Tides of Valor

by Peter Albano

  Randolph’s mind wandered back to 1917 and his old enemies of the Western Front; Oswald Boelcke, Manfred von Richthofen, Hermann Goring, Ernst Udet, Wemer Voss, Max Mueller, Erwin Boehme, and the sadistic Bruno Hollweg. In four years he had flown against all of them, fought most of them, and in a strange, twisted way even respected them. All except Bruno Hollweg. Hollweg the butcher. He still thrilled with the memory of killing the swine. Now it was Kochling. Another war. Another killer. Another personal vendetta. Would it ever end? At age forty-six he was the, oldest fighter pilot in the RAF. Oldest in the world, as far as he knew. But he would kill Kochling before he died. Had to. He punched the instrument panel so hard the needle on his altimeter quivered.

  Everyone said he was too old when he applied for flight duty. But the prime minister, his old friend Winston Churchill, had intervened for him. His only other support came from the elder statesman, the doddering Lloyd. George who everyone ignored. Despite the sometimes bitter objections of Fighter Command’s Hugh “Stuffy” Dowding who pointed at Randolph’s burn-scarred leg and old wounds, the prime minister persisted and saw to it Randolph was given command of Number 54 Squadron based at Detling. Randolph had solemnly promised both Churchill and Dowding he would never fly in combat. However, the promise had been forgotten the first time the major squeezed into the cockpit of a Spitfire.

  The old touch was still there. His ravaged leg strong again from years of exercise had no trouble kicking the fighter into the sharpest of turns. He had had twelve kills in the past year—a pair of the slow, heavy Messerschmitt Bf 110 Zerstorer (Destroyer) fighters better known as “Goering’s Folly,” three dive-bombing JU 87 Stukas for target practice, a Dornier 17 “Flying Pencil,’’ which he broke in half from below where it had little protection, four tough but lightly gunned Heinkel 111 bombers, and two Messerschmitt 109s. Both of the 109s had been from Kochling’s Jagdstaffel Vierter. He and the German were even on that score. Thankfully, Stuffy Dowding’s office had remained silent.

  The ME 109 was formidable. Almost as fast as the Spitfire, it was not as maneuverable and had a short range, which made it a poor escort for bombers. Nevertheless, it was a sturdy aircraft and could strike with terrible destructiveness with two twenty-millimeter Oerlikon cannons and two Rheinmetall Borsig thirteen-millimeter machine guns. Its inverted Daimler-Benz V-12 engine was fuel injected, never faltering in the most violent maneuvers while the Rolls Royce’s carburetor was known to choke in steep power dives. The wise RAF pilot never tried to dive with the ME. And German fighter pilots were the best the Luftwaffe could find. They were superbly trained, experienced, and daring. Many had cut their teeth in Spain and all had enjoyed the Polish massacre.

  The white cliffs and beaches of England were behind him and the coast of France loomed close. Time to turn. You don’t make a fighter sweep over the continent with three aircraft. Moving the control column to the left and gently balancing with rudder, he banked to the north. Glancing from side to side he caught glimpses of his wingmen, Flight Lieutenant Cedric Hart off his starboard side and Pilot Officer Ian McBride to port. As usual, both were holding station perfectly as if attached to his elevators by invisible umbilicals. Randolph smiled. They were the best.

  Twenty-three-year-old Hart was from Hinkley Point in Somerset. The son of a barrister, he was a taciturn lad with a temper like gunpowder and the killer instincts of a scorpion. He had four kills. McBride was a twenty-one-year-old Scotsman from Achanalt, a small town in the beautiful Strathconon Forest of the Highlands. His father was a blacksmith and young Ian had developed powerful muscles from years at his father’s forge. His brain was as big as his muscles and he had qualified for RAF training despite a minimum of schooling. He was also a killer with seven confirmed victories.

  Staring down over his left wingtip, Randolph had a clear view of the Channel, which was only about twenty-five miles wide at this point. It was deceptively peaceful. Reflecting the sky, it was a deep azure, the frothing small chop sparkling with sunlight like chips of diamonds. Such a beautiful day—such a beautiful day to be killing men.

  At the low altitude of six thousand feet, he could see two trawlers and a minesweeper escorting two freighters north toward the Thames estuary. The ships were so slow they appeared like five insects pinned to a collector’s blue mat. Group had reported E-boat activity out of Calais and Bologne.

  But he saw no white scars on the sea—the sure sign of the motor torpedo boat. Indeed, all was calm; almost too calm. He disliked flying this low. He was giving the Germans most of the sky. This was a job for Coastal Command, for big, lumbering Short Sunderland flying boats. Not his Spitfires. He glanced anxiously into the glaring orb of the sun. Saw nothing.

  Randolph stiffened as his earphones came alive with the hiss of a carrier wave. Then the familiar calm, carefully modulated voice of the control officer at Sector Control crackled in his earphones. “Wolf Red Leader, this is Cricket Control. Do you read me? Over.”

  Randolph keyed his microphone. “Cricket Control, this is Wolf Red Leader. I read you loud and clear. Over.”

  The voice returned with the timbre of a schoolmaster assigning a reading of Thackeray, “Wolf Red Leader, this is Cricket Control. I’ve got some work for you in sector one-five-two. Five plus bandits at angel three on a westerly heading. Your vector zero-three-zero, climb to angel ten and intercept.”

  Randolph’s mind churned and digested the information. Radar had picked up some German aircraft flying low and headed for the Thames estuary. Probably mine-laying bombers—the fast Domier 217 that could sneak in at over three hundred miles an hour, drop its mines or bombs, and be gone before intercepted. The information had been relayed from Fighter Command to Group, to Sector Control, and then to his flight. A marvel of efficiency, the system had tipped the Battle of Britain in their favor a year ago. However, it had its flaws. It had never measured altitude accurately and often it missed high-flying fighters.

  After snapping his oxygen mask securely to his helmet and turning the flow valve to “On,” his throat tingled and felt raw as he breathed pure oxygen. Randolph spoke into his microphone, “Wolf Red, this is Wolf Red Leader. We have some unexpected guests in sector one-five-two. Follow my lead and we’ll prepare a warm welcome for them.”

  “Roger. Sure an’ I’m chillin’ the champagne now,” came from McBride.

  A curt “Roger” came from Hart.

  Randolph’s hands moved instinctively in a flurry of movements honed by years of experience. In quick succession he punched the throttle hard open against its stop, changed the pitch of the propeller to fine, and pushed the mixture control knob to rich. Then he pulled back hard on the yoke at the top of the control column. As the horizon dropped beneath the cowling he spoke into his microphone, “Cricket Control, this is Wolf Red Leader. Request top hat.”

  “Wolf Red Leader. This is Cricket Control. Wolf Yellow will provide top cover at angel twenty. Taking station now. Over.”

  “Roger.” Randolph felt new confidence. A three-plane section from his own squadron would give him top cover. The yellow section led by his best friend, the tall, skinny Freddie “Coop” Hansen, had been patrolling the sector just to the north. A friendly Canadian and former bush pilot, Hansen had accumulated over two thousand hours in the air before joining the RAF. With a slow, wry smile, tall, sparse build, Hansen so resembled the film star Gary Cooper he had been immediately given the sobriquet “Coop” when he first joined Fifty-Pour Squadron the year before. At age thirty-five, he was considered elderly but not grandfatherly like Randolph. With a remarkable twenty-one kills in only eleven months, he had been mentioned in dispatches and awarded the DSO. His wingmen were Flight Officer Preston Donovan, a young Welshman from Carmarthen, and Flight Sergeant Michael Sturgis from East London. Donovan was a replacement with only sixty-three hours in Spits. Sturgis was experienced with two kills and three probables.

  Pushed back into his seat by the acceleration, Ran
dolph watched the white needle of his altimeter wind clockwise around the dial. Quickly he scanned his instruments. At full war emergency power, the Merlin was straining at its mounts, vibrating the airframe, and sending the oil and coolant temperature readings to crowd their red lines at 105 and 121 Celsius. Passing twenty-eight hundred, the rev-counter, too, was approaching the danger area while the manifold pressure gauge neared its maximum reading of sixty-seven inches. The airspeed indicator showed 340 miles an hour.

  He was gaining altitude, the flyer’s treasure; it could be so easily traded for speed. He pushed the safety cover from the firing button and caressed it gently with his thumb. Reaching up, he threw a switch and his electric reflector gun sight came to life, the tiny dot in the center of the reticle glowing red. Staring through the gun sight, he felt a familiar warmth deep down in his groin—an atavistic heat he always felt before bedding a woman or killing a man.

  Searching the sea, the flight leader cursed. The big elliptical wings of the fighter blocked most of his view to the north. “Wolf Red Leader to Cricket Control. I can’t see the bloody buggers.” Randolph knew women were stationed at the plotting tables at Fighter Control. But, by now, they were accustomed to RAF profanity.

  “Wolf Red Leader, they are beneath you and five miles to the northwest. Good hunting.”

  “Thanks awfully, old boy. I’m awfully keen to meet those chaps straightaway,” Randolph murmured, mimicking the velvet soft tranquillity of the controller’s voice.

  Leveling, Randolph centered his controls and dropped his port wing. Then he saw them exactly in line with the tip. Just as he had anticipated, five bombers flying very low in a loose V and headed for the Thames estuary. Minelayers or bombers, it made no difference. They were out to kill Englishmen. Callous swine sitting high in the air who dropped their death casually while they joked and gloated. But not these five.

  A hasty glance told him all he needed to know about the intruders: two big BMW 801 radial engines, long tapering fuselage, twin fins, the long tail cone housing the ridiculous-petal-type dive-bombing brake, a thirteen-millimeter machine gun in a dorsal turret and another in a ventral mount. The fast deadly Domier 217. But it was no match for the Spitfire.

  A last look around and then a glance up-sun. This could be a trap. Throw easy meat to a patrol of fighters and then hit them with a high-flying ambush. He had seen it work in 1915 and it still worked in 1941. Watch out for the Hun In the sun, rang through his mind. A whole Staffel could be up there at thirty thousand feet and he would not know it. He saw nothing and prayed Coop Hansen’s Wolf Yellow was up there. He keyed his microphone, “Wolf Red, this is Wolf Red Leader. Tally-ho! Five Dorniers at ten o’clock low. Like whores at the palace. Give them a-jig-a-jig they won’t forget. Number One take starboard; Number Two take port. Break!”

  With acknowledgments from both Hart and McBride echoing in his earphones, he pulled back hard on the column, kicked left rudder, and split-essed into a screaming dive. He pointed his nose at the second bomber on the left» avoiding the lead plane. In this way, fewer guns could be brought to bear on him. McBride would take the last plane to port. Hart already was bearing off to the right after the last Dornier to starboard. The airspeed indicator had passed 360 and was still climbing. Turning like a watch with a broken main spring, the white needle of the altimeter chased around the dial counterclockwise, passing the big needle again and again.

  Randolph felt a familiar vibration as the big wing began to flutter. Although it was a two-spar wing, the front spar took most of the load. Combined with the leading-edge skin, the front spar made a torsion box of great strength. The most advanced design in the world, it could take tremendous stresses, but it still vibrated in full-power dives. Cursing, he brought the bouncing reticle to the fuselage of the Dornier.

  They had been seen. The Dorniers bunched closer like frightened geese. Hunching forward, Randolph skinned his lips back and gritted his teeth, thumb poised over the red button. He brought the bomber to the center of his range finder. It filled two rings. Two thousand yards. One thousand yards. Flashes from the bombers. Glowing fireflies left smoking threads as they arced toward him and fell off. “Too far,” Randolph snorted. “Amateurs!”

  A bare breath of pressure on the left rudder pedal turned the fighter slightly, setting him up for a one-quarter deflection shot from the rear, the glowing dot moving to the forward part of the fuselage where the four members of the Dormer’s crew were bunched together. “Four Huns with one burst.” He chuckled to himself.

  More tracers rose to meet him slowly and accelerated as they passed. There was a thump as his wing took a hit. The Dornier filled all three rings of his range finder and the luminous bead was fixed on the fuselage. He had his killing angle. He thumbed the tit. After the first gun camera pressure, he felt the recoil, the 6,650-pound aircraft bucking and shuddering as two cannons and four machine guns exploded to life. Flames leapt from the leading edge of his wings and streams of empty brass cartridge cases tumbled and showered into the slipstream from their chutes in the wing, glinting in the sun like gay New Year’s Eve confetti. Randolph saw his tracers hammer home. But his hits were far back on the fuselage, not forward in the crew’s compartment. “Fuckin’ bloody buggers!” he screamed, forgetting his microphone was open, but not caring who in the world heard him, anyway.

  Pulling the stick back gently, he marched the hammer blows up the Dornier’s fuselage, shells and bullets chewing into the aluminum like a saw through dry kindling. Chunks of metal were ripped from the fuselage, exposing frames, stringers, and longerons. Torn aluminum tumbled into the slipstream like trash. The power turret exploded, most of the gunner’s head and chest streaming behind the bomber like a red-gray haze. Then the cockpit was blasted by at least four twenty-millimeter shells, Plexiglas and chunks of aluminum whipped into the slipstream, bouncing from the tail assembly and slashing the starboard fin off at its root as if it had been chopped off by a giant cleaver.

  With a dead crew, the big bomber dropped off on its starboard wing and at full power careered across the sky, cart-wheeling wildly toward the Channel. Screaming with joy, Randolph plunged past. The Channel was rushing up at him and his attack had carried him much closer to the Kentish coast than he had anticipated. He was low. Too low. The Channel filled his windshield. Hauling back on the stick, he caught a glimpse of the inshore water. Smudged with cloudy blue, it was calm and smooth as oil. He could even see the line where it met the upwelling of the deep water quite clearly, sharp as a blade, the surface beyond it dark and ruffled by the chop.

  As his dive flattened, his weight was multiplied by at least a factor of six. Heavy as a boulder, his head crushed down and his chin dropped. He felt the strain on his neck and spine. His vision starred and darkened and he seemed to be staring into a tunnel as his peripheral vision faded. He felt his guts drop and push against his harness. The flesh of his cheeks sagged, his nose ran, eyes watered, and there was a terrible roaring in his ears as blood drained from his brain. The Spitfire vibrated and then, as the dive flattened, bounced up and down, wings bending and trembling with the terrible strain like a stricken bird. With its top unlatched, his flare box cover banged up and down like a door in a gale. He slammed it shut, felt a wetness in his crotch. Urine was staining his underwear and creeping through his flight suit. Next, his bowels would go. Randolph shook his head, screamed into his mask, trying to relieve the strain. The dribbling urine stopped.

  The sea was just below and the coast of Kent ahead. He was so low his propeller kicked up an ostrich plume of water. At at least 430 miles an hour, the fighter rocketed over the white strip of sandy beach and then inland, gaining altitude grudgingly. Struck by thermals rising from the hot surface below, trembling and buffeting, the fighter’s controls became heavy and sluggish. It yawed from side to side over the countryside like a Lambeth drunk. Trying to clear his head by shaking it furiously, he caught a glimpse of land so close it looked irregular ins
tead of featureless as it appeared from great heights. The usual mosaic of green and brown was now plowed fields with clearly defined furrows, pastures with animals grazing indifferently. Clusters of trees had become orchards, stands of beech and oak. There were farmhouses, rock walls, fences, a brown dirt road, a stream meandering and frothing through an emerald slash of undergrowth. He whipped over a haystack, the tornado of his backwash leaving a cloud of straw whirling behind it. Chickens screeched in terror and anger, running pell-mell in every direction. Farmers stopped plowing, women and children ran from houses and stared up with white faces.

  The plane seemed to have a mind of its own, refusing the stick. The yaw had become a “Dutch roll,” the aircraft twisting from side to side, nose weaving in a deadly figure eight. If the nose dropped, he would be fertilizer scattered over acres of England’s best farmland before he could blink. Frantically, Randolph worked his controls to regain balance, used full aileron and elevator to keep the fighter from flipping on its side. Like the thoroughbred it was, the fighter corrected and began to fly straight and level as an arrow.

  Randolph felt his guts freeze as a cluster of towering oaks loomed directly ahead. Shaking his head to clear the last cobwebs, he horsed the stick back again. The plane fairly leapt skyward over the treetops and banked away. A last glance down at the oaks and he saw a redheaded girl waving something pink and dainty. Her drawers, by Jove, ran through his mind. “I’ll drop in again for a longer visit,’’ he shouted. Balancing with left rudder and centering his controls, he convulsed with laughter as the fighter pulled out of its turn and pointed its nose toward the sky. The horizon disappeared below his cowling and the girl vanished. Blue sky filled his windscreen. There were more men to be killed. There was no more laughter.

  Climbing high over the Channel, he saw two black plumes and four white parachutes. Hart and McBride had scored. He could see two surviving Dorrniers fleeing to the east. Then he saw his wingmen, low on the water, pulling from their dives and curving after the Germans. Then his earphones crackled with words that froze his blood. “Wolf Red and Wolf Yellow, this is Cricket Control. Six bandits closing on sector one-five-two, high and to the east.” He cursed the controller. How could the man be so bloody calm?