack! Attack!’

  Like a shoal of fish, the thirty Messerschmitts of Fighter Wing 66’s Numbers Two and Three Squadrons plummeted to the rescue of the bombers. Above them, the remaining squadron turned to face a dozen Spitfires, sweeping down from the north.

  The hard-pressed bombers had closed up their formation in an attempt to improve their collective fire-cover. A pack of Spitfires worried at their heels, harrying the rearmost flight of Junkers. Richter saw one of them, its port engine in flames, suddenly break up in mid-air. Its wing folded back in a cascade of sparks and the bomber fell out of the sky, trailing streamers of burning fuel.

  The Messerschmitts, diving at full throttle though they were, arrived too late to save four Junkers 88s. Two and a half miles below, their wreckage burned in the Hampshire countryside.

  Richter levelled out, glancing back as he did so. His wing-man, Sergeant Brandtner, was in position a couple of hundred yards astern, high to the right. Reassured, Richter looked ahead in search of a target. The sky was full of fighters, whirling in a gigantic free-for-all around the Junkers formation. A Hurricane flashed across his nose; he fired and missed.

  With all the shouting going on over the radio, it was difficult to concentrate. ‘Hawks in the sun … Hawks in the sun, high to port … Victor, Victor, I have contact … Elbe Leader from Elbe Three, two Spitfires behind you … Help! The swine are shooting me down … I got that one. Did you see? I got him! Three Squadron, Three Squadron, come on down, damn you! Where are you? … Siegfried Two to Siegfried Leader, more Hawks on your starboard quarter, high …’

  Suddenly, Richter heard Brandtner’s excited voice cut through the babble. ‘Gustav One from Gustav Two. Spitfire astern and to starboard, closing in! Range one thousand metres.’

  ‘Victor, Gustav Two. Watch him.’ Richter knew that the British fighter pilots liked to get in as close as possible before opening fire, to make more certain of a ‘kill’. This Tommy was obviously so intent on shooting down Richter that he had failed to see Brandtner, lurking in the sky to starboard.

  He could see the shark-like front view of the Spitfire in his rear-view mirror, closing rapidly in a shallow dive. Mentally, he ticked off the range. Seven hundred metres … five hundred. Wait for it — now! He heard Brandtner yell ‘Break!’ and at that same instant he kicked the rudder bar and pulled the stick hard into his right thigh. Short contrails streamed from the Messerschmitt’s wingtips as it flipped into a steep turn. The Spitfire, its pilot taken completely by surprise by the sudden manoeuvre, shot past, its speed too high to follow suit.

  Richter pulled the stick back into the pit of his stomach, opening the throttle and turning hard through 360 degrees. The 109 juddered slightly; sustained steep turns at high speed were hard work because of the little brute’s high wing loading, and it was likely to Hick into a spin at the drop of a hat.

  He rolled out of the turn. Brandtner had passed him and was chasing the Spitfire, which was about a mile ahead. The British pilot maintained his shallow dive, which was a mistake on his part, because in a dive the Messerschmitt was fa
ster. Richter, closing the distance rapidly, saw dark grey smoke trails stream back in the wake of Brandtner’s Messerschmitt as his wingman opened fire. The Spitfire curved away in a turn to the left, and Richter altered his heading to cut it off. He fired as the distinctive, elliptical-winged silhouette came into his sights, and the Spitfire abruptly turned the other way — into Brandtner’s line of fire.

  There was a flash, and a tiny pinpoint of flame appeared at the Spitfire’s wing root. It grew into a long streamer, flowing along the side of the fuselage. Richter lined up and fired in turn, and the British fighter went into a steep climb, belching smoke. It lost speed, stalled and went into a spin, a black corkscrew’ of smoke marking its fall. Richter, looking down, saw a vivid splash of fire, instantly extinguished, where it hit the ground far below.

  Colonel Becker’s voice came over the R/T, calling on the wing to re-form. The Junkers 88s were already over their targets, the airfields of Worthy Down and Middle Wallop. The two R.A.F. fighter squadrons on the latter, a vital sector station, escaped destruction by seconds. The last Spitfires were just taking off when the first German bombs exploded among the hangars behind them.

  Section by section, the 109s of Fighter Wing 66 converged on the rendezvous, just to the east of Southampton. The wing was only partly re-formed when more warning shouts burst over the radio. Richter scanned the northern sky, and his heart missed a beat. A swarm of British fighters, at least three squadrons, was heading flat out for the circling Messerschmitts. They were Hurricanes, and they had height in their favour. The 109s scattered in all directions, like bees in a disturbed hive, as the Hurricanes sailed in among them. The British pilots were making the most of their initial height and speed advantage; once that was lost, the Hurricane was inferior to the 109 on most counts.