The Operations Officer admitted, ‘That’s true. We know Tirpitz is in her fjord, and that Scharnhorst is about the biggest unit they have in these waters.’ He sounded less sceptical.
Commander (Flying) said, ‘So they make a push with the really heavy ships and all the while are pushing other units from the south.’ He nodded slowly. ‘Could be. It all hinges on that damned seaplane. Without it, the parent ship may have turned for base.’ He beckoned to a communications rating. ‘Put me through to the captain.’ He winked at his friend. ‘He’s going to love this.’
Turpin remained quite silent until the Commander (Flying) had put his point of view. Rowan heard Turpin’s voice very briefly, a sharp, angry sound in the handset.
The commander put it down very carefully, as if it were cut-glass.
‘The captain says that the A.A. cruiser had already flown-off her Walrus at his suggestion. A short patrol will be made, and then the Walrus will return and be hoisted aboard the cruiser. The convoy will alter course as directed in one hour precisely. No further exchange of signals is contemplated at this stage.’ He smiled. ‘That’s it.’
They turned as Dymock Kitto stepped under the bright deckhead lights.
‘I’d like permission to fly-off a fighter patrol, sir. Right now. I’ve known Lieutenant Rowan for a long time, and I trust his judgement.’ He eyed the Operations Officer calmly. ‘And as I am now equal in rank to you, sir, I can add that although I am a “temporary gentleman” too, I have probably flown more hours than any pilot in the entire Navy.’
To everyone’s relief the Ops Officer grinned. ‘Mostly on our side, I trust?’ He became brisk again. ‘The Old Man’ll not allow a full flight. I’ll suggest one Seafire.’ He frowned. ‘Not you, Kitto. You are supposed to be in charge of Growler’s unruly mob.’
Rowan said, ‘I’ll fetch my gear.’ He glanced at Kitto. ‘Okay?’
Kitto lifted his head as if to listen to the wind, his blue chin shining in the glare. ‘No heroics then.’
As he hurried to the cabin Rowan heard the pipe on the tannoy for one fighter to be prepared for take-off. So Turpin had agreed. He struggled into his leather jacket. Probably suggested he should be the pilot.
Back at the Ready Room he found Bill and the stand-by pilots protesting to the Commander (Flying).
The latter merely said, ‘This is not a routine flight.’ He caught an ashtray as it slid from the desk. ‘Nor will it be a comfortable one.’ He nodded to Rowan. ‘I’ll give you the details now. Then you have fifty minutes. Not a second more, so let’s hop about.’
It was a strange sensation to realise that Jonah was alone on the glistening flight deck. Figures crowded around the Seafire as if paying homage for the last flight ever. Even the weird light, purple streaks between the racing clouds, the endless, tumbling mass of wavecrests looked vaguely unreal. The light made the crests dirty yellow, and the air was like stinging, cold sand.
The petty officer helped him into the cockpit and strapped him in with extra care, his eyes watering as the wind moaned through the lattice mast and above the bridge.
He shouted. ‘The skipper’s taken over the con himself, sir.’ He reached in to help plug the headphones in position. ‘So you should be all right.’ He patted the cockpit and then slammed it shut. His lips mouthed ‘good luck’ as he ducked away, and the prop swung stiffly and then burst into life.
The Affirmative was hoisted, the flag already in ribbons. Rowan hoped the yeoman had several spares.
The light blinked and Jonah started to weave forward, delicately, as if to avoid the puddles on the wooden deck.
Forward gently. Tail up. He felt the usual chill sweat as he pictured the blades slicing into the deck. Easy now.
The familiar panorama slid past. The coloured overalls, Bats and his crew. A solitary seaman by the island carrying a bucket, frozen as he realised he had emerged at the wrong moment.
He watched the straight edge of the deck dashing to meet him, the sensation of driving an uncontrollable, brakeless car over a cliff, and then with a thunderous roar he was off.
It took several minutes to work his way round the carrier, to compensate for a buffeting wind which seemed determined to hurl him back on board.
But it had been a good take-off, which when he saw the carrier’s violent motion below his starboard wing was hard to believe. He hummed quietly. Each showing the other what he could do. Turpin coming off his high-horse to prove that he could handle the awkward Hustler better than anyone else. He smiled tightly. And me?
Before he turned and headed towards the south he took a long look at the distant convoy. The Ops Room had told him that a cruiser had joined it from the Home Fleet force, and he could just make out her splash of dazzle-paint beyond the more slender silhouette of the A.A. ship.
He banked away, putting it astern like a moving picture.
Poor old Walrus. How could a man who had designed anything as beautiful as a Spitfire have been capable of dreaming up something like the ungaingly Shagbat? The only comfort an amphibian’s crew had was that they could land on water. But in these seas it would be rough going. He thought of the Arado and wondered if the Germans had been picked up.
Carefully and methodically he began a sweep of the horizon. It was misty with spray and blown rain, but good enough.
The voice in his headphones said, ‘Hello, Jonah, this is Lapwing. Any signs of Walrus?’
Rowan flicked his switch. ‘Negative.’
He imagined Turpin saying, ‘Waste of time. Bloody amateurs.’
He was running into patches of cloud now, and could feel the wind buffeting him like an invisible giant. He started to climb, checking his compass repeatedly. It was so easy to be carried away. He smiled to himself. Literally. With no land in reach, it was prudent to take navigation very seriously.
Twelve thousand feet, the engine behaving perfectly. He tried to relax, but it seemed to be getting harder every day.
When he thought of going on leave he thought of home. Of that first visit he would have to make. The sympathy. The strange curiosity you saw in people’s eyes when something bad had happened.
He tensed. Through a narrow ravine in the clouds he saw a dab of colour. He put the nose down carefully and switched on the firing button. This time it might not be a helpless Arado.
But as the cloud fanned away from the prop he saw the A.A. cruiser’s Walrus far below him, barely appearing to move against the ranks of wavecrests. He peered down at it, wondering how he would like to be given such a job. Maximum speed one hundred and thirty-five . . . He gasped aloud as the nearest cloud erupted in a great vivid flash. For a split second he imagined that while he had been watching the flying boat two other planes had been stalking him and had collided inside the cloud. Then he saw the drifting ball of dirty smoke, and as he flew past the cloud’s massive overhang he saw the ships. They were off the port bow. He saw more bursts, felt the Seafire rock dangerously as one shell exploded right astern, but he concentrated on the ships. Three of them. One was big, and although end-on, showed her bridge and powerful armament, her high bow wave as she thrust purposefully towards the north.
The others were destroyers, large, probably Karl Galster class. He had met them before in these waters.
More flak exploded across his path and he swerved to port, losing and then regaining height in a great bound to throw the gunnery officers off balance. They were not using pop-guns either, he realised. Some of the big ship’s secondary armament by the punch of it. Crump . . . Crump . . .
He turned away, losing height rapidly as he plunged down towards the Walrus which hardly seemed to have moved. As he got closer he saw it had been hit by flak, and there were several large gashes on both upper and lower wings. But the one prop, the ‘pusher’, was still going strong, and he saw the blink of an Aldis lamp to show they had seen him.
He levelled off, searching in his mirror and overhead, just to be sure, before flying directly past the flying boat. He could see two of it
s crew, but of the others there was no sign.
Rowan wondered if the carrier was in R/T range and switched on his transmitter. He knew instantly that it was quite dead. That big burst of flak must have shaken something loose. He groped for his signal lamp and flashed a brief signal to the Walrus. Returning to base. Their wireless had most likely been done in as well.
He started to climb again, watching the strange light recrossing his smeared screen. No time to lose. The big German warship would need a lot of stopping. He began to estimate the speed and distance of those three ships.
Keep your head. He looked around for more cloud cover and climbed towards it. Turpin would have to be convinced. He would want to know exactly what he was up against.
When he burst out of the clouds the second time he saw the three warships angled away on the starboard bow. They were all going flat-out by the look of them. He steadied his binoculars, seeing the gun turrets swinging round, the long barrels lifting towards him. He was well out of range of the anti-aircraft guns, but not of those massive weapons. He made up his mind. She was big all right, probably the Hipper. He saw the next bank of cloud rushing to meet him.
Rowan did not recall feeling or seeing anything. It was more of a sensation than a crude shock. One second he was watching the bulging cloud, and the next he was gasping for breath, as if his lungs were on fire, and his ears felt like twin probes of pain.
He could only stare at the picture through his prop. It was not rigid and firm, but was starting to revolve, slowly, and then more rapidly.
He wanted to cry out, to move, but he could only stare. There was no sky or cloud any more, just the sea. The frosted surface was breaking up, into great white patches, then into rollers, now into individual waves.
The stark realisation reached him. The big warship had fired her main armament. A rough estimate across his path. He was crashing. Half the port wing had gone completely. His hands started to move, fumbling at first and then with frantic desperation as he smelt burning and realised for the first time that the inside of his left boot was sodden.
Dear God. He released the cockpit and gasped for breath as the bitter air drove the mounting panic aside like an overwhelming tide-race. Crashing. Baling out. Mayday. God help me.
He was upside down, hanging, then dropping, kicking and hitting out like a drowning man. He felt the savage jerk of the harness, the sudden pain in his leg helping to steady him again as the chute opened above him, suspending him, and letting him sail with the wind, his lips and eyes almost frozen.
He twisted in the harness, sobbing with pain, as he heard an intermittent coughing roar. Then he saw Jonah. She was almost down, spiralling and leaving a trail of smoke until she hit the sea. He heard nothing, and when he wiped his eyes again even the smoke had vanished.
Rowan peered down between his feet. One boot was bright red. He retched and tasted vomit in his throat. He felt his Mae West, his fingers all thumbs. He heard more shellbursts and wondered why the Germans were wasting ammunition. Unless . . .
He waited for the chute to swing crazily with the wind and then saw the flash of gunfire. The Germans were far away. It had taken Jonah longer to die than he had realised. He felt the pain and anger welling inside him like fire. Poor Jonah.
He watched incredulously as the Walrus appeared beneath him and porpoised violently across two large waves. It was an insane dream. There was somebody standing in the bows, poking through a little round hole and waving at him. He looked like half a man. A mascot perched on the Walrus’s nose. It made him laugh. He could not stop laughing until he hit the water with a tremendous splash, the chute dragging him through the pounding crests like a piece of driftwood.
Rowan was losing consciousness fast. He could hear the grating roar of the Walrus’s engine, somebody yelling. Crazy fools. The Jerry gunners would get them. They’d not be able to take off anyway. Crazy, wonderful fools.
It was over at last. He was dead.
He opened his eyes, feeling something burning his lips. Terror lurked just seconds away, and then he grappled with the understanding that he was not dead. Nor was he in the water. He was in the Walrus’s boxlike belly, and he could see the waves through great rents in the side, but the sea was below. He tried to understand. They were airborne.
He realised that someone was crawling towards him. It was a young man with very blue eyes. He had to yell above the pounding roar of the engine. ‘All right, chum?’ He patted his leg. ‘I’ve got a dressing on the wound, but it’s best left for a doctor.’
Rowan tried to speak but nothing came. Another figure was sitting in a small seat below the pilot. He was jerking to the violent motion, and Rowan saw he had one arm torn off, and there was blood everywhere. They had gone through enough already, yet they had risked everything to land on the sea for a man they probably thought was past saving anyway.
The man with the blue eyes stumbled forward and touched the pilot on the shoulder. He shouted, ‘He’s all right, Jim! Caught one in his leg, but I think he’ll be okay!’
The pilot was not wearing a helmet, and had his headphones fastened over a battered peaked cap.
Rowan heard him reply, ‘Must have been the brandy you poured into him! Glad it wasn’t wasted!’
Rowan lay back against the vibrating frames, knowing there was another dead man somewhere, wondering why he had felt nothing of the rescue or the take-off. Maybe he had died but had somehow come back.
He moved and felt his flying gear squelching with water. His watch had gone. And the pain was getting worse.
‘Get the Aldis! There’s the bloody convoy!’ The pilot was laughing. ‘Oh, you beauties!’
The other man was pointing the lamp through the port side as the Walrus gave a steep tilt and began to descend.
‘Shall I tell them about the Jerries?’
The pilot turned to stare at him. ‘Not bloody likely! Wait till they’ve picked us up!’
It was the first time Rowan had seen his face. There was a rough eye-patch jammed under his cap and dried blood on his cheek. He should get the Victoria Cross for what he had done.
The other one was crawling aft again. He shouted, ‘Get ready, chum! When we hit the sea, we hit!’
Through a gash in the side Rowan saw something solid rushing past. It was a big freighter, the sea lifting and curling along her side apparently without effort. He watched it, fascinated. Then the Walrus struck the water, and the pain took away the last of his reserve.
When Tim Rowan opened his eyes again he had to adjust to a completely new set of sounds and smells. He was instantly aware of a feeling of warmth and safety. He was in a white-painted cot, and beneath the stiff sheets he was naked, his wounded leg encased in some firm, heavy dressing which by itself seemed to keep all pain at a distance. He moved his head very carefully, afraid the agony would return.
Then came the other awareness. The motion was different. It was the regular, restless plunging movement of a destroyer. He watched the other cots swaying in unison, they were all empty, the bright, clinical perfection of a warship’s sickbay.
He listened to the roar of fans, the confident vibration of the destroyer’s engines. He was obviously under some kind of drug, and it was hard to keep his eyelids from closing.
A voice said cheerfully, ‘Now then, sir, we don’t want no peepin’!’ It was a sick berth attendant, his jacket pocket full of pencils for some reason or other.
Rowan asked huskily, ‘What ship?’
The S.B.A. answered automatically, ‘’Ardship, sir.’ He chuckled. ‘The Pathan, Tribal Class destroyer, and the skipper’s monniker is Commander Nash. Now will you go back to kip, sir?’
He saw the look in Rowan’s eyes and added more gently, ‘I’m sorry about your friends, sir. Just think you was lucky. It’s all you can think.’
Rowan felt he was going mad. He asked very slowly, ‘What happened? Please tell me.’
The S.B.A. leaned over the cot and dabbed Rowan’s forehead.
‘Do
n’t you remember nothin’, sir?’
Rowan shook his head. Even that was a terrible effort.
The man sighed. ‘We was on the starboard wing of the convoy when your plane was sighted. Cap’n (D) ordered us to stand-by ‘case you broke up like. A freighter spread oil ahead of us, an’ the skipper decides to chance it an’ lower the sea-boat. There was some sort of argument with your pilot. He wanted to get some bodies off, but the commodore an’ Cap’n (D) ordered ’im to abandon and let the Walrus adrift. While all this was goin’ on the boat’s crew got you passed across.’ He looked away. ‘After that, nobody seems to know what ’appened. Jimmy the One reckons it might have been a flare explodin’, or some kind of electrical fault, anyway –’
Rowan reached out and gripped his wrist. ‘Were both the men killed? Is that what you’re saying?’
The S.B.A. watched him uneasily. ‘Like I said, you was lucky, sir.’
Rowan tried to struggle up but the man restrained him easily.
He gasped, ‘How long have I been here?’
‘’Bout two hours after the doc ’ad seen to you, sir. Bein’ one of the big Tribals we carries a doc.’
‘Get him for me.’ Rowan saw the man’s expression changing. In a second he’ll put me right under. He said urgently, ‘I was not a member of that crew. They picked me up.’
‘Then ’o th’ ’ell?’ The man reached over and snatched a handset. ‘Doctor, sir? This ’ere is Wilkins. That flier is wantin’ to speak to you.’ He nodded to the telephone. ‘That’s what I told ’im, sir.’
Rowan said as loudly as he could, ‘Tell him . . . I was shot down by . . . a heavy cruiser.’ He saw his words hitting home like fists. ‘P-probably the Hipper. Just you tell him that, for God’s sake.’
At that moment the alarm bells shrilled throughout the ship like mad things, and above it all the tannoy bellowed, ‘Action stations! Action stations!’
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