Hunter Squadron Read online

  Hunter Squadron

  Yeoman in the Congo Conflict

  Robert Jackson

  © Robert Jackson 1984

  Robert Jackson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1984 by George Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  SEEN FROM A HEIGHT OF FORTY-FIVE THOUSAND FEET, THE island of Helgoland was a featureless grey blob, set in a sea that mirrored the sunlight like dark-green glass, its fringes marked by a thin white line of surf.

  It was a morning to remember; a glorious morning of high summer, unmasked by even a hint of cloud. Only in the south, where the sun stood high in a white glare, was the horizon hard to distinguish; elsewhere its curve was crisp and sharp, broken in the north-east by the long scatter of the North Frisian Islands.

  Towards the islands sixteen aircraft flew, cleaving through the stratosphere, their condensation trails etched stark and white against the green backcloth of the sea eight miles below. They were Hawker Hunter Mk6 jet fighters, graceful swept-wing descendants of the famous Hurricanes that had fought so valiantly to sweep Hitler’s Luftwaffe from the skies of England twenty years earlier.

  The squadron of Hunters that flew high over the North Sea on this summer’s day in 1960 was normally based at Rheinbrücken, near Hamborn in northern Germany, which it shared with two other Hunter units. For the past few days, however, the sixteen fighters had been deployed to the island of Sylt, which lay off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein close to the Danish border; this was the location of the RAF 2nd Tactical Air Force’s Weapons Training Unit, where fighter squadrons in Germany were periodically sent to carry out air-to-air and air-to-ground firing practice.

  The Hunters were flying in squadron battle formation, the aircraft in each section positioned in the classic ‘finger four’ grouping first perfected by the Luftwaffe and since used by air forces all over the world. First, and lowest of the formation, came the four Hunters of Red Section, with Yellow Section on their left and a little higher up. Astern of these two sections, and higher still, were the aircraft of Blue Section, and on their left, the topmost element of the formation, was Green Section.

  The sun was on the right of the formation and astern, in the four o’clock position. In its glare, several thousand feet higher than the others, a seventeenth aircraft flew. They knew it was there, for although it was almost invisible against the intense light its long contrail betrayed its presence.

  In the cockpit of the seventeenth Hunter, Group Captain George Yeoman hummed contentedly to himself behind his oxygen mask, one gloved hand resting lightly on the control column, the other on his left thigh. This, he thought, more than compensated for the long desk-bound hours demanded of him by his post of Officer Commanding, RAF Rheinbrücken; the sad thing was that such opportunities to escape into what he considered to be his natural element were becoming less frequent as time went by.

  At the age of forty, after a flying career with the Royal Air Force spanning more than twenty years, George Yeoman knew that retirement was creeping over the horizon. He would see out his quarter-century, maybe, and leave at forty-five; he knew that he could go on for ten more years after that, and gain further promotion, but somehow there didn’t seem to be much point. He had no wish to end his career in stagnation behind a Ministry desk after an active operational life that had started in the Battle of France, in May 1940.

  There was another tour ahead of him; maybe he would opt for a liaison job in the United States to round things off. There were some plum exchange postings for senior RAF officers with the USAF, and a couple of years with Air Defense Command HQ in Colorado would be right up his street. Maybe his old pal General Jim Callender, who had once served alongside Yeoman in the early days of the Second World War, could pull a few strings in that direction.

  A tour in the USA would certainly please Yeoman’s American-born wife, Julia. It was a long time since she had been back home. Also, a couple of years in America would be a good education for their two children, eleven-year-old June and little Paul, who was six.

  That was in the future. In the meantime, Yeoman, with no clear idea about what he intended to do when he left the RAF, meant to make the most of any flying that came his way.

  This morning’s exercise was more in the nature of a joyride than anything else. He did not need to be there, shadowing the Hunter formation, but he was interested to see how the pilots would perform in a few minutes’ time against the ‘opposition’ which, unknown to them, was even now racing towards them from the direction of the Danish coast, just below contrail level.

  The opposition, he knew, would be making a fast climbing attack on the Hunters from the seven o’clock position. He knew exactly where to look, and after a while his vigil was rewarded by the sight of six metallic arrows, coming up hard from the north-west after flying a long curve out over the sea. The ‘enemy’ could afford to attack on the climb, for their speed was a good deal higher than the Hunters’. They were North American F-100 Super Sabres of the US 3rd Air Force, temporarily deployed to Denmark from their normal base at Wethersfield, in the United Kingdom, and they were capable of a top speed of 900 mph at forty thousand feet, a good 200 mph more than the British fighters.

  Speed, however, was fine when it came to overhauling one’s target or getting out of a tight spot, but Yeoman knew from long experience that the outcome of an air battle was usually decided by superior manoeuvrability. In this respect, the Hunter could outclass the F-100 every time.

  Contrails had begun to form behind the Super Sabres now, and the Hunter pilots had spotted them. Yeoman watched with interest and a good deal of professional pride as the Hunters, section by section and still holding formation, executed an immaculate defensive break, turning hard to meet the threat and presenting the American pilots with a maximum deflection shot. They would not have much to show on their camera-gun films for this first firing pass.

  Far from manoeuvrable at high speed, the F-100s passed through the middle of the Hunter formation, whose sections had turned left and right, and went up to fifty thousand feet with afterburners blazing. They made a broad turn, splitting into two elements of three as they did so, and came down hard to attack on the dive.

  As Yeoman watched intently, losing height gradually to keep pace with the descending battle, he saw the silver dart shapes of four more F-100s arrowing down from the north, on a level with the Hunters. While twelve of the latter carried on turning to confront the diving Super Sabres, the remaining four broke hard left to meet the new batch of Americans head-on.

  Yeoman saw a definite pattern starting to emerge from the mock combat, and nodded in approval. The leader of the Hunter squadron, while parrying each new thrust made by the American fighters, was losing height continuously, his object being to get the F-100s down to sea level where they would be forced into a turning fight. After each pass by the American fighters, sections of Hunters were diving steeply away, pulling up only briefly to meet fresh attacks.

  The mêlée dropped through twenty thousand feet and went on descending. Yeoman went down with it, keeping his distance, casting an eye from time to time on the Hunter’s fuel gauges; in another few minutes, it would be time to go home
.

  A silvery flash off to the right caught his attention and he turned his head in that direction, scanning the sky. About a mile away, a lone F-100 was turning towards him, closing rapidly. Yeoman grinned in delight; he had been expecting something of the sort. One of the Yanks was trying to ‘zap’ him, to use their jargon.

  He rolled the Hunter on to its back and pulled through on the stick, taking the fighter seawards in a vertical dive. The whisper of the airflow outside the cockpit became harsh as the speed built up. On the instrument panel, the needle of the Machmeter trembled through 0.95 and went on rising slowly towards 1.0, the speed of sound.

  The Super Sabre continued to follow him, still narrowing the distance. Yeoman eased back the control column gently until the Hunter was speeding straight and level, a few hundred feet above the sea. Misty pressure waves danced back over its wings. The speed started to fall away as Yeoman continued his level run; a check rearwards showed that the F-100 was still with him, almost within firing distance.

  Slender contrails streamed from the Hunter’s wingtips as Yeoman broke to port in a maximum-rate turn, his vision blurring as the high ‘g’ forced him down in his ejection seat. The F-100 pilot tried to follow suit, as Yeoman had anticipated, and failed to match the British fighter’s manoeuvrability. The heavy Super Sabre skidded across the sky, carried on by its momentum, and Yeoman hoped that the American pilot was experienced; only a couple of weeks earlier, an F-100 had tried to better a Hunter in a low-level turning combat off the Suffolk coast and had flicked into the sea.

  This American, Yeoman soon discovered, was not going to risk his neck. Climbing away, he made a couple of diving passes at the Hunter, which Yeoman avoided by steep-turning, and then reduced speed and came alongside, rocking his wings to show that as far as he was concerned, the contest was over. Yeoman stuck two fingers up at him, grinning behind his face mask; the American reciprocated and then accelerated away, his turbojet leaving a thick trail of dark fuel smoke as he climbed towards the Danish coast.

  Yeoman gained altitude too, although in more leisurely fashion, and set course for Sylt. Over the radio, he heard the leader of the Hunter squadron call ‘Bingo’ — the signal that he and his pilots were breaking off the friendly battle with the F-100s and returning to base, their fuel low.

  Yeoman was the last to land, making a straight-in approach and setting the Hunter down gently just beyond the striped markings at the end of Sylt’s long runway. He taxied to the end of the flight line, following the directions of a marshaller, and quickly completed his post-flight checks, shutting down the Hunter’s Rolls-Royce Avon turbojet. He had taxied in with the cockpit canopy open, and now an airman came forward with an aluminium ladder, which he hooked over the cockpit rim. The airman climbed up and Yeoman handed him the safety pin for the top handle of the Martin-Baker ejection seat, which the man slotted into place; Yeoman himself inserted the second pin, which prevented the accidental pulling of the seat pan handle, between the pilot’s legs.

  With everything switched off and the ‘bang seat’ now safe, Yeoman uncoupled himself from the seat connections, handed his ‘bone-dome’ flying helmet to the airman and shinned down the cockpit ladder, jumping clear of the last two rungs and flexing his knees slightly as his feet hit the concrete. The airman, a corporal, grinned at him.

  ‘Good trip, sir?’

  Yeoman grinned back and nodded. ‘Spot on. Had a bit of a tussle with an F-100, but shook him off all right.’

  He made his way towards the ‘line hut’, as the Handling Flight building was known. It had always been his practice to exchange a few words with the ground crew; some pilots didn’t bother, and that annoyed him. The ground crew worked like slaves and their perks were few, so Yeoman got them airborne as often as possible on a rotation basis in one of the Rheinbrücken Wing’s two-seat Hunter T7 trainers or the Vampire TII ‘hack’ aircraft that was used for communications work. It all made for higher morale, and for a more efficient and closely-knit station.

  At the door of the line hut, where pilots book in and out and sign the Form 700, the technical log that certifies that an aircraft is free from snags, Yeoman paused for a few moments and looked out over the airfield, revelling in the view. The sunlight sparkled on the grey-green camouflage of the long line of Hunters, looking sleek and potent even in their earth-bound environment. After the recent crescendo of high-powered jet engines, a silence that was almost unearthly hung over Sylt.

  Somewhere, a lark trilled, just as it had trilled on that airfield in France on a day in 1940, so long ago, when Yeoman had first come face to face with the deadly reality of combat flying. He looked for the bird and found it at last, a minute speck hovering high above the tarmac.

  The lark brought back memories to him, not all of them pleasant. A cold shadow seemed to fleet over him for an instant and he shivered despite the sun’s heat. Something had seized him; a premonition, perhaps, or a vague sense of for-boding for which he could not account. It was still with him, like a chip of ice in his mind, as he went into the hut.

  *

  At Rheinbrücken, two hundred miles south-west of Sylt, it was also a day to remember; the kind of day that air-minded small boys recall for the rest of their lives, a day dreamed of and prayed for by anyone who has ever stood in pouring rain at an air display and striven to catch vague glimpses of aircraft fleeting through the murk.

  There were a few scattered tufts of cloud here, but they were high and fleecy, permitting the rays of the summer sun to shine through unhindered, and the lightest of breezes was pleasantly cool on arms reddened by the heat of the previous days. But it was not the weather that had produced the day’s magic; that had been created by the brutal noise of fast jets ripping through the sky, and by the smell of the kerosene fumes that drifted across the airfield in the wake of their passage.

  A mild ripple of applause came from the crowd as four F-86 Sabre jets, bearing the iron cross markings of the Federal German Luftwaffe, touched down in immaculate formation at the close of their aerobatic display. The applause was hardly surprising, for the crowd was predominantly German. This was what the Americans would call ‘Kids’ Day’ at Rheinbrücken; the RAF station had thrown open its gates to school-children from all over northern Germany in a major public relations exercise designed to strengthen relationships with the local community.

  In the VIP enclosure, a much-decorated RAF Air Vice-Marshal paused in the act of raising a teacup to his lips and gazed at the Sabres as they rolled along the runway, losing speed. Even though it was fifteen years since the war had ended, he still found it difficult to come to terms with the idea of sitting in the sun on a German airfield, sipping tea, while a German crowd applauded German fighters.

  Still, everyone was on the same side now, all part of that great multi-national defensive system called NATO, and after fifteen years the old enmities had disappeared. Anyone under the age of twenty who had been watching today’s air show would be hard put to remember the war at all, and most of them didn’t give a damn about the stories their fathers told them.

  As the shrill whistle of the Sabres’ turbojets died away, the Air Vice-Marshal turned to the woman who sat beside him. Rheinbrücken’s commanding officer, he reflected, was a very lucky man indeed. His wife was in her early forties, but looked a good ten years younger; her figure showed no sign of approaching middle age, and the occasional undisguised thread of grey in the reddish-gold of her hair served to accentuate, rather than detract from, her beauty.

  The Air Vice-Marshal took out a cigarette case and offered its contents to his companion. Smiling, she shook her head.

  ‘No, thank you, Richard. I gave up ten years ago. Not good for the children to have the house filled with tobacco smoke, you know; George’s pipe produces enough, as it is.’

  Richard Fitzhugh Hillier nodded and lit a cigarette for himself. ‘Very wise. Well, it’s been a fantastic day, don’t you think?’

  ‘Wonderful. Do you know, in all the years I’ve been
married to George, I think this is only the second air display I’ve seen from start to finish. In the past, I’ve usually been dashing round like a maniac making sure that everyone of importance had their cups of tea and sandwiches. Actually, I’m a bit cross with George for escaping to Sylt with all this going on.’

  Hillier grinned. ‘I’d have done the same myself. I don’t much enjoy making small talk while other people are doing the flying, either.’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t shirked his responsibilities entirely,’ Julia smiled. ‘He’s flying down from Sylt to do the solo aerobatic spot. In fact, he should be back in just a few minutes. He’ll be pleased to see you again, Richard.’

  Hillier was silent for a few moments. He was wondering whether to tell Julia about the real purpose behind his visit to Rheinbrücken. In the end he decided against it; there would be time enough for that later. He had no wish to spoil her day. Instead, he said, ‘Your George has certainly come a long way since I first met him.’

  Julia looked at him. ‘Yes, but he’s worked hard for whatever success has come his way. As a matter of fact, he has often spoken of you — about you being his first commanding officer in France, in May 1940, I mean.’ She gave a mischievous smile. ‘He said you were a stickler for the rules.’

  Hillier raised an eyebrow. ‘Did he, now? Well, perhaps I had to be, with unruly young beggars like your husband in my squadron. Those were bad times. There wasn’t much room for individual heroics; we all had to stick together, or we’d have been in a real pickle.’

  ‘Yes. It’s hard to imagine, looking back over twenty years, just how bad those times were. All I seem to remember is the sunshine and the heat and the smell of flowers; I have to think really hard to recall German aircraft machine-gunning columns of helpless refugees. Maybe I’ve deliberately pushed all that out of my mind.’

  Julia Yeoman paused introspectively, her thoughts turning to those far-off days when a chance encounter had first brought her face to face with George. They had both, in their respective fashions, been fleeing in front of the German ‘Blitzkrieg’; he had been trekking west with a French refugee column after his Hurricane had been shot down when fate had overtaken the pair of them.