An extract from "Bring Back my Stringbag"
by Lord Kilbracken
Ditching a Swordfish in the North Atlantic
We are two days' steaming from Halifax, about 500 miles, but haven't, yet reached the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream The convoy has held a north-westerly course at twelve knots, its maximum speed, since the U-boat fix was established, so its position is now south-southwest of us, some, fifty-five miles distant. Jake plotted our course using an estimated windspeed and direction, which we will check when it gets light enough. With a following wind, it will take about half an hour to reach our rectangle, which we are to spend an hour searching, covering some 1200 square miles. As we fly southwards the sky slowly brightens, white then steely blue without a cloud. One by one the stars outshone, the sea its unending expanse of emptiness. We see no sign of Flash, already out of sight to eastward.
We start our search at 0811, as the sun bursts from the ocean. Our flight plan calls for a series of parallel tracks thirteen miles apart. We cannot be sure of sighting a U-boat, even in such perfect visibility, at a range greater than seven miles, and this allows a one-mile overlap. As always hoping for that slim grey shape low on the water ahead of us. But we sight no enemy and at 0911 turn for home. With the headwind it will take us twice as long as the outward leg but by 1015 we should be safely back on board.
And then, within ten minutes, three amazing events. First near the limit of visibility, I see what appears to be., unless an apparition, a solitary vessel which a moment later I make out to be a sailing ship. Way out in the Atlantic! With U-boats known to be around!
- Jesus, boys, there's a sailing ship ahead of us!
- You're crazy, you're bloody seeing things.
- Must be the Marie Celeste, sir.
I tell them to take a look then, pointing a gloved hand fine on the port bow, my left arm out of the cockpit into the slip, lake lifts his binoculars. Moments of disbelief.
- By Jesus you're right, John. A three-masted schooner, bare poles, seems to be stationary. What the hell's she doing?
- Shall we have a look, sir?
- You bet we'll have a look.
In all my Atlantic patrols, this was the only time I sighted the smallest sign of human life, from the time I left the, convoy till my return. Always the empty ocean. Now this chance. vessel, located almost precisely where her presence would, so soon be indispensable if our lives were to be saved, a dozen miles ahead of us I alter course fifteen degrees to bring us directly over her. Five minutes later, Charlie's voice on the intercom.
- Hey, it's getting crowded. Isn't that a Swordfish, sir? Away on the starboard beam?
Again Jake swings his glasses (the only pair between us).
- It's a Stringbag all right. Must be, Flash and Stan. Now there's dead reckoning for you.
A remarkable coincidence or else damned fine flying. After nearly two hours of DR navigation over an empty sea with no navigational aids, Flash and I are returning abeam of each other on convergent courses, now some twelve miles distant at the extreme limit of visibility, exactly as ordered by the flight plan. Either we are both within a mile or two of our correct positions, or else we, have both run up precisely the same aggregate error. And this fortuitous chance sighting, in addition to the other, would be needed to save our lives.
The third event in this sequence, three minutes later. My beloved Peggy, my beautiful Pegasus M, the most trusted engine in the service, decides at this moment she's taken us far enough. A brief splutter, then perfect and terrible silence.
To throttle back a Stringbag at safe height so that the engine is only idling; to revel in the sudden silence, hear the airstream -whistling in the struts; to push down the nose till she is diving earthwards at 140 or more, then ease back on the stick till you are sedately soaring not far from the stall at under sixty, losing height hardly perceptibly; to soar and bank like a glider among the clouds - these wore among the darling pleasures of flying. It isn't so darling when sudden absence of power has been totally involuntary and there is now only the Atlantic 1500 feet below.
Not that we were yet for a single moment seriously apprehensive, not in fear of death. There was a hope I'd be able to coax MY Peggy to life again. If I couldn't, a Stringbag was the easiest and safest landplane to put down in the drink and would float for several minutes. Our Mae Wests in themselves wouldn't be much use, the water would be too cold, but we had our four dinghies and would at once break radio silence to send a mayday. And there anyway by such a fantastic stroke of luck was this sailing boat, now much closer, just waiting to pick us up. Nothing to be alarmed about. But one by one these doors to safety closed on us.
Holding her directly towards the schooner in the shallowest possible glide, I jiggled the throttle, played with the mixture control, tried every trick I knew to get a spark from her. To no avail. Now came Charlie's laconic voice on the intercom.
- ******* radio, sir. Packed up.
Couldn't believe it! Engine and radio packing up together I Never before had Charlie failed to establish instant contact at such close range. Well thank God for the schooner. I dived through 300 precious feet, throttle wide open, then closed, then open again, hoping increased revs would do it. Silence.
- OK, I'm going to fire all eight rockets. Charlie, keep trying.
I wanted to lighten the plane; and the rocket projectiles made such a series of screeches that the schooner couldn't help but hear them if by some impossible chance she hadn't sighted us. I dipped our nose and then fired them off in pairs, aiming slightly ahead of her - they dropped well short as I knew they would. Then having reached 150 feet I gave up trying with the engine and concentrated on ditching.
We were already headed upwind so I could continue straight ahead. At the last moment I hauled back all the way on the stick so that the tail dropped and was first to strike the sea. My forward speed over the water must have been no more than a mere thirty knots-on impact. Settle down nice and gently.
Strange as it now seems we were all in the highest spirits. My only minor worry apart from losing a valuable aircraft was that the big dinghy hadn't ejected and inflated automatically as it was supposed to do on ditching. However there was a failsafe manual release in the upper mainplane above me. Unclipping my parachute and leaving it with my one-man dinghy in the cockpit, I clambered up to work it, not even getting my feet wet. I pulled the cable release and nothing whatever happened. First twinge of anxiety. I stayed on the wing pulling and tugging that goddamn cable till the Stringbag sank under me - in 18,000 feet of water.
Only, at this instant did we begin to realise things weren't too good and five minutes later we were sure of it. Jake and Charlie were already in the ocean, shouting, come on in, it's lovely. It was lovely for thirty seconds. Till we were in it we didn't realise what a heavy swell was running, how terribly cold the water. We hadn't reached the Gulf Stream and it wasn't far from freezing. Much worse, Jake's one-man dinghy had been forced forward on impact and he hadn't been able to reach it, whilst mine had sunk with the plane. We just had Charlie's; and three into one won't go.
So we all three clung on, hoisting ourselves as best we could from the water but immersed from the belly down. No more joking. The coldness with terrible speed took hold of us. And lake and Charlie were soon being violently seasick. Yes, you can sure as hell get seasick clinging to a dinghy in that swell, even though you've never been bothered by it in the heaviest weather on shipboard. But, at least we knew it was for only a few minutes. The schooner had finally been two or three miles distant, though to us she was now out of sight with the heavy swell running.
Just one thing we didn't know, she hadn't seen us. Was quite unaware of our existence, our growingly precarious existence.
As we discovered later, she was a fishing vessel, Kasagra, out of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, a port not far from Halifax. She had her boats and nets out to northward, taking in the nights catch, and we had approached thoughtlessly from the south. Everyone hard at work, no lookout set, no idling crewman to see or hear us, not even those screaming rockets. So now our lives depended on the crew of the other Stringbag, trained to keep a continual systematic sweeping of the ocean. But they were young and inexperienced. Had they seen us go in, had they seen us at all? We knew within minutes as Flash Parkin roared low over us.
We owe our lives to him. He at once summed up the situation. If we had been ensconced in the large dinghy with full supplies, as he must have expected to find, no flap whatsoever. But we were half immersed in the water - we had about an hour to live unless picked up - and this crazy boat fishing. No way he could drop a dinghy to us but he could signal Kasagra to come on over and quickly. His observer, Stan Holness, got working with the Aldis lamp. it now transpired that none of the fishermen was versed in the Morse code. Thinking Stan wished to establish their nationality, they found an outsize Red Ensign, stretched it out on the -deck. No, no, no. Flash now began a series of dives on our position, returned to Kasagra, waggled his wings, returned again to our position, dropped smoke markers, waggling his wings, firing red Very lights.
Meantime the three of us in increasingly serious trouble. The sea was quickly claiming us. Every ounce of energy, a our concentration, devoted to that dinghy, four-foot by two-foot, to keeping hold of it and we were losing inch by inch. Soon it was only with our hands, we were immersed from the armpits down, then from the shoulders.
A few minutes later I felt myself at the limit of endurance. I remember telling the others I couldn't hold on any longer, that it didn't seem worth the effort. And they both looked back in silence. I guess they were feeling something of the same but I was the only one who said it. The physical exertion needed was just becoming too great. Death was so near that it was easy, the easy way out, almost welcome, certainly acceptable. And very soon, had nothing intervened, I'd have let go, drifted a few yards, then slipped quietly and not ungratefully into and under the swell.
But at just this minute: 'Look, look, oh Jesus!' And there, seen through the fine spray blowing from the swell's crest, now for the first time were the tops of the three bare masts, rising and falling from view as Kasagra rose and fell with the waves. Soon the whole vessel. She drew near and put down a boat for Us.
Afterwards we could all remember this rowing boat heading. for us. Coming alongside. Strong arms reaching down for us. Beyond that point, for all of us, oblivion. We had all held on, because we had to, far beyond our natural strength, kept going those last ten minutes (in my, case anyway) only by the sudden knowledge that rescue was at hand. The instant it was no longer necessary, no longer vital, we all three lost consciousness, those arms around us, before even being lifted in to the rowing boat. We had been fifty-one minutes in the water by Stan's stop watch.