Hornet’s Sting (24 page)

It was true: squadrons of heavy French flies cruised around the barn, pilgrims at a shrine. Brazier thrashed the air with his copy of
King's Regulations
. A dozen fell dead.

“Now you are fighting history
and
natural history,” Lacey said. “But I may have the answer.” He got on the phone to a Royal Navy storekeeper in Boulogne and swapped a lambskin flying jacket, slightly bullet-holed, for six big tins of pungent black pipe-tobacco. Inhaled, its smoke made the adjutant's eyes water. Exhaled, it sent the flies racing to the nearest window.

Half an hour after the crash, Cleve-Cutler went into the adjutant's office. Brazier was with a couple of officers. The air was bruised blue with tobacco smoke.

“Look here, Uncle ... I've knocked something together, but ...” The C.O. looked chirpy, but he sounded annoyed. The officers moved away. “I mean, it's all well and good to tell his folks he made his mark on the squadron, but what did he actually
do?
”

“Stamp was quite keen on getting a cricket team going here, sir. You could say he never let the side down.”

Cleve-Cutler grunted. “Didn't exactly cover himself with glory, either.” He folded the paper and used a corner to clean his fingernails. “Covered himself with broken Pup, more like. What d'you call that, Uncle? Go on, give me an epitaph.”

The adjutant blew smoke at a solitary, inquisitive fly. It whirled and tumbled to the ground. “Sorry, sir,” he said, comfortably. “No can do.”

The fly lay on its back and buzzed.

“See that?” Cleve-Cutler said. “Made the same mistake as young Stamp. Stalled and spun, stalled and spun. Silly boy.” He trod on the fly, and immediately wished he hadn't. “Spinning is such a plague,” he said. “It's worse than Archie. You can dodge Archie, but a bad spin ...” He shook his head.

“There's an answer to it,” one of the officers said.

Cleve-Cutler turned and saw an angular, black-haired pilot in a uniform that should have been pressed a week ago. His face had a grubby quality. His eyes looked old, but that was not unusual among pilots: even the best goggles could not protect eyes from the bitter gale that hammered at an open cockpit. What was unusual was his mouth. It was a wide mouth in a thin face and it curled in a way that might mean something or nothing. Either way, the C.O. disliked it.

“Captain Woolley, sir,” the adjutant said. “And you remember Lieutenant Paxton, of course.”

“Good Christ, Paxton,” the C.O. said. “What a dreadful moustache.”

“Thank you, sir.” A year ago, Paxton would have burned with shame. Not now. A year ago, when he had left Sherborne School and got his wings and joined this squadron, he had been stiff and priggish, and the other officers had made his apprenticeship very sticky indeed. During the battle of the Somme he had grown up very fast. He survived a bad crash and was sent home to instruct, and now he was back with good old Hornet. The C.O. could say what he liked. Paxton was fireproof.

“Mr Woolley,” Cleve-Cutler said. “A machine in a bad spin is a coffin. The answer is not to let the machine get into the spin to start with. That's what we teach on this squadron.”

“A pilot can get out of a bad spin if he knows how,” Woolley said. “Sir.” He wasn't arguing.

“Captain Woolley has been instructing, sir,” the adjutant said.

“Ah! Instructing, has he? That explains why we get replacement pilots who never last long enough to pay their mess bills! What d'you teach them? Hopscotch?”

“They get their wings too soon,” Woolley said. “That's not my fault.”

“They get their
funerals
too damn soon. And I have to write these bloody letters! So don't come bragging to me about your brilliant methods, captain. We shovel the results into coffins every week.” Cleve-Cutler hadn't finished. He didn't like Woolley's unreadable face or his easy stance or his grubby uniform. “Chaps like you make the Hun very happy,” he said. “Mr God-Almighty-Richthofen depends on chaps like you to send him the bunnies he knocks down before breakfast.”

“Richthofen depends on his skills, sir. He's a professional.”

“He's a bloody butcher.”

“Butchery is an honest trade.”

Cleve-Cutler gave up in disgust. He turned to the adjutant. “This officer is a tradesman who has been sent, in error, to a squadron of gentlemen. Make him duty officer until further notice. Since he regards himself as no better than the municipal rat-catcher, he can get rid of the rats that plague this camp.” He left. The door banged, and its shock shivered the remnants of tobacco smoke hanging in the air.

“The major's a bit touchy,” Brazier said. “We've had a few losses lately.”

“That's all right, Uncle. I never wanted to come here, anyway,” Woolley said. “I bet there's no draught Guinness in the mess.”

Brazier gave him a duty officer armband and a clipboard. “The funeral's tomorrow morning. The burial party know the drill. I trained them myself.”

“See? This is a top-notch squadron,” Paxton told Woolley. “Keen as mustard.”

They left. Brazier strolled into the orderly room. “You fancy yourself as a scribbler,” he said to Lacey. “The C.O. needs something to spice up his next-of-kin letters. Knock out a few patriotic lines.”

Lacey was slightly nettled. “Certainly, sir. Do you want sentimental rhymes, or deathless prose? I should warn you that the latter may take a lifetime.”

Brazier nodded. “Start now,” he urged.

* * *

Only a handful of Bristol Fighters had been sent to France. Hornet Squadron was to get six. The day before they were ferried in, General
Trenchard sent for Cleve-Cutler. A single Bristol Fighter, he told him, was worth two of any other type. The squadron had three weeks to learn how to use it. And the enemy must know nothing of its existence. “You,” Trenchard said, “are entrusted. With a weapon. That could well turn the tide. Of battle.”

Rashly, Cleve-Cutler said, “The battle of Arras, by the look of things, sir.”

Trenchard gazed down at him from his great, gaunt height.

“That's pure speculation, of course,” Cleve-Cutler murmured.

“Impure,” Trenchard growled.

Next day, six Bristol Fighters circled Gazeran and the first sight of them was a disappointment. “It's an elephant,” Spud Ogilvy said. He handed his binoculars to Crash Crabtree. “What a monster! Must weigh a ton.”

“Perhaps it's a Bristol Bomber. Or a clerical error.”

Nobody wanted to hear that. The R.F.C. had bomber squadrons, brave chaps who flew deep into enemy territory, bombed from beneath the clouds, and got harried all the way home. No thanks.

The Bristol Fighters landed neatly and in quick succession. Cleve-Cutler and his pilots ambled towards the aircraft, hands in pockets, out of step, exercising the privilege of airmen to be unmilitary.

“We shall need bigger hangars,” the C.O. said. He walked around the nearest machine.

Plug Gerrish paced out the wingspan. “Forty feet,” he said. “Half as wide again as a Pup. Nose to tail, I'd say a good six feet longer.”

McWatters approached the C.O. “I don't know if you've noticed, sir,” he said, “but the bottom wing seems to have come away from the fuselage.”

“I'd noticed.”

“You can see daylight between them, sir. The bottom wing's actually hanging from the top wing.”

“So it appears.”

“Sloppy workmanship, sir.”

“Try not to be a greater idiot than nature created, McWatters.”

“Yes, sir. They seem to have forgotten to give the pilot a Vickers, sir.”

Cleve-Cutler nodded. It was true: where the Pup had a machine gun bolted on top of its nose, this had nothing – just a hand-held
Lewis in the rear cockpit. He was looking at a hulking aeroplane with a vast spread of wings, a disturbingly experimental design and no weapon for the pilot. It was not the thrilling new fighter he had expected to see. He remembered other models that had disappointed: the DH2 Gunbus, soon known as the Spinning Incinerator; the BE12, which refused to dive with the engine full on, and if the engine was throttled back the interrupter gear failed and the pilot often shot his propeller off; the RE8, underpowered and a bitch to land because two fat exhaust pipes stuck up in front of the pilot ... Then he saw a familiar figure in a flying suit: Colonel Bliss.

“Gather your chaps, Hugh,” Bliss said. “I bring them tidings of great joy and bloody slaughter.”

While the pilots assembled, Bliss climbed into the pilot's cockpit and stood on the seat.

“This is the F2A, popularly known as the Bristol Fighter,” he announced. “No other aeroplane, in any air force, can fly as fast,
and
climb as fast,
and
fly as high,
and
stay up as long,
and
carry as many guns, as this machine. No Albatros can do it. No Fokker can do it. No Pfalz, no LVG, no Halberstadt. This machine, gentlemen, is the last word in fighters. And it is yours.”

“Guns, colonel?” Cleve-Cutler said. “No sign of a Vickers.”

“Absolutely none. That's because the gun is tucked away
inside
, on top of the engine, which keeps it warm. A frozen gun is therefore a thing of the past. If you care to look above the propeller hub you will see a discreet hole in the radiator. From this orifice will emerge a string of bullets.” They surged to look. “Greatly to the shock and chagrin of the foe,” Bliss said; and thought: No, no. That's too much. Keep it simple

“Sir, some of us were wondering,” Ogilvy said. “The wings —”

“Ah yes, the wings. Now, Captain Frank Barnwell designed this bus. Barnwell's an R.F.C. man. He knows what you want when you go on patrol. Above all, you must see the enemy! If you can't see him, you can't kill him. But the wings obstruct your view. They're a damned nuisance. So Barnwell did something so simple that it's brilliant.
He moved the top wing down
. Down to the pilot's eye-level. So now you've got perfect vision forward, sideways and upwards, because you can look over the wing! If you lower the top wing, you've got to lower the bottom one. And that, Captain Ogilvy, is why the lower
wing is slung six or nine inches below the fuselage. Or, to put it another way, Barnwell left the wings where they were, but he put the fuselage midway between them. Very accessible. Makes dusting so much easier, don't you know.”

“Big aeroplane, sir,” Gerrish said. “Big engine?”

“Rolls-Royce Falcon. One hundred and ninety horsepower. Treat it nicely and she'll stay up for three hours. Maybe more.” Bliss allowed the rumble of comment to die down. “Now, Barnwell remembers the bloody awful layout of other two-seaters. The BE2c, for instance. More wires than a birdcage. Every time the observer fired his Lewis, bang went a wire.” He pointed at Heeley. “You, sir. Jump up and try this one on for size.”

Heeley climbed into the gunner's cockpit. Bliss slid down into the pilot's seat. They were back-to-back, their shoulders only inches apart. “Can you hear me, gunner?”

“Perfectly, sir!”

“Give that gun a spin. See what you can see.”

The Lewis was mounted on a Scarff ring, which was a hoop that fitted the circular cockpit. Heeley rotated it enthusiastically through a full circle, and then back the other way. “I can see everything, sir!” he cried.

“Of course you can, my dear chap.” Bliss climbed onto his seat. “Notice how the fuselage tapers
downwards
towards the tail,” he said. “Observe how much of the rudder is placed
below
the level of the tailplane. All this gives the gunner a wonderful field of fire. He can hit virtually everything except his own pilot. And we're working on a new design to let him do that ...” They laughed generously. “No further questions? Good. There will be a silver collection at the door, and meanwhile I'm looking forward very much to a large drink, major.”

A tender carried them to the C.O.'s office. Bliss took off his flying suit while Cleve-Cutler poured the whisky.

They toasted each other in silence, and drank in silence.

“What's wrong with it, Colonel?” Cleve-Cutler asked.

“That's for you to find out.”

“So it's not perfect.” He got no answer. “But if it out-flies and out-climbs and out-shoots —”

“I never said that.” Bliss took his whisky to the fire. “I said no other aeroplane
combines
all the abilities you've got in this one fighter. The
latest Albatros is slightly faster, but it has no rear gunner. The Fokker Triplane climbs faster, but it lacks endurance. The Halberstadt can stay up for ever, but the Bristol Fighter climbs faster. And so on and so on. Nobody else
combines
what we combine. That's what I said.”

“With respect, sir, a three-hour endurance is no damn use if you can't catch the Hun.”

“Well, every aeroplane is a compromise. If you want this one to go faster, jettison the wheels and you'll get an extra ten miles an hour. Probably kill yourself when you land, but ...” Bliss kicked the coals and made sparks fly. “That's part of the compromise, isn't it?”

His bland equanimity began to annoy Cleve-Cutler. “Sir: you just told my chaps they've got the best fighter in the world. How can I —”

“No.” Bliss used his little finger to clear a stray lash from his eye. “No, I never said that. What I said was the F2A is the last word in fighters, and so it is. Tomorrow, there will be a new last word. Different. Maybe better, maybe worse; we shall have to wait and see.”

“With respect, sir —”

“Oh, bugger respect, Hugh. Half the battle up there is confidence. Men fight better when they believe they can win. You know that. Well, the F2A is a damn good bus, so they stand a damn good chance, provided they use the thing properly. Here.”

He gave the C.O. a thick envelope, heavily sealed.