‘Crete ahead,’ Squadron Leader Kendal’s voice came suddenly over the R/T, stating the obvious. Unless they had made an appalling navigational error, the distant land could not be anything else.
The six Hurricanes were flying in loose ‘V’ formation at eight thousand feet, following a magnetic compass heading of 300 degrees. It was nearly an hour since they had taken off from 493 Squadron’s new North African base of Daba, cruising out over the Mediterranean at 180 mph to conserve fuel, and Yeoman, who was flying number two to Kendal, was suffering from an almost unbearable cramp in his left leg. Massaging the knotted muscles of his calf brought no relief. In desperation he wiggled his toes frantically, and that didn’t work either. He prayed that they would be able to land on Crete without opposition, seriously doubting his ability to operate the left rudder pedal if he had to carry out violent manoeuvres.
It was ten o’clock on the morning of 21 May, and Yeoman felt worn out. His experiences of the past couple of days were catching up with him fast, aggravated by the fact that he had been able to snatch only three or four hours’ sleep before leaving Tobruk with Kemp in the Lysander. The early hours of the morning had been spent in catching up on the latest reports on the situation in Crete, scant and patchy though they were, and in making preparations for the flight.
Yeoman looked over towards Kemp’s Hurricane, behind and to the left of the formation. Taking into account the naval officer’s lack of experience on the type — his conversion had consisted of a few circuits at Daba earlier that morning — he was handling the fighter remarkably well. Kendal had cut a lot of comers in authorizing him to fly with the squadron, but there was a desperate shortage of pilots and Kemp would be a valuable addition. Griffiths, Bright and Ritchie made up the rest of the complement.
Griffiths, whose Hurricane was equipped with a 44-gallon auxiliary long-range fuel tank, had flown a reconnaissance mission to Crete at first light, returning with the news that all three airfields on the island — Maleme, Rethimnon and Heraklion — had been heavily bombed. Fierce fighting seemed to be in progress on Maleme itself, but as far as the pilot could make out the other two were still in Allied hands. Judging by the number of gliders and Junkers transports he had sighted, the main enemy concentration appeared to be in the Maleme area. Kendal had therefore decided to make for Heraklion, which lay roughly at the centre of Crete’s northern coastline. From there, the fighters would be able to provide rapid air support in any direction. The other factor influencing Kendal’s choice was that Heraklion possessed two decent runways, assuming that they were still in one piece.
A small island slid by, a tiny, elongated counterpart of Crete itself. Yeoman glanced briefly at his map; that would be Gaidhouronisi. They were right on course, with about fifty miles to run. As they crossed the coast, Kendal warned them to keep their eyes peeled. Even at this distance they could see a lot of smoke away to the north, which probably meant that enemy air attacks were in progress.
The Hurricanes droned on past a range of mountains, the highest peaks towering up almost to the fighters’ own height, and then began a slow descent towards the narrow strip of level ground that ran along Crete’s northern coastline. A careful scan of the horizon revealed no enemy aircraft. Heraklion airfield was now clearly visible, with the port and the walled town beyond it. Yeoman, searching his mind for snippets of history, recalled that Heraklion had been one of the main centres of Minoan civilization, and that according to legend Zeus, father of all the gods, had been born on a mountain not far away.
The drifting smoke on the surface indicated that there was a breeze from the west, so they would be landing in that direction. Kendal’s voice came over the radio again.
‘All right, chaps, let’s give it a try.’
They had arranged the landing procedure before leaving Daba. Kendal would go in first to make a low-level reconnaissance of the airfield while the rest kept clear. If he drew fire from the airfield itself, it must be assumed to be in enemy hands. In that case the formation would make for Rethimnon. If that had fallen too they would have a real problem, for only Griffiths’ long-range aircraft carried enough fuel to make the flight back to Egypt. The rest would have to try and find somewhere else to land, or alternatively try and inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy before their fuel ran out.
All eyes were on Kendal’s Hurricane as it dived away, looking very small and lonely. They saw it flatten out over the airfield boundary, speed low over the cratered surface, and disappear behind a curtain of drifting smoke. For endless moments it was obscured; then, thankfully, they saw it emerge in a steep climb and turn out over the coast.
‘Okay, come on down, one at a time. But watch it — there are obstacles all over the place.’
Kendal’s voice was calm and reassuring. As he followed Griffiths down, Yeoman saw his CO’s Hurricane begin its final approach to land, wheels and flaps down, weaving a little to reduce speed. Then he was forced to concentrate on his own approach, throttling back to let. Griffiths draw well ahead. The latter was heading for one of the few remaining intact strips of runway and Yeoman decided to make for the grass alongside, risking the possibility of striking concealed debris. He lowered full flap and came in as slowly as he dared, just above stalling speed, to reduce the landing run. The grass began to blur under his wings. Out of the comer of his eye he saw Griffiths touch down safely, ahead and to the left, then he eased back the stick and closed the throttle in a simultaneous movement. The fighter sank like a stone and the main undercarriage struck the ground with a jarring thump. Yeoman kept the stick hard back in the pit of his stomach as the Hurricane bounced, then she touched again and this time stayed firmly down, rolling forward and swaying over rough, uneven ground.
Yeoman had landed with the cockpit hood closed as an insurance against dust and other particles; now he opened it and looked around. A soldier appeared from nowhere and ran towards the aircraft, waving and gesticulating; Yeoman understood that the man wanted him to taxi to the shelter of a clump of stunted trees, a couple of hundred yards away. Kendal’s Hurricane was there already, being hurriedly draped with a camouflage net.
Yeoman opened the throttle slightly and the fighter moved forward again, weaving between fresh bomb craters. It took what seemed an eternity to cover the distance to the trees and the pilot kept looking apprehensively over his shoulder, expecting to see Messerschmitts or Stukas arrowing down out of the sun at any moment, but he arrived safely and switched off, climbing thankfully from the cockpit to stretch his aching leg. A mixed group of soldiers and airmen seized the Hurricane, swung it round and manhandled it tail-first into the grove, under a camouflage net which had already been spread between the branches of two trees. In a remarkably short space of time all six of the newly-arrived Hurricanes had been brought under similar cover.
Yeoman, joined by the others, walked stiffly over to where Kendal was engaged in conversation with two more pilots, an RAF warrant officer and a naval sub-lieutenant. They were the sole survivors of the island’s original air defence complement of fourteen fighters — three Fulmars, four Gloster Gladiators and seven Hurricanes. Some had been shot down in the one-sided air battles of early May, when the Luftwaffe launched its first air attacks on Crete, and all but three Gladiators had been destroyed on the ground during the massive air bombardment that had preceded the airborne landings. The Gladiators had been hurriedly evacuated from Maleme, with paratroops and gliders dropping on all sides, but one of them had suffered engine failure and had come down in the mountains. The fate of its pilot was not known.
Kemp, as it turned out, already knew the sublieutenant, whose name was Musgrave. The RAF warrant officer, Fraser, had fought in Greece, and had a pair of Fiat CR.42s and a Heinkel 111 to his credit. From these two, the newcomers quickly pieced together the events of the past twenty-four hours.
Communications with Maleme had broken down and it now seemed certain that the airfield had been overrun. Rethimnon, however, like Heraklion, was still firmly
in Allied hands, and at both these places the enemy had suffered appalling losses. At Heraklion in particular the defences were strong, consisting of three battalions of British troops, two of Australian, and three of Greek, and were centred on two steep hills that dominated the whole area. Twelve Bofors guns were dug in around the airfield perimeter, and thirteen field-guns, grouped in the lee of the hill that rose to the south-west, were ranged on the perimeter, ready to engage any enemy forces that tried to break through. Each end of the airfield was covered by a tank, and six more tanks were positioned close to the other hill. There were also a few three-inch naval anti-aircraft guns and some pom-poms.
‘We had just arrived here, late yesterday afternoon, when the Stukas came,’ Musgrave explained. ‘A few minutes earlier and we’d have been right in the middle of it. As it was, we’d just managed to get the Gladiators under cover when about fifty of the bastards arrived overhead. Some of them went for the airfield, but most seemed to be concentrating on the perimeter positions. I don’t think they did much damage, apart from making an awful lot of holes, but it was all a bit nerve-racking. Anyway, we gathered that something important was about to happen, so we thought we’d better get the Gladiators fuelled up and armed. Then we discovered that the fuel dump had been knocked out — there wasn’t much fuel there, in any case — and we had to send down to the port for a fresh supply. Before it arrived all hell broke loose, and there wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it.’
Musgrave raised an arm and pointed westward, along the coast.
‘They came in from that direction,’ he went on, ‘waves of Junkers 52s, flying at about a hundred feet. Then they climbed and started dropping their paratroops. The sky was black with them. Our chaps opened up with everything they had and wiped out whole sticks as they dropped. There were Junkers going down in flames all over the place. There’d have been a bloody sight more,’ he exclaimed bitterly, ‘if only we could have got off the ground.’
In fact, the enemy paratroop force earmarked for the Heraklion operation had met with something very close to catastrophe. Because of the heavy losses already sustained by the transport aircraft at Maleme and the unserviceability of many of the remaining aircraft, the Heraklion force, designated Group East and comprising the whole of the 1st Parachute Regiment, together with the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Parachute Regiment, had taken off from its Greek airfields in conditions of chaos, with flights of aircraft departing late or in the wrong order. The result was that, instead of unfolding as a highly concentrated operation, the Heraklion drop had been stretched out over something like two and a half hours, giving the paratroops no chance to co-ordinate any assault on the Allied positions. The 1st Parachute Regiment’s 1st Battalion, for example, already decimated by savage rifle and Bren gun fire as the men floated helplessly down, fell mostly among well dug-in positions held either by Australians or the determined Scottish troops of the Black Watch. In less than twenty minutes, three whole companies of elite German troops had been wiped out.
‘What’s happening now?’ Kendal asked.
Musgrave gestured towards where columns of smoke were rising from the town and harbour of Heraklion. Faintly, the pilots could hear the intermittent rattle of machine-gun and rifle fire.
‘The Jerries bombed the place for about an hour earlier on,’ Musgrave said. He grimaced. ‘We missed our chance again. We had no orders whatsoever, so we decided to carry out a patrol westwards. We never saw a damned thing, and by the time we got back all the action was over. We saw some Stukas beating it, but we didn’t have enough fuel to go after them.’
‘But what’s the shooting we can hear?’ Kendal wanted to know. ‘That seems to be coming from the town.’
Musgrave nodded. ‘Some Germans managed to sneak in under cover of the air raid,’ he explained, ‘but I don’t think they’ve got very far. Apart from our blokes, the town’s full of Greek civilians, all armed to the teeth with captured enemy weapons somebody had the foresight to distribute last night. And I don’t think they’re taking prisoners.’
Kendal looked round. ‘Who’s in charge here?’ he asked.
Musgrave shrugged. ‘We’ve been liaising with an Australian lieutenant-colonel,’ he said, ‘but he’s not around at the moment, and in any case he’s been a bit too busy to bother about us, really. We’ve been rather left to our own devices.’
‘All right, then,’ said Kendal, ‘let’s get organized.’ He turned to the warrant officer.
‘Mr. Fraser, will you be good enough to get me a complete inventory of fuel stocks, ammunition and so on, right away. Then I’d like to see all NCOS, both our chaps and army, who’ve been lending a hand so far.’
Kendal’s piercing gaze shifted to Musgrave. ‘I’m allocating both Gladiators to airfield defence and local close support,’ he went on. ‘I want both aircraft at cockpit readiness at all times during daylight, starting one hour from now. Some of my chaps have flown Gladiators so I’ll work out a rota.’
He paused and gazed at the 8,000-foot summit of Mount Dikte, away to the south-east, as though searching for inspiration. Then he said, with complete assurance: ‘Maleme’s the key to this whole business. That’s where they’ll fly in reinforcements, once they’re in complete control of the airfield. So I intend to put up a patrol with all six Hurricanes at first light, noon and early evening, say 1800. That way, we ought to catch at least some of the bastards. I’d like to cover a wider area, but we don’t have enough aircraft. We’ll just have to do the best we can with what we’ve got.’
He looked at his watch. ‘It’s going to take us a while to get properly sorted out,’ he continued. ‘We’ll fly our first patrol at 1600 hours. If my reckoning is right, and the Jerries are getting the upper hand at Maleme, they should be ready to receive their first transports round about that time. Well, with a bit of luck we’ll give the buggers a surprise or two.’
He gazed directly at each pilot in turn, then added: ‘And, in the meantime, if Heraklion comes under air attack, we will not oppose it. I want to make that clear to you all. We can make a far greater contribution by shooting down the transports, and possibly killing a few score German soldiers, than by knocking down one or two Stukas and possibly getting ourselves shot up in the process. So we lie low, stay under cover, and try not to advertise the fact that we’re here.’
Yeoman knew that Kendal’s decision was sound; nevertheless, it was galling to have to stay on the ground and grit one’s teeth when the bombers came two hours later and subjected the harbour of Heraklion to yet another assault. Some of the Stukas broke away and dived on the two hills overlooking the airfield, the smoke of the bomb-bursts obscuring the slopes, and two or three dived low over the airfield itself, machine-gunning the anti-aircraft emplacements on the perimeter before flying away to the north-west. The action was not all one-sided, for the pilots, sheltering among the trees close by their aircraft, saw one Stuka hit by a string of shells as it winged over to dive on the port. It plunged down, its bombs unreleased, and exploded somewhere on the outskirts of the town.
The bombers did not come back that afternoon, and apart from some desultory firing in the suburbs of Heraklion and the surrounding hills, the situation was generally quiet. When Kendal ordered the Hurricanes to be wheeled out of the grove at 3.45 the silence was almost uncanny. Had it not been for the bomb craters and the smoke that still shrouded Heraklion, Yeoman might have easily imagined himself on a peacetime aerodrome. The birds were singing and the air was filled with that indefinable scent of the Aegean, a mixture of salt water, dry earth and tangy olive groves.
The six Hurricanes took off in pairs, with Kendal and Bright leading. Yeoman followed, with Warrant Officer Fraser as his number two; Kemp, who had flown Sea Gladiators with the Fleet Air Arm, reluctantly stayed behind at Heraklion with Musgrave. Griffiths and Ritchie brought up the rear. Kendal led them in a steady climb to ten thousand feet, following the coast westwards. They passed over Rethim-non with the sky to themselves and, twenty miles ahead,
picked out the broad crescent of Suda Bay, flanked by the round bulge of the Akroterion peninsula. Fifteen miles further west, jutting out into the Sea of Crete like a phallic symbol, was the Spatha peninsula, and nestling between the two lay the towns of Canea, the island’s capital, Galatos and Maleme.
A lot of smoke was rising from the airfield at Maleme, and from the high ground to the south and west. As the Hurricanes flew overhead, it became clear to the pilots that the enemy had gained a substantial foothold on Maleme, for the field was littered with Junkers 52s. It was also clear that the New Zealanders who held this sector were fighting back hard; brown and white puffs of smoke sprouted from the airfield like malignant fungi as shellfire from the prepared positions in the hills raked the area.
‘God Almighty!’ An unidentified voice burst over the R/T, completely forgetting radio procedure in the heat of the moment. ‘Look at that lot down there! Two o’clock, low!’
They all looked, and saw a fighter pilot’s dream. Crawling low over the sea towards the Cretan coast, like a swarm of insects, were fifty or sixty Junkers 52s, flying in a series of wide arrowhead formations.
‘Follow me down,’ Kendal ordered. ‘Frontal attack, then beam attacks, individually.’
From force of habit, Yeoman glanced back over his shoulder as the six Hurricanes began their long dive, and stiffened in alarm. Coming down on them fast from the north-east, but as yet still two or three miles away, were three separate clusters of black dots. They could only be enemy fighters.
Striving to keep his voice calm, Yeoman alerted the others over the radio. ‘Bandits, five o’clock, high. About three miles, but closing.’
Kendal’s reply came back without hesitation. ‘All right, ignore them. The transports are our target. But keep watching your tails.’
Target Tobruk: Yeoman in the Western Desert Page 11