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5. The Ace
- The University Press of Kentucky
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27 August 1941 5. The Ace It was still pitch dark on the morning of 27 August 1941 when the batwoman (yes, I said woman, a WAAF type) knocked on my quarters door, entered the room uninvited, and turned on that bloody bright light. "Four o'clock, sir," she cheerfully informed me. "You've got to be at dispersal in an hour. Come on now. sir, hop to it." Then she shoved a cup of boiling hot tea under my nose. How the hell could she be so cheerful at such an ungodly hour as four in the morning. I think she took a perverted delight in waking me up. I opened one eye to look at her. She was short and dumpy, just what you'd expect the RAF to pick for this duty. "OK, OK, I'm awake," I responded sleepily. "What's the weather like?" She said the sky was brilliantly clear with twinkling stars (bloody poetic), dawn would soon be upon us, and it looked like the day would be lovely and sunny. Hell's fire, I mused, why couldn't it be raining and socked in with fog so our squadron could stand down, or be released, and I could sleep in for a few more hours. Not today, kid. Get your can out of the sack if you want any breakfast. I could hear the WAAF going down the corridor knocking up the other pilots. How about that "knocking up" bit. In England it means waking someone up. I struggled out of bed, took a semi-cold shower, dressed in my old flying uniform, and went to the mess dining room for a bit of breakfast. Some of the other guys were already there—Tommy McGerty, Uncle Sam Mauriello, Jimmy Crowley,Gussy Daymond, and Pete Provenzano. Several others straggled in during the next few minutes. I was sort of surprised to see so many of the squadron pilots being routed out; usually only four or six of us were required to be on readiness at this time of the morning. So I wondered out loud what was going on. Uncle 78 Fighter Pilot Sam told me we were going on another circus this morning, the whole squadron, and that's allhe knew about it. Our breakfast was nicely served to us by more WAAFs. It consisted of two sausages (90 percent bread filler and 10 percent meat mix), a damned fried tomato which I grew to hate with a purple passion, toast, jam, and some sort of brackish liquid the English mistakenly called coffee. No sense in complaining—the stock answer was: "Don't you know there's a war on?" Yes, we knew there was a war on. Maybe,we occasionally suggested, the Germans had a better mess; maybe we ought to transfer to the Luftwaffe. By the way, we were rationed one eggper month; everyone, even the admin types, got up for breakfast on that morning. In ten minutes breakfast was finished and six of us piled out of the mess and into F/Lt George Brown's little canvas-covered truck for our ride to the dispersal hut on the far side of North Weald airfield. The others caught a ride with S/Ldr Paddy Woodhouse, who had been issued a staff car. At dispersal we were assigned to our flight and section positions. I was assigned Blue 3. My aircraft was a Spitfire Mk IIA, code letters XR-D, serial number P7308.1 usually flew aircraft XR-D or XR-T. Both were good kites, but XR-D had just a bit more zip, I thought. Just as we went out to the dispersal bays to get our aircraft ready, lugging our parachutes and flying helmets, I heard the operations corporal calling No. 11 Group to report No. 71 "Eagle" Squadron's readiness status. The fitter (crew chief) had already run up my Spit's engine. He told me she checked out OK. I stepped up on the port wingroot and straightened out the Sutton harness to suit me, put my chute in the cockpit seat, and climbed in. After checking the petrol gauges, I selected most of the switches to the "on" position, except for the master switch. Then I unscrewed the Ki-Gas pump, but left it closed. Next I set up the throttle, mixture, and propeller pitch for quick starting. I plugged in the radio cord and oxygen tube, and placed my flying helmet over the gunsight...