The events of the next few minutes were to remain totally confused in Richter’s mind. Tactics were thrown to the winds; it was every man for himself. A 109 exploded and went down vertically, a bail of fire that broke apart as it fell. A Hurricane flicked past, minus a wing and rolling over and over. A parachute blossomed out, then collapsed again at once. Richter got a shot at a Hurricane and saw his bullets stitch a pattern across the fighter’s roundel, just behind the cockpit. It was gone before he had a chance to fire again.
Several of the German pilots, including Richter and Brandtner, desperately tried to form a defensive circle. It was their only chance of survival; they did not have enough fuel left for prolonged combat. Their only chance was to keep on corkscrewing across the sky in this hellish merry-go-round, then make a break for it when they spotted an opening.
The whole Royal Air Force seemed to be in action today! A shoal of fighters, Spitfires this time, dived slap through the middle of the defensive circle, disrupting it momentarily as the startled German pilots turned to meet what they thought was a new threat. But the Spitfires continued their dive, streaking over the coast in pursuit of their real target: the retreating Junkers 88s.
There was nothing the fighter pilots could do to help the bombers. Two more Messerschmitts were already going down in flames. Others, their fuel dangerously low and their ammunition exhausted, took a chance and ran for it, diving away into the thin heat haze that hung over the Channel.
The fight was not all one-sided. A Hurricane, its pilot somewhat over-confident, suddenly dropped into the defensive circle and opened fire on the 109 in front of Richter. The latter could hardly believe his eyes. He took a deep breath and lined up his sights carefully on the spot where the Hurricane’s wing joined the fuselage, just below the cockpit. His guns hammered briefly, then stopped abruptly as his ammunition ran out.
The single burst was enough. A great sheet of metal ripped away from the Hurricane’s wing root and Richter’s bullets tore off a large section of the fuselage’s fabric covering, punching the wooden spars to splinters. The wing folded up and broke free, whirling past Richter’s cockpit. The rest of the Hurricane went over on its back and dropped like a stone.
Richter looked around quickly. There seemed to be a momentary lull in the battle. It was now or never. He called up Brandtner and they pushed down the noses of their fighters, heading out over the sea at full throttle.
‘Gustav Two to Gustav One. I think I’ve been hit.’
Richter turned his head, searching for Brandtner’s aircraft. He located it a thousand feet below him, astern and to the right. It was pouring smoke.
‘Gustav Two, you’re on fire. Bale out. I repeat, bale out.’
‘No, I’m staying with it. Too close to Tommyland … I don’t want to be taken prisoner.’ Brandtner’s voice was high-pitched and strained.
Richter spoke to him urgently. ‘Brandtner, don’t be a bloody fool. She’ll go up at any moment. Get out while you can. I order you to get out!’
‘Sir, with respect, you can stuff your orders. I can hold her for a little while longer … long enough to get a bit further out over the Ditch.’
Brandtner’s Messerschmitt flew on, shrouded in smoke, losing height all the time. Richter throttled back, keeping pace with it. He kept glancing anxiously at his fuel gauge; he hoped it was inaccurate and that he had more petrol left than it showed, otherwise he wouldn’t make it.
The French coast was visible now, a thin line in the haze. The two 109s were heading for the Cherbourg Peninsula; there was no hope whatsoever of regaining Abbeville.
Richter looked down. His wingman’s Messerschmitt was almost brushing the waves. The red glow of flames showed through the smoke.
Brandtner’s voice came again, weak and broken by racking coughs.
‘Hello, Gustav One, can’t see a thing … cockpit full of smoke. Can’t see to ditch … am baling out.’
‘Brandtner,’ Richter yelled, ‘don’t be a bloody fool! You’re too low! I repeat, do not try to bale out!’
There was no answer. Instead, the square-cut cockpit hood of Brandtner’s Messerschmitt fell away and Richter saw the pilot’s head and shoulders emerge, blurred among all the smoke. The next instant, the dark shape of Brandtner’s body was plucked clear, sprawling along the side of the fuselage and missing the tailplane by inches.
Richter found himself shouting incoherently over the radio, praying at the top of his voice for Brandtner’s parachute to open. With a gasp of relief, he saw a yellow streamer of silk flow out in the wake of the tumbling black speck that was his wingman’s body.
A split second later, with the parachute only half deployed, Brandtner hit the sea.
Richter circled the spot once, There was no sign of the pilot. Sick at heart, he set course for Cherbourg, As a forlorn hope, he radioed the map reference of the place where Brandtner had gone down to air-sea rescue.
Ten minutes later, Richter touched down at Cherbourg. His fuel-starved engine cut out on final approach and he just made it over the airfield boundary, his undercarriage collecting a few twigs from a hedge on the way.
The aircraft rolled to a stop in the middle of the runway. A truck raced up and half a dozen airmen jumped out of it, seizing the fighter and pushing it clear.
One of them came up to the pilot and saluted. ‘Want a lift over to the flights, sir?’ he asked.
Richter shook his head. ‘No, thanks. Just get the refuellers over as fast as possible. I want to be on my way.’
He went over to the Messerschmitt and walked slowly round her, stroking the metal of her wings and fuselage. It was warm. He shivered suddenly, thinking of Brandtner and the cold waters of the Channel.
The grass looked inviting. He stretched out on it, revelling in the sunshine and the silence, his head pillowed on his lifejacket. Thirty seconds later, he was fast asleep.
Chapter Five
Yeoman threw his kit on the bed and looked around him appreciatively. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Not bad at all.’
Jim Callender crossed the room and threw open the window. The hut looked out over a large field, with cows grazing placidly. Beyond, the roof of a farmhouse peeped out from behind a barrier of trees.
‘Well, at least it’s an improvement. The north-east was beginning to get right on my nerves.’ He gazed thoughtfully out of the window. ‘So this is Tangmere.’ He jerked a thumb towards the south, where the waters of the Channel lapped against the coast. ‘We’re right in the front line, boy. Just a few miles of hogwash between us and all the grim nasties. Now we can really get at ’em.’
‘It’s a pretty good station, this.’ The speaker was the room’s third occupant, who was lying the wrong way round on his bed with his feet against the wall. His name was Alex McKenna, and despite his Gaelic name he was a Cockney to his fingertips. He wore a flight sergeant’s crown above his stripes.
Yeoman looked at him. ‘Have you been here before?’ he asked.
McKenna blew a leisurely smoke ring. ‘Yeah. In thirty-eight, when I was a gunner. Mind, you’ve got to get away from the station if you want a bit of life. The pubs round about aren’t any great shakes. There’s one in the village which is very nice; it’s a real old-world place, but it’s just about been taken over by the officers. Chichester’s not bad, but I always used to go down to Bognor or Brighton. You couldn’t go wrong there, especially at the weekly Widows’ Ball.’
‘Widows’ Ball?’ Yeoman queried.
McKenna looked up at him in mock contempt. ‘Where were you brought up?’ He sat up on his bed and ran his fingers through his hair, which was sticking out at all sorts of angles.
‘The Widows’ Ball,’ he explained patiently, ‘was held every Thursday night, in a certain pub in Brighton. Thursday, you see, happens to be pay-day in this part of the world. So on Thursday night, every female in Brighton who was on the loose descended on this pub in hope of finding a feller.’
‘You mean they were prostitutes for one night in the week
?’
McKenna looked shocked. ‘Good God, no. We never used to pay for it. It was almost the other way round. I practically lived with one old dear for six months. Rampant, she was. Must have been forty-five if she was a day, but what a body! Tawny all over, like a lioness. She used to put screens up in her back garden and sunbathe in the nude. And talk about cook! I never tasted food like it.’
Yeoman looked at him sceptically. ‘If you were such a brilliant performer,’ he asked, ‘why did this happy relationship come to an end?’
McKenna waved a hand airily. ‘Oh, well, you know how it is — too much of a good thing, and all that. She was getting a bit too possessive, so I decided to shake her off.’
Callender, who knew the speaker of old, roared. ‘What the bloody gigolo means is that her husband came back from sea and caught him. on the job, or near enough! Exit one N.C.O. sharpish, via drainpipe, pants in hand!’
Yeoman laughed. ‘I’d like to have seen it.’ The bony, angular McKenna running for his life and clutching his trousers was something that defied the imagination. Callender noticed his expression and slapped him on the back, grinning. ‘I can see you don’t believe a word he says, but I assure you that all the lies he tells are true. Come on, let’s go and grab something to eat.’
They went out of the hut and strolled towards the sergeants’ mess. Callender looked up into the sky, squinting against the noonday sun. ‘I’d like to bet the bastards are over in force this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Let’s just hope they get our Spits turned round in time, or we’ll be sitting ducks.’
It was Sunday 18 August, and 505 Squadron had been at Tangmere for less than an hour. The squadron they had replaced had taken a bad beating the day before and had immediately been sent north for a rest. 505’s arrival had caused some confusion; there were two other fighter squadrons at Tangmere and they had both been in action that morning. The new unit had landed just as the Spitfires were being refuelled and rearmed, and had been unceremoniously pushed into a corner of the airfield until the ground crews were free to attend to it. Wing Commander Hillier, on learning that it would be some time before his Spitfires were combat-ready, had at once sent off his pilots to find their accommodation.
There had been no let-up in the German air attacks since the terrific air battles of the fifteenth. When the last enemy bombers droned away across the Channel at the close of that fateful day, they left behind the shattered, burnt-out wrecks of seventy-five of their number scattered over the English countryside. It had been a clear victory for Fighter Command, but a victory bought at a cost of thirty-four Spitfires and Hurricanes.
Tangmere, the most westerly of Number Eleven Croup’s sector stations, had been badly hit the following day. A force of dive-bombers had struck at the airfield just as the resident fighter squadrons were landing after a sortie. Yeoman and the other newcomers had been appalled at the scene of devastation that greeted them as they taxied their Spitfires across the grass after landing; hangars, workshops, stores, flight huts were all wrecked, and there were craters all over the place. Most of the other buildings on and around the field were damaged to a greater or lesser extent; the officers’ and sergeants’ messes and their adjacent accommodation seemed to be the only structures that were still completely intact.
The situation on 18 August was gloomy. Already, on this Sunday morning, the Luftwaffe had struck hard at the vital sector stations of Kenley and Biggin Hill, severely damaging the former’s all-important operations room. Pilots returning to Tangmere after action told of fierce air battles with superior numbers of Messerschmitt 109s. Yeoman watched them covertly as they sat at the mess tables in their sweat-soaked uniforms, gulping down their food before dashing off to dispersals again. Some, their eyes dull with fatigue, pushed away their plates with the food on them untouched and wandered off in morose silence. Yeoman recognised the symptoms, for he had experienced them himself during three weeks of fighting in France. These were young men whose nerves were as taut as bowstrings; men perilously close to total exhaustion.
Yeoman and his colleagues were half-way through their lunch when Simon Wynne-Williams burst into the room like a cannonball and yelled; ‘505 to readiness!’ They jumped up, scattering knives and forks, and rushed outside, grabbing the nearest bicycles from the rack next to the mess.
‘What’s going on?’ Yeoman shouted, as he pedalled furiously alongside Wynne-Williams.
‘There’s a big plot building up over the French coast,’ the other yelled back. ‘We’re to go to cockpit readiness. It looks like all hell’s going to break loose.’
They reached dispersal and threw their bicycles aside. Most of the ether 505 Squadron pilots were already there, strapped into their cockpits. Yeoman climbed on to the port wing of his Spitfire and eased himself into the cockpit, taking care not to ruck the parachute back straps as he did so. They could be very uncomfortable. He strapped on his parachute first: body belt, left shoulder, right shoulder, leg straps through the crutch loop, clicking the metal tags into the quick release box and pulling the harness tight. Then, over the top of the parachute harness, he fastened his safety straps; left shoulder first, then leg straps, then right shoulder. Safety pin slammed into position.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw an airman jump on to the wing of Hillier’s aircraft, shout something at the pilot and then jump down again. Hurriedly, Yeoman lifted his helmet from its resting place on the control column and put it on. Hillier raised his arm, giving the signal to start up. Mechanically, Yeoman went through the motions. On either side of him, eleven other pilots were doing the same. Unscrew the Kigass and pump twice to prime the engine; switches on. A nod to the airman standing by with the trolley-acc. Yeoman pressed the starter button and the big propeller began to turn, slowly and unwillingly at first. Then there was the usual cough, a cloud of smoke, and the Merlin blared into life, rumbling and vibrating.
Yeoman set the throttle to a thousand revs, locked the brake lever on the control column and checked the pressures by applying first left and then right rudder. Making sure that the radiator was fully open — otherwise the engine would boil very quickly — he waved his hand from side to side, pulling the cockpit flap closed as his fitter and rigger unplugged the trolley-acc and pulled away the chocks.
He clipped his face mask into place — his cheeks were already clammy with sweat from his exertions and the soft kid of the mask clung to his face uncomfortably — and pressed button A, glancing round at his two wingmen as he did so. Keenan gave him the thumbs-up and the other pilot, a flight sergeant named Honeywell, raised an index finger and thumb joined in a circle. Yeoman grinned behind his mask. He liked Honeywell, a broad, cheerful New Zealander. He hoped the man would enjoy better fortune than Hamilton, lost on his first sortie.
The radio hissed and crackled with atmospherics. Through it all, distorted and tinny, came the voice of the controller: ‘Hello, Stingray, Red Box calling, scramble, scramble. Portsmouth, Angels Sixteen.’
Hillier acknowledged and a moment later his Spitfire began to move, followed by the other two fighters of Red Section. Their tails came up and they took off across wind in a cloud of dust and bits of whirling grass. Yellow Section followed suit, and then it was the turn of Yeoman’s Blue Section. He trimmed rudder and elevators, checked petrol on and propeller in fine pitch. Mixture rich, and a quick scan of the instruments; oil pressure and glycol temperature both O.K.
He opened the throttle to plus two boost and the Spitfire began to roll forward. He eased the stick forward, holding on a little left aileron to counteract the cross wind, then pulled it gently back. The pounding of the undercarriage died away to a dull rumble and then ceased. He was airborne. All around him fighters were lifting away from the ground. He squeezed the brake lever to lock the wheels, then selected undercarriage up. He felt two distinct thumps and the indicator lights winked red at him. He reached up and pulled the hood shut, then closed the radiator flap.
‘Hello, Red Box, Stingray calling, all sections ai
rborne.’
‘Roger, Stingray. Hello, Red Two, Red Box calling, stand by for pipsqueak zero in fifteen seconds.’
At the right-hand side of each Spitfire’s cockpit there was a little pointer and a dial marked off in four fifteen-second sections. This piece of equipment, when switched on, sent out a high-pitched fifteen-second transmission to the ground station, enabling the latter to tune in and fix the position of each section, advising details of its whereabouts to the operations rooms controlling the fighter formations. Transmitting for a fix in this way was the job of the number two aircraft in each section. Yeoman heard the ground station call up each one in turn:
‘… five, four, three, two, one, zero … pip in, Blue Two, pip in.’
The high-pitched squawk momentarily drowned all other radio noise as Keenan pressed down the switch. ‘Hello, Red Box, Blue Two calling, pip in, pip in, listening out.’
The twelve Spitfires pointed their noses into the blue vault of the sky, climbing steadily at two thousand feet per minute. Adrenalin pumped through twelve bodies as the pilots began their endless, life-preserving search of the sky around them; left, right, above, below, behind, into the hostile sun.
‘Hello, Stingray, Red Box calling, vector 250.’
The formation turned, heading west-south-west. At ten thousand feet, Yeoman turned on his oxygen, then as an afterthought turned it off again. He would wait until he reached fifteen thousand feet before turning it on again. Pilots had been lost because their oxygen ran out during a dogfight at high level.
The Channel was over on the left, shimmering and glassy under the sun. The Isle of Wight showed up darkly, like a great ink stain. From time to time, Yeoman dropped his eyes from the sky search to scan his instruments, instantly correcting any tendency of the Merlin to use too much power. Everything was vital; the avoidance of excessive throttle movements or an over-rich mixture became of paramount importance, points that could save precious fuel for use in an emergency.
Squadron Scramble (1978) Page 5
