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and turned after them with Pete close behind me. We were about a thousand feet below and despite full throttle, it seemed an age before we reached their altitude. The enemy had tightened his formation a bit and I selected the starboard aircraft. Pete was on my left in a good position to engage one of the others. As I got within range I fired and immediately my target’s undercarriage dropped down and his starboard engine started smoking. Almost simultaneously the Perspex on the port side of my windscreen disintegrated and smoke filled the cockpit. I turned away quickly cursing that I had been too deliberate in my attack and had been hit by the rear gunners of the Heinkels. I opened the hood and the smoke cleared a bit. A quick look round the cockpit showed me I had no oil pressure and already the coolant temperature gauge was going off the clock. There was nothing for it but to try to get back to the airfield. I was able from the height we had climbed, 4000 ft, to glide back and, thank goodness, the undercarriage came down when selected so I landed safely. I ran gently off the runway and cut the switches. As I got out of the cockpit my ground crew came running up and we went around the Hurricane together. I had been hit in the port oil tank, which was blown to pieces, and also the radiator The bullet that had hit the side of the Perspex of the windscreen had gone through the armour plate directly behind where my head would have been if I had strapped in. Luckily, because of the hurried take-off, I had been unable to do up the straps and had been crouching forward over the control column to steady- myself. A narrow escape. Corporal Willers, one of the Armament NCOs and who is still alive today, found the strengthened core of this bullet and recorded the incident in a personal diary he was keeping. " A last patrol over Narvik gave results. Flying Officers Mee and Drummond attacked four He 111’s. One was shot down. Another made it home to Trondheim with 233 bullet holes, and a third flew into a storm and crashed at Grong on the way back! In the early hours of 8th June it was time to fly the Hurricanes out to Glorious, “Jamie" Jameson describes the first Hurricane landings on an aircraft carrier: "We agreed that I would lead the first section of three Hurricanes back to the carrier Somehow -we had to get rid of the nose heaviness caused by the metal propeller so that we could slam on the brake. I carried out some trials at Bardufoss and found that a fourteen pound sandbag strapped in the fuselage right down at the tail end allowed the use of full brake. We took off in the twilight of the Arctic night and were navigated out to the carriers by a Swordfish from Glorious. They were about 150 miles out from the Norwegian coast and looked quite impressive with their four escorting destroyers fussing round them. Despite the ships' size their flight-decks looked pathetically small. Lilliputian was the description that sprang to mind. Glorious grey deck reminded me of the back of an elephant, particularly as the flight- deck had a round-down at the stern which was moving up and down like a cantering elephant's backside! We had to touch down as near the top of the heaving rump as possible to minimize the chance of over-shooting and crashing on to the fo'castle (the flight deck did not go right up to the bow of the ship) There was quite a swell on and Glorious was at full tilt -about 30 knots - which meant that the landing spot was moving up and down at an alarming rate! Before taking-off from Bardufoss I had decided that the only way to find out if it was possible to land on Glorious was to commit myself to the landing. If I got three-quarters of the way along the deck and then realized that I was not going to stop in time, it would be too late to take off again anyway! · |