Free I Sank The Bismarck by John Moffat Page B

anxiously checking their mirrors, their
speed, their legs aching through pressure on the rudder
pedals, their planes shaking as the guns fired. I was the only
one looking up; nobody else was showing any interest in what
was going on above them – they were concerned only with the
cricket. It was difficult to comprehend.
    Shortly after this the squadron was disbanded. However,
before our transfer one strange incident occurred which had a
profound bearing on my life, although if I had known at the
time just how it would affect me I would have been even more
disturbed by it than I was.
    I was on afternoon duty in the air-watch office with a senior
officer. It was another nice summer's day, and I think it was
probably the weekend because everything was quiet. There
were just the two of us, smoking and chatting. On the table
were the telephones linking us to the adjutant's office and the
switchboard, and of course the red 'alert' handset. In a rack
on the wall were three sets of loaded Verey pistols, two with
red flares and one with a green. Suddenly the red phone rang
for an air-raid alert. So we sprang up and switched on our air-raid
siren, which was on a lattice tower. As the horrible wail
of the siren started up, my partner on duty noticed a Hudson
aircraft taxiing out from the Saunders Roe hangar on the
other side of the aerodrome. It kept coming out and lined up
at the end of the runway, turning into the wind. We both
knew how efficient our barrage-balloon operators were by
now; they would spring into action as soon as they heard our
siren. I rushed into the watch room and grabbed both the red
Verey pistols, rushed out and handed one of them to my companion.
He immediately fired it into the middle of the airfield
where it burst lazily, leaving a trail of red smoke. It didn't
seem to deter the pilot of the Hudson, and realizing he was
opening up to take off, I fired the second red Verey pistol.
Sure enough, the balloons were soaring up. To our alarm, the
pilot of the Hudson ignored both our danger signals.
    'The idiot, what is he doing?' I shouted, but there was
nothing else we could do. The aircraft started rolling, reached
speed and took off. He must have been at about 200–300 feet
altitude when he reached the airfield perimeter where several
barrage balloons were stationed. I was tensed, waiting for the
inevitable, horribly powerless to prevent what I knew was
going to happen. I didn't see the pilot make any attempt to
manoeuvre. One wing struck a cable, bits flew off and the aircraft
dived into the ground, where it exploded. We stood there
for I don't know how long, as smoke from the burning
wreckage climbed into the sky. I felt sick. We learned later
that the plane had crashed on to a house in Nutbeam Road,
destroying it and killing both the Mayor and Mayoress of
Eastleigh who lived there.
    The closure of thesquadron meant that I had to make a
choice about what I wanted to do next. I knew that I did not
want to continue training on Skuas. What I knew personally
about them, and what I heard about them in action, made me
think that they did not have much of a future in the Fleet Air
Arm, and their replacements, the Fairey Fulmar, did not look
any more promising.
    One of the functions of the Fleet Air Arm that had been
stressed at different times during our training was to attack
enemy ships, sinking them or damaging them sufficiently
that they could not escape our fleet. There was a slogan that
summed it up: Find, Fix and Strike. We would locate the
enemy by searching vast areas of the ocean from the air, work
out his position and then mount a strike from the air using
bombs or torpedoes. This seemed a way forward that would
enable me to fight back against the enemy. The war was
happening all around me now, and I felt restless and out of it.
The cricket match at which I had been a spectator while the
war was being fought out thousands of feet above my head
had upset me. It was fine for the civilians, who were doing
what