A Wartime Incident in the Eastern Mediterranean
This is my father's story. He was 22 years old and had been flying Coastal Command Wellingtons over the North Sea, the Atlantic and the Red Sea on the look-out for U-boats. This could be the loneliest and least glamorous role for a pilot; eight-hour patrols, low over the sea, with everyone in the six-strong crew straining eyes (and radar) for a tell-tale sign somewhere among the waves. He says you had to concentrate hard to keep your altitude; the horizon was usually lost in the murk and you didn't dare nod off for even a second. The crews came back with red eyes and were often too exhausted to eat before collapsing into their bunks.
In 1944 he was given the job of familiarising new crews with the technique of criss-crossing the ocean in a systematic pattern. This was called a 'nav patrol'. On this particular day he met his crew of trainees - all bright-eyed and excited, fresh out from the UK - in Haifa, and they took off in a Wellington XIII for a night patrol over the Eastern Mediterranean.
It was a dark night, with no moon. There was a high wind, which posed a navigational challenge, and the crew could see the phosphorescent wave-tops breaking down on the surface of the sea. The patrol went smoothly until one of the trainees touched my Dad's arm: 'Skipper - look at the port engine!' Twisting round, my father could see 2-metre tongues of flame streaming from the engine nacelle. Cursing the system which gave Coastal Command Training aircraft with one wheel in the scrapyard, he shut the engine down and activated the extinguisher, which didn't work.
He turned and steered for home. Moments later, the starboard engine stopped. He ran through the checks - nothing, so he feathered the propellor and prepared to 'ditch'. Unfortunately, no engines meant no instruments, so he was forced to fly by feel in a series of 'levels and dips', hoping to make a flat landing on a horizontal section of the invisible sea. No luck; they hit the water and sank like a stone. My father doesn't remember much about the next few minutes; he found himself on the surface with his hands clawed to ribbons where he had unconsciously been trying to unfasten his seat-harness.
Only three of the crew escaped from the wreck. My father, who was a good swimmer, herded them together and showed them how to turn away from the breaking wave-crests, breathing in the troughs; the swell was three metres high. The inflatable dinghy, designed to pop out of the Wellington's wing automatically, was nowhere to be seen. Then my father did an odd thing; he took the battery out of the light in his life-jacket and tucked it inside his shirt.
They swam like this for ten hours. Shortly before dawn, with the sky still pitch-black, they heard the sound of an aircraft's engines. Quickly retrieving the battery, my Dad signalled S-O-S. The aircraft sent back: 'Help coming. Must go - no fuel'. A long time later the swimmers heard the noise of a motor-launch searching nearby, then a voice: 'There they are!'
The Air-Sea Rescue Crew pulled the survivors into their launch like herrings. They were stripped, put into dry blankets and given cocoa. When they reached Haifa my Dad tried to give the captain of the launch some money to buy the crew a drink, but he handed it straight back.
Thirty years later my Dad attended a reunion of 'The Goldfish Club' - airmen who had crashed in the sea and survived. Their guests were some chaps from the Air-Sea Rescue Service, and my Dad got talking to one of them. 'We had a strange war', he said. 'We spent five years in the Eastern Mediterranean and - in all that time - only once did we rescue a crew from the sea.' My Dad smiled. 'Right - now I'm going to buy you that drink!'
In 1944 he was given the job of familiarising new crews with the technique of criss-crossing the ocean in a systematic pattern. This was called a 'nav patrol'. On this particular day he met his crew of trainees - all bright-eyed and excited, fresh out from the UK - in Haifa, and they took off in a Wellington XIII for a night patrol over the Eastern Mediterranean.
It was a dark night, with no moon. There was a high wind, which posed a navigational challenge, and the crew could see the phosphorescent wave-tops breaking down on the surface of the sea. The patrol went smoothly until one of the trainees touched my Dad's arm: 'Skipper - look at the port engine!' Twisting round, my father could see 2-metre tongues of flame streaming from the engine nacelle. Cursing the system which gave Coastal Command Training aircraft with one wheel in the scrapyard, he shut the engine down and activated the extinguisher, which didn't work.
He turned and steered for home. Moments later, the starboard engine stopped. He ran through the checks - nothing, so he feathered the propellor and prepared to 'ditch'. Unfortunately, no engines meant no instruments, so he was forced to fly by feel in a series of 'levels and dips', hoping to make a flat landing on a horizontal section of the invisible sea. No luck; they hit the water and sank like a stone. My father doesn't remember much about the next few minutes; he found himself on the surface with his hands clawed to ribbons where he had unconsciously been trying to unfasten his seat-harness.
Only three of the crew escaped from the wreck. My father, who was a good swimmer, herded them together and showed them how to turn away from the breaking wave-crests, breathing in the troughs; the swell was three metres high. The inflatable dinghy, designed to pop out of the Wellington's wing automatically, was nowhere to be seen. Then my father did an odd thing; he took the battery out of the light in his life-jacket and tucked it inside his shirt.
They swam like this for ten hours. Shortly before dawn, with the sky still pitch-black, they heard the sound of an aircraft's engines. Quickly retrieving the battery, my Dad signalled S-O-S. The aircraft sent back: 'Help coming. Must go - no fuel'. A long time later the swimmers heard the noise of a motor-launch searching nearby, then a voice: 'There they are!'
The Air-Sea Rescue Crew pulled the survivors into their launch like herrings. They were stripped, put into dry blankets and given cocoa. When they reached Haifa my Dad tried to give the captain of the launch some money to buy the crew a drink, but he handed it straight back.
Thirty years later my Dad attended a reunion of 'The Goldfish Club' - airmen who had crashed in the sea and survived. Their guests were some chaps from the Air-Sea Rescue Service, and my Dad got talking to one of them. 'We had a strange war', he said. 'We spent five years in the Eastern Mediterranean and - in all that time - only once did we rescue a crew from the sea.' My Dad smiled. 'Right - now I'm going to buy you that drink!'