Bull - Speed kings: the 1932 Winter Olympics and the fastest men in the world

PROLOGUE

T he lunch van arrived at a quarter to one. And about time too. Bill Littlemores stomach was starting to growl. They had been up before dawn again, fitting and rigging the fighters, loading the bullets, checking the repairs, running the engines. That was the job, so there was no sense complaining. Which never stopped them from doing exactly that.

Bill volunteered to run over to the van for his fellow mechanics. He could already see the queue starting to form as he trotted across the grass. He quickened his pace. Started to sweat a little. It was hot now. The early morning haze was long gone. This was the first bit of blue sky theyd had all week. He looked up. The pilots were up there somewhere, but he couldnt see them. They must be out over the Isle of Wight. He said a quick prayer to himself, asking God to send them home safe. He often did that when they were in the air, and he didnt mind admitting it.

Hed already eaten half his bun by the time he got back to the dispersal hut. He had to duck his mouth down to it because his hands were full and he didnt want to spill the tea on his uniform. The lads were all idling around, waiting for news from Control. The squadron had taken off half an hour ago, when the radar stations had picked up a formation coming out of Cherbourg and heading across the Channel. By now theyd either be in the thick of it or already on their way back home.

Any news? he asked as he put the three teas down. He already knew the answer. No one was moving, so there was nothing doing.

He passed the buns around, one apiece for each of the two Jocks, Tyrrell and McKinley. They were firm pals, flight mechanics, like Bill, with 43 Squadron, the Fighting Cocks. And just then, they heard the distant hum of the engines.

That sounds like them now, said Tyrrell. Thats the Cocks returning.

Bill put his ear to the wind, paused. And he knew, he just knew, that it wasnt them. The pitch was off.

Theyre not ours, he said. They sound like bloody Jerry, dont they?

The loudspeakers burst into life. Attention! Attention! Take cover! Take cover! It wasnt the first time theyd heard that today. But the announcer sounded a little more urgent this time.

Bill heard the words, but somehow they didnt register. Theyd done so many drillshe just couldnt believe this was the real thing. Then the air-raid alarms began to wail. He stepped out of the hut and threw his hand up above his brow to block out the sun. And he saw it straightaway. A Stuka. Gull wings, fixed undercarriage, large glass canopy. The silhouette was utterly unmistakable. He watched as the plane turned its nose down toward the earth and swept into a steep dive, down toward No. 1 Hangar. He could hear the howl of the siren from across the field. When the dive reached two thousand feet, a small black orb fell away from the Stukas belly and carried on down toward the earth while the plane itself pulled up and away back into the sky. And then a pillar of fire and smoke filled the sky, followed, so quick you couldnt tell which had come first, by the thump of the explosion. The bomb fell right by the van, at the exact spot where Bill had been standing a few minutes earlier.

There is no single, definitive account of what happened at RAF Tangmere on August 16, 1940. There are dozens of versions, one for every person who was there. Their memories of the raid dont always add up. Often they contradict each other. Some say they heard the sirens earlier, that the Tannoy warned them sooner, that the first bomb fell in another spot. They are all right. Everyone made sense of the chaos in his own way. This is the story of the raid as told by Bill Littlemore, Leading Aircraftman, 43 Squadron, as he remembered it forty years later.

From that moment on all hell broke loose, with bombs exploding, the noise of the Stukas strafing us as they dived and pulled skywards, and our ground defenses putting up a barrage of metal which must have made the Hun feel that he was not welcome, Bill wrote. For many of us at Tangmere that day it was our first baptism of fire, something I shall always remember as a very unpleasant experience when one considers we had no arms to hit back with except the tools in our tool boxes. And I can assure you these felt very inadequate when set against the bombs and cannon fire that was to be aimed at us by the Stuka 87s when they suddenly pounced on the airfield.

For those of us on the flights, and I am sure I express their feelings as well as mine, we were shaken to say the least, and as per our orders for such a situation the only sensible thing to do was seek the protection of our air raid shelter which lay just to the rear of B Flight dispersal hut. All sprint records were I am sure broken in our haste to reach the safety of the shelter and it is said that fear lends wings to those who need them. I grew a pair very quickly.

Bill wasnt thinking anymore. It was blind panic. He sprinted toward the bomb shelter, and safety. He was almost there when, through the machine-gun fire and the bomb blasts and the sirens and the engines, he heard, loud and clear, what he described as the stentorian shout of his boss, Flight Sergeant Savage.

Stand by! Savage barked. Our aircraft are approaching!