Ginger Lacey: Fighter Pilot Read online

  Familiarity with this frustrating procedure bred a spirit of competition to reduce the time it took to report from the end of the runway. The pilots, when on stand-by at night, left their parachutes and cockpit straps undone and merely plugged their helmets in to the R/T. In consequence, the practice scramble times shrank gratifyingly and became a matter of pride and satisfaction to both Ops. and Group.

  One night, when Sergeant Lacey was adorning the role of stand-by pilot and had arrived at the end of the runway in his Hurricane with fantastic smartness, still thinking of the cliff-hanging thriller he had just left and to which he was in a hurry to return, the fruity voice of the Ops. Controller curtly ordered: ‘Scramble!’

  ‘Eh?’ The exclamation burst from the stand-by pilot before he could restrain himself.

  ‘Scramble!’

  ‘Understand scramble,’ acknowledged Sergeant Lacey briskly; and then muttering under his breath he hastily began to repair his omissions in the matter of straps and buckles. He got airborne; eventually.

  A big ship, steaming past Beachy Head, was being bombed. By the time Tangmere’s stand-by night fighter arrived, the German bomber crews were sitting down to sauerkraut and ersatz coffee, in their own messes in the Vaterland.

  Thereafter, night flying stand-by was treated less light-heartedly and scramble times noticeably increased, provoking irascible comment from Group.

  Sergeant Lacey withdrew from the conflict temporarily, to have German measles; and to start it on a round of the station. The Station Warrant Officer, who was a notorious xenophobe, cut him for the next month. He might at least have had the decency to contract British measles; especially with a war on.

  But spring brought an end to the sceptical mood in which the first six or seven months of the war had been passed. During this time the squadron had been settling down together to unfamiliar routine, to the blackout and security-mindedness and all the other phenomena of war. Hitler had left England pretty much unmolested and despite casualties in the air among people whom they knew on bomber squadrons, the home-based fighter squadrons had so far felt rather like privileged participants in a massively organized game. They had the pleasure of greatly augmented flying hours, the sharpened senses that came from knowing that they were technically at war; and no hardship or danger.

  In March, the air war for the R.A.F. squadrons in France, which had been quiescent since the previous November, flared up again: fighter to fighter, the R.A.F. fought the Luftwaffe. The German bombers had not yet reappeared in large numbers over France.

  News of air battles reaching Tangmere made the pilots impatient to join in.

  In April, Blenheims, Wellingtons and Hudsons were in action over north-west Germany and the Heligoland Bight. More news to whet the operational appetites of 501.

  At last, in May, the squadron was warned to prepare to go to France.

  Like all momentous events, this one is remembered for its personally significant trivialities. Lacey, reporting to the dentist for examination before going overseas, was told that two teeth needed filling; but there was no time to do this, so they must be extracted. He says that he has missed those two teeth ever since.

  CHAPTER FOUR - France

  THE R.A.F. squadrons already serving in France were in two formations: the Advanced Air Striking Force, of which the fighter squadrons were Nos. 1 and 73 ; and the Air Component of the British Expeditionary Force, whose fighter squadrons were Nos. 85, 87, 615 and 607.

  On the l0th May 1940, Nos. 3, 79 and 504 Squadrons were sent to reinforce the Air Component, and Nos. 17, 242 and 501 to the Advanced Air Striking Force.

  May l0th was a day of crisis: Germany invaded both Holland and Belgium, without formal declaration of war.

  The Governments of the Netherlands and Belgium had already received warning of the danger, by means of captured documents and their intelligence services, and had asked Britain for help, particularly in the air, in the event of attack. This had been promised, although it committed the Service which could least be spared.

  At dawn, the German Air Force attacked both countries simultaneously with heavy air raids on aerodromes, communications, capital cities and troop concentrations. Within a few hours more than half the aircraft of the Belgian Air Force were destroyed on the ground. At the same time, the German Army advanced strongly on Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

  At six-o’clock in the morning, the Dutch and Belgian Ministers in Paris and London appealed for the promised aid. Within a matter of hours, 501 Squadron was among those ordered to give it.

  The reinforcing squadrons sent to France arrived in a setting in which they were at a considerable disadvantage.

  German aircraft production had already more than replaced the number of aircraft shot down over Poland, Norway, France and the United Kingdom with its approaches. Thus the Luftwaffe, which was numerically greater at the outbreak of war, was daily growing at a faster rate than British industry could yet attain.

  Poland, Denmark and Norway were under enemy occupation, and Russia was bound by a non-aggression pact with Germany. The air forces of Britain’s allies were nugatory, by reason of small numbers of inferior aircraft.

  The R.A.F. was therefore not only outnumbered, but compelled to cover a huge area; and devoid of any prospect that Russia, Italy, America or any other country with a large air force was likely to join the Allies.

  At 2.30 p.m. all sixteen Hurricanes of 501, led by Squadron Leader M. V. M. Clube, took off for Betheniville, near Rheims. The move was completed by 5.15 p.m. on the next day.

  It was hard to believe that they were flying towards places which had, that morning, been the scenes of barbarous holocausts, for there was a certain holiday feeling about the trip. The sparkling sea, the clear sky and the sun warm through their cockpit canopies; the sense of adventure, the feeling of relief that at last they were going to do something more positively concerned with the nation’s task of defeating the Germans: all these added up to a heady satisfaction for highly-trained young men. Few of them had been abroad before and the mere anticipation of seeing France, perhaps managing a visit to Paris, was enough to dispel immediate fear and the unavoidable thought that some would almost certainly never see England again.

  Sergeant Pilot Lacey, looking down for his first sight of their new base, saw a vast field with a hump in the centre which, he found when they landed, made it impossible to see one side of the aerodrome from the other. Buildings there were none.

  With their aircraft parked in a row at one side of the airfield, the pilots stood in a group surveying their new home. ‘Not much like Tangmere,’ remarked one. Nobody disagreed with him.

  ‘What’s the form, sir?’ One of the Flight Commanders asked the C.O.

  The squadron leader pointed towards the edge of the field. ‘We’ll put up a couple of big tents here as a rest room and an Ops. Room. As soon as the rest of the chaps arrive we’ll start pitching tents on the domestic site: that’s about a mile from the aerodrome.’

  ‘Call this an aerodrome!’ This rueful cry was drowned by the sound of the first of the heavy aircraft that were bringing the squadron’s ground crews: two Bristol Bombay troop carriers and an Armstrong Whitworth Ensign airliner.

  The first Bombay landed and the Hurricane pilots watched with amusement as it disappeared and then came into sight over the rise in the centre of the field. Then the dignified Ensign, looking markedly outraged by its crudely applied field service camouflage, lumbered in. The other Bombay came over the hedge, and somebody had just said, ‘Now they can get cracking with those tents; and a brew up: I could do with some cha,’ when silence fell over the watchers.

  Mute, holding their breaths, the Hurricane pilots stood with their eyes fixed on the big troop carrier. The ground airmen and officers who had emerged from the first Bombay and the Ensign, and had been calling to one another or chattering loudly with excited comment on their new surroundings, also let their voices drift into silence.

  The Bombay which had just f
lown over the boundary and looked as though it was about to touch down, was climbing again: its nose up at an angle of sixty degrees, it hovered on the edge of a stall. Everybody knew what must happen. Each one of them wanted to shout a fruitless warning to the pilot. Their stomachs taut with the anticipation of what they realized they must witness in the next few seconds, the members of the squadron looked on helplessly.

  The Bombay hung, nose-up, for a second or two; then its nose and one wingtip dropped heavily and it spun into the ground with a thud which sent a tremor through the onlookers’ feet. The roaring of the engines combined with the thunder of the impact made their hearts leap with shock; then there was silence.

  For ten seconds they waited for a tongue of flame; but there was to be no explosion of petrol vapour, no fire. Feet pounded across the turf.

  Lacey could see the Adjutant, through a window of the cabin: although the officer sat motionless, he looked unhurt. When he scrambled into the aircraft, he saw that the Adjutant was indeed un-marked; but had died of a broken neck. Among the nine who were killed in the accident or died in hospital were both ground crew and spare pilots.

  It was a hateful, ominous start to the squadron’s service in France. In an instant the holiday atmosphere vanished.

  Worse was to come. The doleful ceremony of burial next day was not to be the end of this accident. Three nights later there was an air raid: bombs intended for the airfield fell in the nearby cemetery, disinterring the bodies which had so recently been laid there; reburial of the corpses dismembered by bombs was as gory as it was macabre.

  This first day had not exhausted its horrors, however. Two hours after landing, while the squadron was busy erecting its tents, a Dornier swept in low and straffed. With machine gun bullets flinging up divots all around them, officers and airmen sprinted away from the line of fire. There was no need for the C.O. to take any action to enforce his order that slit trenches were to be dug.

  But they were here to fly, and singly and in pairs the pilots were sent off on sector reconnaissance and patrols to familiarize themselves with the area as soon as possible that same day.

  At once, the squadron was in action.

  Flying Officer A. D. Pickup, patrolling 15 miles north-west of Vouziers, intercepted a Do. 17 and dived instantly to attack. Two minutes later he saw it hurtling down wreathed in smoke and flames as the pilot jumped clear: he watched the German’s parachute open and wondered whether, perhaps, the reception awaiting the latter from the French peasantry might make him wish that he had died with his crew.

  The squadron was jubilant. Everyone had a vicarious part in the kill. They all felt that danger and discomfort were amply compensated for. This great event made each man, fitter, rigger or Orderly Room clerk, a fighting member of a fighting unit, added enormously to his morale and seriousness of purpose, and gave a sense of immediacy to the squadron’s task.

  Every pilot wanted to hear Pickup’s story a dozen times over. Each believed that he could have done as well, given the luck to make the interception. Every one of them burned with impatience for his own chance to come. The day was not long enough and they went to bed longing for the first light that would allow them to fly again and hunt the enemy.

  Lacey took off shortly before dusk. He climbed quickly, searching the sky for hostile aircraft and looking down as often as possible to fix landmarks in his mind. When he turned for home, he realized that these big French fields with so few hedges between them were difficult to differentiate between: but he thought that he could identify the aerodrome.

  He spiralled down, lowered his undercarriage and landed gently. Then he taxied; and taxied; and taxied. One field gave onto another. And dusk settled. And still there was no sign of the two big tents which would tell him he was back at base.

  At last he cut off his engine, got out of his aircraft and began to walk towards the lights which glowed a short distance away.

  A voice challenged him from the shadow under a tree. He stopped. He had always wondered whether he would find his school French of any use; now was the time to find out: and quickly, for a steel-helmeted poilu had appeared from the shadow and was pointing a rifle at him. The bayonet looked unpleasantly long and sharp.

  ‘Anglais,’ he ventured.

  The poilu said something incomprehensible.

  ‘Pilot,’ Lacey explained hopefully. ‘R.A.F. Savez-vouse?’

  The poilu shouted. Lacey resignedly stood motionless until two more men hurried up. Then, ‘Anglais,’ he repeated patiently. ‘Pilot.’

  One of the men, with a corporal’s chevrons on his sleeves, approached, stood looking at him like a suspicious pointer and then beckoned. The four of them went to a house on the outskirts of the small village.

  When the officer commanding the detachment spoke to him in hesitant but recognizable English, Lacey was so relieved that he would not have seriously resisted an attempt to kiss him on both cheeks.

  The French officer put him in touch with his squadron by telephone; the natives were friendly and their supply of wine and cognac was abundant; with a head throbbing more than a little, Lacey took off at first light and this time he found his way correctly to base.

  It had been a late night for Sergeant Pilot Lacey as he contributed his bit to the entente cordiale; he had been celebrating the end of a day that was momentous also for Britain’s most distinguished citizen: Mr Winston Churchill had, on the morning of l0th May, been asked by King George VI to form a new Government. The Prime Minister, too, was tardy in going to his bed: at 3 a.m., looking forward to the morrow. The squadrons, indeed the whole British force, fighting in France had little time to think about the new premiership; but it was the first step towards victory although the near future held defeat and retreat for them. The news that Churchill was leading the nation was heartening despite the undeniable hopelessness of the immediate situation in Europe.

  During the night, the airfield had been the target for an air raid. Lacey landed there to be met by ribald comment on his foreknowledge that had led him to spend the night elsewhere. In fact, the Luftwaffe had missed their objective and it was the village of Betheniville and a few empty meadows which had been hit. The raid had, however, been a salutary encouragement to the more careless airmen to give some thought to their own safety: this, on top of the Dormer’s straffing the previous afternoon, had bred a fury of trench digging. Whereas at first the troops had made the excuse, when issued with spade, that they were fully occupied by aircraft maintenance, it was now, for a few hours, impossible to divert them from their excavating long enough to carry out daily inspections on the aircraft.

  ‘It’s amazing how bombing changes your outlook,’ remarks Lacey.

  But he was in no mood to quip during those first three days in France. The other pilots on the squadron were shooting down the enemy, some of them more than one apiece, and he could not even make a start.

  On the 11th, he flew twice. At the end of the day, with his score at nil, the squadron had accounted for six hostiles: Pilot Officer C. L. Hulse and Sergeant P. Morfill a Me. 110 each; Flying Officer C. E. Malfroy (the New Zealand Davis Cup player) and Flight Sergeant A. D. Payne each a Heinkel 111; and a Do. 17 apiece for Flight Lieutenant E. S. Williams, ‘B’ Flight Commander, and Sergeant R. C. Dafforn.

  On the l2th, Lacey flew three patrols totalling 3 hours 45 minutes, and still his duck remained unbroken. But his comrades destroyed twelve German aeroplanes. He. 111s were brought down by Sergeant P. C. Fames, Sergeant D. S. Mackay, Sergeant Morfill, Flight Sergeant Payne and Flying Officer P. H. Rayner. Fames and Pilot Officer E. J. H. Sylvester shared a Do. 17 and another was destroyed by Pilot Officer K. N. T. Lee. Flying Officer E. Holden got a Ju. 88 and Sergeant J. E. Proctor a Me. 110 and a Do. 17.

  Nobody had yet come up against that formidable enemy fighter, the Me. 109.

  But it was not entirely a day about which to be glad.

  Rayner did not come back from his patrol. Sylvester saw him crash to his death after he had shot do
wn his Heinkel, 30 miles north-east of Betheniville. Flying Officer M. F. C. Smith was killed by a Me. 110.

  The fat days at Filton and Tangmere, the comfort of permanent billets and the complacent certainty that you and your friends would all be alive tomorrow, seemed a long time ago. You remembered the parties in the mess or in the ‘local’, and memory flashed a picture before your eyes of a flushed, laughing face and brought back the sound of a voice telling a joke or joining in a song. You felt a tightening of your stomach and you looked quickly around for a drink. Above all, you didn’t talk about it.

  Then, on the 13th May came the dawn patrol on which Lacey, separated from his companions, shot down a Heinkel III and a Messerschmitt 109 within a few minutes of each other; and the second sortie, immediately after he had landed to refuel and rearm, on which he destroyed a Messerschmitt 110 and Griffiths and Lee got two more: and all before breakfast. For this, the French Government bestowed on him a Croix de Guerre.

  On the next day he was sent to Mourmelon, a French aerodrome, by road to collect a Hurricane which had been forced landed there by one of the other pilots of 501 and was now fit to be flown.

  The transport driver had other duties on his list and Lacey, since he was to fly back to Betheniville straight away, sent the truck on its way. He walked towards the hangar with his parachute slung across his shoulder, looking up at the sky as usual and thinking what a clear day it was. But his Hurricane wasn’t in the hangar. He stood outside, searching, and saw it parked on the far side of the airfield among some trees. A French officer gave him permission to walk across the aerodrome; he had hoped for the offer of a lift in a lorry or at least the loan of a bicycle: but he found himself trudging across the grass in his flying boots, lugging the bulky parachute.