Mosquito Squadron (6 page)

Yeoman had the feeling that the root of O’Grady’s problem — if, indeed, he had a problem — was that the man had some sort of chip on his shoulder. Something to do with his background, perhaps. Yet the majority of the men in the room came from relatively humble backgrounds; Yeoman’s own father was a gamekeeper, which had absolutely nothing at all to do with Yeoman’s own ability. Or maybe it had, for John Yeoman had taught his son the one thing essential in the making of a successful fighter pilot: the art of deflection shooting, and of hitting the target first time. Anyhow, Yeoman sensed that something deep down was bothering O’Grady, and he was determined to find out what it was.

Of the others, as far as he knew, only Pilot Officer Reed was a former public schoolboy, and it showed in his accent and mannerisms. Six feet tall and of athletic build, with corn-coloured wavy hair, his uniform was always immaculately tailored and pressed and he exuded self-confidence from every pore. He was the only first-tour pilot on the squadron, but his flying ability was well above average and he got on well with everybody. Young Reed would do all right.

Four of the squadron’s pilots were NCOS, and they were top quality too. Yeoman looked at Flight Sergeant Miller, a wiry, hawk-faced man with dark eyes that had hidden depths to them. Like Sloane, Miller had completed a tour on Beau-fighters and had three German bombers to his credit, all at night. His navigator, Sergeant Sillitoe, who had come to Mosquitos with him, told horrifying stories of how Miller had yelled and cursed crazily in the cockpit as he pumped cannon shells into his shattered enemies at point-blank range, and now everyone knew the reason for his actions. For Miller was a Jew, sent to England from Germany by far-sighted parents in 1933 to be brought up by an aunt. The parents were to have followed, but they never did. Both were arrested and flung into a concentration camp, and Miller had no idea whether they were alive or dead. All he knew was that he had a highly personal score to settle with the Germans.

Once, in the sergeants’ mess, he had remarked to Sillitoe that he would never allow himself to be captured alive if anything went wrong over enemy territory.

‘Well,’ his navigator had retorted mildly, ‘that’s up to you, old son. But if we catch it and you feel like diving the bloody thing into the middle of Berlin or somewhere, for Christ’s sake let me get out first!’ Together, they made a formidable team.

Then there was Flight Sergeant Lorrimer, the South African, who had spent his early working life as a merchant seaman (so many of his countrymen did, Yeoman mused). Lorrimer, sun-burnt and lithe, was a demon card player and a formidable drinker, although he seemed to sense when an operation was in the wind and never touched a drop for at least twenty-four hours beforehand. He had completed a tour in Coastal Command, flying Beaufort torpedo-bombers.

Sergeant Olafsson, the Icelander, was a typical Nordic type, blond and long-boned. He, too, was a former seaman, having served his apprenticeship on whalers, and had volunteered to serve with the British forces after Iceland was occupied by them in May 1940. Serving originally with the Air-Sea Rescue Service, Olafsson had applied for aircrew training and had been readily accepted. Like Lorrimer, he had completed a tour on Coastal Command Beauforts. Olafsson’s nickname was ‘Moby Dick’, and Yeoman had a shrewd suspicion that it referred to something other than his association with whales.

Next to Olafsson sat the Icelander’s close friend, Paddy Keen, a diminutive and wiry man of twenty-two who came from Rostrevor, in the north of Ireland. His shock of blond hair led Yeoman to believe that he might be descended from the Vikings who had settled in Northern Ireland nine hundred years ago; perhaps that accounted for the unlikely friendship between the two, for they seemed to have little else in common.

Last of all there was Sergeant Telfer, a man in his late twenties who had a wife and a couple of children somewhere up in County Durham. A quiet, pleasant individual, Telfer spent many hours alone in his billet, carving model aircraft out of perspex for his kids, but he was not reticent in the same way as O’Grady; his balding head gave him a fatherly appearance and Yeoman knew that the other NCOS often sought him out for advice, knowing him affectionately as ‘Old Tef’. A superb, rock-steady pilot, Telfer would never take unnecessary risks.

Yes, thought Yeoman, they were a good crew, just about the best a commander could wish for.

The engineer officer, the last of the specialists to speak, was concluding his part of the briefing with details of fuel loads and other technicalities, and when he had finished Yeoman rose to his feet and was joined on the platform by Group Captain Davison. The navigators had arrived outside and someone opened the door to admit them. When they were seated, Davison addressed the complete assembly.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ he began crisply, ‘you have the details. It is now my job to put you in the overall picture. This morning, you will be operating in direct support of the United States Eighth Army Air Force.’

The crews exchanged glances, and a brief ripple of muted comment ran round the room. Davison picked up the billiard cue’ pointer and turned to the wall map.

‘At 0600,’ he went on, ‘about a hundred and fifty Flying Fortresses will take off from their bases here in England to attack the Messerschmitt aircraft factory here, at Regensburg.’ The tip of the pointer indicated a spot deep in Bavaria, five hundred miles inside enemy territory. There were low whistles from the audience. Five hundred miles into Germany. In daylight, with flak and fighters all the way. Not a recipe for survival.

The pointer’s tip moved back across the map to the Frisian Islands, then inland again.

‘The Fortresses will cross the Dutch coast here, and will have fighter escort to a point north of Meppel. After that, they will be on their own. As you can see, their route takes them across the centre of a line joining the three fighter airfields you have been detailed to attack.’

The group captain paused, then turned from the map to face the crews. ‘This is where the enemy fighters are expected to start hitting them hard,’ he said. ‘If they can break through this heavily defended sector reasonably intact, then they will have a fighting chance of getting through to the target. After attacking Regensburg, they will fly on to bases in North Africa.

‘The Regensburg force will be followed by a second wave of over two hundred more Fortresses, whose target will be the ball-bearing factories here, at Schweinfurt.’ The pointer tapped the map once again, then Davison went on: ‘This second wave will not be required to penetrate so deeply into enemy territory. However, there is a snag. None of the Fortresses in the Schweinfurt force have been fitted with the necessary long-range fuel tanks to enable them to reach North Africa, which means that they will have to fight their way back over northern Germany and the Low Countries again.’

The group captain’s hard gaze roved over the faces of the men in front of him. ‘You must therefore see,’ he continued, ‘that any effort to disrupt the enemy’s fighter defences may have a telling effect on the outcome of these two raids. If all goes well, your attack will take place some thirty minutes before the leading Fortresses cross the enemy coast, and we hope that you will be able to create enough confusion to keep a substantial proportion of the enemy fighters on the ground at the three designated airfields during the crucial period after the American fighter escort has turned back.

‘By attacking half an hour ahead of the Fortresses, it is hoped that you will catch quite a number of enemy fighters being readied for take-off, out in the open and with their pants down. And remember this: every fighter you knock out could mean one more Fortress, and that means ten men will come back safely. That is all, gentlemen. Good luck to you all.’

Davison stepped down from the platform and the crews rose as he made his exit. As the door closed behind him, Yeoman said: ‘Right, chaps. Now let’s have a close look at those target photos.’

For the next twenty minutes, the crews pored over the photographs of their assigned targets, discussing the best methods of approach and attack. Yeoman decided to lead his four Mosquitos straight in from the north-west, at right-angles to Twenthe’s main runway. They would attack in two pairs with a hundred yards between them horizontally, the second pair about four hundred yards astern of the first to give covering fire in case the leading aircraft were ‘bounced’. The other two section leaders adopted a similar procedure.

They synchronized their watches; it was now 0450. All of them had already breakfasted, so there was nothing to do now but wait.

*

It was strange how, in the last minutes before taking off on operations, the grass always smelt sweeter, the air clearer. Small, insignificant things — the slow, unsteady flight of a bumble-bee, the call of a bird, even the trickle of a drop of moisture down a window-pane — all assumed a new importance, for always there was the knowledge, thrust deep into the recesses of the mind, that one might never see them again.

It was always so, even on a morning like this, when the air was chill and dank and the mist clung stubbornly to the ground, as though reluctant to yield to the rays of the rising sun. Yeoman, standing in the door of the dispersal hut, was worried about the mist; contrary to the Met people’s predictions, it showed no signs of lifting. Visibility was barely sufficient for take-off, and no more — sufficient, that was, for a Mosquito. Yeoman, however, was not worried about his Mosquitos, but about the Flying Fortresses for which they were to breach a gap in the enemy’s defences, for the Fortress needed a far longer take-off run than the Mosquito and he knew that the mist, which covered all Norfolk and Suffolk, was still too dense to allow the big American bombers to take off in safety. Laden as they would be with maximum fuel and high-explosive bombs, the Fortresses would need every available inch of runway.

For the fourth time Yeoman rang the Met office to find out the latest situation, and received the same reply from the harassed duty officer: the mist would clear slowly as the sun came up. There might be a short delay in getting the main bomber force airborne, but nothing serious.

The pilot looked at his watch. He had already delayed 380 Squadron’s take-off by ten minutes, to compensate at least in part for any hold-ups the Americans must be experiencing, but to delay any longer was to invite disaster, for by the time they arrived over enemy territory the Luftwaffe would already be wide awake.

He made up his mind and turned to the others. ‘Well, lads,’ he said simply, ‘I suppose we might as well get on with it.’

Two by two, pilots and navigators, their parachutes draped over their shoulders, walked out across the damp grass to their aircraft, shadowy outlines in the gloom of the grey dawn. Yeoman stared out across the airfield and thought that he could just make out the shapes of the dispersal huts which had been erected for the use of the Mosquito night fighter squadron, whose arrival had apparently been delayed because of problems with the new AI equipment.

Yeoman’s ground crew were standing by the Mosquito, and the corporal fitter came up to the pilot with the Form 700, the technical log that certified the aircraft fit to fly. Yeoman inspected it, then signed it.

‘Everything’s okay, then,’ he said.

‘Top line, sir,’ the corporal replied cheerfully. ‘There was a bit of a mag drop on the port engine, but that’s fixed now. She’ll go like a rocket.’

Satisfied, Yeoman walked round the aircraft, carrying out his external checks, then climbed the ladder and squeezed himself through the narrow hatch into the cockpit, followed by Hardy. Both men strapped themselves in and Yeoman went into the starting-up sequence, muttering the drill to himself, while Hardy sorted out his maps.

‘Master switch, on. Voltmeter showing 24 volts. Bomb doors shut, selector neutral. Bomb control panel, all switches off, guard closed. Undercarriage: emergency knob in normal position, safety catch on. Air pressure okay, 200 p.s.i. Fuel cocks to outer tanks. Throttles one-half inch open, propeller speed controls fully forward, supercharger okay. Radiator flap switches closed, pressure venting on. Fuel transfer cock off, immersed fuel pump switch off.’

A glance through the perspex assured him that the ground crew were standing by the fuel priming pump, in case there was any trouble in starting up, but the engines had been run only half an hour earlier and priming ought not to be necessary.

He switched on the ignition, made a signal to the ground crew and then pressed the starter and booster-coil buttons for the port engine, watching the propeller. It began to turn, slowly at first, then its revolutions increased as the Merlin fired with a bang and a cloud of grey smoke. Yeoman repeated the process for the starboard engine; that, too, was soon roaring healthily. As soon as both engines were running, the pilot opened both throttles slowly to 1,200 rpm, checking temperatures, pressures and magnetos. As the oil and coolant temperatures rose satisfactorily, he checked the operation of the hydraulic pumps by opening up each engine to 2,000 rpm in turn and then lowering and raising the flaps. After testing the all-important magnetos again, this time at the take-off rpm, he throttled back and clipped his face mask into place, glancing over at Hardy. Over the intercom, he asked:

‘Can you hear me okay, Happy?’

‘Loud and clear, skip. We’ve just got a green from the caravan.’

Yeoman looked across towards the red-and-white control caravan. A green light, the signal to taxi, was flashing from it. The pilot glanced round to make sure that the other three Mosquitos in his section were ready; all their engines were turning and there was no abort signal. He made a list check of the controls and then waved the chocks away. One of the ground crew gave him the ‘thumbs up’ sign and he released the brakes, then opened the throttles a little. A last wave to the ground crew as the Mosquito began to move forward: they were on their way.