No Longer A Game (Innocents At War Series, Book 3) Page 14

  “Ready to go now, sir. All set up and the engine tested, sir. Armourer sergeant is happy with the gun, sir.”

  Tommy was aware that perhaps for the first time ever, he was not looking forward to taking up a new machine. He could not be convinced that the wedges made sense, although he was sure in another way that they would probably work. Simply, and irrationally, he did not like the plane.

  He sat in, made himself comfortable, put his gloves on and found that the left was inconvenient with the finger flapping. He must have a word with his batman – not a patch on Smivvels. Sergeant Davies had turned up and was fitting himself into a niche in the squadron; a word to him, perhaps, and he would see if Smivvels could be located and transferred. He was delaying, procrastinating even; he signalled to start the engine.

  A matter of seconds, for the engine had been warmed up already; left rudder to counteract the spin of the rotary – not so pronounced as in most, but only an eighty hp Le Rhone – perhaps the effects were less in a monoplane, he did not know. A short take off, and a high rate of climb, most impressive, a good five hundred feet a minute; he wondered why, the wing configuration, perhaps, or the low weight, less than half a ton with the pilot aboard.

  The plane was inherently stable, showed no desire to roll and seemed to resist violent banks and turns, necessitating a heavy hand on the controls, in turn calling for a very rapid response to incipient stall or spin.

  Tommy found himself unhappy with the engine temperature; it was air-cooled but did not seem to be responding to the increased flow of air with speed. He decided he must ask about the experience of the few other users. The spinner at the front was streamlined and looked pretty, but he wondered if it might not be blocking the airflow.

  He took the Morane into level flight and experimented with the blip switch, reducing speed to discover ordinary stall and hence landing speed. Very nearly sixty miles an hour on a machine that would not top eighty-five – it gave a very limited scope to the pilot. Best perhaps to practice his landings. He looked about him and turned into the wind and then proceeded to land and take off and make a circuit, four times in a row. The demand was for precision, and a feel for the wing-warping. Another hour and he would be at home in the machine, he was sure. He landed and taxyed in.

  “She’s hot. Is the spinner blocking the airflow to the engine?”

  The engineering officer allowed that it was not impossible; if he really wanted then he would remove the spinner and they could experiment, but the change to the streamlining could have any sorts of unpredictable effects, and he was rather pleased with his own design for a spinner which he had wanted to try…

  “I want to fly her without a spinner this afternoon, if I may.”

  The Engineer agreed and almost flounced as he turned away after giving the mechanics their orders.

  Major Kite was amused, but took care not to show the least vestige of a smile.

  “Will you let the boys have turns with the Morane, Tommy?”

  “Not yet, sir. I haven’t got the feel of her. Landing speed is high and I suspect that it might be easy to lose her in the last few feet. So light that a gust of wind at ten feet might be very twitchy, sir. Only ninety minutes in the petrol tank, as well. Could be a nuisance in itself. I want to test her without the spinner this afternoon, then try hunting in the morning. I wonder, sir, do you think it would be possible to get close to a balloon before they noticed the RFC roundels?”

  “What a nasty thought, Tommy. Worth trying.”

  The absence of the spinner possibly slowed the Morane by a couple of miles an hour; the difference was minimal, might have been imagination, but it permitted the engine to run at perfectly normal temperature – the overheating was cured. Tommy devoted another hour to his landings, was reasonably satisfied by the time he was finished for the day.

  “Take off a few minutes after dawn, if it ain’t raining.”

  He changed and went in search of Sergeant Davies.

  “Anything on Drongo, Sergeant Davies?”

  “Sent back to England as an instructor last month, sir.”

  “Good. I wonder if you might be able to assist me in the matter of my servant, Sergeant Davies…”

  “Ah, yes, sir. The man Smivvels – is he not here yet? I had thought he was due to arrive today. Mr Arkwright mentioned him when I came here.”

  A tender drove in an hour later, depositing Smivvels outside the Officers Mess; he fell into the hands of the Warrant Officer, was rescued within seconds by the adjutant, who had been forewarned of his presence.

  “Jolly good. Corporal Smivvels, I believe.”

  “Private First Class, sir.”

  “Promotion came through today, Smivvels. Major Stark is waiting for you. Your predecessor has just been transferred to general duties. Off you go.”

  “Sir!”

  Smivvels was appalled at the injury to Tommy’s hand, and horrified by the slackness of the previous servant that had permitted his flying gloves to remain unmodified.

  “Done by morning, sir! Needs his bloody backside kicking, that hopeless apology for a human being does! Oh, won’t I tell him his bloody fortune, sir!”

  “Sorry, Smivvels – ‘tell him his fortune’?”

  “Yes sir: his future includes a punch in the mouth, sir.”

  “Ah! Don’t get caught.”

  “Sir.”

  The sergeant armourer was convinced that a Lewis would have been better than a Vickers, thinking there was an argument for the lesser muzzle velocity of the shorter-barrelled gun; but had personally loaded the belt, guaranteed every round to be good.

  “Get some very poor quality rounds coming from the new factories in England, sir. Inspection is slack in some of them, sir. Off shape rounds is common, sir. Propellant charges inconsistent as well, sir. Can cause a jam if you don’t check every round you put into a belt. Gun itself is air-cooled, sir, rather than the normal water jacket; probably works better, sir. Get a flow of air at eighty miles an hour and naturally cold at height – should prevent any expansion of the metal, sir. Two-bladed propeller, sir, should not interfere too greatly with the firing rate – though I wish it did not rely on these wedges. Would it be possible to make a steel airscrew, sir? Instead of wood, that is?”

  “Damned if I know, sergeant!”

  “No, sir. I suppose you would not. You get on with the flying, sir. I’ll have a look at what’s possible.”

  There was a pair of Drachen balloons behind the lines, not more than twenty minutes flying time from the field; they were surrounded by their normal defences of machine-guns and quick-firing cannon.

  Tommy flew directly towards the balloons, tethered at three thousand feet, saw men running to the guns at the sound of an aircraft engine. He picked out the figures of officers waving them back to their normal duties – it was a mid-wing monoplane, which the English did not fly; must be a Fokker, or a Pfalz perhaps – they were all very similar. No doubt they thought he was simply familiarising himself with this part of their lines, flying a little closer than was normal.

  Tommy raised a hand and waved, saw a number of salutes in return. He turned in towards the nearer balloon, levelling off some forty yards from the wicker basket carrying the pair of observers, the men straightening up as they realised something was wrong. He opened fire with a burst that shredded the basket, and its occupants – trained and valuable artillery observers - then raised his nose to stitch a line of bullets along the rear of the balloon. The second was nearly a hundred yards distant and he managed a burst of two seconds before putting the Morane into the steepest possible climb.

  He banked away from the outraged bursts of fire, saw that one of the balloons was deflating slowly, its fabric torn just sufficiently to allow significant amounts of gas to escape.

  He turned for home – it was not possible to reload the Vickers in the air and he must have used a significant part of the belt. He landed after less than an hour, satisfied with his first patrol.

  There were
rain clouds looming in the west and he was fairly certain that he would not fly again that morning, possibly not for the rest of the day. He would have to delay his reconnaissance of Belgium behind the lines till later in the week. He reported the results of his attack to Brains and then retired to the Mess for the breakfast he had skipped before flying.

  The Bristol Flights were sat to table already, returned from their own dawn adventuring. A quick count showed the correct number of heads, including Noah.

  “Was that you playing with the balloons, Tommy? We were off dropping hundred-pounders in the vicinity of some cookhouses a couple of miles behind the lines. Don’t think we actually hit anything, but we probably gave a few Huns indigestion. Joe spotted a pair of bent balloons and pointed them out to me.”

  “Half-blind Huns, Noah – they saw a monoplane pottering out of the west and assumed it was a Fokker. We exchanged waves before I shot up the basket of one and tried popping the other.”

  “Works once, that sort of trick, Tommy,” Noah commented warningly.

  “Not considering making it a habit, Noah. But the next Fokker who gets anywhere near a Drachen is going to be very upset.”

  They chuckled, envisaging the scene of outrage.

  “What did you see, Noah?”

  “One being lowered, nothing underneath it that I could see. The other was sagging down on its tether, parachutes close by. I suspect they started to haul it down and the pull ripped at the fabric so they had to stop and let it come down of its own accord. I told Brains.”

  “Good. Trenchard will boom away merrily on the strength of that. The Army hates balloons and likes to hear of them being nobbled. Here comes the rain, Noah!”

  There was a subdued cheer through the Mess followed by a call for tea and toast, for coffee and biscuits as they prepared to spend an idle morning.

  “You have a range of a little more than one hundred and twenty miles, Tommy. That won’t take you very far over Belgium.”

  Tommy stared at the map and was forced to agree with his CO.

  “Add to that, sir, things look different at night, so there ain’t a lot of point to peering at them in the daytime. Scrap the reconnaissance, I think, sir.”

  “Definitely, Tommy. Trenchard wants you to go out on a series of lone patrols over the lines, searching for any targets that may be available. He thinks it is possible that if there are four or five of you out at random and picking off the occasional two-seater then the Fokkers may be pulled into chasing you, and leave the poor little BEs and REs alone, to an extent. He knows that escort ain’t possible so wonders if decoys might work. He said as well that he is aware of the dangers involved, but he thinks that if anyone can do it, you can. Try it for a week and then he wants you to ‘do the pigeons’, whatever that means.”

  “What it is to be known to the brass! I am so good, they must work me to death. Can I borrow Blue and Joe and Micky to show them how the Morane works, sir, and let them have the chance to go out? They will probably be flattered at the opportunity.”

  Major Kite gave his permission, reluctantly, as he was not sure he approved of letting young pilots loose out of sight. They had no sense of mortality – death happened to other people who were not as good as them – and would casually take ludicrous risks.

  “Balloons are forbidden, Tommy. Tell them that. There is a rumour from Intelligence that a Fokker was shot down earlier in the week having strayed within range of a Drachen. Much bad temper, no doubt. Trenchard was heard to laugh as he read the report. By the way, you have not told me the significance of the pigeons.”

  “For those mad buggers in Belgium, sir. They spy on the Hun and then post their reports by pigeons. They need some more, it seems. I don’t think I can imagine anything more brave, sir; cold-bloodedly living under the Germans’ noses and spying, for a year now and no end in sight – one mistake and they’re shot.”

  “Takes some doing, Tommy. They have my respect.”

  “Obviously, sir, the Brigadier should not have explained the details to me – the fewer who know about it, the less the risk. I was told recently that the Hun has hundreds of spies in France.”

  “Then silent I shall be, Tommy.”

  Patrolling was all very well as an idea, Tommy mused, but it helped to have a petrol tank that was good for more than ninety minutes. Half an hour used up in getting across the lines and back home again; fifteen minutes that he did not dare use because the petrol gauge was untrustworthy; forty-five minutes maximum actually doing the job, and if he climbed too high, that was reduced by an amount that he could not predict, petrol consumption varying dramatically with the rate of climb. Really, he had no more than thirty effective minutes on each patrol.

  He went out four times on his first day and saw nothing, mostly he suspected because winter was coming in and cloud cover was heavy and he spent more time searching for clear air than he did hunting for the Hun. It was all great fun, or should have been, but perhaps he no longer possessed the light spirits of boyhood; it reminded him almost of the happy days before the war when he would sometimes go wandering along the valleys between the clouds, occasionally venturing into their very edges just to enjoy the colours and change in the light. Now, twitching every time he banked between two black rain clouds for not knowing what might be on the other side, he was less enthralled.

  The second day dawned clearer, but with cloud in the far west, almost certain to travel towards the field. Tommy felt obliged to meet Trenchard’s demands, to fly while he had the opportunity. He took off without bothering with breakfast, almost glad of the excuse – he was finding eating less enjoyable these days, his belly full of acid and churning after every meal.

  The wind was strong, picking up as he climbed and blowing the light machine to the east; he decided that any patrol would be much curtailed – he might find himself travelling at no more than thirty miles an hour across the ground when he turned back to the west.

  He struck lucky within minutes, spotting a two-seater biplane at a thousand feet, a large camera visible on its starboard side, pointing vertically down, the observer busy with navigation, bringing the pilot towards the exact location for their work. There was a machine-gun mounted on the rear cockpit, but the observer was too much occupied with his map to sit at it, ready in defence. They were still over their own trenches, evidently planning to cross at the nearest possible point to their target and spend the minimum amount of time over enemy territory.

  Tommy held back for a while, placing himself for a diving attack from the front, intending if necessary to climb and then come back under the tail, where the machine-gun could not traverse. If he was very lucky, he would force the biplane down behind the trenches where it could be captured and examined. He waited, watching the sky around him; he had no wish to discover the hard way that the two-seater was no more than a decoy.

  Four minutes and the German plane was crossing the trenches, the observer already busy with the camera. Tommy wondered just what the plane was – it was new to him, not the familiar old Aviatik. Even more reason to bring it down on the British side of the lines. He began his dive, controlled, not so steep that he would cross his target too quickly. He fired a short burst, as he brought his nose onto the engine, probably not hitting the cockpit. He zoomed and banked hard, swinging back onto the tail, seeing that the engine was stopped. He fired deliberately high and saw the two men both raise their hands.

  It had happened in the past; surrender was a legitimate, and sensible, option when the plane was crippled. He held back and watched as the pilot tried to glide in on flat mud close to the support trenches, saw him make a very respectable job of it. The crew helped each other out and then stood back as infantry ran across to them and took them captive. Quite correctly, the Germans made no attempt to set fire to the plane – that would have been a breach of their surrender, would have been dishonourable and would have rendered them liable to court-martial and the firing-squad.

  That was number five, Tommy realised – th
e French would say that made him an ace. He wondered which suit it was – Hearts was strictly for the Lotharios; Diamonds for the wealthy; that left him Clubs or Spades – he would have to take advice. Noah would have a comment to make on the issue, probably very rude.

  Sufficient unto the day, or the patrol at least; he went home.

  “One two-seater of unknown type, Brains. Forced down behind our lines, crew captured and no fire, so there should be something to learn.”

  The wind was rising, the clouds not more than an hour distant; no more flying for the morning at least. The mechanics agreed, were pushing the planes into their hangars. Tommy wandered inside and asked the mechanic what, if any, damage he had done to the propeller.

  “Can see a few grazes, sir, but nothing to show any damage, as such. What is interesting, sir, is this pair of rips in the fabric back here.”

  The sergeant pointed to a tear towards the side of the cockpit and another closer to the engine.

  “Wrong angle for ground fire, sir. I reckon those are ricochets off the wedges.”

  “I fired two short bursts, that was all. Can’t have been fifty rounds between them. How many would have come back if I had fired off the whole belt?”

  “Can’t tell, sir. Too many variables. Might be no more would have come this way; could be half a dozen.”

  Tommy did not like the Morane; he had not liked it at first sight and was no more in love with it now. He prayed for a wet week.

  The afternoon was dry and the grass was usable two hours before dusk; the mechanics pushed the planes out.

  Tommy took off first – showing the enthusiasm that was his trademark. Many of the ground crew cheered as he taxyed out.

  He swore and swallowed and looked around him – the sky was empty, clean in fact, the weather all gone and leaving a colder, bright promise of winter. He adjusted scarf and gloves and tugged on his belt and turned into the light wind and raced down the grass and up, climbing hard on impulse. Normally, he would control his ascent, but this time he wanted to get to five thousand and quickly, purely because his habits might have been observed and it was wise to do things differently at intervals.