“His name is Christopher, sir.”
“Thomas, not sir, Hilda. Can’t use Hildebrand – far too long on the radio.”
“I might prefer Brandy, sir.”
“You’ve got Hilda – can’t be having foreign drinks in the RAF. You are Red Four, purely through being last man in. Jan here is Red Two and Joe is Red Three. Both are long experienced fighter pilots and you can regard them as senior to you – if they give an order, obey it!”
“But, Thomas, they aren’t English, are they?”
“Neither am I. I’m Australian, more or less. How many hours have you got in a Hurricane?”
“Forty.”
“Good. What’s to be looked out for? We’ve all three of us got time in on other monoplanes but we don’t know the Hurry well.”
Hilda was not sure – it was a jolly good plane.
“Ah… I think you shouldn’t spin her, from what the instructors said. They are bringing in a modification to the rudder assembly, I remember that.”
“Why should you not spin her, Hilda?”
“I don’t really know, Joe. Look, I’ve practised spinning in a Maggie and in biplanes. I’ll take the Hurry up and put her in a spin and you watch and we’ll see what the problem is.”
Jan gave a little smile.
“Maybe problem is not to come out.”
Hilda considered that, agreed it was possible and suggested he should start at twenty thousand feet – that would give him plenty of time to find a solution.
“Bound to be an answer, Jan. I think I’m good enough to find it.”
Thomas did not think that to be the best of ideas.
“No. Wait until we’ve got a response from on high. If there is a problem, they should know about it at Martlesham Heath where they did the development work. I’ll ask Henry to talk to them.”
Henry took to the telephone, came back with the reply that the modification was in the pipeline. Until it came through, they were to avoid spins at all costs. If they found themselves in a spin – jump.
“Don’t think I would wish to take to my parachute, Thomas. I prefer to bring my plane back.”
“So do we all, Hilda. I much prefer to bring myself back as well. If you get into a spin, you will jump if you have not recovered at five thousand feet. By order. Mind you, you might be lucky to get out if she’s spinning hard. You might be stuck in your seat.”
They laughed at the prospect and turned to the next question, being indoors on a rainy morning and having to talk about something.
“Thomas, there are four of us in the flight…”
“I had noticed, Hilda. We follow the example of the Germans in Spain and use finger fours. Two pairs together. Myself and Jan. You and Joe. That way there’s one man with fighting experience to each pair.”
Hilda was puzzled, a not infrequent occurrence.
“But, Thomas, we haven’t had a war.”
“The world is full of wars, Hilda. China has a three-way conflict going on – Kuomintang against Communists against Japanese. Spain is just fizzling out. There have been squabbles in South America. Lots of work for roaming pilots on the mercenary game, and for those fighting for principle.”
Joe laughed and commented that China was a lot more than a three-cornered fight.
“There’s a dozen warlords trying to snatch independence from the old Empire and a few of them have little air forces and pay their pilots well. A real mess. It’s tidying up a little just now, so they tell me.”
“So you two have actually flown in a war?”
“China and Spain for Joe. Just Spain for me. Both of us knocking down Fascists.”
Hilda laughed uncomfortably, said it almost sounded as if they had fought for the jolly Reds.
“Only I can see neither of you are Commies!”
It was a great joke, apparently.
“Is better Marxist than bloody Hitler.”
Jan seemed a little upset. Thomas took over before he could become angry.
“Just so. It’s not a matter of who you’re fighting for. What counts is who you are against, Hilda. We’re here because Hitler’s bastards deserve to be dead. If you had seen them butchering civilians, you might well agree. We don’t want them in this country, and they look as if they want to conquer the whole world between them, him and Mussolini. So we fight, and when they are destroyed, dead to the last one by preference, then we can argue what comes next. Until they are dead, it don’t matter what you believe in – it’s what you detest that counts.”
The philosophy was a little deep for Hilda, but he knew better than to disagree with his seniors – he was a very well brought-up young man and his school had beaten dissent out of him.
“Oh, well – too much like politics for me, Thomas. I’ll just fly for the RAF. Have you both got scores? How many?”
Thomas had no choice other than to answer.
“Twelve which the RAF have accepted. Mostly Italians – they’re easier for having lousy planes. Their engines are hopeless.”
“Six for me, Hilda. Older Japanese bombers. When they brought in their Zero fighters I was put down on the first day. Splashed a flamer into a river – I was lucky. I was bombing and ground attack in Spain.”
Hilda was awestruck – both men were aces.
“I got one.”
Thomas was immediately interested.
“How was that, Jan?”
“Bloody Nazis attack Sudetenland. Stationed there. Told I must stay on ground. Half the squadron says ‘sod that’ – is right English?”
“Perfect, Jan!”
“We fly, we got French Moranes, what is not bad and got six point fifties machine guns what is good. We see Freikorps, so Nazi call them – is just their army in funny hats! Shoot column up. They got little army plane, slow Heinkel watching for them. I shoot him to bits.”
“Well done, Jan. What then?”
“We land and get told to jump in cars and disappear, quick. Over the border and gone. Through Hungary. Ship from Yugoslavia. Get into Malta and put on Royal Navy. Out of sight. Into London. Two weeks, here I am.”
“And very welcome, too! The more the merrier, seeing we have more planes than pilots, very much so.”
Hilda was amazed – he had not heard of most of the countries Jan had mentioned. He seized upon the little he understood.
“What’s the Morane like, Jan?”
“Engine not good. Guns better than Hurricane. Other? Is a fighter monoplane, little different to others made same time.”
Thomas agreed – the older monoplanes were all much the same.
“So, Hilda, it’s the pilot that makes the difference. The better trained, the more alert, the pilot, the greater the chance of victory.”
“Quite right, Thomas. I’ve finished training now and Cranwell is the best.”
Three simultaneous cries of ‘Bullshit’ rather intimidated the lad.
“You have learned how to get a plane into the air and how to land it again, Hilda. Other than that, you know nothing. We’ll probably go to war in late summer, once the harvest is in. That gives us about nine months to work together and discover how best to fly these machines. We’ll need every bit of the time available.”
Joe and Jan nodded.
“My father used to tell me that it’s very easy to learn to fly badly, Hilda. You are going to learn to fly well. When you’ve done so, and while you’re doing it, you will discover how to fly as one of four. The rule is to go into action as a flight. When we get close, very close, then you are one of a pair. You are never, ever, on your own, not unless you can grow eyes in your arse so you can watch your own tail.”
“But, Thomas, we are to attack them, not defend ourselves. They told us at Cranwell that we are the attackers – the RAF owns the sky, as Boom Trenchard said.”
“My father knew Trenchard well. He said he was a dick. I much respect my father and will take his word for it.”
“Who was your father, Thomas? He must have flown in the Great War if he
knew Trenchard.”
Joe shook his head.
“The name gives a clue, Hilda.”
Hilda thought deeply for a few seconds then inspiration struck.
“Stark the VC. The one who flew with Noah Arkwright?”
“Yes.”
“They have their photographs up in Cranwell, you know, Thomas. Next to Ball and McCudden and the others. Most of them are dead, of course. Did you say your father is in Australia now, Thomas? Will he come back to England?”
“Doubt it. I haven’t heard but I expect he’ll go into the RAAF. Fighter-bombers, if he has his way, I would think. Too old to fly but he’d make a good Wing Commander. He’s been running airlines for the last twenty years.”
“I will tell my father when I next write, Thomas. He will be pleased to hear of that. He never managed to get out to the Front in the War – his work in England was too important – but he followed the newspapers and knows all the names from those days.”
They made no reply, turned the conversation to the finger-four formation.
“You are first finger, Jan. I am index. Joe is ring finger and Hilda is little finger – you call that ‘pinkie’, don’t you, Joe?”
“Typical English – you don’t know how to speak English.”
They ignored the provocation.
Three of them were familiar with the formation. They explained it to Hilda, very kindly.
“You are Joe’s wingman, Hilda. Never leave him. You are tied to him on a piece of string a quarter of a mile long. So you can go six hundred feet higher or lower than him and six hundred feet in front or behind him. No further.”
“Should I not be tucked into your wing, Joe?”
“Far too close. You can see no more than him and that makes you useless to him. Keep a distance.”
Joe and Jan agreed.
“Eyes open. You is looking from Heaven to Hell; from right shoulder left; from in front to behind. Never stop looking and moving head.”
“Dead right – and if you don’t, it will just be dead. Never fly in a straight line for more than three seconds. Change height, change direction, change distance from your leader. The man who don’t change, can’t – because he’s dead, Hilda. Ask Thomas how many wingmen he lost in a year. I went through five in a month of low-level bombing, all because they flew straight and didn’t look. You are there to kill Germans – and you can only do that if they don’t kill you first.”
Thomas nodded.
“I flew with twenty-eight men - and with a twenty-ninth I wasn’t sure about. There was thirty of us, pilots that was, when we started. Four of us flew out last month. The others were all good civilian pilots and they wanted to kill Germans, or Italians as second-best. But they didn’t watch the sky and they flew straight. Twenty-six from thirty in sixteen months of fighting. Bit dicky!”
“So… what do we do, Thomas?”
“Stay alive. Like Joe said. Never more than three seconds in a straight line. Change height and position a little all the time. Learn flat, skidding turns. If the German sees your wings lift left or right, he knows you’re turning and can cut the corner. If your wings are level, you are flying straight… Fool him and then kill him. He fools you, guess what happens?”
“It sounds simple, Thomas.”
“So it does. Six months practice, for all of us, and maybe it will be.”
A week saw the squadron up to full, three flights of four and the squadron leader who managed to fly for no more than two hours every week, having so many important things to do at Wing and Group.
Five of the pilots were new from Cranwell and showed the capacity at least to lift their planes off the ground. Only four were foreign, Joe and Jan joined by Kurt and Mack.
Kurt said he was South African, and if that was so, it was his choice. He had the guttural accent of the Boer, they agreed and if he might be a German refugee, well, he had more reason to fight. Mack was Irish Free State and had recently left China, at some speed.
“I was out in a little old Polikarpov, the biplane, running ground attack behind the Jap lines - not that they had lines like the Western Front, it was more of the follow-up to a spearhead – when I spotted this convoy of fat staff cars with machine-gun trucks behind and in front. Got to be a general or two in that, well worth the effort, so I dropped to zero feet, wheels not six foot above the dirt, and came in obliquely. You know the Polikarpov – four heavy machine guns – I blew six out of seven cars off the road and set the rear gun truck afire and buggered off, still at nothing feet.”
“Good job that, Mack. What went wrong?”
“Official visit by some sort of Prince, second son of the Emperor’s brother, so they said. They was not best pleased at having his guts spread over twenty square foot of Chinese padi field.”
“No sense of humour, these Japanese.”
Joe interrupted the story to provide celebratory whiskey for Mack.
“What did you do?”
“I was sent out of the country. They gave me a medal first and put five hundred gold sovereigns in me hand and smuggled me out through Cochin China and down to Singapore. The police there had heard the whisper and they had me aboard ship so fast me feet never touched the ground. First boat out, which happened to be by way of Colombo to Port Said and Gibraltar and Southampton. Gets off the boat – which had made a pleasant holiday, you might say – and this old bugger in a grey suit comes up to me and says I’m welcome to go back to Cork, but there’s a thousand quid on me head, the Japs having found out me name. If I am wishful, it’s the RAF for me and His Majesty’s police looking out for me. If I want to go back, sure, they’ll put me aboard an express, first class, and then on the ship to Dun Laoghaire and make sure me name’s not on the passenger list, on the grounds that they have no love for the Japanese, slant-eyed bastards that they are. But they don’t think I’ll survive the first week, for me head being worth more to other folk than to meself.”
“A good reason for joining up, Mack.”
“They persuaded me, Thomas.”
Chapter Five
The Gathering Clouds
A newly fledged pilot officer arrived to become Armourer. He was well-educated, had a University degree and was not a natural straight-backed military man, but he seemed likely to be good at his job; this was not the best of beginnings, any tradesman could work for his living. He had been to a grammar school in Hampshire and had studied at the University of London, neither fact a recommendation to the Cranwell types. His name was irredeemably common – what could one say to John Smith?
“Not even a Smythe, Thomas, old chap. He might at least try.”
“Exactly, Hilda – he has no business being in the company of gentlemen. Of course, as you say, he’s only a tradesman, even if his job is the most important on the field – if our bloody guns don’t fire, we are useless!”
Thomas was inclined to be impatient with the class war.
Smithy was less than pleased with all that he found. He reported to the five senior men of the squadron, gravely assembled to hear his words.
“We have one hundred and ninety-two modern air-cooled Brownings. One hundred and fifty-six are installed in the wings at any given moment, leaving three dozen spare to be stripped down and set into perfect order. No problem there. They are belt fed, as you will know, the belts laid flat in pans in the wings. Plenty of them, new and in good condition. So far, so good.”
“A rough calculation says you will have about two hundred thousand rounds made up into belts and you should have a substantial reserve, Smithy.”
Henry was rather pleased with his maths, had made the calculations in his head, to the awe of his pilots.
“That’s the problem. I have more than a million rounds in store, which sounds good, but if you were to fly four times a day and use up your belts each time, then each plane could fire ten thousand rounds in a day. Eight days of that - which is unlikely but must be a contingency – and my store is empty. Except that it won’t happen, because each gun w
ill jam by the third round with the ammunition they have given us.”
They were outraged, demanded to know why.
Smithy dipped his hand into his pocket and came out with half a dozen rounds which he dropped on Henry’s desk.
“I grabbed them blind from a box. Look at ‘em!”
Very ordinary brass-cased three-o-three rounds, cylinders a little longer than a big man’s finger, lying where they had been thrown, because they would not roll. They were green with verdigris and had lumps of a grey-white chemical protruding as much as a tenth of an inch from the propellant casing. Their bases were thick with something black and slightly damp.
“You can’t fire those, Smithy. What’s wrong with them?”
Smithy smiled, very kindly.
“I left a box outside, Henry. I’ll bring it in.”
A standard green wooden box, the old pattern rather than the newer metal carriers. Its provenance was painted faintly on the end.
“War Department. 1917.”
“Twenty years old!”
“It gets better, Henry. Look at the other end.”
Henry peered and saw the words ‘Dum Dum’.
“We can’t use them, they’re illegal… They don’t look like dum-dums.”
“They’re not dum-dums, in the normal sense, Henry. That’s the mark of the arsenal in India where they were invented and got the name. These rounds were made in England, shipped out to India, held in store at Dum Dum in tropical conditions, condemned as useless and shipped back for disposal. We are short of rounds in England so they have been sent out to the fields, in their tens of millions. I am told it will be a year at least before the new factories are knocking out rifle-calibre rounds in the quantities needed.”
“Jesus wept!”
“I can see his point of view, Henry.”
They peered at the offending rounds. They could not be fired from a Browning in that condition.
“Are they still live, Smithy?”
“Yes. Most of them will still fire, if you can get them into a gun. Almost all, I would think.”
The Gathering Clouds (Innocent No More Series, Book 1) Page 7