大象传媒

A Caulkheads War Part 3

On the night of Sunday August15 1943 the Luftwaffe attacked Portsmouth and with our next door neighbour, my father and I watched procedings from the vantage point on the pavement by our house. We could see an aircraft caught by a searchlight over the target and incredibly even at that distance we could see tracer bullets from the plane descending in the beam of light. Red tracer anti-aircraft fire was slowly making its way upward. We had been watching the general spectacle for some twenty minutes when suddenly there came the piercing whistle of an approaching missile. As I looked towards All Saints Church I saw the strike as a shower of red sparks burst from the north side of its roof. When I turned to talk to my two companions I saw that they were both lying full length on the pavement. They had acted prudently whereas I had been too interested in the direction taken by the oncoming projectile to think of my own safety.
The cause of the explosion was a dud anti- aircraft shell fired from Portsmouth. By a curious but sad twist of fate a young woman was hit in the throat and killed by a shell splinter. She was living near Portsmouth and had come to stay for the weekend with her parents in Ryde to get away from the bombing.
The very next day at about 6.45 pm as I made my way to attend an ATC meeting I was near the same church when the air raid siren sounded. It was one of those cloudless August evenings with a clear blue sky. To the west I could see three vapour trails caused by aircraft flying northwards. I judged them to be somewhere over Cowes and as I watched I saw them reach Southampton then turn East, fly to Portsmouth and turn south towards the Island. The height at which the planes were flying was such that all I could see of them was an occasional glint as one of them was caught by a ray from the westering sun. I have since found out that they were at an altitude of seven miles. When the three aircraft were near Ryde I could see that they were in close vic formation. A small group of people had gathered by the church when we heard the four guns of the Nettlestone battery open fire. An elderly man in the group said "four point sevens - they will never reach them". A few moments afterwards we saw three shellbursts in a perfect line astern of, and tracking the aircraft and then the lead aircraft burst into flames as it was directly hit by the fourth shell. A great cheer went up from the crowd and we watched as the fuselage fell earthward in a curved trajectory. Both wings were severed from the body at their roots and these, very very slowly swung to and fro as they undulated earthwards. The two escorting fighter aircraft immediately fled the scene at full power.
I am not sure whether it was the following or the day after that my friend, the late Vernon Pragnell, told me that he knew where the wings had landed on Ashey Down and suggested that we cycle there to see them This we did and located both wings which lay in adjacent fields.
To our surprise there was no other person there and we spent a liesurely time examining each wing. Our second surprise was to find that there was no sign of damage to either wing despite the distance they had fallen and the explosion of the AA shell.
Vernon, sensible chap, had brought some tools with him and we were able to unscrew an underside wing panel on which the black and white Luftwaffe insignia was painted. Underneath this panel we could see the manufacturer's label proclaiming that this was a Messerschmitt109G. It was the only aircraft of that mark to be brought down over Britain.
The flanges on the ribs and brackets to which the panel had been attached showed the pencil lines (between holes) which were used by a German workman for alignment purposes. I immediately felt an affinity with this unknown German workman because I too marked such lines when working on aircraft parts at Saunders Roe East Cowes.
With our prized souvenirs we set off for Ryde but as we approached the junction with Rosemary lane a soldier on a bicycle overtook us and raced ahead. His purpose became clear when we turned the next bend because there stood a line of soldiers with rifles and bayonets who called us to a halt and confiscated the fruits of our journey. Until recently I imagined that these soldiers were responsible for guarding the aircraft remains and were intent on returning our booty to the proper authorities - but I now know otherwise.
Subsequent to the above events it was rumoured that the body of the pilot fell in Brading reservoir and that his watch was still working.
What a remarkable shot! To aim at a small moving aircraft, at a range of 7 miles and hit it at the junction of fuselage and wings!
'Men aged seventeen and a half can volunteer for aircrew duties'. Thus proclaimed a poster. At the time of reading this I was aged 16 years and became impatient for June 1943 to arrive so that I could enlist. Most civilians were not fully aware of the dangers that bomber crews were subject to, and I for one had the courage of ignorance. Had I known the true facts I would have resisted any and all attempts to get me into a military aircraft.
At last I reached the manly age of seventeen and a half years and volunteered for aircrew. I passed all parts of the medical inspection with flying colours.
There were young men from the Ryde district, slightly older than myself who were already serving in to the RAF. In particular there was one19 year old who I sometimes met when he was home on leave. He was undergoing aircrew training as a Wireless operator/ air gunner and in his service cap he wore the distictive white flash of an aircrew cadet. He was very handsome and looked most dashing. As time passed he completed his initial training and came home minus the white flash and sporting the W.AG brevet on his uniform jacket. Then off he went to an operational training unit and thence to a fully operational squadron. It was the last I was to see of him. Some months afterwards a girl asked me if I had met him on his recent leave and when I replied in the negative she said that he had completed three bombing missions and how he had changed from the smiling fun loving young man that we knew to a withdrawn and introspective individual. He was shot down and killed over France shortly thereafter.
None of this diverted me from my intention to join what I had perceived to be, the band of intrepid RAF aviators. It was as though I was impervious to reality. Such is the power of media campaigns and seductive imagery over young minds. This was at a time when we were hitting the Germans hard with thousand bomber attacks, and the casualty rate among aircrew was mounting. Air gunners were particularly vulnerable and replacements were sorely needed. Such was the state of affairs when I was called to London for aircrew attestation.
The night before going for the tests I had a stroke of luck which may well have saved my life. As I was leaving the ATC headquarters I met the navigation instructor. I knew that he had been a pilot in the first world war but we had never spoken to each other before. "I hear you are going for attestation tomorrow" he said "Take care to stick out for any particular job that you prefer. They will always try to push you towards a job where there is a shortage". It was rumoured that the the mortality rate among air gunners was high but until that moment I was prepared to take any job providing it led to a uniform and an aircrew brevet. There and then I resolved to go for PNB (Pilot/Navigator/Bomb aimer) and nothing else. Inevitably I was assessed as Air Gunner material and when I said no to that offer it was suggested that I enlist for groundcrew duties and, once in uniform apply to remuster to aircrew. To this I agreed and signed on as a sheetmetal worker having been persuaded that it was a group one trade and therefore was the most highly paid. What I wasn't told was that promotion was extremely slow in group one but could be quite rapid in group five, so any pecuniary advantage to be gained in group one was often swiftly countered by a 'bright spark' in a lower group.
As a result of this I received my calling up papers shortly before Christmas 1943. These instructed me to report to RAF Padgate Lancs on January 10 1944, a date four days after my eighteenth birthday. Thereafter I spent 4 years in the RAF as a volunteer for service 鈥淔OR THE DURATION OF THE PRESENT EMERGENCY鈥�.
I emphasise this because when hostilities ceased in August 1945 I was on active service in Palestine but owing to the troubles in that and other overseas regions at the time the newly elected government decided to hold back the return to the UK and demobilisation of RAF personel. This became the source of much rancour and contributed to what was referred to euphemisticaly as the RAF Strikes . Meanwhile demob of Army and RN personel proceded apace. Thus it was that I was not returned to the UK until June 1947 (two years after VE day) and demobbed in January 1948 a sadder and a little wiser man.

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