Tempest Squadron Page 5

  The tarmac was a grey blur under the Tempest’s wings. The wheels bounced once, twice, and then the fighter was airborne, the airfield falling away beneath it. Wynne-Williams touched the brakes to stop the wheels spinning — a necessary precaution, otherwise they would cause fearsome vibration as they retracted into the wings — and pulled up the undercarriage, followed by the flaps.

  The Tempest formation swung round to the right, thundering over the grey slate rooftops of Eindhoven, climbing away at 185 mph on a pre-determined heading of 045 degrees. At five thousand feet they levelled out, sliding into combat formation and increasing speed to over 300 mph. Wynne-Williams stuck to Yeoman’s aircraft like glue, glancing around briefly to check on the positions of the other six Tempests. A considerable distance behind, the eight aircraft of 473 Squadron were also setting course, but their track would take them farther to the south.

  The 505 Squadron Tempests crossed the enemy border near Venlo and Yeoman led them down practically to ground level, the eight aircraft speeding along a hundred feet above the railway line that led to Wesel. There was no point in keeping radio silence any longer, and now Yeoman spoke for the first time.

  ‘All right, chaps, spread out. Yellow Section, keep your eyes peeled for flak posts. Red Three and Four, watch out for fighters.’

  In response to Yeoman’s order, the two rearmost Tempests of Red Section popped up a couple of hundred feet, so that their pilots could make a regular scan of the sky without fear of flying into the ground or hitting some unseen obstacle. The remainder continued to search the terrain ahead, looking for trains and anything else that was worth shooting up.

  As they flew on, Wynne-Williams noticed that visibility was growing steadily worse, with a grey mist creeping over the land. By the time they crossed the Rhine near Wesel — making a careful detour to avoid the formidable anti-aircraft concentrations in and around the town — the horizon was completely obscured. Above the mist, great banks of cloud, pregnant with snow, billowed up into the eastern sky, directly in front of their noses.

  So far, miraculously, there had been no opposition from enemy flak. They curved around the southern outskirts of Dorsten and picked up the railway line again, maintaining their spread-out formation. Wynne-Williams reached down and pulled a map from the top of his flying-boot; the chart was folded neatly to display the route along which they were flying and he glanced quickly along it, checking off the towns in their path: Haltern, Dülmen, the village of Buldern and then Münster itself, whose railway yards were their main objective.

  ‘Train ahead, one o’clock!’

  Yeoman’s voice crackled in Wynne-Williams’ headphones and he hastily shoved the map back into the top of his boot, at the same time looking ahead. Immediately, still a long way in front of the hurtling Tempests and slightly off to the right, he spotted a plume of steam, rising straight up out of the haze that covered the landscape.

  Hastily, he switched on his reflector gunsight and pushed the propeller control into fine pitch, hearing the Sabre engine’s dull roar change to a full-throated howl as he followed his leader down to the attack. Yeoman was already firing, dark smoke trails streaming back from the Tempest’s wings. A spray of glowing coals leaped ahead of his aircraft, twinkled over the dark snake of the train that now leaped to meet the attackers out of the haze.

  Wynne-Williams gave a touch of right rudder and opened fire in turn, seeing his shells rip into the rearmost of the freight cars and then ripple along towards the locomotive. He saw a sudden burst of steam, followed by black smoke.

  Then the flak started to come up, God only knew from where. He hunched down lower in the cockpit and swept straight over the train at more than 400 mph, through the web of fiery tracer that reached up to claw him out of the sky. There must be a flak truck on the bloody train, he thought wildly. Then, suddenly, he was out of danger, streaking up the line in pursuit of Yeoman’s Tempest.

  A few seconds later, Yeoman’s voice came over the air again.

  ‘Ramrod Leader to Ramrod Aircraft. Is everybody okay?’

  One by one they acknowledged. Laconically, Tim Phelan said:

  ‘We got the train. The loco blew up.’

  ‘Good show. Stay close, and keep your eyes open. They know we’re here, now.’

  The Tempests flew on towards Münster. Near Buldern they made a short detour from the railway line and attacked an enemy convoy moving along the road that ran parallel to it, a mile and a half away. Wynne-Williams had a hazy impression of explosive shells, flashing and sparkling among the dark outlines of trucks, of something erupting in a boiling bubble of smoke and flame, of wreckage, turning over and over in the air, and that was all he had time to catch before the Tempests’ terrific speed took them over and away, leaving a spreading column of smoke behind them.

  Less than two minutes later they swept down like a whirlwind on a marshalling yard that lay on the southern outskirts of Münster. The flak was accurate and intense and they made only one high-speed firing pass, flashing low over the intricate network of railway lines.

  Wynne-Williams, ignoring the rolling stock in the sidings, selected a signal box as his target. It was a big affair, perched high above the yard, and his 20-mm shells pulverized it. A split second later he was forced to break sharply as a Tempest sheered across his nose, almost colliding with him. The aircraft, wobbling uncertainly from side to side, crashed full tilt into the signal box Wynne-Williams had just shattered. There was a terrific explosion and rivers of burning fuel licked out across the tracks.

  The sky was filled with multi-coloured streamers of light now as a dozen flak posts opened up on the fleeting, twisting Tempests. Wynne-Williams sighted one of the posts, perched on top of a shed, and fired at it while still on the turn, but his shells flew wide of the mark. He passed through a pall of smoke that temporarily obscured his vision and instinctively pulled back the stick, sending the fighter rocketing skywards. Dimly over the R/T, he heard Yeoman’s voice:

  ‘Okay, chaps, let’s get out of it. Reform to the north-west.’

  They sped away from Münster, away from the inferno of the marshalling yard. Looking back, Wynne-Williams counted the Tempests: there were seven of them, including himself, so the aircraft that had crashed into the signal box had been the only casualty. The unfortunate machine was Red Four, flown by a sergeant pilot named Barker — one of the replacements who had arrived at Eindhoven with Wynne-Williams a few days earlier. With a sudden shock, Wynne-Williams realized that he couldn’t even recall what the man had looked like.

  Yeoman circled briefly to the north-west of Münster to allow the other Tempests to regain formation. As he did so, there came a sudden cry of alarm from one of the pilots in Tim Phelan’s section:

  ‘Look out! Aircraft, four o’clock high!’

  Craning his neck, Wynne-Williams looked back over his right shoulder in time to see a cluster of dots a couple of miles away. Adrenalin coursed through his veins, quickly followed by a comforting surge of relief as he recognized the aggressive shapes of 473 Squadron’s Tempests. The latter descended cautiously, waggling their wings to ensure identification, and fell into position a mile or so to starboard of 505 Squadron’s aircraft. A few moments later, the two formations set course northwards in the direction of Rheine, remaining at low level.

  They were only some fifteen miles from the enemy airfield, and so Yeoman decided to hold his present course as far as the little town of Emsdetten and then sweep sharply to the left across the approach to Rheine’s main runway, keeping well clear of the enemy flak lanes. It was not long before these tactics paid dividends. As the Tempest formation swung to the left, a Junkers 52 transport aircraft lumbered directly across its path. The Ju 52 sheered away from the threat and made a desperate attempt to reach Bentlage, one of Rheine’s small satellite airfields, but a section of 473 Squadron pounced on it and shot it flaming into a wood.

  Apart from the solitary Junkers, the sky was empty of enemy machines. After several fruitless minutes qua
rtering the sky to the south and west of Rheine, Yeoman finally gave up and ordered the Tempests to set course for home. He was worried about the weather, which by this time was deteriorating rapidly. Heavy clouds had completely obliterated the sun and a strange, leaden twilight was falling over the land. Although it was relatively warm in the Tempest’s cockpit Yeoman felt a shiver run down his spine.

  The fighters’ homeward course took them over more or less open country, dotted with woods and villages. Yet there was menace even here; more than once, flak rose to meet them from seemingly-innocuous country lanes, or from gun posts on the outskirts of innocent hamlets. The Tempests jinked away from it, their high speed carrying them out of danger.

  Hurtling across the ground at 350 mph and almost at tree-top height was a nerve-racking business, yet strangely enough Wynne-Williams felt a curious sense of detachment as he clung like a limpet to Yeoman’s Tempest, following every move his leader made. There was something unreal about it all: the leaden, lowering sky, the drab, grey-green landscape that was little more than a blur, the dull thunder of the big engine. He had the oddest feeling that he was plunging downhill out of control, that any second he would smash headlong into a great brick wall that would somehow materialize out of the mist on the horizon.

  He shook his head in an attempt to dispel the weird illusion and checked his oxygen flow. It was functioning normally. Yet the strange detachment persisted, accompanied now by a sense of oppression, as though earth and clouds were closing in like grim walls to trap and crush him.

  ‘Rhine ahead. Look out for shipping.’

  With something approaching panic welling up inside him, Wynne-Williams strove to pull his scattered senses together. Peering ahead through the hazy blur of the propeller, he made out the dull grey expanse of the great river, sliced across by bridges. Crawling under one of the bridges was a long string of barges, their outlines blurred in the murk.

  Yeoman opened fire, followed by Wynne-Williams a fraction of a second later. Cannon shells churned up the water, crept across to the line of barges and obscured them with flying spray. As he swept overhead, Wynne-Williams noted with complete detachment that one of the barges had a string of multi-coloured washing fluttering from a line rigged along the length of its deck.

  The Tempests were coming under fire now from 20-mm flak batteries on the west bank of the Rhine, the barrels of their guns depressed to as low an angle as possible. The gunners pumped clip after clip of shells into the path of the Tempests, heedless of the fact that some of their missiles were exploding among the barges that were moving steadily along the waterway close to the opposite bank. The latter came under attack from the Tempests of 473 Squadron and were soon holed and sinking, joining those which had been hit seconds earlier by 505 Squadron’s aircraft.

  Racing away from the river, Wynne-Williams used up the last of his ammunition against a flak tower, the top of which vanished in an explosion of powdered masonry. A village passed under his wings and he had a hazy glimpse of people hurling themselves into doorways as his aircraft zipped a few feet above their heads.

  All the Tempests were over the Rhine now, heading out over the last few miles of German territory and into Holland. They passed to the south of the enemy airfield at Laarbruch and kept a watchful eye on the sky, but no German fighters were in the air and, in any case, few of the Tempests still had ammunition.

  The weather was closing in rapidly now, and as they crossed the River Maas the pilots strained their eyes to pick out familiar landmarks, for Holland — flat and featureless, criss-crossed with its maze of waterways — was not the easiest of countries for visual navigation. Then the Helmond-Venlo railway line came up ahead and they curved across it to the right, picking up Eindhoven without difficulty. Ten minutes later all fifteen Tempests were safely on the ground and taxiing to their dispersals.

  Wynne-Williams swung the nose of his aircraft into wind and opened the throttle to 1,000 rpm, keeping an eye on the blue smoke that flowed back from the exhaust stubs. When it died away to a trickle and finally ceased altogether, it meant that surplus oil had been expelled from the engine. Satisfied at length that all was well, he pulled the cut-out lever and the rumble of the engine died away as the propeller flicked to a standstill.

  He switched off the ignition and fuel, then opened the cockpit canopy, thankfully unfastening his oxygen mask and pulling off his helmet. The air was bitter, with drops of freezing moisture in it, and stung his sweaty face.

  He unfastened his harness and clambered down from the cockpit, pulling his parachute pack after him and dropping it into the arms of one of his ground crew. The airman looked at him anxiously.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ he asked. The pilot nodded.

  ‘Well, you’ve collected some holes. Just there, sir, look.’

  The man pointed to a spot just behind the cockpit. A line of ragged holes scarred the fuselage roundel. Wynne-Williams swallowed hard; a couple of feet further forward, and the bullets would have perforated him.

  The ground crew corporal came round the end of the wing and looked at the holes reprovingly, as though suggesting that the pilot might have looked after the aircraft better. Then he turned to Wynne-Williams and grinned suddenly.

  ‘Good trip, sir? Did you get anything?’

  ‘We shot up a few trains,’ the pilot answered, ‘and some barges on the Rhine. Oh — and the 473 Squadron boys clobbered a Junkers 52. But there wasn’t much doing, really.’

  He turned away and walked over to join Yeoman, who had paused to light his pipe — which always flew with him on operations, packed and ready to be lit — a few yards away from his Tempest. He looked up as Wynne-Williams approached.

  ‘Well, Simon, that was your first long sortie into Indian territory. What did you think of it?’

  Wynne-Williams scratched an itchy spot on his cheek, where his oxygen mask had chafed him.

  ‘This low-level-all-the-way stuff takes a bit of getting used to, doesn’t it? I felt decidedly queasy at one point — claustrophobic almost, just as though things were closing in around me.’

  Yeoman smiled. ‘You probably got a bit disorientated,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about. You sometimes get funny impressions, when you’re flying low and fast, especially if the visibility is marginal and there’s no horizon. The thing to do is concentrate on your instruments for a few seconds; that usually does the trick. You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘The flak was pretty bad,’ Wynne-Williams commented. His companion gave a derisory laugh.

  ‘Bad? That was bugger all, my friend. Just wait until we carry out an airfield attack to find out what flak’s really like! One of the Typhoon squadrons attacked Laarbruch a few weeks ago, and lost eight out of twelve.’

  ‘Not exactly a comforting thought,’ Wynne-Williams murmured, as they walked towards the debriefing hut. There, for the next ten minutes, the Wing’s Intelligence Officers quizzed them on the afternoon’s events: targets attacked, opposition encountered, anything of special significance observed, and so on.

  The pilots clamoured eagerly round the trestle tables, clutching mugs of tea and gratefully inhaling cigarette smoke, anxious to tell their stories and then board the truck that was to take them into Eindhoven. Now that the tension of the sortie had dissipated, they were ravenously hungry; even half-burnt sausages and dehydrated potato would be welcome.

  One of their number stood at the window, a half-smoked cigarette between his fingers, staring moodily out over the airfield. He was thinking of Sergeant Barker, who had been his room-mate and whose charred, unrecognizable remains now lay under the wreckage of his Tempest on the outskirts of Münster. In his mind’s eye, he could picture the report on the operation that would end up in the files of 83 Group, written by some dispassionate wingless wonder who had probably never been near an aeroplane:

  ‘Wednesday, 29 November 1944. Offensive sortie by sixteen Tempests of 505 and 473 Squadrons, Eindhoven. Trains attacked in the Münster area. One Junkers 52 destroye
d (by 473 Squadron) on approach to Rheine. Barges attacked on the Rhine in Wesel area. Moderate flak encountered; no enemy fighter activity. One Tempest (505 Squadron) failed to return.’

  There it was, in four or five cryptic lines: the everyday life of a Tempest squadron.

  Outside, it was beginning to snow. There would be no flying while it snowed. The young pilot at the window hoped that it would snow forever.

  Chapter Four

  THE SNOWFALL DID NOT CONTINUE. AFTER BRIEF SHOWERS that fell on and off for two days it ceased altogether, leaving the countryside dusted with powdery particles of ice.

  After the snow came the fog, spreading its dirty grey blanket over the land, more surely and swiftly halting air operations than any other kind of bad weather. At Eindhoven and the other forward airfields on the 2nd Tactical Air Force’s front, while the Tempests, Typhoons and Spitfires stood earthbound like grey ghosts on their freezing dispersals, the pilots took advantage of the unexpected respite to relax as best they could.

  Mostly they slept — or tried to sleep, for sleep does not come easily to a body whose nerves are bunched into knots by the incessant strain of flying a high-performance combat aircraft at low level into the teeth of murderous flak, knowing that one’s chances of survival are no more than fifty per cent. When they did manage to sleep, they often awoke feeling more wretched than before, and the sleeping pills provided for them by their medical officers offered no real solution.

  The makeshift bar in the convent-cum-mess in Eindhoven stayed open from twelve noon until midnight and there was no shortage of beer and spirits, but it was a rare thing to find more than half a dozen pilots gathered there at any one time, and even then their purpose was usually to play cards, chess or draughts, rather than to drink. The same pilots, when they were on duty, reported conscientiously to the airfield every morning — and played cards, chess or draughts in their dispersal huts until darkness fell. Quite a few of the pilots had formed relationships with hospitable Dutch families in Eindhoven, and many a tin of corned beef and packet of tea found its way on to kitchen tables to supplement a grateful housewife’s own meagre rations.