Voices on the Wind - Assault

Everything had happened so fast that there wasn’t time to get nervous. Twenty minutes later they found themselves flying in brilliant sunshine as the sun behind them cast a golden sheen on the water below. A few scattered clouds crouched on the northern horizon, but visibility seemed infinite. As they turned on their west-by-southwest course, Ned heard the controllers tracking an incoming raid on Malta, but it was not their affair; Malta was just a small brown ‘leaf’ on the sea behind them.

Despite the sleepless night, Ned felt invigorated. He was finally going to do what he’d spent the last eight months training for. More importantly, after nearly thirty months of war, he was finally going to hit back at the enemy. He felt no particular nervousness at the prospect of combat. In contrast to their flight to Malta, they were now in company with three other Beauforts, all looking aggressive and formidable in formation. He was being led by a more senior officer and supported by other experienced pilots. Their orphan flight to Malta had been the aberration; this was the way it ought to be.

His mood was further lifted by the surreal environment. The vivid colours and the intensity of sunshine were strikingly different from his long, draining patrols over the Icelandic Sea or his training up in Scotland. Back in Britain, he’d flown in a grim, grey, warlike world. Here the sea was a powerful cobalt and the sky a shockingly brilliant blue. It felt more like he was in a travel poster than a war.

Matt echoed his thoughts, clicking on the intercom to remark, “Makes you picture girls in scanty swimming suits, doesn’t it.”

“It will need to warm up first,” Tim grumbled.

“There’s no harm in dreaming,” Matt replied.

After about an hour and a half, Taylor waggled his wings and began to descend. The other Beauforts tucked in closer. Ned ordered his crew to action stations and positioned his aircraft on Grant’s port flank. The war was back. Adrenaline surged through Ned’s veins. One of his crew had forgotten to switch off his intercom and his heavy breathing rasped in Ned’s ears. Tim demanded the ‘milk bottle’ for a second time within the hour. Matt fussed with his charts unnecessarily. Ned felt their nervousness almost more than his own.

Far ahead, a convoy parted the glistening seas, leaving streaks of white like chalk marks on a dark blue board. The merchantmen were in three columns, two with three ships and a central one with just the Victoria and a tanker. From this altitude, the profile of merchantmen did not differ noticeably from the hundreds of Allied cargo ships Ned had seen while flying for Coastal Command in the UK. The difference was the escort. Ned had never seen the Royal Navy commit a battleship for such a small convoy. Mostly far larger convoys than this had to make do with a single destroyer and a two or three corvettes.

Flt Lt Taylor led them in a steep dive towards the deck. Even after nearly a thousand flying-hours, Ned still found power dives were exhilarating. They gave a pilot a sensation of extreme speed that triggered some kind of childish excitement.

Below, the ships sailed serenely across the bright blue Mediterranean as if unaware of the danger — until abruptly, the escorts emitted a blinding flash. Instantly, the sky was soiled with puffs of smoke and bursting shells. Ned’s Beaufort shook like a rat in a terrier’s teeth. A hailstorm of debris crashed onto the airframe — and didn’t stop. Ned forced himself to blot it out of his consciousness and narrowed his focus to holding his position on Grant’s flank. While Taylor and Jebson were targeting the Victoria, Taylor had swung slightly to starboard to attack a tanker behind her.

“Matt!” Ned called out. “Give me the range to the tanker!”

Between the attacking torpedo bombers and the freighters, a cruiser stood guard. Although her main batteries remained silent, her secondary turrets flashed, smoked, and flashed again. It struck Ned as strangely unreal. The shells hurled through the air around them and landed with giant splashes that spurted so high they rocked his wings. Meanwhile, the glowing beads of tracer arching up from two dozen anti-aircraft guns converged on the approaching Beauforts.

In training they advised dividing the fire of major warships, so when Grant banked right to slip around the stern of the cruiser, Ned broke in the opposite direction and darted across her bows. For a split second the high prow of the Italian warship pointed straight at them with the bow wave snarling and frothing as it fell away from the steel slicing the water in two.

Then they were past and heading for the outer column of freighters. Furthermore, Tim was finally in a position to return fire. Instead, something crashed into the tail. Tim screamed and Ned struggled to retain control of the injured aircraft. Wind roared through the fuselage and light flak continued to hammer the metal frame.

Ned had no time to find out what was wrong. The first column of merchantmen was dead ahead. For a second time he demanded, “Matt! Range!”

“Just drop the bloody thing!” Matt screamed back.

“But—”

“Drop it! Drop it!” Matt shrieked.

Unnerved, Ned punched his thumb onto the release button on the control column to release the torpedo and as soon as it dropped away, he upended the Beaufort on a wingtip to escape.

All he could see was tracer criss-crossing the air as he skidded over the waves between the freighters and their escorts. He spotted what he thought was a gap between the escorts and headed for it, ignoring the repeated strikes against the outer skin of the aircraft. The interior of the Beaufort was a whirlwind of acrid smoke.

They swept past the destroyers so close to the surface that the propellers flung up spume, and then they were in the clear although still taking hits from behind them. After another few seconds that sound also stopped; the only noise was the drone of their own engines and the wind howling through the hole in the tail.

Only now did Ned notice that the Beaufort was vibrating irregularly and that something was flapping loudly in the tail. Tenderly, he tested the controls one after another. The Beaufort responded, and gradually Ned’s heart started to slow and his breathing to stabilise. Gently, he lifted the Beaufort off the deck and as they passed through 1,000 feet he was able to focus on something other than flying.

First things first, he flipped on the intercom. “Tim? Are you all right?”

 There was no answer.

“Tim! Are you there?”

Still nothing.

Ned called more urgently, “Tim! Come in!”

Finally, there was a click, followed by Stan’s strained voice, “Do you want me to go and check on him?”

“Yes!”

“I’m on my way.”

Ned searched the sky for the other Beauforts. He found first one lone black dot, and then another pair. Against the glare of the sun, he couldn’t be one hundred percent certain they were Beauforts; they might be Germans, but they weren’t behaving like fighters. He altered course to try to intercept them, but when he tried to increase the engine revolutions, the Beaufort let out a howl, and something started clacking inside the engine. That did not sound good. He eased back on the throttle and switched on the microphone, “Matt, what’s the course for home?”

“What?”

“I need a course for Malta.”

“I’ll work on that straight away.”

Work on it? He should have had it plotted before the attack.

Stan’s voice, sounding clearer now, came over the phones. “The Victoria appears to have been damaged; she’s drifting and is down by the bow.”

“Is Tim okay?” Ned asked back.

“He’ll be fine,” Stan answered.

“Is he or isn’t he?” Ned demanded.

“He wasn’t hit. He’s just a bit rattled. One shell came pretty close to his head.”

“Did we hit anything?”

“No.”

That was not good. Ned sat in the sweat-soaked silence of the cockpit, his arm muscles aching from the white-knuckled grip he’d kept on the column, and he reviewed what had just transpired. Tim had screamed, although apparently he was not injured. Neither Tim nor Stan had returned fire. Matt had failed to give him the range during the attack and had not prepared their return course. And rather than holding course for the tanker he’d allowed Matt’s panicked shout to “Drop the bloody thing” to unnerve him. Instead of attacking a valuable target, he wasted the ‘fish’ on an old, tramp in the outer column. Not only that, but even for that target, he’d dropped too soon! From start to finish, the sortie had been a total shambles! They’d failed to strike anything, and the Beaufort was a bloody wreck again!

Angrily, Ned switched on the intercom and announced acidly, “That was a total cock-up! We’re going to have to do better than that! A lot better than that!”