Battle Climb Read online

  There were fourteen merchant vessels, in three columns: the two flanking ones of five and the centre one of four ships. The naval escort covered the seaward flank and rear while the minesweepers led the way.

  Upton made his identification signals, the escort commander greeted him, and the Hurricanes bore away north-eastward for home. The sun was giving promise of a fine day. Upton was glad to be at work instead of sprawling torpid in a chair, waiting for something to happen. And flying the first sortie of the day put the three of them at the bottom of the roster, so that they should have a decent rest before being sent up again. He did not think of it precisely in those terms, hut the fact was that this gave them a few more hours’ certain expectation of life. He would have been ashamed to put it this way to himself, but the subconscious acknowledgment of it had much to do with his satisfaction at being airborne so early.

  Yellow Section began its monotonous circling of the orderly files of ships, all three pilots’ heads constantly turning to search the sky for an approaching enemy. There was a condition known as fighter-pilots’ neck, a stiffness caused by this ceaseless twisting from side to side and up and down. They wore silk scarves, a proven way of preventing this discomfort; it added a touch of panache, too. A silk square and unfastened top tunic button were the distinguishing marks of a fighter pilot, the former a custom resurrected from the Great War.

  It was not easy to keep one’s mind on the task when on such a repetitive operation: round and round at the same altitude, creeping forward at the convoy’s pace.

  Upton’s thoughts drifted to Ann. Brunettes had always attracted him and she was the darkest-haired sweetheart he had ever had: her curly hair was almost black and her eyes a lustrous deep brown. She was small, fine-boned, with neat hands and little feet, and stood on tiptoe when they kissed even though he bent down to her. Her five-foot-nothing stature did not give him a protective feeling, though, because she was so independent and competent and could probably look after him as well as herself if need be. What appealed to him most in Ann was her tranquillity.

  Roy Taylor, on Upton’s right wing, more stolid than either he or Tom Dellow, took this job as seriously as he took everything else and made a great effort not to succumb to boredom. Just the same, he couldn’t stop himself thinking about Lois when they had been over the convoy for half an hour and nothing interesting had happened.

  Lois was by way of being what cynics called a suicide blonde: dyed by her own hand; but none the less fetching for that. She was naturally fair, he could tell that from her rose-petal complexion and her bright cobalt blue eyes. Her mouth was her most arresting feature, almost negroid in its lushness; he fancied often that he could disappear completely inside it, when he kissed her. She looked a bit top-heavy, he admitted, with her generously proportioned torso balanced on such amazingly slender, shapely legs; like a toffee apple: but what a lovely sweet to lick and chew. Although, in their embraces, it was she who did most of that. He had tacitly acknowledged to himself that Lusty Lois was going to seduce him and had decided to let her take her own time: in truth, he felt a trifle nervous about it and did not feel like hastening this consummation.

  Sergeant Dellow was the least bored of the three of them, but his thoughts began to drift as well. He was still thrilled by, and savouring, the extreme change in his life and the many freedoms it had brought. A year ago he was a conscientious schoolmaster, bound by all the restraints and inhibitions of his profession, which demanded many external signs of the virtues expected of it: dignity, reliability, erudition, respectability, sternness, sobriety and culture. His weekends and school holidays spent with the R.A.F.V.R. had given him a much prized escape to a more relaxed and socially carefree community. Now he was a full-time member of it and found it exhilarating. He had been engaged for a year to a serious girl he had fallen in love with at Bristol University, but had broken it off six months ago: he found her boring and priggish after the sort of girls he had met since the war started. He enjoyed Hands-off Helen’s company and was content to bide his time and see what happened. In some ways she resembled his ex-fiancée: quiet, serious, emotionally guarded; but she had a greater sense of humour. And who needed more, with that trim figure and auburn colouring, those huge grey-green eyes?

  If the three members of Maypole Yellow Section were thinking of three different girls, one thought they had in common was that they would be leaving the convoy in twenty minutes’ time.

  It was just after they had all, coincidentally, checked the time on their watches, that Clive Upton saw the climbing sun glint on four silver specks to the south and called sharply “Bandits... three-o’clock... range ten... above.”

  ***

  Werner Hintsch and Emil Festner became friends at first encounter. Both were keen sportsmen, Hintsch a boxer and swimmer, Festner a skier and runner. They were both hefty young men, dark-haired and blunt-featured, similar enough to be mistaken for brothers or cousins. Hintsch was a year the elder. The pair of them were ardent girl-hunters and shared the good-humoured conceit and swagger of successful young bucks: they were good pilots, good sportsmen and good at bedding women.

  Hintsch had shot down two Fairey Battle and one Blenheim bombers of the Advanced Air Striking Force in France, and two Hurricanes and a Spitfire during the Battle of Britain which was then reaching its peak.

  Festner had a score of two Battles and one Hurricane.

  Each of them had damaged four or five British aircraft as well. Hintsch had made two forced landings from severe battle damage and Festner had once had to bale out over the Channel, where one of the many German patrol boats had picked him up. German pilots, unlike the British, already carried dinghies and he had been safe and comfortable enough while waiting to be picked up, although very wet. Both young men had destroyed French Air Force Potez bombers; two apiece. Hintsch also had two Polish fighters to his credit. All this experience and success and their survival in damaged or shot-down aircraft had given them great confidence and inflated their natural arrogance.

  The standard Luftwaffe fighter formation of a pair of aircraft, known as a Rotte, allowed great flexibility. Two Rotten formed a Schwarm. In that formation, the leader flew with his No. 2 on his left, the leader of the second Rotte immediately on his right and the fourth man, No. 2 to the latter, on the extreme right. They were at twelve thousand feet, climbing, when they saw Upton’s section three thousand feet lower than they.

  “Three Red Indians, ten-o’clock, below,” warned Hintsch.

  “I’ve got ‘em. Spitfires,” Festner answered.

  It was impossible to tell whether they were Spits or Hurricanes, at that distance, but all German air crews jumped to the conclusion that any British fighter they saw must be a Spitfire. German fighter pilots were particularly prone to make this identification. It was considered shameful to be shot down by a Hurri, which was slower than a Me 109; whereas being shot down by a Spitfire was not held to be a disgrace. The fact that only one third of Fighter Command squadrons had Spitfires did not make any difference to the enemy’s insistence on their ubiquity to the exclusion of Hurricanes.

  “They’re circling the convoy.”

  “Shall we take them on?” asked Festner.

  “Let’s make some more height first... and see if there are any more of them around.”

  They climbed but could see that the circling Spitfires were climbing also. At this altitude the 109 had slightly the better of it, but the higher one went the greater became the problems and restrictions on fighting. Despite breathing oxygen, men’s reactions became a little slower. Aircrafts’ control surfaces had less grip on the air, which meant lower stalling speeds, wider turns. Acceleration and deceleration deteriorated. One easily over-shot in a dive because the thinner the air the sooner one needed to pull out.

  “Let’s have a go,” Hintsch decided, turning to bring the Spitfires directly ahead.

  There were now five miles between them, and the Spits were still orbiting the ships.

  “Think
it’s a trap to draw us into their flak?” asked Festner.

  “Soon find out! Hope not… I’m in the mood for a good scrap this morning.”

  “Well done Hiltrud!”

  Hintsch couldn’t help laughing at his friend’s allusion. But he was not amused by the prospect of a sudden barrage from the warships’ guns and he watched tensely for the first flashes at their muzzles.

  It was going to be all right, for the Spitfires turned suddenly towards them still climbing and came at them head-on so that in a few seconds they were between the convoy and the Messerschmitts.

  Still with their three thousand feet advantage, a great asset now that the adversaries were so close, the 109s did a crossover turn to starboard, which repositioned the others on the opposite sides to Hintsch: his No. 2 was now on his right, and so on.

  The Spitfire on its leader’s left had climbed above the other two and was protecting both their tails.

  Hintsch spoke briefly to Feldwebel (sergeant major) Falck, his right winger: “Stick to me like glue and guard my tail... but don’t forget to watch your own as well.” Then to Fw. Rudorffer: “ Same goes for you... hang on to your leader as close as you can, and keep eyes in the back of your head at the same time.”

  Both youngsters acknowledged cheerfully and edged nearer to the two leading aircraft.

  The four of them were at slightly different altitudes. Falck, on the right, up-sun, side of Hintsch, flew a little below him so that none of the other three would have to gaze into the sun to find him. Festner was stepped up rather higher than Hintsch, and Rudorffer was a bit higher again. There was about two hundred feet of lateral distance between each aircraft, which left ample room for manoeuvre.

  The four German pilots watched the three Spitfires rapidly grow larger in their ring sights. When their wingspans filled one-third of the ring the range would be about three hundred metres and they could open fire with the 20 mm. Oerlikon cannon in each wing by pressing the finger trigger on the control stick. The five-ounce shells could do serious damage from that distance. As they closed, they could thumb the other trigger that fired the two 7.92 mm. Rhinemetall machine-guns in the engine cowling; but a well placed burst with the two cannons could cripple or bring down a Spitfire at once.

  The advantage was with the Messerschmitts: height, numbers, weight and duration of fire.

  ***

  Maypole Yellow Section had one advantage, a slight one, over the enemy: they were further up-sun; but as the sun was so low that did not help very much.

  Upton tasted bile in his mouth. A Schwarm of 109s was always an ugly sight. On an empty stomach and first thing in the morning, it was dire; in the proper sense, terrific.

  A favourite tactic of the German fighter pilots was to split a Rotte, so that a British fighter pilot on his own would be caught between the two of them. They did the same with a Schwarm. Although the three Spits were tightly together, they might try it on this time, Upton was thinking. If so, they were going to be unlucky, because he wouldn’t fall for it.

  The climb they had held during the Messerschmitts’ initial dive meant that the two formations would still be six hundred yards apart when they reached the same level. If the Spitfires continued to climb and the 109s levelled off, they would have the advantage of getting above the latter. The 109s could, however, use their tremendous build-up of speed in the dive to zoom up again and keep their height advantage. The third possibility was that both would level out and try a head-on attack: which would give barely a second or two in which to aim and fire before they flashed past each other in opposite directions.

  A head-on attack offered less chance of a miss than a deflection attack; but only if one were climbing or diving at an angle, however shallow, which allowed one to rake the target’s back or belly.

  Good deflection shooting was the essence of air gunnery. Not only were course angles and ranges difficult to judge, but also target speed and angle of climb. Deflection shooting meant aiming not at where the target was at that moment but where it would be by the time the bullets or shells reached a certain point through which it would pass at its present speed, on its present course and at its present angle of climb or dive.

  Upton and his two wingers were experienced in air fighting and owed the fact that they were still alive to their ability to judge all these factors accurately. But it still did not mean that they would not rather go for a no-deflection shot from dead ahead or dead astern, or a full-deflection shot with the target passing ahead at right angles and straight and level, than try a shot in which the target was travelling away at thirty degrees across their bows, and diving or climbing at the same time.

  At one hundred yards the wingspan of a Me 109 dead-on from front or stern would almost completely fill the illuminated ring of the reflector sight.

  Neither Upton nor his two wing men had to think all this out consciously, any more than they had to think out each word before speaking. But these considerations went automatically through their minds during the few seconds that they closed with the enemy; they were engrained in their sub-conscious: a quarter of a century later, they would have likened them to the in-put into a computer, but there weren’t any computers in 1940.

  And even in those pre-jet engine days, events in an aerial dogfight happened so fast that there was time only for instinctive action, not for laboured working out of what to do next.

  The first principle that had been instilled in Upton by his squadron commander from the day he joined the squadron was never to lose height in a dogfight: until it was time to break off through lack of ammunition; and then, to dive away as fast as he could.

  Two other tenets he had acquired through his own experience. Never to change the direction of his turn when in a fight, for every time he did so he gave his opponent a chance to catch him up and a greater area at which to shoot. And not to do perfect, elegant aerobatics in evasive action, but flat, skidding or slipping turns like a clumsy beginner: these threw the opponent’s aim awry because he would allow for a smooth flight path when aiming-off for deflection and miss widely.

  The two fighter formations were closing at over seven hundred miles an hour, more than three hundred and fifty feet per second. If they levelled off at the same altitude, the Messerschmitts’ speed would decrease and the Spitfires’ increase, so their combined rate would still be about the same. Which meant that the six hundred yards separation at that moment would be covered in five seconds.

  The eight machine guns of a Spitfire carried enough ammunition for 14.8 seconds’ firing.

  The Messerschmitt’s cannons could fire for seven seconds and its machine-guns for 54.6 seconds.

  Thus, in any event, a combat had to be resolved quickly and British pilots were used to firing in bursts of one to three seconds. Five seconds was, therefore, a comparative-ly long time. But although the guns of the Spitfires were harmonised to two hundred and fifty yards, pilots usually opened fire at two hundred yards and considered one hundred to be the really effective range.

  Closing at three hundred and fifty feet per second, more than a hundred yards, meant less than one second between a range of two hundred yards and a range of one hundred yards; and about half a second beyond that point in which to break off and avoid a collision.

  The Spitfires therefore had approximately one and a half seconds in which to destroy their adversaries. The Messerschmitts had rather more, because of their cannons, which had a greater killing range: about one whole second more.

  Upton knew from the experience of many combats that a head-on attack at the same level as the target would not produce a conclusive result.

  When the 109s were within two hundred feet of the Spitfires’ height, they flattened their dive. Their intention was plainly to attack at a shallow angle from above and cover the whole length of their targets’ fuselages with their fire.

  As soon as the enemy eased out of their dive, Upton steepened his with a curt order to the others to do the same and to push the throttle through the �
��gate”. In ten seconds they had gained five hundred feet of height above their opponents.

  The four Messerschmitts had reacted immediately by pulling up to follow them. The three Spitfires were in a close bunch, Upton in front with Taylor’s left wingtip fifteen feet behind his right one and twenty feet to the right of it. There were two 109s on each side of them, Hintsch’s and Falck’s to their right and Festner’s and Rudorffer’s to their left.

  The Germans had to turn as well as to climb, and to get on the Spitfires’ tails they had to go round one hundred and eighty degrees. This lost them a lot of time and was the penalty for too fast a dive, particularly at such a height.

  By the time the Germans had turned right round, the Spitfires were one thousand feet above them and nearly a mile away, also they had altered course to port, towards the sun, and the enemy had to face the glare.

  The Spits now had the 109s at five-o’clock to them. Upton warned them to stand by for a stall-turn to starboard and they loosened their formation by several yards. On the word “Go!” they nosed up, throttled back, fell away to starboard, put their noses down steeply, opened the throttles and had the enemy nicely positioned to starboard, at two-o’clock. They had the sun directly behind them. Before the enemy could change course they opened fire comfortably at three hundred yards’ range, the four targets crossing them at an approaching angle of thirty degrees from right to left, which allowed a long raking shot at the whole aircraft.

  Festner and Rudorffer were the two nearest after the Spitfires’ turn.

  Upton said hurriedly, “You two take Number Four.”

  Taylor pulled sharply away to starboard, closely followed by Dellow who was on his port and astern.

  Upton saw his tracer falling just below Festner’s 109 and raised his aim. But Festner had throttled back and the bullets now passed too far in front of him though at the right elevation.

  Taylor’s first burst, of two seconds’ duration, passed slightly behind Rudorffer, who had gone into a flat skidding turn. Dellow had waited to fire and he now gave Rudorffer a three-second burst that caught him in the engine and swept right across his cockpit canopy and along his upper fuselage as the 109 leaned sharply into a steep dive. Smoke poured out of its engine and it began to spin violently.