Читать книгу Combined Operations - Percy Francis Westerman - Страница 7

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Pilot-officer David Price, feeling none too happy over the state of affairs—it looked as if the destruction of the one F.W. 190 and the probable crash of the second would never be reported—made his way back to the semi-conscious O’Hara.

He was rather surprised to find that the Yorkshireman had followed him.

Holroyd looked in a filthy mess. If he had sat in a tub of dirty lubricating oil he couldn’t have presented a more disreputable appearance. He was shedding oil as he stood—but what mattered? The interior of the fuselage would be in a worse state before “S for Sylvia” landed, if she should succeed in touching down without smashing herself up.

“Just a breather, sir!” he observed. “Then Ah reckon Ah’ll be right busy rest o’ trip. Ah’m fair mucked oop wi’ oil.”

“I can see that,” concurred David.

“Reminds me o’ bit o’ fun when Ah were garage-hand,” Holroyd continued in a well-meaning effort to relieve the mental strain. “We’d get hold of young lad—a beginner—and stuff the spout of a six-inch filler into his trousers band. Then we’d tell him to bend his head and place a copper on his forehead.”

“What was the bright idea, anyway?”

“We would tell him to move his head forward again so a penny’ll slide off. If it drops into the oil-funnel t’ lad gets t’ penny. Happen he missed first time. Second go, he almost does it. ‘Bide your time, lad,’ prompts one of the hands as he has a shot at it for the third time.”

“Third time lucky, perhaps?” remarked David.

Holroyd grinned.

“The third time, whiles lad wur slanting with head back, someone poured half a gallon o’ paraffin down funnel. Sor’ of initiation, same as Oddfellows and the like.”

“Strange sort of initiation,” observed David. “How do the novices take it?”

“Fair an’ middling,” replied Holroyd. “Those lads who tak’ it gamely most often turn out the most likely.”

“And how did you react when you went through it—I suppose you did?”

Another smile flitted over the sergeant’s face.

“Ah’m not answering that question, sir!” he replied enigmatically. “Reckon Ah’ll be getting along!”

“That helped pass the time,” thought David, as he directed his attention upon the wounded O’Hara.

The sergeant was sitting up with his back propped up by his parachute kit.

“Feel better like this, sir,” he declared. “Get more air—breathing better. Well it is that Holroyd didn’t patch me up. He’d just be for trying that trick on me!”

That was a hopeful sign. If men could talk in this strain when lying helpless in a badly mauled bomber it spoke well for morale.

Meanwhile, Derek Dundas was having a busy time at the controls, or, rather, what was left of them. The speed had dropped considerably, while the aircraft’s climbing power was almost negligible. By careful nursing he could gain altitude, but that was almost invariably countered by loss of height when attempting to fly level.

All the while a sharp look-out was kept for more intercepting aircraft. “S for Sylvia” might not be so fortunate next time. She was no longer in a position to ward off attack, especially if she encountered a group of fighters.

Dodging from cloud to cloud and taking advantage of the cover they afforded, the Halifax struggled homewards. She was now within range of British fighters that were to act as air-cover for the returning raiders; but of these there was no sign.

The inference, as Derek saw it, was that all the other bombers had returned. “S for Sylvia” was already considerably overdue. “Operations room” had doubtless called her up more than once, but getting no reply had come to the conclusion that “one of our aircraft had failed to return”.

At length the sea, looking like a leaden strip between the British and French coasts, came in sight. The Halifax was now flying at six thousand feet, which brought her well within the range of the numerous enemy A.A. batteries along the coastline.

She could climb no higher, not with two engines out of action and the other two firing intermittently. There was, in the captain’s opinion, only one thing to be done. That was to dive down and “hedge-hop” over the last ten or twenty miles of enemy-occupied France and skim the waves across the Channel. If the Halifax failed to make it on the last lap, there was always the chance of her crew being picked up by R.A.F. rescue launches.

He glanced at the gauges of the remaining intact petrol-tanks. They showed just about enough to get the aircraft across to the other side, but not a sufficient quantity to enable her to make base.

Derek’s throat was parched and dry. Not until he’d taken a malted milk lozenge could he shout to the navigator.

Holt had virtually finished his specialized job. He’d set the course that had brought the Halifax within sight of the chalk cliffs of Kent and Sussex. He heard the skipper shouting, calling him by name.

“Tell the gunners I’m diving on the ack-ack batteries,” said Derek. “We’ll have to shoot our way through. We may rattle the blighters quite a lot, but there’ll be some dirt flying about, I reckon!”

The Halifax was incapable of making a “close” turn, owing to the damage to the ailerons. It was much like steering a rudderless ship by “working” her twin screws. But she could dive, and when Derek put her nose well down she tore through the air almost as rapidly as if all four engines had been running all out.

There were plenty of ground defences: groups of anti-aircraft guns with their muzzles fairly discernible in spite of camouflage. All around there were craters large and small, showing that the R.A.F. had recently been busy.

So far not an enemy gun opened up. Sergeant Tredgold, peering through his sights in the forward gun-position, waited.

He hadn’t to wait long. From a large hut close to one of the batteries poured a stream of grey-uniformed figures. Most of them were looking upwards as they ran to man their anti-aircraft guns. Their faces, though probably bronzed by the weather, showed white against the dun-coloured ground.

Spurts of flame leapt from the New Zealander’s twin guns. Some of the Huns fell, others stopped in their tracks, more of them turned and ran for cover. A few continued to race to their gun-sites, but thought better of it when more of their numbers bit the dust.

Tredgold might have bagged the lot, since the Germans were bunched in his sights, for quite thirty seconds, while the Halifax was making her dive. He desisted, not because he was reluctant to inflict casualties, but he had achieved his object by preventing the battery from opening fire. There was also the expenditure of ammunition to be taken into account. A lot had been fired during the encounter with the three Focke Wulf 190’s, and more might be badly wanted before “S for Sylvia” was out of the present jam.

It was a great temptation to blaze away, but the New Zealander, cool and collected, wisely refrained. He was one of those level-headed fighting men who can see two or more moves ahead. If anyone were to ask him how and why he had acquired the faculty, he would have replied—if he replied at all—that it was because he was supposed to be a fairly good chess-player.

An ack-ack battery opened up on the right, and although shells whizzed dangerously close, the Halifax had almost reached the limit of her dive.

Flattening out with only thirty feet to spare between the belly of the fuselage and the tops of a clump of trees, the bomber began her hedge-hopping tactics. The impetus of her descent carried her on at a tremendous speed that gradually dropped until the dial on the instrument panel registered a bare two hundred miles per hour.

Even at this relatively low speed the moral effect of the huge aircraft skimming low over the ground was enough to put the breeze up the German troops, most of whom consisted of raw levies and elderly men whose nerve had been badly frayed by repeated visits by the R.A.F. and the American Air Force. By day and by night, with bombers and fighter-bombers, the Huns had been plastered. They hardly dare move either by rail or on the road without running the risk of being surprised and shot up from the air.

The Germans were trying similar tactics over English coastal towns, but with this difference: they made tip-and-run raids, barely lasting more than five minutes; while the R.A.F., selecting its targets with due regard for the French civil population, did their job thoroughly and deliberately before returning to base.

The Halifax was now flying so low that the sea was no longer visible. “Hedge-hopping” in this instance was a misnomer, since there weren’t any. Sometimes flying down a shallow valley, at others skimming the tops of the trees growing on either side of a long straight road, the bomber tore on, Derek doing all he knew to keep her clear of various obstructions.

There were convoys along the highway. At the first sound of the British aircraft’s approach the drivers and troops, not even waiting to ascertain whether it was one of their own, leapt from the hastily stalled vehicles and dived for shelter in the nearest ditches.

Well before they got there the Halifax was over them and almost out of sight.

Occasionally bursts of machine-gun and rifle fire greeted the bomber. Most of it went wide. Indeed, the crew were ignorant of the fact until, quite by chance, half a dozen clean bullet holes appeared in the side of the fuselage just below the rear-gunner’s perch.

Now she was over the coast. Skirting the barbed wire festooned on the end of the cliff the Halifax headed northwards, barely eighty feet above the sea. By luck she had chosen a stretch of coastline where there were no batteries; or if there were they didn’t open fire.

Thirty seconds or so later, however, some heavier guns, probably dual-purpose ones, let rip from a position a mile or so farther along the coast.

Derek, who was preparing to relax somewhat now that the aircraft was clear of enemy territory, received a sudden shock when the first shell, cutting diagonally across the bomber’s nose, hit the water some thousand yards away and exploded. By the flash and the volume of smoke emitted by the missile it was evident to him that it was something of considerably greater calibre than that of an ack-ack gun. It also meant that the Halifax was not only within range but would continue to be so for thirty seconds or more.

Now the heavy stuff was coming thick and fast. Ahead and on both sides the surface of the sea was churned into columns of white foam by the ricochetting missiles.

Derek took evading action as best he might, pushing the rudder-bar to and fro. Slowly the partly crippled aircraft responded. It seemed a futile operation, since the Halifax, answering sluggishly to the action of her rudder, might well flounder into the path of one of the shells. If she did, then the resulting explosion would smash her to atoms.

Pieces of shells rattled against the sides of the fuselage. More holes, this time ugly, jagged ones, appeared on the wings and in the hull. Acrid smelling fumes filled the interior, eddying violently under the effect of the air currents pouring in through a dozen gaps.

Then, almost unexpectedly, the shell-fire ceased. Probably the German gunners, deceived by the water-spouts caused by their projectiles, had come to the conclusion that the low-flying aircraft had fallen a victim to the accuracy of the fire. And when they discovered their mistake the Halifax was out of range.

There was no time for the pilot to relax. He’d been keyed up to such a pitch of excitement—a contrast to his usual coolness and alertness in a tight corner—that he found himself shaking with the reaction. In spite of his fur-lined flying helmet a cold perspiration oozed from his forehead.

“What’s up with me?” he asked himself. “Am I passing out?”

A hand touched him on the shoulder and a voice that he dimly recognized as Price’s announced:

“The ‘Warm-’Un’s’ copped it, Skipper!”

That brought Derek up with a round turn. So Phil Evershot, the midship gunner, was a casualty.

“Dead?” he inquired laconically.

“As good as, worse luck,” replied the Welshman. “Shell splinter in the forehead. We’ve got him out of the turret, but goodness knows what we can do. How far now?”

“Another five minutes,” declared Derek. “Stand by for ‘flaps down’. Lower the under-carriage. We may just do it yet.”

Then more trouble followed.

The hydraulic system, operating the lowering of the landing wheels from their cowlings, failed. Those of the crew who were available set to work on the hand-operated gear. They weren’t certain that that was working.

Meanwhile Derek was making for the coast in the neighourhood of Worthing. Here the land was lower than to the eastward, where high chalk cliffs might have proved an unclimbable barrier to the returning Halifax.

He knew—in fact he could see—that a few miles inland was that ridge of hills known as the South Downs. If the bomber couldn’t gain sufficient altitude to clear the cliffs it seemed obvious that she could not surmount the Downs, that rise to a height of some eight hundred feet.

Between them and the sea were one or two landing grounds, while there were gaps in the hills, particularly between Worthing and Pulborough, where the bomber might scrape through. It didn’t look particularly hopeful, but where there’s life there’s hope.

Now they were over the English coast. For miles there seemed to be nothing but buildings, for this part of the south coast is one of the densest and most extensive “built-up areas”, other than the congested manufacturing towns and cities.

Then, unaccountably and as if they knew they were over British soil, the two engines that had been running erratically, suddenly picked up.

Quick to take advantage of this astonishing piece of good luck, Derek put her nose up. The altimeter, if it could be relied upon, indicated a clear gain of seven hundred and fifty feet.

Ahead lay the aerodrome for which the pilot was making. Then came another shock. The landing ground was dotted with dispersed aircraft. It would be hopeless to attempt to touch down, equally so to circle round until the grounded machines could be moved sufficiently to enable the Halifax to come down. Her fuel would be exhausted long before that could be done.

“Wheels down, sir!” reported Holroyd.

“I’m carrying on, Sergeant,” declared Derek. “We can’t touch down here.”

“Ah doubt there’s enough juice for another five minutes, sir.”

“Then we can only hope for the best—a crash-landing. Warn the crew to stand by.”

Holroyd had a shrewd guess why the engines had picked up. Petrol engines when they are using the last of the juice frequently do “rev up”, only to give up the ghost in a series of coughs and splutters.

Now the Halifax was over the crest of the Downs. Beyond lay a wide expanse of agricultural land, interspersed with numerous woods and dotted with hamlets and isolated houses. Over the landscape were patches of low-lying clouds.

Then, within a few seconds of each other, both engines stopped. There was an uncanny silence, except for the humming of the wind against the jagged leading edges of the wings.

It was too late to bale out, since the Halifax was now too close to the ground. In any case, with two wounded men on board, the captain would not have given the order to abandon aircraft.

He searched the ground below her in the hope of finding a possible clear space on which to touch down.

There was one—apparently the ground of a manor house. Close by was a narrow lane crossing a small river, while roughly parallel to the latter ran what appeared to be a sunken lane. Actually it was the dried-up bed of the long-disused canal between the Wey and the Arun. A century ago it was the only inland waterway affording communication between London and Portsmouth. Now there is none, and what would have been an important alternative to rail and road transport in the present war was now derelict.

Putting the nose of the Halifax down, Derek prepared to land. Then quickly he changed his mind; for across her proposed emergency landing-field were five circular patches regularly spaced out in a line. He knew what they were. Jerry at one time had dropped a stick of bombs. The craters had only been partly filled in. To attempt to touch down there would simply be begging for trouble.

A short distance away across the stream was a farm-house with outbuildings. Beyond was a small field, bounded on three sides by a wood. Even at a comparatively low altitude it looked little bigger than a pocket-handkerchief.

It had to be touch and go. The bomber, nursed into a steady glide, couldn’t possibly clear the tree-tops.

Again Derek put her nose down.

The ground seemed to be leaping up to meet him. Then there was a bump—not so severe as he had expected—and another. The Halifax, making a good though by no means perfect three-point landing, had touched down.

Carried onward by her momentum she tore towards the fringe of the wood.

Derek applied the brakes, but the huge tyres skidded on the sodden grass.

“Now there’ll be a proper mess-up,” was the thought that flashed across his mind.

He braced himself for the impact. He’d be lucky if he got off with a pair of broken legs. He’d seen men removed from a Lancaster that had, in similar circumstances, crashed against but not through, a stone-built barn. It hadn’t been a pleasant sight! He wondered whether the other members of the crew had taken up crash-landing positions—how O’Hara and Evershot, helpless as they were, would fare.

Then, with hardly a jolt, the Halifax came to a standstill.

Her motionless propellers were within arm’s length of a row of fully grown trees, each trunk as massive as a stone buttress.

For several moments no one spoke.

Then: “We’re down, look you!” exclaimed David in a high-pitched voice, stating what was an obvious fact.

Derek eyed him severely.

“For that barred expression, my lad, you’ll stand drinks all round in the mess to-night!” he declared.

There was a general laugh. The tension was broken. Short of being sent up again—a recognized antidote to air shock—to raise a laugh is the next best thing.