by Jim Crossley
A cold fury possessed William as he led the six fighters fast and low across the Channel. The waiting had given him time to brood, and as he brooded, his anger against the Germans, the war, and everything else, developed. He was short and ill-tempered with his crew, and he flew the aircraft coarsely, cruelly, as if the whole affair was its fault. Willis, his navigator remained calm and temperate, giving courses and corrections quietly as they sped over the sea. The aircraft following them were invisible, blacked out in the darkness, each showing a dim stern light to guide the pilot behind.
“Skipper,” Willis said as they approached the French coast, “I don’t believe the wind Met gave us is correct, I think we have a fresh easterly. I think we’ll meet the coast at Dieppe, not at the mouth of the Somme.”
“Well, stick on this course for now, we’ll see it in a minute.”
The coast came into view, a line of white surf breaking on the beach.
“Skipper, that’s certainly Dieppe, I recognise the docks. Turn ninety degrees to port. We should pick up the Somme in a couple of minutes.”
“OK.”
“There it is, skip. Turn to starboard and follow it inland. I calculate we have fifteen to twenty knots of wind. That’ll affect our course from Amiens, I’ll re-calculate.”
Thank God for Willis.
They flashed over Abbeville without provoking any defensive fire and roared on towards Amiens. The moonlight was now quite strong, the river glowing silver below them. Farms and villages, sleeping peacefully, flashed beneath the wings.
“OK, that’s Amiens ahead, Skip, steer two three zero degrees from the town centre, we should be over the airfield in seven minutes. I’ll go forward into the nose now, it’s a question of keeping a lookout for the target.”
“OK, Sarge, Jimmy, did you hear that? Keep your eyes skinned up there, remember that triangular-shaped wood we saw in the recce photos. That should give you a clue.”
“Bloody hell, what was that?”
The defences of Amiens had woken up. a barrage of fire surged towards them. A shell bursting close astern threw the aircraft on her nose for an instant, but otherwise the aim was poor. They still could not see the following aircraft and were keeping radio silence. They saw tracer reaching out towards a point behind them but there was no sign of anyone being hit. The bombers now would be climbing hard to five thousand feet and looking out for their flares.
Seven minutes passed. No sign of anything in the blacked-out land below.
“We must have missed it. I’m going to circle this point so we get a better look; it must be somewhere near. Jimmy, break radio silence, Jerry knows we’re here anyway and tell the others what we are doing.”
“Roger.”
Two big circles and nothing seen. Obviously the enemy were holding their fire so as not to give away their position.
“Skipper, quick, look down there, three o’clock left from the nose, something silver.” It was Jimmy’s voice, then Willis in the nose, saw it too. “It’s an aeroplane on the ground, silver, big one, I think it’s a Ju 52 transport.”
Now clearly visible in the moonlight, the silver aircraft had been bringing a new draft of pilots to France. The Germans were normally masters of camouflage but for some reason this machine had not been painted and had been carelessly left out in the open at night.
“This is it, all right, I’m going to shoot up that machine and drop flares. Let’s go for it.”
Opening the throttles, William dived towards the Junkers as Willis dropped his flares and opened up with his machine guns. The parked plane was a sitting target and soon burst into flames. At the same time the defensive fire opened up, tracer seemed to arc slowly upwards from the ground then accelerate madly as it approached, whizzing above and below them. Angry balls of dirty-looking fire marked where heavy ack-ack shells were exploding. On each side they could see the other fighters blazing away at the gun emplacements. Their .303 machine-gun fire could do little to damage the bombers on the field, as they were carefully dispersed in protected pens, or to the AA guns in their armoured dug outs, but at least they distracted the defenders from the approaching high-level bombers. The flares lit up well and out of the corner of his eye, William saw a host of men running out of one of the buildings. They were in fact aircrew who had been assembled for an early morning briefing.
“I’m going round again!” he yelled to his crew and he flung the aircraft into a tight turn, so low that the wing nearly touched the trees below. Before the little figures on the airfield could reach shelter, the Blenheim’s machine guns were on them as William made his second pass. Jimmy’s rear turret followed up as the Blenheim climbed away, chased by furious tracer fire from the ground. No sooner had they reached a reasonably safe height than they saw the bombers begin their work and great dirty black clouds of smoke and dust rose from the airfield.
The raid seemed to have been a rare success for the Blenheims, but the difficult part was to come. In the east the rim of the sun was just appearing over the horizon, and gradually colour was returning to the landscape. Dark fields were turning to green grass and yellow stubble, and the midnight blue of the sky was lit up by orange and greenish light as the sun rose over northern France. Soon the sky would be full of venomous fighters, ready to avenge their comrades, and there was over one hundred and twenty miles to fly before they reached the English coast. Sure enough, Jimmy reported some suspicious-looking specks in the sky above them. To his horror, he saw two machines detach from the formation and dive towards them. It seemed that their quarry was one of the other Blenheims and soon an ugly pall of black smoke marked where it had been destroyed. William had been hugging the ground to try to avoid detection but it could only be a matter of minutes before he, too, was seen. With so many fighters around, he could not hope for the same luck as had saved him on his last foray over France.
The German plan for that day had been to dispatch four hundred high-level bombers to attack airfields in southern England. They would be escorted by two hundred fighters which would station themselves about five thousand feet above the bombers, and another one hundred and fifty which would keep close to the bombers, weaving about around their formations. The bombers would take off before dawn so as to reach their targets soon after first light. The fighters would not be airborne until half an hour later so as to conserve their fuel as much as possible. This plan had been disrupted by the Blenheim’s raid. The German bombers’ take-off had been delayed while damage was assessed. News of the delay had not got through to all the fighter formations, and the ones which attacked William’s colleagues had taken off well before the first of the bombers. They had been looking for their charges when they spotted the unfortunate Blenheims below them.
Unaware of all this, William hedge-hopped towards home, trying to weave a course across country. Suddenly he saw a mass of dark-coloured shapes rising into the air ahead of him. Obviously these must be a formation of aircraft. He now could see that they were Junkers 88s, climbing away in front of him.
“I’m going to try to link up with those Jerries,” he told his crew. “If we keep up sun of them, they won’t be able to see us well and may mistake us for one of their stragglers. It’s our best hope. Don’t anyone for heaven’s sake open fire or do anything stupid unless I say so, and keep a look out for the Me’s.”
“OK, skip, let’s hope.”
The Junkers, with their single tail fin, looked not unlike a Blenheim in the distance and with the sun in their eyes, the enemy crews did not pay much attention to the aircraft climbing alongside them and heading north towards the Channel. With a light fuel load and no bombs on board, the Blenheim could easily keep station to the east of, and slightly behind, the formation. The crew hardly dared to breathe as they crossed the French coastline, expecting the close escort to appear at any moment. There was a thick bank of white cloud on the English side; if they could reach that undetected they might be safe. It was not to be. Willis, still in his nose gun position spotted a shoal of litt
le silvery shapes, at about their height, joining the formation. Me109s! They couldn’t possibly miss the odd-shaped aircraft with RAF roundels on the flank of the bomber stream. For a few valuable minutes all went well, then two of the enemy seemed to see that something was wrong. They pulled a tight turn and worked round onto the tail of the Blenheim. There was only one thing William could do. Pushing the throttles to their emergency full-speed position, he steered centre of the German bomber fleet, aiming to pass close above them. The fighters couldn’t possibly open fire while he was so close and perhaps the gunners in the Junkers would not realise what was going on. The Me’s pulled out of their attack and shot past the Junkers. They seemed to have decided to have another go, this time attacking while climbing from below so as to have a clear field of fire. As they manoeuvred, William pushed the control column right forward, putting his machine into a steep dive. At the same time, Jimmy opened up from his turret, with the general idea of creating confusion. The aircraft shuddered and bumped about horribly as it passed through the slipstream of the enemy bombers, still progressing in perfect formation towards their target. The engine note rose to a howl as the speed built up. Surprised by the sudden move, the German fighters rolled into a dive to follow, but they also were thrown about the air by the wash of their own bombers and took several precious seconds to regain control. Too late they resumed their chase after the Blenheim which disappeared into the welcome cloud below. Panting and sweating, William pulled out of his dive and tried to keep inside the cloud by making tight circles.
They saw no more of their attackers. The main danger now was being shot down by their own fighters, mistaking them for a straggler from the German armada. Luckily they saw nothing of them. The Blenheim came out of the cloud just above Bognor Regis and broke radio silence again to report its position. In a few minutes they were over their home airfield and landed safely. This time William was not the trembling wreck who had tumbled out of his plane a few days earlier. He was elated, proud of his performance and of his crew. Willis and Hopson both looked shaken; they had certainly had a hair-raising ride, but neither was hurt and he overheard them telling the ground crew how their skipper had outwitted the Luftwaffe to get home. They were right to celebrate. Only two other aircraft limped back from that raid, both badly damaged. One other had been brought down by ground fire, the rest had been picked off by Me’s.
This was to be the last time the radar development team was used to join in raids on Nazi airfields, and indeed the last such attack mounted by Blenheims. It was obvious that the loss rate was unacceptable. Also, during the following weeks it became clear that Goering had made a change of policy which was to be fatal to his objective of overwhelming the RAF. In retaliation for some raids by Bomber Command on Berlin, he turned the might of his bomber force against London. Here his bombers were operating beyond the range at which effective fighter escort could be provided and their losses were horrific. As autumn drew on, the Luftwaffe was forced to accept that it would have to give up its attempts to bomb Britain into submission. Instead they would try to demoralise the population by intensive night time attacks, just as Kilowatt had predicted.
The Martlesham Heath radar-equipped fighter unit was now reduced to three Blenheims, all now in barely serviceable condition. There was time for another meeting with the boffins from Bawdsey Manor while work on the aircraft progressed and replacements were provided. Hugh and Kilowatt arrived at the air station, looking utterly exhausted. For three months they had been rushing between Chain Home radar stations, helping to fix problems and improve performance. In the early stages of the Battle of Britain, Stukas had successfully been used to attack the radar masts, but somehow they had always been repaired and brought back into service in a few days, so that eventually the Germans gave up their attacks on them. Keeping the radars operational was only one of Hugh’s tasks however. Early in 1940 a German bomber had been shot down, and among documents recovered from it was reference to a “knickebein” beacon. What on earth was that? Gradually evidence began to mount that the Germans had developed a system for generating a narrow radio beam which could be transmitted from a fixed point in the Low Countries and which could guide aircraft accurately to their targets in total darkness. This was the system which the Orfordness people had got wind of just before the war. There was some experience within the RAF of using radio beams to enable aircraft to land in poor visibility, but it had seemed to be impossible that such a system could be developed so as to guide bombers over a range of several hundred miles. With authorisation from Churchill himself, a project was launched to detect a German guidance beam and a flight of three Ansons had been assembled for the purpose. They were fitted with an astonishing assortment of radio sets in the hope that one of them might have the right characteristics to pick up the beam. One machine, using a set which had been borrowed from a US police establishment, was tuned to 31.5 megacycles. The crew picked up a narrow radio beam on this frequency and themselves used it briefly to hold a steady course towards a target selected by the enemy. This was devastating news. Using the knickebein, the Germans could accurately bomb any point in Britain in total darkness and they could fly so fast that no existing night fighter could get near them. “We are doing everything we can to find some way of interfering with these beams, but it’s new science to us and it takes time and needs research specialists who are in short supply,” said Hugh. “Also, Jerry isn’t just standing still; there seems to be a further development on the way, X-Gerat we think they call it, which really gives pinpoint accuracy. They could easily knock out a chosen factory, Rolls-Royce in Derby for example, in a single night raid. We’ve got to stop them and you night fighter boys are the only effective defence we have.”
At that moment the sound of an unfamiliar aircraft shook the table around which they were sitting, then another, then a third. A glance out of the window revealed three short-nosed, rather stubby-looking machines with enormous engines and propellers taxiing bumpily towards the hangar. Three Beaufighters.
Chapter 9
Hans was none the worse for his swim, but the return to his squadron brought bleak news. No less than eight Stukas from his station had failed to return from their mission. It was now obvious that, formidable as it was to harry and terrify ground forces and to sink enemy shipping, the Stuka simply could not operate in areas where the enemy had effective, modern fighters. The lesson of that day’s disasters was well learnt, even in the top echelons of the Luftwaffe, and the aircraft were withdrawn from the battle. Hans and his colleagues wondered where their next posting might be. There were rumours that an attack was to be launched one day against Russia. No one really believed them; nevertheless, there was a lot of discussion about the part they could play, blasting a way for the Panzer divisions towards Moscow, or to the oil wells at the eastern end of the Black Sea.
The wing to which he was attached was re located to Germany, allowing him to take a few days’ leave at home. He found that life in the castle was remarkably untroubled by war. There were still domestic servants and there seemed to be no shortages of food or household products. Only petrol was hard to obtain, and with his connections in the Luftwaffe, he found little difficulty in wangling even this when he needed it. He found himself feted wherever he went: his exploits in Poland and over France had been trumpeted all over the district by his mother who insisted on throwing numerous dinner parties so that people could admire her son. In particular she had a way of surrounding him with suitably attractive female company, especially seeking out girls from wealthy or noble families. “Hans,” she said before one such event. “You need to forget that little English girl. You have the future and the family to consider and it’s time that my hero made a proper marriage. The Fuhrer himself has said that Germans have a duty to produce large families of good Nordic stock. At least consider that delightful Countess of… so charming, and such a family! Or how about Gertrude… they say she’ll have a career in films… then there’s…” Hans was not generally an ill-tem
pered fellow but this he simply couldn’t stand. He became almost rudely standoffish and cool, giving them all a wide berth. He still dreamed about Angela and what they would do together when Britain finally saw sense and ended the war. No one else would do. He was quite glad when he was recalled to his unit early.
By the end of September, it was clear that the attempt to smother the RAF and open the way to an invasion of southern England was not going to succeed. As the weather turned in October, units of the Luftwaffe were withdrawn and redeployed, mostly to the east where they rebuilt their damaged formations and trained new aircrews. 1/StG1, Hans’ unit, however, found itself posted briefly to the Baltic so as to hone its anti-ship operation skills. In particular they practised endlessly bombing a wooden mock-up of a British aircraft carrier. Intelligence had discovered that the Illustrious class carriers had armoured decks and these could only be pierced by thousand-pound bombs which were just coming into service. Four thousand-pound hits would, it was believed, sink any carrier ever built. That winter they learnt that they were destined for the Mediterranean. They flew their machines by easy stages across the Reich and down the length of Italy to the beautiful island of Sicily. They were to be based on a well-defended aerodrome near Catania. Here they formed the core of a new and formidable formation known as “Fliegerkorps X”. By early January their ground crews and equipment had caught up with them and they were ready to practise the deadly trade they had learnt that autumn.
The situation in the Mediterranean was at that point not looking good for the Axis powers. Italian troops were being heavily defeated in North Africa and the Greeks were holding off the Italian attempt to invade their country. Things were about to change, however. Released from northern Europe, German ground troops, armour and air force units were beginning to come onto the scene. In Libya the defeated remnants of the Italian army were soon to be reinforced by the superb troops of the Afrika Corps led by General Rommel, while at the same time Churchill made the disastrous decision to deprive the army in Africa of most of its air power and many of its best troops in a vain attempt to check the German forces who began to pour into Greece. In this situation the role of the Stuka squadrons in Sicily was simple. They had to deprive the Royal Navy of the ability to use the Mediterranean to supply its forces in Egypt and Greece, and to assist the Italians in forcing the surrender of the strategic island of Malta. They very soon made their presence felt.