The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots (42 page)

On across the Pas de Calais and over the battlefields of a half-forgotten war against the same foe. From the Tangmere ops. room Woodhall breaks the silence:

“Dogsbody, from Beetle. The beehive is on time and is engaged.”

“O.K.”

“Fifty-plus about twenty miles ahead of you,” from Woodhall.

“Understood,” replies Bader.

“Thirty-plus climbing up from the south and another bunch behind them. Keep a sharp look-out,” advises the group captain.

“O.K. Woodie. That’s enough,” answers the wing leader, and we twist our necks to search the boundless horizons.

“Look’s like a pincer movement to me,” comments some wag. I suspect it is Roy Marple’s voice, and again the tension slackens as we grin behind our oxygen masks. Woodhall speaks into his microphone with his last item of information.

“Dogsbody. The rear support wing is just leaving the English coast.” (This means we can count on some help should we have to fight our way out.) “Course for Dover – 310 degrees.” (This was a last-minute reminder of the course to steer for home.) Woodhall fades out, for he has done his utmost to paint a broad picture of the air situation. Now it is up to our leader.

“Dogsbody from blue one. Beehive at twelve o’clock below. About seven miles.”

“O.K. I see them,” and the wing leader eases his force to starboard and a better up-sun position.

The high-flying Messerschmitts have seen our wing and stab at Stan’s top-cover squadron with savage attacks from either flank.

“Break port, Ken.” (From a pilot of 610).

“Keep turning.”

“Tell me when to stop turning.”

“Keep turning. There’s four behind!”

“Get in, red section.”

“We’re stuck into some 109s behind you, Douglas.” (This quietly from Stan.)

“O.K. Stan.”

“Baling out.”

“Try and make it, Mac. Not far to the coast.” (This urgently from a squadron commander.)

“No use. Temperatures off the clock. She’ll burn any time. Look after my dog.”

“Keep turning, yellow section.”

So far the fight has remained well above us. We catch fleeting glimpses of high vapour trails and ducking, twisting fighters. Two-thirds of the wing are behind us holding off the 109s and we force on to the target area to carry out our assigned task. We can never reform into a wing again, and the pilots of 145 and 610 will make their way home in twos and fours. We head towards the distant beehive, well aware that there is now no covering force of Spitfires above us.

The Stirlings have dropped their heavy load of bombs and begin their return journey. We curve slowly over the outskirts of Lille to make sure the beehive is not harried from the rear. I look down at a pall of debris and black smoke rising from the target five miles below, and absurdly my memory flashes back to contrast the scene with those other schoolboy Sunday afternoons.

“Dogsbody from Smith. 109s above. Six o’clock. About twenty-five or thirty.”

“Well done. Watch ’em and tell me when to break.”

I can see them. High in the sun, and their presence only betrayed by the reflected sparkle from highly polished wind-screens and cockpit covers.

“They’re coming down, Dogsbody. Break left.” And round to port we go, with Smith sliding below Bader and Cocky and me above so that we cover each other in this steep turn. We curve round and catch a glimpse of four baffled 109s climbing back to join their companions, for they can’t stay with us in a turn. The keen eyes of Smith saved us from a nasty smack that time.

“Keep turning, Dogsbody. More coming down,” from Cocky.

“O.K. We might get a squirt this time,” rejoins Bader. What a man, I think, what a man!

The turn tightens and in my extreme position on the starboard side I’m driving my Spitfire through a greater radius of curve than the others and falling behind. I kick on hard bottom rudder and skid inwards, down and behind the leader. More 109s hurtle down from above and a section of four angle in from the starboard flank. I look round for other Spitfires but there are none in sight. The four of us are alone over Lille.

“Keep turning. Keep turning.” (From Bader.) “They can’t stay with us.” And we keep turning, hot and frightened and a long way from home. We can’t keep turning all bloody day, I think bitterly.

Cocky has not re-formed after one of our violent breaks. I take his place next to Bader and the three of us watch the Messerschmitts, time their dives and call the break into their attacks. The odds are heavily against us.

We turn across the sun and I am on the inside. The blinding light seems only two feet above Bader’s cockpit and if I drop further below or he gains a little more height, I shall lose him. Already his Spitfire has lost its colour and is only a sharp, black silhouette, and now it has disappeared completely, swallowed up by the sun’s fierce light. I come out of the turn and am stunned to find myself alone in the Lille sky.

The Messerschmitts come in close for the kill. At this range their camouflage looks dirty and oil-stained, and one brute has a startling black-and-white spinner. In a hot sweat of fear I keep turning and turning, and the fear is mingled with an abject humiliation that these bastards should single me out and chop me at their leisure. The radio is silent, or probably I don’t hear it in the stress of trying to stay alive. I can’t turn all day. Le Touquet is seventy hostile miles away; far better to fight back and take one with me.

Four Messerschmitts roar down from six o’clock. I see them in time and curve the shuddering, protesting Spitfire to meet them, for she is on the brink of a high-speed stall. They are so certain of my destruction that they are flying badly and I fasten on to tail-end Charlie and give him a long burst of fire. He is at the maximum range, and although my shooting has no apparent effect some of my despair and fear on this fateful afternoon seems to evaporate at the faint sound of the chattering machine guns. But perhaps my attack has its just reward, for Smith’s voice comes loud and clear over the radio.

“One Spit behind, Dogsbody. A thousand yards. Looks like he’s in trouble.”

Then I see them. Two aircraft with the lovely curving wings that can only belong to Spitfires. I take a long breath and in a deliberately calm voice:

“It’s me Dogsbody – Johnnie.”

“O.K. Johnnie. We’ll orbit here for you. Drop in on my starboard. We’ll get a couple of these—”

There is no longer any question of not getting home now that I am with Bader again. He will bring us safely back to Tangmere and I know he is enjoying this, for he sounds full of confidence over the radio. A dozen Messerschmitts still shadow our small formation. They are well up-sun and waiting to strike. Smith and I fly with our necks twisted right round, like the resting mallard ducks one sees in the London parks, and all our concentration focussed on the glinting shoal of 109s.

“Two coming down from five o’clock, Dogsbody. Break right,” from me. And this time mine is the smallest turn so that I am the first to meet the attack. A 109 is very close and climbing away to port. Here is a chance. Time for a quick shot and no danger of losing the other two Spitfires if I don’t get involved in a long tail chase. I line up my Spitfire behind the 109, clench the spade-grip handle of the stick with both hands and send short bursts into his belly at less than a hundred yards. The 109 bursts apart and the explosion looks exactly the same as a near burst of heavy flak, a vicious flower with a poisonous glowing centre and black swirling edges.

I re-form and the Messerschmitts come in again, and this time Bader calls the break. It is well judged and the wing leader fastens on to the last 109 and I cover his Spitfire as it appears to stand on its tail with wisps of smoke plummeting from the gun ports. The enemy aircraft starts to pour white smoke from its belly and thick black smoke from the engine. They merge together and look like a long, dirty banner against the faded blue of some high cirrus cloud.

“Bloody good shooting, sir.”

“We’ll get some more.”

Woodhall – it seems an eternity since we last heard him – calls up to say that the rear support wing is over Abbeville. Unbelievably the Messerschmitts which have tailed us so long vanish and we are alone in the high spaces.

We pick up the English coast near Dover and turn to port for Sussex and Tangmere. We circle our airfield and land without any fuss or aerobatics, for we never know until we are on the ground whether or not a stray bullet has partially severed a control cable.

Woodhall meets us and listens to his wing leader’s account of the fight. Bader has a tremendous ability to remember all the details and gives a graphic résumé of the show. The group captain listens carefully and says that he knew we were having a hard time because of the numerous plots of enemy formations on his operations table and our continuous radio chatter. So he had asked 11 Group to get the rear support wing over France earlier than planned, to lend a hand. Perhaps the shadowing Messerschmitts which sheered off so suddenly had seen the approach of this Spitfire wing.

Bader phones Ken and Stan while the solemn Gibbs pleads with us to sit down and write out our combat reports.

“Please do it now. It will only take two minutes.”

“Not likely Gibbs. We want some tea and a shower and . . .”

“You write them and we’ll sign them,” suggests a pilot.

Cocky walks in. He came back on the deck after losing us over Lille and landed at Hawkinge short of petrol.

“Dinner and a bottle at Bosham tonight, Johnnie?”

“Right,” I answer at once.

“Count me in, too,” says Nip.

The group captain is trying to make himself heard above the din.

“You chaps must watch your language. It’s frightful. And the Waafs seem to be getting quite used to it. They don’t bat an eyelid any more. But I’m sure you don’t know how bad it sounds. I had it logged this afternoon.” And he waves a piece of paper in his hand.

Someone begins to read out from the record. We roar with laughter, slap each other on the back and collapse weakly into chairs, but this reaction is not all due to the slip of paper. Woodhall watches us and walks to the door hoping that we don’t see the grin which is creasing his leathery countenance.

We clamber into our meagre transports, one small van per flight, and drive to Shopwhyke. We sit on the lawn and drink tea served by Waafs. These young girls wear overalls of flowered print and look far more attractive and feminine than in their usual masculine garb of collar and tie. One of our officers is a well-known concert pianist and he plays a movement from a Beethoven concerto, and the lovely melody fills the stately house and overflows into the garden. The sweat from the combats of but an hour ago is barely dry on our young bodies.

THE FLYING TIGERS

CLAIRE L. CHENNAULT

The legendary Flying Tigers squadron – more properly the American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Nationalist Airforce – was the brainchild of Claire Chennault, a former USAAF pilot who had become the air adviser to the Chinese government of Chiang Kai Chek. Chennault’s appointment in 1937 had virtually coincided with the Japanese invasion of China, to which the CNAF had only been able to put up a token resistance. Eventually, though, Chennault persuaded the Chinese government to bolster its airforce by buying 100 Curtiss Tomahawk fighters (P-40s) from the US, while he himself – with President Roosevelt’s permission – recruited volunteer pilots for it from the US airforces. By spring 1941, 109 pilots from the US Marine Corps, the US Navy, the USAAF and civilian flying clubs had joined the American Volunteer Group (AVG).

Training lasted until December 1941, in which month the AVG flew its first missions against the Japanese. By now the USA itself was at war with Japan, but the Tigers retained their volunteer status until the summer of 1942, when they were reorganized as the 23rd Fighter Group of the USAAF. In the seven months of its existence as a fighting unit, the AVG and its shark-mouthed P-40s shot down 297 Japanese aircraft over the skies of China and Burma for the loss of 80 planes.

Below is Colonel Claire L. Chennault’s personal account of the first AVG sorties against the Japanese, flown in December 1941.

My worst fears in thirty years of flying and nearly a decade of combat came during the first weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor over the possibility of getting caught on the ground by a Japanese air assault on the A.V.G. at Toungoo. This fear had been gnawing at me ever since mid-October when the volunteer group began to take shape as a combat unit and I ordered the first aerial reconnaissance over the Japanese-built airfields in Thailand. I knew the Japanese were well informed on the condition of my group. I also knew they would have scant regard for the neutrality of Burma if they considered the A.V.G. a real menace to their activities in China. After Pearl Harbor I considered a Japanese attack on Toungoo a certainty. My only thought was to meet it with my planes in the air. During my long fight against the Japanese I constantly strove to put myself in the place of the enemy air commanders and diagnose their probable tactics. Generally my experience proved I allotted them too much credit.

Nearly half the A.V.G. men at Toungoo were Navy men and many of them had served at Pearl Harbor. I too had my own memories of Hawaii in the days when the 19th Fighter Squadron, which I commanded, was based on Ford Island as part of the air defenses of Pearl Harbor. In 1925 we experienced one of the Japanese attack scares that periodically swept the islands. It proved to be a baseless rumor. However, for three weeks I had the 19th Fighter Squadron warming up their planes in the dark of early morning. We took off before the first streaks of dawn to rendezvous over. Oahu at 10,000 feet where it was already day. We patrolled the approaches to Pearl Harbor until long after sunrise hit the ground. There were no orders from my superiors to stand this alert, and our squadron took a lot of ribbing for the performance. I knew, as does every Regular Army officer, that the first responsibility of a unit commander – whether he heads an infantry platoon or an air force – is to take measures to ensure his own unit against tactical surprise by the enemy. The transition from peace to war comes hard for civilians, but for professional soldiers there is no excuse. If I had been caught with my planes on the ground, as were the Air Corps commanders in the Philippines and in Hawaii, I could never again have looked my fellow officers squarely in the eye.