Fighters Up Read online

  Other dimensions had quickly been added. Fun burgeoned into excitement: a thrill that exceeded mere revelling in his growing expertise and could come only from defying danger. The expected aesthetic delight of cavorting about in the air among clouds which formed their own marvellous patterns, above glorious land- and seascapes, gave birth to an unexpected metaphysical enchantment. He told himself that if God had granted him a poetic gift, he would have used it to express his delight in flying. Flying created joy, in a purely physical activity, which had an element of the mystical.

  When he flew, either the menace of an ogre like Group Captain Augustus Northam was obliterated or the ogre was reduced to a mere pigmy by the awesome panorama of the sky, the vast distances his eyes could command, the grandeur of hills and oceans and the works of man. Not only Nature made an oppressor seem puny. When he saw the outlines of a Roman fort or settlement, Stonehenge, the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, the turrets of Windsor Castle, the ruins of a Saxon or Norman abbey, then any personal discomfiture or grief, fear or uncertainty came into perspective: ephemeral, trivial, to be ignored.

  Too often, it was a delusion. You could not ignore the fact, once your feet were on solid ground again, of the power that a malign superior could wield over your destiny. You could not ignore the death of a friend whom you missed or of a leader who had given you a feeling of security. You could not ignore the fact that you were liable, even likely, to be killed on any day when the weather was fit for flying. You could not ignore the fact that you did not face the prospect of dying with indifference.

  At night the entrancement was enhanced. The stars seemed within arm’s reach, the moon’s light gentle and benevolent; the flarepath, seen from miles away as you made your way home, snug and cheerful and reassuring. And so it was until an unexpected cloud hid the moon or unforecast fog blotted out every light on the ground. Hills and spires and factory chimneys: you knew where they were, but where were they now? There was nothing lyrical about spilling your guts in collision with the most beautiful of God’s works or of man’s.

  A convoy was moving eastward, from Southampton to the Port of London. Two Spitfires circled it. A destroyer fussed around the merchantmen, three frigates guarded their flanks and rear. There were times when Howard had felt more hostile to the Royal Navy than to the Luftwaffe. He had been fired at half a dozen times by British warships: when taking over convoy patrol, or emerging from cloud over the Channel, North Sea or Western Approaches and finding a convoy directly beneath. Red white and blue roundels and tail markings seemed to mean nothing to the nautics, if they were not expecting to see them. Nor was their aircraft recognition reliable. And even if they did identify a friendly aeroplane, they would shoot at it unless it made the right recognition signals.

  On the Sussex Downs he watched the Army fighting a mock battle. Infantry charged across the sheep-cropped grass, they dropped prone to fire blank cartridges, they discharged mortars. Tanks crawled about the low hills. Armoured cars scuttled along the lanes. Platoons and companies of riflemen marched briskly down the roads. Howard regarded all this activity with the traditional mockery of airmen for soldiers. They ought to practise rearguard actions in defence of a retreat, he thought; judging by what’s been going on in North Africa. But the desert army had done more advancing than retreating, as any member of Desert Air Force could - and would - have told him. The pongoes were the eternal butts of both the R.A.F. and the Navy, and this would never change however brave and brilliant they were. The Navy didn’t think much of the R.A.F., either. Socially, the latter was regarded as highly dubious. You entered the Navy either at 14 through its college at Dartmouth, or, at 18, from public school followed by a short course at the Royal Naval College. The Royal Flying Corps, the R.A.F’s progenitor, had opened its officers’ ranks to grammar school products. Bad show. The Army, like the Navy, regarded R.A.F. wives, in particular, as flashy and common. Hard luck, Army and Navy: the R.A.F. didn’t give a hoot.

  Howard was not concerned with snobbery or recruitment at that moment. He was looking down from a few thousand feet at members of the two sister Services with the habitual ridicule they all evinced for each other. With him, it was totally impersonal. He had always liked and got on well with all the pongoes and nautics (webfeet) he had met. It was simply that he felt superior to those who clumped about - pedestrians - in large boots and pooped off at the enemy with puny .303 rifles. He felt equally superior to the others, who thought they were going fast at twenty knots and had only to receive one shell or torpedo in the right place and a whole ship’s company of them was sunk. It was the R.A.F. that would have to win this war, with its speed and hitting power.

  He tolerated the sham fight as though he were an indulgent uncle and the soldiers slow-witted nephews. He looked on the inmates of the ships bullying the little convoy with the same pitying condescension.

  In his view, they must all be retarded, anyway, to want to adopt a profession that spent its time wallowing in mud, and probably infested by lice; or soaked to the skin and threatened by scurvy ... and worse, as the joke about the golden rivet immortalised. Mud, sweat and blood; or rum, bum and baccy: there was nothing to choose between them. Flying was the only intelligent pursuit and airmen lived clean and dry, and healthily in quest of complaisant girls.

  Having cast a perfunctory look around the sector, he indulged himself with five or six minutes’ aerobatics. He was on form today. Every loop was symmetrical, every slow, flick or barrel roll flawless, every chandelle, Immelmann, stall turn and spin recovery beyond criticism.

  He was on his way back to base, straight and level at 10,000 ft, when he was startled by a voice dinning in his headphones, imitating the sound of machinegun fire. The turbulence of a Spitfire slicing past close overhead rocked his aeroplane, its slipstream made it yaw.

  An Australian voice cackled “Gotcher, One-Six.”

  His first emotion was anger, then shame at being caught napping. He had been too absorbed in preening himself on his smooth aerobatics and in watching the sky a few miles ahead, over base, to keep his habitual sharp lookout all round. There was no real danger of a Jerry straying over this part of England at this time of day, but Agger (Agony) Payne from Brisbane had given him a salutary shock.

  “Two-Nine from One-Six ... Ten out of ten ... pancake and we’ll go up again on P.Is.” He had arranged them with the radar station at Wartling for 1600 hrs but had not yet detailed a partner.

  “O.K., One-Six.”

  Agony Payne was evidently in a particularly confident mood. Howard watched him do two climbing rolls (upward Charlies), then wing over and dive almost vertically towards the aerodrome.

  “Don’t tear your wings off, Two-Nine ... you’re going to need them.”

  “I’ll ease out as gently as a sheila stroking my ...” Payne remembered in time not to say it. “Cock” would have earned a reprimand from the squadron commander: the W.A.A.F. radio-telephone operators had to be protected from obscenities; probably to the regret of some of them. They were under orders to log everything exactly as they heard it: euphemisms and omissions were not allowed. It sometimes put a strain on Agony Payne to remember that female ears were listening to every word he uttered.

  He was standing near his aircraft while it was being refuelled when Howard climbed down from the cockpit. Payne’s beaky face, all sharp planes and long chin, was cracked in two by his irritating grin. He was as tall as a man could be and still fit under the hood of a Spitfire. His shoulders were bowed, the result of long hours of hunching down to read his instruments and keep the top of his head clear of the perspex. He was the only scruffy officer on the squadron, although as well-scrubbed as a daily hot shower could make him. Even in his best blue, dressed to kill when hot on the scent of some sheila, he looked unkempt.

  “Want to go and change your pants, Sport?”

  “You didn’t scare me, you bastard: I saw you in my mirror. I wanted to see what sort of a job you made of it.” This was as far from the truth as a man cou
ld get, but for a moment it stopped Payne’s grin and a look of doubt showed in his rather reptilian eyes.

  “Yeah, like bloody hell. I shook yer, Boost, yer know I did.”

  “Yes ... by your lousy break.” Doubt was replaced by indignation in Payne’s look. “Break down, you clot. Then you’ve got the speed to zoom for a belly shot, where Jerry can’t see you.”

  Silence reigned while Payne mentally chewed this over. Then he thought of a suitable retort. “I broke up so you’d see me. I knew you were dozing. You’d have missed me if ...”

  “If you’d broken downward I’d have winged over, poured on boost and gone after you like a dingbat and caught you.”

  The grin returned. “Wanna bet, Sport?”

  The time had come for a little line-shooting, a little chastening. Howard ostentatiously walked around to the port side of Payne’s aeroplane. He looked up at the swastikas, denoting kills, painted on its side. His finger pointed at each while he slowly counted to four.

  He beckoned without saying a word and Payne grudgingly followed him to his own Spitfire. The flight sergeant, who had known Howard on other stations and approved of him, had had his tally painted on the B Flight commander’s aircraft in anticipation of his arrival.

  Howard briefly regarded the evidence of his twelve victories, then glanced at Payne: who was blushing now as well as grinning.

  “I won’t bet, Agger: it would be like robbing the blind.”

  “Ouch!” said Payne.

  “Come on, let’s get weaving.”

  There were no concrete runways at Monkston. The fighter boys liked this, because it enabled them to take off directly into wind from wherever it blew and to do so in any size of formation. Howard led Payne along the perimeter track and they formed up on the airfield with the latter’s port wing a few feet astern of the former’s tail and a little to the right of it.

  As soon as they were airborne and climbing, Payne came further forward and settled his port wingtip in a position where it was about halfway between Howard’s starboard wing and tail plane and its tip was within ten feet of Howard’s fuselage.

  “Tighten it up, Two-Nine.”

  Payne came nearer.

  “Get in close, Two-Nine.”

  Payne came closer.

  “Windy, Two-Nine?”

  Payne edged even further forward and more to his left.

  “Hold it there.”

  Howard was climbing fast and steeply, the demands on his No 2 were enough to give a nervous man a coronary thrombosis. It was highly dangerous for both of them.

  At 15,000 ft: “Levelling off.” And, almost at once, “Don’t stray. Tuck in.”

  They flew straight and level for half a minute.

  “Turning port ... go.” A few seconds later “You’re wandering about like a wet hen ... get in tight.”

  “Straightening out ... Closer, Two-Nine.”

  More turns and climbs followed; and crossovers, when Payne had to slide from his leader’s right to his left, as they changed direction.

  Howard called the G.C.I. and the controller replied. “I can see you. One-Six, you’ll be fighter, vector two-seven-zero. Two-Nine, target, vector three-six-zero.” Having split them at right angles he ordered the target to turn onto a course of 270 degrees and the interceptor to turn onto 360.

  A quarter of a minute later: “One-Six, target two-o’clock, range twelve. He’ll cross you starboard to port.”

  “O.K.”

  “One-Six, vector zero-four-five, target will be one-o’clock, range eight, on two-seven-zero.”

  “Turning onto zero-four-five, Tophat.”

  “One-Six from Tophat, target one-o’clock, range five.”

  “O.K.”

  “One-Six, Vector zero-two-zero. Target half past twelve, range three.”

  “Zero-two-zero, Tophat.”

  “One-Six, vector three-six-zero. Target a quarter past twelve, range one.”

  “Tallyho.”

  It had been a copybook curve of pursuit and Howard was well positioned for a high quarter attack from the port side and slightly above. But he thought poorly of these interceptions that the controllers set up. They were artificial. He made his dummy attack and broke away.

  When Payne had had his turn, Howard called the G. C. I.

  “Suggest you let target choose his own course in a forty-five degree arc. That’ll give you, as well as the fighter, some real practice.” The controller couldn’t set Jerry up as he wished for a convenient kill!

  “One-Six from Tophat. We’ll halve the number of P.Is we can do in the time, then.”

  “Better a few realistic ones than a lot of set pieces.”

  “O.K. Stay on your present vector, One-Six. Two-Nine, vector zero-nine-zero for one minute, then set any course you like between two-five-zero and two-nine-zero, angels twenty.”

  “O.K.”

  “One Six, angels twenty-one.”

  The interception was laborious and the controller began to sound uneasy. Howard decided he was inexperienced. He might be a fighter pilot on a rest between operational tours or he might be a fulltime controller: whatever their backgrounds, all controllers needed more testing practice than they could get by telling the target what course to steer. It was specious to make putting in the maximum number of P.Is during a given time the main objective. He was always impatient of any exercise that lacked realism. He would allow Tophat one more run, with himself as target, and then finish. He could find more profitable ways for Payne and himself to spend the next half-hour.

  “Tophat, instructions please.”

  “Stand by, One-Six. May have trade for you.”

  Payne treated his flight commander, the controller at Wartling and anyone else who was listening, to his machinegun imitation.

  “Shut up, Two-Nine.” Howard found himself suddenly on edge.

  “One-Six from Tophat. Bogey fifteen miles north of you, at angels twenty, course one-eight-zero. Make angels twenty-two, vector three-six-zero.”

  A mere bogey, an unidentified aircraft. It’d turn out to be some stooge from an O.T.U. who had lost his way and strayed from his intended track.

  “Tophat, what’s he doing so far north, at that height?”

  “We think he must be a bandit on P.R. who’s had to lose height through engine trouble.”

  An enemy on photographic reconnaissance! He was ten thousand feet lower than the usual P.R. altitude. It could just be that the Group Filter Room and the G.C.I. had got it right.

  Howard glanced to his right. “Loosen out, Two-Nine.”

  Payne tilted away and put two hundred yards between them. Now each would be free to manoeuvre as necessary and to cover the other as well.

  What else could this bogey be? Solitary bombers did not venture thirty miles inland at this time of day; nor did single enemy fighters. It couldn’t be a crippled P.R. kite, surely? That would be too great a slice of luck. It must be a friendly that had lost its way.

  “Bogey twelve-o’clock, range ten. Still at angels twenty and on one-eight-zero. Speed three hundred.”

  It was a Spit or a Hurricane, then. Or a Yank, a twin-fuselaged P38. A couple of American fighter squadrons had arrived somewhere in England recently. Howard had heard that they were always getting lost.

  That must be the explanation for this one.

  But it wasn’t.

  “Tophat from Hamlet One-Six. Bogey one-o’clock, range four. Tallyho!”

  Howard had not followed the controller’s instructions exactly. He had turned twenty degrees to the west of the track he had been given, a minute earlier, to widen the angle of approach and put the sun more astern of Payne and himself.

  He slanted into the attack.

  Payne, keeping watch all round, said calmly “One-Six, there’s a gaggle about a mile astern of the bogey and about five thousand above.”

  When Howard looked up he saw four small shapes where Payne had said they were.

  “Tophat from Hamlet One-Six, I can see them. H
aven’t you got them?”

  “No, One-Six.”

  They must be too high for the radar anywhere to have picked them up. What were they? They were fighters, flying in the finger-four formation that both the R.A.F. and the Luftwaffe used.

  They were leaving condensation trails now, and they were diving.

  “Tophat from One-Six, I think we’ve been suckered. Four bogeys coming in from above. Must be bandits.” “Crafty bastards,” said Payne.

  It was a neat trick and trap. Howard checked that his gun button was set to the firing position and concentrated on the target below him. But it was already climbing to join the other four.

  Five to two. Better odds than he’d had to fight against two years ago when the B of B was on. This wasn’t going to be a piece of cake, just the same.

  “You O.K., Agger?”

  “Right with you, Boost.”

  The single enemy aircraft was a Me109, but the other four were FW190s. All must have carried drop tanks to make so long a flight and still have enough combat time in hand to make the trip and the deception worthwhile. No doubt the 109 had flown in company with the others, which would have had to throttle back, on the outward leg. It must have come down to detectable altitude over Surrey, well to the west of London.

  “Hamlet One-Six from Tophat. Look out for two friendlies now at angels ten, joining you, ten miles south of you.”

  “O.K.”

  The party would be over by the time they got here. Now shut up, Tophat, and let us get on with it. After a Tallyho, controllers kept silent unless there was excellent reason to interrupt. Howard did not think that the information that two Spits were on their way too late to be of any use was an excellent reason.

  He headed for the FW190s’ leader. It came flashing down at him so fast that in five seconds it had changed from the apparent size of a large bird to its true dimensions; his own speed made their rate of closing over 600 m.p.h.