Our Father's Generation. F. M. Worden
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was closing on the next one so fast I had to throttle back and hit the flaps to slow my speed a little. It worked fine. Now the rear gunner was firing at me. The blink-blink of his machine gun sent red fire tracers at me, he was missing badly. I squeezed the firing button, dead on, sparks of my tracers showed I was hitting damn good. He began to show black patches of smoke, I must have hit his engine. The Stuka began to shake and flop around, it did a slow roll and dove straight toward the water, and No one had gotten out. I looked to the last one, he was quite a ways ahead. I opened the throttle, I was closing fast. Damn, black smoke flak bursts began to fill my space, Ack-Ack. To my surprise, looking down I was over land, I had flown into France. I banked hard right and did 180, I wanted away as fast as I could. I said out-loud, “I’ll get you Huns some other time.” I just wanted to put distance between me and the Anti-aircraft guns; luck was with the Hun this day.
Out over the Channel, I was feeling darn good, and then it happened. My wind-screen began being covered with green slim. Crap, my engine coolant was leaking, Ack-Ack had scored a hit, in a few minutes my engine would freeze , the coolant was gone, I knew I didn’t have very long as the engine would seize. I was now at three thousand feet altitude and I hadn’t seen any enemy aircraft, luck was with me. I had a heading of dead east toward England; my engine began to miss badly.
The white cliffs were coming closer, I was going down fast. I tried to gain more altitude. “Come up baby, come up.” I kept yelling, “Come up, come up.” No go, I had to get higher or I would crash into the cliffs. I pulled back on the stick with all I had, still no go, I had to ditch. The plane was going down fast, fear grabs at you. What if the plane summersaults? Scary, one dead pilot. My best shot was to drag the tail in the water and try to make a soft landing. Still pulling on the stick, I thought, “Flaps, flaps,” no good.
Still hauling back on the stick, I could feel the tail dragging in the water. All of a sudden the plane stood on her nose, turned to the right, then settled back down. It was all over and I was in one piece. I pushed back the canopy, unhooked the harness and got out on the left wing. The wing was slowly sinking into the water, I crawled over to the right wing.
Looking around, I could see I was in about four feet of water, I could wade to the beach. Looking north, I saw a small boat coming my way, maybe Germans? I pulled my pistol ready to make a fight. As the boat got closer, I could see a woman in the bow waving. As the boat drew up to the wing, the woman yelled, “Jump!” I did right into her arms.
The boat backed out and turned around, we headed north. She said, “Come into the cabin, I want you to meet my husband and father.”
I followed her to the cabin. I soon discovered these people look for downed pilots in the Channel all the time, these are great people. A cup of hot tea and a biscuit, the lady introduced her husband and father. The husband was a rather stout fellow with coal black hair and a friendly smile; he darn near shook my arm off. The father was smoking a stinky pipe, a cap cocked on his head, he gave me a big bear hug and said, “We saw you go after the Huns, we saw you coming back trailing smoke, we headed for the spot where we hoped you would come down, we will take you in.”
“You people do a great job.” I had to ask questions. “Do you pick up many downed pilots?”
The father answered, “Everyday.”
“Enemy pilots?”
“Everyday.”
“Do they give you trouble?”
“Not often; they are happy to be saved. We do run into German boats once in a while, we never have any trouble from them, we both respect what we do.”
In a short hour, we entered a small inlet, leading to a pre-war fishing village. The boat people dropped me and headed back to the Channel. I got a wonderful reception from the villagers. All the food and drink I could take and I got a lot of attention from the children of the village, all kinds of questions. When I told them I was an American, I really got a lot of cheers and they sang, {He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.} I got on the telly and informed the airdrome where I was, I was told to sit tight; a car would come for me.
Just as darkness fell a car arrived, the driver, to my surprise and delight, was none other than the female WAAF, my friend Sarah. I thanked the village people, got in the car and Sarah and I started for the airdrome.
Sarah said very little until I thanked her for coming to pick me up. She got very talkative, “Did you know your R/T was open and sending during your flight.”
“No, I hope I didn’t embarrass anyone with my language, I had no idea you guys were listening.”
“No, the operation room got a real kick hearing you, all of us were praying for you. There’s a pub just ahead, would you like to stop and have a pint?”
“Yeah, I would like that.”
We stopped and had a pint and some fish and chips. The pub was warm and the people friendly. We fighter pilots leave the top button on our tunics undone. People all know when they see that we are fighter pilots. I got a lot of slaps on the back and lots of cheers. It was all a lot of fun for me.
We heard many stories about the dogfights that raged in the sky above them. One older man told us, very proudly, that he had captured three Nazi Airmen when their bomber crash landed in his field. With a shotgun he held the airmen until the home guard came for them. Another said he had pulled a pilot from his burning crashed Spitfire. We heard several similar stories. Lots of cheers after each story.
We both hated to leave such a friendly group. Sarah and I arrived at the airdrome commanding officer’s office around ten p.m.
As I started to leave the car, Sarah grabbed me by the right arm and said, “Tom, I’m becoming very fond of you.” She was such a sweet girl, she pulled me to her and pecked me on my cheek, I hardly knew what to tell her. All I said was, “Good night, you sweet thing.” I hurried into the office, I knew I had a good balling out coming, I was not disappointed. Officer Martin gave me a real tongue lashing for disobeying orders. “Don’t chase the enemy across the Channel again.” Then he said in a demanding voice, “Go get some rest.”
As I left, he said with a big smile, “Jolly good bloody show, old chap, you will get a new Hurricane in the morning.” I gave him a quick salute and headed for my hut. A hot shower and some sleep was all I needed.
At six a.m. on September 15, 1940, I entered the NCO’s mess and got a rousing welcome from my brother pilots. I got a lot of “good shows” and slaps on the back. The roar of aircraft engines filled the morning air, three new Hurricanes arrived. After my breakfast, I hurried out to my park to find Smithy giving my new aircraft a real going over. The ground crew refueled and armed her ready to fly.
I climbed into the cockpit to look her over, she smelled new. An envelope was pinned on the dash, I opened and read the letter inside. The ladies who had worked on the aircraft wrote they would pray every day for my safe time in this machine, six ladies signed the letter. We have great people we have backing us up.
I heard over the loud speaker, “SCRAMBLE!”
Smithy helped to fasten my parachute and seat straps, and then he pulled the wheel chocks. I turned the engine switch on and pushed the starter button. The twelve hundred and eighty horse engine burst with a roar into life. Following my squadron leader, we taxied to the downwind end of the grass airfield, I lined up for takeoff. I followed number seven in my takeoff run. Throttle forward, airborne, we lined up in formation. We headed northeast, climbing all the time. A near cloudless sky greeted us, at ten thousand we leveled out.
The raiders shown on the operations screen appeared below. Six Heinkell-15 float planes were flying at four thousand. I guessed they were going to plant mines in one of the inlets just off the Channel, sitting ducks for us.
“Tally Ho, away we go.” I switched on my firing button, trimmed her and followed the squadron in a dive on the target. I never got off a shot; the first six squadron fighters took out all six floatplanes. We returned to the airfield and landed in about half an hour, a job well done. Most of the remaining morning my squadron sat on alert at the