Howard’s answered him handsomely. It almost pirouetted on a wingtip and his attacker had to turn savagely to try to catch him in his sights again. Blood drained from Howard’s brain and he verged on blacking out, but he held the turn until he had gone three-quarters of the way around a circle. When he eased out, a Dornier 17 bomber was three hundred yards at eleven-o’clock and five hundred feet below.
Profiting by the experiences of the Hurricane squadrons that had been sent to France in 1939 and done more fighting, by May 1940, than the home-based ones, Fighter Command had dropped the Dowding spread in June 1940 and guns were harmonised at 250 or 300 yards.
Diving to attack to the Do 17, Howard glimpsed Me109s on either side of him. The bomber had two rearward-firing guns: one in a belly hatch and the other in a dorsal turret. The latter began firing while the Spitfire was out of range. Howard tried a short bust of cannon and the tracer from the Dornier ceased at once. He saw shards of shattered perspex glinting in the sunlight. Closing, and firing his cannon and machineguns at the port engine, he saw a pulped and bloody mess in the dorsal gunner’s seat as he passed within a few yards. Flames and smoke came spurting and belching from the engine. The port wing dropped. Another Spitfire, in Howard’s mirror, following close behind him, put the starboard engine out of action. The Dornier’s nose dropped and it began to glide towards the hopfields below.
Howard held his dive before pulling up beneath another Dornier in a gentle climb. Its belly gun was shooting but he snaked from left to right and saw its tracer flit past harmlessly. He fired at the bomb bays and instinctively banked away to the right. The bombs detonated with a roar like a volcano erupting. A shock wave of torrid air struck the Spitfire, thrust it into a vertical bank and hurled it simultaneously far off course.
A quick roll brought Howard the right way up again and he was instantly assailed by three 109s, one on his right and the other two on his left. Tracer crisscrossed close in front of him. He made a flat, skidding turn to the left. He felt thuds on the armour plate behind his back. He banked and made a tight turn. One of the 109s came into his sights and he gave it a long burst with all his guns. His incendiary bullets made orange splashes along the tail of the 109 and he altered his aim so that it flew into his fire. He saw flames lick out of the engine cowling and the pilot immediately inverted, to drop clear before his whole cockpit became enveloped in smoking flames.
Another bomber was within range. Howard aimed at it. His guns made the dreaded sound that indicated empty ammunition boxes and magazines. Two Me109s were turning close beneath him for a belly shot. He pulled the stick back, gave the engine more boost and soared away.
I’d have had to try something else in a Hurricane, he reflected. In a few seconds the 109s were mere specks in his mirror. It was a joyous moment.
But that had been nearly two years ago and although the old delight in finding out for the first time the superb qualities of the Spitfire had come back vividly, he was not returning home victorious with two and a half kills this time.
There was no joy at all in the present moment.
He could see Monkston clearly and it was time to call the control tower for permission to join the circuit. Everyone on the squadron who was not flying, and all the ground crews at dispersals, would be waiting and watching for his return.
So would Group Captain Northam, by now.
Eight
He made a good landing, which was not to be taken for granted even by a pilot with 1,500 flying hours logged. Badly shaken in a fight; concussed perhaps, and eyesight unfocused; caught by a freakish gust of wind a few feet above the ground; a suddenly unresponsive control or sticky throttle: many causes apart from the ubiquitous and universally blamed gremlins could spoil a touchdown after a perfect approach.
These misfortunes seemed usually to befall under the eyes of some spectator whom the pilot would least like to witness them.
Howard saw the blue-grey Hillman staff car with a group captain’s pennant hardly fluttering on the offside mudguard in the light breeze. He saw Squadron Leader Kennard and Bisto, Flight Lieutenant James Lambert, the elegant, standing near it. He saw all the other pilots of his own flight, save the late ... the very late ... Flying Officer Agony Payne. They stood on the grass outside the squadron’s dispersal hut, intent on him.
Coming over the boundary fence, he had observed that pilots of the two other squadrons of the Monkston Wing were watching for him also.
The front doors of the station commander’s car opened as Howard climbed down from his cockpit. Northam emerged from one. From the other an unfamiliar dapper figure with the three rings of a wing commander on his cuffs got out. The wing leader had been on leave, but recalled to meet his new master. Howard knew Wing Commander Reid only by name and reputation: a pre-war member of the Auxiliary Air Force and, before that, the Oxford University Air Squadron. A barrister on the threshold of his career when war interrupted it: almost briefless but certainly not penniless. Ample private means were a requisite for membership of some Auxiliary squadrons, and Reid’s was one of them. He had won a D.F.C. and bar and was well spoken of.
When Kennard had told Howard whom their wing leader was, Howard had hoped, without saying so, that Bunny Reid - he had prominent rabbity teeth - would be able to contain and restrain the new “station master’s” more offensive personality defects. Seeing how short and slight Reid was, he wondered at once whether he too was bumptious, and over-assertive to compensate for his lack of height. Then he recalled that Reid was a bold and well-liked gentleman rider with two Grand National finishes to his credit. G.Rs were not commonly offensive, bumptiousness was swiftly corrected in the jockeys’ room; and he had no need to be self-assertive: his record over the jumps, and, now, in the air, made that quite unnecessary.
Kennard and Lambert came quickly forward, both grave-faced: Bisto Lambert, though, with his usual detached air, as if worse things happened at sea and there was no point in making a song and dance even if your wings suddenly folded in a dive.
Kennard asked “What happened, Boost?”
“We were jumped by four One-Nineties as we tallyhoed on a One-O-Nine that was stooging along near Reigate. My guns jammed and Agger got the chop.”
“I know that: I’ve been talking to Ops. But what happened?”
“Yes, Howard, what happened?”
Howard looked lip with a start. The passage of time had not mellowed Northam’s harsh voice or softened his marmoreal stare.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
Northam returned no greeting. “What happened?”
“We took the bait, sir ... a stooging One-O-Nine, apparently in trouble ... four One-Nineties appeared from nowhere ...”
“Nowhere!” If group captains, even one like Northam, didn’t scoff, his tone verged on it. “And your Number Two was shot down?”
“Blown up, actually, sir,” Howard said quietly. He looked at Reid. “Good afternoon, sir.”
Reid stepped past the station commander and shook hands. There was neither censure nor contempt, and not even much gravity, in his voice or expression. “Hello, Howard. We haven’t met, have we?”
“No, sir.”
“I think my squadron flew in to Manston last year just as yours flew out.” It was a friendly overture.
“So I believe, sir.” Howard’s words sounded easy and unstressed. Relief had come to his taut nerves as soon as Reid acknowledged him.
Northam said “Aircraft don’t appear from nowhere, Howard. Were they hidden by cloud?”
“No, sir. Apparently they weren’t plotted, sir.”
“And the controller was as surprised as you were?” The tone of voice that in a junior officer would have been described as jeering was present again.
“Hardly, sir: not on the deck and protected by several feet of concrete.” Sector Ops Rooms were strongly built. Howard’s retort sounded polite and well-disciplined enough, but the implication - and perhaps the mild insubordination - tickled Reid. Being surprised and outnu
mbered at 20,000 ft was very different from being shocked in a bunker.
Reid uttered a short laugh. “The controller was the first to say so. He’s fired rockets in all directions, wanting to know why R.D.F. didn’t pick them up.” Radio direction finding, the old name for radar, was still in common use.
“Payne’s guns didn’t jam?” Northam asked.
“No, sir. All mine did, but when I tried them again at ten thousand feet, my Brownings fired a few rounds ... not the twenty-mils, though.”
“Let me know what the armourers report, Kennard.” Northam turned away without waiting for an acknowledgment. He paused and glared at Howard. “Just like 1941, isn’t it?”
“I’ll hang on, sir, if you don’t need me,” Reid said. He looked at Kennard. “You don’t mind giving me a lift, do you, Bobby?”
“I’ll send someone to fetch your own car, if you like, sir.
“Oh, would you do that? Thanks awf’ly.” Reid gave Howard a friendly look. “The Spy’s all agog to get your combat report. Mind if I listen?”
The squadron Intelligence officer, a keen-faced former schoolmaster, looked pleased and cleared his throat preparatory to firing questions. He walked with Howard, the wing commander, Kennard and Lambert to the hut. The armourer sergeant himself was at work with one of his minions on Howard’s aircraft.
Howard was thankful that Reid’s interruption had saved him the necessity to reply to ... to retort to ... Northam’s unkind parting shot; his jibe, in fact.
He had caught the quick frown of incomprehension on Reid’s face. He quailed more than a little as he wondered what Northam had already said to Reid about him and would say later.
What had happened to Payne and to him was not like 1941; except that they had been outnumbered and Payne shot down, dead.
While he tried to concentrate on his combat report and the I.O., half his mind was preoccupied with reminiscence.
The malicious detachment to the Gladiator squadron that was going to Norway was not his only grudge against the group captain.
***
Soon after the Battle of Britain, some of the most successful fighter pilots commanding fighter squadrons had been promoted to fill a newly created post: wing leader.
There were heroic and distinguished names among them: Sailor Malan, Douglas Bader, Robert Stanford Tuck. One or two postings went to officers who already held the rank of wing commander but were not necessarily among the top-scoring fighter boys. Among these was Wing Commander Northam.
He had assiduously taken part in sorties over France at Dunkirk time and in the defence of England during the heaviest of the enemy bombing raids. On several occasions he had put himself at the head of the two squadrons on his station when they were ordered up together. He could therefore fairly claim to have performed as a wing leader before the role was officially established.
His leadership and courage had been recognised by a D.S.O. and D.F.C., and even Howard could not deny that he had earned them.
It was no pleasure, however, when Northam turned up as wing leader at the station near London, commanded by a group captain, where Northam’s squadron and two others were based.
In the autumn of 1940, the fighter wings began to harry the enemy by day with three types of offensive operation. There were sweeps, when one, two or three wings, comprising a total of 36, 72 or 108 aircraft, flaunted themselves over German-occupied France in a challenge to the Luftwaffe to come up and fight. There were Circuses when a small number of Blenheims, usually twelve, would bomb airfields or other targets, escorted by two, three or even more fighter wings. The object was to lure the German fighters up to try to prevent the Blenheims from reaching their targets. Finally there were Rhubarbs, which were flown at low level. On these, a pair, a trio or a foursome of fighters would strafe targets such as gasometers, railway locomotives, vehicle parks, airfields, factories. Sometimes the target was selected in advance, sometimes the aircraft took off with no particular objective and attacked whatever they happened to see: such as a road convoy, a train, barges or small ships.
By the middle of 1941, such operations had reached a high intensity. They were also incurring heavy casualties among the fighter pilots of both the R.A.F. and the Luftwaffe. For the former, there was flak to evade as well as the Me109s; when the latter accepted the Spitfires’ challenge, they came up in greater strength than the challengers.
Howard, his mind, body and nerves already warning him of excessive stress, looked back a year later with perfect recall. There had been a morning of unimpaired visibility and high cloud, a few mares’ tails of cirrus only, when the wing formed one-third of the escort for nine Blenheims on a Circus over the pas de Calais. The three wings had, as they so often did, made a rendezvous over Beachy Head. To escape detection by German radar, they stayed low.
Flying low in such numbers was nerve-racking in itself because of the collision risk; which was aggravated by the whirling slipstreams of 108 aeroplanes.
Northam’s wing, with Howard’s squadron at the rear, flew at the bottom of the stack, orbiting clockwise. Close above them was a wing in which two of the squadrons were Polish. This lot arrived at full pelt, seemed to expect everyone else to keep out of their way, and roared into their ordained anti-clockwise orbit apparently oblivious of them. The top layer circled clockwise, also with very little separation between them and the Poles and the seemingly equally regardless British squadron. The latter, in fact, numbered Frenchmen, Czechs and Canadians among it.
This was not the first time that Howard had found himself in a closely packed formation hurtling round in opposite directions. Nor was it his first experience of Polish dash and recklessness. But this morning he was feeling jaded and had slept badly. He was more concerned with going on seven days’ leave the following day than with the task in hand. He found himself as frightened of this maelstrom of noise and disturbed air and the blurred shapes of other Spitfires racing past unpleasantly close as he had ever been of bullets.
This preliminary was bad, and there was another nasty moment when the Circus neared the French coast. German radar had been much improved in the past year and the Blenheims and Spitfires met flak when they were still over the sea.
Then came the enemy fighters: Me109s: what else? Howard saw them with the habitual resignation of the seasoned fighter pilot. “Here come the bastards again” had been the stoical reaction of everyone in 1940 when Hitler was poised to invade. And here, over France, came the bastards yet once more.
Flying close to the Blenheims, Howard prepared for the familiar attack: a dive onto the bombers and their close escort, prolonged after the first pass to dive below them and zoom up for a belly shot. The scout pilots of the Great War had originated the technique and it had been found once again to be the best in this one.
The 109s were up-sun and ready for the Circus. For a moment Howard was reminded of a propaganda film he had seen recently in the local cinema. He had a mental image of a spy passing on, by carrier pigeon or clandestine radio, warning of the intended operation: based on careless talk by pilots heard in a pub.
How the brutes knew what was coming didn’t matter. There they were and he was feeling dull and listless.
The 36 Spits on close escort were outnumbered two to one. Each Blenheim also had two 109s to contend with. The Blenheim gunners put up a web of mutually supporting fire from their twin-gun dorsal turrets. The enemy replied with shells from their 20 mm cannon, which were effective at a greater range than the air gunners’ .303 bullets.
Two Blenheims fell out of formation: one with smoke pouring from both engines, the other with no sign of damage; obviously the pilot had been killed. The dorsal turrets of both were destroyed and Howard reflected fleetingly that the way people talked of air gunners being scraped out of their turrets when their aircraft landed after engagement with fighters was no exaggeration.
He broke to tackle one of the Messerschmitts before it could come within shooting distance of a Blenheim. It raced away from him as he
tried to close. Astonished, he chose another. Watching it, he could see two Spitfires going down in flames. The 109s that had dived through the formation were climbing faster than he had ever seen one climb.
His second target pulled away from him almost as though he were flying a Hurricane, not a Mk V Spit.
Bullets somewhere behind him swung his aircraft off course. A 109 had appeared in his mirror from what had been, only two seconds before, a clear patch of sky. He aileron turned out of the way of its guns and then banked back to position himself for a quarter shot as it passed. Before he could shoot, more bullets thudded into his aircraft and he saw holes in one wing. But where the hell had that one appeared from?
He skidded aside, dived to increase speed, and saw a 109 climbing below and ahead of him. He made a couple of quick movements of hands and feet to bring his reflector sight onto it, then fired. He saw strikes along its fuselage, just forward of the cockpit, but in a split second the target was outside his sight’s span and although he turned with it, it tore away as the others had done.
There were only five Blenheims left and another two Spitfires were going down trailing smoke. There were some parachutes around. Three 109s were falling: two on fire.
He was startled by tracer close overhead and on one side. He turned hard to dodge it. Two 109s were trying to shoot him down. He held his turn, inside theirs. Once, he throttled back and upset their calculations. This gave him the chance to loose off a long burst at one and it at once quitted the scene with smoke creeping out of its engine.
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