by Jim Crossley
He was convulsed with coughing and for several minutes could say nothing, then he started speaking again, this time more strongly.
“I want you to know, William, that your father was the finest, bravest man I ever knew. After your mother and brother and sister were lost in that terrible accident, I was so proud when he asked me to do what I could for you if he did not survive the war himself. Of course, I don’t know exactly what you are doing in the RAF but I believe that you are proving yourself a worthy son to my dear friend. I have to tell you also that he felt especially bitter that the war had divided his own family and he longed for it to end so that he could bring the von Pilsens together again. It will be hard, but do try, dear William.”
The effort of speaking seemed to have exhausted the poor man and he collapsed back onto his pillow in another fit of coughing.
William nodded, but his eyes filled with tears as he took hold of one of the withered hands on the bedspread and held it gently. The little figure in the bed seemed to relax and fell into a doze. William sat there with him for half an hour, trying to digest the burden these few words seemed to have placed upon him, then he tiptoed out of the ward to find a doctor. The young man on duty looked completely worn out, but with a sigh he took William into a small office. He knew Flopsy well as the clergyman had often visited the hospital in more peaceful times to see sick parishioners.
“I have to tell you,” he said, “the poor reverend has suffered terrible internal injuries, bomb blast often damages internal organs, especially in old people, and I believe that his lungs were weak anyway due to gassing in the First War. Poor fellow! And he was trying to do his bit watching for fires in the tower – all by himself, in this weather! I am sorry but I can’t see much hope for him. It’s terrible to see such a good man go.”
Jimmy was waiting in the lobby trying unsuccessfully to chat up one of the nurses.
“OK,” said William, “I’ll drop you off by your house now and collect you here about midday tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll be able to do anything for the old boy tonight.”
“But where are you going to sleep, skip? Lord, you do look all shaken up.”
William couldn’t answer.
“Look, you’ve got yer ration card, haven’t you? Come round to my old lady’s place; she’ll put you up for tonight, so you’re nice and close to the hospital in the morning.”
“But she won’t be expecting me. Can’t we phone her first?”
“Telephone! Do me a favour, skip, we ain’t got no phone. Doubt there’s one in the whole street.”
William marvelled that this expert radar operator and competent navigator had lived all his life without a phone. He was worried about his own reception in what was obviously a working-class home. The RAF had taught him to get on with all sorts of people, but staying in an east London cockney household would be a new and daunting experience.
They pulled up outside one of a row of terraced houses. It was one of the few undamaged in the street but, even so, it looked gloomy in the blackout. Obviously relieved, Jimmy jumped out.
“’Ere we are, skip, number forty-three.”
William followed him through the front door, which was not locked. The narrow hallway led into a fair-sized room in which Mrs Hopson was engaged in laying the fire. She half turned round then, let out a little scream as Jimmy scooped her up in his arms.
“Ullo, Mum.”
“Lorks, Jimmy, you didn’t ’arf gimme a turn.”
“Sorry, ole girl.” He turned towards William. “This ’ere is my skipper wot I told you about. ’Ee’s come for the night. Where’s Dad?”
“Eez on night shift, ain’t ’ee. Sit down, Mr Skipper, this one’s comfy.”
William noticed a face which smiled all over and kind blue eyes. Mrs Hopson was a small person with large strong-looking hands, all black with coal and soot from the still unlit fire. In spite of this, she looked neat in her floral pinny over a day dress and slippered feet.
“Yer dad won’t be back till eight in the morning I should think. Let me finish this and I’ll see about some tea. Aizul!”
“Hazel’s my brother’s wife,” explained Jimmy. “Bombed out they was so she’s living ’ere for now, so you’ll ’ave to ’ave the back bedroom where I used to sleep.”
He showed William his room and when they returned both women were hard at work in the kitchen and a welcome fire was burning in the grate. Soon they were tucking into plates of sausage, mash and cabbage liberally covered with onion gravy. Mrs Hopson explained that she had three other sons, all away at the war. She herself worked in daytime at an aircraft parts factory and she and Hazel kept house for Mike, her husband, and any of the family who might come home on leave.
After supper and the radio news Jimmy went down the road to meet some old mates in the pub and show off his sergeant’s stripes. William sensed that he would be out of place among Jimmy’s pals and planned for an early night, but it was clear that Mrs Hopson was not going to let him escape too easily.
“Mr Skipper, my dear, I tell you I’m not ’alf glad to meet you, and to see that you’re looking after my Jimmy. I wouldn’t want to think of him up there in the air with any young tearaway, and you seem such a sensible man, but tell me is what you are doing very dangerous?”
William reassured her.
“Thank God for that, I’m not worried about Freddy and Joe, they’re both in the Navy, in a big ship called Hood I think, they’ll be safe enough there, my Mike he was a Navy man in the last war. In a battleship he was, and he said they never saw the enemy once. I was worried about Jimmy until I met you but I know he’s all right now. Young George – I don’t know what he’s doing, he joined up in the Service Corps, sent him to Africa they did, driving lorries, but he’s a wild one always getting into fights. I’m afraid he’ll sign on for anything dangerous.”
“Well,” said William, “I don’t know much about the fighting in Africa but I do know that in this war it’s just as dangerous to be here at home as it is to be in the front line. Look at all the houses which have been hit around here.”
“Strange, ain’t it? Me and Mike has to spend most nights in the shelter down the playground at the end of the street. Right cold and damp it is in there and you should hear the language. Bad enough to make a cat blush. And you’ve got to keep an eye on everything. There’s those in there would nick yer false teeth given half a chance! But I’ll tell you one thing, we’ve never made money like we are now, what with the night shifts and both of us working. Coining it we are. But still I wish it was all over.”
“Well, at least we’re not in the shelter tonight; this is no weather for the bombers.”
“Now tell me, Mr Skipper, you must know, being an officer and that, are we winning this war? They says we are on the radio and in the papers, but they would, wouldn’t they? Are we winning?”
“Well, we got our men back from Dunkirk, that was important, and the fighter boys fought them off last summer and autumn. Now there’s the night time blitz, but maybe we can put a stop to that by the summer, so I’d say we are holding our own now and perhaps the Americans will come in to help sometime. From what little I know it’s the submarines we have to watch. If we can get on top of them we should be all right as I see it.”
“Well thank you, Mr Skipper, you’ve talked a lot of sense, and thank you for looking after Jimmy, he worships you, you know. Now I can see you are tired, get you off to bed. I’ll be gone by the time you are about in the morning. Good night.”
In bed, William heard Jimmy come clumsily home from the pub, singing snatches of song. Although he had been flying the previous night and was terribly tired, he could not sleep. He thought of the destruction he had seen from the car, of Flopsy, terribly wounded while fire-watching on his own, up his church tower; of the brave woman he had been talking to, working in a factory, running the house, worrying about her boys and trying to make sense out of the war. Above all he felt humbled and inadequate to bear the responsibility of th
e trust she placed in him. This brave, hard-working woman seemed to represent the very core and backbone of the British people, but he himself was unworthy of them. He was no ace pilot. Even if he had been, he could not keep Jimmy safe. No one could ever guess at the terror he had felt during his bombing exploits. If only he could be carefree and easy going like Jimmy. Miserably he lay in the humble bedroom and at last fell into a troubled sleep.
Flopsy did not last that night. He passed away quietly, by himself, in his hospital bed dying, as he had lived, causing the least possible inconvenience to those around him. William looked at the grey, drawn face, peaceful now somehow in death. He thought of his bumbling, unworldly guardian, so brave and yet so gentle, now at peace. If there was such a thing as Heaven, surely he was there.
Two days later the weather changed and the squadron was active again. William and Jimmy flew eight operational missions during the next three weeks, two of them resulting in successful kills. The attrition rate of enemy bombers delivering the night time blitz on British cities was rising sharply as more Beaufighters came into operation and techniques for working with the ground control radars improved. The Luftwaffe were now suffering an attrition rate of over five percent of the bombers on each mission and they clearly could not sustain their assault for ever. That did not necessarily mean, however, that the interceptors were always free from risk, as William was to find out.
Oberleutnant Carl von Brunden of 100 Gruppe, was a highly experienced pilot. He had flown Messerschmitt Bf110 twin-engined two-seat escort fighters throughout the Battle of Britain. Bf110s had taken terrible losses when trying to escort heavy bombers in daylight to their targets, as they were no match in combat for the defending single-seaters. They were, however, quite formidable aircraft, faster and lighter than the Beaufighter, and heavily armed. The German high command decided to try to use 100 Gruppe’s 110s to make deep penetration night time bombing raids on key British factories and airfields. As they could cruise at over three hundred miles per hour and reach over thirty thousand feet, perhaps they could safely avoid British night fighters and, guided by X-Gerat beams – the navigation system which Hugh and Kilowatt had described to William – make successful high-level attacks on strategic targets deep into enemy territory. Von Brunden was selected for one of the first of these ventures. His force consisted of six aircraft, each carrying two five hundred-pound bombs and the target was the Vickers factory at Bromsgrove, in the Midlands. To reach the target from their base in Holland, the aircraft were fitted with Dackelbauch long-range fuel tanks; these were rather unsatisfactory plywood tanks mounted under the fuselage. Von Brunden’s regular rear gunner/signaller was off sick on the night of the raid and was replaced by a less experienced crewman, Feldwebel Hauser.
At first all went well for the raiders. All six aircraft took off and in spite of their heavy load of fuel and bombs, struggled up to twenty-five thousand feet as they crossed the North Sea. In the darkness the aircraft soon lost visual contact with each other and strict radio silence was enforced but it was somehow comforting to know that five friendly aircraft were at hand as they entered enemy airspace. They were navigating on the X-Gerat system which produced a wide radio beam along which the aircraft flew until they were within about twenty miles of their destination. Here they would pick up a narrow beam leading them directly to the target. A series of three cross beams, radiated from a separate transmitter, would time the aircraft as it moved along the narrow beam and signal the exact moment for the release of the bombs. The system was difficult to jam or bend as it operated in centimetric wave bands which could be changed each night and were extremely difficult to detect. The pilots, specially trained in the use of X-Gerat, listened attentively to the signals on their headsets – a constant hum meant they were on the beam, dots told them they were to the left of it and dashes to the right. A sharp “ping” sounded when they crossed the intersecting beams, telling them to drop their load. It was far from comfortable in the cockpit of the Messerschmitt. The crew were seated in tandem, back to back and encumbered in heavy sheepskin flying gear to keep out the cold. They were breathing oxygen from clumsy masks. During the outbound phase of the operation, von Brunden was fully occupied keeping the aircraft on the beam, but Hauser had little to do but keep a sharp lookout for any sign of enemy activity and occasionally retune his radio set. The stars shone brightly in the night sky, but below them nothing was visible through a blanket of thin low cloud. Beneath it, blacked-out Britain slumbered peacefully.
The six intruders were picked up on long-range radar well before they crossed the British coastline. In the darkness they had become quite widely separated but, as they were all on a similar course, it seemed likely that they were heading for the same target in the Midlands. Twelve Beaufighters, among them William’s machine, were scrambled and instructed to orbit a beacon on Salisbury Plain. Soon Magnet had a target for William. This, however, was not like any intruder he had so far encountered. It was flying much higher than the bombers normally assigned to him and it seemed extraordinarily fast. As he climbed towards twenty-five thousand feet, to begin his stalking, he found that instead of closing the range, he was getting gradually further behind. Levelling off, he pushed the throttles forward to the emergency full-speed position. The engines could stand this setting for a maximum of ten minutes. The machine shook and trembled with the extra power and the controls felt heavy, but the speed built up rapidly and Magnet reported the range gradually closing.
At two miles Jimmy got a radar contact.
“He’s dead ahead, skip, slightly below us. We’re gaining on him slowly.”
Three minutes later:
“Five degrees to port, we’re catching him fast now, range five hundred yards.”
William was afraid of overshooting his target. He was still on emergency full power and in a gentle dive, still gaining speed, he eased back the throttle. As he did so there was a loud report from the engines backfiring, and a sheet of flame from each exhaust. It happened that at that moment Hauser, in the Messerschmitt, was looking directly aft. He saw a vivid flash. He could not see what it came from, but he was certain it must be an enemy fighter. “Fighter astern!” he yelled and at the same time fired a burst from his machine gun in the direction of the flash. “What the hell are you doing?” yelled Brunden. “How do you know you’re not firing at one of our own planes?” This had not occurred to Hauser; anyway it seemed that he had missed his target, but for a few brief seconds, confusion reigned in the cockpit.
Hauser’s burst of fire, however, had shown William exactly where to look for the target. Yes, there it was right ahead. He fired a two-second burst. Unfortunately, he had not remembered to correct for the swing of the aircraft as he made his last course alteration, and his shells whizzed past the target. Brunden knew now that Hauser had been right and that he had to get away fast. Jettisoning his bombs, he turned hard, pushed the nose down and made for the cloud layer beneath. As he turned, Jimmy’s radar lost contact but for a critical moment William caught sight of his exhaust flames and followed him down. In normal circumstances the Me 110 could have outrun the Beaufighter but Brunden’s machine was encumbered with the long-range fuel tank. He wove from side to side to try to put off the aim of his pursuer and Hauser kept up intermittent bursts of machine gun fire. In reality a small calibre machine gun was unlikely to do serious damage to a big machine like a Beaufighter but the fire was uncomfortably close and certainly disconcerting. Twice more William fired three second bursts but the swerving enemy was undamaged. Ammunition was beginning to run low. At last the Messerschmitt reached the clouds and disappeared into their welcome downy dampness. Brunden, now, as he thought, invisible, resumed a steady course, still at full speed. Unfortunately for him, he had reckoned without Jimmy’s radar set. Entering the cloud a few seconds after the enemy, William levelled off and swung the nose of the aircraft gently from side to side, hoping to capture the enemy in his beam, like a hound sniffing for scent.
“Got him!”
yelled Jimmy. “Turn to port… more… more… roll out now. Starboard… starboard. That’s it he’s dead ahead range four hundred yards.”
“Can’t see,” said William. “Now don’t lose him, tell me as soon as he turns.”
“Going straight now, skip, running for it I guess.”
The chase continued through the blanket of cloud, Brunden unaware of his pursuer, William unable to see to take a shot.
At last there was a gap in the cloud and a pale moon shone dimly on the wings of the quarry. William finished his ammunition in one short burst. He saw the shells pass below the belly of the Messerschmitt then suddenly the air ahead of him turned brilliant orange. The Beaufighter was hurled upwards and sideways with tremendous force and great chunks of metal whizzed past. William felt the impact of something hitting the lower fuselage and a hail of metal peppered the wing surfaces. Of the Messerschmitt there was no sign at all. A cannon shell had punctured the empty long-range fuel tank, detonating the petrol vapour inside and blowing the machine completely to pieces. No part of the airframe of the Messerschmitt or of its unfortunate crew was ever found, but two massive Vee-12 engines ploughed into the garden of a farmhouse near Coventry, scaring the farmer and his wife half to death. The engines buried themselves deep in the moist, damp soil and rested there, smoking and hissing, until morning. The two bombs buried themselves deep in the ground. They are probably still there.
But the victors had problems of their own. Caught in the blast of the explosion, the Beaufighter reared up, rolled over on one wing, then plunged downwards. William fought to regain control. “For God’s sake, don’t let her spin,” he said to himself. “Gentle control movements, don’t rush.” Thankfully he found that the controls seemed to be undamaged. He could see nothing through the windscreen but he was used to flying entirely on instruments and managed to settle the machine into a controlled dive, but something was wrong. There was no response to the throttles; both engines had quit. Desperately he tried to remember the emergency re-start procedure. The best practice was to call it out aloud so that the navigator could double check: