Big Week

by James Holland

  Taking off, fully laden, in such weather was one of the more dangerous parts of the mission, but flying in a stream rather than in any kind of formation made life easier. None the less, collisions did happen. The twins managed to clear the cloud and by around 5.30 both were crossing over the Channel and joining the bomber stream of 589 aircraft: 344 Lancasters and 233 Halifaxes led by 12 Pathfinder Force Mosquitoes.

  Already Luftwaffe radar and the radio listening service of the Horchdienst had begun to pick them up. They managed to avoid heavy flak concentrations, but it was easy to drift even slightly off course and find guns peppering the sky as they crossed the coast of Europe. And from then on the night-fighters might begin stalking them, directed to the stream by the Tame Boar system. On board the bombers, gunners strained into the darkness.

  The coastline came and went. Now they were flying over occupied territory. In Z for Zebra, Bill Byers glanced out of his side window and saw that some of their aircraft were under attack from night-fighters; he saw one Halifax plummet in flames. He pushed on until he was well into Germany. As he neared the target, flak began peppering the sky, shells exploding all around them, the Halifax rattling and shaking. Now they were on the bomb run, flying straight and level until at last Dick Fawcett, the bomb-aimer, called out, ‘Bombs away!’ Immediately, the bomber rose, lightened now the bombs had gone, up and out of the fray. Most of the bombs dropped that night were reasonably accurate, hitting the centre and south of Düsseldorf and destroying a number of industrial buildings as well as homes in the area.

  Nearly four hours after they had taken off they were approaching Leeming once more. Three from 429 Squadron had already returned home early with technical problems, but of those who had made it to Düsseldorf, the first landed back just before 10 p.m. Wing Commander Pattison and his crew touched down at 10.04 p.m. Bill called up Leeming flight control and told them they would shortly be joining the circuit, flying around the airfield waiting their turn to land.

  Most had landed by 10.30, but Bill Byers continued circling, waiting to hear George’s voice crackle through his headset. But there was no sound from his brother. ‘Skipper, I think you’d better land,’ said Jim Moore, the flight engineer, eventually, ‘we’re getting low on fuel.’13 Reluctantly, Byers did so, the 16-ton bomber touching down with a lurch and a screech of rubber. They were the fourteenth aircraft from 429 Squadron to make it safely back. Byers hung around for as long as he could, then made his report to the intelligence officer. Tots of rum and cups of tea were handed out to the exhausted crews, but as soon as Bill had changed out of his flying kit he made his way over to the control tower, and waited. The minutes passed slowly. Eleven o’clock came and went, then midnight; but there was nothing. No distant beat of engines, just a dark, empty sky.

  He waited up all night for George, but in his heart of hearts Bill had known earlier that night that his brother wasn’t coming back. No one had seen them hit or crash near the target, so the chances were it had been a night-fighter that had got them. The following morning, Wing Commander Pattison offered Bill some compassionate leave – everyone knew how close the twins had been – but he turned the offer down. The CO accepted his decision, but insisted on accompanying him on a twenty-minute flight to see how he was holding up. All right, it seemed – but even so, he and his crew would not be sent out again for a fortnight.

  The crew did their best to help him, but it was difficult. Dick Meredith moved into George’s old bed to keep Bill company, but otherwise no one ever mentioned it. Bill hoped that word would come through that his brother was in a POW camp – that was not uncommon – but days passed and then a couple of weeks and there was nothing. And by that time, Harris was launching his offensive against the capital of the Third Reich: Berlin.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mustang

  THICK FOG HAD stopped the Athlone Castle from docking at Liverpool on 1 November 1943, so not until the 4th did the ship finally pull in alongside the quay. On board were some seven thousand servicemen, including over a thousand pilots, ground crew and staff of the 354th Fighter Group, a further three squadrons that had been formed and trained together in the States before being shipped across the Atlantic. Among them was 23-year-old Lieutenant Dick Turner, who, like most of his fellow pilots, had always been quite happy with his own two feet on the ground, even happier in the air, but was not so keen to be out at sea, especially not on an ocean as large as the Atlantic and with the possibility of a lurking U-boat striking at any moment.

  The Battle of the Atlantic might have been won by then, but U-boats were still operating and ships were still being sunk, as Turner had witnessed all too vividly. One night, he and his pals had been about to turn in for the night when suddenly the ‘Abandon ship’ alarm rang out. Breathlessly hurrying to his lifeboat station and strapping on his life jacket as he did so, he had been stopped in his tracks by the sight of a sheet of flame mushrooming into the sky away off their port beam as one of their convoy was hit. Fortunately, the Athlone Castle had sailed on safely and they had all remained on board, but it had been an unsettling experience and a reminder that they were heading ever closer to the war.

  After a warm welcome speech from an RAF group captain, they finally began to disembark. As they did so, Turner was carefully watching cargo nets hoisting their foot lockers on to the quayside, conscious that one of them contained their squadron mascot, a white bull terrier. They had smuggled him aboard in New York, but the ship’s captain had discovered the dog’s presence and insisted the mutt be destroyed before landing. The pilots had responded with a wall of silence and protested ignorance, but now Turner prayed the winch operator wouldn’t be too rough and the terrier be injured in the process. Then something else caught his eye: the sight of aircraft being off-loaded. Presumably these were their fighters, and what was particularly exciting was that these planes were not the P-39 Airacobra with which they had trained, but brand-new P-51 Mustangs. Soon after, Turner was reliably informed that they would indeed be assigned to the 354th. ‘Rumor or not,’ noted Turner, ‘it served as an excellent omen on the arrival of our fighter group in the European Theater of Operations.’1

  Rumour became a reality when the pilots were posted south to Greenham Common near Newbury in Berkshire, while the ground crews, support staff – and the crates of P-51s – were sent direct to Boxted in Essex. Greenham Common, meanwhile, was home to the 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Group, already flying P-51As. For over a week, the boys of the 354th were to share these Mustangs while their new base was set up at Boxted. Turner was thrilled. Before reaching England he had never even seen a P-51, but they all knew about this exciting new fighter plane and the first few flights did not disappoint. It was fast, forgiving, highly manoeuvrable and vastly superior to the old P-39s they’d been flying in the US. The only drawback was that the P-39s had a tricycle undercarriage, giving them excellent forward vision when taxiing, whereas the Mustang was a tail-dragger so that when on the ground all the pilot could see ahead of him was the fighter’s nose. However, it didn’t take them long to learn to taxi in an ‘S’ movement, from side to side, to see better.

  On Saturday, 13 November, Turner and the rest of the pilots headed to Boxted, near Colchester, where they discovered everything already in place and three squadrons of brand-new P-51Bs – the latest high-altitude, high-speed and, crucially, long-range version. The 354th Fighter Group was to be the first to use this new wonder-plane operationally. Turner and his fellow pilots could not have been more delighted.

  That they had them at all had been the result of much high-level wrangling, about which the new pilots were completely unaware. It had also been the subject of a number of missed opportunities by those who, frankly, ought to have known better, and not least Hap Arnold and Ira Eaker. In fact, that new P-51Bs were now in England at all was, in a large part, down to a civilian, rather than to any military commanders; Robert A. Lovett, the US Assistant Secretary of State for War, had identified its long-range potential to Arnold back
in June, before the slaughters of the Eighth’s bombers over Germany. There was, he had urged Arnold at the time, ‘an immediate need for long-range fighters’, and he had identified both the twin-engine P-38 and the new P-51B. Despite this, and despite a number of tests proving the Mustang’s ideal suitability, the 354th Fighter Group had arrived in England originally destined to join the fledgling Ninth Air Force, currently forming as a tactical rather than a strategic force. The Mustangs were to have a ground-attack and reconnaissance role.

  The story of the Mustang was certainly a remarkable one. In 1940, both Britain and France had been trying to increase their war production dramatically, and Britain was already committed to a strategy in which air power was to play a central role. More factories were springing up and increasing numbers of aircraft were being built, but the worry was that even this was not enough. The USA, at the time neither at war nor under threat, and with huge industrial potential, had been an obvious place to turn to the moment the war had begun, and by January that year the Anglo-French Purchasing Board had been established in New York. Although the United States still had its Neutrality Acts in place preventing the sales of arms to overseas customers, a loophole had been introduced the previous November that allowed for purchases on a cash-and-carry basis. This worked for the British – and French – rather than Germany, because only Britain and France had both the ready cash and the shipping available successfully to conclude any arms deal in the US.

  Among the first orders made by the British had been for three hundred Curtiss P-40 Warhawks, but although the Curtiss–Wright Corporation had already sold a number of the earlier model P-36 Hawks to the French, they told the British they no longer had the capacity to build such numbers of their latest fighter for the RAF as well as for the now expanding US Army Air Corps. In desperation, the British had then turned to North American Aviation, a far smaller company based in California, which specialized in building training aircraft. Initially, they asked North American to produce Warhawks under licence. James Howard ‘Dutch’ Kindelberger, the North American Aviation president, asked to be given some time to consider the matter, to which the British conceded.

  Kindelberger recognized his company had been presented with a wonderful opportunity. The Warhawk was, even by 1940, a relatively old design and, although rugged and reasonably well armed, it was slower than other leading fighters, not so manoeuvrable at higher altitudes and would most likely soon become obsolescent. On the other hand, if they could produce an entirely new and better fighter aircraft, they would have an incredible chance to advance and expand their company significantly. Edgar Schmued, a German-born engineer who had moved to South America after the First World War and to the US in 1931, had drawn up the first designs of a new fighter for North American in February 1940. The British officials had been impressed and two months later, they were presented with a further design, which looked sleek and smooth and included a revolutionary laminar-flow airfoil wing, which meant a much narrower leading edge and, theoretically, less drag; in a nutshell, the pressure that produced lift was more spread out than on a traditional wing. The fuselage, too, was narrower than on other fighters. Another design first placed the radiator and oil-cooler intake centrally on the underside of the plane, just behind the cockpit, which not only reduced drag further but also produced a far more efficient cooling system. Furthermore – and quite by accident – the radiator design provided around 300 lb of jet thrust as the heat energy left the exit scoop.

  Schmued’s design was approved on 4 May 1940 with an order for 320 planes at $50,000 each – roughly £14,500 – but with the caveat that the prototype be completed within 120 days. It was an enormous – and potentially costly – gamble by the British, but an even greater one by North American Aviation; even by the standards of the day this was an exceptionally short period within which to design, construct and fly a brand-new fighter aircraft. The development rule of thumb was four years, not four months. Cutting development corners had repeatedly come back to haunt the Germans over the course of the war so far, but such had been the urgency back during the desperate days of 1940 that both the British and the team at North American had accepted the risk.

  Incredibly, however, after some 78,000 man-hours and a mere week over schedule, the prototype, NA-73X, was rolled out. With very few problems during testing, production began equally seamlessly and, although a bit behind schedule, the first Mustangs reached England and the hands of the RAF in October 1941. By the time of Pearl Harbor in December that year, the British had orders for some 620 and North American’s gamble appeared to have paid off.

  However, the Mustang, as the British had named it, was not proving to be quite the aircraft that had been hoped. It was undoubtedly fast, with a top speed of 388 m.p.h., and highly manoeuvrable too at heights of up to 5,000 feet; but performance tailed off dramatically with altitude, and at 15,000 feet and above it was nothing like as effective. Consequently, the RAF used it purely for low-level operations, while the USAAF showed absolutely no interest in the fighter.

  The issue, however, was not Schmued’s design but the plane’s engine. The Allison V-1710 simply did not have the power. The Mustang might well have been relegated for ever had it not been for Ron Harker, a test pilot at Rolls-Royce. Harker, who had joined the company before the war, had flown a large number of aircraft and liked a lot about the P-51. It reminded him of the Me109F, a captured model of which he had also flown. ‘The point which strikes me,’ he wrote in his subsequent report, ‘is that with a powerful and a good engine, like the Merlin 61, its performance could be outstanding, as it is 35mph faster than the Spitfire V at roughly the same power.’2

  The new Merlin 61 had a horsepower of 1,565 compared with the Allison’s 1,150. Furthermore, it had a two-speed, two-stage supercharger, which, crucially, gave it greatly increased performance at medium and high altitudes, as well as improved boost. These were the kind of refinements that had been giving the latest marks of Spitfire such improved performances. The Merlin 61, for example, was now being fitted out in the Spitfire Mk IX, an aircraft that could out-perform both the latest Me109 and FW190. The problem with the Spitfire, now that the air battle was moving ever further from England, was its lack of range.

  On paper, this should not have been an insuperable problem. In early 1942, for example, Spitfires had successfully flown off aircraft carriers and then travelled over sea more than 800 miles to the island of Malta. Auxiliary drop tanks had been fitted and had worked well. Photo reconnaissance Spitfires also regularly flew deep into German air space. At the very top of the RAF command, however, there was a fundamental unwillingness to engage in the notion of long-range fighters. Early in the war daylight bombing had been judged too dangerous and so both it and the need for escorting fighters had been brushed aside along with any further notions of daylight bombing.

  The other issue was the lack of will on the part of Harris’s opposite number at RAF Fighter Command, Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. It is baffling how Leigh-Mallory rose so high, because as a commander he was conservative, unimaginative and, worst of all, complacent. Nor did he make a great effort to learn much about fighter tactics, despite having been first commander of Fighter Command’s 12 Group and then 11 Group before taking the top job. As Johnnie Johnson, Fighter Command’s leading ace, admitted, Leigh-Mallory ‘did not pretend to know about fighter tactics and relied on us to keep him up to date.’3 He guarded his precious Spitfires – and their use – religiously and gave short shrift to anyone trying to encroach on his patch. Any number of reasons had been given as to why Spitfires could not be sent overseas, all of which had proved fallacious the moment the RAF’s best fighter began operating from Malta. By then it was the spring of 1942 and, although it was a case of better late than never, sending them to the Mediterranean and North Africa far earlier might well have proved decisive. It is extraordinary to think the RAF could have fought with significantly superior aircraft in this theatre earlier and yet did not because of interne
cine small-mindedness.

  As a result of this asset-hogging – an attitude Leigh-Mallory had also inherited from his predecessor, Air Chief Marshal Sir Sholto Douglas – Fighter Command’s swollen squadrons had spent the two years following the end of the Battle of Britain flying mostly ineffective and costly cross-Channel raids to northern France. More recently they had been coerced into providing escorts for the Eighth’s bombers, but only within their normal – and limited – range.

  Instead, the seeds of a future long-range fighter had been transferred to the Mustang. After Harker’s report, Rolls-Royce converted five models, the first of which, with Harker at the controls, flew in October 1942 and with a four-rather than a three-blade propeller. The results were stunning. Meanwhile, Major Tommy Hitchcock, the Assistant Air Attaché at the US Embassy in London (and the inspiration for the character Tom Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby), who was a friend of Harker’s, had already been urging his bosses back home to do the same, as the Packard automobile company had an agreement to build Merlin engines under licence. Both the Merlin 61-equipped Mustang III and the newly designated P-51B Packard Merlinfn1 had a performance that did not decline at altitude but, rather, rapidly improved. With the Packard-Merlin V-1650-3, for example, it could fly at 375 m.p.h. at 5,000 feet, 400 m.p.h. at 10,000 feet, 430 m.p.h. at 20,000 and a stunning 455 m.p.h. at 35,000 feet, some 6½ miles up. This made the P-51B faster than both the FW190 and Me109G – some 70 m.p.h. faster than the Focke-Wulf above 28,000 feet and 50 m.p.h. faster at 20,000. It could also dive faster than either – which had earlier in the war been one of the great strengths of the Me109 – and had a tighter turning circle than the 109 and much the same as the 190.