There was something niggling at the back of his mind, something to do with his present predicament. Suddenly it burst forth, like a flash of light, and he knew that he had been given one last desperate chance. He remembered the advice of his flying instructor, a veteran of the Great War. The words sounded in his head like the beat of a drum.
If your engine stops and all else fails, and if you have plenty of height, give her half throttle and do a steep dive to port.
Down to 6000 feet. There was time, but only just. Moving the throttle to the half-open position, he dropped the Heinkel’s left wing and pointed its nose at the sea. The whine of the slipstream increased.
For a few heart-stopping seconds nothing happened. Then the propeller, which had become stationary during the glide, began to turn, slowly at first, as the pressure of the airflow built up against its blades. The speed of rotation increased and he held the dive, fighting an almost uncontrollable urge to pull out as the sea leaped up to meet him.
The engine gave a series of bangs and blue smoke belched back from the exhaust stubs. The propeller became a blur in front of his eyes and the Heinkel vibrated as the motor burst into full-throated life.
Keeping one hand on the throttle, Armstrong pulled back on the control column with the other, striving to keep the movement fluid. The force of gravity pushed him deep into his seat as the aircraft responded slowly — too slowly. The angle of the dive had lessened, but the sea still filled his windscreen. In desperation he let go of the throttle and placed both hands on the stick, hauling back with all his might. A reddish-grey veil obscured his vision.
When it cleared, the horizon was ahead of the nose and the sea was beneath him — about 20 feet beneath. Hastily, he put the aircraft into a shallow climb and turned on to a westerly heading, looking round dazedly. Off his left wingtip, the Friesian Islands were rapidly disappearing into the blue morning haze. The rising sun was high enough now to cast a shadow on the water ahead of his aircraft. It skipped over the wave crests, accompanied by a second shadow off to the right.
A second shadow! Armstrong’s heart skipped several beats and he turned his head to look above and behind. He spotted the other aircraft at once, and the recognition posters that had adorned the crew room of his old Spitfire squadron flashed into his mind. He had studied this particular silhouette from all angles: shark-like fuselage with a low wing mounting two engines, twin fins, two crew — one a gunner in the rear cockpit, adding extra firepower to what was already a heavy forward-firing armament of two cannon and four machine-guns. It was a Messerschmitt 110 long-range fighter, and the Germans had given it a lot of publicity in their aviation magazines. They called it a Destroyer.
Armstrong held a steady course, trying to make his mind up what to do. The Messerschmitt was shadowing him, and so far making no attempt to attack. Armstrong decided to do nothing as long as the other pilot made no move, conscious that every mile was bringing him closer to safety. With the help of the tailwind he was doing over 200 miles per hour; he was already well clear of German territorial waters and a bit of mental dead reckoning told him that the English coast was about 55 minutes away.
He looked at the Messerschmitt again. It was falling behind, and he saw with dread that it was moving into a firing position astern of him, about 200 yards away. He knew that the pilot must have hesitated while he radioed for instructions, and that he had now been ordered to shoot the Heinkel down. Suddenly, Armstrong’s fear left him and he became icily calm. He found himself putting himself into the German pilot’s mind, could visualize with startling clarity his own aircraft centred in the 110’s gunsight. He felt himself take a deep breath, just as the German must be doing as his finger hovered over the trigger, an instant before unleashing a storm of cannon and machine-gun fire.
To Armstrong, the next few moments would always be a blur, yet a blur in which everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Opening the throttle wide, he pulled the Heinkel into a steep right-handed turn, its wingtip pointing towards the sea. There was a hazy impression of the Messerschmitt flashing past, its nose lit up by vivid flashes, and of grey smoke trails spearing through the bit of sky which had been occupied by his aircraft only an instant ago. All this he glimpsed looking down through the cockpit canopy as the Heinkel rolled almost inverted, the Messerschmitt missing it by a matter of feet, spraying its gunfire uselessly into the sea in a welter of white foam.
The Heinkel was not exactly stressed for this kind of violent manoeuvring and Armstrong prayed that it would hold together as he continued the turn, pulling hard on the control column, until he was once more on his original heading. He levelled the wings as he headed for sea level in a shallow dive, looking for the Messerschmitt.
He saw it at once, a few hundred yards ahead, waggling its wings uncertainly in a reflection of the pilot’s indecision as he tried to make up his mind which way to turn to begin another attack on his elusive quarry. He reached a decision at last and turned left, passing the Heinkel in the opposite direction prior to making a second attack from astern. As it did so, the 110’s gunner opened fire, and Armstrong heard a series of sharp metallic bangs from somewhere behind him. There was no time to worry about that now; he was going to need all his concentration to stay alive.
Armstrong knew that the Heinkel, with its broad elliptical wing, was more manoeuvrable than the Me 110, and that its stalling speed was lower — much lower. He also knew that the German pilot would not be taken by surprise this time. When the Heinkel turned, he would slow down and follow it, seeking to bring his guns to bear.
Armstrong was banking on him doing exactly that.
He flung the Heinkel into another steep turn, this time to the left. The Messerschmitt pilot followed his action at once, as Armstrong had anticipated; most pilots turned left instinctively when taking evasive action, unless they happened to be left-handed, in which case they tended to turn in the other direction.
Slowly and carefully, at pains to make no abrupt movements, Armstrong began to tighten the turn. He had no need to look behind; he knew that the German pilot would be doing exactly the same, tied to the Heinkel by an invisible string as he strove to cut inside Armstrong’s turn in order to bring his guns to bear. Armstrong also knew that the Me 110’s gunner would not yet be able to traverse his machine-gun to a sufficient forward angle to take a shot.
He continued to tighten the turn, feeling the aircraft respond to the touch of his hand on the control column. It began to quiver slightly, and he knew that the next few seconds would be decisive. A few moments more, and the Heinkel would be on the verge of a stall — and at this height, only a few feet above the waves, there would be no chance of recovery.
Astern of him, and still off to one side, the Messerschmitt pilot swore out loud in rage and frustration as the steeply-turning Heinkel eluded his gun sight. The Messerschmitt began to shudder violently as it, too, approached its stalling speed. Still cursing, the pilot loosed off a despairing burst with his full forward armament of cannon and machine-guns.
The recoil was just enough to rob the Messerschmitt of the few vital knots of flying speed it needed if it was to stay in the air. Neither pilot nor gunner had more than a second or two to register terror before the Me 110 fell out of the sky, its downward-pointing port wingtip cleaving into the surface of the sea. The tail unit broke off with the violent impact as the fighter cartwheeled and remained floating on the surface as the rest of the aircraft plunged beneath, dragging its now unconscious crew with it.
Armstrong, narrowly avoiding the stall himself, levelled the Heinkel’s wings and turned sharply to the right, looking back. He saw the spreading patch of foam and the floating debris and knew that he had won — this time.
Drenched in sweat, shaking and exhausted, he pointed the Heinkel’s nose towards the western horizon, and home.
Chapter Five
I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a fi
nal note stating that, unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany …
Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, 11.15 a.m., Sunday, 3 September 1939.
The Naval intelligence officers who examined the still-wet photographic plates developed from Armstrong’s film could hardly believe their eyes. In the Schillig Roads, outside Wilhelmshaven’s main harbour, lay a huge battleship, quickly identified as the Admiral Scheer, surrounded by an armada of light cruisers and destroyers. And that was not all: riding at anchor on the Elbe were the battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
Within the hour, sweating ground crews were working flat out, loading armour-piercing bombs into the two squadrons of Blenheim bombers that had been standing by at RAF Wattisham since the news broke that the Germans had invaded Poland. The Blenheims’ crews had been briefed to seek out German warships in the North Sea and attack them from high level, but now there were new orders: the warships would be bombed in their lair. Furthermore, the attack would have to be made at low level to escape the worst of the fire from the warships’ heavy anti-aircraft guns, and armour-piercing bombs were no use unless they were dropped from a fairly high altitude.
So the cursing armourers had to start all over again and replace the armour-piercing bombs with ordinary 500-pounders, fitted with 11-second delayed-action fuzes. It was the fifth time the bomb loads had been changed in 24 hours.
At last everything was ready. Starting at four o’clock the ten Blenheims roared one by one down Wattisham’s main runway and lifted away into an overcast afternoon sky. Led by Flight Lieutenant John Fairhurst, the most experienced pilot available, they sped over the Suffolk coast and set course eastwards, flying in two tight formations of five.
As the 10 Blenheims droned on, Fairhurst noticed that the cloud base was getting steadily lower. The sky was heavily overcast, forming a solid wall that extended up to 20,000 feet, and dark rainclouds scudded towards the German coast before a strong north-westerly wind. Soon, the Blenheims were flying in a narrow 300-foot gap between the cloud base and a heaving grey sea, the colour of slate. Sometimes, the aircraft were forced to fly as low as 50 feet.
Already, Fairhurst and the other pilots could feel the strain on their muscles. It was a nerve-racking, exhausting business, flying over the sea at this height. A false move would be fatal, and hitting the water at 200 mph would be about as soft as flying into a brick wall. But it was their only chance of finding the target.
Fairhurst peered ahead into the murk, running over the attack plan in his mind. At the briefing they had been told that the German pocket battleships were armed with only two types of anti-aircraft weapon, heavy guns and machine-guns, so the idea was to go in low where the heavy guns could not be brought to bear on them. They were to spread out and attack from three directions, to confuse the enemy gunners. The aim was to lodge the bombs in the ships’ superstructures, where they would go off after a delay of eleven seconds. This meant that the pilots who made their bombing runs after the leader would have to go in with split-second timing, otherwise there was a very real danger that they might be blown sky-high by the explosions of the bombs dropped by the preceding aircraft.
The minutes went by, and Fairhurst glanced at the clock on his instrument panel. He calculated that the Friesian Islands were off to starboard, lost in the driving rain, with Heligoland up ahead. Right on cue, his navigator’s voice crackled over the R/T. Fairhurst glanced down at him, hunched over his tiny chart table in the Blenheim’s glazed nose. The third crew member, the gunner, sat halfway down the fuselage in his revolving turret, cut off from the others except for the intercom. With luck, the gunner would have little to do on this trip; the low cloud should keep enemy fighters at bay.
“Turning in 30 seconds, skipper. Stand by to turn on to one-three-oh degrees.” There was no trace of nervousness in the navigator’s voice; he was too intent on his task to notice the sea flashing past a few feet beneath him.
“Five … four … three … two … one … NOW!”
The Blenheim’s starboard wingtip almost brushed the wavecrests as Fairhurst swung round on to the new heading, followed by the rest of the formation. The aircraft were now flying south-eastwards, directly towards their target. Rain streamed down the bombers’ windscreens in rivulets. Once, a couple of trawlers flashed beneath their wings and were immediately swallowed up in the gloom behind them.
Suddenly there was land. An island slid by to starboard, and ahead was a coastline broken by a wide bay.
“Enemy coast ahead, skipper. That’s the Jade estuary. We’re right on target.”
“Okay.” The Blenheims roared on, heading straight for Wilhelmshaven. Amazingly, the weather began to clear a little. The rain stopped and the cloud base lifted perceptibly higher, to about 500 feet, which worried Fairhurst. Any further improvement in the weather would make them easy meat for the Messerschmitts.
Dead ahead, a long dark shape rose out of the water. It took Fairhurst’s mind a moment to register the fact that he was looking at the Admiral Scheer, and that it was looming up with frightening speed. He flicked the R/T switch.
“Numbers four and five, break! All aircraft, make for the big one! Attack, attack!”
Led by Fairhurst, the first three Blenheims roared flat out towards the battleship. The other two aircraft broke to left and right and shot up into the clouds.
On board the Scheer, everything was normal. The sailors were going about their routine duties. From his lofty platform high up in the foremast, the flak control officer stared out across the grey water at the misty outlines of the neighbouring destroyers.
A sudden shout over the intercom jerked him into action. “Number four anti-aircraft position here, sir. Three aircraft bearing three-one-oh.”
The officer raised his binoculars and scanned the sky off the warship’s port bow. Three black dots were racing along just below the clouds, getting bigger every second. Twin engines, single fins. They looked like Junkers 88s. The officer swore. How often had those Luftwaffe idiots to be warned not to fly over the anchorage? One day, someone was going to give them a hot reception.
A yell from one of the lookouts on the platform shattered his thoughts. “Sir, those aren’t ours! They’re Blenheims! The Tommies are here!”
The strident blare of the alarm klaxon resounded through the ship as the leading Blenheim closed in, thrumming steadily on above the waves. Hunched in the cockpit, Fairhurst doggedly held his course as the great battle wagon loomed up in front of him. He could see what looked like a line of washing strung across the after-deck. There was a hazy impression of white, upturned faces. Some of the sailors waved. Then they saw the red, white and blue roundels stamped on the Blenheim’s wings and scattered in all directions.
“Bombs away!”
The navigator pressed the bomb release and Fairhurst hauled back on the control column. The warship’s grey superstructure shot past, terrifyingly close. The two 500-pounders dropped away and curved down towards the Scheer. A shout came from the Blenheim’s gunner. “Direct hit with one bomb — it went into the superstructure. I think the other bounced off the deck and went into the sea.”
Damn, thought Fairhurst as he raced for safety, so low that the slipstream from the propellers fanned twin furrows on the surface of the water. Still, one hit was better than none at all.
“Watch out for the explosion,” he ordered the gunner, mentally ticking off the seconds. He reached 15, and cursed aloud. A moment later, the gunner confirmed his suspicions.
“It hasn’t gone off,” the man shouted in disgust. “The bloody thing’s a dud!”
The anti-aircraft gunners had woken up at last, and the Scheer’s sombre hull twinkled with flashes as the ship’s 20-millimetre twin-barrelled cannon — the cannon that German pocket battleships we
re not supposed to have — sent streams of glowing shells after the twisting aircraft. The second Blenheim came in for its attack, racing through a wall of dirty black and yellow shell bursts. One of its bombs raised a thunderous fountain of water near the Scheer’s side; the other, like Fairhurst’s, failed to explode.
The dull sky was suddenly filled with brilliant light as the ships let fly with everything they had. Multi-coloured tracers arced up into the clouds from the barrels of more than 100 guns. Heavy batteries on the shore opened up with a vicious thud.
Midway through his attack run, the pilot of the third Blenheim suddenly pulled up into the clouds. He was obeying his instructions; he knew that he could not bomb within the 11-second time limit. Just before the swirling vapour swallowed his aircraft, he saw a blazing ball tumble out of the sky and plunge into the sea near Mellum Island. It was one of the diversionary Blenheims, caught in the meshes of the flak.
There was a momentary respite. The echoes died away and a haze of smoke drifted slowly over the water.
Then came a fresh alarm, as the five aircraft of the second flight came roaring in from the north-west. They ran smack into the combined fire of every gun in and around the anchorage. In the leading Blenheim, the pilot held his course automatically, mesmerized by the intensity of the enemy fire. Just like horizontal sleet, painted red, he thought.
It was his last thought. An instant later, a burst of the glowing sleet smashed through the front of the cockpit, killing pilot and navigator instantly. More shells ripped into the fuel tanks, turning the aircraft into a blazing torch. Caught in a murderous crossfire from at least thirty 20-millimetres, the Blenheim disintegrated. One moment it was there, the next it had vanished. Burning fragments fell hissing into the sea from a spreading cloud of oily smoke.
Flames Over Norway Page 4