A flood of equally brilliant light somewhere astern of him lit the sky and was reflected by the base of the low overcast ahead of him. Someone else had flown into a shell that had blown his aircraft to bits, with the added detonation of his fuel tanks and torpedo.
Now it was anger that became Alden's dominant mood. The ships were the embodiment of death to his comrades and the Nazis' evil doctrine and intentions. A crazy impulse to hurl his aircraft headlong at one of the battle cruisers in order to make sure of sinking it made him shake with tension. Even as the madness momentarily possessed him, he reasoned that crashing into the vast structure of thick steel would achieve little. Only a well-placed torpedo below the waterline had any chance of doing real damage.
He saw the furrow of somebody's torpedo streaking towards one of the battle cruisers… then a second from a different direction.
Ponderously the big ship turned, heeling. Both torpedoes sped past.
A Vildebeest was burning. Its torpedo no longer hung beneath it. It lurched onto its starboard wingtips and slid into the sea. A column of smoke and steam hissed up.
At a little over 1000 yards, aiming carefully ahead of the nearer of the two biggest vessels, judging where it would be, if it held its course, in 90 seconds' time, Alden released his torpedo. A few seconds later he swung away in a tight turn. Twenty-millimetre shells tore holes in his wings. Heavier shells burst close enough to hurl the Vildebeest up to make it pitch and skid. He tried to keep the track of his torpedo in sight. The last he saw of it, it was obviously going to miss its target by several yards.
One of the troopships was down by the bows, motionless. That was the only damage he could see. He searched the sky and could count only seven other Vildebeests.
Shortly after, the second wave passed him and the remnants of his squadron, on its way to take its turn in that maelstrom of gunfire; and with no more hope of success than the first waves.
Three
The second attack scored no hits and lost five aircraft; two of them to enemy fighters that had been scrambled as soon as the first squadron was spotted. Fortunately, the Messerschmitts had fuel for only a few minutes' combat when the second squadron arrived.
The survivors' bitterness about the futility of the venture held no resentment. What they had suffered was only the same as the Hampdens, Blenheims and Wellingtons had been through. It was true that the bombers were the most modern in Bomber Command, whereas their own antiquated aircraft should have been withdrawn from front line service long ago. Chances had not been equal. But Coastal Command was the poor relation in the Service family. Even the other operational Commands had little notion of what Coastal's duties entailed. To them, as to the public, life for a Coastal Command crew consisted of tedious uneventful patrols over the North Sea and Atlantic, looking for U-boats. They flew comfortably in big flying boats - Sunderlands, were they? - or some unaggressive type like an Anson or a... a... Boston, was it? The one that was really an American airliner, with a gun turret fitted on top. U-boats seldom showed up, anyway. And when they did, all the hunting crews had to do was dump depth charges on them before they dived. And they were in such a hurry to dive, that they didn't stay to fight ... they only had one small gun, anyway...
This patronising and uninformed view was known to
the men who flew these sorties but they remained ironically unperturbed by them. Ignorance was to be ignored, not to be irritated by.
There was, none the less, a noticeable lack of the habitual exuberance in the atmosphere at East Crondal after the last aircraft had landed. Alden felt, in a way, detached from the quiet, implicit grief that it would have been an inconceivable breach of tradition to mention. The others on the squadron, with the exception of the handful of Reservists, had been together for a long time: some, for the last two years. He felt, in a way, unqualified to mourn for dead comrades with the depth of feeling that he knew they must be. Also, in a way, he felt apart from them and this distressed him because he had identified himself totally with his own squadron from the moment he joined it. He felt a fraternal attachment to the sister squadron.
He had recognised at an early age that the only way to learn about any community was to keep silent and live among it. Only time and observation revealed the way in which one must think and act in order to become absorbed in the community. It was an almost imperceptible process. Gradually, from a word here and there, a pattern of behaviour, an awareness of other people's actions, concessions, assumptions and acceptances, one had to grow up afresh in every new environment. Every group, whatever its size, had a tacit plan for living from day to day; and even if that plan was never defined, even a dull and insensitive person could recognise it, absorb it and abide by it. If he did not accept and abide by it, he was an outsider. He did not necessarily have to respect it, but what he must do was realise that an outsider was irredeemable.
These were solemn, and could even have been pompous, thoughts to put into spoken words. Even when shaped into private reflections they made him feel a little uncomfortable. But to fit in you had to know the rules and there was probably nowhere in the world more miserable a society to live in, if one did not conform, than an English preparatory or public school, a squadron, or its equivalent in the other Services. The rules were all the tougher because although they were clearly enough defined in the minds of those who lived by them, they were unwritten and every man had to rely on his own good sense and judgment to perceive what they were. It was not until the next day, when he was being driven to the crew room by Courtney in the red TA model M .G., that Alden felt it safe to broach an ignored topic. Even so, he would not have done so with anyone whom he knew less well. He prepared himself by a glance at his old friend's profile. One seldom sees Bruce wearing such a serious expression, he thought. Here goes. 'Pre-war theory was a load of cock.' He seldom expressed himself with the vulgarity of the inarticulate, but his choice of words was deliberate, to jerk Courtney out of his reverie.
Courtney took his eyes off the road long enough for a hard stare. 'What theory?'
'That "the bomber will always get through"; and for "bomber" read also "torpedo-carrier".'
'Go on.' It was hardly an encouraging exhortation, in that tone.
'Well, the bombers haven't been getting through, have they?'
'Well?'
'On the one hand, they... we... need either much more armament or fighter escort. On the other hand, Jerry flak and fighters are a damn sight more effective than the Brass Hats estimated.'
'The only fighters with the range to escort across the North Sea are the short-nose Blenheims; and they've got no better armament than the bomber boys… worse than the Hampdens and Wimpeys. You know that.'
'So does Air Ministry. So it's sheer obstinate pride and unwillingness to admit being wrong.'
'What is?'
'Sending bombers out in daylight. What's the point, if so few of them are going to reach the target?'
'From what I've heard, they seldom do anyway, what with navigation errors and lousy weather… not to mention bombing error when they do get there. Anyway, fighters would be… would have been… a fat lot of use to us!'
Alden, recalling the gouts of flame and smoke at the muzzles of the heavy flak guns, seen from terrifyingly close range, made no reply. After a pause, he said, 'The Beauforts will make the difference.'
What difference? Between life and death, survival and perishing? Hardly: but they would give their crews a better chance of scoring a hit before they were shot down than the Vildebeest did.
'Meanwhile, we won't be used again on ops. Might as well be stooging in Training Command as flogging the old Beest around on routine exercises, knowing we'll never fly it again in anger.'
'If Air Ministry and Command have got any sense, if they understand the slightest thing about basic psychology, they'll start conversion training immediately; however few dual Beauforts there are.'
Courtney's usual serenity had evidently been restored. He smiled. 'You Varsity type
s! All I know about psychology is giving a girl a box of chocolates or a couple of gins to put her in an amenable frame of mind.' It was drily said, despite the smile.
'That's all anyone needs to know, Bruce. What the powers that be have to do now is give us the equivalent of a couple of gins to put us in the right frame of mind.'
And to get us away from this place, which we associate with disaster and tragedy, for a while. It was a rider to keep to oneself.
Wing Commander Tregear appeared in the crew room soon after his pilots had assembled there. He perched on the corner of a table on which Intelligence reports, aircraft recognition cards and other official information lay scattered. Silence fell.
'We're being detached to Thorney Island tomorrow, to do our conversion onto Beauforts.' There were sounds of pleasure: a murmuring, a shuffling of feet, an exchange of grins and nods and winks. 'The jeeps' (Wireless operators; that they were also air gunners was understood.) 'will be corning with us. We'll crew up with an observer and second air gunner for each crew either there or when we come back. New crews will go to O.T.U. to crew up before they join us here.' Operational training units were a wartime innovation. Previously, all newly qualified pilots and others did their further training on their first squadron. 'When we get our own Beauforts, we'll take them up to Abbots inch to learn how to drop a torp all over again.
He continued for a while on this topic and when he had gone Courtney made a grab for the telephone. 'Must get hold of my luscious little pusher and make a date for this evening.'
'You'd better ply her with chocolates and gin,' Alden said. 'It's your last chance for a while.'
'Don't I know it!'
Flight Sergeant Jenkins was looking glum. Somebody asked him what was the matter.
'It's only the beginning of the rugby season, look you, and we're just getting a decent station team together, and now we have to break it up.'
'Thorney has a team,' one of the other sergeants said.
'That's not the same. This is our station.'
'It's more populated down there than in Norfolk,' another pilot reminded him. 'More pushers to the square mile.'
Jenkins brightened. 'Now you're talking.'
Alden supposed that they were all feeling the pressure of advancing time, of time running out, since yesterday. The few weeks converting to the new aircraft type and then learning to drop a torpedo at a much higher speed than from a Vildebeest, would be a welcome break. There would be another difference in technique to acquire also. A torpedo had to enter the water at an angle of seventeen degrees. The Vildebeest carried it slung nose-down. In the Beaufort it was carried horizontally, half protruding from the bomb bay. Absorption in mastering new skills would be a distraction, for those who had taken part in the disastrous attacks, from thinking about what lay in store on future ones. The passage of a few weeks would dim the bad memories. But always, now, there was the first-hand knowledge for all of them of the scale of casualties they must expect.
He envied those who could respond to this urgency to cram their lives with as many pleasures as possible during the probably short time that remained to them, by resorting to sport or women. His own relaxations lay in less frenetic pursuits. He found serenity and interest in music and literature, in colours and forms on framed canvas. Rowing, his only major sport, which he had continued as a member of London Rowing Club after university, he must forget for the duration. As a matter of the principle of keeping healthy and fit, instilled throughout his schooldays, he had always played squash in the winter. That was available. Every officers' mess had one or two courts. But he was not a natural ball games player and it was only his innate persistence and refusal to accept defeat, his long reach and stamina, that enabled him sometimes to beat much better players than he.
Women had never played an important, certainly not a demanding, part in his life. He suspected that he was missing a major element in the joy of living by his lack of compulsive interest in sexuality. It must be inherent, he had decided. His father had never shown much warmth for anybody and treated his wife with a distant, if courteous, kindness rather than overt affection. His elder brother had always spoken of, and behaved towards, girls with the aloof tolerance of an arid nature that put more store in the intellect and social standing of a dance partner or dinner companion than in her beauty or charm. It had come as a surprise to Alden when, at the age of 18, he had found out that his brother's well-ordered life did in fact allow efficiently, if unemotionally and impersonally, for the healthy requirements of the normal male. His brother visited an expatriate tart from Toulouse, in Albemarle Street, every Wednesday evening after office and took one of half-a-dozen chorus girls of his acquaintance to Brighton for a weekend once a month. He was a keen member of the Territorial Army, a corporal in The Inns Of Court Regiment, which was a sort of officers training corps for war. One of his comrades was a raffish barrister of the type who drank champagne from dancing girls' shoes. Alden's brother did not follow this insanitary and malodorous practice, but took advantage of his friend's connections to find partners for his monthly escapade.
Alden was beginning to wonder whether he might do well to emulate his efficiently organised brother now that the unpleasantness’s of war would surely heap themselves upon him to the point where music, literature and paintings might not be enough to sustain his morale. Drink and women were a man's usual outlets and he always felt sick if he drank much.
Contemplating his plain and a trifle forbidding features in the mirror that evening when he brushed his hair, he wondered wryly: Perhaps I should organise myself a pusher like everyone else. Don't like that term much. Birds, as the Cockneys call them, sounds more attractive. There's a suggestion of soft, plump sleekness about it: of something cuddly and cosy and comforting. After all, that's what one wants: comfort.
But there wasn't much comfort to be derived from the Mk I Beaufort.
The Adjutant, from the instructions of the flight commanders, and with the squadron commander's approval, had issued a movement order which provided for some of the pilots to travel to Thorney Island in their own cars. Driving past the airfield on arrival, on his way to the mess, Alden saw his first Beaufort.
A tough looking job, was his first thought. It gave him some reassurance. His second gave him none at all; it needs to be, for the kind of ops we're going to have to fly in it.
He paused for a moment to look it over. Here at last, was an aeroplane which was really modern and would challenge his skill. His old Cranwell training type, the Avro 504N, had been a hangover from The Great War: although not introduced until 1927, it was a continuation of a series which had begun in 1913 with the 504K. The Tutor, which he had flown at Oxford, had followed the 504N in 1932. The Hawker Hart dated back to 1930 and the Vildebeest to 1933, in squadron service. All were biplanes and all were small.
The Airspeed Oxford had been an important advance for him not only because it was twin engined but also because it was a monoplane; and much larger than any of his earlier aircraft.
But the Beaufort! There was a threatening looking bit of aircraft design, if you liked. Its wingspan of almost 58 ft. was about nine feet longer than the Vildebeest's. It was nearly 45 ft. long, compared with the Vildebeest's under 37 ft. Its two engines were each of 1,010 h.p., whereas the Vildebeest had a single 660 h.p. Empty, the Vildebeest weighed 4,724 lb. and loaded, 8,500 lb. The Beaufort, 13,107lb and 21,228lb respectively; and it was the first all-metal aeroplane that Alden would fly.
Courtney had arrived before him and dispelled the first of many delusions held by the pilots, over tea in a quiet corner of the ante-room. 'It's worse armed than the Blenheim; and you know how the Blenheim has got on against the Messerschmitt! We've got a single Browning in the port wing, fired by the pilot, as in the Blenheim, but instead of two Brownings in the dorsal turret, there's only one Vickers K, same as the Vildebeest. If the Blenheims can't put up adequate defensive fire with two Brownings, what the hell hope have we got with one K?'
'D
amn all. What's the arc of fire?'
'Only a hundred and eighty degrees: so any fighter attacking from forward of the beam will be impossible to hit; except dead in front of the wing gun.'
The Vickers K gun was greatly inferior to the Browning and one of its weaknesses was that instead of a belt feed its ammunition was fed from a drum, which held only 100 rounds. This meant that the drum had to be replaced after just over six seconds' firing. The enemy did not hold their fire while this was being done!
'They're bound to make improvements. This is only the Mark One, after all.'
'I hear the engines are unreliable, too.'
'Who told you that?'
'A type I met at lunch, who'd pranged one.'
'It's easy to blame an engine instead of one's own ham-handedness.'
'It was an instructor, whom I was on a squadron with. I know he's not ham-fisted. If an engine does fail, one's in real trouble, it seems; especially on take-off. Apparently the pilots' notes say, as usual, that if an engine fails, throttle back the other and land straight ahead. But they contradict that by also saying that it's not advisable to attempt a one-engine landing! And if an engine fails on take-off at anything like full take-off power, or with flaps partly down, the Beaufort swings and rolls at once: in less than three seconds it's in a vertical bank… and you can't stop it with aileron or rudder. Nice thought, isn't it? But there's more: it's virtually impossible to prevent this happening if you've still got your flaps and wheels down.'
'It doesn't sound like a very friendly aeroplane.'
'Downright hostile. It won't climb on one engine unless it's very lightly loaded…' 'Which it won't be, on ops.'
'Precisely. What's more, it'll only maintain height, even lightly loaded, if you close the gills on the live engine and bring the flaps up.'
'But,' said Alden, 'if you close the gills, the engine is bound to overheat.'
‘Exactly. So you prang anyway.'
Torpedo Attack Page 4
