The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots (50 page)

A sudden torrent of rain struck the windscreen like a blow and for a few seconds I could see nothing whatever. Then the curtain of cloud parted abruptly to reveal Gela’s white beach where, not long before, I had met the Italian sentry patrol. I turned to starboard so as to avoid the beach and the inevitable anti-aircraft fire from the destroyers and landing craft. I was now a few hundred feet above the road that runs parallel to the coast, flying through a continuous hail of tracer with the others behind me well closed up as though threaded on a string. By introducing an element of surprise we could use our fire-power to maximum effect before the troops on the ground managed to jump for cover or the gunners take aim.

Lorries and tanks were lined up along the road as though on parade, and as I dived, with the “pop-pop-pop” of my cannon drowning the noise of the engine, my mouth was dry and the old bitter taste was back on my tongue. I had only a few seconds firing time left and my speed built up rapidly as I pressed home the attack. The illuminated cross-wires stood out against the dark ground, and the silhouettes of vehicles flowed rapidly across them. With violent kicks on the rudder bar, I tried to line up the illuminated ring and its cross-wires with the road and the transport. A large tank loomed up rapidly in my sights and my cannon shells smacked on to its armour-plate, ricocheting in all directions. Soldiers leapt for the verges and melted into the ground before my eyes.

Then the “g” force was pressing me hard against my parachute as I went into a climbing right-hand turn and continued my headlong progress along the coast road. Leaning my head right back I looked over the armour-plate and through the sloping Plexiglass window down on the road which was flowing away behind me as though in a greatly speeded-up film. There were burning vehicles, cannon shells bursting on the road and jeeps bumping over the ground in a wild dash for the open country. It was an absorbing sight which gave one a deceptive sense of superiority. I banked to the left and, still looking back, saw one of our aircraft going down low – far too low! – until it struck one of the vehicles in the convoy and immediately exploded in a welter of metal and a column of flame as high as a house.

This was what we termed a “fire on impact”, which could be caused either by anti-aircraft fire or by inadvertent contact with the ground. Such a death, spectacular and gruesome, was seen but fleetingly, with half an eye. One heard the droning of one’s engine and, in the headphones, the staccato sounds of battle. But, as in a silent film, the tremendous explosion seemed to make no noise at all. So it had been when Sergeant Meyer had cut a swathe through a wood near Novgorod; when Second Lieutenant Behrens had rolled along like a fireball in the middle of a convoy of Russian army lorries; when Flight Sergeant Stumpf had lost a wing while flattening out and crashed on the steppe among the enemy tanks.

All at once there were no more streams of tracer rising ahead of me. The pale ribbon of road below was deserted. The front had been left behind. I wondered who the unlucky one had been for I didn’t know who had taken off with me apart from Bachmann and Zahn. These two were flying close by in battle formation but the others had left Gerbini in the order that their aircraft had been serviced and found airworthy.

Agrigento was on our left. I made a wide detour round the town and harbour so as to avoid stirring up the anti-aircraft guns and began to climb. The sun was shining on my face and the wall of cloud to the east gleamed brilliantly white. My intention, provided that we did not encounter the enemy in the meanwhile, was to fly in a large semicircle so that I could observe Chinisia, Trapani and the two advanced landing grounds from above.

“Odysseus One to Erice, how are you receiving me?”

“Receiving you beautifully Odysseus One. We’ve just picked up a formation of Marauders with fighter escort approaching Trapani. Report your position and height. Over.”

“Odysseus One to Erice understood. Position Castelvetrano, 16,000. Over.”

Once again those idiotic bombers were “approaching Trapani’ so as to deliver yet another load on to the same expanse of rubble. But fundamentally the Allies were right in doing so for we were still attacking them even though it was with the last remnants of our effective strength. And by now they had no illusions about our toughness.

By my reckoning we should make contact in ten minutes. What sort of a bunch, I wondered, was I leading? I twisted round and tried to make out the numbers painted on the aircraft accompanying me. There were eight in all, my entire fighting force, and I had no idea who was piloting them, apart from Bachmann and Zahn, of course. These two were flying close beside me to right and left, their machines rock-steady in the calm air. I had somehow suspected that the enemy would be reported. A sense of foreboding had told me that this battle was inevitable and that, with no reserves of strength, I was nearing the end of my tether.

The Erice controller kept reporting the latest position of the bomber formation. If there had been more of us and if we had been a little fresher, this teamwork between air and ground could have been entirely pleasurable, but as things were now it was nothing more than the prelude to an unequal struggle.

“Erice to Odysseus One, Pantechnicons now immediately north of airfield, height 10,000. You’d better get a move on!”

“Message received.”

By now we could see the dirty smudges of the flak bursts and, in front of them, the bombers flying in close formation. They were coming in over the mountain from the north and at any moment would be opening their bomb doors. My altimeter was showing 13,000 feet. “You’d better get a move one!” he had told me. That I was most assuredly doing, hastening towards another clash with our old acquaintances from North Africa. Where were the fighters? As yet I had seen none. The flak’s shooting was brilliant. Their shells were bursting accurately among the Marauders, forcing them to make repeated changes of course.

One of the big aircraft dipped a wing and for a few seconds accompanied the formation in a side-slip – a wholly unnatural manœuvre. Suddenly it touched another aeroplane in the section and immediately the two machines locked together and hurtled downwards in a tangle of metal. Surprisingly, two parachutes appeared above them, floating calmly in the air.

And then I saw the fighters immediately ahead of me on the same course. They were Thunderbolts with big radial engines, ambling along well above the flak bursts.

Almost subconsciously I moved the lever into position above the button on the control column, thus setting my weapons at “fire”. Provided I was certain that I was going to shoot I invariably did this well beforehad. And once again the bitter taste was in my mouth.

As soon as I engaged them with my cannon the fighters broke formation. I had taken them by surprise. The section leader half-rolled and broke away in a spectacular dive. However, I hadn’t hit him yet; the black smoke emerging from his exhaust stubs simply meant that he was on full boost. As the ground came racing towards me I managed to keep in position, firing at short intervals. Where my section could be I didn’t know; doubtless they were locked in battle elsewhere. We were very low now, hopping over trees and houses as we neared the coast, and then suddenly we were over the sea, only a few feet above the surface of the water. I was racing in the direction of Pantelleria with little reserve of fuel, but once again the fever of the chase had me in its grip. I was faster than he was and I continued to close.

If he had turned his head he would have looked straight along my engine cowling. I had expended all my cannon ammunition. But I didn’t intend to fire my machine guns just yet, because it was very easy to miscalculate when engaging fighters. The American could in his turn force me into a dogfight. I hadn’t enough fuel for that but he was not to know it. Hence he was seeking safety in escape, putting his trust in his powerful engine.

“All of a sudden, acting instinctively, and independent of any conscious decision, I pulled the throttle back and began a wide turn towards the land. I returned the firing lever to the “safe” position, screwed the knob behind the sights to the left to extinguish the illuminated cross-wires, and opened the radiator flaps. A few minutes later I saw the airfield. My mind had been so empty that I had gained height and navigated almost automatically. I had to make two circuits before I identified the narrow landing strip between the bomb craters and committed myself to a landing. Just as I was touching down, the engine began to misfire violently and then suddenly cut. I had got back on my last drops of petrol. The airfield looked dead and deserted as though it had already been abandoned by the group. All at once I knew that the end had come – irrevocably.

Jagdgeschwader 77
was withdrawn to Italy on 13 July, thereafter playing a part in the defence of Italy, France, Rumania, the Reich and Berlin. Steinhoff survived both the war and imprisonment by the Russians.

BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP

“PAPPY” BOYINGTON

Gregory “Pappy” Boyington had a long war, beginning with Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers (see
here
) in China and finishing as a prisoner of the Japanese. In between, Boyington shot down six aircraft in China, then 22 for the US Marine Corps. Almost as famous for his insubordinate plain-speaking and drunken boisterousness as for his flying, Boyington gathered around him pilots of similar hue, hence the “Blacksheep” tag accorded to his VMF-214 Squadron. After the war, he sunk into alcoholism for a decade until rescued by Alcoholics Anonymous. In this extract from his memoir
Baa Baa Black Sheep,
Boyington describes his last mission for VMF-214, undertaken on 3 January 1944.

During one of these daily hops over Rabaul I had reached a definite climax in my flying career without too much effort. I shot down my twenty-fifth plane on December 27. And if I thought that I ever had any troubles previously, they were a drop in the bucket to what followed.

There was nothing at all spectacular in this single victory, but it so happened that this left me just one short of the record jointly held by Eddie Rickenbacker of World War I and Joe Foss of World War II. Then everybody, it seemed to me, clamored for me to break the two-way tie. The reason for all the anxiety was caused by my having only ten more days to accomplish it; 214 was very near completion of its third tour, and everyone knew I would never have another chance. My combat-pilot days would close in ten days, win, lose, or draw.

Everyone was lending a hand, it seemed, but I sort of figured there was too much help. Anyway, I showed my appreciation by putting everything I had left into my final efforts. I started flying afternoons as well as mornings, and in bad weather in addition to good weather.

One pre-dawn take-off was in absolute zero-zero conditions, and all we had for references were two large searchlights on the end of the Vella strip, one aimed vertically and the other horizontally. I wasn’t questioned by the tower whether I had an instrument ticket, like I am today. My last words to my pilots before I started my takeoff through the fog were: “Please listen to me, fellows, and have complete faith in your instruments. If you dare to take one look out of the cockpit after you pass the searchlights, you’re dead.”

As I had always been unaccustomed to help or encouragement in the past, all the extra help did nothing more than upset me. But I couldn’t have slowed down or stopped if I had wanted to, simply because nobody would let me.

One fight made me desperate when I could not see to shoot with accuracy, because I wasn’t able to see well enough through the oil-smeared windshield. After several fruitless attempts I pulled off to one side of the fight and tried to do something to correct it. I unbuckled my safety belt and climbed from my parachute harness, then opened the hood and stood up against the slipstream, trying my darnedest to wipe off the oil with my handkerchief. It was no use; the oil leak made it impossible for me to aim with any better accuracy than someone who had left his glasses at home.

Soon I began to believe that I was jinxed. Twice I returned with bullet holes in my plane as my only reward. Twice I ran into a souped-up version of the Zero known as the Tojo. Though not quite as maneuverable as the original, it was considerably faster and had a greater rate of climb. Still no shoot-downs, and I was lucky the Nips didn’t get me instead.

Doc Ream was really concerned over the way I was affected by the pressure, suggesting we call a halt to the whole affair. He said that there were plenty of medical reasons for calling all bets off. But I knew I couldn’t stop. Whether I died in the attempt made no difference. Anyway, my last combat tour would be up in a few days, and I would be shipped back to the United States. I said: “Thanks for the out, Doc, but I guess I better go for broke, as the Hawaiians say.”

Never had I felt as tired and dejected as I did when I flew into Vella one afternoon in late December. Another futile attempt was behind me. The bullet holes in my plane were a far cry from the record I was striving to bring back. I was dead tired, I had counted upon the day ending, but a pilot had crawled up on my wing after I had cut my engine, and he had something important to say.

Marion Carl was scheduled to take several flights that afternoon to Bougainville, where they were to remain overnight, taking off on the following morning for a sweep. He said: “Greg, I want to give you a chance to break the record. You take my flight because you’re so close I think you are entitled to it. I’ve got seventeen, but I still have loads of time left, and you haven’t.”

Carl had been out previously in the Guadalcanal days as a captain, piling up a number of planes to his credit, and was then back for the second time, as a squadron commander. He had just been promoted to major, and it was true that many chances were coming up for him. Great person that Marion Carl is, he was trying to give a tired old pilot a last crack at the title, even though it was at his own expense.

I can never forget George Ashmun’s thin, pale face when I mentioned where I was going, and he insisted that he go along as my wingman. Maybe George knew that I was going to have to take little particles of tobacco from a cigarette, placing them into the corners of my eyes to make them smart so that I’d stay awake.