1941, Tuesday 29 July;
The first of four aircraft peeled off and went into its dive. On the low hill they watched as it aimed for its target, an 80-foot white painted cross on the field in front of them. They counted the seconds, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ah there’s the release, the change in tone of the Merlin engine as it worked hard, doing its best to pull the aircraft out of its dive. And still falling came two black objects, bombs, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, bang! Two large sand bags ruptured on impact, spilling sand 100 feet away from the cross, while the aircraft, having fully pulled out of its dive, flew across them, right to left.
And already a second aircraft was on its way, having started its dive twelve seconds after the first. The young pilot, Sergeant Eddie Alworth fully focused, the adrenaline pumping through him, as he held his dive. Again, the same count, this time the sand bags were 60 feet away, but more to the right, then the third and finally fourth aircraft completed their dives, their sand bags all less than 150 feet from the target. Air Commodore Archie Wann lowered his binoculars onto his chest, and looked at his adjutant, a small nod and smile indicating his pleasure in the improvement, as indeed it was.
He was enjoying life, the sentenced man given a reprieve, as he felt had happened, getting the posting to Malaya. His career was in the field of army support, and he’d made efforts in that direction, unsuccessfully, in France, commanding the 75th Bomber Wing of the Advanced Air Striking Force, in developing closer co-operation with the Army. The losses over Sedan had been blamed on the aircraft flown, a bad type, but he didn’t prescribe to that view, thinking there was a lot more to it than just blaming an aircraft as bad. He’d spent time in Northern Ireland, developing an army co-operation system, and had provided a detailed document, the Wann – Woodhall report, but the RAF wasn’t interested, it was all about fighter defence, and developing the heavy bomber force, and so his career had stalled.
But here he was, Park having given him licence to put in practice what he preached. The arrival of RAF 226 squadron with her Fairey Battles in March, and the creation of the Canadian Article VX squadron, 404, in June, equipped with the same aircraft, gave him the men and machines. They were over strength, and with more pilots and aircraft to come, but he was creating a reasonable training plan for them, with the plan going forward, of creating a second Canadian Battle Sqn, 414, spawning off of 404, sometime in September. With the promise of the third squadron, he had now created a new wing for the Battles, the 7 RCAF, under Group Captain Sydney Pope, a former commander of 226 Sqn and a veteran of France, who was proving a useful subordinate.
Wann had given some thought to how he could improve the performance of the Battle, and had changed tactics, they would dive bomb their targets now. The Fairey wasn’t the perfect aircraft for this role, he didn’t expect them to perform an 80-degree dive, but he did want to get to 60. After 60 degrees the Fairey had proved to be somewhat unstable in a dive, a few turning onto their backs while going into the dive. To help with this he’d also had some alterations made, firstly he’d replaced the basic gun sight with one which could be better used for dive bombing, and also added a dive angle indicator. Secondly, he’d had the central fuel tank removed, just using the wing tanks, as he didn’t need a range of 1000 miles, and the central tank was an unnecessary fire risk. Nowadays, the planes had self-sealing tanks, something they hadn’t had in France, as well as some basic armour plating around the pilot, all being retro fitted here in Malaya.
Training the crew was of the upmost importance, and again he’d had some thoughts about that. He’d removed the navigator, operationally most aircraft wouldn’t be carrying one, just a pilot and rear air gunner, but at the moment, needing them to learn the art of dive bombing, it was just the pilot. He’d lost one aircraft and pilot, late in pulling out of the dive, but as pilot competencies grew, so he’d introduced the air gunner. To date he’d transferred two pilots and one air gunner to his Blenheim squadrons, due to the fears of diving they had been unable to overcome in training. But he’d also worked hard on creating a esprit de corps among the crews, making the point to them that their bombing would always be more accurate and effective than the Blenheim squadrons.
He turned and walked under the awning set up to give shelter from the sun, his next flight was due in a quarter of an hour. He was convinced the accuracy would improve immeasurably on the cross target, but he needed to come up with some more difficult exercises, without killing anyone and damaging morale. The working with fighter escorts was going to be a next step, but he didn’t foreseen problems, just needed time. What was a greater issue was the whole concept of air-ground communications, his attempts with radio to date had been miserable, the sets were unreliable, poor maintenance, spares in short supply, and atmospheric conditions all colluding to thwart him, but if you were to ask him, life had changed for the better, he was developing his doctrine for air support, and it was going well!
