To So Few

by Russell Sullman

He yawned hugely, and tried to make himself comfortable on the bench. He tipped his cap forwards and closed his eyes.

  With a bit of luck, maybe he’d get the chance of a quick forty winks.

  Half an hour later, still bleary eyed, he and his section were taking off on an interception near the Thames estuary.

  The third scramble of the day saw A’Flight take-off in mid-afternoon to the request for assistance by the standing patrol of the small coastal convoy ‘Teacake.’

  Rose was Yellow Two in the second section element of the six aeroplane flight. Flight-Lieutenant Denis led his flight as Blue one.

  Climbing quickly, they flew to the coast. There was no radio chatter as they flew. The enemy raid was a large one, and already some coasters had been hard hit.

  Other fighters had also been scrambled and the first of these smashed into the Luftwaffe attackers, to the relief of the hard-pressed defenders.

  As they neared the coast, they could see the thin dark trails, in the distance, stark against the pale sky, marking where ships and men fought and bled and died.

  Dry-mouthed and heart beating rapidly, Rose was transfixed by the distant sight of battle, and the first warning of trouble was when Granny Smith suddenly shouted desperately over the intercom, “Break! Bandits above! Break, break!”

  Seeing the burning ships before them, they had not noticed the high level bandits, the raider’s escort.

  Cursing, Rose instinctively kicked right rudder, pulled the stick back hard into the pit of his stomach, as far back as he could. Like someone wet behind the ears, he had allowed the sight of burning ships make him forget to keep checking his tail. Thank God for Smith!

  Pulling into the sudden, vicious manoeuvre, Rose blacked out momentarily. The Hurricanes of A’Flight shot apart in all directions, like a flock of startled birds as the Staffel of Me110 twin-engine fighters fell on them from above. However, thanks to Smith’s desperate cry, miraculously, not one Hurricane was downed in that first pass.

  But the formation was broken, whilst nearby sailors raged and bled and called desperately for assistance.

  As Rose turned sharply, sight blurring, sweat sprang out on his brow, and his heart thundered like a kettle-drum. He could feel abject fear engulfing him, an inexorable tide that threatened to overwhelm and engulf him.

  He had felt this way once before, when he had been scrumping with Fred Hinds. The farmer had set his dogs on them, and they had fled in terror. Rose had wet himself in his fear.

  Thank goodness that at least he hadn’t done that again now.

  Suddenly, as he looked up, a black shape hurtled past him, huge and dark. The Hurricane wallowed in the shock-wave of disturbed air, and he instinctively ducked his head.

  What in the hell was that?

  Whatever it was, it was sufficient to snap Rose out of the frozen moment of stark terror that many fighting men experience as they go into combat for the first time in their lives.

  Look around you; check those danger areas below and behind.

  Calm down.

  Calm.

  Calm. Pretend it’s just another practice combat.

  Breathe slowly.

  He craned his neck around, glanced quickly up, down, to the sides, just as he had been taught to do by Smith

  The blood was roaring in his ears, heart fluttering violently. He willed himself to slow down his rapid breathing.

  Dear God. Was this what it was like?

  Most of his companions had already disappeared. Surely they were not shot down?

  No, of course not. He could hear them calling out to each other.

  Far below, he saw a Hurricane chasing a pair of Me110’s three thousand feet below. He could not tell if it was Granny or Barsby, or one of the others.

  Another Me110 was going downwards, seemingly out of control and at full throttle in a steep dive, almost vertical, away from him. Apart from the distant solitary Hurricane, there was no sign of the other members of A’Flight.

  Where could they all go, so suddenly?

  Then his heart lurched painfully again in his chest, for just below, perhaps a couple of thousand feet was another Me110, and it had just pulled out of its own dive, and was turning to gently climb to port, its wings waggling uncertainly.

  That must be the aircraft that had just passed so close to him, almost hitting him in his turn. The speed of its dive had prevented it from levelling out and chasing him at his own height. It had probably prevented the German pilot from drawing an accurate bead on him.

  Lady Luck had smiled on him, saving him from the mid-air collision.

  Already the panic was lessening, as Granny’s teachings took control.

  Time was of the essence, a quick glance in the mirror.

  Satisfied that there were no more enemy aircraft behind him for the present, he quickly half-rolled so that he was inverted, and pulled the Hurricane into a dive to follow the Messerschmitt.

  The carburettor of his Merlin, not being fuel-injected, would have become starved of fuel and would have cut out, so he had to roll inverted before he could dive. A few small lumps of earth from the floor of the cockpit swirled past his face. He had to act quickly, because with its advantage of speed over the British fighter, the 110 could escape if not tackled immediately.

  Below Rose, in the Me110, Leutnant Carl-Gustav Schnee was having an extremely anxious time. Up until a few minutes ago, he had been revelling in the fact that he was a member of the invincible Luftwaffe’s elite Bf 110 Zerstorer force. It had felt so good to be flying wing to wing with the finest pilots in their powerful heavy fighters.

  He had caressed his firing button lovingly, anticipating the moment that he would pour fire from his nose mounted cannon and machine guns into some hapless Tommy fighter. The tales he had heard from his squadron mates had fuelled his hunger for combat.

  The enemy fighters had been there one moment, but as he fired at them, there was just empty space ahead as the British schwein scattered.

  But now, he had lost the Staffel, the formation broken as he tried to follow a Tommy with his sights, but the enemy fighter had disappeared and, worse, he had lost sight of his leader. He was alone, his crewmen offering little comfort.

  It suddenly felt very lonely and vulnerable in this small patch of sky, and the enemy coast so nearby.

  He suddenly wished desperately for the sights of his home town of Dortmund instead.

  Suddenly Rudi, his gunner, screamed urgently, “Spitfire! High and behind! Hard turn!”

  Directly before Rose, the Me110 suddenly tightened into a turn as the enemy pilot became aware of the danger from above.

  The enemy gunner opened fire at him, but the stream of tracer, a line of fiery blobs, curved uselessly away below and to one side harmlessly as the gunner tried to track Rose’s Hurricane, whilst his pilot began to manoeuvre desperately.

  The enemy aircraft banked sharply to starboard, then to port again, jinking poorly, and then the nose of the 110 went down as the other pilot tried to pull away from the diving Hurricane, whilst also trying to give a better field of fire to his rear-gunner.

  As the German plane disappeared momentarily from view, Rose rolled to right his fighter, and the enemy popped back into view.

  Quick, quick!

  As the distance closed he saw that the twin-engine machine before him was not painted all-black as he had originally thought but wore patterns of black and dark-green, and had large crosses on the wings and white spinners on its propellers. Each detail, from the glinting of the long, narrow glasshouse-like canopy to the ineffectual short bursts of fire from the rear-facing machine gun burned into his mind as the enemy plane began to dive again, as if realising the danger suddenly, and trying to escape, rather than fight.

  He realised also that he was well within range now, and gauging the degree of deflection, he sighted and pressed the firing button.

  The eight Browning machine guns spat fire at the German fighter, and the Hurricane bucked with the recoil, so that the imag
e of the Me110 seemed to tremble and jump before him. The enemy gunner’s aim seemed to be improving as well, though.

  Tracer ripped up towards him, as if it was reaching for him, but then at the last moment shooting past, seemingly only a few feet above his canopy, like a blazing trail of comets. His breath came in gasps from the effort, and the rush of adrenaline coursing hot through him. He could smell the cordite, acrid and choking.

  His own aim was not much better than the enemy gunner’s, the tracer from his guns passing just below the enemy’s tailplane, so he pulled back the stick a little, adjusted his aim, led as he had been taught, and fired another two-second burst. This time the trails of smoke converged just ahead and then onto the enemy aeroplane, and he was rewarded with the sparkle of glittering hits on the 110’s starboard wing just inboard of the engine, and along the starboard ailerons.

  A detached part of Rose watched as some of the rounds from his guns left unusual, corkscrewing trails of smoke behind them. The German fighter was still turning, but the Me110 could not out turn Rose’s Hurricane, and his aim was good.

  There appeared to be no immediate physical effect on the enemy machine, but there was more of an effect on the enemy pilot, startled by the shocking clatter of the hits so close to him and by the sight of the torn fragments of metal that began to peel away from his starboard wing.

  Schnee suddenly pulled up, twitching the Me110 as if stung, so that his machine suddenly leapt back upwards into a desperate climb, upsetting the gunner’s aim completely, and tracer sprayed out below, impotently into the void.

  This tactic to gain precious height was a terrible mistake on his part, presenting more of his plane as a target, whilst also allowing Rose to catch him.

  Following him from above and behind, Rose fired again, reflexively, without sighting properly, and his bullets also curved away uselessly, beneath the other plane. He muttered to himself reproachfully. The excitement of the situation had got the better of him.

  The stink and smoke of cordite from his guns filled the cockpit as he pulled back, back, then back again, as he strove to keep the twin-tailed fighter in his sights as it jinked, firing short bursts. Most of the bursts connected and he was rewarded with further twinkling hits on the wing-root and fuselage, and a streamer of smoke began to trail thinly behind the starboard engine.

  What was it that Granny used to say?

  “Get as close as you can, as close as you dare. Then, get closer still.”

  Still flying at full throttle, he cut across the wide arc that the climbing Me110 made, closing the distance between the two aircraft rapidly, heart hammering. He began to reduce the throttle as the German aircraft seemed to swell in his GM2 reflector gun sight and pressed the gun-button again, convulsively.

  Someone was shouting hysterically, and at first he wondered who it was cursing over the R/T.

  With a shock, he realised that the voice was his own. He lapsed into a tense embarrassed silence. His eyes were smarting and his arms felt stiff as he held on to the stick tightly, as if it were his lifeline, as if to let go were to let go of life.

  A blazing cluster of hits sparkled brightly once more on the 110, but this time a number of larger warped pieces flew off, and a great gout of black smoke erupted from the starboard engine. The shining arc of the propeller broke up as it began to windmill, and the engine cowling was ripped completely away.

  The glass of the long canopy exploded, shattering into a million glittering fragments, and for a split second created a strange, eerie, shimmering and hazy halo around the German plane before being whipped away in the howling slipstream.

  The Messerschmitt wallowed and slowed as it lost the power of one engine, pulled to one side, and just as it seemed that they must surely collide, Rose realised the danger and heaved back the control column hard, deep into the pit of his stomach again, spasmodically pulled the flap lever, and the Hurricane clawed upwards.

  He tried to curl into a foetal ball, and instinctively closed his eyes tightly in terror, threw up his arm over his face, as the black shape loomed, filling his windscreen, and the cockpit radio aerial stood out before him from the long glasshouse canopy that had been devastated by his Brownings.

  In his terrified mind it seemed like a lance, as if to impale him.

  Even though his eyes were closed he could still see, fixed in his mind’s eye, the pale ovals that were the faces of the German crew, incredibly not killed, as they stared back at him, transfixed with shock, or fear.

  A tableau frozen in time, imprinted on his eyeballs.

  Dear God! He wasn’t going to make it!

  He waited for the crash of impact, eyes closed tight, and teeth clenched, but it did not come. He could hear the sound of the rear-gunner’s 7.9mm machine gun as he passed over the Me110. It sounded like a strange, dim and distant popping, like the backfiring of a motorcycle on a summer’s day, a spatter of pebbles against the underside of the aircraft. Then there was a faraway thunderclap of sound, ‘Boom!’

  He cringed at the thought of hot metal that could punch through the floor of the cockpit at any moment. There was a second, louder, thunderclap of sound, ‘BOOM!’ Not the high pitched, rending crash of metal on metal that he had been expecting, but a deep, visceral sound, that he felt in his bones.

  After a few, long, seconds, Rose opened his eyes.

  Incredibly, unbelievably, he had not crashed into the heavy German fighter, although it must have been pretty close.

  The Hurricane was still climbing steeply, screaming upwards, with bullets still spraying from the guns. He released the button, and the guns fell silent, and gulped in great whoops of air.

  He realised that he must have been holding his breath.

  Rose relaxed his gloved hands on the stick, palms greasy.

  There was nothing but emptiness in front of him.

  Where the enemy aircraft had once filled his windscreen, just seconds ago, there was now only a beautiful empty, deep blue sky.

  He was still alive!

  He suddenly realised with a shock that he hadn’t once checked behind him during the attack, glanced into his rear-view mirror, then twisted around to see behind him.

  The enemy fighter that he half-expected to be sitting behind him, dark and threatening, spitting deadly fire, was not there.

  In fact, there was nothing behind him at all, not even the Me110 he had just attacked. It was as if it had disappeared into thin air. He undid his mask and wiped his face with the back of his gloved hand. The combat and near collision had left him feeling fiercely excited, and he was exultant that he had survived his baptism of fire.

  He had passed The Test without flinching (well, sort of).

  But, more importantly, he was Still Alive.

  He laughed, the terror of a few seconds ago forgotten.

  “I’m alive!” he shouted, joyously.

  There was the taste of blood in his mouth, where he had bitten his lip.

  “I’m alive!”

  But then he sobered.

  Idiot! After all that Granny has taught you, you overshot! You just went at it like a bull at a gate. All that training and you make a balls-up of that attack. Missed half the time! Lucky to be alive.

  But I’m still here. That was just the beginning. There would be more fighting to do yet. The convoy was still under attack.

  You’ve got another chance of doing it better. Don’t make such a mess of it next time.

  He looked into the curved rear-view mirror like the one Granny had.

  Far below there was a splash in the sea, a white, expanding scar, which boiled for a few seconds, before the water settled, and it disappeared, leaving behind an expanding circle of disturbance, but he could not tell what had made it.

  Was that ‘his’ Messerschmitt? Or was it one of his countrymen? He felt quite sure that the enemy fighter could not be able to get back to its aerodrome with only one motor.

  He pulled the Hurricane around and headed back towards the burning convoy. The ships we
re still under attack, and it was his duty to go and protect them, even though he was now on his own.

  This time, he kept a careful look-out all around him. He had been extremely lucky not to have been shot down, but this time he would not trust to luck, but would maintain a good lookout as he had been taught to by Smith.

  Amazingly, there were no other aircraft visible in the air around him. How many Me110s had bounced A’Flight? Where had they gone?

  He was Still Alive!

  God be praised!

  As he drew closer he could make out the bursts of anti-aircraft fire peppering the sky above the convoy. There was something falling slowly, burning. Above it silvery shapes wheeled and dived. The aircraft were flying away from him now, and were too distant for him to catch up with. The R/T was filled with the sound of men fighting, swearing…dying?

  But there was something, a shadow, just skimming the sea, not quite as far away. At first he thought it was a boat, but, as he got closer, he could see that it was another Me110. A thin, almost invisible, trail of smoke limned from one engine.

  It was heading east towards sanctuary, away from the pitifully small collection of coasters that were the battered convoy ‘Teacake.’

  The 110 was flying low, so low that the slipstream from the propellers was creating furrows in the surface of the sea. Hazy plumes of spray swirled away lazily behind it. It was as if the enemy aeroplane was a speeding motor boat, leaving its wake behind.

  He wondered if it was one of the planes that had bounced A’Flight.

  The rear-gunner had also seen him, and a line of tracer sped from the gun as the enemy tested the range. This one was a better shot, but the range was still too great, and the fire curved away from him uselessly.

  Thank God for bullet-proof windshields, thought Rose again, as he swept down at full throttle. As the range closed, he fired a one-second sighting burst.

  This time he had calculated the deflection better, and the Me110 seemed to fly through the glowing lines of tracer.

  Lines of splashes shot up from the surface of the sea, like an avenue of surreal trees, with the German flying through them. His propellers carved the water into spiralling vortices that whipped backwards towards the pursuing Hurricane. Already water was speckling Rose’s windscreen unevenly, unevenly smearing the shape of the 110.