And of his precious friends of course, and especially of Granny Smith and Stanislaw Cynk.
Dearest Granny and Stan.
Two of the finest friends a chap could wish for.
“Granny was always moaning at me about checking the airspace around and behind me, and now I’ve got you to look after me.” He laughed, “At least it’s a lot harder for Jerry to bounce us in the darkness. I’m grateful for that, I can tell you! Just remember, though, when we’re up there, keep a good lookout, my son.”
They lapsed into silence for a little while, then, shyly, “I’ve asked Mandy to the pictures, sir. What do you think?”
“Sounds like a grand idea to me, Chalky. What’re you taking her to see?”
“Well, I’ve heard that Gasbags is a bit of a laugh, and I like Bud Flanagan, anyway. What d’you reckon, sir?”
Rose nodded appreciatively, “Sound’s great. And girls always love a good laugh. I remember the first film we went to see. It was The Lady Vanishes. I was so tired; I slept through the entire film. Still don’t know what it was all about, but Molly said it was very good.”
“Was Mrs Rose, um, a bit annoyed that you fell asleep?”
“No, Chalky, she knew how tired I was. Molly’s a terrific girl. I’m very lucky.”
“Yes, sir. I hope I’m as fortunate with Mandy.”
“From what I’ve seen of her, I’d say she’s pretty special, Chalky. Good luck to you, chum.”
The first hour trailed grudgingly into the second, and still they weren’t called for by the controller, slowly freezing in the bitter cold. The damned heating vent was about as useful as a pair of boots made from cheese.
Rose stared longingly at the hot exhausts mere feet away from him, and wondered again about the appalling heating system of the Beaufighter. How could someone design a machine as good as the Beaufighter and provide it with such a crappy heating system?
A thin stream of insipidly warm air played feebly across his right heel, doing little or nothing to dissipate the chill that was permeating his bones, despite all the gear that he was wearing. It was worse for poor old White, his heater produced a weak dribble of warmth that did nothing to heat the RO’s compartment.
Rose thought longingly of a hot mug of coffee to wrap his cold fingers around. Better still, hugging Molly (preferably a naked Molly) was the finest way he could think of warming up, and, better still, it was lots of fun too.
Sigh.
Dear God, it was so cold.
He shivered. Come on, Lamplight, give us something, for pity’s sake, before we die of boredom or the cold.
It looked as if the enemy weren’t interested in raiding their patch this evening. But at least it meant no civvies were suffering.
“Lamplight from Dagger 3, you haven’t forgotten about us, have you?” he asked plaintively.
Immediately they heard the controller’s voice, “No, Dagger 3, I’m afraid we have nothing for you, no enemy activity for the moment.”
But fifteen minutes later, the tedium was suddenly broken, “Dagger 3 from Lamplight, if you’re not doing anything better, we might have something for you, please confirm your angels.”
“We are at sixteen, Lamplight, repeat sixteen.”
“Understood you are at sixteen, Dagger 3, vector zero-seven-five magnetic, incoming trade, angels six, range twenty-five miles.”
“Angels six, Lamplight? Please confirm Angels Six, steering zero-seven-five mag.”
“Lamplight to Dagger 3, confirmed Angels Six, zero-seven-five.”
“Thank you, Lamplight, descending, please continue to vector us.” He switched to the intercom, “Chalky? Wake up old lad, we’ve got some business, it’s flying at six thousand, so we need to lose a lot of height, OK?”
“Gotcha, sir.”
“Right then, turning onto zero-seven-five, here we go then, going down.” Excitement coursed through him, and he patted his pocket, checking that the little teddy bear was still safely ensconced in there.
The thick cloud rushed up to them and then they were within it, engines purring loudly, powerfully, plunging rapidly through the murk. The altitude dropped off yet still they remained in cloud.
Tendrils of fear clammily encircled his heart.
Damn it, but how he hated low cloud. It wasn’t particularly mountainous or even hilly around here, but it was so easy to fly into high ground, known by aircrews with grim humour as a ‘crowded cloud,’ and the thought terrified him.
“Dagger 3 to Lamplight, Please advise?”
“Dagger 3 from Lamplight, maintain current heading, range eighteen miles, angels four. Please confirm your angels.”
“Received, Lamplight, Angels Four.”
Inwardly, he groaned despairingly. Good Lord! That low down, tracking it on the AI set would be incredibly difficult if not impossible, the blip dancing seductively amongst the ground returns on the scope, and the effective range at that height would be half a mile or so.
Poor odds of picking up the bandit in such conditions.
It had better be a damned good interception by the controller.
More worryingly, the bandit was heading straight for Dimple Heath. Might it be an enemy raid?
Molly ought to be safe in the cottage at this time of night, but... What if he drops early? He could hit the village. What if…?
“Lamplight from Dagger 3, could you please advise home base that there might be an incoming raid? Oh, and how are we doing?”
“Dagger 3, will advise home base. Maintain heading, angels three, range ten miles.”
Silently, Rose groaned. An altitude of three thousand?
“Dagger 3, we have lost contact, I’m sorry, repeat, contact lost.”
This time Rose groaned aloud in despair. “Chalky, they’ve lost the contact, have you got anything?”
“No, sir, nothing. Is it an enemy raid?”
“God, I don’t know, chum! It’s really low down; I’m going to follow its heading from about fifteen hundred feet. I’ll need you to keep one eye fixed firmly outside, but just keep the other on The Thing an’ all, in case we get lucky and end up close enough to it.”
“Lamplight to Dagger 3, break off! Air defence have been alerted, observe five miles exclusion radius.”
“Chalky, we’re breaking off the pursuit, hang on to your hat, pal, I’m taking her up, we’re climbing!”
Cursing foully under his breath, Rose pulled back on the control column and rammed forward the throttles so that D-Dog shot upwards again, his vision greying, the fighter suddenly erupting from the denseness of the thick cloud like some terrible marine monster exploding out from the depths of the ocean.
And then again, almost immediately, “Dagger 3, break off! Break off! Contact has been identified as friendly, repeat contact is friendly, please break off! Repeat, break off! Acknowledge, please!”
Rose closed his eyes, then opened them again and looked yearningly at Molly’s photograph. Oh Molly, we almost shot down one of ours!
Dear God. And then, Thank God.
They would find out later that the contact Lamplight had been tracking for them and directing them to, was in fact a flak-torn Wellington limping home, from Dimple Heath’s very own bomber flight.
The battle damage done to the bomber included the destruction of the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system, such that the aircraft had been classified as an unidentified trace, and therefore, a probable bandit.
The Wellington had finally managed to identify itself, almost too late, belatedly via a hastily repaired shrapnel-torn wireless set to RAF Dimple Heath’s air traffic control, and the frantic duty officer desperately phoned the news urgently through to Sector, thereby preventing a disaster in which Rose and White might well have downed a friendly aircraft (or vice versa?) in poor visibility.
Near to the end of their patrol time, all was still quiet, and with no enemy activity immediately apparent, Rose requested and received permission to return and refuel.
Wearily the two o
f them, frustrated, bored and half-frozen, traipsed back tiredly to the dispersals hut with the strange faintly green glowing smoke seeping resentfully from the jauntily askew chimney.
Rose and White made their way to the stove to pour themselves a well-earned cup of stewed sweet tea.
Half an hour later, readiness was relaxed, for there would be no enemy activity that night.
Nevertheless, the crews stayed up until dawn broke, waiting patiently, just in case, bolstered by endless cups of tea or black coffee, dreaming patiently of their fried egg ‘supper’ and the glass of refreshingly cold milk that often came with it.
They gratefully watched the sun crawl into the sky, the little band of brothers sitting and standing companionably close together, some smoking in the fresh glare, saying nothing but silently glad that once more, they had, each of them, survived another night.
Chapter 16
The following night, being third on the duty roster, Rose and White were airborne in D-Dog by seven thirty, arrowing cleanly up into the clear night sky at full power as they sought to gain height rapidly, a bright moon shining coldly down upon them from the south-south-east, indifferently illuminating the inside of the Beaufighter’s cockpit with its cold shine.
But Rose was not even remotely interested in admiring and enjoying the moonlight; he would appreciate it only when Molly was with him. Right now, however, it was a useful tool, a weapon even, to be taken advantage of and used to assist him in any coming interception.
Once they had reached their directed height of fifteen thousand feet, sector control told them to circle the Sultana Beacon on the east coast, and then they were once again assigned to their GCI controller, Lamplight.
They were not kept waiting for long, and Lamplight was soon passing them a set of vectors, but the range was far too long, and White was able to hold the fleeting blip only briefly, helplessly watching it slowly slide off the scope as the distance between them and it gradually increased over the next ten minutes.
White clenched and ground his teeth together in frustration as the trace gradually crept away from them, flittering timidly at the edge of the screen for a teasing moment, and then it finally disappeared from his scopes altogether.
Whatever they had been chasing had a far better turn of speed than they did, and easily outpaced the battling Beaufighter, even with the powerful Hercules engines driving them after it at maximum speed, the controls trembling and stiffening in Rose’s straining hands.
Grimly, they returned disappointedly to the cab rank holding point, but the night was not yet over for the crew of D-Dog.
Half an hour of circling later, in the far distance, a pair of searchlights suddenly lit up, the thin white fingers of light criss-crossing slowly.
The lights wandering apparently aimlessly intrigued him. “Fuck this for a game of soldiers. I’m fed up with all this stooging around,” muttered Rose, half to himself, “Shall we go and see what those lights are all about, Chalky, my old bag of pants?”
The boy’s voice was eager. “Yes please! Go on, sir!”
“Hullo, Dagger 3 to Lamplight, there’re a couple of lights on the coast or thereabouts, permission to investigate, bearing zero-eight-zero relative to Sultana.”
“Dagger 3, permission granted, things are a bit quiet in your area at the moment. I’ve nothing for you at the moment. See what you can find. Good hunting.”
“Thank you, Lamplight, will advise soonest.” Here’s hoping…
Rose dropped the Beau down to twelve thousand feet and headed straight for the lights. One of the thin pencil-like beams went out for a second, but almost instantly re-appeared.
“Nothing so far, sir.” White thought his eyes would pop as he stared unblinkingly at his set, face stuck against the visor, willing a blip to appear amongst his wavering lines.
As the spidery threads of white cold light wavered before him in the night, Rose’s eyes turned to one side to protect his night vision, and then White suddenly called out urgently from behind him, “Contact! Contact, vector zero-seven-zero, range five miles, erm, angels twelve thousand five hundred, he’s above us, range closing fast! Oh shit! He’s coming towards us!”
Instantly Rose pulled back further on the control column, turning the snub nose of D-Dog directly onto the line of approach of the enemy plane.
White was still babbling, “Range one mile, he’s to port of us and still above!”
“Stay in your seat, Chalky!” He thought he saw movement fleetingly, just for an instant, and then quite suddenly a sparkling necklace of tracer reached out, hurtling down and towards them, but then curling away below and behind as the nose gunner of the enemy bomber blasted away at them, the grey blur of the enemy bomber streaking past in the wink of an eye.
And then they were turning again, turning, turning hard after the enemy, the Hercules snarling and snapping as he pushed forward hard on the throttles, pressed back hard into his seat in turn as they fought to pursue the German bomber.
The turn was not one of those gentle Sunday-afternoon steering manoeuvres more common with an AI intercept, but rather a muscle-twisting, chest crushing, vision blurring and breathlessly wheezing one, much like those he’d performed when dogfighting with nippy little single engine fighters the previous summer and autumn.
“Cripes!” Rose gasped, surprised that he was actually enjoying the manoeuvring. He felt so alive! “Do you have him, Chalky?”
“Contact, three miles, vector two-two-five, same angels as us.” White panted beneath the overwhelming forces as the Beaufighter wheeled after the enemy, “Range closing! Two miles! He’s coming back! Oh Fuck!”
Rose felt like laughing madly at the gulped fear and surprise in White’s voice, despite the circumstances. He felt exactly those same feelings mirrored perfectly in his own thumping, thrashing heart.
Bloody Hell! This one was going to fight it out with them! A dogfight with an enemy bomber!
And then the darting enemy was zipping close by once more, and this time the deadly line of boiling red blobs of fiery lead passed below them, and then the bandit shot past once more, and again Rose pulled the fighter hard into yet another straining turn, the world tumbling around them.
“Still in contact, whoops!” squawked White in discomfort as his stomach lurched and reeled violently, and he struggled, neck and spine straining, to keep his head from being pulled to one side as Rose violently wrenched the Beaufighter around after the enemy aircraft.
White’s voice was thin and reedy as he gasped, “Keep turning, heading one-zero-zero, range two miles, bandit now descending! Reduce angle of bank.”
“Thanks, Chalky.” Rose wheezed and strained as the forces punched against him roughly, turning the Beau onto the new heading and pushing the nose down, “Angels?”
“Nine thousand and still going down, sir, maintain heading.”
The airframe was quivering eagerly like a hunting dog as they shot after the enemy bomber, and Rose realised with some irritation that he still wasn’t even sure what type of aircraft it was.
They snapped through a thin, filmy, patchwork of cloud, ripping a ragged, swirling trail though it as they chased once more after their enemy.
“Angels?” asked Rose again; carefully scanning the sky ahead, but nothing was yet visible.
“Seven thousand five hundred, still going down mighty fast, sir, still one-zero-zero, range three miles.”
Oh Lor’! It was going to get away! The AI set at this height had a reasonable range of seven miles or so under ideal conditions, but if the bandit got outside that, they might lose it in the darkness…
Come on! Come on! Come on! It felt as if his heart would burst. The Hercules’ were bellowing with effort.
They passed through six thousand feet, “Chalky?”
“Still going down, sir, four thousand, one-zero-zero, range just under three miles.”
Come on! Come on! Come on!
D-Dog was straining and rattling, but they weren’t getting that much close
r, and that damned bomber was going down really fast! His arms ached holding the stiffening controls and his face was clammy.
Damn it! Come on!
And then, at three thousand feet, those dreaded words, “Contact lost, sir. Contact lost. Sorry...”
White sounded sick.
This close to the ground terrain, the enemy’s return on the scope had disappeared into the ground clutter. Reacquiring would be nigh on impossible.
He swore. Damn it! He’d lost an enemy bomber over which he should have had a performance advantage on a perfect moonlit night! He felt an absolute chump.
“No, no, Chalky, not your fault,” Rose said quickly, reassuringly, even though he could feel the same anger and frustration gnawing at him, “He was quick, Chalky, damned quick, and he didn’t hang around. He threw me onto my back foot straight away, kept us flapping and then scarpered sharpish, while I was still trying to get after him. He was good.”
Very good, bloody good. And damned lucky.
The lucky, lucky bastard.
But then his fury relented.
At least they themselves were still alive too. They had survived the encounter.
And there might still be a chance of making good…
“Cheer up, pal. Let’s see if Lamplight still have him, eh?”
“OK, sir.” Chalky replied doubtfully.
God, the poor old thing sounded so miserable, and Rose could understand and sympathise utterly.
Against all the odds, they’d actually found a bandit for themselves, but then lost it without even getting a shot in.
The same couldn’t be said for the enemy, sod him.
If only Chalky had a gun in his Perspex dome, or better still a gun turret, things might have been different.
If only…
“Dagger 3 to Lamplight, I’m afraid we lost him. Can you help?”
“Rotten luck, Dagger 3. I’m sorry to hear that, but we only got a fleeting contact and we don’t have him at all now. Please rejoin the cab rank. We’ll try and find something for you.”
“Thanks, Lamplight, am now re-joining cab rank, please advise angels.”
Beaufighter Blitz Page 17