Chapter 20

Sidetrack (ii)  Merlin

Darkest Hour to Deliverance

There’s something about a familiar song or a piece of music that embeds itself deep into the memory region of the brain.  It sits there until you hear it again, sometimes decades later, and instantly the Time Machine hurls you backwards to that place in time and space where it had been a key part of your life.

The same is true of other sounds.  The school lesson bell, or the alarm from Beeston Fire Station which would sometimes wail in the night calling the firemen in to tackle a blaze somewhere in the locality, are a couple of examples that in a moment can transport me back to my childhood years.  Can this ability to recognise certain sounds be inherited, passed down a generation, from parents who had lived with a particular noise during an intense part of their lives?  Or is it just the result of very limited exposure to that sound being mixed with a whole load of conditioning?

Here’s something I can’t easily explain.  I’m willing to bet that if I’m in the garden, or out and about in the countryside, and hear the sound of a propeller-driven plane, I can almost instantly recognise one particular type that stands out from the general mass of whines, drones, hums and buzzes that can fill the air on a summer’s afternoon.  I stand and listen for a few moments, perhaps doubting my instincts, but under my breath I’d be mouthing the word ‘Spitfire’ and trying to spot the source up in the sky before it was lost behind a cloud or tree branch. 

And yet it’s such a rare occurrence how could I know?  I could count on just my fingers and toes  the times I’ve actually seen a plane powered by a Merlin, the famous piston engine with such a distinctive sound.  A few air displays, the odd fly-past and one surprising Sunday when, whilst watching Murray playing football at Filton, a solo pilot performed aerobatics in a Spitfire over our heads.

But for anyone who grew up during the war years, it was very different.

I went with Dad once to an open air concert at Chepstow one summer evening in 2014, sitting on a gently sloping hill with views over the Severn Estuary, and listening to some rousing orchestral music on Battle of Britain Day.  The event was capped by the arrival, almost without warning, of two planes flying at such a low level they were skimming the tree tops.  The music was drowned out as both a Hurricane and Spitfire buzzed the crowd before climbing into the blue late summer evening sky and performing a series of rolls, dives and loops, their two Merlin engines roaring or purring, in synchronisation with their manoeuvres.  It was a mature audience that evening, sitting in their deck chairs beside their hampers and flasks, many with blankets over their knees.  Most would have been children 70 years ago.  They all rose,  every man and woman, drawn onto their feet by an invisible cord.  All heads gazing nostalgically into the sky, all eyes misting over, all voices quietly cheering, some even choked up, a few arms and hats waved, but all hands clapped.  Ten minutes later it was all over as the planes flew east back across water and the engine sound faded.  Silence.  Nobody spoke for a few minutes as they quietly re-emerged back into the 21st century.

It’s the same response you can see at many of the commemorative fly pasts or airshows.  Royal weddings and birthdays, WWII anniversaries and other national celebrations all follow a familiar pattern.  We’re placed in the right patriotic mood by the Red Arrows, leaving their red, white and blue smoke trails as they roar overhead, seemingly only metres apart.  But the biggest cheer and the deepest emotion will be reserved for the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.  Escorted by a Spitfire and Hurricane, the Lancaster bomber, powered by its four Merlins, will slowly appear in the distance and steadily approach before flying a straight line up The Mall and over the Palace.

If you think about the experiences of those children back then it’s perhaps easier to understand why these planes and their legendary engine are so engrained in their souls.  It only needs a short visit in our Time Machine to the late Summer of 1940 – their  ‘Darkest Hour’, to appreciate it.

The match is about to start.  We’re the underdogs and the consequences of defeat range from worrying to terrifying.  The children - our parents - display a mixture of defiance, doubts and concerns.  The news, the gossip in the street and the scary stories in the playground combine to ensure that you, your siblings and your mates are simultaneously both thrilled and frightened.  Looking back from the Present we know the outcome, we’ve seen the Match of the Day highlights, we know the heroes, we know the villains.  The key point though is that in September 1940 no-one knew how the game would play out, how long it would last, how hard it would be, who might be injured, and ultimately what the result would ultimately end up being.

We were up against a team that had conquered most of mainland Europe.  The largest, fittest, and strongest squad with a seemingly endless supply of the best kit.  A ruthless management set up, a publicity machine second to none and hordes of fanatical supporters.  They expected a walkover and the odds were stacked in their favour.  It only needed our hastily assembled defence to be broken open and the game would be as good as over.

Our manager didn’t have much to work with.  The remnants of last season’s squad, still smarting from a thrashing in France and barely recovered from knocks received in the last minute point salvaged at Dunkirk.  Behind the scenes the backroom staffs were working hard bringing the reserves and youth team up to match fitness.  There was an option to play a few foreigners, acquired at the last minute from Poland, France or the Commonwealth, but there was barely enough kit to share around.  When the match kicked off in September our team ran out with little more in their favour than some inspiring words from the manager.  The desperate tactical plan was simple: speed and a non-stop fight to keep the waves of attacks at bay, preventing the opponents from getting too close to score decisive goals.

The fearful crowd followed the early exchanges, many pessimistically expecting an early capitulation.  They knew that it wasn’t just like another game.  Defeat would be life-changing, possibly life-threatening, and many could hardly watch.  However like most supporters their mood could swing and, as the radio and newspapers updated the latest situation, a glimmer of hope appeared that we might at least put up a decent fight.

The children picked up on the mood-change as their team hung on.  Whether it’s football or cricket everyone has a favourite player and now was time to choose your hero from the team playing so desperately in the sky to defend your freedom.  The choice was easy: the pilot and his fighter.  It didn’t really matter whether it was a Hurricane or Spitfire, both names sounded thrilling.  The comics, the doodles, the models, the playground games all helped spread their fame and, as the days dragged into weeks, the press, radio, parents and neighbours all slowly helped to reinforce the legendary status in the minds of the nation’s youth.

It was for real.  If you lived in the south east, around London or the Channel coast you could watch the match live, hearing the engines, seeing the trails.  Otherwise you’d see and hear it on the Pathe newsreel at the cinema or when a solo Spit’ flew overhead on a training flight, a journey from the factory to the Kent airfields or some other objective and you’d wave your school cap and excitedly discuss its mission with your mates.  You grew to recognise the Merlin’s growl and purr.

As children you had no knowledge of the assistance provided by radar or the choreography-role played by Ops team in the control room bunker where the WRAF anticipated and moved the team’s defences around on the huge map table to thwart the approaching bombers.  You didn’t consider the army of workers, many of whom were women, working long hours in the factories or armouries.  But as 1940 rolled into 1941 it was clear that the defence had held up against the first onslaught.  It was enough to ensure that these childhood heroes would remain heroes for life.

The Team, strengthened and now more experienced started to push back.  Venturing into the opposition half, the strategy was to use heavyweight forwards to bludgeon their defences, combined with nippy, manoeuvrable strikers to hit specific targets.  Amongst the big guys, the Lancaster was the workhorse, flying missions night after night deep into enemy territory, whilst on the flanks the Mosquito, with its twin Merlins, would be making numerous incisive surgical strikes.

Curled up at night under the eiderdown the children would hear the drone of the bomber squadrons in the distance, flying closer with an increasing throb that seemed to make the room vibrate as they passed overhead on their way to northern Europe from their bases in the east Midlands and East Anglia, before fading into the night.  Around dawn they’d wake to the same sound returning, often with not quite the same reassuring growl, and usually, sometime later, a solo plane with a spluttering, misfiring engine.  Night after night, week after week, with increasing intensity, it drilled its way into your subconscious, the only respite provided by nights with heavy cloud cover.  But you didn’t mind.  The pundits had changed their tune, the balance of the match had swung and ‘our boys’ were slowly gaining the upper hand.

‘Our boys’

 I had a useless teacher for A-level Maths who was completely incapable of explaining the mysteries of quadratic equations, differentiation and integration and other bewildering theorems and formulae.  To be fair I was probably on the limit of what I could cope with and was relieved when calculators replaced the ingenious, but baffling, slide rule (two sticks marked with a logarithmic scale and you can calculate out all sorts of stuff - how does that work?).  But I needed a C grade and so tried to follow his seemingly incoherent mumblings.

Mr Porter was an older member of staff, he dressed smartly, he never shouted, he just wrote it on the board and marked your homework.  He didn’t really teach and he didn’t inspire.

Apart from the time we did trigonometry.

‘You might need this one day.’

‘Oh yeah.  Why sir?’

Only 35 years earlier, aged 19, just two years older than we were right then, Mr Porter had flown mission after mission as the navigator on bombing raids over the Continent.  He spoke quietly of the importance of triangulation, of vectors, of wind speeds and maps.  How he could work out a position using the stars, how radio bearings could help but couldn’t be relied on, and how his calculations were often the only thing that ensured they’d reach the target and get home afterwards.

He described the cold, frightened hours spent tucked in his seat with its tiny chart table just behind the pilot and engineer as they ran the gauntlet through the anti-aircraft fire, hoping to avoid any enemy fighters. He painted a picture of the stress and anxiety that accompanied every flight.  If he wasn’t double-checking where he thought they were, he’d be gazing anxiously out through the perspex to reassure himself the engines were still driving the propellers, praying silently they’d keep going:

‘Four Merlins - should be ok and home before the dawn.

Three Merlins - on a 500 mile flight home they might just make it before the breakfast had all gone, assuming that, as wounded stragglers, they weren’t intercepted before reaching the safety of a fighter escort.

Two Merlins - a nightmare.  His calculations for the agonising crawl back to the first airfield they  could reach on their side of the Channel were critical.  If a headwind was against them…….

One Merlin - he’d heard of planes managing to limp back, or get down safely, but it required a lot of initial height, anything non-essential to be jettisoned, and miraculous level of skill by the crew.’

It’s impossible to appreciate what those hours must have been like.  I get anxious if I’ve had a puncture on a bike ride and only have one spare tube left on me.  Our children worry if they can’t hook up to google maps or get immediate responses to their social media postings.

Why didn’t he start his year teaching us with this story rather than leaving it to the final term to gain some respect?

‘Our boys.’  Night after night, aged 19.

The match was over.  An experience that could never be forgotten.  It was time to celebrate an unlikely victory and ensure that these heroes of adults and children alike, would pass into legend.

Cue the movies, cue the music.

I grew up with regular reminders of their exploits.  The black and white films were regular staples from the BBC archives.  Kenneth More as Douglas Bader hoisting his tin legs into the cockpit in ‘Reach for the Sky.’  The low-level training over the Derbyshire reservoirs for 617 squadron in ‘The Dambusters.’  ‘Did you know that’s Ladybower Reservoir?’ said Dad every time.  And every Christmas the Mosquitoes of ‘633 Squadron’ would hurl their way, Merlin engines screaming at full throttle, up the narrow Norwegian fiord in defiance of the guns to take out the Nazi heavy water plant.

The orchestral music re-inforced the mood.  Everyone of my generation knows the majestic ‘Dambusters March’ and would recognise the thrilling tempo of ‘633 Squadron.’  Any fly-pasts are usually accompanied by ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ that culminates in the chorus of ‘Land Of Hope and Glory.’  I’ve got mixed feelings on this piece.  I feel uneasy with the Last Night of the Proms rendition; it’s in part the jingoistic celebration that involves Union-Jack waist-coated, debenture-holding bankers tipsily singing Rule Britannia.  (His grandfather was probably one of the gallant officers remembered in the increasingly regular Telegraph obituaries, but the only battle our banker has known is to get a seat on the Tube or triumph at conkers in the playground). On the other hand, along with everyone else, I get a lump in my throat whenever the Battle of Britain flight appears in the sky accompanied by this classic Elgar piece.

Whether it’s the music, the films, the tales, the grainy black and white newsreels it doesn’t matter. The uncertain intensity of the experience created an environment for heroes and the pilots and their planes stepped into that role with their purring, screaming Merlins providing the soundtrack.

It’s a soundtrack that won’t last forever.  Soon the fly-pasts will no longer be there for the heroes or their children.  They’ll roll on a while longer for our generation brought up on the folklore.  But then the sound will quickly be forgotten, failing to be passed on to our children.

No more Spitfires, Hurricanes or Lancasters, no more Merlins.  Like the ring of an old telephone, the clatter of a typewriter, or the whistle of a steam train, a sound so engrained into people’s lives for just a few decades will pass quickly into posterity.

Of course our alien friends on Beta Arietis can still hear the sounds for a while yet. The 'do or die' radio chatter of the Battle of Britain was picked up by their radio telescopes 15 years ago and just recently they’ve just been watching The Dambusters at their cinemas.

Images removed to avoid copyright: Lancaster and Spitfire, 633 Squadron cover, Dambusters poster, Merlin engine