And we complain about flack

[Dakaras]

Extract from The Big Show bt Pierre Clostermann DFC

Leading a flight of 8 when attacking German airbase 1945.

The plan was for 8 Typhoons with rockets to go in 1st and engage the flack followed by a Tempest beat up of the airfield

The Typoons couldnt make it

"Smell of flowers!" Came Bay Adams voice mockingly in the earphones. Flack! Christ what Flack! The entire surface of the airfield seemed to light up from 20mm and 37mm guns. There must have been at least 40 of them. A carpet of white puffs spread out below us and the black puffs of the 37mm stood out in regular strings of 8.

What flack! Physical fear is the most terrible thing man can suffer- my heart leapt to my mouth, I was covered with sweat, with sticky, clammy sweat. My clenched toes swam in my boots.

We dived desprately into the smoke...explosions and tracer to left and right crossing over and under us..bangs round our wings and sinister dazzling flashes.

We were a mile from the perimeter 150 feet from the ground. Men were running hither and thither.

"Lower for christs sake" I yelled hysterically. The broad expanse of grass, carved by the grey runways tilited up before my eyes and rushed towards me. We were doing over 450mph. 1st a hanger a browser then the messerschmitts perched clumsily on thier narro undercarts, about 30 of them, with men crouching under the wings. To far to the left out of my line of fire.

A group of a dozen Arados loomed up in my sight. I fired, I fired frantically, my thumb jammed on the button. my shells formed a ribbon of explosion worming its way between the Arados, climbing up the fuselage, hitting the engines...smoke..one of the planes exploded just as I was over it, and my Tempest was tossed up by the burning gust. A Tempest touched the ground and the fuselage bounded up in a shower of fragments of smashed eings and tail planes.

More hangers in fromt of me. I fired a 2nd burst-it exploded on the galvenised iron doors and the steel stanchions.

"Look out Red 2" My no 2 was coming straight for me, out of control at terrific speed. His hood had gone. At 470 mph 20 yards to my right he went smack into a flack tower cutting it in two underneath the platform,

A wooden frame blew into the air. A cluster of men hanging on to a gun collapsed into space. The Tempest crashed on the edge of the field, furrowing through a group of little houses, with a terrific flash of light the engine had come adrift in a whirlwind of flames and fragments scattered in the sky.

It was all over...almost..1...2..3..the tracer bullets were pursuing me..I lowered my head and hunched myself up behind my rear plating..12..13...14..I was going to cheat... a salvo of 37 burst so close that I only got the flash of the explosions without seeing the smoke...splinters hailed down on my fuselage...19..20! I pulled the stick back and climbed straight up into the sky. The flack kept on.

I glanced back towards Schwerin, just visible under my tail plane. A 1000 feet below a Tempest was climbing in zig zags, the tracers stubbonly pursuing him. Fires near the hangers, columns of greasy smoke, a firework display of expolding magnesium bombs. The lone Tempest caught me up, waggled its wings and formed line abreast.

"Hallo Filmstar aircraft reform south of target, angels 10"

"Hallo Pierre, Red 3 here. You know, I think the rest have had it!"

Surely Bay couldnt be right! I scanned the 360 degrees of the horizon, and the teriffic pyramid of flack bursts above Schwerin right up inot the clouds, hanging in the still air. No one.

13.04 hours. We had attacked at 13.03 hours. The nightmare had lasted perhaps 35 seconds from the beginning of our dive and we had lost 6 of 8 aircraft.

[[GSV]Trig]

U bringin that to the LAN for me to borrow then m8

[Tumble]

blimey...... thats a bit harsh..... I'm speechless.. I really am...

[Dakaras]

Yes Trig will do..
Yep Tumble stopped me in my tracks, read it last night after our game, second time ive read the book and that still makes me gulp.

[Zak33]

Horrific.....losses like that smash your thoughts of Grandeur to smithereens.

Dog fighting, ground bombing, bomber attacks.....all as a GAME.

We weird or what?

[TiG]

And thats the strange thing - WWII battles etc in games seems to be more popular then ever at present, with MOHAA, bf1942, fb, commandos 3 etc.

So many games depciting the war that cost millions of lives.

TiG

[Hat]

One evening, George led one of the squadrons on a sweep round the far side of the Elbe and I led a finger four down-sun from him. We were after the jets and we intended to visit the maximum number of luftwaffe airfields.

We swung towards an airfield which lay neatly camoflauged in the midst of some thick woods. The heavy flak reached up and bracketed us and the soot bags followed us through the sky when George led us into the cover of the low sun. Before we turned away, I scanned the airfield below and saw a squadron of Messerschmitts with churning propellors about to take off. The leader and his wingman were already stacked alongside each other on the runway and the remainder were packed closely behind on the perimeter track. I called George.

"A dozen 109s below, George. About to take off"

"Ok I've seen them Greycap. We'll come back in a few minutes"

Five minutes later we returned in a fast dive from the sun. The 109s were still there, but there was no fooling the Huns for the gunners were ready and waiting and hundreds of light flak guns joined the heavy barrage. The Germans had developed this type of defence to a fine art, and sometimes they succeeded in holding us off with the flak whilst their own aeroplanes made their approach to land through special safety lanes.

My heart sank when I saw the flak. Probably we were all thinking the same things. The war could only last a few more days. The 109s were below, whose pilots had probably left their cockpits for their engines had stopped. What were the chances of getting through the flak, now that the gunners were thoroughly aroused. I reckoned this was about fifty-fifty.

"Greycap. I'm going in with my number two., Cover us will you?"

I wanted to say - "Is it worth it George?" or "The army will probably capture this place tomorrow" but I only muttered;

"OK George"

I reefed my Spitfire into a tight turn and watched the pair of Spitfires hurtle down towards the junction of the runway and the perimeter track. George was making his strafing attack parallel to the perimeter track to destroy the greatest number of Messerschimtts, and didnt have the benefit of the sun.

The two Spitfires got smaller and smaller. Their grey-green camoflauge merged into the spring greenery of the trees below and for a second or two I lost them. But the gunners on the ground still saw them, and the whole airfield seemed to sparkle with the flashes from the guns. Heavy guns and light guns. Single barrels and quadruple barrels; firing from all angles and from the hangar roofs. A thick bed of explosions filled the airspace below us. Yellow flak, black flak, white flak and strings of flack.

We saw them again when they streaked over the boundary of the airfield. We saw the cannon shells from George's Spitfire flashing and bouncing on the concrete perimeter track, and I shouted into the microphone:

"Up a bit George, you're under deflecting!"

Then his shells ripped into the last Messerschmitt in the line and we saw the winking explosions on the rest. The rear Messerschmitt caught fire, its ammunition exploded in the heat and the cannon shells slammed into the next 109. In a matter of seconds the whole lot was ablaze and a great spiral of white smoke curled up from the airfield.

"You alright George?" I said
"Fine Greycap. Am climbing up"
"Red two?" I asked
"I've been hit sir, but she's flying OK" replied the wingman.
"Lead him home George and we'll cover you" I instructed

I twisted my neck for a final look at the airfield. All the Messerschmitts were still burning fiercely and the smoke was already up to our height of 6000 feet. It was the best strafing attack I had ever seen. It was certainly the bravest.

"Nice work George" I said. " You got the bloody lot!"

How many were there Greycap?" asked George.

"Exactly eleven. I counted them" I told him

Wing Leader by Air VIce-Marshall "Johnnie Johnson"

[Lowe]

Bloody vulcher