BY Larry Forrester
Fought in August and September of 1940, the Battle of Britain is probably the most famous aerial conflict of all time, and rightly so. The fate of a nation hinged on the outcome. In his biography of Robert Stanford Tuck, Larry Forrester caught very well the spirit of the British fighter pilots and the people they were trying to protect. The excerpt that follows details a few of Tuck’s adventures in Spitfires.
“Bob” Tuck managed to shoot down twenty-nine German planes before he was himself shot down over occupied Europe. He spent the remainder of the war as a guest of the Germans.
The Vickers Aircraft Company had taken over BrooklandSj the prewar motor-racing track, as a test field and experimental plant. Tuck was sent there one day to have a new
Camera-gun fixture installed in his aircraft. The job done, he hopped over to Northolt to have lunch with Group Capt. “Tiny” Vass, an officer he’d known since training days. In the middle of the meal the alarm went and the squadrons scrambled. Vass grabbed a phone and learned that a big battle was developing off Beachy Head, Sussex. At that moment the air-raid warning sounded. Station orders were that all nonflying personnel were to take shelter in slit trenches during raids.
Vass, a mountainous man with the strength of a farmhorse, grabbed Tuck’s arm and propelled him out of the mess.
“Come along. Tommy. Down the bloody bunker!”
Protesting, Tuck was shoved into a damp hole where an NCO unceremoniously rammed a tin hat on his head. Looking out across the grass, he could see his aircraft — the only one left at dispersal. He started to clamber out but Vass grabbed his ankle and hauled him back. They argued for precious minutes before Vass finally shrugged and said, “Dammit, I can’t give you permission to take off, not on your own. But. . . well, I can’t be everywhere, I can’t see everything that goes on, can I?” He turned his back and concentrated on surveying the sky to the
East. Tuck went west — scrambling out of the trench and pelting across to his machine. He started it himself and was airborne within two minutes.
He picked up Hornchurch control and followed their directions. As he crossed the coast, far to the north and very high he could see a tremendous tangled mass of vapor trails, and tiny glints of metal. . . then the hurtling, weaving fighters, mere dots, flitting in and out of sight, like dust motes in the sun’s rays. He advanced his throttle through the gate into emergency power and clambered up frantically to join in the fray. Soon he could distinguish 109s, Hurris, Spits, 110s, a few Ju-88s. ... It was the biggest fight he’d yet seen, an awe-inspiring spectacle that made his throat tighten and produced an odd, damp feeling at the temples and wrists.
Then suddenly, far below him two 88s passed, very close together, striking out for home at sea level. He turned out from the land, away from the main scrap, and with a long, shallow dive got well ahead of them. Then he turned again, due west, dropped low over the water and made a head-on attack.
The port one reared up so violently as the Spitfire’s bullets ripped into the cabin that its slender fuselage seemed to bend back-
Wards, like the body of a leaping fish. Then one wing dipped. The plane cartwheeled and vanished in an explosion of white water. It was exactly as if a depth charge had gone off.
He pulled up sharply into a half loop, rolled off the top and dived hard after the second bomber. He passed above it, raced ahead, and came round again for another head-on attack.
Tracer came lobbing leisurely at him: from this angle it wasn’t in streaks, but in separate, round blobs, like a long curving chain of electric lightbulbs. The stuff was strangely beautiful, the way it glowed even in the broad daylight. At first it was well out of range, but as the two aircraft raced towards each other, suddenly he was flying in the broad jet of the Junkers’ forward guns, and the tracer seemed to come alive and spurt straight for his face at bewildering speed. He concentrated on his own shooting, and saw his stuff landing on the bomber’s nose and canopy.
The enemy’s silhouette, limned almost black against the sunlight, remained squarely in his sight, growing with incredible rapidity, and all the time those wicked blue flashes twinkled merrily on it. It came on and on like that, calm and beautiful and
Stately as a giant albatross, straight and unflinching as though it were some purely automatic missile, an unfeeling super arrow, scientifically, inexorably aimed so as to drive its point between his eyes.
He had the sudden unsettling conviction that this one was different from all the others. This one was more dangerous. It wasn’t going to stop firing at him, it wasn’t going to break off no matter how much lead he pumped into it.
This one could be death.
All this was happening, all these thoughts and feelings were crowding on him, in the space of a mere two or three seconds. But everything was so clear, so sharply focused. The moment seemed to stand still, in order to impress its every detail on his mind.
The silhouette grew and grew until it seemed to fill the world. He clenched his teeth and kept firing to the last instant — and to the instant beyond the last. To the instant when he knew they were going to crash, that each had called the other’s bluff, that they could not avoid the final terrible union.
Then it was a purely animal reflex that took command, yanked the stick over, and lashed out at the rudder. Somehow the Spitfire turned away and scraped over the
Bomber’s starboard wing. There could have been only a matter of inches to spare, a particle of time too tiny to measure. Yet in that fleeting trice, as he banked and climbed, showing his belly to his foe, several shells smashed into the throat of the cowling and stopped up the Spitfire’s breath. The elaborate systems of pipes and pumps and valves and containers which held the coolant and the oil, and perhaps the oil sump, too, were bent and kneaded into a shapeless, clogging mass that sent almost every instrument on the panel spinning and made the Merlin scream in agony.
“With what speed I had left I managed to pull up to around fifteen hundred feet. I was only about sixteen miles out, but I felt sure I’d never get back to the coast.
“I can’t understand why that engine didn’t pack up completely, there and then. Somehow it kept grinding away. I was very surprised, and deeply grateful for every second it gave me.
“As I coddled her round towards home I glimpsed the 88 skimming the waves away to port, streaming a lot of muck. In fact, he was leaving an oily trail on the water behind him. I had the consolation of thinking the chances were that he wouldn’t make it either.”
At the time, Tuck was heartily glad to see the Junkers in as poor shape as himself, and he hoped fervently that the German would crash into the sea.
“I trimmed up and the controls seemed quite all right. The windscreen was black with oil. Temperatures were up round the clocks and pressures had dropped to practically zero. But she kept on flying after a fashion. Every turn of the prop was an unexpected windfall — that engine should have seized up, solid, long before this.
“I knew it couldn’t last, of course, and I decided I’d have to bail out into the Channel. It wasn’t a very pleasant prospect. Ever since my prewar air collision I’d had a definite prejudice against parachutes. But the only alternative was to try to ditch her, and a Spit was notoriously allergic to landing on water — the air scoop usually caught a wave and then she would plunge straight to the bottom, or else the tail would smack the water and bounce back up hard and send you over in a somersault. Bailing out seemed the lesser of two evils, so I opened my hood, undid my straps, and disconnected everything except my R/T lead.
“It got pretty hot about now. The cockpit was full of glycol fumes and the stink of burning rubber and white-hot metal, and I
No
Vomited a lot. I began to worry about her blowing up. But there were no flames yet, and somehow she kept dragging herself on through the sky, so I stayed put and kept blessing the Rolls-Royce engineers who’d produced an engine with stamina like this. And in no time at all I was passing over Beachy Head.
“I began to think after all I might make one of the airfields. The very next moment, a deep, dull roar like a blowlamp started down under my feet and up she went in flame and smoke.
“As I snatched the R/T lead away and heaved myself up to go over the side, there was a bang and a hiss and a clump of hot, black oil hit me full in the face. Luckily I had my goggles down, but I got some in my mouth and nose and it knocked me right back into the seat, spluttering and gasping. It took me a little while to spit the stuff out and wipe the worst of it off my goggles, and by that time I was down to well under a thousand. If I didn’t get out but quick, my chute wouldn’t open in time.
“It wasn’t the recommended method of abandoning aircraft — I just grabbed one side with both hands, hauled myself up and over, and pitched out, headfirst. As soon as I knew my feet were clear I pulled the rip-
Cord. It seemed to open almost immediately. The oil had formed a film over my goggles again and I couldn’t see a thing. I pushed the goggles up, then it got in my eyes. I was still rubbing them when I hit the ground.”
It was an awkward fall and he wrenched a leg and was severely winded. He was in a field just outside the boundaries of Plovers, the lovely, old-world estate of Lord Cornwallis at Horsmonden, Kent, and several people had witnessed his spectacular arrival. The blazing Spitfire crashed a few hundred yards away in open country. An estate wagon took him to the house, where His Lordship had already prepared a bed and called his personal physician. But Tuck, once he’d stopped vomiting, insisted on getting up to telephone his base — and once on his feet, wouldn’t lie down again. He had a bath, leaving a thick coat of oil on His Lordship’s tub, then despite the doctor’s protests, borrowed a stick and hobbled downstairs in time to join the family for tea.
But after that, very suddenly, exhaustion took him. They helped him back upstairs and he slept deeply for three hours. When he awoke his leg felt better and his host’s son, Fiennes Cornwallis, was waiting to drive him to Biggin Hill, where a spare Spitfire would be available.
“Drop in for a bath anytime, m’boy; His Lordship.
Said
Precisely one week after his parachute escape he was in trouble again. And lucky again.
He had with him Bobbie Holland and Roy Mottram. An unidentified aircraft had been reported off Swansea. A day or two earlier the big oil-storage vats at Pembroke Dock had been hit, and they were still burning fiercely. The great pall of smoke reminded him of that first day’s fighting over Dunkirk. Between 3,000 and 4,000 feet there was a solid shelf of white cloud, and running through this was a distinct, oily black ribbon.
Control told them a small coaster coming up the Bristol Channel was being bombed by a Do-17 and gave them a course to steer. They dived below the cloud and found the ship, but couldn’t see the raider. All at once a plume of spray sprouted just off the coaster’s port bow. Still they couldn’t spot the Domier, but now at least they knew its approximate position and course. At full throttle they flashed over the ship and climbed through the cloud. The topside was smooth as a billiard table. Still nothing. Tuck called to the others to stay up top, on lookout, then nipped back underneath.
As he broke cloud and circled, he spotted the big, logger-headed Domier making another run on the coaster. Another white plume blossomed close by the little vessel. On the deck he could see a group of seamen fighting back gamely with a couple of ancient Lewis guns.
The Dornier saw the Spit curving in at him and quickly pulled up, into the cloud. Tuck followed him in, overtaking very fast. As the blinding whiteness struck the windscreen he throttled back hard — to stay behind him, with luck to catch the vaguest outline of his tail.
The best part of a minute passed. His straining eyes saw nothing. Then came a series of deafening thuds and the Spitfire kicked and leapt like a startled foal.
Christ, he was being clobbered. . . the Hun’s rear gunner must have X-ray eyes! He kicked his rudder savagely, yawing about violently in an effort to get out of the fire, but couldn’t. More thuds, more jolts and shuddering. He narrowed his eyes to slits and shoved his face forward, close to the windscreen. If it could see him, then he ought to see it! But — only the whiteness.
Then his port wing lifted jokingly, and glancing out, he noticed a couple of holes in it. He skidded to the right and at once saw,
Immediately below and very slightly ahead, the shadow outline of the bomber. He’d been sitting almost on top of it! He closed the throttle, dropped down and slid in directly behind it, ignoring the rear gunner’s furious blasts. Then he opened up the engine and edged up on it. From what couldn’t have been more than fifty yards he dealt it a long, steady burst. Then he rose a little to one side, and with his guns roaring again gently brought his nose down slantwise and literally sawed right across it, from starboard engine through the fuselage to port engine and out to the wingtip. The cloud thinned suddenly, and he could see holes as big as his fist appearing all over it. But at this low speed the recoil of the second burst threw him into a stall, and he went hurtling down into the clear air.
His engine was critically damaged, spluttering and rasping and leaking glycol. But as he regained control and brought the nose up he saw the Dornier plunge vertically into the water, less than half a mile from the little ship it had failed to hit.
He called up Bobbie and Roy and told them the score. Bobbie had gone steaming off somewhere after a shadow, but Roy came swooping down, slid in alongside, and took a good look.
“One helluva mess underneath,” he reported — and he spoke with a chuckle in his voice, as if his leader were a schoolboy who’d just driven a cricket ball through the vicar’s greenhouse. “I say, you’re in beastly trouble and no mistake!”
The smashed engine was losing power fast. Tuck decided he was very unlikely to make the shore. It would have to be the chute again. Angrily he made ready to depart, sliding back the canopy, undoing harness and oxygen pipe.
“Going somewhere?” Mottram inquired.
Tuck reached out a hand to disconnect the R/T lead, but surprisingly, the engine began to provide spasmodic bursts of power. He hesitated. The shoreline drew closer. Then a last, gallant pop or two and the Merlin died. Dead ahead there were sheer cliffs with flat, browned grassland on top — St. Gowan’s Head. He had about twelve hundred feet. Only seconds to make the decision, and his judgment had better be precise.
He decided he could just make it. He could stretch his glide and set her down on the clifftops. The ground looked rough: he’d have to make it a belly landing.
He held the speed at a hair’s breadth above the stall mark and, forcing himself to relax, to be delicate and to “feel” every
Inclination of his aircraft, settled down once more to fly for his life.
“Ha! Now you’ve had it!” cried Mottram after they’d descended another two or three hundred feet. “Should’ve gone while you had the chance. You’ll never gox over these cliffs!”
Tuck shot him a hateftil glance. Mottram, no respecter of rank, responded with a hoot of laughter and some rapid-fire V-signs. Predicting disaster was his way of giving comfort.
Right up to the last moment the issue was in gravest doubt. Mottram, irrepressibly pessimistic, stayed right on Tuck’s wingtip all the way, until the crippled Spitfire, fluttering in the first tremors of a stall, grazed the brink of the cliffs and bounced on its belly on sun-cracked, rutted ground. Then he yelled, “Jolly good!” and got out of the way.
Only as he wrestled to set her down again did Tuck remember, with sickening apprehension, that he’d undone his safety straps. No time to rectify that now — he could only hope he’d get away with black eyes and a broken nose, not crack his skull. . . .
Then the tail struck a bump and the Spitfire bounced up again, this time for all of a hundred feet. All hope drained away. Now he would surely stall — a wing would drop, she’d plow in on her back. . . .
She seemed to stop in midair and drop vertically, like a lift, but shaking herself like a dog after a swim. He shoved the stick hard forward and worked the rudder feverishly to try to keep her straight.
Steel bands around his chest, thorax throbbing painfully, damp-faced and dry-mouthed. He was like a man lashed face upward on the guillotine — in another instant he would be watching death hurtling at him. But though the needle was for several seconds distinctly below stalling speed, the Spit didn’t drop a wing. A creature of true breeding, she kept her poise — and suddenly she was responding, she was flying again, she was gliding down smoothly and steadily!
This time he was able to flatten out with a shade more speed, and consequently more control. Out of the comer of his eye he saw Mottram away to the left, very low, going round in a steep bank, watching him. Then he spotted a hedge across his path just ahead and thought, “That’s handy, that’ll break my fall a bit. I’ll try to touch down right on it.” He judged it perfectly. But instead of passing through the leafy barrier, the Spitfire stopped dead, as if she had hit a wall.
She had hit a wall — a dry-stone dike hidden by the hawthorn. She came from eighty miles an hour to a standstill in about
Five feet, but Tuck went right on traveling, out of the seat — luckily not upward, not out of the cockpit, but horizontally, in the general direction of the instrument panel, on and on into an ocean of darkness.
When he awoke, he could remember nothing at first and couldn’t think where he was. No pain, no sound at all. Something was pressing down on his head, though, and a strange piece of metal was wound around his leg. Odder still, he seemed to be all rolled up in a ball.
He stared at the twisted piece of metal and recognized it as the control column. He looked around some more and found he was sitting on the rudder pedals. Then he knew where he was: he was stuffed into the small space under the instrument panel.
There came to his ears, gradually, a faint hissing and dripping, and he caught a whiff of gas. That made him wriggle out very quickly. He walked about ten paces and sat down with a thump. It was a great effort to raise an arm and wave to Mottram’s low-circling machine, but he managed it. Then he decided to have a nice, quiet snooze.
In hospital that night he persuaded a young nursing sister to let him go to the telephone in her office. He was talking to “Mac,” the adjutant at Pembrey, when sud-
Denly he was greatly surprised to find that he couldn’t see anything, not even his hand holding the phone. He just managed to slur out, “Well, g’bye, ol’ boy, g’bye,” and fumble the receiver back on its hook. Then he did a forward somersault into oblivion.
Postaccident shock, they called it, and they kept him on sedatives for two days. When finally he was discharged, he suffered another shock: he had been posted from 92 to 257.
And 257 was a Hurricane squadron!
World History
