Flames over France (4 page)

He turned back towards the Franco-Belgian border, intent on finding an airfield on the other side. Throttling back as much as he dared, he found that he could just maintain his present altitude. He flew steadily on, smelling his engine growing hotter and hotter all the while, knowing that he was going to have to get down soon or risk the consequences. With an enormous gush of relief he saw the Meuse up ahead, and a few minutes later picked up a town which he identified as Mezières. Searching the area, he found what he was looking for; a light green patch which his trained eyes told him was an airfield.

He judged the wind direction by reference to drifting smoke on the ground and began his approach, operating the undercarriage lever. Nothing happened, except that a red light winked at him mockingly from the instrument panel. Hydraulics shot up, he thought fleetingly. There was no time to worry; only time to act, and act quickly. The oil temperature was nearly off the clock and smoke was trailing from the engine exhaust stubs, growing denser by the second.

He tightened his harness straps and lowered the seat as far as it would go in order to protect his head if the aircraft should flip over on its back. Sliding the hood back, he locked it in position; air rushed into the cockpit and he suddenly realised that he was bathed in a clammy sweat. The smoke from the exhaust stubs was now shot with glowing sparks and glycol fumes were beginning to invade the cockpit.

He was over the airfield boundary now. Vivid details imprinted themselves on his mind; twin-engined aircraft, some intact, some wrecked, dotted here and there among bomb craters. Look for a clear patch ahead. He’d forgotten to do something. Christ! With a hand that was far from steady, he switched off the battered engine and cut off the fuel supply. Far from dying away, the smoke now belching from the exhaust stubs increased in volume.

The grass was a blur beneath the aircraft’s wings. Out of the corner of his eye he saw figures running towards him. A glance at the airspeed indicator: ninety miles per hour. Without fully realising it, he had been pulling back gently on the stick, killing the speed. The Spitfire shuddered and he pulled the stick right back, stalling the aircraft.

There was a moment or two of utter silence, followed by an appalling crash as the Spitfire dropped onto the ground, jarring every bone in his body. He had a hazy impression of bits flying off. Fragments of propeller whirled past the cockpit.

He had anticipated the sudden deceleration, but it was far worse than anything he had expected. His seat harness bit deeply into his shoulders as he was hurled violently forward. The world gyrated dizzily as the aircraft slewed round. The port wingtip dug in and then the nose. Suddenly, Armstrong saw nothing but grass and clods of flying earth through the windscreen, and for a terrible moment he thought that the machine really was going to flip over. Then, with a last fearsome crunch and a screech of tearing metal, it flopped back on his belly again.

His first sensation was a numbness in his wrist, and he realised that he had been clutching the now useless control column for dear life.

Letting go, he ripped off his flying helmet and unlocked his harness. Without bothering to unlatch the cockpit door, he heaved himself over the edge, still wearing his parachute, and collapsed onto the buckled and earth-spattered wing. Sliding off, he tottered to his feet and stumbled away from the aircraft, fumbling with the parachute harness’s quick-release box as he went. The impediment fell away and he increased his pace, anxious to get well clear, having a good idea of what was about to happen.

The figures were still running towards him. He waved his arms at them frantically.

“Get back!” he yelled, or tried to yell; the words came out as a hoarse croak. “It’s going to go up!”

Behind him, there was a dull thud and a roaring noise. He felt a wave of heat on his back and tripped up, sprawling full length on the ground. A man in the dark blue uniform and gold braid of a French Air Force officer bent over him and grasped him under the armpits, pulling him to his feet. Armstrong put a hand on the man’s shoulder to steady himself and half-turned to look back at the wreck.

The Spitfire was a mass of flame, spewing a cloud of oily smoke into the air. Somewhere in there, the film he had risked his neck to obtain would be charring away nicely. So, he thought, was his overnight kit, which his batman had stowed in the wing in the space that would normally be occupied by one of the ammunition boxes. He had decided to leave it there in case his return to England should be delayed for any reason.

It would be delayed now, all right.

Armstrong, his legs suddenly weak, sat down heavily on the grass. He spoke passable French, and trawled his brain for an expression that would fit the occasion. He found one word that would do very well.

“
Merde
!” he said, with considerable feeling.

The Frenchman helped him to his feet again and patted him sympathetically on the arm. He introduced himself as Captain Le Roy, and said that he was saddened by Armstrong’s predicament. He asked if the Englishman’s “Hurricane” had been attacked by enemy fighters. Armstrong pointed out that it was actually a Spitfire, and explained his mission. He also mentioned his belief that he had been damaged by friendly fire, at which Le Roy raised an eyebrow.

“I doubt it, my friend. Our troops and the Belgians have been engaging a force of Germans all day in that very area. Events are overtaking us, you see. The immediate question arises, though, of what we are to do with you. We are in the process of moving to another airfield, and we have no transport to spare to take you to your headquarters at Reims. All I can suggest is that you remain with us for the time being as our guest, so to speak, while we work something out.”

And remain with the French Armstrong did, for much longer than he could possibly have envisaged.

*

BATTLE SITUATION: THE BRIDGES AT MAASTRICHT, 12 MAY 1940

On 11 May, one low-level attack by eight Fairey Battles was ordered against enemy forces moving up to the Luxembourg border. They never reached the target area; the only crew to return, their aircraft badly hit en route by anti-aircraft fire, reporting seeing several other Battles going down amid heavy flak while still over the Ardennes.

Meanwhile, armour and motorised infantry continued to pour over the Meuse at Maastricht and General Hoeppner’s 16th
Panzerkorps
, benefiting from the still-intact bridges over the Albert Canal, thrust on towards Tongeren with strong dive-bomber support. The Belgian Government regarded the destruction of these bridges as vital, and in the small hours of 11 May addressed a desperate plea to the commanders of the Allied air forces to mount attacks on them.

Air Marshal Barratt was the first to respond, and at first light No. 114 Squadron RAF, one of the AASF’s two Bristol Blenheim squadrons, was ordered to stand by for the mission. An hour later the Blenheims were fuelled and bombed-up; the crews were briefed and ready to go. Take-off was in fifteen minutes. A light drizzle had fallen shortly before dawn on Conde Vraux airfield — the squadron’s base on the north bank of the Aisne not far from Soissons — and the air was fresh and cool as the crews snatched a last cigarette before climbing aboard their aircraft.

Suddenly, nine elongated shapes skipped over a line of trees and fanned out low across the airfield. They were Dornier 17s, and before the startled defences had time to fire a shot the bombers were speeding over the line of parked Blenheims. Showers of 100-pound fragmentation bombs cascaded down and exploded among the British aircraft. The Dorniers turned and came in again, raking the airfield with machine-gun fire. Then, still low down, they disappeared in the direction of the Aisne. Belatedly, a Vickers gun chattered.

The flight line was a shambles. Bodies of airmen sprawled among the shattered wreckage of the Blenheims and columns of oily smoke rose from lakes of burning fuel. In less than a minute, No. 114 Squadron — half the AASF’s medium bomber strength — had ceased to exist.

At 1130, the Belgian Air Force itself attempted to destroy the bridges with the most modern bombers it had left: nine British-supplied Fairey Battles, operating from Aeltre airfield. The crews were briefed to attack the bridges at Veldwezelt, Vroenhoven and Briedgen in three flights of three. The mission was a disaster; six Battles were shot down by intense flak before they got anywhere near their targets, and the 100-pound bombs of the three survivors failed to do any damage.

Because of the indecision of the French High Command, it was not until the morning of 11 May that the French day bombers flew their first combat sortie. This was carried out by ten LeO 45s, fast and modern twin-engined bombers, which attacked enemy armour around the bridges at Maastricht. Nine of the bombers returned to base, although all were damaged by the intense flak and several crew members were wounded. The next daylight mission in this sector was flown the next day by eighteen Breguet 693 light assault bombers, escorted by the same number of Morane 406 fighters, which made a gallant attack on enemy columns in the Hasselt-St Trond-Liege-Maastricht area. The Breguet’s combat debut had been held up because, even at this late stage, some of the aircraft still lacked bomb-release equipment; it was brought up during the night and hastily installed.

The attack went in at treetop height, the Breguets leap-frogging over obstacles as the roofs of Tongeren rose up in front of the pilots. The main road ahead, flanked by trees and ditches, was jammed with vehicles, rolling towards France and travelling fast.

Strings of glowing shells, thousands of them, reached out towards the speeding aircraft. Flak tore into the leading Breguet; it flicked over on a wingtip, smashed through a row of poplars and exploded in the middle of the road on top of a group of vehicles. A second aircraft, one engine in flames, raced low over the Albert Canal and its pilot made a belly-landing in a French field. He and his crew were among the lucky ones; in all, eight Breguets failed to return from this mission.

The earlier annihilation of the AASF’s two Blenheim squadrons meant that the vulnerable Battle units would once again have to be sent into action in daylight, even though Air Marshal Barratt was well aware that such a course would be little short of suicide. Barratt had little choice; he was under continual pressure from the French and some sort of air effort had to be made, even though it would almost certainly result in the loss of a high percentage of the AASF’s crews. Nevertheless, he stressed that an attack on the bridges at Maastricht by the Battles was to be strictly a job for volunteers.

One hundred and twenty miles from Maastricht, not far from Reims, lay the little grass airfield of Amifontaine, the base of No. 12 Squadron. A little after 0800 on this beautiful Whit Sunday morning, the squadron’s crews — thirty young men in all — were crammed into the small operations hut listening in silence as the deputy CO, Squadron Leader Lowe, told them that he was calling for six volunteer crews to attack the bridges at Vroenhoven and Weldwezelt. With the whole squadron clamouring to be given a chance, Lowe finally settled for the six crews already on standby. Three Battles would attack the bridge at Weldwezelt, and three the bridge at Vroenhoven. The former was to be the objective of ‘B’ Flight, led by twenty-one-year-old Flying Officer Donald Garland, whose nickname, predictably, was ‘Judy’. Garland’s opposite number of ‘A’ Flight was Flying Officer Norman Thomas, who would lead the attack on the Vroenhoven bridge.

Thomas was the first to take off, followed by Pilot Officer Davy. The third member of ‘A’ Flight, Pilot Officer Brereton, had mechanical trouble with his aircraft and had to be left behind. Five minutes later, Garland’s Battle was also airborne, followed by the two machines piloted by Flying Officer McIntosh and Sergeant Fred Marland. Thomas and Davy climbed steadily at 160 mph, levelling off at 7,000 feet. Scattered cloud was creeping across the sky from the east. Thomas glanced at his watch: it was 0900. Tongeren was dead ahead. At that moment a heavy flak barrage erupted around the Battles. It came as a nasty surprise; there had been no indication that the Germans had advanced so far. Thomas and Davy came down to 5,000 feet and altered course north-east, heading straight for the target.

Five minutes ahead of the Battles, the eight Hurricanes of No. 1 Squadron were also heading for Maastricht. Two more Hurricane squadrons, Nos. 85 and 87 of the British Expeditionary Force’s Air Component, had also been detailed to provide fighter cover, but No. 1 was first on the scene. High over the Albert Canal, the fighter pilots caught sight of a swarm of glittering crosses. They were the Messerschmitt 109s of
Jagdgeschwaders
21 and 27 — almost a hundred fighters.

Without hesitating, No. 1 Squadron’s CO, Squadron Leader ‘Bull’ Halahan, gave the order to attack. In the brief dogfight that followed, the squadron shot down three Me 109s and lost two of its own aircraft, one pilot being captured and the other — Halahan — eventually returning to base after making a forced landing in Belgium.

Under cover of the diversion, Thomas roared over the Maastricht-Tongeren road towards his objective, the concrete bridge at Vroenhoven. An Me 109 appeared off to starboard and began to close in, but Thomas held his course. Then the enemy fighter turned and went after Davy, who sheered off into a cloud. The flak was coming up thick and fast now. Thomas pointed the Battle’s nose at the bridge ahead and eased forward the control column. The altimeter unwound rapidly and at 3,000 feet Thomas pressed the bomb release. One of his 250-pounders dropped away, followed by the other three, singly. The Battle came out of its dive and raced across the canal at less than 100 feet, hit again and again by shells. Thomas skipped over a German convoy, then the engine died and he brought the aircraft down for a belly-landing. Dazed but unhurt, the crew scrambled out of the wreck and were taken prisoner.