by Alan Evans
‘Yes.’ Smith went back to the bridge. Out on the starboard wing he looked down and saw Elizabeth Ramsay with a group of airmen gathered aft of the platform. Her face was turned up to him, pale and anxious. Danby stood directly below him at the foot of the ladder, sizing up the Camel.
It was a short-bodied biplane and looked what it was: a fighting machine, a killer. It thickened quickly up from the tail to the hump of the housing covering the breeches of the twin Vickers machine-guns. That hump gave it the name: Camel. Engine, guns and cockpit were all crammed into the front seven feet of the body. Its grey-green paint was mottled after the repairs but the red, white and blue roundels on wings and fuselage were clear. There was an extra white circle painted around each one, the mark of the Royal Naval Air Service. Danby wondered if that was correct now that they were Royal Air Force?
Gallagher had started: ‘Now, listen! I’ll run through it all, though you’ve heard most of it before, just to get you thinking it. And remember, this is just another aeroplane. It has its own idiosyncrasies you’ve got to learn, but it’s just another aeroplane. And flying off from a platform is just one more stunt.’
Danby waddled across the deck and climbed laboriously on to the platform. It would be cold up there, in spite of all his clothes. He was cold now, the sweat running chill against his skin. His head ached and he felt sick. The wind froze his face: twenty-five knots. Should be just enough, Gallagher said.
Should be?
There was a trestle at the back of the platform holding a slotted steel tube six feet long. The Camel’s tail was lifted and the tail-skid entered in the tube’s slot so that the Camel stood in a flying attitude. A ball on the tip of the skid ran in the tube and could only come out at the end. That kept the machine straight for the first six feet of its run. At present the Camel was locked to the platform by a quick-release clamp on the undercarriage. A wire led from the quick-release to the back of the platform and was held by a rigger.
They were waiting for him. A fitter and a rigger stood by the machine but the rest had cleared off out of the way and stood behind the platform. He saw Mrs. Ramsay there and she smiled at him. The seas were not big but Audacity’s speed through them gave her a rocking-horse motion and her deck bucked steadily under his oversize boots. He shoved the toe of the left one into the step cut in the fuselage just behind the lower wing and pulled himself up to sit on top and just aft of the cockpit. He swung his legs in, one either side of the stick, then slid down into the seat. His boots scraped on the rough wooden planking of the floor then settled on the rudder-bar. He took the stick with its spade-grip top and worked it cautiously, moved the rudder-bar with his feet. Everything was working all right. On top of the triangular spade-grip was the engine switch and inside the triangle were the triggers of the twin Vickers.
Looking forward over the guns and under the top wing he had a view of the timber platform stretching away to end sharply at the bow. Was that forty feet? It looked so short! There was the line of the edge of the platform cut against the sky like a false horizon, then—nothing. That false horizon soared and plunged as Audacity crashed on at full speed and the spray burst inboard, driving into his grease-slicked face like rain. If he pancaked over the end then the ship’s bow would grind him and the Camel under—
A voice. ‘Switches off!’ He tore his eyes away from the emptiness over the bow and looked down, saw the fitter and the rigger staring up at him, faces blue-white and pinched with cold, realised the fitter had twice called up to him.
His gaze flicked inside the cockpit, checked the two magneto switches were off and the petrol fine adjustment lever was shut. He turned on the petrol tap, felt for the handpump and worked up the fuel pressure. A wind-driven pump would do it once he was airborne.
If…
He pushed the petrol fine adjustment lever half-open and called, ‘Switches off!’
‘Petrol on!’ The fitter reached up to the propeller.
Danby answered, ‘Petrol on!’ As the fitter pulled the propeller round slowly, Danby lowered his gloved left hand to the long lever of the throttle valve and edged it forward, heard the suck and gurgle of the mixture of petrol and air. He pulled the straps of the Sutton harness tight over his thighs and fastened them with a conical pin thrust through holes in the straps. He held them on the pin with one hand as he brought each shoulder strap down over his chest and on to the pin. Then he locked all four straps with a spring clip pushed through a hole in the narrow end of the conical pin. Pulling out that spring clip would release all four straps at once, sliding off the pin, but now he was belted in to fly. He pulled his scarf up over his mouth and nose so that only his eyes showed between scarf and balaclava.
The fitter ceased his steady turning of the propeller and held it with arms at full stretch above his head. He bawled, ‘Contact!’ The rigger moved in behind him and locked one hand in the back of the fitter’s belt.
Danby flicked the switches on, the petrol fine adjustment back and the throttle half-open. ‘Contact!’ It came out a whisper he hardly heard through the muffling scarf. The fitter waited, fingers twitching on the propeller, nervous. Danby thought, Christ! You’re all right down there!
Gallagher had told him: ‘Look, you can do this. The first smash was bad luck, we all have them. The second—I didn’t know about Johnny, I’m sorry.’
He’d looked wretched, but he meant it. Gallagher didn’t lie.
Danby shouted squeakily, ‘Contact!’
The fitter yanked the propeller down, a quick snatch, and the rigger’s hand in his belt jerked him back clear of the spinning propeller as the engine fired. Danby ran it up until the indicator showed the revs were right and it sounded right, then pulled down his goggles with one hand, keeping the other on the stick. Gallagher had said, ‘She’s sensitive. Hold the stick forward until you feel the pressure then let it come back. Don’t pull the thing!’
Johnny’s goggles. He remembered Johnny’s Camel suddenly, inexplicably sliding across in front of him, then the crash. They smashed in from only a few feet at the end of the field. He got out of his own Camel before anyone could come up and tried to pull Johnny clear of the flames. But he could not reach the belt’s locking-pin, only got his hands on Johnny’s head, lolling as the goggles came away, dangled from his fingers, the fire beating him back.
He licked his lips, tasted blood on them still from Gallagher’s blow, sucked in air through the folds of the scarf. He kept his eyes on the short strip of rough timber decking. The Camel was vibrating, held on the leash. He lifted one hand, signalling, brought it quickly back to join the other on the stick, felt the kick as the rigger at the back of the platform pulled on the wire and the anchoring quick-release on the undercarriage snapped free. The Camel shot forward, the platform sliding fast under the wing. He yielded to pressure on the stick, let it come back—and there was no platform. A foam-flecked, cold green sea lay below him but the Camel was flying.
Gallagher’s voice in his head: ‘Don’t try to turn when you first take off. The torque effect of the engine can be murderous. If you bank left she’ll try to climb and she’ll stall; turn right and you’ll bang her nose-first in the drink. So ease the stick forward again and keep her level. You’ll soon reach a hundred knots and then you can climb.’
Danby held it forward, one eye on the airspeed dial, one on sea and sky. Now. He let the stick come back an inch, then another and the nose lifted. He was climbing steadily.
Pearson and his party had brought up Gallagher, injured leg splinted temporarily by boards, and sat him in a chair lashed to the starboard wing of the bridge. With Smith he watched in silence until Danby took off and began to climb. Then he said quietly, ‘Thank God!’ The aircrew on the deck below were cheering.
Smith ordered, ‘Port ten.’ He brought Audacity around on to a course of south-west, steering as if for Kiel and Germany. The Zeppelin was still not in sight. He told Ross, ‘I want to talk to Mr. Gallagher.’ And when Ross had gone away into the wheelhouse: �
�You owe me an explanation.’
Gallagher answered absently, head turned and eyes still fixed on the shrinking, climbing Camel. ‘I had a friend once…’ He turned back to Smith. ‘He’d flown too many patrols. I should have thought of it, seen it happening because I’d seen pilots crack up before. But Johnny was—well, special. It just never entered my head that it could happen to him. He was always steady as a rock. We saw a lot of service, shared a lot of life. Then we went to Russia.’ He told Smith the whole bitter story as Audacity hurried south-westward.
*
Danby could hardly believe he had flown off the Camel and he sat tense, but his gloved fingers were cautiously gentle on the stick. His eyes searched the sky to the south though he knew he should not see the Zeppelin yet. He became aware of the freezing cold. At a thousand feet he levelled off then made a careful, slow turn to the left so he was flying south-westward. He let the stick come back again and recommenced the steady climb, now slanting towards the sinking sun.
At twelve thousand feet he eased the stick forward and levelled off, cocked the twin Vickers then set his thumbs on the triggers and fired a short burst, testing. He’d done exactly as Gallagher told him. The idea was to meet the Zeppelin on its northward run and out of sight of land. Gallagher estimated it was flying at ten thousand feet and between fifty and sixty knots. Danby’s fifteen minutes of climbing should have taken him to the west of the Zeppelin’s course so he would be up-sun.
He ought to see it soon.
Would he? He had never flown a combat flight, let alone hunted a Zeppelin. He’d been told that inexperienced pilots often flew their first patrols without seeing any of the distant enemy aircraft that older hands picked out in one sweeping all-round glance. And he was flying through confusingly scattered banks of cloud now, cautiously turning this way then that to skirt them, peering through the breaks.
He had to see it!
*
‘There it is!’ McLeod snapped it out, glasses at his eyes. ‘Fine on the port bow!’
A silver splinter above the horizon, the Zeppelin was all of twenty miles away but closing Audacity at their combined speeds of around seventy knots. In a few minutes they could make out the cigar shape, foreshortened because it was flying more or less towards them. Then it foreshortened further still as the Zeppelin turned and headed directly for the ship.
Gallagher burst out, ‘For Christ’s sake! Where’s Danby?’
The sky was laced with strung cloud through which the sun blinked out of the west so that they had to squint their eyes against it. There was no Camel.
*
Danby leaned to starboard, looked out and down, wondered if the Zeppelin had taken a more westerly course and was sailing past while he searched the sky to the east. He could see nothing but the wisping cloud and the gunmetal sea far below. He looked up and winced, momentarily blinded as the sun blazed into his eyes. He turned away from that glare and searched to port again. It had to be there. He must see it. This cloud was a bastard! It was like peering down through holes in a fence that you were sliding past very quickly. For a second you saw the sea below then lost it. Now you see it, now you don’t.
Gallagher had said to stay at twelve thousand feet: ‘You’ll need that height to hit him from above.’ Danby had obeyed but up here he could see nothing. He told himself: Use your common sense. If you can’t see, go down and have a look.
He banked the Camel gently but with growing confidence now, then with the sun at his back he eased the stick forward and took the plane down into a gap in the clouds. As he passed through he was aware of his widening arc of vision, the sea spreading out and out. That had to be Audacity, a lone toy ship at the end of a long track of white water that was her wake, the trailing feather of her smoke bent round to the south on the wind like a quill laid on the sea. Then his eyes changed focus and he caught his breath. The Zeppelin was a thousand feet below, almost between him and Audacity so that he had in fact looked past it, missed it as he peered at the ship. He did not understand how he could have done that. The long silver sheath of it sliding slowly below was big enough, for God’s sake.
He turned again, slightly, to port so that he was on the same course as the airship. Gallagher had said, ‘Go at him from above and behind. They used to have a machine-gun mounted in an observation bay on the top but our chaps operating in the North Sea say the Hun gave up manning it a while ago.’
Danby inched the stick forward and the nose tipped down, pointed at the Zeppelin. He was watching it over the Aldis sight as he descended in a shallow dive. It swam along like a great silver fish, eerily silent because the whirring clatter of the Camel’s Clerget engine blotted out all other sound. A slow fish, growing bigger and coming closer with every second. His eyes flicked to the airspeed dial and he read 140 knots, saw the needle still climbing. His gaze jerked back to the Zeppelin and it was huge, monstrous, rushing up at him. A glance along the top of the Aldis sight showed him the guns would not bear because he was slightly to the left of the Zeppelin so he edged to the right. He was coming down out of the sun as Gallagher had said, so aboard the Zeppelin they wouldn’t see him until he was right on top—
He was too close!
He remembered just in time not to snatch at the stick and nursed it back, felt the gravitational pull as the Camel came out of the dive, the nose lifting to sweep along the length of the Zeppelin from stern to bow and about thirty feet above it. As the finned tail of the airship slid towards him he saw the pale wink of flame amidships, and for a split second did not realise what it was. Then he did: the machine-gun was manned.
It raced towards him as he planed over the top of the silver monster, the two tiny figures behind the gun growing with terrifying speed. In those first seconds he did not think of firing back, did not think at all but sat with his thumbs idly on the triggers. He felt the shock of the bullets striking the Camel but didn’t realise he was flying straight down the German’s cone of fire. Then something tore along the side of his head and he flinched, cried out at the pain of it. That flinching swung the Camel out of the cone of fire, banking to port away from the Zeppelin and climbing. ‘Watch she doesn’t stall when you turn to port!’ Gallagher’s voice again. Danby kept pressure on the stick and the climb gentle. Smoke from burning castor-oil poured from the engine and streamed past his face.
*
Gallagher said heavily, ‘He’s hit.’
The Camel curled away from the Zeppelin, turning on one wing, then climbed, smoke trailing from it. The turn became smoother, the climb shallower. On the bridge they waited for the little whirring machine up there to falter, the sun bringing tears to their eyes.
*
The pain and smoke acted on Danby like icy water. He shuddered and found he had a sudden clarity of vision. The Camel’s speed had taken him soaring out ahead of the Zeppelin, turning to port and climbing. He was in a wide, banking circle that would bring him round to lie astern and above the Zeppelin again. He had thrown his best chance away, wasted that huge advantage of surprise, the Zeppelin never expecting an attack by an aircraft here at all, let alone out of the sun. He had not even fired but had simply flown the Camel in like a game-bird to be shot at.
The Clerget was running erratically now and it set the airframe vibrating. He thought he could see black tendrils whipping from the fuselage just abaft the engine, and that meant fire. He remembered how Johnny Vincent looked when they had finally put the fire out and cut him from the wreckage. He pulled down the scarf, leaned over the side of the cockpit and vomited.
He wiped his mouth on the scarf, thinking: You went in too fast. He felt empty, weak, and his head hurt. He eased the Camel out of the turn and put its nose down again just enough for him to see the Zeppelin in the gap between the twin Vickers and the upper wing. He checked his airspeed and this time it was just a hundred knots. He saw the pin-pricks of stabbing flame from the gun on top of the Zeppelin and set the Camel swinging in text book style from side to side of its mean course so that
the gunner had to chase his target and missed. The smoke streamed across Danby’s face each time he turned, blinded him briefly and made him cough, but he ignored it. Gallagher had said, ‘Come in nice and steady, give him a long burst.’
When he reckoned he was forty feet above the Zeppelin he levelled off behind its tail and laid the Aldis sight on the long silver body. He pressed the triggers and saw the tracer flying; the guns were loaded one round of explosive ammunition to one of tracer. The bursts ran ahead of the Camel like a knife slitting the silver envelope. The flame from the gun on top of the envelope ceased and there was a ball of flame of another kind. He stopped firing and turned away as the Camel passed the bow of the airship, craned his head around to look back and saw the fireball blow itself up into another sun, swallowing the middle of the Zeppelin. The ends of it fell away crumpled and flaming, the fabric flesh stripped from the bones of the frame in seconds as the hydrogen burned.
He hung his head over the side as his stomach heaved again at the sight but only sour bile came up. His engine died. There were flames from the vents at the bottom of the cowling and the underside of the fuselage was smouldering. He looked for Audacity.
*
Gallagher shouted exultantly, ‘He’s got it!’ Then he was suddenly silent. The second burst of cheering from the deck also died away. He watched the Camel slide steeply down the sky, its nose turning to point at the ship. The wreckage of the Zeppelin hit the sea but passed unnoticed.
Smith ordered, ‘Call away the sea-boat’s crew!’
The boat was lowered and hung from its davits a foot above the water with a fender to hold it off from the side. All eyes were turned forward to watch the Camel at the leading end of its long streamer of smoke. Gallagher’s lips moved soundlessly, as if in prayer. The Camel’s nose lifted at the bottom of the dive and it ripped along the surface of the sea, the wheels spurting feathers of white spray to join the brown and yellow smoke. Then the spray thickened for a second before the wheels dug in and the Camel ditched on its nose.