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Excerpt: Flying Officer Ned Nettleton, Flight to Malta
Context: Flying Officer Ned Nettleton, RAF, is the pilot and commander of a Beaufort torpedo bomber en route to the Middle East with a refuelling stop in Malta. The crew is straight out of training and deploying to an active squadron for the first time. They are carrying a passenger, a WAAF officer assigned to Malta, Flight Officer Candice Weld. After a pleasant five and a half hour trip, they are approaching Malta when things get difficult.
“Huns!”
Tim’s voice crackled over the intercom at a higher octave than normal.
“Give me
a proper report, Gunner,” Ned replied, keeping his tone as calm and routine as
possible.
“Passing
overhead, swinging around and preparing to attack from the rear!”
“Can you
identify them?”
“Me109s.”
“How
many?”
“Two.”
“Damn the
effing Frogs! They passed our position to the Hun!” Matt bitched.
“Stan,
contact Malta and report we are under attack. Maybe they can scramble some
fighters to help us out, then take your action station.” There was no need to
order Matt and Tim to action stations; they were already in them.
Ned
turned to look at Flight Officer Weld. Her frightened yet trusting eyes met
his. She seemed to have complete confidence in him, and that shook him because
he knew it was misplaced. Ned had never been in a situation like this before.
Assigned to Coastal Command straight out of flying training, he had flown
reconnaissance aircraft over the Western Approaches for eighteen months without
once encountering enemy fighters. Boredom had driven him to volunteer for
torpedo bombers eight months ago. He’d finished training three days ago and was
on his way to his first operational torpedo squadron. The same was true of his
entire crew. This would be their baptism of fire.
Ned would
have liked to reassure Flight Officer Weld that everything would be fine, but
he couldn’t lie. Instead, he told her as calmly as possible, “Go to the radio
compartment, strap yourself in and keep your head down. I may have to throw
this crate around a bit.”
She
nodded, released the straps, and climbed quickly out of her seat to go to the
radio compartment. Ned drew a deep breath and then checked his watch. It was
now just after 15.30, and they were no more than twenty minutes away from
Malta.
“Coming
in now!” Tim reported. “Five o’clock high.”
Ned
started evasive manoeuvres, weaving and swooping up and down to disrupt the aim
of the fighters. Shortly afterwards, Tim and Stan opened fire, filling the
interior of the cockpit with the smell of cordite. Abruptly, two loud bangs
made Ned wince; the Germans had made hits before sweeping past on either side
of them. Ned watched them as together they banked and climbed to come in for a
second bash.
“Tell me
when to take evasive action,” Ned called over the intercom to Tim and Stan,
conscious that he was sweating badly. He strained to look as far ahead as
possible. They couldn’t be more than sixty miles from Malta. He must see it
soon.
“Here
they come! Wait! Wait! Now!”
Ned threw
the Beaufort into a sudden skidding turn, and a second later the aircraft
shuddered violently as Stan and Tim opened fire almost simultaneously. Yet, as
he lifted a wing to change course, enemy shells tore into it, piercing the fuel
tanks.
Ned
corrected the attitude of the aircraft, twisting the other way. Instantly, the
other German fighter punched a hole in the Perspex directly over his head.
Shards flew everywhere, shattering some of the instrument dials, and then the
shadow of the Messerschmitt flying low overhead blocked out the sun. As it shot
past them, Matt fired furiously without any visible effect. The German fighter
wheeled away on a wing, chasing after its leader.
Ned
watched them as they soared up the sky and then, one after the other, flopped
over to roll off the top of the loop to position themselves for a new attack.
Ned tested the controls. The Beaufort was still responding normally, although
he didn’t like the sight of petrol running off the trailing edge of the
starboard wing. He shifted his attention to the fuel gauge to see how rapidly
they were losing green stuff, but the face of the dial was shattered.
Tim and
Stan’s machine guns started chattering again, and the aircraft shuddered from
the recoil. Ned saw more bits and pieces of his precious new Beaufort breaking
off. Suddenly, it staggered and the starboard propeller stopped. Ned cursed;
the Beaufort was notoriously difficult to control on one engine. Their speed
dropped instantly, and Ned pushed for more power from the port engine. This
increased the torque, forcing Ned to apply full right rudder just to hold the
Beau on course. The only good news was that Malta was now in sight.
Ned
stared transfixed at their destination—until he registered scores of bombers
escorted by twice as many fighters approaching the island from the north.
Bursts of anti-aircraft guns started to soil the sky with dirty puffs of smoke.
Then the first bombs started to fall. Where the hell was the RAF? Ned couldn’t
see a single friendly fighter.
“Corkscrew!”
Tim shouted, and Ned again tried to dodge the attack with abrupt movements.
With only one operable engine, however, it was like fighting on one leg. Within
seconds, the Beaufort was again shaken by cannon shells hitting home. Perspex
and metal fragments flew around his face as something smashed into the airframe
nearby.
Ned
observed the damage dispassionately. He had left his terror behind and no
longer felt any fear. He cared only about saving the lives of his passenger and
crew. To shake off the Messerschmitts, he dived for the deck and fishtailed
over the long rollers coming out of the southwest at an altitude so low that
the wash from his remaining propeller blew spume from the wave tops. The
manoeuvre appeared to have done the trick. Tim reported the Messerschmitts had
broken off their attacks and soared upwards instead.
A second
later Ned realised why: he’d been so busy concentrating on not putting a wing
into the water that he’d failed to notice he was fast approaching cliffs that
rose straight up for what looked like 1,000 feet. Frantically, Ned yanked the
control column back and put on full flaps to gain altitude. Just when he
thought they were going to crash into the limestone, they scraped over the top
of the grassy edge and were suddenly scudding at less than twenty feet above
brilliant green fields littered with bright yellow flowers.
Ahead of
him, the horizon was blotted with smoke, dust and debris from the bombs raining
down on the far side of the island. Nearer at hand, a hill rose up, topped by a
walled city built of white stone. Bathed in bright sunlight and dominated by
the dome and towers of a great church, it looked surreal in its timeless peace.
To his left, another city of white stone stretched on a wide plain, equally
serene and dominated by a single, even larger red dome. Between these
apparently sleeping monuments from an earlier civilisation, giant flames leapt
and danced amidst clouds of oily smoke.
Ned
banked slightly and headed for the flames on the assumption that they marked a
fuel or ammo dump near an airfield. He registered with detachment that he had
received no instructions from Control. He was on his own.
They
skimmed over the surface of the island. Trees and scrub-brush, stone walls and
stone churches, houses and pastures with frantic goats—all raced by just feet
below the belly of the Beaufort. Through the soles of his flying boots, Ned
felt his rudder flinch and flutter as a control wire stretched or frayed. If it
broke, they were doomed. Oil or hydraulic fluid glistened on the cockpit floor.
The Beaufort had had enough. She was mortally wounded and wanted only to
surrender in exhaustion. Sweat soaked the inside of his flight jacket as Ned
fought to keep her airborne. He held her aloft by sheer willpower, forcing her
to fly straight and level just a little bit longer, a little bit farther.
He could
not risk taking a hand off the controls to click on the intercom. All he could
do was shout at the top of his voice, “Crash positions! I’m putting her down.”
The
others must have been waiting for the order. Matt scrambled back into the
cockpit. Tim dropped down to take his position behind the main spar. Ned sensed
rather than saw Stan pull Flight Officer Weld out of the radio station and push
her down behind the main spar, too. Good lad, he thought, as an airfield came
into view in front of him.
Ned knew
it was an airfield because of the number of wrecked Hurricanes dispersed around
an expanse of flat dirt pock-marked with filled-in bomb craters. The ruins of a
three-storey, brick house with silly, mismatched towers and turrets loomed off
to the left and a charred and collapsed hangar lay broken to the right. Tents
flapped in the wind behind another ruined building. Ned could not identify
anything that looked like a tower, but a red light was flashing at him from a
broken-down caravan. Red?
Ned had
never disobeyed flying instructions before, but he could not make a new
approach. The Beaufort could neither gain altitude nor manoeuvre. He eased back
on the throttle and lifted the nose so that she stalled out and flopped belly
down on the rocky earth.
Then all hell broke loose as the Beaufort careened across the runway, hitting one bomb crater after another. Just a few feet overhead, four Messerschmitts strafed the field from one end to the other.
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