They were still half-way to Rheine when Hardy suddenly picked up a contact on his AI radar. The blip was still a long way out on the starboard beam, some thousands of feet lower down, and the navigator gave Yeoman a course to steer that should have enabled him to turn right in front of the target and cut it off — the most favourable interception pattern of all.
Hardy called out the range at regular intervals. Suddenly, he swore and ordered:
‘Turn left twenty degrees.’
Yeoman pulled the Mosquito round and levelled the wings again. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘The bastard went straight across our nose,’ Hardy told him. ‘I misjudged his speed. He must be going like a blue-arsed fly.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Dead ahead, two miles and about two thousand feet lower down.’
Yeoman put down the Mosquito’s nose and opened the throttles. The engines howled and the aircraft began to shudder as the speed built up. It made no difference; the blip remained obstinately in the middle of the trace at a range of two miles. Hardy felt an irrational hatred growing inside him as he stared at the tiny, glowing spot of light; it was as though it were mocking him.
The buffeting was getting worse. The controls were stiffened by the speed and the Mosquito was beginning to ‘porpoise’ slightly, as though riding over a series of waves. Yeoman felt a growing fear that the whole airframe was about to come apart; the engine temperatures were already in the red
‘Still two miles,’ Hardy said, ‘and still dead ahead.’
Yeoman began to level out cautiously, struggling to control the shuddering aircraft, at the same time peering ahead into the night. After a few moments, he said calmly:
‘I think I’ve got a visual. Twelve o’clock, level. See what you make of it, Happy. But be quick: I can’t hold this speed for much longer.
Hardy raised his eyes from his radar display and peered through the windscreen, but could see nothing; the fluorescent images of the cathode ray tube had ruined his night vision for the time being.
‘Sorry, skipper,’ he muttered, ‘can’t see a thing. What’s it look like?’
‘Two red points of light, like stars, very close together. Oh, they’re fading now. He’s drawing away, going down I think.’
Hardy took another look at his radar; the luminous blip sank slowly and slid off the display. ‘That was him all right,’ the navigator said. ‘I wonder what it was?’
Yeoman throttled back, testing the controls carefully and keeping an anxious eye on the engine instruments as the speed dropped away.
‘Definitely a jet job, I should say,’ he said. ‘Probably one of the new Messerschmitt 262s we’ve been hearing about. Anyway, we hadn’t a hope in hell of catching him.’
Yeoman resumed their heading for Rheine, glancing at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. ‘Oh-one-thirty,’ he said, as though talking to himself. ‘The bombers should be on their way home now. We might just catch the Huns with their pants down, with a bit of luck.’
Luck indeed seemed to be on their side when, a few minutes later, a cluster of twinkling lights appeared on the horizon; the runways at Rheine were brightly lit to receive the returning night fighters. Some of the latter were already over the airfield, for as they drew nearer Yeoman and Hardy saw multi-coloured recognition flares float down through the night.
Yeoman pushed down the nose and took the Mosquito in a dive to less than a thousand feet, the height at which an aircraft normally flew around an aerodrome circuit. By keeping below it, he hoped to be able to spot the enemy fighters silhouetted against the night sky.
The lit-up main runway was approaching fast now and Yeoman crossed the end of it at right-angles before turning on to the downwind leg of the circuit. The engine exhausts crackled and popped as he throttled back, lowering the undercarriage and a few degrees of flap and reducing to circuit speed so as not to overshoot anything ahead of him.
Hardy already had a radar contact ahead and above and was rapidly counting off the dwindling range. Yeoman looked up, saw almost immediately that it was very close, and identified it without difficulty as a Junkers 88 night fighter. Its wheels were down and he could clearly see the array of radar antennae festooned around its nose.
It was too close for comfort, so he reduced the speed still further and dropped back a little, keeping the Junkers in sight all the time. Then, opening the throttles again, he pulled up behind the enemy aircraft and opened fire almost at point-blank range into the long, black fuselage.
Vivid flames streamed back and Yeoman pulled sharply off to one side, raising his own undercarriage and flaps as he did so. There was no need for a second attack; the Junkers was finished. The burning mass went down in a steep dive and exploded beside the runway in a cascade of blazing wreckage.
The runway lights went out abruptly. At low level, Yeoman took the Mosquito away from the airfield and cruised around for several minutes.
‘Might as well let the fuss die down,’ he said. ‘They’ll put the lights on again shortly; the Huns in the circuit are bound to be low on fuel.’
After ten minutes he turned and edged back towards Rheine, still keeping low, while Hardy searched for more contacts among the echoes from the ground that cluttered his radar screen.
Suddenly the runway lights came on again.
‘Have you found anything yet, Happy?’ Yeoman asked. Hardy was glued to his radar set.
‘I’m not sure,’ the navigator said. ‘There seems to be something, but it’s very faint…hard to distinguish among the ground clutter. Seems to be on the same level as us, or perhaps a little below…coming in to land, maybe.’
Yeoman stared hard at the runway approach lights, which were coming towards them at an angle of forty-five degrees. They seemed to flicker slightly, as though a shadow was fleeting over them.
With a start, Yeoman realized that he was seeing the silhouette of an aircraft, its dark shape obscuring the lights for a fraction of a second as it flew over them towards the end of the runway. He turned in after it, trying to work out where it would touch down, knowing that as soon as it landed the runway lights would probably be extinguished and that he would lose his target in the shadows.
‘Careful, skipper,’ warned Hardy. ‘It might be another Mossie, up to the same thing as us.’
‘Don’t think so,’ the pilot muttered. ‘He’s landing all right, reducing speed now as he crosses the threshold. There he goes, touching down now; I can just see him. Damn!’
Yeoman’s exclamation was caused by the sudden extinction of the runway lights. In that same split second, his thumb jabbed down on the firing-button. Four glowing lines of cannon shells burst from the Mosquito’s nose, exploding on the concrete of the runway and the dark shape that had just settled on it.
The Mosquito swept over the top of the target with only feet to spare and Yeoman pulled the stick into his right thigh, opening the throttles and taking the aircraft into a steep climbing turn. A bright orange flash from somewhere behind him lit the interior of the cockpit briefly, then died away to a fading glow as they sped away.
‘Did you see what it was, Happy?’ the pilot asked.
‘No, I didn’t,’ Hardy replied. ‘But I think it was twin-engined. It certainly went off with a hell of a bang.’
‘Good enough,’ Yeoman said. ‘It’s time we went home. We’ve got just about enough fuel to make it. We seem to have stirred up a proper wasps’ nest back there.’
Behind them, the sky over Rheine was a spectacular display of anti-aircraft fire. After a while it died away as the enemy gunners realized that there was nothing to shoot at. Yeoman set course for home, juggling with the throttles and the fuel mixture as he gained altitude to give them a few extra minutes’ flying time.
The flight back to Le Culot was uneventful. Yeoman found that he was the last to land; the other Mosquitos which had been out on the night’s operations had returned some minutes earlier, and the crews were debriefing.
It had
been a successful night for the squadron, as Freddie Barnes lost no time in telling Yeoman. The Intelligence Officer’s face lit up as the squadron commander came into the briefing tent.
‘That’s everyone back safely,’ he said, ‘and with your two Huns the night’s score is six. Considering the weather conditions, that’s pretty good.’
Yeoman smiled at Barnes’s understatement and gratefully sipped the mug of scalding tea someone handed to him. Looking round, he caught Tim Sloane’s eye and waved him over. Sloane’s promotion to squadron leader had just come through; on the epaulettes of his battle-dress, he had pushed his flight lieutenant’s bars apart to make room for the new, shiny strip of blue braid.
‘Well, Tim,’ Yeoman said, ‘it’s all yours. I’m pleased that you’ve got the squadron.’
‘Thanks for recommending me,’ Sloane answered. ‘When are you leaving?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon. No time for a farewell party, I’m afraid. I’ll be on the duty Anson and out of this place like a shot!’
‘We’ll be around to see you off,’ Sloane assured him. He hesitated for a moment, then said:
‘I hope I can do as good a job as you’ve done, George. I’ve a lot to live up to. It’s been good working with you.’
They left the tent. Outside, Yeoman shook hands with Hardy.
‘Thanks for all your efforts, Happy. We’ve been a good team. Well, that’s it; we’ve flown our last operation with 380 Squadron.’
But he was wrong.
Chapter Twelve
It was pouring with rain, and although he had covered the few yards from his tent to the operations caravan at a run Yeoman was already soaking wet. Dragged from a deep sleep by the urgent summons of the orderly officer, he had pulled on a greatcoat over his pyjamas and thrust his bare feet into his flying boots.
Panting slightly, he picked up the telephone. The senior air staff officer of 83 Group was on the line.
‘Yeoman, I’d like you to come up to Air HQ right away. We’ve a very urgent job for you and your squadron to do. Very urgent indeed.’
Taking a deep breath. Yeoman said: ‘Sir, I’m due to leave this afternoon. Squadron Leader Sloane has assumed command.’
‘I realize that, Yeoman,’ the Group Captain replied, ‘but we need your experience for this job. Your tour is up and we can’t order you to do it, of course. We’re asking you to volunteer.’
All Yeoman’s instincts warned him to say no, that he’d had enough, that all he wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep through the rest of the morning. Instead, he said: “All right, sir. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘Good man. I knew we could depend on you.’
Yeoman was at Air HQ in Brussels ninety minutes later, after a hair-raising drive along sodden, pitted roads that were congested with long convoys of armour and trucks, all heading towards the front. On arrival, he was immediately shown into a room where the Group Captain was waiting for him, together with 83 Group’s Senior Intelligence Officer, a Wing Commander.
The Group Captain came straight to the point.
‘Yeoman, take a look at the map. You see this place here?’
Yeoman leaned over the table and saw that the Group Captain was pointing to a small village some forty miles inside Germany; its name was Berge and it lay in heavily wooded country. With his professional eye, Yeoman also noted that it lay in a triangle formed by the three enemy fighter airfields of Rheine, Ahlhorn and Steinfeld.
‘Yes, sir, I see it. It doesn’t look very impressive.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said the Intelligence Officer, ‘until a couple of weeks ago, when it suddenly became stiff with SS troops and ringed with anti-aircraft guns. You can see their positions on these photographs, here.’
The Wing Commander produced a series of air reconnaissance shots of the village, taken both vertically and obliquely. Arrows pointed to the flak batteries.
‘What we are interested in,’ the Wing Commander continued, ‘is this building here.’ He pointed to a large house situated close to the north-east corner of the village; it lay in a park, bordered by woodland.
‘Briefly, Yeoman,’ the Group Captain broke in, ‘we want that house destroyed. More specifically, we want the people in it killed. We can’t achieve that by means of a medium-level attack, because it would give them plenty of warning to evacuate. It’s got to be a low-level affair, achieving complete surprise — the kind of thing your squadron has carried out several times over the past year with considerable success, if I may say so.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Yeoman said, pleased by the compliment. ‘May I ask who our intended victims are?’
The Group Captain shook his head. ‘Even I don’t know that, Yeoman. All I know is that the building appears to be an important headquarters of the Abwehr, the German equivalent of MI5, and that we’ve had top priority orders from London to destroy it and whoever is in there. How soon can you do it? Time, we are told, is vitally important.’
‘As soon as the weather lifts,’ Yeoman answered, ‘if I can get back to Le Culot straight away and begin the planning.’ He looked at the Wing Commander. ‘Is there any more Intelligence on what sort of opposition we’re likely to expect?’
‘No. It’s all there, in the target folder. The flak will be your main problem. With luck, you can be in and out before the fighters from Rheine and so on have time to react.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Yeoman said. ‘The boys aren’t going to like this, though; the squadron was supposed to be stood down for a couple of days after last night’s show.’
‘Yeoman,’ said the Group Captain quietly, ‘if you pull this one off, I’ll stand the squadron down for a week, and you can tell them so. Now, good luck to you.’
Yeoman shook hands with both the senior officers, saluted, and went out into the driving rain.
*
Yeoman looked around the faces of the crews assembled in the briefing tent, Including himself and Hardy, twenty men were present; he had calculated that ten Mosquitos, each armed with two 500-lb bombs, would be more than adequate to carry out the attack.
All the men looked tired and drawn, and with good reason. Yves Romilly was showing more signs of strain than ever; he had developed a fierce twitch in his left cheek. Romilly, Yeoman decided, would have to come off operations. He would have a word with Tim Sloane about that.
‘All right,’ Yeoman said. ‘Synchronize your watches. It is now 1600 minus ten seconds…five…four…three…two…one…now! Let’s get on with it.’
They went out to their Mosquitos, Overhead the sky was still leaden, but the cloud base had gone up to three thousand feet. Yeoman was glad of the clouds; they would provide excellent cover if enemy fighters appeared.
The Mosquitos took off and formed up over the airfield. Then, as though held together by invisible threads, they set course together on a heading of 035 degrees. They thundered into Holland, flying over the flat, waterlogged Dutch landscape at five hundred feet, heading for the town of Zwolle at the end of the first 125-mile leg of their flight; they would then turn due east towards their objective. The dog-leg course would serve two purposes. First, it would lead the enemy to believe that they were heading for a target in the extreme north of Germany, or perhaps in Denmark; and it would take them well to the north of Rheine, the scene of Yeoman’s visit the previous night.
Some flak came up at them as they entered enemy territory beyond Nijmegen, but it was sporadic and did no harm. The roads here seemed almost deserted, in contrast to the constant flow of movement on the Allied side of the front line; it was a silent testimony to the complete air superiority which had been achieved by the Second TAF. Such was the fear of the marauding Typhoons that the enemy convoys now dared move only by night.
Mixed feelings surged through Yeoman as he glanced at the other Mosquitos, flying compactly on either side of him and behind; feelings of anticipation at the coming action, mingled with nostalgia and regret. This was — must be — the very last time that he woul
d ever lead the Mosquito Squadron into action. It would have been better, in a way, if he had ended it all as planned with last night’s intruder sortie, and then slipped quietly away. He hated farewells, and was glad that his closest friend on the squadron, Happy Hardy, was leaving with him. Their departure would have to be put off until tomorrow, now.
The minutes ticked by. The ten Mosquitos drummed low over the rooftops of Apeldoorn and the crews caught brief glimpses of people waving frantically to them from the streets below. Someone fired a machine-gun at them from what appeared to be a group of enemy armoured cars in a square, but the tracer fell harmlessly behind the speeding formation. A few moments later the town receded astern.
‘Turning-point coming up in five minutes, skipper,’ Hardy announced in his laconic fashion.
They crossed the straight band of the Apeldoorn Canal. Beyond it wound the River Ijssel, flanked by a railway line on either side. As usual Hardy had hit their turning-point right on the nose.
‘Stand by to turn in ten seconds,’ the navigator said. ‘Zero-nine-five degrees. Turn…turn…now!’
Followed by the rest of the formation, Yeoman brought his Mosquito sweeping round towards the east, settling down on the new heading. Five minutes later they were entering Germany, flying over marshy moorland.
A few miles to the south was Twenthe airfield, one of the three attacked by 380 Squadron on their very first operational mission more than a year ago! Yeoman himself had attacked Twenthe, together with Terry Saint and two NCOS, Flight Sergeant Miller and Sergeant Telfer. Of those four crews, only he and Hardy were now left; and of the original complement of 380 Squadron, only Romilly, Sloane and Lorrimer now remained except for themselves. The others were all replacements.
They flew on over a barren landscape; there was not much habitation in this part of north-west Germany, which was just as well for them, for habitation — especially where it was linked with industry — meant flak.
Operation Diver Page 14