Malta Spitfire by George Beurling

Author:George Beurling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781909166295
Publisher: Grub Street Publishing
Published: 2011-07-13T16:00:00+00:00

HE WENT DOWN VERTICALLY—NOBODY SAW HIM HIT THE DECK, SO I WAS CREDITED WITH A DAMAGED

Almost as soon as we were airborne the orders came over the RT: “Gain angels as quickly as possible!” We did. “Angels” being RAFese for altitude, those four Spitfires went up the big hill together like dingbats and were at 18,000 feet in something better than ten minutes. There Ops came in again: “Party of fifteen enemy aircraft, boys, coming in from Zonkor Point at twenty-one to twenty-two thousand. No big jobs.” That’s “no bombers” to you. It meant that four Spitfires were commissioned to take on almost four times their own number of Me’s and probably Italian Macchis, pretty much the usual odds in that gas-starved country.

We flew line abreast, as we always flew at Malta, the better to watch each other’s tails. The Jerries came down to the attack, peeling off in pairs and diving, after sending down one lone Messerschmitt as decoy. Then the melee started. The Me’s split us and Berkeley-Hill and I found ourselves alone. About four Jerries jumped B-H and as they did I pulled up sharply under one and blew his tail off. He went down vertically and that was the last I saw of him. Nobody saw him hit the deck, but Berkeley-Hill had seen my burst hit, so I was credited with a Damaged.

Meanwhile Jack Rae had tangled with another Hun and pumped lead into him—another Damaged. Daddy Longlegs had tried a head-on attack on an Me and picked up a few bullet holes in his own wings for his trouble. We were all milling around like madmen, the four of us trying to keep our own and each other’s tails clean and at the same time maneuver Jerries into our sights. After about ten minutes the visitors decided to call the whole thing off, put their noses down and high-tailed toward Sicily. Thirty-five minutes after hearing the Scramble Call we were all down again on Takali. That was my first taste of action over the Mediterranean. It had added one Damaged to my meager bag from France, but it had done something more than that—in those brief moments of combat I had proved, to myself, that I had the stuff to match flying and shooting with the gentlemen from Sicily. That is what I had wanted to find out, and find out in a hurry. As we walked away from our Spits, Daddy Longlegs grinned at me and said: “Good show, Beurling!” I felt swell.

Right then the luck soured and 249 was grounded for ten solid days while its Spitfires were taken apart and put together again. To the old-timers the break was more than welcome. While the other squadrons looked after the business of keeping an eye on the enemy (actually the lull was on in earnest, the Hun needing a chance to rest and refit every bit as much as we did—only he, as attacker, was the chooser of time), they could slip

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