He found Ellis and van Roijen waiting for him in their cabin.
He said quietly, ‘Pep talk. I don’t know whether to admire him or hate his guts.’
Van Roijen beamed. ‘It will be fine, Tim. What is it you say? A piece of cake!’
The six air crews sat in the Ready Room, not looking at each other, their breathing reduced almost to the gentle throb of Growler’s main engine.
The lights were dimmed to ease the strain on their eyes. It was like sitting and waiting for the world to end, Rowan thought. His emotions were in turmoil, so that he was surprised to find that his hands and feet were quite still, his breathing slow and regular.
He let his eyes move around the others. Six aircraft. Twelve men. Ready to move. Expendable.
Bill Ellis, legs out-thrust, eyes closed, his blond hair ruffling slightly from a deckhead fan.
Creswell, his face even more youthful in the orange glow.
The Swordfish crews, pilots, observers, and air gunners. It was odd to realise that Troup, the ex-actor, had an orchid grower as his observer. And young Cotter had come from the opposite end of the world to meet this moment.
True to Bray’s calculations, Growler had arrived at the pencilled cross, some one hundred nautical miles north-west of the Lofoten Islands. They had not sighted a single ship or aircraft since they had left the convoy, and with their four rust-streaked escorts they had had the Arctic to themselves.
From the babble of W/T signals it seemed that the convoy had been stalked twice by U-boats. No ships had been sunk or damaged, and the escorts had not reported any kills. A probing exercise perhaps. Flexing muscles. Either way, the enemy knew about the convoy, its strength and its value. The destination was obvious. Over the last days Rowan had often thought about the thirty-five ships steaming in their long, straight lines. Not crews or human beings. Just the ships. Unflinching. Unstoppable.
The door opened and Lieutenant Commander Miller walked below the one central light.
He said quietly, ‘Time to go, lads.’ He smiled, his devil’s beard jutting above his leather jacket.
They all stood, picking up their helmets and goggles, mentally stripping and readjusting their minds. The plans and charts. Broderick’s sketches of islands and landmarks were now real and stark.
Rowan walked with him towards the passageway. How quiet the ship was. She had been at action stations for four hours. Every gun manned, all air crews mustered and ready just in case the enemy knew about Chadwick’s private war.
They had been briefed and briefed again, until their minds had refused to accept another titbit of information. There was a ship at anchor close inshore of an island. It had to be sunk.
Miller said, ‘If you can’t hit the bloody thing, forget it and come back.’ He sounded grim. There’ll be other targets.’
Out on to the flight deck, empty but for the six aircraft. Below in the hangar deck the rest of Growler’s planes and crews waited and listened.
Rowan shivered and tightened the scarf around his neck. He had never got used to this strange copper light. But it was five in the morning, and the wind across his face was quite raw.
He saw Petty Officer Thorpe crouching by the aircraft. He looked towards him and gave a brief wave. He would know what Rowan was thinking.
Just a few hours ago he had said worriedly, ‘You could have had Jonah tomorrow, sir. But in all honesty I can’t let you take her on a caper like this one. Not after the hammering she had.’
Chitty, the Air Engineer Officer, had confirmed it. ‘You’ll have to be content with Dusty Miller’s.’ He had tried to dispel Rowan’s apprehension. ‘Good as gold.’
He was right of course. This stupid preference, this superstition and folk-lore were absurd. Things were bad enough without . . . He stopped his racing thoughts as the first Swordfish roared into life.
Miller shouted. ‘Give van Roijen his head, Tim. You just watch for fighters and flak.’
Rowan nodded, feeling his pockets, adjusting his leather helmet. He could see it in his mind as if he were there. The low, sleeping hump of an island, the swirling water and the long, boxlike hull of the tanker. He tried to remember all the other details. The Germans had plenty of fighters at Tromso and Bardufoss. There were probably some local fields as well.
He looked at the shadowy figures around the aircraft and on the nearest walkway. Some were friends. All were part of him. It was dangerous to think that in twenty minutes he would be over the target.
He dragged on his gloves and strode quickly to the waiting Seafire, and climbed into the cockpit with barely another glance. When you started to think of what you were leaving behind. Again he had to check himself.
Rowan slammed the canopy over his head and settled himself on his parachute, his hands and eyes moving over the instruments, checking, trusting nothing.
How loud the Merlin sounded as he tightened his harness and eased the throttle very slightly.
He watched the darting flames from the Swordfish exhausts, the shaded blink of a lamp from the bridge. He saw the twin wings of van Roijen’s plane like black lines against the strange sky, the sudden tilt as it began to move forward, the others pivoting clumsily to follow. He could just make out the pencil-like shape of a torpedo slung below the nearest plane. That would be young Cotter’s.
He turned his head to look for Bill’s plane, seeing only a wingtip shivering violently as its engine shattered the dawn air. In his mirror he could see the third fighter more clearly. Creswell’s cockpit hidden by the uplifted nose and racing prop.
A crackling voice said into his earphones, ‘All Swordfish airborne. Stand by, Jonah.’
Rowan gripped the stick and tried not to think about his real Jonah, down there in a corner of the hangar deck. Like a patient in a hospital. On the sidelines.
The lamp blinked again and he opened the throttle with slow deliberation. It was always a difficult time, with so much to see and do that it was rarely possible to contemplate what would happen if the plane stalled as it left the deck and plunged over the bows. Growler would not even notice.
He felt the cockpit quivering violently as he swung the Seafire to one side, searching for the white centre line, oblivious to the pale faces and scarlet fire-fighting gear, yet noting it all the same.
A voice crackled ‘Good luck’ in his ears, but he forgot everything but the final moments of take-off.
He saw the sea rushing beneath him, like black silk, touched here and there by metallic reflections. He swallowed hard, checking his compass, the undercarriage light, the boost, as with a joyful roar he lifted higher and higher from the carrier.
He said after a few moments, ‘This is Jonah. Take station on me.’
R/T would be unused from now on, until the fun-and-games started. It was dangerous even to test the guns. There could be a patrol boat below, an outgoing U-boat.
He smiled despite his taut nerves. If they had any sort of sense they would all be asleep.
He felt as if he were flying at ten times his usual speed, the sea flashing beneath him in an unending panorama, broken occasionally by small white-horses or darker patches of deep troughs.
Rowan checked either quarter, seeing Bill and Creswell spread out like the other two prongs of a deadly trident.
He wondered what van Roijen and his companions were doing. Slower, and flying even lower than the three fighters, they were quite invisible.
Something small and dark and ringed with white spray leapt out of the gloom. A fishing boat by the look of it. Rowan felt sweat under his helmet. He should have seen it much earlier. He saw the single mast and tiny wheelhouse vanish beneath him, half expecting to feel the flak slamming into the Seafire’s belly. Just a fishing boat. But he should have seen it. It could have been anything.
It was getting much brighter already. He could see the camouflage paint on the port wing, the red and blue roundel at the end of it. And there, through the throbbing prop, the low-lying hump of land.
He checked hi
s instruments, his mind taking one thing at a time. He was at two thousand feet. He moved the stick gently, knowing the others were watching him, waiting to follow, Fifteen hundred. A thousand.
Another boat was end-on across the starboard bow, and he thought he smoke rising from it. But not flak. Either its engine or an early breakfast. He grinned, feeling his jaw ache with the effort.
Then all at once the land was right there underneath, hills, tiny streams and barren looking crags leaping towards him as he swept across the island from west to east. Two little houses, like white cubes, a tiny, fast moving dot. A dog probably.
A wide arrowhead of glittering water to starboard, and more houses far beyond. That would be Svolvaer.
He pulled the aircraft to port in a wide turn, losing height, his eyes straining across a smoother patch of sheltered water. There was the little church, the one he had memorised from the files.
He stared, his thumb on the firing button, his brain unwilling to accept that the anchorage was empty.
There was a puff of smoke to starboard and he felt a shell exploding, well clear, unreal.
He snapped on his microphone. ‘This is Jonah. We’ll steer north.’
He heard Bill reply just as tersely, ‘Roger.’
Rowan was sweating badly. This was no good at all. The islands seemed to be all round him, and there was more flak rising from the top of a bald hill. A line of scarlet jewels, lifting so slowly and then whipping past the fighter with the speed of light.
He pushed up his goggles and wiped his eyes with his glove. Ten more minutes. No longer. He saw the three Swordfish for the first time, flying in line ahead between two islands. Very slow and sedate, as if they were seeking a place to perch.
More flak. This time it was from a battery inland. He saw the dirty brown explosions like cotton wool against the sky, catching the first real sunlight above a small village.
All hell would be breaking loose now. Phones ringing. Pilots and ack-ack crews leaping out of bed. Serve ’em right, he thought vaguely.
He thrust the stick forward and watched the water dashing to meet him as a tall headland screened the shellbursts and the torpedo bombers from view.
And there she is. Larger than he had expected, making just a small wash as she turned slightly towards the main channel.
He shouted, ‘Tanker dead ahead! I’m attacking!’
Unblinking he watched the rounded poop and squat bridge structure blocking his way, a flag hanging limp above her taffrail. Some men were tearing a canvas canopy from a machine gun mounting abaft her single funnel.
He riveted his full attention on the sight, his hand almost numb while he controlled stick and firing button in one unit.
She was full to the gills with fuel. Beyond the bridge he could see the small shadow her hull was making on the water. She was so deep-laden he could almost feel the frantic efforts of her captain to take her closer inshore.
He pressed the button, feeling the wings jerk violently while he watched the tracers smoking towards the stern and the limp flag. With a great roar he was climbing diagonally across the ship, seeing his shadow on the water being joined, first by that of Bill’s Seafire and then young Creswell’s. He levelled off, taking precious seconds to watch the tracers raking across the hull. The machine guns pointed at the sky, the canvas cover still in place. One body lay nearby, of the others there was no sign.
He heard van Roijen’s thick voice, ‘Hello, Jonah! I see her! Am attacking now, by God!’
Rowan tried to imagine the scene below. For days the tanker’s captain had been moving and hiding. Dodging the R.A.F., keeping close inshore to avoid submarine attack. Then, when he was moving into safe waters, and at a time of day when few felt at their best, enemy fighters had appeared. Where from, how many, no longer mattered. They were attacking his ship, while he and his men were standing on one giant bomb.
‘Close on me!’
Rowan tore his eyes from the tanker and the moth-like wings of the first Swordfish as it flew straight down the channel towards her.
Flak interlaced between two islands, but it was haphazard, blind.
All caution was gone now. He heard the Swordfish pilots yelling to one another, van Roijen’s great bellow as he took his plane even lower, so that it seemed to be straddling its racing reflection on the swirling current.
There was a brief white splash as the torpedo hit the water. Rowan wiped his face, tilting over to watch, holding his breath. But the torpedo ran true. It did not porpoise and break its back as so many did when the moment came.
As the Swordfish lifted away he saw the rear gunner pouring a long burst across the tanker’s steel deck.
Here was the next one. That was Troup. What a perfect name for an actor. He tore his eyes away, veering from side to side as some bright tracer floated past him. Some shellbursts, too. From between two islands, so there was probably an anchored warship here. The tanker’s escort maybe.
He saw a vivid flash, and imagined he could hear the torpedo explode as it struck the tanker’s hull just forward of her bridge. Spray and smoke erupted skyward, and he saw Troup’s plane fly directly through it, reeling violently as it was caught in the shock-wave.
The second torpedo also truck home, and with it came the biggest explosion so far. When the smoke drifted to the nearest island the whole of the tanker’s foredeck was belching flames, the catwalk and forward mast pitching down into a great, glowing crater.
The ship’s wake was curving, the wash dropping away, as a boat was swayed out from some derricks, and several splashes showed that rafts were being jettisoned. The crew were abandoning her.
Creswell’s frantic voice seemed to scrape the inside of his skull.
‘Fighters! Twelve o’clock high!’
Then Bill’s voice, harsh and angry. ‘You bloody fool! You should have seen them!’
Rowan said, ‘This is Jonah. Break off the attack.’
Van Roijen sounded far away, almost drowned in static. ‘Roger.’ A pause. ‘Pull away, damn you!’
His last comment was addressed to the third Swordfish. It was circling round the blazing tanker, and Cotter obviously intended to fire his torpedo, having been driven from his original attempt by the explosion and great gouts of burning fuel.
‘Tallyho!’ That was Cotter. He was yelling aloud, his voice that of a jubilant schoolboy.
Rowan forgot Cotter as he opened the throttle and went into a steep climb. He had seen the German fighters coming out of the pale sunlight. Two of them, with another one just lifting over the nearest island.
Bill was right. Creswell should have done his job and watched over his leader. Now it was all too late. The thing to do was to wing one of them and then get away after the Swordfish.
A shadow flashed across his sight and he hurled the Seafire into a steep turn, the other plane’s silhouette twisting away and then starting another climb. Rowan tried to steady his breathing, to stop himself from peering into his mirror. It was an ME 109, with yellow stripes on its wings, inboard from the stark black crosses.
He pressed the button and swore as the tracers fanned harmlessly above the German’s tail.
Round again, the cannon and machine guns hammering while the other pilot tried to shake him off.
Thoughts scurried through his mind, while his eyes, hands and feet moved in oiled unison. The German pilot was handling his machine as if going through the training manual. He was probably brand new, sent to Norway to get in some training before going to the Eastern Front.
He pressed the button again and saw the shells ripping across the black crosses, the tell-tale plume of smoke twisting and writhing as the Messerschmitt went plunging out of control.
Rowan sucked in his breath, willing the man to bale out. But he did not, and he knew he must have been hit in the last burst.
He levelled off, his eyes watering as he swept round into the sun’s path.
He heard the muffled rattle of machine guns, and twisted his head to see Bill
and another ME 109 tearing across the empty sky, through a pall of smoke which must have reached this far from the torpedoed tanker.
‘Hello, Jonah!’ It was Creswell. ‘Derek’s under attack!’
Rowan did not bother to acknowledge, but put the Seafire into a steep dive, the engine’s note rising to a whistling whine.
He called, ‘Hello, Derek, this is Jonah. Drop that bloody fish and get the hell out of it!’
From a corner of his eye he saw the first ME 109 explode on a hillside, and the shadow of Bill’s plane as he roared above, all guns firing as he went after his quarry.
Creswell was close on Rowan’s tail now, his lesson learned.
Cotter shouted, ‘Here we go!’
Rowan gritted his teeth as the low-flying ME 109 swept round the jutting headland to meet the Swordfish almost head-on. It was finished before Cotter even knew what was happening.
The darting tongues of flame from the German’s guns, the familiar sight of fragments hurled across the water, and then the Swordfish drove on to explode against the sinking tanker in a great ball of orange fire.
Bill’s ME 109 was trailing smoke, and without stopping for more was already heading towards the mainland.
Creswell was almost sobbing. ‘Let me go for him!’
‘Denied! Return to base!’ Rowan peered at his clock, his eyes stinging with sweat. They had been far too long already.
Creswell was saying, ‘He killed Derek!’
Bill called, ‘Shut your mouth and do as you’re told!’
The two Seafires swam out like sharks and formed up on Rowan’s quarter.
Van Roijen called, ‘Returning to base. Over and out.’
The islands vanished under the curved wings, and ahead stretched the great desert of empty, glittering water.
Compass, clock, height and fuel. He found that he wanted to blow his nose.
Beneath him the two Swordfish, unhampered by their torpedoes, were working up to their full speed of one hundred and thirty plus, and he could see van Roijen’s red scarf whipping over his cockpit like a banner on a field of battle.
Three young men dead in exchange for a shipload of desperately needed fuel. It made sense, he thought bitterly. It had to.
Winged Escort Page 9