Читать книгу Amazing Airmen - Ian Darling - Страница 18

4 A LIGHT FOR MALTA

Flight Sergeant Bob Middlemiss had never taken off from an aircraft carrier before. He was apprehensive.

Middlemiss, a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force who was flying with Britain’s Royal Air Force, usually took off from airfields, but he was eager to help the RAF get Spitfires to Malta, which is in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

Spitfires could not stay in the air long enough to fly directly from England to Malta, which was a British colony during the war. To get the planes to Malta, the RAF decided to disassemble them and put the parts on a freighter sailing from Greenock, Scotland, to Gibraltar, at the western end of the Mediterranean. At Gibraltar, mechanics reassembled the planes and put them on HMS Eagle, an aircraft carrier. Closely guarded by several destroyers, the Eagle and its cargo of thirty-one Spitfires sailed toward Malta.

On June 3, 1942, the Eagle reached a point north of Algiers, from which Middlemiss and the other pilots could fly to Malta in about three hours.

Middlemiss, who was twenty-one, revved his Spitfire’s engine. He pushed the throttle forward to have maximum power. Then the ground crew pulled the wood chocks from in front of the wheels and the Spitfire rolled along the short deck then dipped down when it left the carrier. Middlemiss was just a few metres above the sea, but he pulled up into a bright, sunny sky.

Bob Middlemiss in 1941.

Three other Spitfires flew close by. When the four planes were close to Malta, several Messerschmitt 109s appeared suddenly and started firing. Because a Spitfire could turn quickly, Middlemiss escaped from the German fighters.

One of his colleagues was not so fortunate. The 109s shot him down. The Germans also shot down three other Spitfires flying to Malta that day. Of the thirty-one Spitfires that left the Eagle that day, only twenty-seven landed on the island.

When Middlemiss arrived at the Takali airbase in the middle of Malta, he realized how desperately the RAF needed the Spitfire he had just flown: Another pilot was already waiting to take off in it.

Malta, the largest island in the Maltese archipelago, was under siege. The entire archipelago is only 316 square kilometres, the size of a metropolitan city. During the Second World War, however, Malta had a strategic importance far greater than its size. Located between Italy and North Africa, Malta was a fortress from which a country with a navy and an air force could stop an opponent from dominating the Mediterranean Sea.

The Allies used Malta to attack ships taking supplies to German troops in North Africa that were advancing toward British positions in Egypt. For the Allies, losing Malta would have meant losing the Mediterranean.

Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy fully understood the importance of Malta. Planes from both countries bombed the island relentlessly. They also attacked British ships sailing for the island. As a result, the British navy sometimes used submarines to bring in supplies.

The Allied forces were short of food, fuel, guns, and ammunition. On some occasions, the Royal Air Force had no fighter aircraft ready to fly. The island was short of everything needed to win a war, except for spirit and determination.

Middlemiss’s arrival in Malta was part of the RAF’s campaign to build up its forces on the island in order to end the siege. A member of the RAF’s 249 Squadron, Middlemiss quickly learned how the siege could affect even a strong young man such as himself. He normally weighed about 140 pounds, but the shortage of food cut that figure by ten to fifteen pounds. In addition, Middlemiss suffered from what became known as Malta Dog, which was a form of dysentery.

Middlemiss and his squadron were often called on to pursue German aircraft that had left Sicily to attack Malta. On July 7, 1942, just over a month after he arrived on the island, Middlemiss was at his airfield early in the morning, ready for another day of flying. The weather was ideal: the sun shone, the sky was blue.

Later in the morning a radar unit detected enemy aircraft approaching Malta. The controller, who worked in a bombproof shelter in Valletta, Malta’s biggest city, called for eight of the squadron’s Spitfires to take off. He kept two pilots in reserve: Middlemiss and Flight Lieutenant Raoul Daddo-Langlois.

Middlemiss and Daddo-Langlois did not want to be left behind — they wanted to participate in the attack. Daddo-Langlois told officers at the Takali base that he and Middlemiss wanted to get their Spitfires into the air. The officers relayed the information to the control centre. After several minutes, the controller agreed. He let the two pilots take off.

Middlemiss was already wearing his Mae West life preserver. All he had to do was step on the port wing of his Spitfire and climb into the cockpit. He put on his helmet and mask, and snapped on his parachute and uninflated dinghy. He taxied the Spitfire out of the sandbagged enclosure where it was kept when not in use.

Daddo-Langlois and Middlemiss flew south, in an attempt to gain altitude before confronting the German planes. The two pilots had time to turn northward, but they did not have time to climb to their maximum altitude before they spotted Messerschmitt 109 fighters escorting Junkers Ju 88 bombers. Daddo-Langlois and Middlemiss also didn’t have time to position themselves so that the sun was behind them; the German pilots could already see them.

“Shall we have a go?” Daddo-Langlois asked over his radio. Middlemiss said they should attack the German planes. Daddo-Langlois fired at a bomber and hit it. Middlemiss noticed that one of the 109s was close to the tail of Daddo-Langlois’ Spitfire. Middlemiss fired machine-gun bullets and cannon shells at the fighter. The 109 exploded.

Middlemiss wanted to get away as quickly as possible because he suspected that the pilot of the fighter he shot down might have been paired with another pilot. He turned his Spitfire left to break away, but he was too late. As Middlemiss leaned forward and looked to his left, the pilot of another 109 fired at his plane. At least one shell hit the starboard side of his Spitfire’s fuselage.

Either a shell, or a piece of the aircraft hit by the shell, flew into the cockpit, striking the muscles in Middlemiss’s back and right arm. That was the arm he used to adjust the control column, which moved the plane’s ailerons.

Although he didn’t feel any pain, he knew he had to get out of the aircraft. The Spitfire started spinning to the left. He didn’t even have time to send a Mayday message. Middlemiss tried to bail out, but he was pinned inside the plane by the centrifugal forces produced by the spin. Before he could get out he had to stop the spin. To do that, Middlemiss used his left hand to push the control column forward and his right foot to turn the starboard rudder.

He stopped the spin, pulled the small rubber ball above him to jettison the cockpit canopy, rolled the plane over, and fell out.

Middlemiss managed to pull his ripcord, probably with his left hand. His descent to Earth was quiet and gentle. The thought of going into the Mediterranean Sea did not overly concern him. He felt thankful that his parachute had opened. He would deal with the sea when he had to.

As he came down, Middlemiss remembered from his training that parachutists have trouble judging their distance from the water. He needed to know the distance because he wanted to release his parachute just before he entered the water. If he didn’t release the chute, the wind could drag him along the sea and prevent him from inflating his dinghy. To get a better idea of the distance, he dropped one of his flying boots. The boot took some time to reach the surface, so he knew he was not ready to release his parachute.

He descended further, and released his chute as he hit the water. Once he was in the water, Middlemiss inflated his Mae West life jacket with a small bottle of carbon dioxide. It kept him afloat.

He had only one thought: to get into his dinghy. First he had to inflate it — he found the canister of carbon dioxide for that purpose, pulled a pin, and turned the handle slowly. Nothing happened. No carbon dioxide flowed to inflate the dinghy. He turned the lever the other way and, again, nothing happened.

In addition to the canister, Middlemiss had a small hand pump that was attached to the dinghy by a cord. He decided to use it. As he tried to connect the pump to the valve, the cord got in his way. He pulled out a hunting knife from inside his life jacket and cut the cord. The pump was free. Then, with his left hand, he twisted the pump onto the valve. Gradually, he was able to inflate the dinghy and climbed in.

When he was in the dinghy, Middlemiss felt relief. The sea was calm, so his chances of surviving for a while were reasonably good, but he did wonder whether sharks would find him before his squadron did. Just in case any sharks did approach, he had a packet of shark repellent in his rescue kit.

Middlemiss’s squadron sent several Spitfires to look for him. However, the pilots searched the wrong part of the Mediterranean. The squadron thought he was northwest of Malta, but he was northeast of the island.