Once More the Hawks by Max Hennessy Read Free Book Online Page B

said.
    ‘And big ones at that! Let’s go!’
     
    It was a perfect night and when he reached base Dicken strolled towards the airfield. The stars were bright and sharp and there were a lot of aircraft about overhead. This was nothing unusual because there was always activity along the frontier, but this time he could hear the whango-whango-whango of French anti-aircraft guns, and a piece of shrapnel struck the ground nearby. In the early hours of the morning he woke with a start to see his batman standing in the doorway, his hand on the light switch.
    ‘You’re wanted at headquarters immediately, sir.’
    ‘What’s happening?’
    ‘I think it’s started, sir. Number One Squadron’s already in the air, patrolling towards Metz. The Germans are coming through Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. There are plots all over the board!’

 
     
Five
    Already the panic messages were arriving. The uncanny quiet of the previous day was sharply contrasted by the reports that were coming in now of the most modern army in the world on the move. By evening, the airfields at Lille and Nancy had been bombed and Barratt had lost a lot of precious aeroplanes.
    The Allied army’s plan to swing north through Belgium was already in operation but there were reports of a gigantic phalanx of armour breaking through the Ardennes, just as they had suspected they would. Within forty-eight hours they were all involved.
    The Germans seemed to be everywhere, both on the ground and in the air, and the Advanced Air Striking Force with its pathetic Battles had lost half its numbers. The Dutch army was collapsing and they all knew that the Belgian Army would go the same way. Their machines, Fiat biplanes with a single machine gun firing through the propeller, were worse than the RAF’s and the replacements were even older. As attrition wiped away their squadrons, the Battles took over from them the attempt to destroy the Maastricht bridges, but four out of the five that were sent were shot down and the fifth crashed on the way home. Within two days the AASF had shrunk to seventy-two machines.
    ‘I wish to God we’d developed a few of Udet’s dive bombers,’ Barratt growled, ‘instead of concentrating on those wretched Battles.’
    The Stukas were everywhere. To capitalise on the natural scream of an aircraft diving at speed, the Germans had added sirens to the undercarriages. They called them Jericho trombones and the name had somehow crossed the frontier, and it was found that the sound was numbing to unseasoned troops.
    They had shattered the morale of the French second-class reservists on the Meuse and were paralysing the French artillery, whose gunners stopped firing and went to ground as soon as they started their dives, while the infantry cowered in trenches, dazed by the crash of bombs and the shriek of the bombers.
    Leading the German armour, they were pile-driving their way into France and it seemed that nothing could stop them. The first attacks had been against front line positions and airfields, wiping out the opposition air strength, and, unlike the allies, the Germans were using their machines in large numbers, not scattering them all over the front. The long-cherished illusion that the Battle was a worthwhile aircraft had vanished in the attacks on the Meuse bridges when whole squadrons were wiped out without registering a single hit, and on May 13th, the Germans put 700 machines into the air over Sedan, 200 of them Stukas. The French simply threw away their rifles and ran and, after an attempt to help by attacking the bridgehead, the AASF was as good as finished.
    Within days the whole front was beginning to crumble and the army was withdrawing to the line of the Escaut because the French First Army had collapsed. There was now no question in the morning of fighting to throw off the deep sleep that came with spending all day in the open air. Everybody came awake in a flash to buckle on tunic and revolver and within a week had