by Cecil Beaton
But I now realize that feelings are controlled and smothered by a self-preservation instinct. Realization of their nearness to danger is never far removed from the minds of these youths, in spite of such easy grace of heart.
These men bring the art of living into the aerodrome, knowing that the best has been provided. They value their aircraft, and appreciate that it does only what the pilot makes it, that without him it cannot fly, and that its weakest part is the pilot. Their respect even for their rather arid-looking mess is shown by the scrupulous care with which, having returned from the air, the pilot takes off his coat, washes his hands, combs his hair, and brushes his shoulders before entering. Airmen are surprisingly formal. Even the bad language and the slang they use becomes part of a code of behaviour. Even the CO feels that he must use the ‘good shows’, ‘wizard prangs’, and ‘gens’ that are part of an anonymous language pattern by which the RAF expresses itself. He even thinks in the special phraseology of the RAF, thereby associating himself utterly and entirely with the communal spirit.
April 1941, Tangmere
Fighter pilots have a daredevil bravura quality, and seem to be rakishly gay and heroic in an offhand way. They are the more reckless ones, slightly temperamental, perhaps even a bit selfish — but only in comparison with the rest of the RAF, for selfishness, as known in the outside world, cannot exist here.
Though the fighter pilot generally flies alone he is always a part of the squadron, he is often flying in formation, and receives his instructions from the squadron leader or wing commander. However, we have the impression that the fighters are the tough ones, irresponsible young sparks who might risk all for a lark. But the daredevil who, without reckoning the odds, would go ‘flat out’, would ‘shoot up’ his aerodrome, diving down between the refuelling bowsers, has long since gone. Erratic feats of devil-may-care recklessness are less admired today than the calculated courage of the new type of hero with his ‘cold guts’. His bravery needs no aids. His attitude, without heroics, even a little cynical, is sobered by his sense that so much depends upon him.
Under fine weather conditions any fool can fly a straight course. To manoeuvre a Spitfire in rough weather for an hour is as fatiguing as any normal day’s work. To compete with the unexpected danger, and to control the hundred-and-one ‘hot and cold taps’ on the dashboard, needs a concentrated clarity of mind: to be able to fight in the air demands enormous ability and intelligence.
The fighter pilot must learn to have such instinctive mastery over the complicated controls that within a split-second he can take action. Simultaneously assuming the duties of navigator, wireless operator and air-gunner, he must be as alert as a highly-trained racehorse, never off guard for an instant, craning his neck lest an unsuspected enemy forestall him or creep up from behind. Taking into consideration position of the sun, wind speed, his height and petrol reserves, he must be quick enough to make any immediate practical decision. For his life he alone is responsible.
Although so much can happen within the few split-seconds of combat, the fighter is rarely for more than an hour and a half in the air. Most of his time is spent waiting near his Spitfire ‘at readiness’ from dawn to sunset.
These young pilots stand about in loose attitudes, flexing the muscles of a leg, kicking a corner of the door with a heavy foot, or tossing a pencil in the palm of a hand that has a piece of sticking-plaster on it. Intent on nothing particular, they are absorbed by the waiting. Yet this lassitude is neither as casual nor as utterly carefree as it seems. At any moment the alert may sound — and then all hell breaks loose.
They are a blue and yellow group in their yellow life-preservers, their blue trousers tucked into sheep-wool lined boots. In the RAF colours take on new significance. They are not chosen for aesthetic reasons or personal taste. They become intelligence symbols that change according to the code of the night. Red chalk on the boards of the operations room shows what has been achieved, yellow chalk that which has been the aim. The coloured lights flash their signals to the traffic in the air above where, for obvious reasons, the Defiant night-fighter and the Manchester bomber are painted black. Yellow, however, according to the scientists, is the colour most easily seen in the distance. Yellow becomes the symbol of faith. The skull-caps, like buttercups, that the pilots wear when they bale out into the sea, and the dinghy which contains them, are yellow, and it is often by the streaks of yellow fluorescine chemical with which they stain the sea that they are seen from above and saved from drowning.
Hallo! What’s this? One of the squadron back already?
‘What happened to you, McCarthy?’ McCarthy, of the large, pale moustache, is ‘browned off’. The door of his machine had come unhinged and might have flown off, hitting his tail. So he’d had to turn around, hanging on to it with all his strength. He settles down in resignation to read a detective novel until the others return.
A dramatic silence pervades the operations room with the flashing lights of its batteries of telephones through which come information, orders and inquiries to the controller. The men working here are older, now considered unfit for operational duties although, having been previously through similar combats, they are able to give confidence to the younger men fighting in the sky.
The pilots, when many miles away over enemy-occupied territory, are comforted if they know the controller on duty and recognize his voice. Henderson, with the long, lean face of a sad greyhound, said, ‘Yes, I want to know whether the bloke is fat, stupid, or if he knows what he’s doing.’ The controller can become a sort of godfather to the fighter pilots — a sympathetic link with the ground; they like to hear the deep, pleasant voice which warns them: ‘Bandits behind you, but don’t worry’, and in answer to their, ‘I think I’d better come home’, replies: ‘Yes, come home right away.’
Though conversing with one another in the air is not encouraged, for it may add confusion and their bad language prove embarrassing to the WAAFs in the ‘Ops’ room, the fighters can often be heard calling to one another on their radio sets: ‘Look out for your tail!’ ‘You take that one on the right, I’ll take this.’ Leslie, with his tombstone teeth and mop of yellow straw hair, is recognized, when soaring above the clouds, by his imitation of Donald, the squadron’s mascot duck. It never fails to send a shiver down the spine when you hear the cry ‘tally-ho’ as the fighters dive to engage the enemy.
One by one the returning aircraft circle before landing. An intelligence officer is there to interrogate the fighters as, with surprising agility, they jump from the cockpit. As all men when they arrive from the skies, they appear a little remote from this planet. They have acquired the ecstasy that only pilots know. They have become a particle of the great kingdom of the skies — attained the sense of freedom of a bird. This has been achieved by complete mastery of the aircraft and the element in which they fly. Now, ambling along towards the hangars, harness thrown over their shoulders, they smile the smile that conveys more sentiment than a whole host of words.
The questions surprise them. ‘How many does that make? How many missing?’
‘Yes, I got one, but Brownie’s not back, nor Leslie.’
‘Anyone see what happened to Brownie?’
‘Someone saw him shot down in flames.’
‘See him bale out?’
‘No. Don’t think he got his hood open.’
‘How bloody!’
Another aircraft circles above. It must be Leslie! Yes, it is. Leslie appears, straw thatch on end, in such a state of wild exultation that his very teeth are flashing as he punches the air.
‘Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Never had such a time! I got two, two down. Never had such a wonderful ten minutes in my life. Oh, boy! Oh, boy!’
Often the pilots return in such a highly-keyed condition that it may take several hours for them to calm down enough to remember clearly what happened. Sometimes, in order to get his story, the PRO will give them a drink. ‘Had an interesting time? What was it like?’ But, in all probability, he wi
ll only be told that it was a ‘hell of a party’ for, so innately modest and selfdeprecating are the pilots, so self-conscious about ‘shooting a line’, that they are seldom willing to give a graphic description of their fight.
COASTAL COMMAND
June, Lossiemouth
The work of Coastal Command and Fleet Air Arm, concerned as it is with our seas and shores (and those occupied by the enemy), is the least spectacular, if perhaps the most strenuous, and even dangerous. Coastal Command is relied upon to be the eyes of the RAF and is an air force within the air force, with its own land planes, bombers, fighters and flying-boats to ward off attack from the air. Its fleet services the flying-boats and high-speed launches, and co-operates with the Royal Navy. The men, wearing navy blue, using nautical terms and measuring in knots, whether in landcraft or not, escort or sweep ahead of convoys in search of U-boats.
The pilots seem to have a quietness that results from their long days of patient endurance on reconnaissance trips, from which they bring back valuable photographic and other information of activity along eastern and western coasts. They must be able to report fully to Intelligence on every detailed item of interest they have seen on their long journeys, keep constant watch on shipping, give positions of the mines, upturned boats, or the small loads of escaping foreigners they may have seen. (To these latter, compass courses, food and brandy are dropped from the air or, should they be in distress, rescue launches are sent out.)
During the first year Coastal Command was said to have ‘had the war to itself’, and became known as the ‘Green Line Bus’. As one officer said, ‘A lot of petrol ran through the engines at that time — the boys saw a lot of water, and did they work! Yet somehow they still had time to take out the WAAFs in the evening!’ One, Corporal Ball, did over 180 flying hours in a month.
Coastal Command, besides patrolling the shores of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and stretching its arm from the north of Norway to the Spanish frontier, carries on a twenty-four hour watch over almost the entire eastern world, while a ‘strike crew’ always stands by waiting for orders to attack enemy shipping. The pilots have to read visual Morse signals and know as much about navigation as a ship’s master. They must be able to manoeuvre a flying-boat and, though its wings are caught by wind, to bring it ‘alongside’ in roughest weather. They must recognize the types of stern of all ships, so that they may learn what class of ship has been seen and from whence it comes. Enemy ships must not be confused with friendly ones, nor islands be mistaken for ships. (Sometimes small islands have been torpedoed!) From early morning until moonlight the marathon of routine patrols continues. Sighting reports are sent every two hours, and a ‘nil’ report is always welcome.
A jovial, red-cheeked officer with a ginger, lavatory-brush moustache, completes his conscientious report of yet another monotonous daily sortie. He scratches his sandy head and asks, ‘How many G’s in Skagerrak?’ The pink and perky flight orderly who comes in with a wicker cage of carrier pigeons does not know. The use of homing-pigeons to carry messages is as old as Solomon: the early Persians trained these birds for the ancient Greeks to dispatch the results of Olympic races. Today, when more modern methods have failed, they are considered the most reliable means of communication, and many men have been saved by these birds flying as quickly as forty miles an hour back to their home loft. The last act the navigator performs when his wireless fades out is to release the two pigeons carrying messages giving the position of the aircraft.
The fighter pilot is never away for more than two hours, but Coastal Command pilots, on their long flights hundreds of miles out over the Atlantic, must exercise enormous patience and, in an effort to make time pass more quickly they prepare large meals of soup, steak, vegetables, fruit and coffee. A tea towel is kept on the stove. One gunner does the washing-up, the other the drying. The navigator, having given the pilot his course for the next half hour, crawls about the aircraft doing odd jobs or composing light verse. In his turret the rear-gunner is singing Rabelaisian songs into his radio transmitter. The crew has to fly until the clock shows it is time to go home. It is ungrateful work and seldom spectacular, yet these men are doing a great national duty.
Nearly all the while flying at a low level over the waves (to fly at 2,000 feet is considered mountaineering), often in slow, cumbersome landcraft, they go out as far as their petrol can carry them, 500 or 600 miles at sea, and can be blown thirty miles off course by the gales. If forced down, they have poor chances of survival. An aeroplane sinks rapidly in rough seas, and it is only a miracle if a small yellow dinghy and its buttercup-capped occupants are sighted from the air.
Night after night, day after day on end, these men endeavour to track down, sink, or even capture submarines. ‘If you spot a “sub” it’s a hell of a scramble to get to it, and, in any case, it’s probably seen you first and already started to crash dive.’ Coastal Command pilots have been known to circle over a certain patch of sea, their eyes glued to the spot where they have sighted a submarine, until the help they have signalled for has finally arrived, hours later. Jim Osman, a seasoned pilot of twenty-three, told me that once he had strained the muscles of his neck so that, for several days afterwards, he couldn’t turn his head back to its normal position.
Maybe word is sent by cypher from a patrolling Hudson of a convoy creeping past the coastline. These men have dislocated enemy communications, have laid their mines, have attacked with torpedoes a ship carrying bombs from a height not higher than 500 feet at a level with the gunfire — unless, in fact, it skims beneath the fire angle of the guns.
Some of the feats of endurance do not bear contemplation. Gunners are clamped in the medieval vice of the narrow fuselages where they have bled to death. Sometimes they fly in temperatures so low that a thermos of tea becomes frozen the moment the cap is unscrewed, and icicles form on the chin.
Patrick, a tall, cub-like youth who pilots a reconnaissance plane, baffled me with his incomprehensible allusions to ‘the enemy’. At last I realized Patrick was not referring to the Germans, the Japanese or the Italians, but to the weather. When he spoke of the front, it was not of the battle-front, but of the weather-front. Weather is his greatest problem. Weather can bring him down to his doom more readily than any gunfire. The weather is mysterious. This enemy springs so many surprises. Suddenly, in a warm atmosphere, the pressure valves may begin to ice up, and our friend must go up and over, not below, as one might have thought, to avoid disaster. The strangest phenomena occur in this element: fickle and contrary winds can beat and batter the aircraft and cause it to go ‘off trim’, or bear down upon one wing or the other and blow the pilot irrevocably off course; electric storms can turn his aircraft into an electrical conductor; the strata above and between clouds can contain ‘up and down’ currents of 100 miles an hour: cirrus clouds, flat and small and wispy, are so cold that they are non-ice-forming in that the ice snaps and bounces off the wings. Patrick may dive down into a warmer cumulus cloud where, within a few seconds, ice forms on the outward edge of the wings, destroying the vacuum of their upper surface, and therefore depriving them of their lift. The air speed indicator and the other instruments are thrown out of control. Patrick opens up the engines faster as the icing proceeds faster. He puts up the nose of his aircraft when gradually he finds himself stalling and then falling uncertainly, like an autumn leaf, towards the earth until control is regained.
The stars have also been known to lure pilots up and up to their doom, for they have sometimes been mistaken for night-fighters and gunners have blazed their ammunition at them. The stars can be familiar signposts telling a pilot within five miles his position in the sky. By astro-navigation he has been able to fly thousands of miles with the aid of the constellations, and before setting out on their night flights you can hear the pilots joking to the CO: ‘Can’t you give Sirius a bit of a polish up for us tonight, sir?’ Cloud is good cover, at the right height, in which a pilot is unlikely to be discovered: cloud can provide him wi
th the stepping-stones on which to hop towards and over his target — but the clouds may fail him, may close down and prevent his landing; sea fogs and mists are calamitous.
Yet certain Coastal Command operations are so dangerous that those undertaking them pray for bad weather conditions during the execution of them. Patrick himself prefers to navigate weather which, over England, would be considered too bad for flying. Sometimes it is necessary to go down 400 feet in order to photograph a well-defended port where it is said the ‘flak’ is so thick you could land on it! To launch a torpedo the pilot must descend as low as twenty feet above his target. It is easy to understand why he prefers not to perform such feats out of a clear sky.
For minelaying the aircraft approaches the coast as near as possible, gliding in quietly ‘like a cat in a crypt’. Pilots have been known to fly along the hostile cliffs so close that they were supposed to see what appeared to be fireflies, but were, in fact, the pocket torches of the Germans running to man their guns! So vivid is the feeling of stealth during these occasions that the pilots, forgetting the noise of their engines, instinctively talk in whispers to one another on the intercom.
The typical Coastal Command pilot has a sailor’s sense of distance, and like a sailor he learns to depend a great deal upon himself. He is an aviator, a true wanderer through the sky, and is never for long at one home station. He may find himself unexpectedly working anywhere from the Far East to the Shetlands. Compared to pilots of other commands he is perhaps more adult and more at ease when conversing about the universe.