Target Tobruk: Yeoman in the Western Desert

by Robert Jackson

  The sky was cloudless except over the coast, where a few isolated clumps of cumulus cast purple shadows on the flat, blue-green sea. After his earlier low-level work Yeoman found the long climb immensely relaxing and the panorama breathtaking, with the tawny expanse of the desert merging into the darker browns of the hills and escarpments along the coast and these, in turn, giving way to the narrow chalk-mark of brilliant white sand that fringed the cooler hues of the Mediterranean. From this height, activity on the desert floor was marked only by the occasional trail of dust in the wake of some convoy.

  As the coast loomed nearer, however, the impression of tranquillity was brutally dispelled. Kendal’s voice crackled over the R/T. ‘All right, chaps, keep your eyes skinned. It looks as though Tobruk is taking a hammering.’

  He was right. Shading his eyes against the sun, whose light came flooding into the cockpit from a low angle on the left, Yeoman saw that Tobruk was obscured by a pall of drifting dust and smoke. A cloud of what looked like black, hovering midges hung over the town and he realized that they were anti-aircraft bursts, slow to disperse in the heavy air.

  Where there were anti-aircraft bursts there must also be enemy aircraft, but try as he might Yeoman could not see them. Kendal altered course slightly, flying due west and skirting Tobruk’s defensive perimeter, guessing quite rightly that the town’s defences were probably in a state to shoot at anything.

  Yeoman dropped a wing a fraction and looked down. He picked up the Blenheim formation quickly, passing to the north of El Adem. The Tomahawks were spaced out on either flank, flying in pairs.

  There was still no sign of enemy aircraft. It was too good to be true. Perhaps, thought Yeoman optimistically, they have all gone off to refuel after the raid on Tobruk. Perhaps, just for once, we are going to get away with it. But deep inside him, a small voice of warning was murmuring: not a chance. They’ll be there all right, lurking up-sun. Don’t relax; keep on searching endlessly, your eyes roving across the brazen vault of the sky, sweeping from horizon to horizon.

  Far below, Combette had sighted a worthwhile target on the road leading from Gazala to Derna and his Blenheims were starting their bomb run. Their guardian Tomahawks had climbed a few thousand feet and were weaving over the sky in a series of gentle ‘S’ turns, ready to cover the bombers on their way out.

  Looking down quickly, reluctant to take his eyes from the dangerous western sky even for a second, Yeoman saw explosions blossom like small, dirty flowers along the line of the road as the first four Blenheims released their loads and turned away. The second box bombed in turn, and Yeoman saw one aircraft from the first box peel off and dive down through the smoke and dust to make a lone strafing attack before climbing back to rejoin its fellows. He grinned, guessing that Combette was paying off some of the lengthy score he had to settle with the enemy.

  Flying in impeccable formation, the Blenheims turned towards the south-east, setting course directly for Maddelena. The Tomahawks closed in to rejoin them.

  Kendal’s warning came like a trumpet-blast in Yeoman’s earphones. ‘Look out, bandits three o’clock, low! Meercat Leader, bandits astern of you, six and seven o’clock, closing fast!’

  ‘Okay, I’ve got ‘em!’ Van den Heever’s voice came over the radio, sounding surprisingly calm. The Tomahawks continued to hold their positions close to the Blenheims, a course of action which Yeoman considered dangerously restrictive, unless Van den Heever had something up his sleeve.

  Yeoman could see the enemy fighters clearly now. They were Messerschmitt 109s all right, about thirty of them flying in sections of four. They headed straight for the bombers and their escorts, and they did not appear to have seen the four Hurricanes cruising higher up.

  Kendal winged over and dived to the attack, followed by Yeoman and the other two. Yeoman stayed half a mile behind Kendal’s fighter and a couple of hundred yards to the right, ready to pounce on anything that got on his leader’s tail; it was the first time he had gone into action in the basic ‘pair’ formation, which the enemy had been using with great success ever since the Spanish Civil War. Kendal had urged its adoption as the basic fighting unit during the Battle of Britain, but the RAF had persisted in its tight pre-war combat formations and had suffered accordingly.

  The Hurricanes came curving at high speed behind the rearmost section of 109s and Yeoman saw grey trails stream from Kendal’s wings as he opened fire on one of them. The Messerschmitt belched white smoke and fell away below. Yeoman snapped off a short burst at a second 109 that skidded across his nose, without visible result, then concentrated on keeping up with Kendal, who was skipping in and out of the startled Messerschmitt formation like a stone across a pond.

  The next few minutes were a whirling confusion of twisting aircraft. There was no time for concerted tactics any more; it was every man for himself. Yeoman looked in his mirror at one point and saw a whole cluster of 109s in it, all jockeying for position to take a shot at him. He pulled round in a tight turn and met them head-on, missing the leading aircraft by a few inches as it swept over the top of him, buffeting the Hurricane with its slipstream. The others flickered across the comer of his vision and vanished. Another Messerschmitt appeared off to one side, turning steeply towards him. Yeoman turned also, trying to cut inside Hie enemy, but it was far more difficult than he had expected. There was something odd about this 109; it was more streamlined than the 109Es he had encountered over France and England, with rounded wingtips instead of square, and the bracing struts that were a feature of the 109E’s tailplane were absent.

  Yeoman’s palms sweated and every fibre of his body ached with concentration as he strove to out-tum the enemy fighter. Despite the effort, every detail of the 109 etched itself indelibly on his mind; the blotchy sand-brown and green camouflage, the white-edged chevrons that denoted a section leader painted just forward of the black crosses on the fuselage.

  Yeoman had no idea how long the merry-go-round continued, but there came an instant when he knew, with sudden, blinding awareness, that he wasn’t going to make it. The 109 was gaining on him all the time; if he broke away the German would have him cold, and if he went on turning his adversary would soon be in a position to shoot his tail off.

  George, you bloody fool, he told himself, you’ve really done it this time. Suddenly, in desperation, without even considering the implications of the manoeuvre, he slammed the stick over to the left and at the same time kicked the left rudder pedal. The hard-pressed Hurricane, already teetering on the edge of a stall, flicked over on its back and literally fell out of the turn. Sand flew around the cockpit and for a few seconds Yeoman lost control completely as the Hurricane went into a violent spin.

  The desert, the coastline and the sea beyond it merged into a single confused blur in front of his eyes and the horizon expanded to enfold him as the Hurricane continued to fall. He brought the fighter out of its headlong plunge at three thousand feet and continued in a shallow, high-speed dive to ground level, turning on to a south westerly heading as he did so and looking back over his shoulder.

  The Messerschmitt was still with him, half a mile or so astern and closing fast. Ahead of Yeoman, a broad, steep-walled wadi twisted away in roughly the direction he was going. He dropped into it, dangerously low, leap-frogging the sandy hummocks and piles and piles of stone that raced towards him. His one chance was to run, in the hope that the Messerchmitt pilot would eventually abandon the chase through the lack of fuel.

  Fountains of sand and stones burst from the wadi wall beyond the Hurricane’s port wingtip as the Messerschmitt opened fire. Yeoman’s heart pounded wildly. The 109 was well within range, and he could imagine its pilot sitting tensed in the cockpit, waiting until he could be sure of his kill.

  A mile in front of Yeoman, the wadi split in two. In the fleeting seconds left to him, a desperate gamble took shape in the young pilot’s mind. He held his breath as the fork in the dried-up river bed hurtled towards him, deliberately holding the Hurricane low and level,
his slipstream kicking up a miniature sandstorm in his wake. Then, at the last moment, he stood the fighter on its tail.

  So abrupt was the manoeuvre that for one brief, horrifying instant the Hurricane continued to skid forwards, carried by its own momentum towards the sheer face of the cliff that stood in the centre of the wadi’s fork. Then its propeller bit into the hot, dry air and the fighter rocketed upwards, gradually losing momentum as gravity fought against the power of its struggling Merlin engine.

  At four thousand feet Yeoman stall-turned. The Hurricane went over on a wing, its nose slicing through the horizon, and entered a steep dive in the direction from which it had just come. Yeoman levelled out gently, circling the spot where the wadi divided.

  From the foot of the cliff a dark column of smoke, its base shot with orange flame, rose like a tombstone. Around it lay the charred, fragmented wreckage of what had once been an aircraft. By a one-in-a-million chance, the desperate gamble had paid off: the German pilot, intent on his kill and half blinded by the sand whirled up by the speeding Hurricane, had failed to see the cliff in time to take avoiding action, and had paid for his error with his life.

  Trembling with reaction, Yeoman climbed away and set course for Maddalena. He was far from proud of his performance that afternoon; the German pilot had outflown him in a straight fight, and the modified Messerschmitt was clearly superior to the Hurricane. Later, Yeoman learned that his adversary had been a Messerchmitt 109F, one of only a handful which had so far arrived in North Africa. The Luftwaffe squadrons in Europe had only just begun to re-equip with the type.

  He landed at Maddalena to find that Kendal and Griffiths were already back. There was no sign of Ritchie. One of the Blenheim crews reported having seen a Hurricane collide with a 109, so there seemed little hope that he was still alive.

  Combette sat apart from the rest of his men, incessantly smoking and unapproachable. All four Blenheims of the second box had been shot down, and the remainder were riddled with bullet holes and cannon-shell splinters. Van den Heever’s Tomahawks, too, had taken a fearful mauling, losing half their number. The Messerschmitts had swarmed all over them, and the South African pilots’ inexperience had cost them dearly. Completely unable to protect the bombers, they had formed a defensive circle in an attempt to save themselves. Van den Heever, his eyes haunted, told how one Messerschmitt had simply dropped into the middle of the circle and flown around it in the opposite direction to the Tomahawks, knocking down two of them in quick succession before making his escape.

  The afternoon’s loss would appear in stark figures on the official reports. Four Blenheims, four Tomahawks and one Hurricane had failed to return. In terms of human life, that meant seventeen young men. It was too high a sacrifice for three Messerschmitts destroyed, and a handful of enemy vehicles knocked out; it was a sacrifice which, Yeoman knew from bitter experience, they would be called upon to make over and over again.

  Chapter Three

  Three days later 493 squadron was on the move again, this time to Sidi Barrani, fifty miles inside Egypt at the eastern end of the Gulf of Sollum. Its place at Maddalena was taken by two flights of a Free French Hurricane squadron, which arrived together with four replacement Blenheims. The surviving South Africans also pulled back to Sidi Barrani, reaching the new location several hours after the Hurricanes.

  The ground crews and support vehicles, arriving by convoy the next morning, were greeted by a short but blinding sandstorm that brought all activity to a halt. When it was over, van den Heever raised a laugh by swearing blind that he had seen cats digging holes for themselves in the sky.

  Conditions at Sidi Barrani were, unbelievably, even more primitive than they had been at Maddalena. Every available scrap of material had been used to provide accommodation for the air and ground crews, who lived in an extraordinary collection of shanties made from the hammered-out metal of cans, the wood of packing cases and scraps of canvas. Arabs occasionally wandered through the camp, staring in amazement at the sights that met their gaze, like tourists on holiday. ‘Let ’em stare,’ Kendal grumbled. ‘At least they’ve got proper bloody tents to live in. We must seem like a proper lot of ignorant savages to them.’

  As the days went by, however, things gradually became more organized. Kendal disappeared to Mersa Matruh one morning and reappeared after dark with a whole truckful of tents. He flatly refused to say where they had come from, but they were erected in record time and no one asked any questions.

  There was very little operational flying during this period. The South African squadron, which had been brought up to strength by an influx of aircraft and pilots, concentrated on training and tactics, while 493 Squadron made only a few short reconnaissance sorties over the enemy-held area west of Sollum. Yeoman flew four of these missions in a week, and encountered no enemy opposition whatsoever. It was as though Rommel’s forces had gone to ground completely, their path into Egypt through the only access route at Halfaya Pass effectively barred by the British 22nd Guards Brigade.

  The lack of enemy activity was fortunate, for the Hurricanes — and for that matter the South African Tomahawks, too — suffered from a spate of technical problems caused by the savage variations in climate, with its extremes of temperature. An engine could be expected to last for thirty hours’ flying time or less before it became worn out, its cylinders pitted and its valves eroded by the scouring effect of the sand. Labouring liquid-cooled engines used vast quantities of oil and were prone to seize with little warning. Often, at night, the air was laden with a salty dampness that ate into everything with a relentless corrosive action. At the height of the day, aircraft tyres had to be covered with moist cloths to stop them bursting in the tremendous heat.

  All these problems took their toll of personnel who were already suffering from poor food, a critical shortage of water and often severe dysentery, spread by the everpresent clouds of bloated flies. Everyone suffered from it to a greater or lesser degree, and it made flying a nightmare. Only Kendal seemed immune, probably thanks to his lengthy pre-war travels in the Merchant Navy. He cheerfully assured Yeoman, who was groaning in his tent following a particularly severe bout, that the young pilot’s system would get used to it in time. The early mornings were the worst; after a troubled night, Yeoman would fall into a deep sleep at about five o’clock to be awakened an hour later by the first solitary fly, which would appear with the first ray of sun. The fly would buzz around the tent for a while, like a scout, then disappear only to return with twenty more. Within minutes there would be a whole legion of the insects, savagely attacking any exposed part of the body. Yeoman tried putting his head inside his sleeping bag, and almost suffocated himself. The only alternative was to get up, utterly worn out and in no condition to face another day of misery.

  The attack of dysentery put Yeoman out of action until the middle of the last week in April. After that, on the MO’s orders, he spent two days on the beach at Mersa Matruh, lying in the sun and recuperating. He returned to flying duties on the last day of the month, still feeling sick and weak. There was one bright spot. Jack Ritchie came back, having survived the collision with the enemy fighter. He had baled out and been picked up by a long-range patrol after three days in the desert.

  Every pilot was needed now. That night, two German divisions launched a fierce assault on the western sector of the Tobruk perimeter in a determined effort to smash the Australian defenders and remove, once and for all, this thorny obstacle to the Afrika Korps’ drive into Egypt.

  The Australians had been expecting the attack for some time. During the last two weeks of April, they had watched great dust-clouds rising two miles beyond the perimeter as the enemy moved up infantry, tanks and guns. Then, on the afternoon of 30 April, a rain of shells screamed down on their positions, and when the shelling stopped the Stukas came, howling out of the red sunset to unleash their bombs into the clouds of dust and smoke. They kept on coming, wave after wave of them, and when the last bomber turned for home the enemy artiller
y resumed its barrage, hurling high explosive into the same tortured sector of the perimeter. Under cover of the dust and the spreading darkness, enemy sappers, supported by a machine-gun battalion, moved forward to clear a way through the minefields and blast gaps in the barbed wire to left and right of the main Australian strongpoint, a fortified mound known as Hill 209. During the hours that followed, German spearheads penetrated between the widely dispersed Australian forward posts and set up machine-gun nests in their rear.

  In an attempt to resolve a situation that was growing more confused by the hour, Kendal and Griffiths each flew a reconnaissance sortie over Tobruk at first light, but returned with the report that the whole area was shrouded in thick ground-mist.

  Beneath that opaque shroud, the defenders of Tobruk were undergoing a period of desperate uncertainty. No one knew where the Germans were, and since the signal lines linking the Australian infantry company on the vital Hill 209 with their HQ in the rear had been cut by bombs and shells, their commanding officer was without news of them and dared not order the artillery to lay down a barrage for fear of hitting his own men. When the mist finally began to clear at about seven o’clock, the position proved even worse than the defenders had feared. The enemy had overrun several of the Australian posts around Hill 209 and had rammed a great bulge, a mile and a half wide and over a mile deep, into the defensive perimeter.

  The German plan was rapidly becoming clear. With their bridgehead secure, their aim was to make a strong armoured thrust through to Tobruk harbour. At seven-thirty, forty German tanks clattered from the direction of Hill 209 towards the Australian reserve positions, blazing away with their cannon and machine-guns. Anti-tank gunners knocked one of them out, but the remainder drove on until they ran into a minefield. Seventeen tanks slewed to a halt with shattered tracks, sitting targets for anti-tank guns, but all the latter in the vicinity had been knocked out. The remaining enemy tanks, however, did not risk pushing on through the minefield; instead, they turned away to the south, leaving the Australians to snatch a little respite and await a fresh onslaught.