Aviator Extraordinaire by G J Christopher Paul

Author:G J Christopher Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781594247
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-01-03T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

GERMANY

From my home in Botley I went once more to Henlow where Angus Horne, who was to be my Wing Commander Training in Germany, had thoughtfully left a Mosquito for me to make my journey. It was another Mk VI. The two Merlins had short stub exhausts, and the twenty-four cylinders of the pair produced the same resounding crackle at low speeds and the Merlin noise under power, that one expected from two Spitfires. It was a well kept and particularly nice aeroplane, with only a few hours from new. I was privileged to use it as my own for the whole of my time in Germany. Its number was TA 591 and having inspected and approved what I saw, I loaded my luggage into the bomb bay and flew solo to Manston.

Over the Thames the weather became increasingly foul, and after a short ride of twenty-five minutes I landed at Manston to clear customs. Customs was one of the first signs of encroaching peace. In the old days at Harwell I had been accustomed to shuttle between 13 OTU and 2 Group Headquarters in Brussels direct. Manston was covered in low cloud and a nasty drizzle which limited visibility to a little over a mile. After consulting the meteorological forecaster, I found that this was the western edge of a complicated occlusion whose eastern front already extended well into Holland and towards the Rhine. Prudence, I suppose, would have suggested waiting till it had blown away.

There were no landing or navigation aids at my destination. The aerodrome at Bucheburg, close to the HQ of the RAF in Germany at Bad Oeynhausen had numbers of transport aircraft whose pilots had already made this sensible decision. I met a disconsolate old 2 Group navigator impatiently waiting to get back to his squadron in Germany. We teamed up and set off into the murk. Going high, we agreed, was pointless. This was 2 Group weather so we stuck, never above 300 feet, across the unobstructed sea to Flushing, south of Rotterdam. Then over Dordrecht, and up the Rhine lowlands, towards Nijmegen and to the south of Arnhem, hoping to run into clearer weather. Instead, the gradually higher ground merged increasingly often here and there with dragging wet cloud steamers. Reluctantly we went up a little way into it. We had never flown together before, but I had utter confidence and to my great regret, his name, recorded in my pilot’s log book with gratitude, have been lost with many other things I wish I still had.

So we continued, until he suggested that we might ease down. Carefully we did, slowing down to a rather rumbling 150 knots, probably too fast. Just short of Gutersloh we emerged from the muck, where we fastened on to the autobahn which led us towards Bielefeld, Herford and Bad Oeynhausen and to our destination at Buckeburg aerodrome, exactly one and half hours from Manston.

Near Bielefeld I had my first sight of the massive destruction wrought by Bomber Command.

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