Spitfire Ringers

by Ian Lindsey

  Chapter 19

  June 18th, 1940

  Aviation gunnery school, like flight training, started on the ground. In between flight maneuvers in the previous two weeks the pilot trainees also learned to shoot. Although Dylan and Payton had occasionally toted around a rifle at home on the farm, and had been taught military gunnery at WestPoint, they knew little of the complex geometry and dynamic nature of firing a gun moving in six dimensions at 330 mph.

  A cockpit type apparatus had been set up on the ground with both stationary and moving targets, and just to make things interesting the cockpit moved too. Out the front windshield lined up with the nose of the plane sat the gun sight, just a metal ring really. However, the gun sight on an airplane differed greatly from that on a rifle. On a rifle, the sight lined up with the barrel and the stock so the bullet flew true and straight. The bullets from the plane could fly true and straight as well when not moving, but a single bullet, or even a few bullets flying in a straight line, would never bring down a plane because the plane moved so quickly out of the line of fire. Instead the machine guns on a plane were set at an angle to converge and concentrate the firepower about thirty yards in front of the plane. With the light caliber Browning guns on British Interceptors, chosen so that they could use the same ammunition as the rest of the military, the number of rounds required to bring down an enemy aircraft could reach in to the thousands, so getting all of the rounds possible on target took the highest priority. After the rounds crossed paths, they spread out again like a shotgun blast hoping to get a lucky hit on a vital piece of an enemy aircraft.

  However, the biggest challenge in aerial gunnery was not the angle of the machine guns fired from the wings, but actually the inertia exerted on each bullet by the maneuvering plane. A stationary target with a stationary rifle took a straight line and little skill. Adding a moving target increased the difficulty, but not by much. Like a quick draw or shooting from a horse in the old west, adding some movement to the gun increased the difficulty even more. Now, adding airplanes flying about half as fast as the bullets, both as targets and as firing platforms, along with the uninhibited maneuverability of both tested the laws of physics. Bullets flew in arcs and curved at angles determined by gravity and rolling planes that seemed impossible. No smart pilot would let an enemy directly behind him for a clean straight shot, so the impossible angles stood as the only real chance at shooting down the enemy.

  The gunnery simulator moved along a track while the targets moved as well. Each of the students learned to anticipate the targets from whichever angle they moved and fire accordingly. Dylan and Payton handled this part of the training as well as the other students, but tried to get as much extra practice as time allowed because they knew that a missed opportunity in a dog fight might mean the end of their plane at least, and possibly themselves. The best shot turned out to be Pilot Officer Quarles, the small bespectacled man that the twins noticed first in the initial introduction to the training. As the twins befriended him that first day they’d learned that he knew a thing or two about cricket, and that he taught as a professor of physics at a small college in Wales. Although his flying did not match that of Payton and Dylan for the level of instinctive feel, he easily rated above the rest as the best gunner in the group. Owing to his exceptional eye sight and understanding of what the movement he exerted through the training simulator would do to the rounds loosed from the machine guns he hit all targets much more often than the other students.

  “It’s really quite simple.” Pilot Officer Quarles tried to explain. “You rounds will never fly straight unless you are moving straight as well.”

  “Why’s that?” asked Baker loudly.

  “Because it will move a little in the direction you are moving, and a little in the direction it was moving originally when you fired it.” Quarles said, leaving out the technical aspects of Newton’s first law of motion. Baker was a true fighter and just wanted to go fast in planes so he lacked scientific inclination and curiosity to care too much about the details. The idea of vector mechanics sunk to the depths of Baker’s mind like a stone in water never to see light again. “Think of it like rugby. When you are running with the ball and have to pass to a teammate you have to account for your running and the running of your teammate. The ball will curve.” Quarles finished sensing that Rugby might be more understandable to Baker than physics.

  “That’s right.” Dylan noted. “In baseball when you throw on the run the ball doesn’t go straight. It bends and curves depending on how fast you are running, the angle you throw from, and the angle you are running at compared to your target.”

  “Very good my young friend, that is precisely right.” Quarles congratulated Dylan. “The force you are exerting on the ball comes from both the throw you are making with your arm, the rifle, and the speed you are running at in a different direction with your legs, the plane. Those two forces, plus gravity, determine the movement of the ball. It is the same in an airplane, except the forces involved are much greater, and the bullet is much smaller, so the total effect is quite large.”

  “Is that why you are so good on the range?” the elder recruit, Wallace, asked. “You are anticipating the bends?”

  “Yes of course, that is all I am doing.” Quarles smiled at the thought of helping his fellow pilots. “I anticipate where the target will be as it moves, and then just imagine the arc the tracers will travel towards the target and try to line up the sight with the high point of the arc. Physics takes care of the rest.”

  That afternoon Captain Benson noted a marked improvement in the gunnery of the group as a whole on the range. The best pilots in the world can run out of trouble, but without shooting down enemy planes and pilots, eventually their luck runs out. The best fighter pilots were flyers and gunners all at once without ever thinking about either.

  Two weeks after their arrival at the training field in Middle Wallop, Dylan and Payton graduated from the training planes to the fastest plane in England. The Supermarine Spitfire began life as a failed bid to a military contract. The Supermarine company answered an Air Ministry request for a new short range high performance interceptor plane in 1931. The resulting Supermarine type 224 failed miserably with too big wings, an open cockpit, and fixed landing gear. Lead designer RJ Mitchell learned quickly from his mistakes and re-modeled his next attempt after the sea planes the company entered in the hallowed Schneider Cup races. The refined iteration closed the cockpit, retracted the landing gear, and shortened the wings while thinning them out and adding the trade mark elliptical shape. Finally, the new design included the Rolls Royce Merlin engine that eventually pushed the plane over 350 miles per hour. The resulting Supermarine type 300 prototype would become the spitfire, one of the two interceptor planes along with the Hawker Hurricane, the factories of Great Britain rushed to manufacture as quickly as possible.

  Equipped with four Browning machine guns in each wing, the Spitfire was the first real fighter plane that the twins had flown. Now all the trainees would start to put together the flight skills and gunnery acumen drilled in to them over the fourteen straight long days at the airfield. Payton climbed the ladder up to the Spitfire cockpit with a renewed energy and excitement for the first flight, just like a knight of old climbing on to his best warhorse for battle. The thought of flying such a machine made him feel invincible.

  Just after takeoff, Payton pulled the plane in to a steep climb north of the airfield. Following the flight instructions given to him by Captain Benson before leaving the hangar, Payton executed several evasive maneuvers in the new plane. Finally, he spotted one of the training planes towing a training target behind it off to the east. Payton took three different strafing runs at the target simulating different angles of attack and peppered the plywood frame each time. The pilot of the training plane towing the target appreciated the marksmanship on the target and not his plane.

  On his fourth and final run he dove after the target from high above in the classic Red Baron attack out of
the sun. However, on this run, Payton found one of the fatal flaws in the Spitfire. Hoping for superior horsepower and less maintenance, the Spitfire design included a simple carburetor instead of the new fighter standard direct fuel injection. When Payton took such an extreme downward angle on the target he created a negative G force in the engine which, effectively weightlessness, forced all of the fuel out of the engine and starved the powerful Merlin Engine of its combustion. Payton sprayed the target below him just as the engine on his plane sputtered and coughed to a halt as he tried to pull back on the stick. It did not take long for Payton to realize the danger he faced flying a plane pointed at the ground with no engine to pull him back in to the sky.

  As he hurtled toward the ground the altimeter spun like the scoring on a pinball machine as the feet quickly disappeared beneath the plane. The negative G forces also made Payton feel like he was floating in his seat with only the harness keeping him in place. Though the rapidly approaching ground never left his sight, Payton narrowed his eyes to focus on what the plane was telling him both through the instruments and the feel of stick and seat. Panic never crept in to his thoughts because panic would kill him.

  After falling more than two miles Payton knew the plane was doomed. He just had to level out the flight path enough so that he could open the cockpit and bail out with his parachute after doing his best to point the plane at an empty field. Payton quickly deployed the flaps on his plane to maximum angle to try and slow his descent and increase the lift he could generate. He also lightened his touch on the stick while he pulled back so the tail might level the plane out long enough to jump without jerking the plane back and forth in any wild maneuvers. At about seven thousand feet Payton’s efforts paid off. The plane eased back from a straight nose dive to slightly more gradual descent and he wasted no time popping open the canopy and exiting the plane as fast as he could. He crawled from out of the harness holding him to the plane and pushed off from the side as hard as he could. Leaping clear of the plane Payton just hoped that his parachute would deploy above him as the plane continued its tragic fall from the sky. As he pulled the ripcord on his chute Payton said the same little prayer as ever person that had ever exited an airplane while still in flight. “Lord, please let this chute open!” he murmured to himself as he approached terminal velocity.

  Blissfully, the Lord answered his prayer. The chute billowed out behind him and jerked Payton back as the canopy fully deployed. The white silk looked like gossamer above him as he began floating towards the ground. He watched gratefully as his plane continued on course right at the empty field he aimed at before disappearing in a fireball on the ground. Relaxing only a bit, he looked down to see where he might land. Fortunately, this part of England consisted mostly of farmland, so he only had to worry about the low stone fences separating plots. Barely pulling on the riggings above him put him down dead center in a meadow empty except for one cow lazily feeding on grass in the far corner.

  The last pass at the flying target had brought Payton close enough to the airfield that Dylan and the other recruits could see Payton’s plane as it began its final strafing run. From the observation deck of the airfield tower Dylan saw immediately that his brother had lost control of the plane and before anyone else noticed a problem he ran down the stairs. Dylan jumped in the closest car, a Squadron Leader’s staff car, and revved the engine while he peeled out in the direction of Payton’s descending plane.

  Hurtling out on to the country lanes outside the airstrip Dylan swerved back to the left side of the road to avoid a motorcycle heading in to the airbase. He looked up in relief as he saw the snow cone shape of his brother’s parachute deployed and wafting gently to the ground. He saw the fireball rip in to the sky from the exploding Spitfire and thanked God himself that his brother made it out of the plane first. After another frantic few minutes trying to pinpoint exactly where the parachute deposited his brother Dylan found Payton calmly sitting on a low rock wall with his parachute bundled together in his lap.

  “Thanks for coming to pick me up.” Payton half smirked at the understatement but with evident relief in his voice.

  “Nice landing.” Dylan chided his brother in response.

  “I’ve had better landings, that’s for sure. Hopefully this doesn’t qualify me for jump school. I don’t want to be a paratrooper. I'm not sure any sane person should jump out of a perfectly good airplane.” Payton joked to ease the edge from his near fatal experience.

  “Hopefully the Captain doesn’t dismiss you for crashing the plane.” Dylan noted the next problem they faced as both twins crawled back in to the car. Dylan even failed to ask if his brother was physically all right. He didn’t have to because he knew that he was from his jokes and general demeanor. Had Payton really been hurt, Dylan would have known in an instant from the grimace on Payton’s face from trying to hide the pain. Dylan’s final relief came when he saw none of these telltale signs from his brother.

  Neither spoke on the relatively short ride back to the airfield waiting the questioning sure to greet them upon their return. It went without saying that if Payton was thrown out of the program that Dylan would leave too. Many soldiers formed the bond of brotherhood with their fellow platoon mates. The crucible of battle forged a bond among men only replicated by blood in its strength and loyalty. At WestPoint the instructors had drilled in to the cadets the importance of team work and trusting the guy next to you. The unit had to work as a whole with each part doing its job correctly for the whole to function properly. Dylan and Payton had operated as a unit since the first time they’d discovered as toddlers that if they tugged on the door together they could get out of the house. They were a team, and their unspoken terms were that they would only get through this war together.

  As they arrived back at the airfield Dylan pulled straight over to the hangar and they both marched directly in to Captain Benson’s office. To their surprise, Captain Benson looked more contrite than anything. He did not immediately begin a tirade about the importance of each and every airplane. Instead, he simply asked the twins to follow him in to the classroom where the other three recruits waited.

  “Flying Officer Anders, I’m pleased that you seem well after this afternoon’s flight.” Captain Benson began. “Next, I also want to point to two very important lessons from the incident that we all need to take care to learn. One is operational, and the other more strategic. First, the operational or tactical lesson, and this is a failing on my part for not teaching it to you sooner. The Spitfire has one flaw, and that is the carburetor. Most other airplanes are fuel injected so they needn’t worry about it, but the Spitfire will starve itself if you dive straight down at too steep an angle. The petrol literally is forced out of the engine. Jerry has learned this and begun the tactic of diving for the earth to avoid an attack from a our boys in the Spitfire.” Captain Benson continued. “Fortunately, the issue is simple to solve. You just have to pour gas back in to the carburetor before you dive with a simple maneuver. To do this, you half roll the plane to the right before diving and you should have no problems.

  “Does the roll have to be to the right?” Baker asked.

  “Yes, the fuel line to the carburetor is on the left, so you have to pour it in. Otherwise the maneuver doesn’t work.” The Captain replied.

  “And the second lesson?” Dylan asked

  “Yes, the second lesson is just as important, and far simpler to explain. Planes are easy to replace, we have citizens all over Great Britain working hard to produce them. However, top notch pilots are much more difficult to replace. Always bail out if there is any question as to your survival. Planes can be replaced, pilots can’t. Don’t get too attached to your planes and make some kind of heroic attempt to save them at the expense of your life. We can replace planes faster than we can replace pilots. Dismissed for the rest of the day.” The Captain finished.

  “Thank you, sir!” All five men stood and saluted before hurrying out of the room to digest the hard lesson of the day.r />
  Chapter 20

  June 21st, 1940

  On the Friday of their third week Captain Benson surprised the group. They had completed their training and each pilot received their assigned squadron where they were to report, but not until Monday. Each pilot would have the majority of three days to themselves before joining their combat groups. Dylan and Payton felt fortunate to receive assignments to squadron 610 which was detached from No13 Group RAF to No. 11 Group RAF. The squadron had recently moved to Biggin Hill about fourteen miles south of central London in the borough of Bromley. They could easily spend the weekend with Anne and Clara before reporting for duty.

  With a phone call to Timothy the boys had a ride back to London to surprise the ladies along with plenty of flying stories to tell them. It had not dawned on them that maybe girls don’t want to hear flying stories. As Timothy pulled up he barely had to slow down before the twins had thrown their bags in the back and clamored in to his car.

  “To London, Jeeves.” Payton joked.

  “Arse, you are. But good to see you as well.” Timothy ribbed back.

  “Thanks for picking us up. I hope we didn’t interrupt anything important.” Dylan added.

  “Of course you didn’t. Simone is out of town at her father’s country place, and I’m just looking to stay out of trouble. You got your squadron assignments?” Timothy asked.

  “Yes, we’ll be at Biggin Hill.” Payton answered.

  “Excellent, Biggin Hill guards London from the southeast, directly in line with Jerry in France. You’ll be my personal defenders. Clara and Anne will also have the pleasure of knowing you are in the skies above us.” Timothy nearly beamed at the thought. “It can’t hurt to have friends in the sky.”