Fortress England

by Robert Jackson

Scudding towards him across the cloud tops, like a shoal of minnows fleeting over a river bed, came a line of aircraft — or rather two lines, one after the other. He counted eighteen in all, and quickly identified them as Ju 88s. There was no point in keeping radio silence now.

  “Tally ho!” he yelled, his voice charged with excitement. “Enemy aircraft, dead ahead. Head-on attack, and make every shot count!”

  Quite apart from the fact that the Beaufighters were not carrying a second crew member, who also had the job of changing the ammunition drums, the drums themselves having been left behind in the quest to reduce weight. Those already in place on the cannon’s breeches held enough ammunition for only a few seconds of firing time, after which the pilots would have to rely on their belt-fed machine-guns, six of which were installed in the wings.

  The Beaufighters fanned out into line abreast, each pilot selecting his target as the German bombers swept towards them. Kalinski picked the middle aircraft in the leading flight of nine — the aircraft, he suspected, that belonged to the formation leader — and held the control column steady with both hands, his whole body braced as the bomber’s glazed nose swelled in his reflector sight. Forcing himself to keep cool, he waited until precisely the right moment, as far as his judgement would allow, before jabbing his thumb down on the firing button.

  The cannon thudded and the image of the Ju 88 shivered in the sight. Kalinski had time for only a fleeting glimpse of the bomber’s nose disintegrating, and then he was pushing hard on the stick, heaving the Beaufighter’s nose down. Oil spattered on his windscreen as he flashed underneath the bomber he had attacked.

  Kalinski kept his aircraft in a dive until he had passed underneath the second formation. As he did so, he was aware of smoky lines of tracer drifting towards him from the bombers’ ventral gun positions, but he did not feel the shock of any hits. He climbed steeply and turned, standing the Beaufighter on its wingtip as he came round in pursuit of the enemy aircraft. Not for the first time, he marvelled at the distance that aircraft in combat put between one another, especially if they were flying in opposite directions; the Junkers formation now seemed a long way off, and as the Ju 88 was a fast bomber, overhauling it took time.

  There were other Beaufighters around him, and he made a quick count; all eight aircraft had come safely through the initial attack. The Junkers formation seemed smaller now, and with good reason — the German pilots had closed up to fill five gaps in their ranks. Smoke trails marked the death plunge of some of the bombers.

  Kalinski came within range and picked another target, closing in fast now, opening fire at 250 yards. The bomber’s rear gunner was on the ball — Kalinski felt a series of small hammer-blows as bullets punched holes in his port wing. He fired again, and orange flashes surrounded the Ju 88’s cockpit area. The whole cockpit seemed to be consumed by a vivid red glow, and Kalinski guessed that his exploding shells had probably ignited flares. In a sudden flash of imagination, he visualised the nightmare inside the Junkers, the crew’s blind panic as they tried to beat out the flames with their hands. An instant later the flames burst through the thin metal of the fuselage and the bomber started to go down, its framework aft of the cockpit shrouded in smoke.

  Leaving the doomed aircraft to its death throes, Kalinski turned away, looking for another target. A Beaufighter zoomed past him and he saw by the code letters on its side that it was O’Day’s aircraft. Off to one side and below, a Junkers that might have been O’Day’s victim was spinning down, minus its tail and in flames.

  The Junkers formation had become dislocated now, and some of the 88s were jettisoning their bombs and turning for home. Others, however, were sticking doggedly to their original course and Kalinski latched on to one of them, which had gone into a shallow dive to pick up speed. Ignoring the rear gunner’s fire he put a burst of cannon shells into it from a few yards’ range, and then the shells ran out. Hurriedly, he turned the machine-gun selector switch to fire and continued his pursuit, opening up and seeing his bullets converge on the bomber’s port engine.

  A thin wisp of smoke, thread-like at first, twisted back in the slipstream. It became denser as he continued to fire from dead astern, yawing the Beaufighter’s nose so that he raked the Junkers from wingtip to wingtip. A tongue of bright flame streamed back from the stricken engine, and then the other motor also began to emit smoke, its propeller windmilling.

  Dark shapes tumbled from the bomber and whirled back beneath the pursuing Beaufighter. Streamers of parachute silk appeared, blossoming into yellow canopies.

  Like most Poles, Kalinski was not a forgiving man when it came to the fate of Germans. He imagined the bomber crew’s relief at successfully escaping from the burning aircraft, a relief that would soon turn to dread and terror as they drifted slowly down towards the cruel waves, with the dawning realisation that their chances of being picked up were infinitesimal.

  Kalinski gained height again. The sky was empty. Maybe one or two of the bombers had escaped, but black smoke trails drifting on the wind and a litter of burning oil patches on the water below told him that most had not.

  He called up the other Beaufighters, asking the pilots to check in, mentally ticking off names against the callsigns as they did so. To his dismay, two aircraft failed to respond. He asked if anyone knew what had happened to them.

  “Blue Three bought it. I saw him collide with a bomber.” The voice was O’Day’s. Blue Three: that was Flight Sergeant Charlton. He’d been with the Beaufighter Flight for just under three months. The other missing pilot was one of the new boys.

  “All right,” Kalinski said. “Let’s go home.”

  Forming up into two flights of three, the surviving Beaufighters set course northwards, climbing steadily as they went.

  German radar on the Cherbourg Peninsula tracked the homeward-bound aircraft, and an operator passed on the information to Bordeaux, where it was received by the commander of the Ju 88 fighter squadron. He was in a towering rage. Frantic radio messages and calls for help had told of the fate of the German bombers, but he had been powerless to intervene. The original intention had been that the fighters were to escort their bomber counterparts, but these orders had been changed.

  *

  After parting company with the Bismarck, the Prinz Eugen had headed south to refuel in mid-Atlantic, but serious engine troubles had caused her captain, Brinkmann, to abandon his planned sortie against British convoys. The problem was that Brinkmann was keeping strict radio silence, so that no-one knew exactly where the cruiser was.

  All that was known was that she was making for Brest, and that she would need air cover on the final leg of her approach. Her call might come at any moment, and so the Ju 88 fighter squadron was ordered to remain at readiness to answer it.

  If only the squadron commander had been given authority to escort the bomber formation, as planned. If only the bombers had been able to get through to the British warships. They might have knocked out the British battleships and aircraft carriers, or at least inflicted extensive damage on them, compelling them to withdraw and so giving the Bismarck some chance of slipping away. If only…

  If only. If only things had turned out differently. If only the Bismarck had not sustained torpedo damage. But she had, and she was crippled now, swerving erratically through the dawn with twisted propellers, still 400 miles from Brest, with the battleships Rodney and King George V coming up relentlessly for the kill. They had come within striking distance of her during the night, but Admiral Tovey, well aware of the deadly accuracy of Bismarck’s radar-directed gunnery, had wisely decided to wait until daylight before engaging her.

  At dawn on 27 May Admiral Tovey closed in from the north-west, the two battleships approaching head-on and in line abreast, with just over half a mile between them. At 0843, with the range twelve and a half miles and Bismarck in sight, the battleships opened fire, their salvoes joined by the 8-inch guns of the cruiser Norfolk, which was now ten miles from the enemy and to the east of the main f
orce.

  The Bismarck returned the fire, concentrating at first on the Rodney, which pounded on through great fountains of water. On the German battleship’s bridge, Admiral Lutjens watched the oncoming British warships through his binoculars, saw with satisfaction the accuracy of his ship’s gunnery, and felt a glimmer of hope that the experience of the Hood might be repeated. Then he told himself that it was only a dream, that the Bismarck was indeed doomed, and that the best he might hope for was that her crew would acquit themselves with honour.

  An officer appeared at Lutjens’s elbow, clutching the waterproof bag that contained the ship’s log and the film shot in the Denmark Strait. He asked Lutjens what he was to do with it.

  “Might as well weight it down and throw it over the side,” Lutjens remarked grimly. “No, wait!”

  His eye fell on a steel locker in a corner of the bridge. It was armoured and watertight, designed to hold code books and secret documents. “Put it in there,” Lutjens ordered.

  Who knows, the German admiral thought wearily. Who knows? Some day, with advanced technology, a future generation might locate the wreck of the Bismarck deep down on the ocean floor. Some day, a salvage expedition might go down to her, and find the locker, with its contents still sealed inside, and bring them to the surface.

  And then, for a time, the world would know how well and gallantly the ship had fought, and his own words would spring to life, and his name would enjoy a moment of glory…

  Minutes later, a 14-inch shell entered the bridge like a glowing meteor and exploded there, killing everyone present and ripping a great chunk from the battleship’s superstructure. The men on the pursuing warships clearly saw the flash of the explosion. Another shell wrecked the main director control, so that her gunfire became increasingly inaccurate.

  By 1020 she was little more than a blazing coffin. All her guns were silent, but she still refused to strike her colours or sink, despite the fact that the British warships had fired over 700 shells at her. Only a small proportion had found their target, prompting Admiral Tovey to remark caustically to his Fleet Gunnery Officer that he would stand a better chance of hitting her if he threw his binoculars at her.

  In the end the battleships, undamaged but seriously short of ammunition, were compelled to break off the action, and it was left to the cruisers Norfolk and Dorsetshire to close in and finish off the Bismarck with torpedoes. Finally, at 1036, she rolled over and vanished under the tortured sea, her colours still flying. With her, she took all but 119 of her crew of over 2,000; they had fought for their ship gallantly to the end.

  Slowly, after picking up what survivors they could, the British warships turned away from the patch of cold sea that was the Bismarck’s grave, marked only by a spreading oil slick, floating debris and a cryptic reference: forty-eight degrees ten minutes north, sixteen degrees twelve minutes west. Two Swordfish circled the scene once and then flew away to join the Ark Royal, cruising on the horizon.

  Epilogue

  The Air Ministry, London — Thursday, 1 June 1941

  “A good show, gentlemen,” Air Commodore Glendenning said enthusiastically. “A thoroughly good show all round!” He looked in turn at Armstrong, Baird and Kalinski, giving the thin smile which was his version of a broad grin.

  “And a good example of cooperation between the RAF and Navy,” he added. “Without the Coastal Command recce flight, the Bismarck would never have been sighted in the Norwegian fjord. Without the Fleet Air Arm recce flight, her departure wouldn’t have been discovered in time. Without the cruisers screening the Denmark Strait, we’d have probably lost her again. Without heavy ships to engage her — admittedly, at dreadful cost to the Navy — she wouldn’t have altered course, and the aircraft from Victorious would not have been in a position to attack her. Without further efforts by Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm she might not have been relocated, and without the Ark Royal’s Swordfish attack she wouldn’t have been slowed down so that our heavy units could overtake her. Yes, a tremendous effort, all round.”

  Kalinski gave a polite cough, causing the air commodore to look at him.

  “Oh, good heavens, yes. I’m not forgetting your chaps, and what they did. Without them, the Germans might have inflicted substantial damage on our naval forces. They might even have bought enough time for Bismarck to be towed home. I understand that Ark Royal only had enough torpedoes for one more strike, and they might well have missed.”

  He caught Baird staring at him somewhat indignantly, and prudently decided to change tack.

  “Anyway,” he said, “the sinking of the Bismarck is the one bright spot in an otherwise gloomy situation. The last troops are being evacuated from Crete, where the Navy has done a magnificent job and taken a terrible beating. Malta is under heavy air attack, and Rommel is on the offensive in North Africa. He’s got Tobruk under siege, and it looks as though the capture of that port is his main objective, so for the moment the threat of a strong German and Italian attack into Egypt seems to have been lifted. It’s given us a bit of breathing space, time to form new squadrons in the theatre. We must have air superiority, and it’s going to take a long time to achieve that. One of the problems is that our aircrews in North Africa are mostly inexperienced. What we urgently need is new blood, men with combat experience who can show the others the way, and begin striking at the enemy now.”

  He got up from behind his desk, went over to a cabinet and took out four glasses and a bottle.

  “I take it you wouldn’t say no to a little drink? Good. Oh, by the way, have any of you chaps ever been to Africa?”

  There was a gleam in Glendenning’s eye which Armstrong found most disconcerting.

  *

  The Foreign Office, Downing Street, London

  Two men faced one another over a highly polished oak tabletop. One was a senior diplomat, the other a man at the peak of British Intelligence. They, too, were sipping whisky.

  “So he’s decided to talk, then, our prisoner in the Tower,” the diplomat said. The man opposite nodded.

  “Yes, he’s told us everything. Dates, times, forces involved, the lot.”

  “And are you going to tell anyone else about these revelations?” the diplomat wanted to know.

  “Well, we’ll have to tell the Old Man, of course. My God, can you imagine his reaction? He’ll jump for joy. A powerful ally, handed to him on a plate at a time when he most needs one. I very much doubt whether he’ll want to pass on the information.”

  The diplomat sipped his drink thoughtfully.

  “Do you think they’ll win?” he asked suddenly. “The Germans, I mean.”

  The man from Intelligence turned his crystal glass round between his long fingers.

  “No,” he said at length, “I don’t think they will. They might achieve their initial objectives, but then they’ll overstretch their supply lines and come to a stop. And winter comes early over there, you should know that. After all, you spent some years in the country.”

  The diplomat let out a sigh. “Yes, I did. Can’t say I enjoyed it very much.”

  He raised his glass. “Well, I hope it all works out to our advantage. Let’s drink to that.”

  They stretched out their arms over the table and clinked glasses. Of all the people in Britain, only three — themselves and Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, now a prisoner in the Tower of London — knew that in exactly three weeks’ time, on June the twenty-second, nineteen hundred and forty-one, Hitler’s armoured divisions would spearhead the German invasion of Russia.

  If you enjoyed Fortress England check out Endeavour Press’s other books here: Endeavour Press - the UK’s leading independent publisher of digital books.

  For weekly updates on our free and discounted eBooks sign up to our newsletter.

  Follow us on Twitter and Goodreads.

 

 

  ing books on Archive.