WINGED HUNS AND THE TALE OF THE I.O.
I.
Down in the Straits of Dover there was now in being a barrage which put
the fear into the hearts of the crews of the German submarines.
All night long, across the narrow channel between the white chalk
cliffs of Dover and Calais, a line of armed trawlers lit up the waves
with brilliant flares, and prevented the U-boats from slipping through
on the surface.
Beneath the water were nasty devices which, when encountered by an
Undersea-boat trying to creep through submerged, brought its crew to a
sticky end, and reduced the cunning mechanism of the submarine to scrap.
Between the coasts of England and France two cables were laid on the
bottom, parallel to each other, and some distance apart. These cables
had hydrophones on them at frequent intervals. A hydrophone is a water
telephone. If a noise is made in the water, say by the twin propellers
of a submarine revolving, the sound is picked up by the diaphragm in
the hydrophone, which is similar to the diaphragm in a telephone, only,
of course, bigger.
An enemy submarine going up or down through the Straits under water
would cross one and then the other of these cables. His propeller
noises would be picked up by the nearest hydrophones, and the listeners
in the silent cabinets on the English coast could tell in which
direction he was travelling, and his approximate position.
The skippers of the trawlers, those born hunters of Fritz, would be
warned by wireless, and would hasten to the place and shoot a row
of nets--that is, lay them while under weigh across the path of the
submarine. On these nets were hung mines, and the mines were connected
to the trawlers by electric cables. The nets were made of wire, and had
a large mesh, were very light, and each had a buoy which floated on the
surface.
The Commander of a submarine running blind would barge into a net, drag
it along, and the mines would be pulled in against the sides of his
boat. The surface buoy would bob all the same as a fisherman's float.
The skipper of the trawler, watchfully waiting, would press a heavy
finger on the correct button.
The mother-ship in the German harbour would wait in vain for the return
of her criminal son.
This was only one of the many methods of counter-frightfulness adopted,
and so efficient were these Naval devilments that Fritz began to go
north-about through the Fair Island Channel between the Orkneys and
Shetlands, navigating south down the west coast of Scotland by sounding
on the hundred fathom line, and the occupation of Felixstowe, so far as
the intensive hunting of submarines was concerned, was gone.
But there were still a few Fritzes about, the Beef Trip had to be
protected, and a demand arose for reconnaissance patrols in the Bight.
Also the Hun had developed a fast monoplane fighter seaplane, with
all its guns on the top line, and specially designed for fighting the
flying-boats near the water.
These monoplanes, which were nasty fellows, carrying little fuel and
fighting on their own front doorstep, were based on Zeebrugge in
Belgium and the Island of Borkum in the Bight of Heligoland. In the
fighting which now ensued the flying-boats, although designed for
weight carrying and distance and not for fighting, held their own. A
complete record of all encounters show honours even; besides which the
flying-boats carried out their job o' work.
With the new year American pilots began to arrive for the War Flight.
The first was Ensign Vorys, U.S.N., and Ensigns Fallen, Potter,
Sturtevant, Hawkins, and Scheffelin quickly followed. They were
splendid chaps, keen on flying, and could not be kept out of the air.
They had all the fresh enthusiasm for the war which everybody that came
in in 1914 and 1915 had possessed, and regarded patrolling, which the
old hands looked on as a hard and exacting business, as a novel and
entertaining sport. One of their number, who arrived a little later,
looped the loop in a six-ton flying-boat; a feat which had not been
performed before, and has not been tried since.
There was the deepest sorrow in the mess when Ensign Sturtevant and
Ensign Potter were shot down. They were charming messmates, splendid
pilots, and very gallant gentlemen.
[Illustration: Hun Monoplane diving in to shove home an attack.]
The new year opened badly.
On the 2nd, in a thirty-knot wind, Gordon took off the harbour in a
new type boat. As he rose from the water a petrol pipe failed, and not
having height to turn he landed her outside down wind. She touched
the water at a rate of knots, her bottom split open, and she sank in
shallow water. Before she sank Gordon and his crew were taken off by a
motor-boat.
The Old Man of the Sea organised a salvage party.
Jumbo boiled about in the sheds setting alight his trusty henchmen, and
collected an amazing assortment of wire cables, ropes, balks of timber,
flares, anchors, and what else I know not. The station tug _Grampus_,
the steam hissing from her safety-valve through the zeal of her fireman
(for the usual unexciting job of the crew was to bring bread and beef
from Shotley, and this was an adventure), took the O.M.O.T.S.'s pet,
the flat-bottomed salvage barge, in tow. They took it out and anchored
it to windward of the wreck, but nothing further could be done until
low water, which was at nine o'clock.
In the darkness of the night, in the shadow of the sheds, Jumbo
collected his piratical crew and packed them into the _Grampus_. I
asked to be taken along, and we all shoved out through the guardships
into the open sea. We could not get near the barge owing to the shallow
water, and Jumbo forsook us, climbing with five of his satellites into
a small dingey, which, perilously overloaded, bobbed away over the
heavy sea into the darkness.
A long wait. The tug was rolling and tossing in the steep waves. A
drizzling rain was falling. There were no shore lights, and the night
was pitch-black. And then there was a glare of light in the distance,
Jumbo had lit one of the acetylene flares on the stern of the salvage
barge. The glare increased, and presently a light came bobbing over the
water towards the tug,--it was a lantern in the bow of the dingey. I
climbed across and was ferried to the scene of activity.
It was a weird sight.
Five hissing acetylene flares surrounded the wreck with a fierce glow.
Intense darkness all around, and in the brilliant pool of light a
section of tossing waves, the flying-boat with her lower wings showing
on the surface of the water, and the oilskin-clad men working on her.
The wind was dying down, and as the tide fell the force of the waves
was broken by the shoals over which they had already passed and by the
barge.
Jumbo took a short wire rope, with a wire hawser attached midway
between the two ends, and had it worked down from the bow beneath the
flying-boat. The ends were made fast to the engine bearer-struts, the
men tying the knots under water, as the tide was now rising. Other men
had made and fitted a wire sling for each engine, and to these two
lines were made fast and taken to the barge. The slack in the wire
hawser and the two lines was hauled in, and as the incoming tide raised
the barge the flying-boat was lifted clear of the bottom.
As soon as the water was deep enough Jumbo had the anchor heaved up
and two motor-boats took the barge in tow. The flying-boat, supported
on the surface by its lower wings moving through the water, followed
after. It was towed by the two lines attached to the engines, the wire
bridle under the bow preventing it nose-diving.
The Old Man of the Sea processioned into the harbour in triumph. First
the _Grampus_, then the two motor-boats, then the barge, and finally
the flying-boat. He beached her at the Old Station at nearly high
tide. A line was taken ashore and attached to a motor lorry. As the
tide came in the boat was pulled farther and farther up the beach by
the motor lorry, until it could be brought in no farther.
A gang of carpenters were turned out of their hammocks and placed
shores under the wings to keep the boat on an even keel, and when the
tide fell they patched the holes in the hull with three-ply wood and
canvas.
At the next high tide the boat was floated off, towed to a slipway, put
on a trolley and rolled up to a shed for repair. She was ready again in
March, and carried out many more patrols.
During January 1918 there were only nine flying days, and although
there were sixteen patrols carried out, no submarines were sighted.
About this time many disquieting rumours were circulating concerning
the joining of the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps
into a new service--disquieting because the sea-going men of the
R.N.A.S. felt that they were nearer in spirit and work to the sailors
than to the soldiers. Also the R.N.A.S. was a small show, the total
personnel being about forty thousand, and it was felt that under new
and unsympathetic management the work would suffer, work the value of
which was just being recognised by a stern parent, the Navy.
II.
Fighting now commenced to be more or less common, the interference from
the German fliers getting more intense as time went on.
The prime mover of the Huns seemed to be Commander Christianson, a
full-out merchant and apparently a sportsman, who was credited by the
Felixstowe pilots with developing the fast little monoplane seaplane.
He was stationed first at Zeebrugge, and when the harbour was wrecked
by the Navy and mopped-up by the Army, after being thoroughly bombed by
the Royal Naval Air Service, he went to Borkum.
He had been in the merchant service, but his wife had objected to his
occupation as being too dangerous, and he had taken up seaplane flying
before the war. He now led the pilots of the Marine Krestenflegen
Abteilung Flandern, and he and his pilots were as hard as their name is
to pronounce correctly.
The Germans did not develop flying-boats, because the work their pilots
had to do was different from the work of the British pilots. One big
four-engined boat was built, a horrid-looking monoplane, with fuselage
sticking out behind, but it was crashed at Warnemünde on its trial
flight, killing eight men.
The British wanted to bomb the submarines and carry out reconnaissance
off the German coast--the Germans wanted to stop them. Therefore the
British built big machines for long distance and weight carrying, and
the Huns built small handy machines for fighting. The boat type is most
convenient for bomb-carrying and long reconnaissance; the float type
for a light two-seated fighter.
The flying-boats, owing to their weight and two engines, were slow to
manœuvre. They were fitted with four gun positions, one in the bow and
three in the tail. The gun mounting in the bow commanded almost all the
forward hemisphere and a fair part of the rear over the top plane. But
the three gun mountings in the boat behind the planes did not together
have sufficient field of fire to protect the boat from an attack from
the rear. In fact a boat did not have the fighting value of a machine
with a single gunner who could fire in all directions--that is, the
value of a single-seated scout.
There are a good many yarns about the fighting.
There is the yarn of the three flying-boats looking for submarines out
near the North Hinder.
The pilots were surprised by seven Huns who dived out of the clouds and
sat upon their tails.
The leading boat was set on fire.
The pilot dived for the water. But before he got there his crew,
seizing the fire-extinguishers which the boats always carried, put out
the fire, and he climbed up again.
But the formation was broken and a dog-fight commenced.
One boat was brought down, but on the way to the water the engineer
shot down a monoplane in flames.
A second boat was brought down, but at the same time the combined fire
of its guns crashed an enemy two-seater.
And then, as the enemy having had enough drew off, the third boat, its
tanks and engines riddled with bullets, had to land.
So all three boats were down forty miles from shore.
The pilots of the first boat, the engines of which were completely
disabled, were taken off by a destroyer and their boat taken in
tow. The pilots of the other two boats plugged the bullet-holes in
the bottoms and repaired their engines sufficiently well to taxi to
England, where they arrived next morning.
There is also the story of the pilots who went out early one morning
for an airing in an obsolete boat.
Five Huns met them off the Galloper Shoal and interrupted their
promenade. They were shot down, crashed in the water, and turned bottom
side up.
But all the crew got out safely and sat on the bottom of the boat. It
was floating in a pool of pure petrol spilt out of its huge tanks, and
the air was scarcely fit to breathe owing to petrol fumes. Said the
wireless operator to the first pilot--
"Sir, may I smoke?"
The crew were later rescued by two flying boats sent out to look for
them.
But only the beginnings of the fighting are recorded, as most of the
fighting took place after the 12th of April--the date on which this
yarn ends.
The first success in the fighting fell to Clayton and Adamson in _Old
'61_ on February 5.
They were out in the Spider Web with another boat looking for
submarines when they found trouble. Five enemy seaplanes dived out of a
cloud in formation and settled on their tail. The accompanying boat was
some distance ahead, and the surprise was complete.
The engineer and wireless operator dived into the stern and got the
rear guns in action. Clayton waggled the tail from side to side in
order to give each man a clear field of fire alternately.
One of the enemy dived in to shove home an attack, and Robinson, the
engineer, put a long burst from his machine-gun into his engine. The
Hun side-slipped, struck the water at speed, the floats collapsed, and
the seaplane disintegrated into a twisted mass of wreckage.
The remaining four enemy seaplanes drew off, and the boats carried on.
But on February 15 the Huns got their own back.
Faux and Bailey in one boat, and Purdy and Sturtevant in another, were
twenty-five miles past the old position of the North Hinder--for this
light-vessel, so familiar to the pilots at Felixstowe, had been removed
by the Dutch authorities.
The pilots were some distance apart booming along looking for
submarines, when seven winged Huns fell upon them. Purdy made a
right-hand turn and steered in a south-westerly direction. Faux opened
out his engines and started to turn after him; but his port engine
failed, and he swung away to the left, thus opening the distance
between himself and Purdy.
Faux found the air mixture control lever had moved forward with the
throttle and had shut down one engine; but in the few seconds he took
to put this right, three of the enemy were on top of him and four were
on Purdy's tail.
Purdy was crashed in flames.
Faux now had five enemy seaplanes attacking him. He turned for England
and roared over the sea, followed by the enemy. Each time they dived
in they were met by a burst from the rear guns. Finally they kept
well astern and sniped from long range. A bullet wrecked the two
wind-driven petrol pumps, and the wireless operator had to leave one
of the rear guns and pump up petrol by hand.
For thirty minutes the chase continued, and then Faux ran in to a bank
of mist. When well in this he turned sharply to the right, the Huns
overran him, lost him, and he returned safely to harbour.
This was the first boat shot down by the enemy, and there was sorrow in
the Mess over the loss of the crew, both pilots being exceedingly fine
fellows, and the ratings held in high esteem by their messmates.
Outside of the fighting February was a quiet month, there being only
eleven flying days in all.
III.
First the skirmish and then the fight.
March the 12th was a fine day, and three boats in formation were thirty
miles off the Dutch coast. There was nothing in sight; the sea, the
horizon, the sky, were clear. And then there were five Huns. It is as
sudden as all that.
The enemy pilots, owing to the greater hand-ability of their
light-float seaplanes, could attack how and when they pleased.
The pilots of the boats kept close formation in order to protect
each other. The Huns attacked from the rear. The air was full of
tracer-smoke. Such a heavy crossfire was developed from the stern guns
that the enemy did not shove home an attack.
Twice the pilots of the flying-boats altered course, and twice the
Huns tried to break the formation as they did so, for with the two
alterations of course the boats were headed for England. The pilots of
the boats had dropped their bombs in order to lighten themselves for
manœuvring in case they were separated.
As the eight machines roared over the sea the pilots of the boats saw a
small enemy submarine directly ahead. It was a dirty brownish colour,
with net-cutters at the bow and jumping cables from bow to stern. Four
men were on the conning-tower.
When the boats passed over the U-boat the bow-gunners fired at it, the
stern-gunners were shooting at the Huns, and the Huns were shooting at
the flying-boats. Near the Outer Gabbard buoy the enemy turned to the
left and buzzed off.
Three more boats were run down the slipway.
One failed to get off, but the other two boomed out to look for the Hun.
Tiny and Fallon were in the leading boat, and Webster and Rhys Davis
were in the second. It was a misty day.
Sixty miles out from land the pilots saw in front of them five little
specks upon the water. As they came up with them they saw they were
five Hun seaplanes waiting to attack our patrols, sitting on the water
in order to conserve petrol.
Tiny and Webster drew close together until they were wing-tip to
wing-tip. They dived at the hostile formation at a roaring hundred
knots. The pilots of the five seaplanes started their engines,
scuttered along the water, leaving five white streaks behind them, and
took to the air in a good V formation.
But Tiny and Webster had the superior position: they were above and
behind the enemy, and height to a flying-man is what the weather-gauge
is to a seaman in a sailing-ship. They saw a ball of green fire shot
out by the pilot of the leading Hun machine. At the signal each of the
Huns turned sharply to the left and were in line ahead, flying at right
angles to their previous course.
Sacrificing some of their height to increase their speed, the
boat-pilots fell on the enemy line, their bow guns going. But now the
Huns flew in a big circle, in order to protect each other's tails, with
the two boat pilots in the centre.
But this formation was a mistake. For only the gunners in the two enemy
two-seaters could each bring one gun to bear on the boats, while the
gunners in each boat could bring a broadside of three guns to bear on
the Huns.
Nicol, the wireless operator of _Old '61_, put a burst from his
machine-gun into one of the two-seaters. It remained on its course
for a moment, the bow rose, and it zoomed into the air until it was
vertically upright. At the top of its climb it seemed to hang for a
moment stationary, the propeller futilely revolving. Then its tail slid
into the water four hundred feet below. As it drove into the water
tail first the wings were torn off and floated on the surface, but the
fuselage containing the engine, and with the pilot and observer, kept
right on and vanished.
Now the remaining four Huns dived for the water, got into line ahead,
and started for the Belgian coast.
But this manœuvre again left the flying-boats with the advantage of
height, and they crashed down on the enemy, broke his line, the four
Huns scattering in all directions. Tiny and Webster now picked out
individual machines, separated, and went after them.
Webster was in _Old '61_. She was full of bullet-holes, and the front
main spar on the lower port wing was shattered. But he drove down on
top of a single-seater, his gunners got several bursts home, and the
Hun side-slipped down into the water on one wing, making a reasonably
good landing. The fight swept on leaving him behind.
Tiny attacked the second two-seater. A bullet from the gun of the Hun
observer found a billet in the neck of the wireless operator, Grey.
He collapsed in a welter of blood. The engineer, leaving his gun for
a moment, seized the Red Cross outfit, broke the water-tight box open
with a kick, and administered first aid.
In the meantime Tiny passed immediately over the two-seater. The
machines were so close that the bow gunner found himself face to face
with the Hun observer. He saw him working furiously to clear a jam in
his gun. He fired a burst, and the Hun collapsed over the side of the
fuselage. The two-seater side-slipped and nose-dived towards the water,
but the pilot regained control before he touched, and made off at right
angles close to the water and one wing very much down.
Webster was on top of the two remaining Huns, who had now closed in to
each other, and Tiny joined him. But the boat pilots could not close
with the enemy to decisive range. All the remaining ammunition was
passed forward to the front gunners, who sniped at long range, the Huns
gradually opening out their lead.
When all their ammunition was expended, Tiny and Webster turned for
home. The fight had lasted for thirty-eight minutes. Over a hundred
bullet-holes were counted in _Old '61_.
Chief Steward Blaygrove announced dinner.
It had been a busy day, everybody was weary, and we began to file into
the mess with a feeling of pleasure.
IV.
The telephone bell rang.
Our new Intelligence Officer, a man of infinite energy, answered the
call.
He had arrived the previous day, and as he had never been on a
flying-boat station before, he examined everything with microscopic
care. He installed a new system of operation orders, put in a new
method for keeping records and signals, and arranged for the building
of a new and spacious intelligence hut. He had gone to bed about
midnight after confiding in me that after France he was going to have
an easy time.
But on this morning he had been up at two o'clock and had been working
furiously all day, without a chance of luncheon or tea. He now followed
me into the mess and said--
"There are four Hun destroyers off the North Hinder position; the
S.N.O. wants three boats sent out."
Giving one hungry glance at the table, he hastened away to the
intelligence hut to prepare the operation orders.
As the three flying-boats were rolled out on the slipway and their
crews climbed on board, four lean destroyers glided down the harbour
in line ahead and passed out between the guardships, bound on the same
errand.
The three boats were shoved down the slipway, the pilots took to the
air at eight o'clock and rapidly disappeared from our sight seaward in
the gathering dusk. The boom of the engines tailed out and ceased. All
was silence.
With the little group of pilots on the slipway I returned to the mess
to finish my interrupted dinner.
But the I.O., who had not even had a plate of soup but was very
conscientious, was now encamped in the Flying Office, where he seemed
to be sending a tremendous number of signals. He also had a long yarn
with the Fire Commander in charge of the harbour searchlights and
batteries, warning him to look out for the returning flying-boats.
Shortly after nine o'clock he received a telephone message from a
coastguard stationed some ten miles up the coast, that one boat was
returning. He joined me on the slipway and we stood together in the
velvety darkness listening. But all we could hear was the tide gurgling
around the piers beneath us. Presently we heard a faint zoom-zoom far
in the distance, and then the unmistakable full-throated roar of the
twin engines.
The pilot passed over us at six hundred feet, shedding red signal
lights, but all that we could see of him were the four pointed flames
standing back from the exhaust-pipes. There was to be a full moon,
but it did not rise until later. The song of the engines ceased as the
pilot shut them off and glided down. And then he was on the water and
being towed into the slipway by a motor-boat.
Her crew came ashore and reported that they had been out to the
position required and had seen nothing. The I.O. retired to the silence
cabinet and got busy. He was carefully writing down and numbering each
signal he sent or received in order to enter them in a big book he had
started to keep.
A thick mist began to creep in from the sea. It swallowed up Harwich,
the guardships, the destroyers at anchor, the trawlers lying on our
landing water, the buoys, and the slipways.
At ten o'clock we heard the second boat returning. The Fire Commander
switched on his searchlights to show up the water to the pilot, but
the beams were diffused in the mist and the harbour was filled with a
yellow luminous haze.
Through this haze we saw the flying-boat travelling at a tremendous
pace. And we heard a loud smack. The pilot had hit the invisible water
at speed. Up and up through the shining mist we saw thrown the black
silhouette of the boat. It seemed to pause for an instant. We held our
breath. Then the bow fell, and she nose-dived into the water with a
sickening crash of breaking wood. She weighed six tons.
Immediately all the ships in the harbour added their searchlights to
the glare. We saw the boat standing in an amazing fashion on her nose,
her tail vertically upright, and resting on the leading edges of the
wings.
Two motor-boats detached themselves from the slipway and raced to
the wreck. Their crews found that the bow of the boat had broken off
complete at the wings. The crew had been spilled out of her like
peas out of a pod. The wireless operator and engineer were picked up
uninjured, and then Faux, who had a slight scratch on his forehead.
Finally they found Bill Bailey, the second pilot, paddling around
in the water, his chart-board under one arm, unhurt, but very much
distressed because he had dropped the weighted code-book, for the loss
of which he would have to fill in innumerable forms.
Going out in a motor-boat I attached a rope to the tail of the wreck,
pulled her over backwards, towed her in, and beached her at the Old
Station. The harbour was again in darkness, all the searchlights had
been switched off.
[Illustration: The boat that stood on its nose.]
As this excitement died down a wireless signal was picked up from the
third boat. It was incomplete, and said something about "gun flashes"
and "Belgian coast." It was of course picked up by other wireless
stations. It lit up the whole east and south coast. Signals poured in
from the Harwich flotilla, the Dover patrol, Group Headquarters, the
Admiralty, and the Air Ministry. Everybody in England seemed spoiling
to get in on the fight. The I.O. stood at the telephone taking down
signals, until the silence cabinet looked as though it had contained a
snowstorm.
I panicked over to the wireless hut. Here, in the sound-proof cabinet,
behind the double glass door, sat two operators, receivers clipped on
their ears, listening intently. One of them closed a switch, a motor
behind me buzzed, there was a series of sharp cracks, and the room was
lit up by a steely electric glare. It was the spark jumping across the
rotary gap, one of the operators had crashed a wireless signal out into
the night. The buzz of the motor ceased. I looked through the glass
doors--the two operators, with intent faces, were again listening.
Spring-heeled Jack opened the door, said a word to the operators, and
then went to the telephone. He was put through to the harassed I.O.,
and said--
"I am sending out the call sign of the boat every five minutes, but so
far she has not answered, and I cannot make anything more out of her
first signal than I gave you. It was very faint, and there was a good
deal of interference."
I went back to the flying office.
At eleven o'clock the I.O. received a hostile aircraft warning. All
lights on the station were extinguished, and the hands turned out to
stand by their dug-outs, which had been constructed after the Gothas
had raided the station twice in daylight. The I.O. seemed glued to the
telephone taking in signals. The first one ran--
"Hostile aircraft attacking light-ship in Thames estuary."
And then they came in fast. The I.O. was working by the light of an
electric torch. These signals said that ships all over the estuary were
reporting enemy aircraft, that some of the coast batteries were in
action, that more batteries were in action, that the first warning was
out in the Metropolitan police area, that night-flying machines were
up from a dozen aerodromes, and finally, that the "take cover" warning
was out in London.
I went out into the mist on the slipway. I heard the thudding of guns,
and saw star-shells bursting high in the air in the direction of the
mouth of the Thames. Nothing had been heard of the third boat, and
I was very much worried. The I.O. back at the telephone was still
fighting with a blizzard of signals.
About one o'clock things quieted down, and the all-clear signal came
in. The I.O. told me he was going up to the mess for a much-needed
cup of cocoa. But as he was about to put his hand on the knob of the
flying office door the telephone bell rang, and his work began again.
Another air-raid warning came in, battery after battery was reported in
action, and London again took to the cellars. The fuss continued until
nearly two o'clock, when another all-clear signal came in. The I.O. was
looking a bit pinched about the face, and white under the gills.
I again went out on the slipway and listened for the missing boat, and
was joined by the I.O. Presently, in the distance, we heard the faint
note of a twin-engined machine. It developed into the roar of a pair
of Rolls, which passed over us in the mist. We fired Very's lights
from the end of the slipway, and the Fire Commander switched on two
searchlights to light up the guardship at the boom. Suddenly the roar
of the engines ceased, and all was silent. We heard nothing more.
Shoving off one motor-boat to search the harbour, I sent a second
outside, and followed it in a third, with a good stock of Very's
lights. After barging around in the mist for half an hour, shedding a
copious display of red, white, and green fire-balls, I fell in with the
missing boat, passed the pilots a line, and towed them in. The pilots,
MacLauren and Dickey, reported to the I.O., and we went up to the mess
for sandwiches and cocoa.
We left a weary I.O. at the telephone trying to straighten out the
tangled skein of events.
MacLauren, as soon as he left the harbour, lost sight of the other two
boats in the gathering dusk. Just outside the harbour, and before they
had got out through the mine-fields, he overhauled our four destroyers
which had got away before him. Looking down, he saw them all in a
lather over doing thirty knots. He left them behind as though they were
nailed to the water.
When he made the North Hinder position he flew around in great circles
but came across no Hun destroyers. It was a fine night for flying, not
a bump in the air, so he turned south-west. In half an hour he saw a
light winking ahead on the water and picked up the Schouen Bank buoy.
Here he turned south down the Belgian coast and soon saw gun-flashes in
the distance. It was the never-ceasing artillery duel on the Flanders
front. But his optimistic wireless operator thought it was a naval
action in full swing, and got off part of a wireless signal before he
could be stopped. When a wash-out signal was being sent the transmitter
broke down.
But during the discussion MacLauren had got over Zeebrugge, and the
boat was surrounded by flaming onions. The whole misty atmosphere was
filled with a green glare. Dickey dived into the front cockpit to drop
the bombs, but before doing so looked back at the pilot.
MacLauren saw the smile wiped off Dickey's face, his jaw drop, and his
frantic signal to turn out to sea.
Not knowing what horror had shattered the composure of the usually
imperturbable Dickey, MacLauren banked the heavy boat round in a
split-all turn and drove out over the water. As he did so he looked
back over his shoulder to see the terror behind, but all he saw was the
placid face of the full moon, just risen, and looking very red through
the mist.
Dickey in the front cockpit, intent on dropping the bombs, had turned
suddenly and got a partial glimpse of its red face through the engine
bearer-struts. He thought it was some new and awful devilment of the
Hun, and automatically made the signal to turn out to sea.
MacLauren now headed for home. The mist was thick and the farther he
flew the thicker it got. While skimming close over the surface of
the water he found a light-ship and circled around it. The wireless
operator took his Aldis lamp and flashed to the crew, asking for the
position. But he received no answer.
So MacLauren barged around in the Thames estuary, happening upon a good
deal of shipping, and finally found himself over the coast. Here big
guns began to go off. Star-shells and high explosives were bursting
at about fourteen thousand feet. He was only up about six hundred,
kiting along in the mist, the concussions from the discharge of the
guns shaking the boat. He fled up along the coast over battery after
battery. Then he turned out to sea.
Dickey wrote on a pad: "There must be the devil of a big air-raid on."
And MacLauren nodded.
When things got more or less quiet MacLauren ventured in again, saw a
place which looked like Harwich harbour, and landed. But it wasn't.
However, he shut off the engines. Then he heard night-flying machines
passing overhead, and knowing that if he met up with any of the eager
young pilots bent on bloodshed they would shoot first and inquire
afterwards, he lay snug on the water. The sandwiches and the thermos
flask were got out and the chart was carefully examined.
As soon as the hick-boo was over MacLauren had the engines started and
took off. Once in the air he saw that the batteries had started up
again. But he now knew where he was and flew straight up the coast to
Felixstowe, landing outside, as he did not want to knock over a ship or
two in the mist.
It was now four o'clock.
As we were rising from the table to go to our cabins the door of the
mess opened. There stood the I.O. drooping with fatigue, but with a
neatly filed and indexed bundle of signals six inches thick in his
hand. He went up to MacLauren and said--
"There were no Gothas. Do you realise, young man, that this night you
have put everybody in London into their cellars twice?"
At early breakfast next morning the I.O. received an urgent order
from the Powers That Be to report elsewhere immediately for important
duties, and an hour later as he was departing he said to me--
"I am sorry to go. I had no idea that a flying-boat station was such a
busy place."
[Illustration]