The Breaking Storm (Innocent No More Series, Book 2)

by Andrew Wareham

  “Sergeants’ shit stinks different to officers’, does it?”

  “No comment, Thomas. That’s the way things work in England.”

  “I’ll speak to them in the morning, Tony. I may be in a better mood then. Wheel in the three pilot officers, if you please. Stay with them so you can carry out any who faint.”

  “Gentlemen, welcome to Two Eighty. That said, let me explain why you are here. It’s very simple – you have about two hundred hours in total, and that is at least four hundred too few if you expect to live. Your course of training has been far too short. If I sent the three of you on operations today, I would expect two to die within the week. That is wasteful of planes and of pilots who will eventually be valuable to me. At the moment, you are just tits on a bull – neither useful nor decorative!”

  Thomas waited for the expressions of shock to fade. They were all well-disciplined lads – none shouted back at him.

  “Opinion is that the attack on Britain will begin in July. The squadron will go south to be part of our defences then. You will be with us but not part of us at that point. I need you, be sure of that, but not as cannon fodder. Flying in France last month sometimes demanded seven sorties a day. Pilots can do that once, but not every day for weeks on end. I need relief pilots initially and then full members of the squadron who will share the workload. I do not need green incompetents who are a danger to themselves and a menace to their wingmen.”

  Ivor and one of the other new men scowled; the third looked down at his feet, shamefaced. The angry men would probably make the grade as fighter pilots.

  “From tomorrow morning, you will fly at least six hours a day. You will spend at least two hours sat in a classroom with me or another of the experienced pilots, learning the basics of fighting. The remainder of your time can be occupied with recognition silhouettes, so that you will know what the enemy looks like at a distance. I want a hundred more hours in Hurricanes before I will let you fly with the squadron. Then it’s a matter of learning how we fly. There are eight of you. I need you but I will throw you out if you are no use to me. Now go off and change for dinner. Working dress all day; mess dress for dinner if we are not flying too hard.”

  Tony led the three out, grinning at Thomas as he closed the door.

  “Tony – did he mean all of that?”

  “Every word. Ivor, isn’t it? At the moment a hungry 109 would eat you alive. He doesn’t want to see you dead before you have had a chance to learn the trade. We have too few pilots and need more, badly. But there’s no point to sending you up to get killed without making a score first. They are thinking of sending me back up, they are so short of bodies.”

  Ivor stared at his eye-patch and then apologised for being so rude.

  “No worry, as Thomas would say. I don’t want to fly again – no judgement of distance, one eyed. I might have to. Listen and learn. The Me 109 is a better plane than the Hurricane except at low level. With luck you can outturn a Me and get on its tail, they tell me. With skill, you can do better. Forget what they told you at OTU. The instructors mostly have too little experience in battle. The squadron uses fours rather than vics, and never attempts that stupidity of the fighting area attacks. Listen, learn and fit in and you will be flying operations inside the month. Don’t do what you are told, you’ll be second pilot in a Hampden.”

  It was a horrifying threat. They had already written home repeatedly detailing their progress as fighter pilots, the cream of the cream. To be relegated to a bomber would shame them, in their own eyes, forever.

  They sat in a little huddle through dinner and drank a very quiet couple of beers afterwards, ignored by the rest of the squadron because they were not real pilots yet.

  The sergeants came to Thomas after breakfast.

  “Good morning, I am Thomas Stark. You are our first sergeant pilots. There were four others but I was able to arrange immediate commissions for them. It will take longer for you, I am afraid, but it is my intention that all of my pilots should share the same mess. But not this month. You have all been on a long course, almost the whole peacetime procedure. It’s a good course - but it ain’t good enough. You need a week or two more learning how the frontline squadrons work.”

  He glanced at the five, saw them nodding thoughtfully.

  “We don’t use fighting area attacks and don’t fly in tight vics. Pilots need to see everything. In a tight vic, all you can see is your leader.”

  Again, he saw slow agreement.

  “We use fours, loosely arrayed so that each man can guard at least one other tail. We fight in sections, pairs, when possible – with a wingman who can watch while you are killing. The rule is to open fire when close – fifty to eighty yards makes sense. Your guns will be synchronised at eighty yards. Aim for the cockpit if at all possible.”

  Three nodded. Two seemed less enthralled at the prospect of deliberately killing another pilot.

  “We have peashooters to work with. No choice. Rifle bullets ain’t much good at killing planes, but they do a good job on people. We don’t want an invasion.”

  “And we don’t want bombs dropping on our people, not like they did at Guernica, sir.”

  “Exactly so, Sergeant. Were you in Spain?”

  “International Brigade, sir, for a year.”

  “Well done. I flew there. What’s your name? I can never remember names first time.”

  “Ardingley, sir.”

  “Right – you know why we are fighting. They tell me Rotterdam was as bad. The bastards haven’t changed.”

  “They can’t change, sir. They can only be killed.”

  “Agreed. As soon as you know what I want of you, and have practised it, I will feed you into the squadron. When the big fight comes we will be flying all day, every day. I flew up to seven sorties in a day in France last month. A week of that and you are knackered, which is why I have asked for extra men. I want to be able to send three full Flights up whenever we are called. Sometimes it will be four. I need extra pilots – skilled and experienced hands – to do that. You and the three new pilot officers are those bodies. I need you and I want you to work like hell these next few weeks.”

  It was a very different approach to the one he had used with the young officers. The attitude of the five suggested it had hit home.

  “Jim, I want you to take the sergeants up this week. Every dry day for at least an hour. Show them how to place themselves – three with you to make a Flight, two in a section to observe what you are doing, swapping around as you can. When you have done each day, send them up together to repeat – four in a Flight and one watching to criticise and correct, taking it in turn. Next week I’m going to put you on with the pilot officers. How’s your own Flight coming on?”

  “They don’t frighten me any more, Thomas. I think they might scare the Hun.”

  “Good. I’ve had word from on high that there are occasional recce flights coming along the coast. If we get word, I’ll scramble your Flight to look for them.”

  Jim was pleased to be selected, trotted off to inform his people of the honour awaiting them and then to find the sergeants.

  “George!”

  “Thomas, old chap?”

  “Round up the three spotty-faced youths and put them into their cockpits and give them an hour of the finger four. They know nothing other than a tight vic. Show them the rudiments today and then give them an hour every morning for a week. Then I’m going to give you the sergeants and put Jim with the officers. I want an older more experienced man to start with the officers – they might believe you. Watch the little buggers – I doubt they can fly half as well as they imagine. Don’t let them kill you.”

  “Oh, they’ll have to get up early in the morning to catch old George napping, Thomas! Let’s wake the little buggers up and get them busy. Flying the spares, are they, Thomas?”

  “They’ve got their own, George. Eight of them that flew in yesterday evening.”

  “More planes than we know how to deal with, T
homas.”

  “The factories are running full out, George. The country is producing more planes than pilots, so I am told. Try to get these unlikely objects up to scratch, George.”

  “Can do, old boy.”

  Thomas saw him hustle about the mess, picking up the three and chivvying them out to get dressed. He still wondered about George, could not trust his breezy, blasé attitude, thought it must be covering some uncertainty – but he was a competent pilot and always showed willing and most of the pilots liked him. If he made a go of training up the greenhands, then he must be made a Flight commander.

  He glanced at the squadron board, at the listings for the day. John and Robert to take Flights on exercise that morning. Two sections to go up separately, getting used to each other as wingmen. Two bodies, Roger and Aloysius, spare, on rest day and available on call.

  For himself, paperwork this morning, trying to catch up on the mass of information coming down from Group and the routine generated by the squadron. Tony would have gone through the whole of the day’s input, would have separated it into ‘sign unseen’; ‘read and ignore’; ‘action necessary’ piles.

  He signed a dozen sheets in two minutes, glanced through the read pile and then sat down to the seventeen distinct items that he actually needed to make a decision on.

  One compassionate leave request – a mother taken into hospital and critically ill.

  First reaction was to grant five days and a travel warrant – but his officer had recommended refusal.

  Aircraftman Howes, working in the Armoury, for Paynton… A bad record, absent without leave twice and under threat of detention for repeated offences. Shifted from his previous squadron because it was too close to his home area and bad acquaintances there. Suspected of theft of money from his barrack room. Aged twenty-five, not a youngster. Civilian record for minor offences.

  Even a habitual petty criminal could love his mother.

  “Tony, what’s the information on Howes?”

  “The mother in hospital request? No telegram informing him of an emergency. Never writes home or gets any mail as far as we know. Might be an illiterate family, of course. Lazy – bone idle, not worth the rations we feed him. Won’t learn his trade – useful for pushing a broom, and that only if he’s watched. Paynton strongly believes he doesn’t know who his mother is.”

  “A real bastard, in fact. We don’t want him, Tony. Got no use for him. Send him off for five days and then inform the Police that he’s a deserter when he doesn’t come back. With his record, it’s prison if he gets picked up. If we never see him again, so much the better. Where’s he from?”

  “The Gorbals.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Ignorant Aussie! Glasgow, one of the hardest slums in the whole of Britain. More thugs to the square foot than anywhere else in the country.”

  “If we’re lucky, one of his old pals will do for him. Leave granted, get him to the station and gone, Tony.”

  “Irresponsible, Thomas?”

  “That’s my middle name, Tony. We don’t want him.”

  “Right. I’ll get him to the station for the twelve o’clock train and then by way of Peterborough to Edinburgh and across to Glasgow from there. He should be home inside a day.”

  One problem dealt with, Thomas took the next sheet off the pile.

  A request to take a training course as an air gunner. A recently conscripted eighteen year old who wanted to become aircrew and had heard that air gunners were in short supply. Once accepted and with some flights behind his belt, he could train as a wireless operator. A year of flying and a course as a navigator became possible, and a commission perhaps. It was a known route for the ambitious boy with a little education. All it required was luck as a gunner – they having a high mortality rate – and the ability to learn.

  ‘Approved.’

  The majority of the pieces of paper contained similar requests, most of them winnowed out by their officers or flight sergeants and reasonable in themselves. They would not all be met, but they could be sent off hopefully. The remainder were unacceptable – requests for a move to a field nearer home or for transfer to another trade and complete retraining. They all would like to be close to home and it could not be done; as for their skills – they must learn what was needed by the RAF.

  Finally, one poor young man who had decided after much thought and experience of the RAF that he was really a conscientious objector. He had consulted his Bible as well and was now certain that he could not be part of a fighting service.

  “Tony!”

  “Thomas? Which one?”

  Tony poked his head round the door, grinning.

  “Barney?”

  “Our newly fledged conchie? Realised too late that he should have objected to the call-up? He tried being sick for a month, but the doctors charged him with malingering. He doesn’t fancy the uniformed existence. Country boy, it seems, might be a gypsy – don’t know about that – but he ain’t a happy lad.”

  “Can we put him across to the sickbay?”

  “Try it, maybe. No malice in him that I’ve seen. He might be good at the job. I’ll transfer him and have a quiet word in his ear. He’s in and he won’t get out – he should make the best of it.”

  Necessary work and it had to be done by somebody; Thomas could not see why it should be him.

  “I’m supposed to lead a bunch of pilots, not ruin my eyes on bits of paper, Tony.”

  “Tell the brass about it, Thomas. Military tradition is to waste your time and effort doing a job that could and should be dealt with by a clerk. That’s why they pay you all that extra money as a squadron leader.”

  Thomas grunted, unwilling to comment and admit that he did not actually know what his pay was, that he lived off his father’s money.

  The Group Captain flew in for his promised inspection, giving an hour’s official warning. One of his staff had telephoned on the previous evening to tell them the timing for the day, to ensure that their schedule did not take the whole squadron up so that he came in to find an empty field.

  “Busy, Stark! That’s what I like to see. Which Flight is that coming out just now?”

  “George and the sergeants, sir. You will see that he has four in Flight formation and a section of two following. Using the grass to take off together. There they go… Tidy. Well done.”

  “My squadrons all use a loose vic instead of your fours. Similar effect. Not the amount of variation in height that your boys show.”

  “Makes it more difficult for a bounce from on high, sir. Arguable which is better. I like them to fight in sections of two, always a wingman to hand. Get into a dogfight and you’re on your own anyway. If possible, I like to avoid dogfights in fast aircraft. You end up slowing down to keep close to your target. Better to bounce and run if you can.”

  “Agreed. Who’s that coming in?”

  “Jim. He has the three pilot officer trainees. Two of them will make the grade quickly from what he says. I might be inclined to dump the third… No kill to him. I’ll take him up as my wingman, get the feel for him. Jim’s fairly green himself, might not have assessed him fairly.”

  “Why is he a flight lieutenant if he’s green?”

  “He’s a blood for breakfast lad is our Jim. Mild, milk-faced little chap who thinks the world’s greatest sport is to get onto a bomber and shred it at fifty yards. DFC in his first fortnight.”

  “One of those. Read of them from the last war. Like your father and Noah?”

  “Probably, sir. I hope so. They survived.”

  “Good point. Let’s take a look at your hangars, just to show willing.”

  “Crowded with the extra planes, otherwise everything on top line, sir. We have the extra mechanics as requested. Might have a use for another highly skilled man – say an old flight sergeant or one of these science graduate pilot officers I’ve heard of.”

  “They are going to the development fields now, Stark. There are new planes in the testing stages and th
e Spitfire is going through new Marks. They are working on a new wing for the Hurricane, to carry twelve guns or a combination of machine guns and cannon and with hard points for bombs.”

  “Ground attack? Best thing for the Hurry. No longer ideal as a pure fighter but years of life in her yet.”

  “They are considering twin engine fighters as well. The Whirlwind is still on the cards. It hasn’t worked yet, but it might. There’s a bit of thought about a family of heavy fighters and light bombers as well. Beaufort, the bomber initially. Might come off, if they can get the production of the engines. The Americans have got their P38 Lightnings which seem pretty good but are a couple of years off operational use.”

  “Mustn’t forget the Me110, sir. That’s fairly much hopeless as a pure fighter but might be good for ground attack.”

  “Agreed. I’ve read the first reports from France which say they ain’t up to much.”

  “Too heavy to dogfight. Good in the dive but slow to pull out and cows to turn and bank. Lousy as bomber escorts because of the difficulties they have in keeping close to the slower planes.”

  “Worth knowing. Why does the Luftwaffe have so many of them? They seem to think they’re the bee’s knees.”

  “Fat Hermann saw them in an opium dream, I expect, sir. Let me introduce you to Phil, sir…”

  Two hours and all had gone well, Tucker returning to his Anson to fly home and promising to do what he could to find another senior man for the hangars.

  “I’ll inform Control that you are operational in terms of contacts off the coast, Stark. I think they are nosing about, trying to map out the inshore convoy channels inside the minefields. Thing is, the channels have to be buoyed for the merchantmen to know where they are and they can be spotted from the air. The Germans have got fast boats – E-Boats the Navy call them – which can play hell with coastal convoys escorted by a couple of trawlers and not much else.”