by John Harris
Refueller crews were supposed to serve only a matter of a month or two before being changed. Tricky to handle, the big iron boats were very heavy and very hard against the fragile aluminium sides of an aircraft, and they needed skilled boat-handlers. But there was something very special about refuellers and it was generally accepted that refueller and bomb scow crews were mad, anyway, because they always seemed to be at the centre of any mischief that was going and they clung to their unwieldy charges as long as possible.
Working his way carefully alongside K-Katie, Bunting made fast and waved to the flight engineer waiting on the wing to sign for the petrol and make the test for water. A heaving line was flung, the pipes were hauled up, the caps were unscrewed and squares of chamois leather produced. The decks of the iron boat were covered with cocks and valves that controlled the flow of petrol through filters and lengths of wire-reinforced pipes, and the after bulkhead of the cockpit supported a large rotary pump which delivered vast quantities of lubricating oil – by hand, in order, it was claimed, to keep the refueller crews from becoming too bored. There was no breeze and the air was heavy and still after the storm.
‘Let’s have it.’
His eyes alert for sparks, Bunting reached to the starboard side of the cockpit where the eight-horse engine connected to the pump was situated. His best friend had been one of the men fatally burned in Refueller 62 and he had no wish to join him.
Looking about him, one eye open to make sure his escape route was clear, he leaned on the starting handle. With the heavy air and the vents open, the cockpit seemed full of petrol fumes and he noticed that the fitter and the deckhand were watching carefully from the deck just above him. As the motor started, he breathed a sigh of relief. No sparks. No explosion. Nobody hurt, thank God!
He had just climbed out of the cockpit to the iron deck when he heard what sounded like the click of a mousetrap going off. He swung round, wondering what it was, just as a roaring, rending explosion engulfed the refueller in orange flame. The blast flung Bunting overboard and before he knew where he was, he was swimming and an iron hatch cover which had torn a great gash in the leading edge of the Sunderland’s wing as it was wrenched off, splashed into the water nearby.
To his surprise the fitter was alongside him. The deckhand was still aboard struggling with a rope, his hair on fire though, finally, he decided not to bother and, running along the iron deck of the refueller, now denuded of its fittings, he jumped overboard. On the wing of the Sunderland, the flight engineer was yelling for help.
As he trod water, Bunting dazedly came to the conclusion that it might be a good idea to put some distance between himself and the aircraft and, turning on his back he began to kick away from it, followed by the fitter and the deckhand, whose face was bright pink where it had been seared by the flames.
Dinghies and a seaplane tender working near the other aircraft had stopped what they were doing and were swinging in tight circles. A bomb scow cast off its ropes and, though still laden with depth charges, began to trudge round to help. The pinnace was working at the far end of the trot of buoys and Corporal Feverel, in a dinghy under a dripping iron Munro buoy hoisted clear of the water by the pinnace, had just finished replacing the four-inch nail which held the shackle with a new one. Once the job had had to be done from Scow 14, heaving the chain in hand over laborious hand, and he was just reflecting how much easier it had become since the arrival of the pinnace when the refueller went up. He knew at once what had happened because it had happened twice before. As he scrambled back aboard the pinnace, the fitter leaped towards the controls of the winch, the buoy splashed back into the water and the pinnace began to head after the other boats at full speed.
By this time the aircraft itself was caught in the mass of flames from the refueller and somewhere inside a man was screaming. The door in the side opened and the wireless operator, who had been carrying out a check on his set, started yelling for a dinghy, before deciding it was wiser not to wait and jumping into the water. The flight engineer was shouting, ‘I can’t swim, I can’t swim,’ and had just begun to run along the wing when the tanks went. There was a tremendous ‘whoomph’ and, as the aeroplane vanished in a huge flower of yellow flame, he was lifted into the air, his legs going as if he were riding a bicycle.
five
Because it hadn’t occurred in the air but on the water and while the aircraft was moored to a buoy, Group Captain Strudwick conducted the inquiry into the loss of the Sunderland himself. He had already made up his mind about the reason for the explosion and fire and it didn’t take him long to inform Flying Officer Hobson what he thought.
As an orthodox airman, he didn’t like the marine section. They were a queer group of men – airmen, yet not airmen: sailors, yet not sailors – men who didn’t fit into what he considered a proper RAF structure.
They had always been unpopular with the more formal minds in the RAF, and the service police actively loathed them because not only did they never polish buttons or cap badges, but they could claim – and always did – that the resultant months of verdigris was only because the salt spray had ruined hours of hard work the night before. Even in Jum they seemed out of place. The station warrant officer complained that, because they claimed to work with the tides, he could never get them on parade and they always seemed twice as scruffy as everybody else with knives at their waists and speaking a different language that no one understood. In addition, Group Captain Strudwick was well aware of the feelings they had for him for taking one of their precious seaplane tenders for his own use, and was never quite sure how much sarcasm there was in it when Feverel and Kneller, working on a new buoy in the water by the slip, gave him guardsmen-like salutes while stark naked but for sweat rags and pith helmets.
‘Those men of yours must have been smoking,’ he announced.
The suggestion was so patently silly Hobson wasn’t sure what to reply.
‘Sir, with respect, I don’t think they’d dream of smoking while refuelling.’
‘I prefer to dispute that,’ Strudwick said sharply. ‘During the Battle of Britain, I came across a group of recruits in a garage who were emptying tins of petrol rescued from France into an open tank to be pumped into aircraft bowsers and I actually caught one of them lighting a cigarette. If men can be that stupid in England, they can be that stupid in West Africa.’
Hobson’s expression became dogged. ‘Sir. Again, with respect. These men aren’t recruits. They’re old hands. Corporal Bunting’s been working with flying boats for two years. He was on refuellers at Stranraer and he’s been doing the job out here for five months. He’s a very experienced and careful man.’
Strudwick gestured. ‘They must have been smoking,’ he insisted.
‘Sir–’ Hobson took a deep breath, realizing he was laying his head on the block by his refusal to agree ‘…it’s impossible. Out here, where the air’s still and heavy and the fumes hang about, it would be committing suicide.’
‘Two men are dead: a man working inside the aircraft who was trapped by the flames and the flight engineer who drowned. Why were rescue craft not available to pick him up?’
‘It isn’t standard procedure, sir, for refuelling and bombing up.’
‘Then I think you’d better make it standard procedure,’ Strudwick snapped. ‘This isn’t England, you know. This is West Africa. Anything can happen here – and usually does.’
Nothing was said about putting the refueller crews on charges and Hobson realized that, despite Strudwick’s conviction about their guilt, he wasn’t prepared to go so far as to press the point. To allow the matter to quieten down, however, he appointed a new crew to the spare refueller. Bunting needed a little placating.
‘I wasn’t smoking, you know, sir,’ he protested. ‘And neither was anybody else.’
Hobson waved aside his objections. ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But there’s nothing I can do about it. At least you’re not on a charge and for a time I thought you might be. Be thankfu
l for small mercies. You’ll run a duty crew. At least there’s not much wrong with a seaplane tender.’
‘No, sir,’ Bunting agreed stubbornly. ‘Except that it isn’t a refueller.’
Hobson was irritated and angry and that evening he took his problem to Wing Commander Molyneux.
‘Could they have been smoking, Hobbie?’ Molyneux asked.
‘I don’t think for one moment they were smoking,’ Hobson said. ‘Bunting’s a responsible chap. He was a policeman in Civvie Street and you can’t get much more responsible than that. Besides, he’s been doing the job for five months and wanted to do it for his whole tour.’
‘Martyr type?’
Hobson shrugged. ‘I think it’s a pride in doing a more dangerous job than anybody else,’ he said. ‘And out here it is dangerous. There are already two burnt-out refuellers on the mud. Now there’ll be a third.’
While they were talking, Mackintosh appeared in the doorway and Molyneux waved him to a chair. Hobson eyed him warily. After all, Mackintosh had just lost a valuable aircraft and one of his aircrew and he might be taking the group captain’s view that it was Hobson’s fault.
Mackintosh studied Hobson, then managed a smile. ‘Take it easy, sport,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s blaming you.’
They were still talking as the sudden darkness fell.
Normally they would all have been in the mess having a pre-dinner gin – if there were any gin – but they were grim-faced and preoccupied and indifferent to the fact that the office was full of the whine and whirr of mosquitoes. In the ceiling the fan moved slowly, stirring the air, but only, it seemed, to give them a variety of hot blasts. They were worried, not merely because of what had happened to K-Katie, but also because the AOC had indicated his intention of paying them a visit.
‘After all,’ Mackintosh said, ‘this makes three aircraft in less than two months. That’s a lot of aircraft.’
‘It seems to be pretty bloody general, too,’ Molyneux growled. ‘Takoradi’s lost one. Crash on take-off. I’ve been told to detach G-George.’
Mackintosh struggled to get his pipe going to his satisfaction. ‘At Bathurst,’ he said, ‘the bloody U-boats are coming so close inshore they’re expecting to see ’em cruising up the main street. I’ve got to send another Sunderland. L-Leather caught one on the surface but it fought back and filled the hull full of holes.’
‘Write-off ?’
‘They got the plugs in and she was beached in shallow water. She’ll fly again but it’ll take time. R-Robert’s taking her place.’
Molyneux frowned. ‘This place’s beginning to look bloody empty,’ he said.
‘Times change, sport,’ Mackintosh commented. ‘Six months ago we were on top of the U-boats and even got a few nice words from the Admiral. It seems to be different now. There are more submarines these days and a lot less aircraft.’
‘And you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll be reinforcing. Rommel’s only just outside Cairo now. Christ knows what they’re doing up there in the desert.’
Mackintosh smiled. ‘Probably wondering what the hell we’re doing down here in West Africa.’
They were beginning now to find problems with the over-worked aircraft, and the fitters in the hangar were having to go all out to get the machines back in the air quickly when they came in for servicing.
Bringing a machine in was never easy. Sunderland A-Apple was towed from the lagoon down the narrow creek, all eyes on the wingtips in case they were damaged by the tough mangrove branches. As she was made fast to the buoy that lay just off the end of the slip, men began to wade into the water – not particularly willingly because there were jigger worms there, and if you were unlucky they laid their eggs under your toe nails so that your foot swelled painfully and a minor operation had to be performed in the sick bay to remove them. As the aircraft rose on her cradle and was edged into the hangar, a vast machine with flat grey sides like cliffs, the fitters fell on her like flies.
The rain came once more that afternoon, putting a grey curtain over the whole base so that from the piermaster’s office it was impossible to see the trots of aircraft. Dinghy drivers, refueller and scow crews, fitters, riggers and flight mechanics returned soaked. The camp these days was surrounded constantly by the misty miasma from the swamps, and the huts on the lower side of the camp filled with water again while drainage ditches became potential death traps. The mosquitoes were biting like mad dogs and malaria, dormant during the dry season, had increased suddenly so that shivering men were being carted off every day to the sick bay. The chorus of frogs and toads grew deafening and Ginger Donnelly killed two mambas in four hours among the long grass. The hatred for the narrow spit of land was almost tangible.
However, mail arrived and though it proved Feverel and the prophets of gloom correct, at least it was a consolation. It included a parcel for Ginger from the pub he’d frequented in England and, scanning through it quickly to find it was full of dubbin, shoe polish, laces, a packet of washing powder, shaving soap and such articles as were considered by civilians to be of prime importance to a serviceman, he hurled it into a corner in disgust. Bates’ wife had sent him a fruit cake, but the large box of talcum powder – a great necessity where you sweated buckets and broke out in rashes – that he’d begged her also to include, had burst out of its wartime utility packing and he was trying to convince himself that if he scraped off the thick perfumed white layer and washed the cake under the shower it would miraculously become eatable.
‘The water wouldn’t go in far,’ he explained, staring at it frustratedly.
‘You got anything, Nellie?’ Feverel asked.
Kneller held up a letter. It came from Ettore Mori-Moncrieff and was addressed from India where he was now entertaining troops.
‘I hope,’ he wrote, ‘that you believed me when I said you should become a chorister at Covent Garden. I enclose my address and when the war is over – and I pray God it will not be too long – please write to me. If I should not, for some reason, still be around – and I might not, because I am no longer young and am finding this tour exhausting – then get in touch with the chorus master there. I have written several letters on your behalf to a number of people, a list of whom I include. Any of them should be able to help you, and I name several because in wartime one never knows the future. I trust you will not fail me because someone with an ear for music such as you have should not neglect its possibilities.’
Kneller was touched but Feverel didn’t seem very surprised.
‘It’s only what everybody’s been saying,’ he pointed out.
That evening Kneller’s voice could be heard through the mist as he took out Scow 14 to check the strops and grommets on the aircraft buoys. He was tough and brave, and despite his voice, a good worker who had learned to splice wire the hard way and could now keep up with Feverel and Ginger Donnelly.
A-Apple was lowered into the water the following morning, her service completed, towed back to the lagoon and secured to a buoy – one of those buoys that gave Feverel and Kneller nightmares with their four-inch nails. During the afternoon, Flying Officer Knight, her captain, was informed he would be taking off in the early hours of the next morning to be in position a hundred miles out into the Atlantic at first light. The crew were given their course and rendezvous, and, as the flarepath dinghies were towed into place, they scrambled into the lorry that took them to the jetty. As they climbed into the interior of the Sunderland, there was a lot of chaffing.
‘Don’t keep us waiting when we land,’ the Australian navigator said, ‘and there’ll be a jar of peanut butter for you.’
‘You can stick your peanut butter.’ Corporal Bunting was still disgruntled at being taken off refuellers. ‘Only Australians would eat that stuff.’
There was a last-minute hitch as it was found one of the dashboard light sockets was faulty and a message was sent ashore by dinghy. An electrician appeared with a new socket and fitted it as the crew chafed and waited, and it was growing
dangerously late as A-Apple prepared for take-off, because they had also had to wait an extra half-hour for the Catalina they were supposed to be relieving to come in and land.
As the returning Catalina arrived with a tunnelling ‘swoosh’, taxied and made fast, Flying Officer Knight started A-Apple’s outer engines, let go her mooring and swung away to the holding area. There, her engines idling, the last checks were made, then he swung her to face into the stream and called base for clearance.
‘Roger,’ he said as base replied. ‘Here goes!’ And he slammed open the throttles of the four great Pegasus engines.
The metal propellers bit at the air and the huge machine began to move forward. They were in for a seven-hour flight.
There was a slight breeze blowing and the water was stirred by small wavelets. They weren’t high enough to damage the always-fragile floats but were high enough to help the take-off, and Knight stared ahead, confident there would be no trouble. The week before, on a dead still day, he had ploughed, fully loaded, up and down the five miles of lagoon three times before finally bumping into the air from artificial waves created for him by the wash of the seaplane tender. The breeze was slightly across his path and he began to adjust the outer engines, keeping one at full revs, the other slightly throttled back to keep the aircraft straight. There were no rules. It was always a case of suck it and see because water made everything different.
Knight liked his Sunderland, despite her shabby appearance where paint had been peeled off by flying in tropical rain. They would live on Machonachie’s stew and coffee until they returned, but the Sunderland was a magnificent machine to handle, especially at the end of a trip when, lightly loaded, he liked to do steep turns and sideslips to show what she was capable of.
The great square fuselage began to cut through the water, throwing out a flat spray on either side and trailing a deep white wash behind it through the brown surface of the river. The mangroves moved past faster and faster until they became a blur, then, as the enormous wing began to take her weight and she moved on to the step, Knight pulled gently back on the stick.