The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots

by Jon E. Lewis

  The Englishman might well have been thinking somewhat similar thoughts, but he too had found himself unable to solve this problem and so perhaps had let it rest. At that, as he looked up, they raised their glasses to him. And subsequently there slowly developed between him and the German General an intimate discussion about fights experienced in common, told after the usual manner of fighter pilots – the sort of conversation only good friends can have.

  That same evening the guest had asked if his reserve legs could be sent across from England, and a few hours afterwards a British radio operator was holding the message in his hands – the Germans had offered an escort at a pre-arranged time, at a specified point where the legs could be dropped by parachute. But over there they didn’t seem to trust “the Jerries” very much, for next day the Germans received a message to the effect that the legs had been dropped at a different time and in another area.

  Our close attention had rewarded the Major for his narrative. I had quite recently heard more about the remarkable R.A.F. officer who continuously encouraged his companions in the prisoner-of-war camps to escape. He had finally got away himself, and it was even suggested our General had given him encouragement in doing so: at any rate the former had sworn heartily when he heard the British party had been recaptured.

  As the last words of the narrator died away a disconcerted silence settled over the company. Few of my fellow pilots had known that memorable fireside circle at the Château of St Omer: the others were no longer living. It was not surprising we were silent.

  The Kommandeur rose to his feet.

  “Kameraden! The Abbeville boys come, do their duty and go. They follow the example of their fallen friends with all that they have in them. These friends have bequeathed to us their knightly spirit. May every one of us carry this spirit in him, and hand it on even when the enemy wins a victory. To the health of all true knights!”

  Subdued strains of jazz could be heard from the next room, I thought to myself – in every age there’ll always be knights.

  Late that evening, with glasses of brandy in our hands, Ulrich and I received orders to take off at first light from a small airfield north of Abbeville. This field lay at the edge of the Forest of Crécy, and was one of those which the English had used during the First World War. From it we were to intercept two Spitfires which used to fly over from Biggin Hill each morning at the same time and patrol along the coast. A reconnaisance at daylight from the English point of view was a small risk, comparable to that which defence against such early risers presented to us. But the Tommies didn’t believe we ever sat ready in our aircraft at this hour, and we counted on this. For this reason both we and the English used to let a learner go out on these operations, a “guinea-pig” so to speak, this being the quickest way of giving him his baptism of fire.

  And now I was the guinea-pig. It was striking six when I put my right leg out of bed. In an hour’s time someone would be shooting at me and I would perhaps be training my guns for the first time on a human being.

  I took things as they came, as millions had done before me, trying to banish all such thoughts from my mind. I looked at my “new” aircraft: perhaps I should soon be lying in the ground in company with it. But really it was so old one could almost attribute to it a consciousness and experience of its own; some people even maintained it could fly without a pilot and shoot down an enemy aircraft of its own accord. I put on my dressing-gown.

  That moment there came the order: “Tommies close off the mouth of the Somme. Take off at once!”

  The Englishmen would certainly not have spent last night drinking brandy! I ran to my machine. Ulrich, too, with puffy eyes and in pyjamas was hurrying to his aircraft. As the engine revved up someone threw a life-jacket round me and someone else fastened my parachute harness and belt.

  Full throttle! As I left the ground and swept low over the tree tops of the Forest of Crécy beside Ulrich, I put on my helmet and goggles with my left hand, adjusted the R/T pads around my neck, retracted the under-carriage, raised the flaps, set the trimmer and made the innumerable small manual adjustments which were required.

  We were already over the sea, with a visibility of barely a thousand metres. Then, through the grey, damp morning mist, the two Spitfires were all at once rushing towards us. To wrench the stick round, sight, turn, aim and fire was a matter of seconds in which body and brain acted with automatic precision – a mechanical reaction for which I had prepared myself for two years, against a target which I now hit quite without conscious volition or regard to the consequences. The enemy crumpled under my fire. Victory! A transport of happiness and pride possessed me, from which it took me a moment to recover. Finally I turned my aircraft and looked round with anxious eyes for Ulrich. Far astern, guns were sparkling in the clear sky over the mainland: the adversaries pursuing one another in a series of steep, tight turns. Before I could help, a small white mushroom unfolded, and slowly sank towards the earth. Ulrich’s aircraft spun into a wood, and the Tommy flew on his way.

  I circled low over my friend, whose pyjamas were flapping in the breeze. Ulrich waved to me, seemingly unhurt. He had scarcely landed in a small meadow when from all directions gallant infantrymen with rifles at the ready came hurrying to take him prisoner. They had obviously mistaken him for the defeated enemy and me for the victorious German. For the first time since the fight I actually began to laugh – Ulrich, the “captured Tommy” was standing down there in his pyjamas with his hands above his head!

  I had too much to attend to in my machine to watch this spectacle for long, but I saw them taking Ulrich away, and I had already flown a good part of the journey home when I looked round again. To my horror I saw another aircraft on my quarter, apparently almost within touching distance. Just as well it wasn’t a Tommy. The unknown pilot put his hand to his helmet, and I returned his salute. The other was smiling all over his face.

  “Good morning, old man,” came through my earphones. I looked again, more closely.

  “Werner, hallo Werner!”

  I had to look ahead again, but now I understood. Werner had baled out yesterday near St Omer and was now flying a new machine back to Abbeville. I looked across at him again – he was staring before him and spoke without turning his head.

  “Are you landing at Abbeville?”

  “Can’t very well. Look at this!” I lifted the skirt of my dressing-gown to the window of the cockpit. It was a little while before Werner understood.

  “Good show,” he laughed. I didn’t know whether he meant my dressing-gown, Ulrich’s pyjamas or this strange reunion. And when, a few minutes later, I dropped away over Crécy and we waved to each other again it was as though a few days only had passed, instead of five long years, since we had last seen one another.

  That welcome night brought to an end what had been a difficult day. I lay awake and thought of the daylight hours just passed. They had been commonplace for many, decisive for some. Today, as for many years past, death and mourning, victory and ecstasy had been arbitrarily apportioned among us. Friend and foe alike had been under the same illusion as they said their prayers, of supplication or gratitude, hurriedly, humbly or proudly, each one wishing only to love the good and to hate evil. And we too belonged to that company.

  From time to time we openly recognised the meaninglessness of this existence. More often we simply sensed it. But, at moments like these, what could our disgust alone do against the links of this fateful chain made up of our own bodies and souls, dragging us all along? Good motives there were – here as well as “over there” – our own country, our own wives and children at home must be protected as stoutly as those on the other side. We young men were incapable of comprehending the meaning of it all. Fate plunged onwards down its ordained path, and however we might try to protect ourselves it struck us exactly as it pleased. I couldn’t block its way; and you – you who had wanted to kill me early in the morning – you couldn’t do so either. Tommy, if you still live, are you perhaps drinking
at this moment in some bar in the West End? Or perhaps you’re in some quiet corner, grieving over one of your own friends or squadron mates who died in the early morning; perhaps you’re writing at this moment to his parents or his fiancée, who, still cheerful, have as yet no idea what has happened? Tommy, I know you would do that, just as I should.

  How joyfully I grasped my comrades’ hands! I jumped beaming from the cockpit, while a soul went up from the still warm body of a man I had killed. How proud I had still been in the time before the bell tolled for him whom I had shot.

  The day passed in jollity, dancing and girls’ laughter. I wanted to forget the morning, to wipe the vision of blood and shining roundels from before my eyes. Now the silent night lay over all. I was very tired, but I couldn’t sleep. Agonising thoughts still passed through my head. Did every soldier experience this feeling when he had killed a man for the first time?

  I listened to Ulrich’s quiet breathing. Perhaps he would laugh if I asked him about it.

  “You could have saved yourself the last burst!” he had said smilingly, not ironically or frivolously, and certainly not sadly. I could see it still, the Tommy in his Spitfire hovering in the air close in front of me. I have no idea whether I have hit him. But I fire – for whole seconds in my excitement. Then we go into turns, the tightest possible turns. It seems any moment I must go into a spin. The rough sea spray is scarcely a hundred metres below me, and we are far out from the shore. I am still lying not quite right astern of the enemy, and the correct deflection for hitting him has not yet been reached. Nerves are stretched to the uttermost. My quarry hauls his machine all of a sudden right round in front of me, so that heavy vapour-trails appear in the sky. I react instantaneously and take a chance between crashing the aircraft and getting the final ounce out of it. Heaving the stick towards me with both hands, for the fraction of a second I achieved the correct firing-angle. My index-finger shifts by a millimetre on the triggers of my guns, and the burst flashes into the enemy’s fuselage.

  He plunges almost vertically, but regains control just above the surface with desperate strength, and climbs steeply – mortally hit. I see him struggling to get out – he wants to jump, He’s like a hunted quarry during any such chase and I feel with him – pray feverishly for him.

  There she goes! The damaged aircraft’s climbing vertically in front of me in its last convulsion, the great roundels on the wings standing out bright and hostile – filling me only with horror. In the seconds which decide a man’s life my finger again crooks automatically one millimetre – and the burst streaks redly out! – I shudder. It shouldn’t have happened, it wasn’t necessary. But I can’t bring those deadly jewels back; it’s done now.

  “Jump! man, jump!” I shouted aloud in despair. Instead I see him bathed in the red of his own blood; his body strains half over the side to hang there, mutilated. Then the waves close over him. . . .

  Perhaps it was only the trembling of my finger that brought death to that man? I didn’t know. But again it came to me – how fate goes its own way and strikes us down as it pleases. I couldn’t stop it, and nor could you – whoever you may have been.

  I turned over on my pillow and reached for the reading-lamp and the cigarettes. For a long while I gazed meditatively at the pictures of my parents. Perhaps tomorrow they would be weeping for me.

  “Still awake?” Ulrich asked softly, although he knew well I wasn’t sleeping. He too was staring at the ceiling. “What are you thinking about?”

  “What am I thinking about. . . .” I repeated, rather at a loss. It was a difficult question; as a soldier I had had to forget how to talk from the heart. But it was easier to talk lying there gazing upwards – you can speak so much more easily and naturally to the ceiling.

  “What am I thinking about, Ulrich? The Tommy of this morning,” I confessed. “It simply wasn’t necessary. Why didn’t the man jump before he did?”

  “You must forget it,” Ulrich replied. “One gets used to anything, including shooting people down . . . but even so, war’s a pretty bloody business.” We were silent. “But, you know,” he began again after a pause, “it’s a great deal bloodier for someone like me who does it all without any real conviction.”

  Nothing more was said. I don’t know how long we lay there with our eyes open, and the light was still burning when the dawn woke us.

  THE STRAITS OF MESSINA

  JOHANNES STEINHOFF

  A veteran of the Battles of Britain and Stalingrad, Steinhoff assumed command of Jagdgeschwader 77 (77th Fighter Group) in 1943, shortly before its withdrawal from Tunisia in the face of Allied victory there. The evacuation was carried out in dramatic fashion, with Group pilots carrying mechanics in the fuselage of their Messerschmitt 109s over the sea to Sicily. The Jagdgeschawder 11 found little peace in Sicily, however, for on 10 July 1943 the Allied invasion of Sicily began. Here is an extract from Steinhoff ‘s diary of 12 July, 77’s last day on the island. It was a turning point of the war for Steinhoff, the moment at which he understood that the Luftwaffe had “been assigned a task which was incapable of execution”‘. It was also the selfsame day that Goering issued his infamous order to the fighter pilots of the Second Air Force demanding “an immediate improvement in fighting spirit”. This blithely ignored the real reason for Luftwaffe fighter arm’s lack of success – which is that German aircraft were generally unable to match the speed and armament of Allied planes.

  The remorseless jangling of the telephone dragged me from my sleep. The noise was unpleasantly loud and in a daze I felt for the receiver in the darkness.

  “Teleprint from Air Corps, sir. We made contact at midnight but we’ve lost it again now. Shall I read it out?”

  “Wait a moment. I’ll have to turn the light on.”

  I looked for the switch in the dark, but when at last I found it, I turned it in vain. There was no current. Eventually I managed to find some matches with which to light the candle stump on the plate beside my camp-bed. My movements were slow, for I was unspeakably tired. As I lay down again in my sweat-soaked pyjamas and picked up the receiver my limbs felt heavy as lead.

  “Will you read it out, please.”

  In expressionless tones the teleprinter operator, a leading aircraftsman, began to read: “ ‘To the Second Air Force. Together with the fighter pilots in France, Norway and Russia, I can only regard you with contempt. I want an immediate improvement in fighting spirit. If this improvement is not forthcoming, flying personnel from the commander down must expect to be remanded to the ranks and transferred to the eastern front to serve on the ground. Göring, Reichsmarschall’ . . . Are you still there, sir?”

  “Yes, thank you. Will you bring it over to the ops room.”

  As I replaced the receiver, the airman gave the three short rings prescribed by regulations. Then the room was deathly still. The candle’s flickering flame cast grotesque, dancing shadows on the walls. All at once I could hear my own breathing. I held my breath and remained quite motionless. Everywhere in this small house people were wrapped in soothing sleep, wholly unaware of this fresh insult. As yet the air-craftsman on the teleprinter and I were the only people here to know of the strictures passed by the most senior officer in the Luftwaffe. I tried to imagine what the man on the other end of the line looked like, for I must have seen him often enough. Perhaps he had been a schoolmaster in civilian life; he might even be old enough to be my father. All at once I was conscious of a strange bond between this invisible airman and myself.

  But the mood passed quickly, thrust aside by the realization of the sheer brutality of the unbelievable message I had just heard. What ought I to do about the signal? Ought I to read it out in front of a muster parade? But if I were to appear before them and talk about “fighting spirit” they would look at me in mute reproach. Their expressions would tell me that my duty as a C.O. was to spare them such phrases.

  So this was what had come of our general’s efforts to save us from court martial. Fighting spirit indeed! In a
n hour’s time another day would begin and with it yet another feat of improvisation such as had been demanded of us every single day since our return to Sicily. With what we could scrape together of the remnants of the group, we would fly along the north coast and over Etna’s crater towards the Straits of Messina where we would fling ourselves at the Flying Fortresses in a series of uncoordinated attacks. Our numbers were so few that we would do little damage, and even that little depended upon our breaking through to the bombers.

  Afterwards we would land in Gerbini if the airfield was still usable, or else at Catania. We would refuel our aircraft by hand-pump, rearm and top up with oil. We would leap into slit trenches and shelters and wait for the bomb carpets to unroll over us. And then we would crawl out again, haul the wrecked aircraft to one side, repair any minor damage and, provided we still had enough machines to make up a modest formation, take off on the next patrol. This was what all these men had had to go on doing day after day. And now I was expected to talk to them about fighting spirit!

  I doubted whether we would be able to hold out in Trapani for the remainder of the day. The bombers appeared without warning since they came in too low to be picked up by our direction finders. Flying in close formation, they had been showering down bombs on the airfield until it resembled a lunar landscape. The advanced landing ground near Corleone would therefore have to be our last refuge. Up to now, however, it had been nothing more than a long field covered with yellow wheat stubbled and marked out with whitewashed stone slabs.