Flames over France Page 7

  By some miracle, all the other Amiots in the Sedan operation returned to base, although all of them were shot to ribbons and not one was in a battleworthy condition. Six Amiots, having failed to rendezvous with the fighter escort, had never reached the target area, but had turned back on the orders of their leader.

  To the south, Colonel Villeneuve, incensed by the noise of battle over the radio and casting aside his earlier caution to save fuel, ordered his twelve fighters to head for Sedan at full throttle. Bringing up the rear, Armstrong felt a strong sense of unease; the turn towards Sedan had put them with their backs towards Germany, and he almost broke his neck as he swivelled his head from side to side, checking the dangerous sky astern.

  When the action came, it came suddenly. There was a warning shout over the radio, and an instant later half a dozen Me 110s appeared dead ahead, diving steeply towards the haze that hung over the valleys far below. A gabble of excited French voices sounded over the air until Villeneuve’s deep accent cut through them, telling them to shut up.

  “Maintain formation,” he ordered. “Do not attack. I repeat, do not attack.”

  His precise, matter-of-fact tone restrained the French pilots, who were clearly itching to dive after the 110s. It was just as well. A moment later, fifteen more 110s came diving out of the east, and were on top of the Hawks almost before the latter had time to react. Armstrong caught the flash of sunlight on their wings and identified them at once as they closed with the French fighters at terrific speed. Without waiting for orders he turned hard towards the threat, the force of gravity compressing him into his seat. His section leader, a young sergent-chef — the equivalent of an RAF flight sergeant — had the same idea and almost collided with Armstrong as he stood his aircraft on its wingtip.

  A Messerschmitt slid into Armstrong’s field of vision, closing rapidly from the starboard quarter. The German was firing in short bursts, the battery of cannon and machine-guns in its nose twinkling. Armstrong kept on turning towards it; it was the only thing to do. Suddenly, a cloud of smoke enveloped the enemy fighter’s port engine and the 110 half-rolled and dropped away beneath. Armstrong never even saw the aircraft that had fired at it.

  Another 110 appeared in front of Armstrong, weaving uncertainly from side to side, its crew clearly visible under their long transparent cockpit canopy. Armstrong kicked the rudder bar, his fingers pressing the twin triggers, and raked the Messerschmitt from wingtip to wingtip as it skidded through his sight. Its twin-finned tail broke away and whirled past him; the remainder dropped like a stone. He caught a glimpse of the German gunner trying to struggle clear before the 110 vanished.

  He got in another burst at a 110 that fleeted across his nose, and then his guns jammed. With a pair of Messerschmitts turning hard to cut him off and no sign of any friendly fighters, he decided that it was time to make himself scarce. He pushed the Hawk’s nose down, opened the throttle wide and dived hard towards the western side of the Meuse. The Hawk’s acceleration in the dive was phenomenal and he easily outdistanced his pursuers, who followed him for some distance, firing a couple of ineffectual bursts, and then turned away.

  Armstrong cleared the battle area and then, throttling back to husband his remaining fuel, found his way back to Martigny at low level, keeping a watchful eye on the sky to the rear all the way. He landed without incident and taxied in, switching off the engine and climbing stiffly from the cockpit. His ground crew looked at him expectantly, then broke into broad grins and clustered around him as he smiled and raised an index finger to indicate that he had destroyed an enemy aircraft.

  “Only two more, mon capitaine, and you will be an ace,” one of them said. Armstrong looked at him questioningly, and the man explained that under the French system of scoring victories, a pilot who destroyed five enemy aircraft was classed as an ‘ace’; it was something that had come into being in the previous war. Armstrong shrugged; the RAF didn’t bother with such a system, and never had done so. But then, you practically had to rip half a dozen enemy aircraft to shreds with your teeth before the RAF grudgingly gave you any recognition, let alone a medal. Perhaps it was better that way.

  Armstrong told his ground crew about the problem with the guns, then went off to have a word with the intelligence officer, from whom he borrowed a cigarette — he normally smoked a pipe, but had no English tobacco with him and couldn’t stand the aromatic French blends — and sat on the grass beside the dispersal hut to watch the others coming in. Villeneuve was among the first back. Presently, after a lengthy conversation with the intelligence officer, he strolled over to where Armstrong was sitting, fishing his pipe out of a pocket as he did so. The English pilot stood up as he approached. Villeneuve looked tired, and there was a deep frown on his forehead.

  “So, my English friend, eight of us have returned. Two have landed elsewhere and two are missing. You destroyed a German, I understand. Well done. That makes three.” He sighed and glanced up at the sky, over which some fleecy clouds were creeping.

  “It is not enough. Not enough, by any means. We have to shoot down more of them. Our tactics are wrong. We need more fluidity, more freedom of action. The problem is, you see, that unlike your Royal Air Force, we are tied to the requirements of the army. We have no independence. We, the group and escadrille commanders, make representation to higher authority on how we might change things. We have done it many times since the start of the war, and we have been ignored just as often. If the Germans defeat us, God forbid, it will not be the fault of the pilots at the front.”

  Still frowning, he tamped tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and lit it before speaking again.

  “The news is bad,” he said. “I have just been informed that our French day bomber force is no longer capable of mounting attacks on the Meuse bridges. The losses have been too high. Which means, mon ami, that everything now depends on the RAF … ”

  Had Villeneuve and Armstrong but known it, the machinery that was to result in the martyrdom of the RAF’s Advanced Air Striking Force had already been set in motion. In the early hours of that morning, General Billotte, commanding the French First Army Group, had telephoned Air Marshal Barratt and begged him to send the AASF into action in the Sedan area. “Victory or defeat hinges on the destruction of those bridges,” the French general had emphasised. Barratt had accordingly authorised the AASF to attack the pontoons which the Germans had thrown across the Meuse, and the first two missions of this kind — carried out between 0430 and 0630 by ten Fairey Battles — had been encouraging, all the aircraft returning safely to base.

  A few of the pontoons appeared to have been damaged, but Guderian’s panzers continued to rumble across into the bridgehead established on the west bank the previous evening. Further north, the 6th Panzer Division pushed through a second breach in the Montherme area, while in the Dinant sector Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzers poured into a third bridgehead. Up to this point Air Vice-Marshal Playfair, the AASF’s commander, had been holding the AASF in reserve to give his squadrons a few more hours in which to scrape together their available resources; these amounted to only sixty-two Battles and eight Blenheims, but with the French bomber force shot out of the sky by mid-morning Barratt and Playfair had no alternative but to commit these battered remnants.

  Between 1500 and 1600 that afternoon, the AASF threw every aircraft that could still fly into the cauldron. It was a massacre. No. 12 Squadron, which had already suffered heavily at Maastricht two days earlier, lost four aircraft out of five; No. 142 four out of eight; No. 226 three out of six; No. 105 six out of eleven; No. 150 lost all four; No. 88 one out of ten; No. 103 three out of eight and No. 218 ten out of eleven. Of the eight Blenheims sent out by 114 and 139 Squadrons, only three returned to base. It was the highest loss in an operation of similar size ever experienced by the RAF, and all that was achieved was the destruction of two pontoon bridges and the damaging of two more.

  During the days that followed, six Battle crews, all shot down behind the enemy lines, managed to st
ruggle back to their bases. They included a pilot who, although wounded in two places, somehow managed to swim the Meuse; and an observer and gunner who had stayed with their badly injured pilot in enemy territory for more than twenty-four hours, leaving him only when he died.

  All the other crews — more than 100 young men — were either dead or prisoners.

  At dusk, the pontoons were again attacked by twenty-eight Blenheims of No. 2 Group, from bases in England. Seven aircraft failed to return, including two which crashed in French territory.

  The news of the disasters of 14 May, both in the air and on the ground, had a profound effect on the British War Cabinet’s plans to send more aircraft, principally Hurricanes, to France …

  *

  HQ RAF FIGHTER COMMAND, BENTLEY PRIORY, 15 MAY 1940: 0900 HOURS

  The tall, stern-faced man sat at his desk, frowning through half-moon spectacles at the memorandum he had recently drafted. He had just been ordered to dispatch a further 32 Hurricanes to the continent, and the French were pressing for an additional 120 machines. The memorandum, he knew, had to be correct in every word, for soon it would lie on the desk of the Prime Minister. He read it through again. He was a staid man, eccentric and alone. Would his words, he asked himself, have the necessary impact?

  Sir,

  I have the honour to refer to the very serious calls which have recently been made upon the Home Defence Fighter Units in an attempt to stem the German invasion of the Continent.

  I hope and believe that our armies may yet be victorious in France and Belgium, but we have to face the possibility that they may be defeated.

  In this case I presume that there is no one who will deny that England should fight on, even though the remainder of the Continent of Europe is dominated by the Germans.

  For this purpose it is necessary to retain some minimum fighter strength in this country and I must request that the Air Council will inform me what they consider this minimum strength to be, in order that I may make my dispositions accordingly.

  I would remind the Air Council that the last estimate which they made as to the force necessary to defend this country was fifty-two squadrons, and my strength has now been reduced to the equivalent of thirty-six squadrons.

  Once a decision has been reached as to the limit on which the Air Council and the Cabinet are prepared to stake the existence of the country, it should be made clear to the Allied Commanders on the Continent that not a single aeroplane from Fighter Command beyond the limit will be sent across the Channel, no matter how desperate the situation may become.

  It will, of course, be remembered that the estimate of fifty-two squadrons was based on the assumption that the attack would come from the eastwards except in so far as the defences might be outflanked in flight. We now have to face the possibility that attacks may come from Spain or even from the north coast of France. The result is that our line is very much extended at the same time as our resources are reduced.

  I must point out that within the last few days the equivalent of ten squadrons have been sent to France, that Hurricane squadrons remaining in this country are seriously depleted, and that the more squadrons which are sent to France the higher will be the wastage and the more insistent the demand for reinforcements.

  I must therefore request that as a matter of paramount urgency, the Air Ministry will consider and decide what level of strength is to be left to Fighter Command for the defence of this country, and will assure me that when this level has been reached, not one fighter will be sent across the Channel however urgent and insistent the appeals for help may be.

  I believe that, if an adequate fighter force is kept in the country, if the fleet remains in being, and if Home Forces are suitably organized to resist invasion, we should be able to carry on the war single-handed for some time, if not indefinitely. But, if the Home Defence Force is drained away in desperate attempts to remedy the situation in France, defeat in France will involve the final, complete and irremediable defeat of this country.

  H.C.T. Dowding,

  Air Chief Marshal,

  Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Fighter Command, Royal Air Force.

  Dowding laid his glasses aside and rose from the desk, striding over to the window. His office faced south; he had chosen it especially for that reason, so that it would receive the sun for most of the day.

  Bentley Priory stood on a ridge, four-square to the compass points. The Gothic building dated from the 1770s; it had successively been a stately home, a hotel and a girls’ school before the Air Ministry bought it in 1926. It was a solid building, as solid as the English earth on which it stood. Soon, the destiny of Britain might be ordained within the walls of the Operations Room in the depths of the building, and by the courage of the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots of the thirty-six squadrons whose integrity Dowding was striving so desperately to preserve.

  Too few, he thought. Too few. There will be great sacrifices. And as he gazed out on the trees in the park, without really seeing them, sadness mingled with the determination on his face.

  *

  BATTLE SITUATION: ROTTERDAM, 14 MAY 1940

  On the morning of 13 May, Major General Hubicki’s 9th Panzer Division at last rolled over the Moerdijk bridge, cheered by its haggard defenders. The Panzers raced on through Dordrecht, and that evening they clattered into the outskirts of Rotterdam south of the Maas. Among the shattered houses near the southern end of the Willems bridge they ground to a halt, pinned down by heavy artillery fire. The paratroops were still clinging doggedly to their tenuous foothold on the northern end of the bridge. Their losses had been heavy, and the survivors were exhausted. They had been in action continuously for nearly four days. But there could be no question of withdrawing across the bullet-swept bridge to where the Panzers were waiting.

  Command of the German forces in Rotterdam now rested on the shoulders of Rudolf Schmidt, General of the 39th Army Corps. His orders were to avoid unnecessary casualties among the Dutch civilians at all costs. On the evening of 13 May he therefore called on the Dutch commander, Colonel Scharroo, to surrender, pointing out that any further resistance would lead to widespread damage in the city and would only delay the inevitable capitulation by a few more hours.

  But every one of those hours would mean a serious loss of time for the Germans. General von Kuchler, C-in-C of the 18th Army, feared that the British were on the point of landing an expeditionary force in Holland. The Dutch had to be broken quickly, for the German forces already committed against them were desperately needed for the push through Belgium into northern France. At 1900 on 13 May, von Kuchler therefore ordered that the Dutch resistance in Rotterdam was to be smashed by every available means. The battle plan envisaged a tank attack across the Willems bridge at 1530 the following afternoon, preceded by a large-scale air raid on the surrounding area to soften up the defenders.

  By the morning of the 14th the Dutch commander still had not replied to General Schmidt’s call for surrender. Two German envoys had been flown into the city to discuss capitulation terms. Eventually, at noon, they managed to make contact with Colonel Scharroo and deliver their ultimatum: surrender, or suffer the destruction of the city centre by the Luftwaffe. Scharroo found himself unable to make the decision alone; he told the envoys that he would have to get in touch with the Hague, the Dutch seat of government, for further instructions. Half an hour later, the Dutch Government replied that it was sending a delegation to Rotterdam to talk terms with the Germans. The deputation was due to arrive at 1400.

  At 1330, General Schmidt sent a signal to Luftflotte 2 calling off the impending air attack, which was scheduled to begin at 1500. He was too late. At 1325, 100 Heinkels of KG 54 had taken off from their airfields near Bremen; by the time Schmidt’s signal reached Luftflotte 2 the bombers were already approaching the Dutch border, and by the time the order to abort the raid filtered through to KG 54’s HQ the Heinkels were over Holland. This meant that the radio operator in each aircraft had now closed down his positio
n in order to take up his combat station behind the machine-gun in the blister beneath the fuselage.

  The He 111s thundered towards Rotterdam in two waves. One, led by Oberst Lackner, KG 54’s commanding officer, approached from the east; the other, headed by Oberstleutnant Hohne — commander of I/KG 54 — made a wide detour to attack from the south-west. Strapped to his knee each bomber pilot had a map of the city, with the Dutch-held zones at either end of the bridges outlined in red. It was precisely within these sectors that the crews had to place their bombs.

  At 1505 Lackner’s formation roared in over the outskirts of the city from the south, sailing through clusters of flak bursts. Lackner screwed up his eyes and searched for the target along the line of the river, which curved through Rotterdam in a sharp loop. It was hard to see anything at all; the city was shrouded in a veil of dusty haze and smoke through which the sun smouldered with a diffuse light. It was hardly surprising that the pilots never saw the red flares — the abort signal — which the German ground forces were sending up.

  The Heinkels flew over the island in the middle of the Maas and unloaded their bombs in the centre of the Aldstadt, where the Dutch artillery was in position, then wheeled to starboard and vanished in the haze. A few seconds later, Hohne’s formation came in from the south-west. In the cockpit of his Heinkel, Hohne concentrated on following the instructions of his bombardier as the latter guided him on to the target, where fires could be seen blazing fiercely amid piles of rubble.