Flames over France (19 page)

Gillet was a fairly simple man, and try as he might he couldn’t think of any. His reasoning was as simple as his nature. The aircraft was not French, therefore it had to be Italian. The possibility that the RAF might have bombers in this area never once crossed his mind; even if it had, the only British bombers he had seen were Bristol Blenheims and Fairey Battles, neither of which resembled this one.

Carefully, Gillet began to set up his attack.

Pittaway, hugely relieved after his trip to the Elsan, slid back into the first pilot’s seat and did up his seat harness, shaking his head when Armstrong asked him if he wanted to take over the controls again. “No, matey, you fly ’er for a bit,” he said. “I’m for a coffee.” He reached down and pulled a thermos flask from a pouch on the side of the inner fuselage and started to unscrew the lid. “Want some?”

“Wouldn’t mind,” Armstrong admitted. His throat was dry, and he was chilly.

At that moment, the rear gunner’s urgent voice cut across the intercom.

“Skipper, there’s an aircraft, working its way around towards our five o’clock position. Can’t say what it is. It’s not a Wellington, though.”

“All right, treat it as hostile and watch it. I want to know every move it makes.” Pittaway screwed the cap back on the thermos and stowed the flask in its original position. “Okay, Ken, I’d better take her. You know the drill, though. Stand by to take over if anything happens to me.”

“Rear gunner to pilot, the aircraft is turning in. I got quite a good look at it … I think it’s French, although it looks a bit like an Me 110. Coming round into our six o’clock, now.”

“Could be a Potez,” Armstrong said doubtfully. “The French have been using some as night fighters.”

“Well, keep on watching it like a hawk,” Pittaway told the rear gunner. “I don’t trust the buggers.”

“It’s closing in fast,” the rear gunner said, his voice high and frightened. “Shall I open fire?”

“Only if it fires first,” Pittaway instructed. “If it does, give it all you’ve got. And stand by for some evasive action.” Holding their breath, they braced themselves.

Chapter Fourteen

In his turret, the rear gunner watched, like a rabbit mesmerised by a stoat, as the dark silhouette of the unidentified fighter grew larger. Suddenly, fire streamed from its nose and wings and red golf balls of tracer shells reached out to ensnare the Wellington. It took him only a fraction of a second to react, and then he too opened fire.

Up front, Armstrong tensed as the red streams of fire ripped past and into the Wellington, and felt rather than heard the vibration as the four Browning.303 machine-guns in the rear turret opened up. Pittaway swore; because of the mountain peaks he was unable to take evasive action laterally, so the only way out was to go either up or down. The trouble was, he couldn’t see what lay below.

“Throttles, Ken!” he yelled. Armstrong, understanding what was wanted, opened both throttles wide while Pittaway used both hands to pull back on the control column, putting the bomber into a climb. As he did so, orange flames burst from beneath the starboard engine cowling.

“That’s buggered the job,” Pittaway gasped. With one engine hit, there would not be enough power to sustain the climb. He eased the pressure on the control column and brought the bomber back to level flight.

At his station further back in the fuselage, the flight engineer hit a button, activating a fire extinguisher that sprayed foam into the crippled engine. For a few seconds the flames dulled and almost died away, then they returned with what seemed renewed intensity.

“Shut it down,” Pittaway ordered. The flight engineer obeyed, using his own bank of throttles to close down the engine, and threw another switch to ‘feather’ the propeller, turning its blades edge-on to the airflow to reduce the drag.

“Rear gunner, what’s the bastard up to now?” Pittaway shouted over the intercom. There was no reply, and Armstrong noticed that the guns had fallen silent. “Nav, go back and find out if he’s okay.”

A couple of minutes later, the navigator’s voice sounded over the intercom. He sounded shaken.

“He’s had it, skipper. The turret took a direct hit. He’s blown almost in half … God, there’s blood and guts everywhere.”

“All right, spare us the details. Listen, everybody. We can still make it back to base. Nav, get up into the astrodome and watch out for the fighter. Let me know the moment you see him coming in again. Wireless op, get on to the waist guns. On the nav’s signal, I’ll turn as sharply as I can. See if you can get a shot at the sod.”

“Okay, skip.” The navigator left his seat and stuck his head into the Perspex bubble on top of the fuselage, peering back past the tail fin. “Can’t see a thing,” he reported a few moments later. “It’s the engine fire. There’s too much glare. The tail’s taken a beating, though. Looks like a lot of loose fabric trailing from it.”

“Right. Keep on looking out, anyway.” Pittaway glanced across at Armstrong, who at this moment was feeling utterly helpless. “Ken,” the New Zealander said, “I’m going to need some help if I have to put her down. She’s becoming hard to control.”

Armstrong reached out and gripped the control column, following Pittaway’s movements. The feel of the stick transferred the bomber’s agony to his hands; he could sense the abnormal shuddering and jerking of the control surfaces where shells and bullets had punched through them, the lifting and twisting of the right wing as the good engine did its best to drag the aircraft round towards the left. Adding his strength to Pittaway’s, he turned the control column towards the dead motor, lifting the right aileron and lowering the left, allowing the airflow to drop the right wing and so cancel out the bomber’s inclination to turn.

A mile astern of the Wellington,
Sergent
-
Chef
Gillet rolled out of a turn, having broken away after his first firing pass, and went in pursuit of his quarry once more. He had no difficulty in picking it out; the engine he had hit was glowing like a furnace. Keeping the glow centred in his windscreen, he closed in steadily, intent on finishing the job he had begun less than five minutes earlier. This time, he would get in really close.

The glow from the bomber’s burning engine grew brighter; sparks and fragments of molten metal swirled past him, and the stench of burning oil pervaded his cockpit. The glow lit lip the bomber’s camouflage, the code letters and the roundel on its fuselage side.

“The roundel,” he whispered to himself in sudden horror. “Oh, my God!”

He could see the colours quite clearly in the glare of the flames. They were red, white and blue. The aircraft was British.

Feeling sick, Gillet pulled off to one side. He had identified the other aircraft now as a Wellington. He began to manoeuvre into position off its port wing, desperately searching his mind for something, anything, he might do to help, some act of atonement to redress his terrible error.

In the astrodome, the navigator saw their attacker for the first time as it crept into position on the starboard beam, and shouted a warning. The wireless operator dashed to the small window in the starboard side of the fuselage and seized the single.303 machine-gun that was mounted there, its position designed to give an arc of fire covering an attack from the beam. Almost at once, he saw the fighter and took careful aim.

“Hold on!” the navigator yelled as he registered what he could see of the other aircraft beyond the roaring torrent of flame from the starboard engine. Its light revealed a roundel to him, too, its colours the reverse of the RAF’s. “Hold on! It’s French!”

He was too late. In the bomber’s waist, the wireless operator took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger, stitching a line of tracer bullets along the full length of the fighter. A couple of seconds was all it took; there was no sign of fire, no sign even that he had hit the other aircraft, but it suddenly dropped away and spiralled down towards the snow-covered crags below.

In the cockpit of the Potez, Gillet registered sudden surprise that he could no longer control his fighter. His hands and feet no longer seemed to obey him. It was all very strange. He had experienced dreams like this; maybe this was a dream. If it wasn’t, he could not remember why he was here.

Gillet had not even felt the two bullets that had struck him in the left side. His face was still registering a look of blank amazement when the Potez hit the ground and exploded, but by that time he was dead.

In the Wellington, the wireless operator suddenly realised what the navigator had been shouting. He released his grip on the machine-gun and instead grabbed one of the aluminium bracing spars that formed the bomber’s fuselage structure. “Christ,” he stammered, “I’m sorry … I didn’t realise … ”

Pittaway’s crisp tones cut across him. “All right, belt up! Don’t worry about it. Crash positions, everybody. It’s time to put the old girl down. We’re not going to make it back.” The bomb-aimer and the front gunner scrambled out of their nose positions and made their way into the main body of the fuselage, leaving Pittaway and Armstrong alone in the front of the aircraft. Suddenly, the New Zealander took a hand off the control column and pointed ahead and down. Peering past the nose, Armstrong saw a broad expanse of snow, nestling between two rock walls. Had there been a moon.

casting dark shadows, they might not have recognised it for what it was.

“Looks promising enough,” Armstrong commented. “Pretty flat, as far as I can tell.”

“Well, old son, we don’t have much choice, do we?” Pittaway observed.

Armstrong didn’t need to voice his agreement. Pittaway was already throttling back the engine that was still running, at the same time pointing the Wellington’s nose towards the plateau. Anxiously, Armstrong looked out of the side window at the flames that were now eating into the wing; it would be touch and go whether they would get down before the fire reached a fuel tank. Every second was precious now.

“Ken, I have control. Stand by to drop the flaps when I tell you.”

Armstrong relinquished his hold on the control column and placed his hand on the flap lever. The snowfield was coming up at them rapidly now; Pittaway chopped the throttle and the port engine fell silent, its propeller windmilling. Behind the pilots’ positions, the flight engineer hurriedly flicked off all the engine and fuel control switches and turned his seat to face rearwards, tightening his harness.

“Here we go,” Pittaway said calmly. “Flaps! Brace, brace, brace!”

Armstrong pulled hard on the flap lever and the Wellington’s nose lifted a little as the flaps bit into the airflow, decelerating the big bomber in the final stage of its descent. It seemed to hang motionless for long seconds, the only sounds the sigh of the airflow and the roar and crackle from the burning engine. Then its belly struck the snow.

Armstrong had been expecting a massive impact. Instead, there was only the slightest rumble, followed by a series of minor jolts. Snow flew back in a spray over the leading edges of the wings. The bomber careered on like a toboggan, sliding on its underside, with no apparent deceleration. Ice particles obscured the windscreen, blocking the view ahead. Pittaway and Armstrong stared at the opaque layer, transfixed. The New Zealander was instinctively juggling with the controls, even though he was utterly powerless to check the Wellington’s long slide.

Then the bomber’s left wingtip hit an outcrop of rock, and the noise and disintegration began. With a jolt that rattled every bone, the Wellington slewed round through ninety degrees, shedding lumps of wing as it went. It continued to slide sideways, but then the starboard wing dug itself in and the headlong momentum began to fall away. Then, with a hideous screeching and rending, the wing broke up. The section outboard of the still-burning engine folded up and spun away into the darkness, and then the engine itself tore from its mountings, rupturing fuel and oil lines and the walls of the petrol tank embedded in the wing’s inner section.

With a huge thud and a series of metallic crunches, the Wellington came to a sudden stop. The pilots’ seat harnesses bit painfully into their upper bodies as they were hurled brutally forward, but mercifully the straps held. From somewhere in the fuselage there came a cry of pain.

Then, for long moments, there was a deep silence, broken only by laboured breathing and the cracking of twisted metal. Armstrong registered everything through a stunned daze, and shook his head to clear it. Automatically, he fumbled for the release of his seat harness. He was dimly conscious of a red glare shining through the cockpit window on his side.

Pittaway punched him sharply on the arm, bringing him fully to his senses, or almost. Armstrong looked at his companion groggily.

“Come on, quick!” Pittaway shouted, his voice echoing strangely. “She’s going to go up — there’s fuel all over the place! Let’s get the others out.”

They clambered unsteadily from their seats, flexing themselves to see if they were still in one piece, and made their way back into the main fuselage. Someone had already kicked out one of the glazed side panels, and a stream of icy air was swirling into the aircraft. One by one, the other crew members scrambled out into the night, urging each other on. Pittaway pushed Armstrong in the same direction, took a last look around the interior to make certain that no one was left behind, then followed suit.

Ahead of him, Armstrong stepped out onto the wing, which was half buried in snow, and slid off it onto a surface which was surprisingly firm. Although he was wearing a flying overall, with a fur-lined jacket on top of it, knife-edged cold struck him like a physical blow. A sudden thought flashed through his mind and he stumbled around the rear of the aircraft, past the shattered turret with the remains of the rear gunner still trapped inside, towards the lurid glare that formed the only light in an otherwise darkened wilderness.

On the opposite side of the Wellington he came to a sudden stop, appalled by the damage the aircraft had suffered. The engine lay some distance away, in the middle of a pool of burning petrol; there was a good deal of spilt fuel near the wreck, too, but there was no sign of the flames extending to it. He made a closer inspection to ensure that his first impression was correct, then went back to rejoin the others. All five of them were safe, apart from some cuts and bruises, although the navigator had taken a nasty blow to the head. It was his cry they had heard.

“It’s all right,” Armstrong informed Pittaway. “I don’t think the aircraft is in any danger from the fire. It’s dying down, anyway.” He shivered; the iciness of the night seemed to be growing more intense.

“Look,” he said, “there’s nothing we can do until it’s light. I suggest we get back into the fuselage and unpack the parachutes; the canopies will make good insulation. For God’s sake, though, don’t anyone light a cigarette!”

“What about him?” the wireless operator asked, indicating the rear turret and its grim burden.

“There’s nothing we can do for him,” Pittaway said. “Come on, let’s get back inside. It’ll be dawn in about three hours. We might as well make ourselves as comfortable as we can, and try to get some rest.”

They clambered back into the wreck of the bomber and set to work pulling the ripcords of their parachutes, allowing the silk to spill out inside the fuselage. As Armstrong had predicted, it protected them from the worst of the cold, although the temperature was still low enough to deny them anything more than a fitful doze.

It was a vast relief when daylight came. The bomb-aimer was the first to venture outside, intent on answering the call of nature. A moment later they heard him give a howl: “Christ, but it’s cold!” His comment brought the amusement they all sorely needed.