‘Well, well,’ Bryan muttered. ‘The Americans have woken up at last.’
Two massive anchors dropped away from the hull, dragging heavy chains behind them. They plunged into the water and splashed huge plumes up the grey-painted prow. Halfway along the vessel, close below its flight deck, a large hatch opened and a stairway lowered on cables, its last treads dipping into the water’s surface.
A small navy launch scudded across the bay, slowing down and curving around to come alongside the pontoon.
‘Six passengers for the USS Wasp,’ a naval rating called out from the boat. ‘Step aboard please.’
Friday, 8 May 1942
The pilots filed into the large briefing room, some picking fibres of their breakfast bacon from between their teeth. Bryan waited for the commotion to ease as the men settled into the rows of chairs that faced the dais. When silence was close, he stood and surveyed the faces before him.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he began, and hush descended with his words. ‘I can confirm that we are headed for Malta, where it is hoped this force will make a decisive difference to the air defence of the harbours and the people that live and work around them.
‘For the protection of this very valuable American vessel, your Spitfires are fitted with extra fuel tanks so the captain can get rid of us as soon as possible and get back to safety. When it comes to it, you must obey every instruction you are given by the crew on the flight deck. They know more about getting something airborne from a carrier than you do. Test your fuel taps as soon as you get to a safe altitude. If they’re faulty, turn back and ditch. They’ll lower a boat to pick you out of the sea.
‘We’ll form into six squadron-strength flights, each led by one of us.’ He gestured to the five men sitting behind him on the dais. ‘There’ll be three waves. The first flies to Ta’Qali, second to Luqa, third to Hal Far. Upon arrival, you will each be met by a dedicated ground crew. Taxi according to their instructions. When they are happy, you will hand over your plane to the fresh pilot who will be waiting at your dispersal point.
‘The Germans already know we’re coming, how many of us there are, and how vital it is to their interests to kill as many of us as they can in the shortest time possible. So, there will, in all probability, be packs of 109s waiting for us when we arrive. Remember, the need to carry extra fuel means you are not carrying any ammunition. We’ll have to rely on the Royal Artillery, and however many aircraft Malta’s fighter control can put up, to keep them away from us.
‘Some of you will find yourselves on the general flying roster the day after you arrive. Nothing you’ve learned during interceptions over England or sweeps over France will help you in Malta. We are not expecting to win the battle we are fighting; we always have far too little and our enemy always has far too much. Rather, it is our task to hold the Germans at bay while using and losing as few of our resources as possible.
‘In Malta we are forced to fly defensively rather than offensively. We can’t afford the fuel to run regular patrols, so you’ll be scrambled when you’re needed. Once airborne, your only targets are the bombers, so ignore the fighters as much as you can. If you do get into a scrap, get low and circle an airfield. You never know, the Bofors gunners might spare some ammo to help you out.
‘Do not force land anywhere on the island. There are too many stone walls waiting to kill you. And do not chase anything out to sea; you’re likely to meet the next lot on their way in. There are no boats to pick you up if you are not in sight of the island, and sometimes not even if you are.’
Bryan cast another look around the upturned faces, some brows carried furrows of concern.
‘It gets worse,’ he continued. ‘Ordinary standards of living no longer mean anything on Malta. You will eat food that tastes like shit, it will very likely give you the shits, and once you have the shits, you will keep them for a long time. You will go to sleep with flies on your face, you will wake up with flies on your face, and the only place to wash properly will be the sea. You will piss into the last man’s urine because water is too precious to waste on a toilet flush. You will spend your days covered in dust that will turn your clothes into sandpaper. There’s no booze, no cigarettes and the girls are all Catholics. Within days you will wish you’d never boarded this ship.
‘You’ve taken on the most difficult job of the war so far, and it starts tomorrow at dawn. I suggest you enjoy what the galley has to offer for dinner and get a good night’s rest. Pick up your flight maps on the way out, and good luck.’
The scraping of chairs and the sudden eruption of chatter filled the room. Ben appeared at Bryan’s shoulder.
‘You could’ve told me,’ he said, ‘about Charlotte. She was a prostitute, wasn’t she?’
‘I would’ve thought the clue was in the name.’
‘It’s not funny. I made a fool of myself.’
Bryan smiled. ‘The only fool in that house was me. You have no idea how much I paid for a bad cup of coffee.’
Saturday, 9 May 1942
The sun’s disc incised its flaring arc on the horizon ahead of the aircraft carrier. Bryan and Ben climbed the stairs to the flight deck ahead of the pilots assigned to the first two squadrons heading for Ta’Qali. The deck bustled with American crewmen, moving with restrained urgency for the task ahead which they knew, once completed, would allow their ship to turn away from these increasingly dangerous waters.
Bryan winked at his companion. ‘Good luck,’ he said.
Ben smiled in reply. ‘I’ll see you at home.’
Ben walked back through the gaggle of fighters standing on the deck. Bryan went the other way to seek out the one at the front, painfully conscious of the runway length the other parked machines had stolen from him.
His aircraft sat on tyres that flattened noticeably under the gross weight of the overloaded fighter. Stretching the full width between the wing-roots, a squared-off fuel tank nestled against the fuselage with the word ‘Gassed’ chalked on its side. Bryan handed his kit-bag to a sailor who ducked under the wing and squeezed it into an ammunition compartment, deftly reattaching the wing-panel with a couple of tweaks from a screwdriver.
Bryan swung the parachute pack onto his back and clambered onto the wing. A sailor helped him into the cockpit and pulled his straps tight.
Bryan looked into the man’s young face. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome, sir.’ He tapped his fingers against his temple in salute. ‘Good luck.’
Bryan felt the massive ship wallow beneath him as the helm adjusted to run directly into the wind. The sailor clambered down and joined the others gathered around the aeroplane. Two men wheeled a starter battery alongside and Bryan fired up the engine, checking the gauges as they twitched into life. Ahead of him, to his right-hand side, the yellow-shirted controller made winding motions with his hands. Bryan eased the throttle forward and noticed three men gather in front of each wingtip, pushing backwards against the leading edge, bracing their feet against the deck, helping to hold the vibrating aircraft motionless against the propeller’s thrust.
The controller abruptly stopped his flurry of movement and slashed his arm horizontally to point to the prow. The men at the wings let go their grip, dropping flat onto the deck and Bryan released the squealing brakes. The Spitfire lurched forward and picked up speed, racing along the fore-shortened deck towards the water-filled chasm at its end.
The tail lifted easily and the baleful eye of the rising sun filled the windshield. Abruptly the rumbling of wheels ceased and the Spitfire’s corpulent belly dragged at its fragile buoyancy, drooping its body towards the wavetops. Bryan eased back on the stick, flattening the craft’s trajectory, waiting for the dragging undercarriage to retract. The wheels clunked home and Bryan flew straight and low to build his air speed before curving up into a shallow climb to circle the carrier.
As he climbed, he watched the second fighter heave away from its standing-start and make its dash for flight. It sagged into the a
ir, expending lift against weight for long seconds of floundering uncertainty before the trade was lost. The nose dipped sharply into a catastrophic stall and the Spitfire dropped into the water. The tail and starboard wing rose vertically, like the desperate hands of a drowning man, before the carrier’s bow wave broke over the doomed fighter and it sunk from sight.
The next fledgling fought the same battle, but won.
Every plane that followed bestowed a few extra feet of flight deck to the one that came after, and within thirty minutes the first two squadrons were formed-up and cruising east over the featureless sea.
****
The long flight finally brought Sicily onto the horizon, its coast imposing a dark line into the blue-to-blue division of sea and sky, and Bryan eased their course to south-easterly. As the profile of that island thickened and slid by into his port quarter, Bryan detected aircraft dotting the sky between the distant coast and his formation. He strained his eyes to count them. There were at least eight fighters, probably 109s, maintaining a shadowing course, unwilling to engage three times their number, evidently unaware that their enemy flew unarmed.
The strange off-set formation flew on, stable in its stalemate of perceived dangers; the hunters content to wait for the odds, as they understood them, to change in their favour. Ahead, the twin islands of Malta and Gozo rolled out of the sea, like bronze flotsam floating on a placid blue lake.
Bryan kept the land mass on his starboard side; Gozo slid past, followed by the rocky north end of Malta. He eased the formation into a shallow descent, noting that the hyena pack on his flank chose to maintain their height advantage.
‘Wasp Leader to Fighter Control.’ Bryan broke the long radio silence. ‘We are approaching base with unwelcome company.’
‘Hello, Wasp Leader. We’ve been tracking them. We’ve sent up a reception party.’
Bryan banked westwards, making landfall over the bay between Sliema and Valletta. Down to his left, all along the edges of Grand Harbour, puffs of gun smoke dotted the quaysides. Bryan glanced into his rear-view mirror and smiled with satisfaction as a densely knit concentration of shells burst in and around the German fighters, causing them to bank away from the harbour. A small gaggle of Hurricanes sliced across from the south of the island, scything over the harbour to engage the intruders. Bryan relaxed, winding his formation into a circuit around Ta’Qali and leading the first few machines in to land.
He bumped down and taxied to the end of the landing strip where an airman waved him down. The man had a placard hanging around his neck which bore the number ‘1’ thickly scratched onto the card with charcoal. The man caught his eye and mouthed ‘Follow me.’ Two more airmen ran to his aircraft, each one grabbing a wingtip, and guided him off the runway.
As he snaked his Spitfire away along the perimeter, Bryan noticed many new protective pens had been thrown together from blocks of yellow limestone, crude but imposing. Each had a number similarly scribed in charcoal on its back wall.
The airmen led Bryan into a stone pen. He cut the engine and clambered out onto the wing, sliding down to the ground on stiff legs. He unhooked his parachute and laid it on the wing-root as armourers pounced on both sides of the aircraft, stripping off the panels and slotting in ammunition boxes. Bryan’s kitbag was dragged out and he placed it in the corner of the pen. A pile of two-dozen petrol cans stood along the back wall and a team of four manhandled them across to the Spitfire, passing them up to an airman on a stepladder who tipped the fuel through a funnel into the aircraft’s depleted tank. A crew chief supervised the operation, walking round the fighter with a critical glare.
‘Where’s the new pilot?’ Bryan asked the man. ‘Who am I handing over to?’
The crew chief scanned the blast-pen. ‘Is he still not back?’
‘Back from where?’
‘The shitter.’ The man grimaced. ‘He’s got The Dog, apparently.
The armourers clanked the wing panels shut and moved to help with the petrol cans. Bryan glanced towards the latrines and sidled back to the parachute on the wing. The sharp scent of aviation fuel filled the air as the tank topped out and the spillage evaporated on the warm cowling. The airman descended, handed on the half-empty can and dragged his stepladder away from the fuselage.
‘Starter battery!’ the crew chief bawled at the sky. Two men careened around the wall of the pen dragging a trolley between them. They ducked under the fuselage and attached the apparatus.
Stillness descended around the aircraft. The crew chief swivelled his head towards the latrines, the airmen who stood amongst a scattering of empty fuel cans followed his gaze. No pilot appeared.
‘I’ll take it,’ Bryan said, hoisting the parachute pack onto his shoulders.
The crew chief looked from Bryan to the latrines, to his clipboard and back to Bryan. Shaking his head, he walked away, relinquishing responsibility for the change of plan.
Bryan clambered back into the cockpit and started the engine. The airmen guided him back to the runway where two more of the new Spitfires were lining up for take-off. Bryan waved away the airmen, squeezed the throttle forward and followed the other two fighters down the runway and into the air.
Bryan’s face split with a fierce grin of triumph; it was barely twenty minutes since they’d left behind the Luftwaffe in the barrage over Grand Harbour. Now fully armed, they’d meet the raiding bombers that must surely be on their way.
The trio of fighters circled Ta’Qali. Below them, more Spitfires trundled out of blast-pens, powered down the runway and clawed into the air.
‘Falcon Leader to Fighter Control. Newly arrived wasps are now airborne.’ Bryan recognised Copeland’s voice on the wireless.
‘Hello Falcon Leader. Visitors are arriving as expected, due north, angels twelve. Watch out for more wasps in the vicinity. Good luck.’
The formation swept around the last curve of its circuit and climbed away north, along the island’s spine. The terrain roughened and settlements grew sparse, then the rugged northern headlands loomed into view, softened by sea-haze rolling through the channel between the islands.
‘Falcon Leader to Falcon aircraft. That looks like our bandits at two o’clock.’
Bryan scanned that patch of sky. Two formations approached; a dozen or more bombers in a tight cluster, and maybe twice that number of fighters flying high escort above them.
‘Twenty-plus aircraft at eleven o’clock.’ A voice Bryan didn’t recognise. ‘Must be the second wave from the carrier.’
‘Alright’ – Copeland’s voice was level and assured – ‘let’s break up those bombers. Avoid the 109s as long as possible. Tally-ho!’
The Spitfires drifted into a looser formation as they curved towards the bomber formation, intent on slashing through them on a near head-on course. Bryan flipped his safety to ‘Fire’ and ballooned upwards to avoid the Spitfires ahead of him.
As the indistinct jumble of silhouettes grew larger, he saw they were Junkers 88s. He flicked a glance at the 109s still flying straight and level high above him, then jabbed the firing button, squirting an un-aimed burst into the mass of German raiders before pulling up to zoom above their ranks.
The two formations flashed through each other above the foam-crested waves of the rocky northern shore. Bryan held his course for a second to allow the air to clear around him, then pulled into a tight turn to port, circling back over the bay that cut a chunk from the ridged headland. Bryan levelled out, his nose pointing south.
Trails of smoke marked the fiery dives of two raiders. Others flared away in steep banks, dumping bombs and deserting the battle. But half of the bomber crews pressed on; their progress trailed by the whips of tracer fire they lashed back at their gathering tormentors.
Bryan squinted up to the escort, still unmoved by their comrades’ plight. Then he saw the reason for their discretion; the USS Wasp’s second incoming wave flew a near parallel course to the raid. The attackers had never seen the Maltese sky so full of British aircraf
t.
Bryan picked his target amongst the persisting bombers, pushed his throttle fully forward and wallowed left and right to avoid return fire. No gunner found his mark, and the Junkers swelled to fill his windscreen like a fattened calf. The pounding of his two cannons rattled his teeth as detonations peppered the bomber’s starboard wing, tearing chunks from the cowling and throwing its propeller into a juddering elliptical spin.
As his guns spat their last shells and dropped to silence, the German aircraft lurched into a steep left bank, spikes of flame flashing from its engine. Bryan banked the other way, diving away from battle to run for home against the mottled mantle of Malta’s rocky hide.
****
Bryan joined several other returning Spitfires in the circuit over Ta’Qali. When he landed, he was met by a capering airman with a number around his neck who led him to a blast-pen where another ground crew swarmed over his machine.
Bryan climbed down from the wing, flexing stiff muscles and rubbing buttocks numbed by long hours sitting on a hard parachute pack in a cramped cockpit. A Spitfire taxied past behind its numbered chaperone. Copeland pointed at him from the opened cockpit and mouthed ‘Wait there.’
Bryan pulled off his leather helmet and scratched at the stubble on his cheek. His skin was greasy with old sweat and grime, his tongue felt dry behind his teeth and his shoulders ached from the tensions of combat.
The noise of chatter distracted him and he turned to regard the armourers, one kneeling on the wing, the other crouching on the ground below. Their faces sparkled with smiles as they joked with each other over their task. The men heaving the heavy fuel cans up the side of the fuselage expressed the strain of their physical effort with a grim visage and gritted teeth, but they worked swiftly with an efficiency of movement borne out of enthusiasm for their task. Bryan cast his gaze over the wider field which bustled with activity, all carried out with a new sense of purpose. If it wasn’t overtaken by some new calamity, it might blossom into optimism.
The Bluebirds Trilogy Box Set Page 73