by Jim Crossley
William suspected that Hugh was behind this development in some roundabout way and he didn’t like it. He determined to tell his friend that he had no right to involve himself in his affairs behind his back. As soon as he got home, he stalked across the lawn into Hugh’s workshop. He was a little surprised to see a gangly youth with an adolescent, spotty face looking at some drawings on Hugh’s bench.
“Ah, William,” Hugh began, “I’d like you to meet Simon Keystone-Watts – Kilowatt we all call him” – the visitor blushed sheepishly – “Simon is from Cambridge and he will be working with me on RDF for a few months. I need to ask you if Mrs Wellibond will be happy for him to share my flat for a bit.”
“Yes, I’ll ask, I expect it will be all right, but we have another matter to discuss. Can we go outside?” On the lawn William told Hugh about his meeting that morning. “Are you at the bottom of this by any chance?” he asked.
“Well, not really, all I said to the Air Ministry fellows was that we needed a good pilot, used to large aircraft, and that the fewer people knew about our work the better. Maybe I did mention your name. I hope you don’t mind.”
William did mind. He still wasn’t clear about what he wanted to do with his life. Of course the RAF would be the full-time job which he had been looking for ever since his work as an illustrator had come to an end, but did he really want it? How far could he hope to get in the Air Force after such an unconventional entry? Surely he would be an odd man out among officers who had trained together and known each other for years. Why should he give up his extremely comfortable life at Stonebeck House for a draughty officers’ mess somewhere in East Anglia?
“At least you might have asked me before putting your nose into my affairs,” he growled.
Determined to refuse the offer, he turned round and stalked back to the house. Half an hour later there came a knock at his door. He was not surprised to find Hugh waiting to apologise to him.
“Look here, old fellow, I am sorry I should not have even mentioned your name without talking to you first. But you see it’s so urgent. We are on the verge of a real breakthrough. We’ve got a brilliant team together and the Ministry has given us full support and a generous budget. Young Kilowatt has been producing some brilliant work on pulsed transmissions. I did really hope you could be part of it. You see, you understand what we are trying to do, and it’s so important that we have a pilot on the team who understands it properly. Please, please do think about it.”
“Well, I have decided against. I’d be neither fish nor fowl in the regular air force, and I’m not really a military type anyway.” Hugh’s face fell.
“May I tell you something you don’t know,” he said. “With RDF we are close to being able to pick up intruders even before they cross our coasts. Light, darkness, fog or rain make no difference. You know the saying ‘The bomber will always get through’? Baldwin said that I think. Well, it may not be true any more. We know that the Germans are building bombers which can make two hundred and fifty knots or more – that’s as fast as our best fighters – but if we know they are coming at least we have a chance of doing something about it. Think what that means. Think of our cities being knocked to pieces and the hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths. Think of the horror of it. Our little team is the only way of preventing that and we need the very best people. Young Kilowatt, he’s an example. He’s one of the brightest physicists at Cambridge. Three-quarters through his PhD thesis he’s broken off to join us because he hates the idea of our country being bombed, and he’s not the only one. Let me give you just one phrase which Watson-Watt, our team leader used after Daventry. ‘Britain has become an island once more’. That about sums it up.”
This was quite a speech, coming from such an easy going fellow as Hugh. William had seen him excited before, but never so emotional. He had never before expressed the least patriotic fervour. Maybe, somehow, it was his duty to join. He thought for a minute about Flopsy and all he had done because of his sense of duty. Even of his father. He needed to reconsider his decision.
William’s thinking took place in his local pub. Sitting in a corner by himself with a pint, he came to a conclusion. His life was going nowhere just now. If there was a war, his Auxiliary unit would be converted to a full-time operation anyway. He’d take the short service commission in the RAF to see how things went.
By the time William’s transfer was completed the research team had moved to Orfordness where, in a little hut, the transmitters and receivers were set up. William found himself stationed at Duxford and attached to a Heyford squadron on the airfield. In practice, however, he worked directly under orders from Watson-Watt’s team. William soon found out that he was by no means the only “odd ball” flying out of Duxford. There was a weather reconnaissance flight, a high-altitude test flight and several other special purpose units.
For members of the regular bomber squadrons who constituted the main part of Duxford’s strength, service life in the 1930s was amazingly relaxed. Officers sat comfortably in leather chairs in the mess and chatted about women, sports cars, tennis and golf. They flew their machines only in fair weather and even then their evolutions were limited to gentle cross-country flights, landing perhaps at some friendly RAF station for a cup of tea before flying gently home. Navigation was strictly by means of map reading and compass. No one in the squadron knew anything about astro navigation or felt the need to. “Bradshawing” – the term used for navigation by following railway lines – was universally popular. William pointed out one day that as there are no railway lines over the sea, this would prove a problem if Bomber Command was to be called upon to attack a foreign country, surely that was its main purpose. The remark did not make him popular. Flights over the sea were avoided at all costs.
In contrast to the regular squadron, his fellow “odd balls” were a serious bunch. They were professional flyers, each dedicated to developing his particular sector of the science of aviation. William naturally gravitated to them and found himself in long discussions about the problems of navigation, blind flying, accurate bombing and what the aircraft of the future might be like. Many of them were older men who had experienced war in the air at first hand and who were appalled at the slow progress made by the RAF since 1918 and by the amateurism of many of its aircrew. Some had travelled to Germany and to the USA and seen some of the developments there which were far in advance of the peace time RAF. All agreed that war, if it came, would bring some nasty shocks and a drastic change of attitude.
Watson-Watt’s team kept William busy. He had been assigned as navigator (then termed an “observer”), a rather eccentric ex-Royal Navy airman who had spent years, including the whole of the 1914-18 war, navigating flying boats and airships around the North Sea. Flight Lieutenant Pickles, or “Branston” as he was universally called, was almost fifty, incredibly old for his rank, but seemed to have no ambition or interest in promotion. Somehow his career had fallen into the gap between the Navy and the RAF, and neither seemed to want either to dispose of him or to do very much with him. Someone, however, had remembered that his navigational skills were outstanding and, as accurate flying was vital to the mission, had nominated him to fly with William. He just loved being in the air, looking down at the sea so as to judge drift and wind speed, looking at the clouds to predict a change in the weather, or spotting a tiny dot in the far distance and identifying it before anyone else had seen it. His particular interest was astro navigation, using the sun, stars or even the moon to fix his position. He had of course learnt the basics of the technique in the Navy, and had managed to acquire an American bubble sextant which was much more suitable than a standard naval sextant for use in aircraft, as it did not depend on the navigator being able to see the horizon. There is no horizon if you are above the clouds. He even persuaded William to buy one for himself.
William and Branston would get their orders by telephone every evening. At first light their Heyford would be trundled out of its hangar, fuelled up and off the
y would set, usually out over the North Sea, where they would fly a pattern over and around a spot determined by someone at Orfordness, or later Bawdsey, a few miles away, when it replaced Orford as the headquarters of the RDF project. The engineers on land would try to track the plane and use data collected to calibrate their radar. During these exercises it was vitally important that a careful log of the aircraft’s actual position and movements was kept, and that navigation was spot on. This was Branston’s main activity. They also carried a signaller, normally a sergeant, who would spend most of his time tapping away on his Morse key or dozing quietly, headphones abandoned on the desk in front of him. Often the three regular crew would be accompanied by someone from the engineering team, either checking incoming signal strength or just up for the ride. Hugh came whenever he got the chance. If there was some anomaly in the results, pilot and navigator would be invited to a meeting where all the observations would be brought to the table and some explanation worked out. Often the culprits were flocks of large birds, geese most often, giving off an aircraft-like echo. Occasionally it would be a stray aircraft somewhere near the target area. On one occasion the target being observed suddenly split into three and it turned out that Bawdsey had somehow been tracking a flight of Hawker Hart fighters instead of the Heyford.
There was a nasty incident early in the exercise which nearly brought an end to William’s flying career. It was a grey day and they had been making some low-level passes along the east coast to see how easy it would be for an intruder to get in undetected, under the radar coverage. The wind had been strong when they set off, very nearly too strong for flying. In fact the flight had been cancelled once, then authorised again at the insistence of someone at Bawdsey. While they were in the air, however, the wind had unexpectedly increased to a full westerly gale. Flying low over the sea in these conditions resulted in an extremely bumpy afternoon’s flying. It was cold and noisy in the open cockpit and, unaccountably, there was a constant smell of petrol which made life even more uncomfortable for the crew. Branston was peering down at the sea surface below, trying to estimate rate of drift, while William struggled with the controls, fighting to keep reasonably straight and level. Sergeant Weston, at the radio set, seemed to be restless. In fact the motion had made him feel terribly sick and he had migrated from his normal station into the unoccupied dorsal gun position, where his top half was exposed to the elements, to get a breath of fresh air and clear his head. Looking casually aft down the fuselage, suddenly he froze in his seat, horrified by what he saw. The rear part of the aircraft was fabric covered and somehow a whole section of the fabric had torn off the top of the rear fuselage and was flapping violently against the tail fins. He could also see that the panels covering the sides of the aircraft were bellying outwards due to the blast of the slipstream getting inside the fuselage. If they were to tear off they would obstruct the whole tail plane and make the machine totally unmanageable. The intercom was not connected so he had to clamber down and struggle forward to the cockpit to warn the rest of the crew. William had already noticed the controls becoming very heavy but thought it must be due to the violent weather. There was a hasty conference, shouted into the intercom above the roar of the two Kestrel engines. Obviously they must slow down as much as possible and fly straight back to base. Weston was told to return to the gun position and keep an eye on the tail while William slowed down to near stalling speed and made a gentle turn so as to head westward, towards the nearest land. By this time the fabric from the upper surface of the fuselage had wrapped itself right round the port hand rudder and the rudder bar was impossible to use, but the plane turned ponderously when William banked to port. Branston, still peering down at the grey sea a thousand feet beneath them tapped him on the shoulder. “We’re almost going backwards!” he yelled. “Wind’s up to fifty knots which is about the same as your airspeed. We’ll never get there at this rate.” He thought for a moment. “Look,” he added, “I’ll bet there is less wind nearer the sea surface. Give it a go.” Down at sea level, with the wheels almost touching the angry-looking rollers, the wind was indeed a few knots less, but progress was still painfully slow. Cautiously, William opened the throttles a little and the airspeed built up to ninety. At this rate it would take half an hour to reach the coast and another hour to get to Duxford. As well as the danger of more of the fabric skin coming adrift, there was no possibility of flying this low over land. They would have to climb to at least three hundred feet, back into the full force of the wind. To make matters worse, Weston reported that the port hand panel was beginning to tear away. They must think of something else quickly.
Branston did a few calculations. “Look,” he said. “If we steer west-southwest in this wind, our track will be almost due south. That’ll take us onto the Norfolk coast in about fifteen minutes, I think it’s our best chance.” Skidding the machine round onto the new course, William thought about the terrain ahead. He knew the coastline well from his sailing, and in fact he had been there the previous weekend. Racking his brains, he worked out that it would have been low tide about midday. Perhaps if he could reach Holkham beach, he could put her down on the sands there; they were quite firm and would be dry until the next high tide. Weston was summoned and told to send an SOS to base, asking them to get the lifeboat crew to stand by. As he was working at this there was an ominous crack and the joystick jerked forward in William’s hands. The loose panel had finally torn off its stitching and was snagging on the elevator. It took all his strength to stop the bomber diving straight into the sea. The windscreen was by now covered with salt spray and impossible to see through. He had to look round it with his head out in the slipstream. At last the grey sea turned yellow as it met the shallow sandbank extending from the coast, and the welcome sight of the beach came into view. With very little control left, he managed to keep just high enough to bank the machine to starboard so as to face into wind and shut the throttles in the hope that she would remain reasonably level as she landed. If the Heyford had one good point it was a very strong fixed undercarriage, and, headed into the gale, she was moving very slowly over the ground when she touched down bumpily but safely on the beach, scattering sea birds and throwing up a cloud of sand behind her.
With a prayer of thanks, the three of them clambered out of the aircraft and quickly shoved the chocks behind the wheel. William left the engines idling in the hope that he might be able to taxi up the beach, but the wheels were sinking into the sand and anyhow it would be impossible to taxi safely with a cross wind this strong. Just as they were about to give up hope and abandon her to the incoming tide, an astonishing procession came into view from amongst the pine trees at the top of the beach. The lifeboat crew from Wells had seen the plane come down and rushed to the spot in a borrowed lorry, recruiting as they came as many people, mostly farm workers, as they could. Among these were four horse-drawn plough teams who had been working nearby and were hastily unhitched from their ploughs. They trotted down towards the sea, the horses enjoying the change and the feel of the damp sand under their feet. William killed both engines and directed the men to steady the wings of the plane so that it wouldn’t flip over, while the powerful animals were hitched to the rear fuselage. With much chaffing, joking and many “gee ups” the machine was hauled up away from the tide and parked in a sheltered clearing in the pine trees where it could be firmly roped down. Everyone involved, and a few who turned up too late, then invaded the Victoria pub in the village where William found himself spending the best part of a month’s pay on beer.
The party in the Victoria was brought to an end by the arrival of a pair of Crossley Tenders, from Duxford, with a team of mechanics, to see what could be done with the aircraft, and with a guard detail to protect it over-night. In charge of this party was Flight Sergeant Ables, a fat, domineering, grumpy veteran who had seen more crashed aircraft than he cared to remember and had a low opinion of pilots. He spent half the night going over the Heyford with a torch and a ladder, accompanied by a pair o
f shivering, miserable aircraftsmen.
William had not been looking forward to meeting the fearsome Ables next morning, but it couldn’t be avoided. They met under the pine trees, sheltered from the wind.
“Well, sir,” began Ables. “She’s not badly damaged apart from the fabric, and we can fix that here, but you’ll have to fly her out. There’s no other way of moving her except to take her apart and cart her away and the CO wouldn’t like that, sir, not a bit.”
“But how will we get her to take off on this wet sand? Surely she’ll get stuck. She sunk right into the sand when we landed.”
“You leave that to me, sir. Let my men get on with their work and then we’ll see.”
“Any idea how this all happened, Flight? The top panel just ripped off. I’ve never heard of that happening before, have you? It wasn’t a bird strike or anything like that. If it hadn’t been for Weston going up there to puke we would have been done for.”
For a moment a flash of kindness seemed to appear in those piggy deep-set eyes.
“Matter of fact I have, sir, will you come this way where no one can hear?” They stepped out onto the sand. The gale had abated and now there was just a fresh breeze. “You know that new Irish boy we have, Aircraftsman Tuoy, sir, nice lad and keen, but a bit over eager if you take my meaning. Well, before we left yesterday, I found him crouched in the corner of the hangar sobbing his heart out. ‘What’s up, lad?’ says I. Then it all came out, sir. Young Tuoy he loves to drive that tractor we use to move the machines in and out of the hangar. Well, yesterday morning we pulled them all out as we was ordered, then came the word that it was too windy, so quick as a flash Tuoy he jumps on the tractor and starts to put them back. Your plane, old Zebra we calls her, she is the last to go in and by that time all the lads, except Tuoy on the tractor, has gone off to the canteen. Now as he is putting Zebra away he manages to push her under the gantry we use to work on the engines. Ripped a good-sized tear in the fabric, he says. Well, he’d be on a serious charge for that so he don’t want anyone to know. He thinks he’ll come back in the afternoon with his mates and see if they can patch her up on the quiet like. So off he goes to his meal, not knowing that you had orders to take Zebra out after all. Well, someone else pulls her out and no one notices the tear. You know how tall those Heyfords stand, sir, so no one would see it. Young Tuoy goes back in the afternoon and finds her gone, then he hears on the grapevine that she’s about to crash into the sea. All because of him, he thinks. No wonder the lad was blubbering.”