Hunter Squadron

by Robert Jackson

  She would never forget her first sight of him, dusty and sweating, his RAF uniform dishevelled, standing in the middle of a French road with a small child cradled in one arm, the other raised imperiously to halt the French Army staff car in which she was travelling. She had been a journalist in those days, working at the Paris offices of the New York Globe, and had been visiting the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line when war had erupted on the Western Front. A senior French officer, glad of any excuse to be going in the opposite direction to the fighting, had offered to escort her to safety, but their car had become bogged down in a mass of refugees, panic-stricken after a German strafing attack.

  The Messerschmitts’ bullets had killed the mother of the little girl Yeoman held cradled in his arms when he stopped the car. Julia remembered how, in his halting French, he had asked for a lift to Chalons, to rejoin his squadron, and how the French colonel had flatly refused.

  That had been his mistake, for Yeoman had promptly commandeered the car at pistol-point, regardless of the consequences. From that moment on, his fortunes and Julia’s had been interwined, although — apart from a few brief periods together — the war had kept them apart for five long years. There were some things about Julia Yeoman her husband would never know. He knew, of course, that she had been an agent with the allied Special Operations Executive, and that she had spent terrible months in a Nazi concentration camp before her escape in the closing weeks of the war, but some things were best left unsaid. He would never know, for example, how many men she had killed; he was aware only of the nightmares that sometimes still caused her to wake screaming in the night. But they, too, were becoming less frequent with the passage of time.

  Coming out of her reverie, she turned to speak to Hillier. At that moment, the airfield resounded to a sharp explosion, followed a split second later by another. Julia jumped, startled, and Hillier laughed.

  ‘I think your husband has arrived,’ he said. ‘Look.’

  Julia looked. High above their heads a silvery arrow streaked earthwards in the wake of the sonic boom it had created. Moments later, the screech of its passage reached them, a strident howl of sound separated from the aircraft by a tunnel of sky.

  The Hunter came out of its supersonic dive, decelerating, and arced round the airfield, lining up with the runway. Yeoman began his display with a low, slow flypast, airbrake and landing gear extended, then cleaned up the aircraft and went into a tight aerobatic sequence that brought a buzz of approval from the spectators.

  ‘He hasn’t lost his touch,’ Hillier said. Julia made no comment, although she felt a surge of admiration inside her as her husband brought the Hunter down for an immaculate landing, its wheels kissing the tarmac in a barely perceptible puff of smoke.

  The display ended with a simulated ground attack run by twenty-four Hunters, blazing low across the airfield at high speed. Below them, explosives planted among ‘enemy’ vehicles, taken from a nearby scrapheap, detonated with a series of very satisfying bangs. Four Hastings transports from Abingdon, in Berkshire, dropped sticks of paratroops to mop up the opposition, and the crowds began to drift happily homewards.

  A staff car took Julia and her guest to the commanding officer’s house, a large and imposing building set among poplars some distance away from the rest of the officers’ married quarters. Julia hated it; she had too many fond memories of the cottage she, George and the children had shared in Wiltshire.

  Yeoman was in the shower when his wife and Hillier arrived, washing away the sweat of his aerobatic exertions. A knock at the bathroom door startled him, and the imperious voice of his daughter reached him through the hiss of the water.

  ‘Daddy, mum’s back, and she says you have to hurry up. You’ve got a visitor. And she says don’t dare come down in just your dressing gown.’

  Yeoman laughed. ‘As if I would! All right, tell her I won’t be a minute.’

  He dried himself quickly, then went to the bathroom to slip on a clean shirt, flannels and sports jacket. He made a perfunctory stab at brushing his still-damp hair, proved quite incapable of dealing with an unruly bit at the crown, muttered ‘to hell with it’ and went downstairs, adjusting his tie.

  Julia trapped him in the hall and gave him a long, searching kiss that held a promise of pleasant things to come. Disengaging herself, she said, ‘Our guest is in the lounge, darling. I think he wants a word with you in private. I’m off to sort out what we’re going to have for dinner and keep the kids out of your way. Off you go, now.’

  She gave him a gentle push, propelling him towards the lounge door. He stood on the threshold for a moment, blinking in the golden sunlight that streamed in through the french window. A tall figure stood in silhouette, looking out into the garden. Yeoman, unable to make out who it was, came forward into the room, announcing his arrival with a cough.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said.

  The figure turned to face him, right hand extended.

  ‘Hello, George. You haven’t changed much.’

  ‘Good lord!’ Yeoman, taken aback as recognition dawned, advanced to shake the other’s hand automatically. ‘Of all the people I expected to see, you were the very last, sir. Welcome! How long has it been?’

  ‘Thirteen or fourteen years, I think,’ Hillier said. ‘When you were at Boscombe Down and I was at Staff College.’

  They sat down and looked at one another for a few moments. Hillier lit a cigarette and Yeoman pushed an ashtray towards him.

  ‘George,’ Hillier said, exhaling smoke, ‘this isn’t just a courtesy visit. We might as well get down to brass tacks while Julia’s out of the room. There’s no need for her to hear what I have to say.’

  Yeoman waited, chewing the stem of his unlit pipe. Hillier looked at him reflectively for a moment, then said, ‘Four years ago, you did a very good job in the Middle East. In Muramshir, I mean. Averted what might have become a very tricky political situation in the Gulf.’

  Yeoman still smarted over the episode. In 1956, he had been ordered to Muramshir, a tiny state on the Arabian Gulf, with two squadrons of Venoms, ostensibly to forestall an invasion by a powerful neighbour. They had, in fact, been little more than pawns in a high-level political game of chess; a game that had claimed the lives of several of Yeoman’s pilots before it was ended. With some difficulty, he choked off an acid remark that rose in his throat and said nothing, waiting for what was coming next. Hillier did not keep him in suspense for long.

  ‘Well, to cut a long story short, we’ve got another problem. You know about this business in the Congo, of course.’

  Yeoman nodded. The recent tale of slaughter and atrocity in the former Belgian Congo, with rival tribal factions supported by foreign mercenary armies tearing that part of Africa to pieces, was known throughout the world. United Nations forces, drawn from parts of the globe as widely separated as Ireland and Nepal, were now campaigning to restore and maintain peaceful conditions.

  ‘Yet another example of a former colony being granted independence before it’s ready for it,’ Hillier went on. ‘Fortunately, it’s the Belgians who have been suffering this time, and not ourselves, as happened in Kenya. Nevertheless, we are rather worried about the turn of events. It seems that one particular politician in the new Congolese Republic has been making good use of all the strife to consolidate his position as tribal overlord of a large slice of territory in the north-east of the country.’

  ‘How does he concern us?’ Yeoman asked, taking advantage of a brief pause while Hillier stubbed out his cigarette.

  ‘Because,’ Hillier explained, ‘his territory is right next door to Warambe, where the British Government has a very definite interest. Warambe, you will recall, is a very small state that lies sandwiched between the Congo, Uganda and the Sudan. It supplies seventy per cent of our uranium, and naturally we don’t want anything to interfere with that.’

  ‘And you think this chap has designs on it?’ Yeoman wanted to know.

  ‘Yes, we do. His name, incidentally,
is Nkrombe, and he seems to be quite a shrewd operator. He has surrounded himself with quite a formidable mercenary army, including a small fighter-bomber squadron equipped with F-86 Sabres, obtained from God knows where. We had no idea what was going on until a few days ago, when the Swedes told us.’

  ‘The Swedes?’

  ‘Yes. They form part of the UN peace-keeping force in the Congo,’ Hillier explained, ‘and are supported by a small air component. Until recently this has consisted of a few communications and light transport aircraft, but they’ve now got a couple of SAAB S-29C reconnaissance aircraft. The S-29C is a version of the Swedish J-29 jet fighter and is pretty fast, as well as having a long range. They are normally based at Leopoldville, but about a week ago one of them detached to Tanganyika to take a look at what was going on in the north-eastern part of the Congo. It photographed the area around Kerewata, which is the capital of the region controlled by Nkrombe, and got chased by a pair of F-86s. That was enough to make the Swedes sit up and take notice, because there aren’t supposed to be any F-86s in that part of the world, and when they came to analyse the photographs their pilot brought back they spotted several more Sabres, very carefully camouflaged, on an airstrip near Kerewata. There also appeared, to be quite a bit of military hardware such as armoured cars in the vicinity.

  ‘To cut a long story short,’ Hillier went on, ‘the Swedes recognized a possible threat to our little colony of Warambe, and thought we ought to know about it. The upshot is that we’re sending a couple of battalions of troops to Warambe from Kenya for border protection duties, and a squadron of Hunters to support them.’

  ‘The Hunters will presumably be drawn from the Gulf?’

  Hillier shook his head. ‘No. That’s the problem. The two Hunter squadrons in the Aden Protectorate, Nos. 8 and 208, have their hands full in dealing with dissident tribesmen. The Hunters will have to come from the UK, but that’s already in hand. As you are aware, 74 Squadron at Leuchars has been re-equipping with Lightnings for the past couple of months, and relinquishing its Hunter F6s; these have been flown down to the Hawker Siddeley works at Dunsfold for overhaul and some tropical modifications have been carried out. Eight of them are ready to go at this moment. Which brings me to my next question.’

  ‘I think I know what it’s going to be, sir,’ Yeoman said resignedly. ‘But do go on.’

  ‘I want you to leave for Dunsfold tomorrow, George,’ Hillier told him, ‘and furthermore I want you and the Hunters to be en route for Warambe the next day. Your pilots have already been selected and the necessary clearances obtained. You’ll be briefed more fully at Dunsfold by someone who is an old acquaintance of yours, or so I believe; a retired Air Commodore called Sampson. As I’m now involved in 2nd TAF Operations, he thought it only right that I should be the one to tell you. Didn’t want to poach on my preserve, so to speak.’

  Yeoman’s heart was somewhere down in his shoes. Ten years ago he would have revelled in this sort of challenge; five years ago, even. But not any more.

  ‘Why me?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Oh, come along, George,’ said Hillier testily. ‘You’re one of the most experienced combat leaders in the Service and certainly one with a lot of experience of special operations. You’ve liaised successfully with ground forces in Malaya and the Middle East; you know the ropes from every angle. You were the natural choice for this operation.’

  ‘But I’m needed here,’ Yeoman protested. ‘We’ve a NATO air defence exercise coming up in a fortnight, and — ’

  Hillier cut him short. ‘Your deputy can handle all that,’ he said firmly. ‘Wing Commander Roper is highly competent, and it will do him the world of good to step into your shoes for a while. Besides, we don’t expect this present emergency to last for more than a few weeks; once the UN forces have established order in the central Congo they’ll move up into the north-east, and that will be that.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t seem as though I have a great deal of choice,’ Yeoman said. ‘Let me get you a drink. I could certainly use one. And then I’d better go and break the news to Julia. She isn’t going to be at all happy about this.’

  But fifteen years as a Service wife had conditioned Julia Yeoman into accepting whatever came her way without too much fuss. Yeoman came to her in the kitchen and, with his arms around her, quietly told her as much as he knew.

  She managed a smile that was far braver than she felt.

  ‘All right, George,’ she said. ‘We’d better make the most of tonight, then, hadn’t we?’

  And they did.

  Chapter Two

  THE ROUTE HAD BEEN CAREFULLY PLANNED. THE EIGHT Hunters would fly in pairs, with a fifteen-minute interval between each one, the first leg taking them from Dunsfold to Istres, in southern France. From there they would stage through Malta to El Adem in Libya, where they would top up their tanks for the long haul across the Sahara to Fort Lamy, in Chad. From here they could reach Warambe in one hop.

  ‘We’ll have to watch our navigation on this last leg,’ Yeoman told his assembled pilots when he briefed them in a small room that had been set aside for the purpose at Dunsfold. ‘The strip we’ll be operating from in Warambe has only recently been completed, and as yet there are no radio aids. Moreover, it has been cut out of the jungle and is surrounded by mountains. If we find landing conditions impossible when we arrive overhead, we shall divert to Entebbe, in Uganda. On the outward flight we shall be preceded by a Hastings aircraft, which will drop off ground support parties at our various staging points, and another will follow us to pick them up again. Our spares, ammunition and so on are being flown down from Eastleigh, in Kenya.’

  Yeoman looked at the pilots who sat in front of him in a semi-circle, scribbling scraps of information on the Perspex knee-pads of their flying overalls, and realized with a sudden shock that some of them were twenty years his junior. There were two exceptions; Squadron Leader Norman Bright and Flight Lieutenant Neil Hart, both Hunter men from 2 TAF in Germany, were in their thirties. Bright, a small, balding man who never drank alcohol — as Yeoman had discovered in the bar during the previous evening — had flown Sabres in Korea, on exchange with the USAF, and was very experienced. He would be a valuable deputy.

  Yeoman completed his briefing and handed over to Air Commodore Sampson, who had been listening to the proceedings from a place in the corner. No-one but Yeoman knew who the grey-haired, slightly stooped man in civilian clothes really was, but his knowledge of the forthcoming operation was thorough and impressive, and left the pilots in no doubt that he was a person of considerable importance.

  Yeoman’s own involvement with Sampson went back as far as 1944, when the air commodore had been in charge of an Air Ministry department responsible for special operations. Yeoman had commanded a Mosquito squadron within the RAF’S NO. 100 Group, and had been assigned special — and usually highly dangerous — targets by Sampson’s people. Their paths had crossed several times since then, most recently in the Muramshir affair of 1956.

  Sampson’s job now was to brief the pilots on the political situation in the Congo as far as it affected Warambe, and to answer whatever questions they might have. Predictably, they wanted to know the kind of opposition they might expect if they had to go into action.

  ‘Nkrombe has assembled an air arm,’ Sampson explained, ‘consisting of about ten or twelve Sabres. That’s more jet fighters than the United Nations have in the whole of the Congo. They are flown, as far as we can tell, by mercenaries, which means that some of them will probably be very good. Our Intelligence people are now at work trying to establish the identities of at least some of them, but it’s not an easy task. However, we don’t think that any former RAF personnel are involved, so at least that should give you a bit of an advantage.’

  The remark produced some grins, but some of the pilots were wondering how the Hunter would fare in combat against an expertly-flown Sabre. So far, it had never been put to the test. Norman Bright had seen how the American jet fighter had perfo
rmed against the Russian-built MiG-15 in Korea at first hand, and had come away impressed; it all depended on whether Nkrombe’s jets were early-model F-86A Sabres or later F-86Fs, which could meet the Hunter Mk6 on more or less equal terms.

  Despite his earlier misgivings, Yeoman was now quite beginning to look forward to the African adventure. He was in command of a first-class bunch of pilots and superb aircraft, and this time, Sampson had assured him, there would be no repetition of the Muramshir fiasco. The orders of the air and ground forces assigned to Yeoman’s command were quite simple: to assure the security of Warambean territory in the event of any hostile moves from across the border.

  Shortly before take-off, which was scheduled for 1000 hours, Sampson took Yeoman to one side.

  ‘They tell me you’re thinking of taking an early retirement,’ he said quietly.

  Yeoman was startled. As far as he knew, he had not voiced his innermost thoughts on the matter to anyone except Julia. He must, he told himself, have dropped a chance remark at some stage, and wondered how it had got back to Sampson.

  ‘It had crossed my mind,’ Yeoman told him.

  Sampson looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Then what will you do with yourself?’ he asked.

  Yeoman smiled at him. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all, at least not for quite a while. I intend to walk the Yorkshire Dales, and fish, and generally lead the life of a gentleman of leisure for some time.’

  ‘And grow roses, I suppose?’ The question was slightly cynical, and Yeoman laughed. ‘Oh, no, to hell with that. I never was a gardener. That’s Julia’s province.’

  ‘Well,’ Sampson said, ‘when you’ve had enough of your walking and fishing, we might find something else for you to do. I’m looking for somebody to step into my shoes. Civil Service pay’s not too bad, on top of your pension, and there’s the odd bit of excitement. Think about it.’