CHAPTER THIRTEEN

POSTING TO A NEW ROLE

 

On January 25, 1943 I was posted from 221 Squadron to 38 Squadron, our sister squadron which was torpedo bombing. I took with me my navigator Johnnie Devine, my radar operator Danny Daniels and my recently acquired second pilot, Sergeant Beethem, a New Zealander who lived up to the reputation our country had for producing good pilots.

The first task on joining 38 Squadron was to become familiar with the technique of torpedo attack. It was not a difficult transition. Fifty feet was the dropping height for torpedoes. I was accustomed to flying low over water at night and it was a simple matter to get used to the fact that the pilot released the torpedoes, not the navigator as was the method of dropping bombs.

The conventional bomb aiming sight was of no use to the pilot in aiming the torpedo. An ingenious, but simple, torpedo sight had been developed by 38 Squadron. It was merely a meccano strip mounted on the nose of the Wimpy. It gave us direction and by counting the holes in the meccano strip down from the top we established the range to release the torpedoes.

To practice using this sight I made several dummy runs at night on the liner Queen Mary which happened to be in the Red Sea at the time after disembarking army reinforcements at Suez. The captain of the Queen Mary gave permission for this practice. We carried a camera synchronized to the torpedo release button to produce evidence of whether our “attack” on the Queen Mary was successful. The Queen Mary looked a mighty ship looming up in the dark when flying towards it at only 50 feet. After two nights of this training I was ready for attacking enemy convoys.

On my first torpedo op I was homed on to an enemy convoy by 221 Squadron whose flares illuminated the enemy ships. I made a run on a tanker. I launched the two torpedoes, then veered away in a climbing turn to avoid the blast if the torpedoes hit. I had turned sufficiently to see the tanker explode in a huge ball of flame. It was an awesome sight. I felt no elation or remorse for the kill. In action one thinks of an enemy ship as an inanimate object which needs to be destroyed to save the lives of one's own troops, rather than thinking of the ship's crew, some of whom and perhaps many, probably lost their lives. There certainly is no glory in war. You are trained to do a job so you do it.

By now the British 8th Army had routed the German Afrika Korps to a position not far short of Tripoli in Tunisia. German reinforcements were no longer coming from Crete. Their ships were sailing out of Italian ports to Tripoli. Our Malta squadrons were directed against them. So my experience on torpedo attacks was short-lived.

The task for 38 Squadron, which also had its aeroplanes equipped with radar, was now to escort our own convoys sailing from Egypt to the port of Benghazi where they unloaded supplies for the 8th Army. We were on the look out for German U- Boats or the nippy motor torpedo E-Boats. We carried five depth charges for attack. They also had to be dropped from a height of no more than 50 feet to avoid the risk of breaking-up on impact with the water.

Some of our convoys were large with up to a dozen merchant ships, two or three tankers and a naval escort of up to a dozen destroyers or corvettes. In this period no U-Boats were sighted by either the air force or the navy. If any had been in the vicinity our air cover would have tended to keep them submerged where they would have been likely to be detected by our naval escorts. Probably the Germans were concentrating their dwindling submarine fleet in the Atlantic.

The R.A.F. had an expression which described flying on ops as “dicing”. It derived from throwing dice in a gambling game - in our case gambling with death. From it derived such terms as “a dicey do” for a shaky experience. I had a dicey do about this time. My aeroplane required air testing prior to an op. I decided, unusually, to fly it solo rather than take crew with me. Just after take off when I had no more than a couple of hundred feet of altitude the fabric began peeling off my port wing outboard from the engine nascelle. The only lift remaining on that wing was the relatively short distance between the engine and the fuselage. Fortunately that section of the wing covering was intact. I swung the Wimpy into a starboard turn to counter the imbalance of lift from the intact starboard wing. In a banking attitude the lift is always greater on the upper wing, the steeper the turn the weaker the lift on the lower wing.

If I had attempted to land into wind the aeroplane would have dropped on the port side due to lack of lift on that side and probably crashed. So I steered for a cross-wind landing with the wind coming on the port side to help hold up that wing. I applied full aileron banking to keep the starboard wing down to get as much lift as possible on the damaged port wing. The manoeuvre was successful, enabling me to get the aeroplane into a reasonably horizontal position to touch down. Fortunately the airfield was as wide as it was long. And as there was no sealed runway I fortunately had a free choice of where to touch down.

The noise of the ripping wing had been quite shattering for people on the ground who were puzzled what was happening. The Wimpy was about the only aeroplane still operational in the R.A.F. which was fabric covered. The fabric was best quality Irish linen but it was prone to deterioration in the heat and scouring by the desert sand. The fabric covered the airframe and wings which were of geodetic construction - that is like a trellis. Because of its unique fabric covering the Americans called the Wimpy the “cloth-covered bomber”. I guess that was another of my nine “cat's lives” used up.

The heat from the desert made the Wimpy sluggish on take-off with a full operational load. It was not unusual on take off to jerk back the control column to get the aeroplane to bounce up a few feet. Then as it began to sink back the undercarriage would quickly be raised to reduce drag. It was a tricky manoeuvre but usually it got us airborne. It took quite some time to climb to our operational height, which was only 500 feet, because the temperature and the war load slowed the rate of climb. One of our squadron pilots pulled the undercarriage too quickly when trying to execute the bounce take-off technique and the aeroplane belly- flopped on to the ground. Fortunately there was no fire and no pre-ignition of his bombs. And none of his crew was injured. One thing about desert air strips there was plenty of space.

From time to time a sandstorm, called the khamsin, would sweep across the desert. They were caused by high winds. Particles of swirling sand could hurt the skin. It was essential to protect the eyes. The sensible course if on the ground was to shelter in a tent. After the storm passed all bedding and clothing in the tent had to be shaken out. To be caught in a khamsin while flying meant a very turbulent ride. These storms occurred very suddenly. The sand could rise to several thousand feet and visibility was reduced to zero. The only escape was to head for the coast and get out to sea. Meanwhile the fabric of the aeroplane was inevitably damaged and the leading edges of the propellers were severely pitted, thus reducing thrust. The propellers would have to be replaced on landing. But the worst risk was sand being sucked into the carburettors. This was also a risk on normal take-offs on the desert. The engine filters were not entirely efficient in absorbing the sand particles. Engineers came up with a solution. They figured that women's sanitary pads made the most efficient sand filters. Until supplies could be shipped from Britain the air force virtually stripped the shops of Cairo of their stocks. I imagine it was not a popular move with the female civilian population.

We made several attempts when on convoy escorts to work in cooperation with Royal Navy submarines operating in the Mediterranean but we seemed to have trouble either with wireless frequencies or codes. To try to improve combined operations we had submariners seconded to our squadron to fly with us on ops to see if we could work out a satisfactory system of communicating from air to sea. The sailors did not like flying. We tried to reassure them by saying that the law of gravity dictated that what goes up must come down. So they could rest assured we would get them back on the ground. But they did not feel assured that the return to terra firma would be a safe one. It is all a matter of what a serviceman is trained for. When it came our turn to go on a submarine patrol aircrew were just as apprehensive.

With Johnnie Devine and Danny Daniels, I was the first of our squadron to be detailed to go on a submarine patrol. We went to Alexandria naval base and were taken out to a submarine mother ship to be briefed. Alongside lay a P class submarine in which we were to sail - none too happily, I must admit. Sailing was delayed by an engine fault. We spent a pleasant night with the sailors aboard the mother ship. Next day the maintenance crew stated that it may take several days to get the submarine serviceable. Middle East Command decided it could not afford to have aircrew hanging around in idleness. So we were told to report back to the squadron until the Navy was ready for us. We were back at the squadron about to fly on ops when we learnt that the fault had been fixed quicker than expected. The submarine could not wait for us to return and had sailed.

Again lucky for us. That submarine did not return to base, presumably sunk on patrol. That was another narrow squeak for me. Could this have been another of the “cat's nine lives”?