Like Father Like Son Parts six to eight

“When it comes to the bombers, I don’t rate the Heinkel and the Dornier but the Ju 88 is good kit. Those bastards can dive like a bat out of hell and leave us standing. I only saw the Stukas once and didn’t get close enough to have a go.” 

“Anything else to add, Michael?”

“That’s about it from me, sir.”

“Thank you. And well done, by the way.”

The pilots trooped away from the briefing with much to consider. From now on they would be taking the fight to the enemy across the English Channel. The situation in France was deteriorating rapidly. The Germans succeeded in driving a wedge between the British, French and Belgian Forces in the north and the main French Armies in the south. The much-vaunted Maginot Line was simply bypassed. The race was on to seize the Channel ports. The B.E.F., together with what remained of their allies, withdrew to Dunkirk to await evacuation.

***********************

For the third time that day, the Defiants of 264 Squadron were sent to patrol the evacuation beaches at Dunkirk. David was flying with Sergeant Wilmott as his gunner. Wilmott, a taciturn Yorkshireman, kept the turret on the move as he scanned the skies behind them. The voice of the Biggin Hill controller cut through the background throbbing of the Merlin engine:

“Rogue Squadron, this is Sapper.”

“Rogue Leader. Go ahead, Sapper”

“I have some trade for you. Twenty Plus bandits assembling over Gris Nez. Vector one-four-zero, angels fifteen.”

“Roger, Sapper. Vector one four zero. Rogue Squadron, climbing to angels fifteen.”

David opened the throttle and began the climb to 15,000 feet. He turned up his oxygen slightly and craned his neck to left and right, searching the sky ahead. Away to his left, a vast pall of smoke stretched into the heavens from the area around Dunkirk. Toy ships moved on a calm blue sea. He couldn’t yet see the actual evacuation beaches but he made out the vapour trails of air combat further to the north. Then he spotted the enemy bombers. There seemed to be two distinct squadrons, separated by perhaps a mile. The Defiants moved to intercept.

Unteroffizier Helmut Graube was flying his first combat mission. He was detailed as ‘katschmarek’ – wingman to Leutnant Muller in a ‘schwarm’ of Messerschmitts from Jagdgeschwader 26. He was both scared and excited at the same time. The German Fighters were some 7,000 feet above the ponderous Heinkel Bombers and quickly spotted the Defiants as they moved to intercept. Graube followed his leader faithfully, keeping station about thirty yards to his right and just behind the senior man. 

“Hurricanes! I don’t think they’ve seen us.”

Leutnant Muller was wrong on both counts. The plunging Messerschmitts, convinced that their attack from astern of the British aircraft had gone unnoticed, flew into a storm of tracers from the Defiants’ rear turrets. Graube watched in horror as Muller’s plane seemed to fall apart before his eyes. He had been hit by the concentrated fire of at least three British fighters. Graube pulled up and away, hearing the bullets strike his own machine as he did so. A solid thump immediately behind him told him that the armour plating protecting the cockpit had just done its job. He smelt burning and saw that his engine was leaking oil, the temperature gauge already beginning to climb. He turned for home, a bitter taste in his mouth. What were these ‘planes? Hurricanes with turrets? Five of his staffel were down and another trailed thick smoke as it headed back for their new base at Quevaucamps. Meanwhile, the Defiants flew on towards the bombers.

The debriefing was a riotous scrum. Excited crews vied with each other to press their claims for enemy aircraft destroyed. Even the normally silent Wilmott was animated and yelling to all who would listen that he was claiming three Huns, one Bf109 and two Heinkels. The Intelligence Officer tried to make sense of all the claims. At last he held up his hand for silence:

“Gentlemen, if I am to believe all of you, you have just shot down half the bloody Luftwaffe. We have Heinkel claims totalling thirty-one. That’s bloody good going out of two squadrons of twelve each, particularly as you also report about ten getting away. We also have claims for eight Bf109s plus six damaged out of a possible twelve.”

He then began a painstaking interrogation of each crew. At the end of it, David and his gunner had been awarded one Heinkel and a share of a 109. David was delighted but Wilmott brooded, claiming he’s been robbed of at least another Heinkel. As they left the room, David spotted Kiwi Braithwaite standing alone. He went up and clapped Kiwi on the shoulder.

“Wotcha, Kiwi. How did you make out?”

Braithwaite turned a grim face towards David.

“OK, I guess, skip. It was bloody pandemonium up there, wasn’t it?”

“It certainly got ‘interesting’ at times.” He noted Kiwi’s sour expression. “What’s up?”

“Just heard my mate ‘Snowball’ bought the farm. He was a gunner on 600 Squadron.” Kiwi indicated a piece of paper balled in his large fist. “One of his pals wrote to let me know. They bought it over Rotterdam, on the 12th. Six Blenheims went to attack the airfields; only one came home. This bloke reckons it certain that Snowy got the chop. He says he saw them go down and nobody got out.”

David’s mood instantly sobered. He was aware of the RAF’s losses, of course, but this was closer to home. 

“I’m most dreadfully sorry, Kiwi.”

“Yeah, Skip, so am I.”

June 1940 Taking Stock

It was hard to see how things could much worse, thought Peter, as he cycled to 12 Group Head Quarters. The French had collapsed entirely, utterly crushed in the space of three weeks. OK, granted the evacuation form Dunkirk was an amazing feat, but the truth was that although 330,000 men had been taken off the beaches, most of them had no weapons or equipment. The RAF casualties had been high. Over 1100 ‘planes were lost, 477 of them fighters, in the debacle. As far as one could tell the Luftwaffe had been hit pretty hard too, but then, they’d had a lot more to start with. The big worry was pilots. Fighter pilot losses during the campaigns in France and Norway amounted to over 280. That didn’t count those who’d either been wounded or captured. Replacing the ‘planes would be a Hell of a lot easier than replacing the men.

Still more bad news awaited Peter when he got to his office. HMS Glorious, the aircraft carrier bringing back 46 and 263 Squadron from the mess in Norway, ran into two German ‘pocket battleships’ and was sunk with heavy loss of life. Peter scratched 46 Squadron from the Group’s strength. Another body blow. He spent the first part of the morning going through the squadron daily returns. Each day, the front line units submitted a report to the HQ detailing the number of aircraft serviceable, the available crews and the fuel, ammunition and spares states. Peter smiled with satisfaction when he noted that 264 were at full strength and readiness with only two pilots reported unfit for duty.

David was in bed with tonsillitis. His temperature had rocketed overnight and now his throat felt like he had been swallowing barbed wire. Quite how he’d come to be in this state puzzled him. Yesterday he’d felt as fit as a flea and now he was utterly wretched. The Medical Officer called on him briefly, peered into his raw throat with a grim smile and had left muttering something about ‘having those out.’ David dozed fitfully for most of the day. He couldn’t eat and lacked the concentration to read or listen to the wireless. In his waking moments, he replayed the intense air battles of the previous couple of weeks in his head.

264 had acquitted itself well. The Squadron had destroyed nearly seventy enemy aeroplanes and suffered few losses. Morale was good and the men had confidence in their Defiants. David would be the first to admit that the ‘plane wasn’t the fastest thing in the sky, but it had been very effective, particularly against the slower German bombers. Despite official policy, the Defiant crews had evolved into unofficial ‘teams.’ Most days, David flew with Kiwi Braithwaite, an arrangement that they had arrived at by mutual, unspoken, consent. Between them, they had three confirmed ‘kills.’ This was not among the highest in the squadron; one pairing had eleven to their credit. 

David reflected on his feelings about the fighting. It was hard not to dwell on the death that one was one causing. Like when you shot down a Heinkel. There were four or five men whose lives you had just snuffed out. Of course, they had no bloody business being where they were and doing what they were doing but all the same, it was a sobering thought being responsible for another human being’s death. David knew that Kiwi had no such qualms. The big New Zealander had conceived a rare hatred for the enemy and revelled in the fighting. David frequently heard him muttering, “another one for Snowy,” as a Heinkel or Dornier turned into a blazing pyre for the men inside. 

True to his word, the Medical Officer returned later and David was whisked off to the civilian hospital in Ipswich. Before he had time to think, he was anaesthetised and taken to the operating theatre to emerge fifteen minutes later sans tonsils. After three days on the ward, he was discharged with a supply of painkillers and sent back to Martlesham Heath. The MO gave him a swift check-up and despatched him on a week’s sick leave. It was an ill wind….

Bethan was overjoyed to see him. She thought he looked pale and thinner but more grown-up. It was difficult to remember he was still only nineteen. When Peter returned that evening he grinned broadly. He didn’t tell David that he read every combat report submitted by 264 Squadron with an almost fanatical devotion. Peter had been promoted to Flight Lieutenant recently. He was still one of the oldest in that rank but had taken it as a sign he was proving his worth. He was able to tell David that his squadron would be moving from Duxford shortly and going to RAF Foulmere. After dinner, they gathered around the radio and listened to a broadcast from the Prime Minister. Churchill repeated a speech he gave to the House of Commons on 18th June. David was profoundly moved as the elderly statesman concluded:

“What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

David glanced at his mother and saw her eyes glistening with tears. It wasn’t difficult to read her thoughts. No one could doubt that Churchill was right. The whole might of Nazi Germany was about to descend on Britain and her boys would in the thick of it. He leaned over and squeezed her hand; a huge lump in his throat prevented him from speaking a word. 

********************

Johanna completed her basic ‘square bashing,’ as she had learnt to call it and was posted to RAF Tangmere on the South Coast of England, near Chichester. There she would assist in the operations room, the nerve centre for the Tangmere Sector control system. Her duties would mainly involve keeping up the ‘plot.’ This large map covered most of the floor of the ops room and was a constantly updated display of enemy forces and the RAF dispositions available to counter them. Her first impressions were frightening. How would she ever make sense of it all? One of the more experienced girls reassured her.

“Oh, we all felt like that when we first started. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.”

Jo certainly hoped so. She had been lectured repeatedly since her arrival as to how vital the task was. The sector ops room exercised tactical control over the fighter squadrons. It was kept up to date by reports from the ‘Chain Home’ stations and the many volunteers of the Royal Observer Corps. These men and women, armed only with binoculars and a telephone, would monitor enemy movements once the incoming intruders had passed inside the ‘sight’ of the coastal radar stations. In addition, the plot showed which fighter squadrons were airborne, which at instant readiness or thirty minutes’ stand-by plus those that had recently landed and needed to be refuelled and re-armed. It was a daunting task for a novice. On her third day, the ops room was conducting an exercise to simulate a full-scale attack on the naval installations at nearby Portsmouth. A group of fighter pilots from the newly arrived Hurricane Squadron were ushered into the ops room to observe proceedings. Michael Welford-Barnes had come to Tangmere.

The exercise was suddenly interrupted by a real alert from the ‘Chain Home’ station at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. Instantly the call went out to 43 Squadron to ‘scramble.’ The radar had picked up an enemy formation building up in northern France, It seemed likely that their target was a small in-shore convoy heading down the Channel from Dover to Portland. Jo’s heart was in her mouth as she pushed the telltale counter denoting the German bomber formation into place on the plot. “Not there, Jo, left a bit. That’s it.” She gave a grateful smile to the girl who had whispered the correction. 

The voice of the controller echoed from the control room loudspeaker. 

“Cameo Squadron, this is Heartbeat.”

“Roger, Heartbeat, Cameo Leader.”

The fighter pilot’s voice was distant and distorted. Jo could barely hear his side of the exchanges. The controller instructed the fighters to climb to 12,000 feet and head 165 degrees. The minutes ticked slowly by until there was a sudden burst of noise from the speaker.

“Red Three, Cameo Leader, bandits twelve O’clock level.”

“Roger, Red Three. Cameo Leader to all Cameo aircraft. Blue flight to maintain present height and watch out for fighters. Red Flight, line astern, line astern go! Tally –ho Red Flight!”

After that the ops room was filled with the excited and sometimes desperate transmissions of the pilots. 

“Break Red One, for fuck’s sake, there’s one on your tail!”

“Got one.”

“Red six, I’m hit. Glycol tank’s gone.”

“Break right!”

“Who the fuck?”

“Oh no! Red six down, leader.”

Jo could barely imagine the mayhem taking place a few miles out to sea. The pilots’ transmissions were crackly and garbled. Fragments of yells and screams and the distant rattle of gunfire when someone attacked while transmitting. She gazed about wide-eyed while the experienced girls calmly shuffled the markers over the plot. A Spitfire squadron joined in the battle and there was a brief exchange between the two leaders. She worked out that the Hurricanes had been ‘bounced’ by some Me 110s and the Spitfires were now wading into these newcomers with a vengeance. The whole thing was over in a little more than ten minutes. The Bomber formation had been broken up and the British fighters were on their way back to base. Calm returned to the control room.

Jo became aware of someone staring at her. She turned to find a young, dark haired Flying Officer just behind her. He was one of the new pilots form 601 Squadron. There was something in that gaze that made her shiver inwardly.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“You don’t know me, do you?”

“No sir, I don’t.”

“But I know you. You’re the Hepworth-Lloyd girl.”

“Yes sir, but how…?”

“I’m Michael Welford-Barnes, I think you know my… step brother.”

It seemed to Jo that he almost spat the words.

“Oh! You mean David Riley! Yes, sir, he’s a friend of mine.”

“How very … charming.”

He smiled but there was no warmth in his eyes. Jo felt cold under his watchful stare.

“What do you say we have a drink Miss Hepworth-Lloyd? We can, um, catch up on the family, what?”

“That’s really very kind of you, sir, but no, thank you. Our ‘mother hen’ is frightfully strict on that sort of thing.”

He shrugged and turned away but Jo had the sensation that he was watching her until the squadron were called away to go on thirty minutes’ standby. 

Michael was gleeful as he hopped on the transport to the squadron dispersal. What luck! David’s popsie here, of all places. Now he could plan some serious revenge on that miserable streak of piss that bastard Riley had whelped on his mother. He wondered idly if David had fucked her yet. If he hadn’t – so much the better! 

Throughout June and into July, the RAF slowly increased its strength. On the other side of the Channel, the Luftwaffe, too, were steadily repairing the damage done during the bloody battle for France. They had been hit hard during May, harder than the RAF even, but they had greater strength in depth. Unteroffizier Graube had learned swiftly since his first battle. The squadrons of Jg26 had been replenished with both pilots and machines. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before they were required to take the fight across the English Channel – the Kanal, as the Luftwaffe men called it. Helmut Graube was no fanatic. He flew because he loved flying and fought because he must. He was glad he flew an ‘Emil’ – the pilots’ name for the Messerschmitt Bf109E. He had seen the slaughter of the bombers – both British and German – and couldn’t imagine what it would be like to waddle about like that; a big, fat target.