The Vultee Vengeance in Offence (Part II).
Good News - my gremlin has vanished as mysteriously as he came. All back to normal! (fingers crossed).
Being so close to the "sharp end" had its advantages. We were almost entirely spared the usual time-wasting visits by high-ranking notables from Calcutta or Delhi, keen to get in a bit of "front line" time to boast about when they got back. Not entirely, one such party came down to have a look at us in early '44, keen to see how this mixed squadron was getting on. As both flights were furiously busy just then, we gave an impression of rather more harmony than in fact existed, and our visitors were duly impressed. They stayed the night.
At breakfast one asked: "What was that clanking noise we heard during the night?"........"Fifteen Division's tanks moving up" "How far away are the Japs?"......."About thirty miles"......Nothing was said, but our visitors disappeared with the speed of light. I grimly recalled my school Shakespeare (Henry IV Part 1), and the young Percy's scornful words: "Came there a certain Lord, neat and trim'ly dressed" - the epitome of the red-tabbed Staff Officer through the ages. (Nagged by this individual to hand over his prisoners, the weary warrior: "I, all smarting with my wounds being cold, answ'd him roundly, I know not what" - but we can guess!)
We lived in luxury compared with the P.B.I. in the jungle. In bamboo bashas, with mosquito nets and camp beds (in my case, my DIY travelling bed), we were quite comfortable and reasonably well fed, although a lot of bully beef was on the menu - (our Hindu colleagues had to turn a blind eye). The cooks could generally find something to curry; rice was no problem in Burma, and you could always get hold of eggs and the odd scrawny chicken. Nobody starved.
It was unwise to bring the odd cold chicken leg back to your basha for a midnight snack; the scent would attract baboons and you might awake to find a ferocious squabble going on over the titbit by your bedside. The thing to do was not to interfere, but let them get on with it; the beasts had fearsome teeth and were quite ready to use them. As with most wild creatures, they were no trouble if you left them alone.
There was nothing to distinguish one ASC job from another, just another puff of white smoke against another dark green background, a dive and another big cloud of dust and smoke. One trip (by 82 Sqn at Dohazari?) gave particular satisfaction. The Army had a small clearing up front in the Box from which they evacuated their badly wounded in (I think) Stinson "Reliants". Somehow the Jap had managed to get a small mountain gun into range and was causing a problem. We got a "fix" on this gun, (Lord knows how), put in a strike, the gun was no more, the gunners went to join the ancestors and the Army was well pleased.
IIRC, the drill was that the "Reliant" took the casualties back to one of the Cox's Bazar strips; if they were in extremis the MFH at Cox's would patch them up; otherwise the empty 'Daks' coming back from air-drops to the Admin Box landed on some strip and took them on to Calcutta (or up to Chandina, near, it seems, a big hospital in Comilla). The 'Reliant' went back for more. (All this I was told - in the MFH? - any medic from those days who can confirm/deny?)
Not all our sorties were trouble-free. One morning George Davies was hit in the hydraulics over the target (sounds a bit painful), and pulled out of the dive with just enough fluid to get his brakes in before the hydraulic power failed. One undercarriage leg was dangling. He couldn't do anything about it, or close his bomb doors, and it slowed him down a lot.
By arrangement, the front three carried on home by themselves. I'd been No.4 - ("in-the-box"), but now we back three reformed to put George in the lead, with one of us each side so that our gunners could offer him a little extra protection from an attacker coming in from either quarter. We had a Hurricane escort that day, two pairs. One pair went on with the front three, the other stayed with us, sweeping side to side a mile astern to give us some rear cover.
In this configuration we limped home without further incident. Paddy Lamb and I landed; George worked on his problem, but try as he might, he couldn't get the other wheel down or the first one up. They'd tried everything without success. It was obvious that any any attempt to land must write-off the aircraft and probably them with it. They headed it out to sea and abandoned it. Both floated down unhurt on land and the aircraft splashed down in the Bay. That was about the only case where the loss of a Vengeance could certainly be put down to ground fire, although there would be others (such as mine) where it was strongly suspected.
It was a common enough story in itself, but there was an unusual twist to it. S/Ldr Thomas (whom we know well), tells a remarkably similar story of a VV which developed a hydraulic fault shortly after take-off, and had to be abandoned in the same way. In his version, the empty aircraft turns back and circles round, threatening one of the parachutes at each pass (very much like my story of the dropped Form 1 at Carlstrom Field long ago).
I never heard of this occurrence, and wonder if we are hearing a much embroidered version of the George Davies affair (could it be? - remember that S/Ldr. Thomas's reminiscences were written 40 years after the event). If that is the case, it is strange (and typical of the IAF "chippiness") that it is told without a single mention that a British crew were involved !
Goodnight, chaps,
Danny42C
Keep smiling!
Last edited by Danny42C; 23rd Jul 2012 at 21:43.
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