Mission5 The Bigger they come. 52 Sq(Bulldogs) Kyte.
The Bigger they come.
Kyte felt the Nieuport shudder. It felt as if the engine were tearing itself loose.
He tried to shut it down, but the vibration only got worse. Then he started to smell the aroma of something burning. The plane fell! It seemed like an eternity. As he lay on his back in the field, although he could see nothing he heard the dulcet voice of a young French girl softly calling to him in his ear, and the smell of burning was still overwhelming his senses.
What was she trying to tell him? He could feel himself slipping away.
If he listened hard he may just be able to catch the last words he would ever hear. The plane was shaking again.
"Wake up sir. Please wake up."
It was Robert his batman, shaking the end of the bed, with a steaming cup of Coffee from which a smell of roasted beans emanated.
"Come on sir. I thought you would never wake up. Good party last night was it sir?"
Kyte wished it had not been so good a night, as he took the first tentative sips of the scalding beverage which his batman had handed to him.
"What time is it Robert"? he mumbled whilst trying desperately to focus on his wristwatch lying on his bedside cabinet.
"Gone 4.15 am sir."
"But it is too early for dawn patrol yet Robert, and anyway it's B Flight's turn this morning"
"Bit of a flap on I'm afraid sir. CO. just got a message from Wing. Apparently there was a Zep raid over England last night sir, and some Coastal Airship sent a Morse message to say that one of the wounded beasties is heading this way.
the whole Squadron is to get airborne by dawn to see if we can intercept her.
Some twenty minutes later, and with a couple of poached eggs inside him violently trying to get back out again, Kyte was in the air alongside his wingman for the mission,
He glanced across to 's Nieuport's beautiful sesqi streamlined silhouette, that only the French seemed capable of producing, marred by the ugly protruding newfangled Le Prieur Rockets attached under its top wing on their racks.
God knew if they would make any difference to a fight against a Zeppelin even if they chanced to find it in the early dawn mist that pervaded the whole coastline. More likely to rip the wings out of the beautiful but frail looking aircraft.
At that very moment of reflection, and with his breakfast making a last desperate bid for freedom he saw Charlie Bates gesticulating wildly from his cockpit, and pointing east.
Looming up out of the mist was the shape of a Zeppelin.
"Good Grief it was vast. filling the sky with its bulk". Well if the Rockets were going to tear the wings off Charlie's plane we were soon going to find out.
As the two pilots approached, it was obvious that the Behemoth was badly hurt.
Down by the tail, and with a rent in the side panels, it was struggling to hold its course against the strengthening wind which was now shredding g the mist into rapidly thinning strands of vapour.
Without more ado Bates sheared off into his attacking run.
Even as he did so the last eddies of mist blew away to reveal an Eindecker bearing down on the action.
"So!" thought Kyte, as he moved in to engage," The RNAS were not the only ones to have got off a Morse message that morning."
The Belgian Archie gunners had obviously also been alerted early, for as the Eindecker closed, a wicked explosion burst not far off its Port wing.
Undeterred by the commotion, Charlie fired his full salvo of rockets as soon as he got within range of the Zeppelin.
To Kyte's surprise and immense relief, the wings did not rip off the Nieuport, and most of the rockets actually headed roughly in the direction of the immense target.
In fact, at that range they could hardly miss, and almost at once a blossom of fire sprang up from the crown of the Zeps envelope.
Kyte, satisfied that his Wingman had executed his part well now Immelmanned away from the Zep to deal with the oncoming Eindecker.
As he hung almost motionless at the top of his climb, an astute and opportunist gunner on the Zeppelins upper deck took a pot shot at Kyte with his Spandau.
Kyte, immediately discovered to his cost that the Zep was not the only craft on fire in that cold bright dawn sky. Fortunately within seconds Bates' return fire silenced the gunner for good.
He continued to maul the airship as Kyte battled to keep the fire away from the doped canvass of his aircraft. Fortunately, the mist damp canvass seemed reluctant to burn freely, as the oil burnt off the engine manifold.
Throwing his aircraft into a wild turn to keep the flames at bay Kyte caught the Eindecker pilot off guard. He obviously had thought that the Nieuport was doomed.
Being sprayed with Lewis bullets soon disabused him of any ideas that Kyte was out for the count.
There now ensued a most unusual combat.
With Archie bursts exploding between them, and Kyte trying to swerve his plane away from the fire, the hapless Fokker pilot was hit almost immediately in the shoulder.
Moreover, Kyte' erratic manoeuvres just happened to coincide with the shocked turn of the Eindecker, keeping it under his guns.
As the fire waned on Kyte's aircraft, and with no escape the Fokker continued to suffer a storm of bullets ripping into its vitals.
Meanwhile a new player arrived on the scene in the form of no less than the German budding Ace Ernst Udet.
He soon spotted Bates going in for another attack on the Zeppelin, which seemed as reluctant to burn as did Kyte's machine.
Kyte meanwhile, was finishing his adversary in the green Fokker.
As another ineffectual Archie burst failed to find the altitude, Kyte gave a sustained raking sweep of fire along the length of the Eindecker. A splinter of wood concussed the pilot, and his aircraft floated gently down in a slow spiral to crash land not far from one of the AA batteries.
Although the Zeppelin continued to smoulder, Kyte now had other things to worry about.
No sooner had he dealt with the Green Fokker, than he dived head on into Ernst Udet's machine, and at that very moment his Lewis ran out of Ammo.
Charlie Bates continued to hammer away at the Zep, but was himself now receiving return fire from the two re-manned guns on its Starboard side.
Whilst Kyte frantically changed his drum of ammo, Udet had to dodge yet another AA burst from the Belgian ground forces.
The exchange of fire between Charlie and the Zeppelin crew was now intensifying without any visible results for Bates, although just as it seemed that one gun was getting his range it fortuitously jammed.
It was ,however just too late to save Charlie from the other gun, which finally brought him down with a very poorly machine indeed. With no power, and only coming to his senses a few hundred feet above the ground, it was all he could do to manage a rough crash landing, before again passing out. Fortunately there was no fire.
Whilst Kyte was re-adjusting his Lewis after reloading,he failed to see charlie go down and he was also caught by Udet, just as he sat down. This caused his plane to veer off course and luckily Udet's bullets went wide.
Leaving Udet to deal with another ill directed Belgian Archie shell Kyte exchanged fire with the Zep, but neither party had any success in the exchange.
The Zeppelin was now within range of the town's AA but its fire was also equally unsuccessful.
Kyte now hit the Zep in a sustained burst which set more of its cells on fire.
In the return his engine was hit and shards from his windshield created a nasty gash on his forehead.
Partly blinded by blood on his goggles, he just crept his Nieuport under the body of the great behemoth, clearing it by inches only.
This probably saved him from the attentions of Udet who had to sheer off to avoid hitting his own countrymen.
By the time he had dived to pursue Kyte under the belly of the Zep, Kyte had managed to clear his goggles, perform a split -s and was returning toward him at great speed.
AA fire again came to Kyte's rescue, for whilst it failed to damage the airship, it served to drive Udet further away on its far side, giving the wounded Kyte with his damaged engine time to make a break for home before it was too late.
A final parting shot from the Zep put another hole in Kyte's Nieuport but did no real further damage.
As Kyte made off Udet got in another shot at extreme range, but once again Archie bursts obscured his view.
Both Udet and the Zep which was steadily loosing height were now subjected to an increasingly accurate fire from the Belgian AA as he tried to shepherd his giant consort to safety.
What Kyte and Bates had conspicuously failed to do was now achieved by the Fire Damage and the Belgians.
Diving for his aerodrome, Kyte failed to see the Sky behind him suddenly turn orange as the great leviathan, it's back broken, finally subsided into the Belgian countryside.
Udet simply shrugged his shoulders and headed for home before any more Allied aircraft turned up to see what the fire was.
The Butcher's bill.
52sq. Bulldogs.
Flt. Lt. A Kyte. RTB. W. one kill. Engine damaged.
Flt Lt. Charlie Bates. SD. FT.
The Belgian AA Battery. I kill.
The Eagles.
Green Eindecker SD.
Ltn. Ernst Udet. RTB.
Zeppelin SD. on Fire. I kill.
Afterword! History has yet to decide the ultimate fate of Kyte and Bates.
Rob.
Reply With Quote
Another masterly 
)
)
Originally Posted by johnbiggles
Bookmarks