In the hours ahead, Rupert’s night would be filled with fitful, restless sleep, and throughout it all, those eerie, almost foreboding lyrics would continue to turn round and round in his mind and his dreams.
PR aircraft ‘B-for-Baker’
Maidstone, Kent
Tuesday
August 13, 1940
Squadron Leader Eric Richardson scanned the sky in all directions for enemy fighters as he had countless times during the 20-minute flight down from Oxfordshire. In that vague half-light between night and the first rays of morning sun, it was probably too early for the Luftwaffe to be out and about in force, but he wasn’t the type to take things for granted. Richardson was relatively new to the field of aerial photography, and had only been with the RAF’s Photographic Reconnaissance Unit for a few weeks. The PRU’s ranks had been decimated by heavy attrition throughout 1940, and it was an unfortunate reality that the huge majority of PR aircraft the RAF sent across The Channel never returned, falling victim either to ground fire or, more commonly, to the predations of radar-directed Luftwaffe J-4A fighters that were too fast to outrun.
The PRU had formed in the last week of September 1939 at Heston Aerodrome, west of London, for the purpose of conducting photographic reconnaissance over Europe. Originally known simply as ‘Heston Flight’, its mission had since grown in size and scope and it had gone through several reorganisations prior to being designated by its current title. Heston was easily within range of the Luftwaffe following the Fall of France, and the unit had been forced to move further west to Oxfordshire in early June due to repeated aerial attacks that had all but reduced the place to rubble and made the runways completely unusable.
As a former fighter pilot, Richardson had already been shot down once but had been fortunate enough to have been over British soil at the time, and had parachuted to safety as his Spitfire spiralled into the ground in flames. He’d been ready to jump straight back into combat, but a shortage of aircraft had left him without a unit for a week or so and had made him an excellent potential recruit for the shattered and reforming Photographic Reconnaissance Unit. The fact that he was an experienced fighter pilot came as a huge advantage in the eyes of the RAF (the fact that he’d survived long enough to become experienced in the current climate even moreso) and even he had to admit that he’d found the specialised PR training relatively easy to pick up. What had been more impressive was the brand new aircraft they’d given him to train with. Manufactured by North American Aviation, the Mustang Mark I (soon to enter production in the United States as the P-51A) was a truly amazing aircraft.
North American were a relatively small, unknown aviation manufacturer whose only notable other military aircraft to that point had been the excellent B-25 Mitchell medium bomber. As had been the case in Realtime, the RAF had originally asked NAA to build Curtiss P-40 fighters under licence. North American had shown a good deal of foresight and initiative, and instead pleaded for the opportunity to design a completely new fighter altogether, so confident in their proposal that North American agreed to purchase RAF wind tunnel testing reports for the P-40 to seal the deal in spite of the fact the data would never be used. The resulting low-wing monoplane fighter was new and state-of-the-art in every respect, and took just 100 days of development from the start of planning to the roll-out of the first prototype. In Realtime it would go on to become what was generally considered the finest piston-engined fighter ever to see combat in the Second World War: the P-51 Mustang.
Still a North American design, albeit conceived at least a year earlier than had been the case in Realtime, the Mustang that Richardson now flew had been ordered specifically from NAA by the RAF under the direction and assistance of Nick Alpert. Alpert had been able to supply detailed blueprints outlining some requirements for modification to the original design, following which a greatly accelerated development and production program had been initiated.
Aircraft ‘B-for-Baker’ was one of the first three dozen Mustangs to be supplied under contract from NAA and delivered via cargo ship in separate fuselage and wing sections. Reassembly had been carried out at secret locations in Scotland and in the north of England, far away from likely prying eyes and ears, and of those first completed models, twenty-four had been assigned to form two new fighter squadrons, while the remaining twelve had gone to the PRU for vital reconnaissance work.
The Mustang I was almost identical to the Realtime P-51H model, save for being armed with two 20mm Hispano cannon in each wing rather than the normal US practice of arming their aircraft with .50-calibre machine guns (usually six). While there was only enough space to carry 120 rounds per gun, the cannon were far more powerful than the .303 machine gun armament standard to RAF fighters at the time, and only a few hits from four such guns would be lethal enough to deal with any enemy fighter and most enemy bombers. The Mustang was also fast… very fast… and its new-model, fuel-injected Merlin-61 engine was at altitude able to take it to speeds of over 780 kilometres per hour — over 480 miles per hour in Imperial measurement. Like its Realtime equivalent, the P-51H model, it was a lightweight version of the more common P-51D which had the same ‘cut-down’ rear fuselage and sliding, ‘tear-drop’ canopy.
Mustangs entering service with RAF fighter squadrons carried the usual RAF land temperate camouflage scheme of large blotches of brown and dark green on upper surfaces and fuselage sides with sky blue beneath. Richardson’s aircraft was built for reconnaissance however — its full RAF title was Mustang PR Mark IA — and it sported an entirely different camouflage scheme as a result. Save for its red/blue tail markings, RAF roundels and its ‘LY — B’ unit letter recognition codes (barely visible on either side of each fuselage roundel in faded grey stencilled letters), it was completely painted on all surfaces with the very same sky blue that fighters usually sported on their undersides only.
A set of high-quality still cameras had been installed behind the pilot, two looking directly downward through a plexiglass panel in the fuselage floor while the lens of a third camera pointed out to port at a right angle through a slightly bulged, clear ‘blister’ of Perspex that formed what would otherwise have been the central red spot of the Mustang’s RAF roundel on that side. The four wing cannon had been removed in the PR variant, and in their place were just two .50 calibre Browning machine guns with 400 rounds apiece.
It was a relatively weak armament, but the modification had a threefold effect on improving the aircraft’s performance: the removal of the cannon meant a marked saving in weight, while also leaving increased space inside the wings for extra fuel. As was the case with the Realtime P-51, it also meant that the machine guns’ muzzles could be mounted flush within the wing. The 20mm cannon of the fighter variant were powerful weapons with a high muzzle velocity, and as such were substantially longer than the Browning M2 machine gun. As a result, the cannon barrels protruded almost a metre beyond the leading edge of each wing, firing outside the disc of the propeller.
This small but notable disruption to the aircraft’s aerodynamics had a direct effect on its top speed, and speed was all important to a PR aircraft. Speed was life as far as recon pilots were concerned; particularly those engaged in exceptionally dangerous low-level missions known colloquially as ‘Going Dicing’: a shortened form of the phrase ‘Dicing with Death.’ At high altitude, a Mustang PR was out of range of ground fire and was too fast to be caught by enemy fighters. Down low however, both were a very real threat and Dicing missions were always tense, stressful affairs as a result.