‘How’s the training programme going, Charles?’ Every other day, Air Vice Marshal Stalybrass would ring up from Group to make that tender enquiry.
‘Not too bad, sir,’ Cavendish would answer cheerfully. ‘Problems, of course. But we’re getting there.’
‘Get there a bit faster, eh, Charles?’ Stalybrass tried to make it sound like a joke but failed.
‘We’d go faster if we’d newer and better aircraft, sir.’
‘Blenheim’s a bloody good kite, Cavendish. Don’t blame your tools.’
But it wasn’t just the tools. It was the airfield. It was the weather. It was the inadequately trained new boys. Two Pilot Officer Prunes – the RAF’s personification of a flying clot – landed with their undercarriages up. Another came in so fast he ended in the hedge. Another came in so slowly he undershot the airfield by half a mile. There had been three ground collisions and one episode where an air gunner had shot his own tail off. Every time he saw Maddox come in to land, Cavendish’s heart went into his mouth. But for some extraordinary reason, none of his antics resulted in any damage to the aircraft.
The AOC’s monotonous question had now turned testily to ‘When is 13 Squadron going to be operational, Cavendish?’
‘Just as soon as we can possibly make it, sir.’
Then when at last they were making some headway, sea mist smothered the airfield. Every breath you took was salty. Then rain bucketed down followed by thunderstorms accompanied by hail and lightning. There were snow showers and freezing rain and night frosts. Out of the leaking huts crawled half-drowned rats, four-legged as well as two-legged. The airfield roads became rivers of water. The Sergeants’ Mess was flooded. SHQ was temporarily abandoned. With no hard standings, Blenheims sank in the mud right up to the middle of their oleo legs.
Gigantically, heroically, splendidly, Marshfield began to live up to its name.
All flying had to be scrubbed. In a desperate attempt to keep the crews occupied, Cavendish laid on lectures on navigation and gunnery, organised physical exercises and route marches – all of which went down like the proverbial lead balloon. With only two Liberty buses a week to Hythe, there was nothing to do but drink and grumble.
The new boys began to lose their girlish laughter, with the exception of Maddox who threw himself into every exercise with the enthusiasm of a laughing hyena. His performance in the Mess games, such as high cockalorum and planting sooty footprints on the ceiling and riding motor bikes round the corridors, was as dangerous as his flying. But he always picked himself up after crashing to the ground, hotly protesting he was not hurt.
With so little to occupy their minds, the crews began chewing over Butterworth’s disappearance. Rumours of high losses on other Blenheim squadrons flooded both Messes. Two young captains decided they had had enough before doing even one operation and were posted to the Glasshouse at Sheffield for Lack of Moral Fibre. Where before, hardly anyone had visited Station Sick Quarters, now there was quite a queue in the mornings with coughs and colds.
People began talking openly about Unlucky 13. It was discovered that the Air Council had decreed that there must be either twelve or fourteen feathers in the new airgunners’ brevet, so even the RAF top brass admitted thirteen was an unlucky number.
In the sanctity of their room, Ginger, ever the optimist, declared to Horner that they need have no fears, they wouldn’t have to complete those four ops before the end of their tour: 13 Squadron, like Marshfield, would collapse.
Nevertheless, imminent collapse or not, the training programme staggered on, frequently in bad weather. Maddox and crew completed their cross-country with no incident more dramatic than ground-looping on landing.
But after that the spectre of night flying raised its ugly head. Incredibly, the RAF had done almost no night flying between the wars. As a result, really experienced night fliers were few. Even Rutherford had been wary of it on the one occasion when they had gone up over France in a Battle. Instructors at OTUs were never keen to go up with their pilots and it was at night that most fatal crashes occurred.
Pointing out to Ginger their names on the Flying Detail in the middle of November, Horner said, ‘Der Tag for us tomorrow, Ginger boy! Prepare to meet your Maker!’
‘It’ll be clampers,’ Ginger prophesied cheerfully. ‘Cavendish’ll have to scrub.’
Certainly the day started with black cloud getting lower and lower. But the night flying Detail carried on regardless.
Sitting in the crew room, looking at the muzzy line of paraffin glims, waiting their turn, Maddox turned the pages of an aviation magazine. Horner and Johnson sat in gloomy silence, while one by one the other three crews were passed out.
It became later and later. A thin drizzle started and the night flying programme fell way behind.
It was three in the morning when Cavendish put his head round the door and called, ‘Maddox!’
Out the three of them followed to Blenheim S-Sugar, its idling propeller blade cutting into oily orange slices the light thrown from the guttering paraffin flares. Twelve of them formed the flarepath in a line to the pitch-black horizon stippled with rain.
Maddox followed Cavendish inside the aircraft for the single circuit that the Wing Commander would do with him alone.
The engines roared up to take-off power. Horner and Johnson watched S-Sugar shuddering over the uneven grass and tottering up into the sky. They watched the red and green navigation lights crawl round the sky, turning on the approach. Then hold off.
The main wheels touched the ground. Up bounded the Blenheim with a sudden burst of engine before banging on the ground again and this time staying there.
‘He’ll fail him,’ Ginger said. ‘Bound to.’
But he didn’t.
Cavendish clambered out and beckoned Horner and Johnson to come in. Maddox said nothing as they settled into their positions.
Still overcast, still raining.
Maddox opened up. The engines roared at full power. S-Sugar zigzagged into the night.
Once airborne, Maddox lost the flarepath.
‘Where is it?’ he demanded shrilly. ‘Horner… Johnson… what’s happened to the flarepath?’
First he went left. Then he went right.
Ginger came up from the turret ‘The cack-hander’s got himself all confused. Doesn’t know his left from his right.’
‘Or anything else,’ Horner grunted grimly. ‘You said we might not have to do our four. And boyo, looks like you’re right!’
S-Sugar was whirling round in pitch blackness – first clockwise, then anti-clockwise.
‘Horner… Johnson…’ the voice had become quite plaintive. ‘The flarepath! Which way?’
Horner said, ‘Search me!’
‘You’re the navigator!’
‘After all your weaving, we could be anywhere.’
‘Johnson!’ Maddox’s voice over the intercom became even higher, even more desperate. ‘Where’s the flare-path?’
‘Maybe there’s an air raid, sir,’ Ginger said helpfully, ‘so they had to douse the lights.’
‘They wouldn’t do that to us!’
‘They could.’
‘Bound to be down there somewhere.’ The Blenheim went into a tight turn, too tight for their speed. Johnson could feel the G in his stomach. The next moment the aircraft was shuddering into a stall.
‘Speed! For Christ’s sake, look out!’ Horner shouted, getting hold of the stick and shoving it forward. ‘Or we’ll go into a spin!’
‘I’m doing a three sixty!’ Maddox shouted back. ‘Call when you can see the lights.’
But no lights appeared. Now they were in cloud. Hail was hammering down on the Perspex of the windscreen. ‘Johnson!’
‘Sir?’
‘Where are those lights?’ Maddox said accusingly. ‘You’ve lost the lights!’
‘Me, sir?’
‘You must be able to see them now! Where are they?’
‘I can’t see anything.’
‘Then get on the set! Get me a QDM!’
Minutes passed.
‘Johnson!’
Ginger stopped sending, and got back on the intercom. ‘Sir?’
‘Where’s my QDM?’
‘Static!’ Ginger retorted.
‘Surely you can get it! Surely you can hear?’
The noise from the hail on the metal sides of the Blenheim was bad enough without any static on the set. The aircraft was bouncing around in a black hole worse than Calcutta. Up and down went the wing-tips like red and green juggling balls.
Up front, Maddox went on struggling with his blind flying, weaving nonsense patterns in the night.
‘God only knows where we are now!’ Horner shouted up at him.
And then suddenly, a miracle! The rain stopped. The cloud lifted. As if whipped out of oblivion by the removal of the magician’s cloak, dead in front appeared the letters MF flashing in red – the Marshfield beacon. And two miles beyond the pale yellow line of goose-necked flares.
That wasn’t the end of it, though. True to form, Maddox turned left instead of right, lost the flarepath again. Then pushed the nose right down as if to sniff it out of the darkness.
Full flap down, losing height at five thousand feet a minute, through the windscreen ahead Horner caught sight of the dark shapes of huts, then a slit of light as a door briefly opened.
Seconds later, S-Sugar hurtled inches above the roof of the Waafery.
Maddox made a tight turn, mercifully the right way, straightened up and at almost full power crossed the threshold.
And then made the most perfect landing.
It was the best landing Horner had ever known any pilot make in a Blenheim. Ginger didn’t know they were down. Maddox didn’t either.
‘Have you noticed,’ Ginger said as they trudged back to the Sergeants’ Mess, ‘Maddox gets into the most impossible scrapes… and then out of the blue, up comes something to save him?’
‘The devil!’ Horner said. ‘He’s got the luck of the devil.’
‘Don’t mind whose luck it is,’ said Ginger, ‘so long as it’s good luck.’
All the Waafs tucked in their beds had heard their engines inches above their heads. Pip actually saw them – it was she who had momentarily opened the door.
Her reaction angered Horner. She didn’t seem to realise how close to death they had been. Indeed many of the Waafs thought it very exciting, and when Ginger foolishly told Parachute Pam about the brilliant landing, Maddox became almost a hero in their eyes.
Pip said, ‘He can’t be as bad as you make him out to be. Did you give him a pat on the back?’
‘Did I hell!’
She paused. Then she said, ‘Couldn’t you be more friendly?’
‘Friendly? Friendly? I can’t stand the little bugger!’
Horner noticed that she went out of her way to be just that. And the little bugger reciprocated. He kept appearing when Horner was working with Pip on the Daily Inspections, trying to help and getting in the way, but she seemed to encourage him.
‘Why don’t you tell him to piss off?’ he asked her. ‘He’s just a bloody nuisance.’
‘He’s trying to learn.’
Horner was beginning to think Ginger was right and that Waafs preferred officers. What happened when they were duty crew seemed to confirm it.
Maddox’s crew had to do a fuel consumption test on F-Freddie.
Off they went for four hours, cruising all over central England in (for once) blue skies and winter sunshine.
Pip was waiting to wave them in.
‘Nice landing,’ she said to Horner.
‘Another fluke!’
‘He’s getting better. He’ll see you through.’
‘Into the next world.’
She clenched her fists. ‘Don’t say that!’
‘I’ve just said it.’
‘Listen, Jack,’ she said as if repeating a mantra. ‘He’s got guts. He’s got what it takes. And he’d do anything for his crew.’
‘How come you know him so well?’
But she walked away and didn’t answer. Off she went to help the bowser men with the dip-sticks checking the tanks.
Surprise, surprise!
Almost dry tanks! F-Freddie had been guzzling it down. Chiefie scratched his head, searching for a reason. Then he said, ‘Double engine change. Nothing else we can do.’
He stalked away in a temper.
Then Horner had an idea. ‘He’ll have flown all the way in rich mixture,’ he told Pip.
Straight away she went over and asked Maddox direct. ‘Did you go into weak mixture?’
He blinked. Looked puzzled. Then he hit his forehead with the palm of his hand.
‘Crikey!’ His face crumpled as though he was about to break down and cry. ‘Pip, I forgot!’
Horner almost danced with joy. They’d got him! Really got him! Sheer carelessness. Appalling airmanship. Endangering his crew’s lives with no enemy in sight. Cavendish would have to act now. He’d have his guts for garters.
All Pip said was, ‘There you are! He’s honest.’
It was what she did then that griped Horner.
Off she went and told Chiefie there was slack on the mixture controls. These were changed – and another crew did another fuel test.
Normal. Chiefie was as pleased as punch.
Horner hung around to reproach her. ‘I suppose you were trying to save his confidence,’ he said bitterly.
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, bang goes all of mine.’
Then he began to walk away. ‘He’s not the first pilot to do that!’ she called after him. ‘It was just a mistake!’
Horner didn’t turn. Slowly he returned to the Sergeants’ Mess. It’s Maddox she likes, he thought. Women are like that. Want to mother their little baby boy.
He opened the swing doors of the Mess and there in the hall saw a crowd had assembled round the noticeboard.
A silent crowd. A very still crowd. With nobody saying anything. Then he looked up at the board and saw why.
Pinned up there was Monday’s Detail. The words ‘Thirteen Squadron is now fully operational’ hit him in the eye.
It was all signed by Wing Commander Cavendish.