Typhoon Pilot Peter Brett's memoirs continued - part 19
Some more of Peter's operations with 183 Sqn...
On the second of November [1943] I flew aircraft HF-T on a shipping reconnaissance in the area of the Goulet de Brest. The weather was not too good with low cloud at about 2000 ft and rain showers. We were flying quite low, at about 250 ft. We kept well out from the coast of France in our search for shipping and we came upon two smallish merchant ships sailing in line astern about five miles west of Camaret-sur-Mer.
The C.O. split us into two groups of four to each ship. I was number two in the group attacking the larger of the two ships. As we turned in to the attack both ships opened up with 20mm and 40mm AA fire. It was my first experience of being fired at with tracer and it was rather unnerving. Although there were probably only three or four guns on each ship the fact that all the firing was coming from a small area, towards which we were exactly heading, made it seem very concentrated. The red dots would seem to float gently towards you and the suddenly speed up and zip past -what seemed like only inches away. I tried my best to ignore the tracer and concentrated on getting as low as possible. The idea was to fly directly at the ship and release the bombs at the last second just as you were forced to pull up to avoid hitting the masts or rigging. The trick was to release the bombs at just the right moment. Too soon and they would fall short and explode harmlessly in the sea, too late and they would fly over the ship to do the same thing on the far side. I don't know where my bombs went, perhaps I hit the ship but can' t be sure. At least two of us did, and as we left both ships were on fire and the larger one looked as if it were sinking. We did not wait around to find out however since we were now without bombs and had accomplished our mission. As we formed up again I realized that somebody was missing. F/O Alan Palmer, who had been No 3 in the first group, had been hit on the run-in and had crashed into the sea and been killed. His number 2 had seen it happen and later reported it at the debriefing. We flew back to Predannack in sombre mood and, as we approached the airfield, we formed up in close formation of two 'Finger Four' sections. It was the accepted form that, if any aircraft were missing on the return from an operation, the remaining aircraft flew in as close formation as possible, leaving the appropriate formation position empty so that the ground crews would know how many and which aircraft were missing.
A couple of days later I flew a spare aircraft to Harrowbeer and back where the squadron went to carry out an operation. Then on the 5th November it was dive bombing again. The target was the airfield at Poulmic, south of Brest on the far bank of The Goulet de Brest. We were only airborne for about 50 minutes since, as we approached the French Coast the cloud was down to below 1000ft and the leader decided it was no good trying to bomb from that height so we turned back. On the way back we jettisoned our bombs into the sea by turning the arming switches off, selecting the drop switches and then pressing the bomb release button on the command of the leader. The bed of the English Channel must be littered with jettisoned bombs. We were flying very low as we returned and I was No.2 in the second four flying on the left of my No.1. The first four were slightly ahead of us and a bit to the left. I suddenly saw the number three of this four, Flight Sergeant Arthur Napier, disappear in a cloud of spray. My immediate thought was that he had dived into the sea, but no, the aircraft emerged from the cloud of spray but began to drop back. Arthur called up the leader to say that he had hit the sea and he was experiencing severe vibration which was causing him to reduce his airspeed. We all throttled back and kept station with him as we flew home at a slower speed. When we landed, we all went to look at his aircraft. Two blades of his three bladed propellor were bent forward about six inches at the tips. This had happened as they had just touched the sea. This meant that he had come within five or six feet of hitting the sea with his radiator which would no doubt have flipped him over and almost certainlykilled him. He said that the vibration on the way back was so bad that he felt as if he were still shaking some half hour after landing. I later heard stories of other Typhoons which had hit the sea and survived and in some cases the propellor blades had been bent backwards. I have since wondered how this was possible since the propellor was pulling the aircraft through the air and, as it was then suddenly hitting a much denser medium, the water, it surely should have bent forward as did the one I witnessed. [TOW1709: Apparently if you strike the sea or ground with the engine at high power, the tips will bend forwards. If the strike happens at idle power, they bend the other way]
The same team tried to bomb Poulmic again the next day and this time, although we managed to reach the target, the cloudbase was still too low to allow us to bomb and once again the bombs were jettisoned into the English channel. The weather then really clamped down and Predannack was shrouded in mist and rain for over two weeks. Several times we were alerted to stand by for operations but the weather was against us and I did not fly again between the 7th and the 21st of November. I took part in a shipping strike reconnaissance on the 21st November carrying two 500lb bombs but no shipping was found and yet again the English channel received sixteen unarmed bombs.
At this time we were going out with two squadrons at a time. One squadron of eight acting as bombers accompanied by the second squadron eight without bombs acting as fighter escort. Thus, the next day, I was with the squadron acting as fighter escort. All I noted in my log book was that we saw a large ship which the bombers attacked without visible result and we suffered no losses although the ship was escorted by two flak ships.
The 23rd November saw me flying again as fighter escort but this time we, the fighters, also attacked the two small ships that we found. Once again no dramatic results were observed from our cannon strafe although I did note in my log book that there was "a hell of a lot of flak".
I must admit that I greatly preferred the fighter role since this meant that the Typhoon was flown without bomb racks or other encumbrances and was much more lively than when carrying bombs. Unfortunately the days of acting as fighters were numbered since there were so many more effective fighting aircraft and the Typhoon was becoming known as a very stable gun platform which could stand up to quite a severe amount of punishment. There was a constant stream of modifications being carried out to improve its role as a ground attack aircraft and also to overcome the one main structural drawback. Quite a few Typhoons literally came apart in the air. Several were lost due to the tail assembly breaking off under severe manoeuvres. At least three modifications were carried out to the tail unit. At one time the fuselage just forward of the tail plane exhibited a series of patch plates placed all round at each longeron position. This was later replaced by internal strengthening. Although this improved the situation, and as far as we knew had cured it, I found out after the war that Typhoons were still mysteriously crashing for no apparent reason right up to their withdrawal from service in 1946 ! The incidence of these crashes seems to have been completely random and luckily I never had occasion to doubt the strength of any Typhoon that I flew, although there were one or two occasions when aircraft in the same formation went missing without obvious cause.
More soon...
Last edited by tow1709; 21st Mar 2010 at 07:31.
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