The Two-Headed Eagle поп-3

by Джон Биггинс

  “Electrical contacts open. Start the engine.” With that, Toth began cranking the little starter magneto—“the coffee grinder”—on the cock­pit bulkhead while Prokesch took a swing at the propeller. It fired first time, the engine roaring into life as gouts of smoke and blue-green flame rippled from the six stub-exhausts. I let it warm up for a minute or so, looked to make sure that Schraffl’s engine was also running, then waved to the ground crew. The mechanics pulled the chocks from in front of the wheels, threw them aside, then ducked underneath the aeroplane to sprawl themselves forward over the lower wings, one man lying on each side just inboard of the struts. The reason for this was that, with the engine and radiator completely blocking the pilot’s view forward, Brandenburgers were notoriously tricky to taxi on the ground and were always piling up against posts or running into other aircraft. The mechanics were there to give directions to Toth as he opened the throttle and the aeroplane started to lurch across the stony grass field.

  We turned into the wind—a faint westerly breeze this early in the morning—and Toth gave full throttle as the two mechanics waved to signal “All clear ahead” and slid back off the wings. The air began to sing past us as the Brandenburger gathered speed, wheels bouncing on the bumpy field. Take-off runs were minimal in those days when aeroplanes started to lift off at near-bicycle speeds: 150 metres or less if the aeroplane was lightly laden. Soon a faint lurch and sudden smoothing of the mo­tion signalled that we had left the ground behind. Toth lugged back the control column—not a modern joystick but a backward-and-forward post with a small wooden motor-car steering wheel on top—and soon we were climbing away from Fliegerfeld Caprovizza, banking to port to make the regulation two circuits of the airfield: a precaution against engine failure, since the probability was that if a piston was going to seize, it would do so now rather than later on. Meanwhile Schraffl and Jahudka had climbed into the air astern of us. Once I saw that they had made their circuits too I fired a green flare to signal that all was well, and we set off down the Vippaco Valley, heading for the town of Gorz and the enemy lines in the hills to west of it. We were on our way. Whether we would make the same journey in the opposite direction would become clear during the next ninety minutes or so.

  We climbed gently as we flew down the broad, uneven valley of the Vippaco, heading for the point where that river joins the Isonzo just south of Gorz. Our aim was to cross the lines at about three thousand metres, then head north-east towards Udine for a while to confuse the Italian ob­servers on the ground, who would telephone our height and direction as soon as they saw us pass overhead. We would then turn south-westwards and circle round to approach Palmanova from the direction of Venice, hoping in this way that we would be taken for Italian aircraft and left alone by any anti-aircraft batteries around our target. I checked my map and ticked off the towns and villages of the Vippaco Valley as we flew over them: Santa Croce and Dornberg and Prvacina and Ranziano; not so much for navigational purposes—we were following the railway line and river anyway—as to memorise their appearance for future flights when visibility might be poor and there might be no time to consult the map. How considerate it had been of previous generations (I thought) to have built so many hill-top monasteries around Gorz—Monte Vecchio and San Gabriele and Monte Santo. As a sceptic I doubted their religious efficacy; but there was no denying that as air-navigation beacons they took some beating, stuck up there on their mountain-peaks and painted white and yellow to stand out against the dark green pine forests. Meanwhile, away to westward, the guns flashed from time to time among the wooded hills across the Isonzo.

  The sun was well up as we passed over the town of Gorz: still largely undamaged despite the closeness of the lines. The castle and the twin- domed cathedral were clearly visible in the early-morning light, and the silvery ribbon of the Isonzo branching and rejoining among the summer- dry banks of pebbles as it made its way towards the sea. Then we crossed the trench lines, which here climbed up from the valley floor to wind among the devastated forests of Podgora and Monte Sabotino on the west bank of the Isonzo. It was around here if anywhere that we would meet flak artillery fire. I peered ahead apprehensively—then saw three quick red flashes and puffs of dirty black smoke in the sky far ahead of us. A feeling of intense relief surged through me. Utterly feeble: so typical of the Italians and their charming incompetence. If that was the best they could do then—It was like a sudden, heavy kick in the backside: three or four shells bursting below us with a concussion that knocked the air out of my lungs and tossed the aeroplane around much as a number of badminton players will bat a shuttlecock from one to the other. I clutched the cockpit edge in alarm as Toth looked down, snorted in disgust and began to weave the aeroplane from side to side to put the gunners off their aim. I looked up and saw that Schraffl—now well above us—was doing the same. Other shells followed, but none came as close as that early group, and within a minute or two we were well beyond the lines and out of reach. A few puffs of smoke hung in the sky astern as if to say “You are lucky this time, porci Austriaci, but there’s always another day . . .” Twenty minutes later we were approaching Palmanova from the west.

  Because everything happens so much faster, and in three dimensions instead of two, air navigation has always been a rather hit-or-miss busi­ness compared with position-finding at sea. I imagine that this is still largely true even now; and in those far-off times seventy years ago it was true—how do you say?—with brass knobs on it. Even so, it would have required a complete imbecile not to have recognised the town of Palmanova, because I think that in the whole of Europe there can scarcely be another settlement so instantly recognisable from the air. I whistled in admiration as we flew over it, so lost in wonder that I almost forgot to check the time and line us up for our photographic run along the railway line. I suppose that in the years since, the growth of suburbs and factory estates must have blurred its outlines; but as I saw it that July morning it still possessed that pristine purity of form in which its builders had left it: a perfect Renaissance fortress-town laid out like a star of David with successive rings of earthworks—lunettes and ravelins and bastions— surrounding it in what could well have been an engraving from a Leonardo da Vinci treatise on the art of fortification. It was so perfect that I half expected to see a scrolled cartouche in the fields near by with a pair of dividers, a scale of yards and a copperplate legend: “Senatus Serenissimae Republicae Venetii castrum et oppidum Palmae Novae aedificavit anno domini 1580,” or something similar. It suddenly occurred to me that Toth and I were among the very few people who had ever had the privilege to see the place from above, exactly as its architects had designed it.

  But we had more important things to do that morning than study sixteenth-century military engineering. More technologically advanced and far less aesthetically pleasing ways of killing people were our im­mediate concern as we lined up to run along the railway track leading towards Udine. Toth brought us down until the altimeter read exactly the three thousand metres prescribed by our orders. I pulled back the cuff of my flying overall and glanced at my wristwatch. Even in July over Italy the air was near-freezing this high up, and I felt the cold suddenly bite at my exposed skin. Right on time: the seconds hand was just sweeping up towards 0630. Really this was too easy. I glanced down and saw the dark oblong stacks of shells piled up neatly alongside the railway track for a good two or three kilometres. Then I bent down to slide open the hatch in the cockpit floor. As the hands of the watch touched 0630 I pulled the lever for the first exposure.

  My attention was not entirely devoted to working the camera lever every five seconds: in fact ever since we had left Caprovizza I had been ceaselessly scanning the sky above and astern of us for the first sight of anything suspicious. I must say that I was somewhat apprehensive about this. Being a naval officer my eyesight was excellent; but I suspected that the skills of a good U-Boat look-out—like the trick of never looking di­rectly at the horizon but always slightly above it—might not be ent
irely applicable in the air. I had also, I must admit, something well short of total confidence in the means by which I was to defend us if we were attacked from behind.

  The 8mm Schwarzlose had been the Austro-Hungarian Army’s stan­dard machine gun since 1906 or thereabouts, selected after an exhaustive series of competitive trials in which it alone had been able to meet the War Ministry’s stringent specification as regards price. I suppose that the thing might have been just about adequate for a peacetime army, but for fighting a world war it was a very dubious contraption indeed. Whereas most other machine guns in service around the world were operated by muzzle-gas, Herr Schwarzlose had chosen to make his design work by recoil—and had then (for some quite unaccountable reason) decided to dispense with the locking system generally considered necessary to hold a machine gun breech shut while each round is fired. These twin eccen­tricities meant that the Schwarzlose had to have a very short barrel—and thus mediocre range and accuracy, not to mention a picturesque gout of flame as each round left the muzzle.

  It also necessitated a massive breech block, like a miniature black­smith’s anvil, so that its inertia would prevent it from being blown back into the gunner’s face. This in its turn meant a further loss of range, be­cause so much of the energy from each shot was absorbed in kicking the breech open. As a result its rate of fire was poor: about four hundred shots per minute on paper but barely three-quarters of that in practice.

  And that was just the army version: the air Schwarzlose, which now rested behind me on its rails ready for action, was a still further declension of mediocrity. Unlike the excellent Parabellum—standard observer’s gun in the German two-seaters—it had no shoulder-stock to allow the gunner to keep his aim however violently the pilot was throwing the aeroplane about the sky. Instead it had a pair of handles like those of a child’s toy scooter. The water-jacket had been removed to save weight; but this had only made the aim even more uncertain since it abolished the foresight, and also meant that we could fire bursts of only twelve or so shots at a time, for fear of burning the barrel. As for the ammunition feed, it con­sisted of a canvas belt of five hundred rounds coiled in a metal drum on the side of the thing. This belt would always absorb some damp in the early mornings, waiting out on the airfields, and even in summer this would often freeze in the upper air, causing the gun to jam. This was bad enough, but our gun that morning was an early model—pensioned off no doubt from the Army—in which each cartridge had to be lubricated by a little oil-pump as it went into the breech so that the empty case would extract afterwards. This oil would become sticky in the cold, so that even if the gun would still fire it would slow down to two hundred rounds or so per minute, making it sound like an exhausted woodpecker on a hot summer’s afternoon. All things considered, I think that a Singer sewing machine would have been about as much use for defending ourselves—as well as being a good deal lighter.

  In the event though it looked as if the wretched Schwarzlose might not be needed that morning, there in the summer sky above the Friulian Plain. I pulled the lever to expose plate number thirty, heard it clack into the box and then turned thankfully to Toth to tap him on the shoulder and signal “Finished—head for home.” I was glad of this, because cloud was coming in fast from the west: white cauliflowers of cumulus which were for the moment above us, but which seemed to be coming down to our altitude. I looked up and saw Schraffl’s aeroplane disappear into the cloud above us, reappear for a moment and then vanish again as we turned for home. He had seen us I was sure, but to make certain that he knew we were finished I fired a white flare just before we lost sight of one another.

  When I next caught sight of an aeroplane, about three kilometres astern and slightly above us, it took me some moments to realise that I was not looking at Schraffl and Jahudka’s machine. I could not see exactly what it was, but head-on it was most certainly not a Brandenburger, whose inward-sloping struts gave it an unmistakable appearance when viewed from the front. It was a biplane, but of what kind I could not say except that it appeared to be somewhat smaller than ours—though still too large for a Nieuport—and that it was most certainly closing with us at speed. Then I saw another one, at the same altitude but about two kilometres astern of the first. Whoever they were, they had seen us and were gain­ing on us fast. Heart pounding, I turned around and seized Toth by the shoulder. He looked around to where I was pointing, and nodded casually. I signalled for “Full throttle” by thrusting my fist forward. He nodded, and eased the throttle lever forward a little. Meanwhile I had turned to fumble desperately with the machine gun, releasing the clamp which held it still on its mounting-rails and jerking back the cocking lever. Damn them, where were Schraffl and Jahudka? They were supposed to be escort­ing us and ought to be manoeuvring now to drop down on the Italians as they came in astern of us. And why were we moving so slowly? Surely a Brandenburger could travel faster than this at full throttle.

  The leading aeroplane was close enough behind us now for me to get a good look at it. It was most definitely an Italian two-seater. Of what make though I have no idea at all, except that it had a rotary engine and a gun mounted on the top wing to fire over the propeller. They were still out of range, but weaving about slightly in our wake in an effort (I suppose) to confuse us before they moved in for the kill. The Italian was smaller and evidently rather more manoeuvrable than our Zoska, and also looked as if it might be slightly faster. Although I had no way of knowing it at the time, he was about to use what would become the standard technique for shooting down a reconnaissance two-seater. He would make a series of feints like a boxer to put me off my aim, then drop down into the blind spot under our tail until Toth had banked away—say to starboard—to let me take aim. Then he would dodge away to port before I could fire, and use his higher speed and tighter turning circle to come up on the other side as I was desperately trying to lug the gun around on its rails. There would then follow a short burst fired at perhaps twenty metres’ range into the belly of our aeroplane; a burst which, even if it were not to kill the pair of us, would certainly knock out the engine, or hack out a wingroot, or rip open the fuel tank to send petrol pouring over hot engine and sparking magneto and send us spinning down in flames to our deaths.

  In the event though, both the Italian pilot and I had reckoned with­out Zugsfuhrer Toth. He banked us a little to starboard as expected. I caught a glimpse of the Italian machine—a mottled greenish-buff colour I remember—under our tail and was just about to loose off a few shots at him when he disappeared back under it. In panic I turned to Toth—and felt my stomach and liver hit the top of my skull as Toth suddenly gave full throttle and dropped into a power dive. Then I was squeezed to the floor as the whole airframe squealed in protest about me: Toth had wrenched the control column back to take us up in a tight loop! I was not strapped in of course: the observer’s folding seat had shoulder-belts, but to fire the machine gun I had to stand up with nothing but gravity to hold me into the aeroplane. I still shudder to remember the sudden, stark terror of find­ing myself upside-down, three thousand metres above the meadows and woodlands of Friuli, clutching convulsively at the cockpit coaming as the engine coughed and faltered at the top of the loop. Then, just as I felt sure that I must let go and fall to my death—I was already hanging in mid-air like a gymnast performing a somersault between parallel bars—the nose dipped down as we dived out of the loop. As we did so I saw ahead of us the Italian, taken by surprise, trying to execute the same manoeuvre.

  I see it now as vividly as in that split second one summer morning seventy years ago: the perfect plan view fifty metres ahead; the black V-marking on the centre section of the upper wing; the red-white-green Italian colours on the wingtips and tailplane; the observer swinging his machine gun up in a desperate attempt to get a burst at us as we passed. In the event though it was Toth who fired first. Given the extreme crude­ness of our gunsights and the primitive firing system I think that it must still be one of the finest pieces of aerial marksmanship o
n record. Our forward-firing Schwarzlose clattered, and the hot cartridge cases show­ered back over us. The burst of ten or so shots hit the Italian just as he was into the tightest part of his loop, and therefore when the airframe was under maximum stress. I think that our bullets must have smashed the main wingspar, but I cannot say for sure: all I know is that as we hurtled past, swerving to avoid him, the Italian aeroplane seemed to pause in its abrupt climb and hang motionless for a moment as though undecided whether or not to go any further. Then it began to fall backwards as its wings crumpled like those of a shot partridge, dropped back out of its loop, then nosed over and began to spiral down, transformed in a couple of seconds from a neat, fast, fighting biplane into a confused jumble of fabric and snapping wood. As we lost sight of him plunging down into a cloud he was already breaking up, leaving sections of wing and strut drifting behind him.

  That left us to face the other Italian aeroplane, which was now upon us, apparently undeterred by the fate of its companion. Toth had put us into a shallow, banking dive and I was just swinging the gun around to port to bear on the Italian—who was some way above us still and about seventy metres astern—when I suddenly realised that things were dread­fully amiss. It was a curiously unpleasant sensation; the queasy realisa­tion that something had gone terribly, unaccountably wrong: the way in which all the normal noises of flight except for the engine—the hum of the wind in the wires, the rushing slipsteam—suddenly ceased as we be­gan to fall out of the sky. The patchwork fields and woods below started to whirl crazily before my eyes as the ghastly truth dawned upon me. We had gone into a spin.

  I suppose that in those early days of flying there was no condition, except death by burning, that was quite so dreaded as a spin. But even a petrol fire was susceptible to rational explanation: the peculiar horror of the spin was that it happened for no apparent reason. One moment the aeroplane would be flying along without a care in the world, the next it would be spiralling down to destruction, falling like a cardboard box and suddenly, bafflingly immune to whatever desperate measures the pilot might be taking to try and get it flying once more. Left aileron; right aile­ron; elevators up; elevators down; full throttle until the engine screamed itself to pieces—none of them were the slightest use. The only thing to do was to watch in horror as the ground came rushing up. Very few people had ever survived a spin, and those who had emerged from the wreckage alive usually found that their nerve had gone and never flew again. It was as if the gods of the upper air had condemned all of us fliers to death for our impudence in defying gravity, but were graciously pleased to keep to themselves the precise moment when they would execute sentence. All that I could do was to cling desperately to the cockpit edge as we fell and shut my eyes tight, waiting for the final smash.