Malta Victory

by Robert Jackson

  On his last day they had walked north from St. Paul’s Bay to Mistra, and from there had ascended the dizzy, winding road to Mellieha. There, standing beside the Chapel of Our Lady of Mellieha, they had looked out in silence over the great sweep of Mellieha Bay, and Lucia had quietly told Yeoman the poignant tale of a young woman, the greatest beauty on the island, who had lived near here. They had called her II Warda Bajda, the White Rose, and artists from far and wide had visited Mellieha, clamouring to paint her portrait. She had always refused, being a modest, retiring girl, and when she died at a tragically early age her beauty had passed into legend.

  There had been a strange, unreal quality about those hours spent with Lucia, as though they had been on a different plane, even though the throb of engines and the wail of plummeting aircraft had never been far away. Yeoman had never made any advances to her, and physical contact had been limited to holding hands and the resting of her head on his shoulder as they sat together, and yet he felt somehow fulfilled. It was as though, somehow, to have gone further would have been to risk destroying something precious.

  Now, back in action, he had reconciled himself to the fact that he would never see Lucia again. He had come to terms with the inevitability of being killed, knew in his heart that nothing short of a miracle would assure his survival. If death awaited him, he thought, then let it be so; and if there was time for last thoughts and images, then let them be of the pure, unsullied things that had brought him to oases of peace 2nd joy amid the carnage and misery.

  His diary, the entries becoming shorter and more laconic, reinforced his belief that he would not come through. He stared at its dog-eared, tea-stained pages now, weary at the end of a day’s intensive flying, and mentally ticked off the roll of the dead.

  *

  5 July. Luqa hit again and again. Surprise attack on field by 109s. Three Spits shot down while landing. Kearney and one other pilot killed, third pilot badly burned. Squadron moved to Takali and continued operations; down to five serviceable aircraft. Two enemy aircraft destroyed, Takali Spits got five. Two heavy raids on Valletta during night.

  6 July. Two sections scrambled at 0800 to intercept raid at 22,000 ft over Gozo. Encountered three Cant bombers and about thirty fighters. Went headlong through the fighters and attacked the bombers, which unloaded their bombs in the sea and turned for home. Fighters came down on top of us and there was a big fight. Shot a Macchi 202 off Powell’s tail; went straight down into the sea, a flamer. Confirmed by one of Takali pilots. One more 202 damaged by A1 Winter. Scrambled again later that afternoon, Italians again. Self, Powell, Randall, Winter. One Cant destroyed by Powell, one damaged by me. Winter hit by 109s, parachuted and came down in sea, but dead when picked up. Might have been machine-gunned while in water. Scrambled a third time early evening; self, Randall, Powell, Larry Taylor. Intercepted two Ju 88s plus twenty 109s. Taylor hit one bomber, which turned for Sicily flying low over the water and leaving a long trail of white smoke. Randall got the other 88 and a 109, the lucky bastard! I fired at two 109s, but observed no result.

  July 8. Taking things easy yesterday, just one or two tip-and-runs by 109s. Everybody patching things up like mad. Workshops at Takali going flat out, practically rebuilding Spits from bits and pieces. Moved back to Luqa in the evening; just as well, because Jerry came back this morning, knocking hell out of Takali. We were able to put up eight Spits (sheer joy!) on first scramble of the day. Scramble call came rather late, with result that Jerry was over the island at 20,000 ft while we were still on our way upstairs to meet him. Couldn’t get through to the bombers — six Ju 88s — which dive-bombed Takali right on the nose, but the 109s came piling down on us and we tangled. They chased us all over the bloody airfield. We were so busy watching our tails that we had no chance to pick a target. Randall shot down and slightly injured, but pronounced fit to continue flying.

  Second scramble of the day got off to a better start. Seven Spits airborne; self (now officially leading squadron), Powell, Randall, Taylor, Schuyler (South African), Brett and Calder. We were at 22,000 ft when the Ju 88s came in, about 7,000 ft lower down. We went down on them vertically, the airspeed practically off the clock, straight through the screen of fighters. I selected a Ju 88 on the port flank of their formation, levelled out and got in a very fast deflection shot. Miracle! His starboard engine burst into flames. No time to observe further results, because half a dozen 109s swarmed all over me. Kept on turning hard and one of them appeared in front. Hit him in the wing root and he exploded. Did not see him crash, but he was confirmed later by a RMA battery.

  While the rest of us tangled with the 109s, Schuyler, Brett and Calder went after the bombers. It seems they failed to see fifteen or twenty more 109s coming from upstairs. Schuyler and Brett were shot down almost immediately and both killed. Calder had a bullet through the thigh and force-landed on Safi. One more 109 destroyed (by Gerry Powell). Not good arithmetic.

  And so it had gone on, day after day, the high drama captured in Yeoman’s hastily-scrawled sentences. A stranger, reading them, would see only a day-to-day record of sorties, kills and losses, with a few names thrown in, and Yeoman was desperately sorry that there had been no time to write a fuller account, with all those vivid personal glimpses that had gone into these hateful, glorious weeks. Yet there were some aspects which no words could ever capture: the stomach-turning fear one felt, for example, as one frantically tried to land with an aircraft full of holes and half an aileron shot away, with fuel almost exhausted and a sky full of 109s, or the time-stopping terror that accompanied the hellish shriek of a falling stick of bombs, when one tore one’s fingers bloody clawing at the hard earth. And it had happened not just once, but time after time.

  Neither could words, however expertly phrased, capture the loathing and horror he had felt when, in Rabat, he had come upon a crowd of children — yes, and adults too — hurling stones at something unseen. Forcing his way through the crowd, he had discovered the object of their hatred: an Italian airman, his parachute partly open, impaled on a set of iron railings. The man had still been alive, that had been the worst of it. Then there had been the Spitfire from Hal Far, shot down in mistake by Luqa’s guns, impacting on the airfield perimeter and breaking apart. The pilot had been thrown clear, but one arm and both his legs were gone. Yeoman had been one of the first on the scene and had held the boy’s head, drenched in his blood, helplessly listening to his animal screams until they faded and then mercifully stopped altogether.

  Yeoman wondered how long they could go on. After three weeks of continual action, during which his personal score of enemy aircraft destroyed over Malta had risen to eight — bringing his overall total up to twenty-one — the island’s fighter defences had been all but wiped out. Luqa could muster four Spitfires, Takali perhaps five, and Hal Far two. Half a dozen more were repairable, but it would be three or four days before they were returned to the squadrons. Stocks of fuel and ammunition, too, were once again perilously low. As far as pilots were concerned, perhaps half those who had already been on Malta when Yeoman arrived, of who had flown in at the same time, were still alive. Even Hazell, Takali’s redoubtable wing commander, who had briefed them on the first evening, had died — machine-gunned, ironically, as he dangled under his parachute.

  Most of the others had been forced to bale out once or more; Yeoman and Powell were among the few who had not yet taken to their parachutes. It could only be a question of time before their luck finally ran out.

  *

  The four Spitfires climbed in an unreal silence, poised midway between sea and sky, every detail frozen except for the shimmering arcs of their propellers. It was as though time had stood still; only the deep, calm voice of Group Captain Douglas was a link with the living world.

  ‘Ten plus big jobs, Angels twenty, approaching Gozo. Vector three-three-zero.’

  And a minute later: ‘Thirty plus little jobs, Angels two-five, Gozo, heading one-seven zero.’

  Oh, God, would it never en
d?

  ‘Fifteen plus big jobs and twenty plus little jobs, Angels one-five, north-east of Gozo, heading one-nine-zero.’

  Behind Yeoman’s four aircraft, the five Spits from Luqa and the pair from Hal Far were also climbing hard. Eleven against seventy-five. Long odds, even for Malta.

  Yeoman looked quickly behind. Powell was there, his faithful wingman, with Randall and Taylor a couple of hundred yards astern. His gaze switched to the sky ahead, searching. So far, there was nothing.

  ‘Hello Douggie, George here, still looking.’

  ‘Roger, George. Hold your heading. Bandits ten miles, closing.’

  Yeoman pushed a finger under his oxygen mask, scratching an itchy spot among the stubble on his cheek. He had not shaved that morning, because there had been no water to spare for shaving, and even if there had been everybody had run out of razor blades. Leaning forward in his straps, he switched on his reflector sight and turned up the illumination a little; then he moved his gun button from ‘safe’ to ‘fire’.

  Strangely, the simple action had a relaxing effect on him. His hands and feet moved automatically on the controls while his mind, seemingly detached from the rest of him, assumed a keenness and alertness such as he had not experienced for a long time.

  His altimeter showed twenty-four thousand feet and he levelled out, easing back the throttle a little. He was puzzled; if the first enemy formation was where it ought to be, the ack-ack batteries on Gozo should be pointing the way by now, but the sky was empty. He searched all around once more, dropping each wing in turn to clear the Spitfire’s blind spot, but still there was nothing. He pressed the R/T button and called up Douglas again.

  ‘Hello Douggie, George here, still looking. Instructions?’

  The calm voice came back immediately. ‘Roger, George. You should be fishing. I repeat, you should be fishing. Over.’

  Douglas was telling him that the Spitfires were very close to the enemy. He searched the sky again, very carefully, making sure that he had covered every quarter.

  At first he thought it was an illusion, a trick of vision. He blinked and looked again. This time, there was no doubt. Several thousand feet below, crawling across the grey-green backdrop of Gozo, were the distinctive shapes of a dozen Junkers 88s, their camouflage blending perfectly with the ground far below. Only the glint of sun on a cockpit canopy had revealed their position.

  There was time for a quick call to control. ‘We’re fishing, Douggie. Out.’ Then, to the other pilots: ‘Tango Red, Tango Red, bandits ten o’clock low. Stand by.’

  He made a last search of the dangerous sky, above, behind and to either side, and saw nothing of the escorting Messerschmitts. They must be around somewhere, but he would have to take the risk.

  ‘Tango Red, Tango Red, one, two, three, go!’

  He pushed over the stick, rolling the Spitfire on its back, then pulled the stick into his stomach so that the fighter plummeted down in a powerful dive towards the bombers. The other Spits were with him, following him down. They were over the northern tip of Malta now, and the first of the flak was starting to come up, the bursts a long way below the bombers.

  The Spitfires swept down on the Junkers formation like arrows. Yeoman leveled out a few hundred yards astern of the right-hand bomber, giving himself a straight no-deflection shot. The 88’s wingspan grew until its tips touched the edges of his gunsight ring. Tracer fleeted over his cockpit, but he ignored it.

  The Spitfire juddered as he pressed the gun button. The grey trails of smoke from his wings converged on the bomber’s port engine, crept across the fuselage centre-section, past the rear gunner’s position, and found the engine on the other side. Metal plates broke away from it and it began to smoke, disgorging intermittent puffs that quickly became a thickening stream.

  The bomber’s outline, shrouded in smoke now, was enormous, filling the whole sky. Yeoman pulled back the stick, feeling an instant of wild panic, believing that a collision was inevitable, then he was shooting over the top of the smoking mass and rolling away, looking back to see the Junkers going down with white flames bursting from its wings.

  Five thousand feet higher up, Lieutenant Hans Weber was the first of the escorting Messerschmitt pilots to notice that the bombers were in trouble. He shouted a warning over the radio and Richter, cursing, brought the two squadrons of Fighter Wing 66 down like an avalanche in pursuit of the harrying Spitfires. How the latter had escaped his attention so far was beyond him, for the Messerschmitts had been weaving ceaselessly over their charges for some minutes, but there was no time to worry about it now. Taking in the situation at a glance, he saw that one Junkers was already falling in flames and another was trailing smoke. There was no time to be lost.

  Gerry Powell, intent on chopping a Ju 88 to pieces, never saw the plunging Messerschmitts until it was too late. A burst of tracer, snickering over his wings, warned him of the danger and he hauled the stick into his stomach with a wrench that threatened to tear it out of its socket, pulling round in a tight turn to face the danger.

  They were coming at him from every quarter. He kept on turning, his breath coming in strangled gasps with the effort. Oh, Christ, they were everywhere, black crosses, mottled camouflage, twinkling cannon. He knew that he must not change direction, that he had to go on turning.

  He sensed a terrific blow. It seemed a long way away, happening to someone else. There was an instant, an eternity of drifting, and encompassed within it was all the love and hate, the joy and pain he had experienced in his young life. The letter he had started to write to his girl, back in Peace River, and never finished. If only he had finished it. Then she would have known. Then she would have understood. And then —

  Nothing.

  Turning clear of the bombers, Yeoman saw a Messerschmitt pull out of its dive, climbing hard. He opened the throttle, clawing for height, for the pursuit of the bombers had taken him down to ten thousand feet. He looked round, forcing himself to stay calm, trying to locate the other Spitfires, and for a split second caught a glimpse of something far below, a seagull, spiralling towards the water, its wings white in the sun. But it wasn’t a seagull, it was Powell’s Spitfire, and in that same moment Yeoman knew that he had lost his friend.

  The instinct of self-preservation, for the moment, pushed all other sentiment from his mind. He twisted in his straps, searching, but although the enemy must be there he could not see them.

  The Messerschmitt he had spotted a few seconds earlier was still climbing, weaving a little from side to side. Yeoman opened the throttle wide and went after it. It was as though icy water coursed through his veins, turning him into something that was no longer completely human. He was a killing machine, completely at one with the vibrating metal parts of his fighter.

  The pilot of the Messerschmitt seemed to be in no hurry. He levelled out and went into a gentle turn, then reversed his direction and flew east, keeping clear of the Takali flak. Yeoman closed on him steadily, following his movements and keeping slightly underneath him, taking advantage of his blind spot.

  Hans Weber was both elated and worried. Elated, because the Spitfire he had just shot down was his third kill over Malta; worried, because his radio had packed in and he had lost touch with the rest of the squadron. For the moment he found himself alone in a hostile sky, and was contemplating whether to run for home or continue his search for the others. Surely he must spot them at any moment, as they turned out over the coast. He had experienced this sort of thing before, this feeling of utter solitude in a sky that was known to be filled with aircraft, and it always left him with an uncanny crawling along his spine.

  There was no warning. Yeoman’s first burst of cannon fire found the 88-gallon petrol tank immediately behind Weber’s seat. It was three parts empty, and the exploding shells instantly ignited the volatile fuel vapour. The Messerschmitt broke apart, the explosion tearing off both wings along with the rear fuselage and tail unit. The cockpit and engine, with Weber’s pulped body inextricably mingled wi
th the remains of the instrument panel, fell like a stone and impacted a few hundred yards north of the village of Attard, gouging a six-foot-deep crater.

  Circling over Salina Bay with the rest of his squadron, Joachim Richter waited to make rendezvous with the bombers and escort them home after their attack. They had driven off the Spitfires, and the British fighters seemed to have vanished.

  Suddenly, Richter realized that Hans Weber was no longer with them. Together with Johnny Schumacher, he detached himself from the rest of the formation and dived across the centre of the island between Mosta and Birkirkara, pulling up sharply over Rabat and curving round towards the north-east once more.