“We could have gone towards the smoke, Thomas. We know they have been there.”
“Yes, Jim. Where are they when we get there? The smoke says they have dropped their bombs.”
Meditation produced the answer that they had been and gone – they would be somewhere else.
“How do we ever catch them, Thomas?”
“We keep looking and sometimes we get lucky. Don’t forget to look high – it may be possible to see their fighter cover more easily than the bombers themselves.”
Jim admitted that to be logical, he wondered why they did not climb up to the same level.
“We want to kill bombers. Fighters are an irritation – bombers kill soldiers.”
“And civilians, Thomas.”
“Civilians can look after themselves. We’re fighting a war. Get a cup of tea and take a pee while they’re fuelling up. Never miss a chance to empty your bladder – you won’t dodge bullets if you’re wondering how long before you wet yourself.”
Jim wondered if the knights in shining white armour had worried about toilet breaks. He laughed as he thought they might get rusty.
He found himself standing next to Bob, who had obviously received the same advice.
“It’s not the way they told us at Cranwell, Bob.”
“Too much to do all at once – look everywhere; vary height, position, speed; decide what sort of smoke you can see… I didn’t think it would be like this, Michael.”
“Jim – I’ve been given the name. I’m stuck with it.”
“So be it. Time to go.”
Mid-afternoon saw the squadron in business, diving onto a big raid of at least two squadrons of Heinkels as they bombed, flying straight and level and concentrating more on their target than the surrounding sky. Thomas searched the air above and spotted an escort of Me 110s high and oblivious to them.
“Squadron attack. Tally-ho! Over.”
They dived, the Flights scattering to spread their blessings.
Thomas picked up a grouping of six or seven, slightly separated at the rear of the formation and dropped in behind and a few feet above them.
“Yellow Two, target to port. Over.”
The first burst from Thomas’ guns hit behind the pilots’ cabin and walked up the fuselage into the nose. The Heinkel tilted into an uncontrolled dive as the dead pilot slumped forward.
“I’ve got him!”
“Yellow Leader. Radio discipline. Well done. Over.”
He glanced across, saw flames coming from the port engine of James’ target as it lost height and then fell into a spin.
“Yellow Leader. Don’t watch him. Go for the next! Over.”
The raid was breaking up fast, bombers heading in every direction, doors open and their loads tumbling out randomly as they dumped weight.
Machine gun fire was coming in from all quarters, hardly aimed but thick.
James dived straight for a Heinkel a quarter of a mile distant, oblivious to everything other than his second kill. Thomas clung to his tail, a couple of hundred yards distant, watching for the escort that should be joining the fight at any time. He spotted a 110 coming onto James, curving in behind him and placing himself immediately under Thomas’ guns, most obligingly. Two bursts and the big fighter sagged away, losing height and then dropping fast as a wing folded.
He glanced across at James, saw him no more than twenty feet behind the bomber, firing into his tail and down the length of the fuselage in far too long a burst, emptying his guns and probably shredding the crew. The Heinkel was nose down, had fallen to two thousand feet and showed no signs of recovering.
“Yellow Leader. Yellow Two, return to base. I have your tail. Over.”
The dogfight was coming to its natural end as fighters ran out of ammunition and broke off. Thomas could see Hurricanes turning for home, could not count them all.
“Yellow Two. I have some damage. Over.”
“Yellow Leader. Fly or bail out? Over.”
“Yellow Two. Holes in wings. Fly, I think. Over.”
Thomas dropped in closer to his wingman and inspected the plane. It seemed likely that he could fly it home and there was no more than another five minutes to go…
“Yellow Leader. How is your engine? Over?”
“Yellow Two. Firing smoothly. Over.”
“Yellow Leader. Fly. Over.”
Thomas sat and sweated while the field came in sight and Yellow Two made a clean landing. He had half-expected to see the boy crash, having told him to fly on. It was better to bring a plane back, even if it was only useful for spares, and a pilot who bailed out was commonly lost – captured or killed landing. It was still a hard decision to take.
All sixteen came back, many with bullet holes in their planes, none wounded.
They queued in front of the Idiot and made their claims, none of the pilots intentionally falsifying their reports but many wildly optimistic. Thomas wished he had camera guns to hand.
“Confirm two Heinkels to Jim, Idiot. I saw both going down, one flamer, one dead pilot. Claiming one Heinkel, one 110.”
The Idiot Boy wrote the claims down and demanded details from each pilot then retired to his office to correlate the sixteen reports – a tedious, slow process. He emerged two hours later, informed the half squadron on the ground of his results.
Nine of the planes had taken damage and could not fly again that day and their pilots were into their third beer by the time the Idiot reached them. They came close to riot as he announced his conclusions.
“A very successful interception. Seven downed and two probables and eleven damaged. Ground reports may add more, of course.”
“Seven? Bloody seven?”
The shouts of outrage were followed by waving fists as the Idiot fled.
Rod ran in and forbade a lynching party.
“We had a clear run at them, Rod. The escort was too far distant and asleep, gave us three minutes clear shooting. We must have got one apiece in that time, and some made two. Jim has two confirmed by Thomas, on his first day! Thomas claims a pair as well, and he knows what he’s doing! It’s bloody ludicrous, Rod!”
“Calm down, Chas. You know how it is – nothing can be given unless it’s confirmed and you know how often two men shoot at the same bird, coming in from opposite sides. If you don’t see a fire on the ground, you can’t be wholly sure.”
Rod nodded to the barman who called for empties to be filled.
More beer calmed most of them.
“Announcement – which was what I was coming for. Pack your bags and be ready to go at any time. I am sending batmen away tonight and they will carry your suitcases. There is rumour from the Frogs of tanks coming out of the hills, the Ardennes. It ain’t likely, but this whole war is bloody unlikely, if you ask me. HQ have offered a back-up field over towards Reims, I’ll give out maps with an exact location this evening. I am sending everything down there overnight, leaving only mechanics to get you up in the morning. They will be taken out as soon as you fly, if the decision to withdraw is made.”
“Will it be, Rod?”
“Damned if I know, Chas. Like I said, it don’t seem reasonable that tanks would come out of the high hills… But, who knows? I do bloody know that the Frog army hereabouts ain’t the best. Dick has seen them. He’ll tell you.”
Dick had already made his opinion loudly clear. He repeated it now.
“Reserve battalions. Old men, in their forties – bloody ancient. Dirty uniforms. Half shaven. Heads down – they didn’t want to be there. I saw a couple of rifles covered in mud – they hadn’t bothered to clean them in weeks. There’s no fight in the ones I saw.”
Dick took a thoughtful pull at his glass.
“Add to that, they’ve got no tanks with them and I saw nothing by way of guns. Just plain infantrymen – rifles and I suppose hand grenades and the odd machine gun and that’s it. If they wanted to fight, they wouldn’t do much against tanks.”
Thomas brought the patrol in and nodded thoughtfully
as he was brought up to date.
“As soon as we can, lads, I shall ask for gun cameras. We used them last year – they come on as soon as you press the trigger. That will give all the confirmation anybody can ask for.”
He was quite pleased with the way he had sold that idea. He had little doubt that it would show most claims to be at minimum overstated; the pilots seemed to think that a camera would prove them right. He found the Idiot hidden in his office.
“Just seven, Idiot?”
“Yes, Thomas. Some of them spotted identification numbers on their bombers and four pilots claimed one of them going down, I know.”
“I expect they all shot at him and genuinely believed they were on their own and killed him. It’s not deliberate falsehood, you know. Travelling at two-fifty, snapping in three-second bursts – there’s no time to see what’s going on. You shoot, you hit, you pass on, and when you get downstairs, you claim. Get a few more hours in and perhaps you see more, know what’s happening – but it ain’t easy for any of us to see. Keep doing what you know is right, Idiot. I will get cameras when this panic is over and we have time to get things together. Put in accurate claims to HQ so they know what the reality is. Not that they will understand it – reality is far too difficult for the brass to handle.”
Idiot almost burst into tears at the unexpected sympathy.
“Are you packed up and ready to go?”
“Go?”
“Apparently, the Hun has got tanks into the Ardennes and we are to fall back to Reims. Be ready to shift everything in your office onto a lorry tonight.”
“Oh dear!”
Thomas left him in the first stages of panic as he tried to decide what must really go, what he could not possibly do without.
Dinner was a noisy meal. The grounded pilots had spent the afternoon on the beer and were more than normally high-spirited. The five new men had lost none of their number and had three kills to celebrate between, them, two of them to Jim, who had never seemed their most martial soul. They ate a beef stew, though wondering what sort of cow it had come from, and whether it neighed, and fought their way through some sort of suety pudding and then drank far too much brandy to follow.
The evening was spent in noisy impromptu games, mainly involving minor bloodshed and much destruction of the mess furniture. Rugby-playing Bob was central to the bloodiest game which centred around a waste-paper bin and the fireplace as a goal; he was carried out unconscious and bleeding to great cheering after making a flying dive across the touchline, which was a brass fender.
The incredible tanks were confirmed in the middle of the night and they woke up to gunfire far too close to their east.
“No breakfast! No time. There’s hot tea out at the planes. Grab your emergency bag and run. Bob! Are you fit to fly? What can you see?”
Thomas waved three fingers in front of the bleary eyes.
“Yes.”
“She’ll do. Out you go.”
Rod handed out maps of the back-up field as they climbed into their cockpits.
“Don’t come back here – we’re burning everything we can’t carry away as soon as you’re off the ground.”
They took off and turned east.
“Yellow Leader. By Flights, hunt for ground attack aircraft. Do not attempt to strafe. I’ll buy a pint for every Stuka. Over.”
They saw bomb bursts within two minutes and headed towards them. There was a substantial detachment of French dug in at a riverbank, about brigade strength, Thomas estimated. They were holding their ground, had been doing so for some hours judging by the bodies and equipment spread across the ground on the other side of the river. There was a masonry bridge with a hole blown out of it, demolished by the French sappers, and the ruins of an assault bridge that had not made it across to its east. There were a few tanks in the distance, bellied down behind cover, going nowhere. Stukas were busy above the French, lining up to make their runs.
“Tally-ho!”
The four planes of Yellow Flight bored in on the Stukas, each hitting one in the first seconds. Bob went too close and followed his target down as its bombs exploded in mid-air, fragmenting Stuka and Hurricane simultaneously. Thomas saw a line of holes appear in his port wing as a tail-gunner did his best; he responded with a burst into the engine, saw his Stuka drop into a vertical dive which took it directly into the river. He went looking for his next target.
“Yellow One, break!”
Thomas flicked onto his port wing and hauled hard round, pushing the throttle over the gate, looking around for the fighter on his tail. He reversed bank, thrusting at the stick and feeling the blood draining away from his head, on the verge of blacking out. A Me 109, less manoeuvrable than a Hurricane at very low level, showed its tail and he fired into it and then down the fuselage before banking away to the west, still as fast as he could manage.
“Yellow Two. He’s down. I’m on your tail. Over.”
“Yellow Leader. Low on ammunition. Return to new base. Over.”
“Yellow Two. Wilco. Over.”
They landed close to Reims, fifteen strong. Nine of them showed damage including Shorty who had a hole six inches across in his fuselage which he said had been caused by a flying machine gun blown out of his exploding Stuka.
“Rod, lost Bob – he killed a Stuka and was caught by its bombs blowing. Letter home, please. Request replacement. Wag! How many planes are beyond sensible repair?”
“Three, Thomas. I don’t know how Shorty came home – his tail’s drooping.”
“It’s always close to the ground, Wag. Bloody good flying to come home in that state, Shorty.”
“If I’d known it was that bad, I’d have jumped.”
“Have we got all we need, Wag?”
“No, but I can bodge it. There’s petrol and oil and Peter has a supply of rounds. We can function.”
The field was makeshift, a farmer’s cow pastures that had been made into a landing ground by ripping out hedgerows. There were tall trees to the west, a shelter from the prevailing wind, Thomas presumed, and a cowshed and two big barns. The farmhouse was tiny, far too small to be made into a mess. Rod had organised tents behind the barns.
“Wag, wheel the planes over to those trees when you’re done with them. Cover them a bit from the air. Fuel up and reload all those that can fly.”
They ran.
Within the hour there was a line of ten Hurricanes under the trees, ready to roll out and fly.
Rod had set up the radio in one of the thirty hundredweight lorries and was attempting to make contact with Group Captain Peters, achieving only a thin, scratchy reception.
“We need to put up a better aerial, Thomas. This is the best I can do.”
“Hello? Squadron leader Stark here. Over.”
“Peters.” There was a burst of static that almost drowned the voice out. It sounded as if he was demanding their status.
“Ten planes and fifteen pilots. Over.”
“East… bombers… as many…”
The sound tailed off and Thomas could pick out nothing else.
“Wilco. Patrol east and attack bombers with as many planes as possible. Over.”
There was another burst of static with nothing intelligible.
“Jan, make up Red Flight. Chas, grab four planes for Blue. Jim, you will fly as my wingman. Tex and Shorty, organise what you can for airfield defence while we’re up. Has the Idiot turned up?”
“Lost, boss. I guess he had to read his own map.”
Tex sounded more amused than regretful.
“Rod! Can you set up a replacement intelligence office?”
“No problems, Thomas. The farmer’s got a sheepdog who looks brighter than the last man who had the job.”
“Keep trying to contact Peters while we’re up. Have you got anything by way of ground control?”
“Maybe. If I can get a decent aerial, then probably. I’ll contact you if I can.”
They wandered into cover behind the Hurricanes and baptis
ed one of the trees before taking off and retracing their track to the river the French were holding. Thomas wished his map was more accurate and larger scale – they could have been on any one of three waterways marked on the issue chart.
Neither side had moved during the two hours since Thomas had last seen them. There were a few more craters and one or two extra bodies and the tail of a Stuka sticking vertically upright a hundred or so yards from the French position.
“Leader. Make angels ten. Over.”
They patrolled the battlefield and waited for something to happen. It seemed most likely to Thomas that they would be hit by as many fighters as the Luftwaffe could drag together. The German army needed its air support and the ground attack machines could not sensibly attempt to do their work while a squadron of Hurricanes circled waiting for them.
A pair of anti-aircraft guns opened fire on them but fell well short. They waited.
“Red One. Is many bandits at one o’clock low. Over.”
Jan had spotted the incoming attack first, which was normal enough.
Thomas acknowledged and waited a few seconds, identified twin engined bombers, perhaps as many as forty. He looked high and left and right and peered behind him. There was no fighter cover. The bombers were stacked in two layers in tight formation, able to support each other with their guns.
“Red One. Is not learn from experience. Over.”
“Leader. Red Flight, top layer. Blue Flight, bottom. Head on. Pass through and return. Buster. Tally-ho. Over.”
There was no need to give any specific order to his wingman, Thomas hoped. He pulled left and high, taking a last sweep around for fighters, then dived into the top layer as Jan’s attack began to break up the formation.
Chapter Seven
The Breaking Storm
“Leader. Hit and run, Yellow Two. Over.”
“Yellow Two. Wilco. Over.”
The boy was in his correct position, coming up on the left. He would make a fighter pilot, if he survived the next few days; Thomas was rather pleased; they needed more of the breed. He spotted a section of bombers displaying discipline, holding together rather than scattering. He turned just a little, holding flat and skidding, put bursts into two before passing into clear air. A quick glance showed Jim doing the same.
The Breaking Storm (Innocent No More Series, Book 2) Page 12