Page 8 of The Dark of the Moon
Keeping busy was a help, and now we Attagirls were certainly being kept busier than ever, ferrying new planes to air bases around the country and delivering more and more damaged craft back to factories for repairs. It was quite eerie flying a bullet-riddledmachine, imagining what it must have been like for the pilot to hear the metal pierce, to feel the aircraft lurch with the impact of enemy fire or the bump of flak and have to summon up every ounce of courage to keep flying and get home in one piece. It put my own preoccupations into perspective, and although I took Amy’s advice and managed to set aside the sadness of my break-up, I thought about Ben all the time, feeling closer to him in the sky than I did back on solid ground. I wondered whether he ever felt the same way about me, sparing a thought for the young, awkward girl he’d loved once. Perhaps the other girls had been right, and I was just one in a long string of broken-hearted WAAFs and Wrens left dangling in his wake. But I could never forget the glimpses of love and pain and fear that I’d seen in those blue eyes of his. They’d always seemed as completely real as the feelings I’d had for him.
By the end of the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe must have been growing desperate, realising they couldn’t win the battle in the air against our Spitfires and Hurricanes. They’d lost hundreds of planes but carried on throwing everything they had at our island. One afternoon in early September, when I’d made a delivery to an airfield in Kent and was waiting for my lift back to base, I witnessed another dogfight. Three Spitfires harried a German bomber approaching from on high, the far-off rattle of the guns sounding like a child running a stick along iron railings. I watched, open-mouthed, as the sky blossomed with white parachutes, which floated gracefully towards the blue waters below. It would almost have been beautiful had it not been for the fact that these were human lives hanging by a thread, intent on the kill themselves just moments before. The other personnel at the aerodrome scarcelylooked up from their work, so accustomed had they become to such sights.
By the time autumn arrived, the Germans had given up on daytime bombing raids. The Battle of Britain was over. But the Luftwaffe deployed a new strategy. They would focus their attention on London and the other big industrial cities of Britain, and they would come at night: the Blitz had begun.
Christmas that year was a subdued affair. Rationing was strict and we’d become used to the dull meals the canteen served up, mostly nondescript stews with scraggy bits of meat floating in thin gravy among shreds of cabbage. That special day, though, we tried to keep our spirits up on the base. Dinner was marginally more edible than usual, and was washed down with a special extra beer ration, although I couldn’t help longing for my mother’s Christmas Eve feasts, the twelve delicious dishes she’d conjure up for us.
Afterwards, we listened in silence to the King’s Christmas speech, broadcast from a secret location to keep the royal family safe. We realised how lucky we were. Thousands of Londoners were being forced to spend their Christmas in air raid shelters, and news trickled through of the bombing of Manchester the night before, leaving hundreds dead and thousands injured. The mood in the mess was subdued. But then Amy got to her feet, saying, ‘Come on, girls. We can’t let it get to us or it’ll be a victory for Herr Hitler.’ She went over to the wireless and turned the dial until she found a programme of dance music. Then, hamming it up, she marched over to the duty sergeant and said, ‘May I have the pleasure?’
We pushed back the tables and chairs and followed her lead, and soon the room grew warm with laughter and chatter again as the Attagirls danced with each other, or with the other pilotsand staff who didn’t have homes nearby and families to be with. I thought of all those Londoners, making the most of it in air raid shelters and Underground stations, and I hoped that Ben and Teddy – wherever they were – were able to distract themselves with a little festive cheer too. As Agnieszka and I foxtrotted around the room, I remember looking across at Amy, dancing with the canteen cook now. She caught my eye and grinned and nodded, and I felt a surge of gratitude for her friendship and the thoughtful way she had of making everyone feel special.
Amy always had that effect on people: a way of making you feel the world was a better place because she was in it.
The fun of that impromptu Christmas dance was short-lived, though, and by the next day we were back to our duties.
A few days into the new year, Amy and I travelled together up to Blackpool aerodrome, assigned to deliver a couple of Airspeed Oxfords (fondly known as ‘Ox-boxes’) to airfields in the south. The weather had closed in, so we spent the night in a lodging house, hoping the morning would bring better conditions. So it was that on the fifth of January, a day like any other, we sat in the canteen, trying to warm our hands around cups of lukewarm tea as we rechecked the handling notes about the aircraft and plotted the courses we’d be following, folding the maps so we could more easily cross-reference them with the landmarks we’d be able to see below. I glanced out of the window. It was still a cold, grey day and heavy clouds formed a solid ceiling overhead, although it was just high enough for us to fly.
‘Where are you headed?’ I asked her.
‘Kidlington. Taking an Ox-box to Oxford. Honestly, I know that course so well I could do it in my sleep. I’m so fed up with this grim weather. Think I might fly over the top and see if I can find a glimpse of sunshine up there.’
I thought of the times I’d flown with Teddy before the war, breaking through the cloud cover and soaring into the sunlight, in a world of our own. Up there, we could bask in the warmth coming through the Perspex canopy, thawing out our fingers, which would be frozen even in our flying gloves, enjoying the dazzle of the sunshine after the damp, grey gloom down below. It was tempting. But I knew both the planes Amy and I would be flying that day were new builds, so they wouldn’t yet be fitted with their radios and their navigation gear. I laughed, getting to my feet and collecting my things. ‘Well, it goes without saying but you’re a better pilot than I am, Amy Johnson! I think I’ll stay low and stick to following the rivers and the railways.’
One of the WAAFs popped her head round the door, waving a meteorology report. ‘If you’re going to get out today, you’d best go now. The window’s going to close later.’
The two of us walked out to the field together and Amy waved me off. ‘Fly safe, Philly. See you on the other side,’ she said, patting the underbelly of the plane.
That was the last time I saw her. By the time I finally returned to White Waltham after making my delivery, the whole base was in mourning. Because our Amy was missing.
It was a mystery. In the days that followed, the newspaper reports said that eyewitnesses on a ship had seen her plane come out of the clouds and dive into the sea over the Thames Estuary. It was surmised that she’d got lost in the bad weather that had closed in, run out of fuel and ditched her aircraft. And although we heard that a lifeboat had been launched, they hadn’t been able to save her. One crewman had dived in and tried to get to her, but the January waters were freezing, and he’d succumbed to hypothermia and subsequently died. Her body couldn’t be found, although they did find pieces of wreckage from the plane.There is no possibilitythat Amy Johnson could have survived when her plane came down, the reports said.
It was the not knowing that was the worst, not being able to bury her properly, not having a place we could go to remember her and pay our respects. I couldn’t make sense of it. She was not just one of the best among us ATA ferry pilots, she was one of the most experienced aviators in the world. If she had gone over the top, she was perfectly capable of working out her route by dead reckoning. Her trip should have taken only about an hour. And if she had somehow lost her way, she’d have known to drop down below the cloud base and pick up the route again, stopping off to refuel, if need be, at one of the other airfields we knew so well.
Then the unofficial story came trickling through, passed along by word of mouth. One of the girls had a friend whose sweetheart was in the Navy ... The rumours were that a plane had been seen over the Thames Estuary, coming out of the clouds, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The warship patrolling below had sent its routine radio signal: Identify, Friend or Foe. When there was no response, it had sent it again. And when there was still no response to a third and more urgent signal – how could there have been, when the Ox-boxes we were delivering hadn’t yet had their own radios fitted? – they’d opened fire.
Amy’s overnight bag washed ashore a couple of days later. But her body was never found.
Finn
The basic formula for dead reckoning is Distance = Speed x Time. So, for example, if a plane has flown at 200 knots air speed for 2 hours it has flown 400 nautical miles through the air. But then there are lots of other factors that can make it more complicated. Like the wind. Or the weight of the plane, which can be affected by how much fuel it’s carrying so it changes over time. Or the density of the air. And air speed is not the same as ground speed, which is why when you fly across the Atlantic from west to east it usually takes a shorter time than flying the other way because the jet stream helps push you along. Amy Johnson would have had to use dead reckoning for flying above the clouds. But maybe she didn’t do the right calculations. And if she made an error then that could have meant that her next calculation was wrong too. That’s probably why she had to drop down to see where she was, and she found she was in the wrong place entirely.
When we were standing on top of the lighthouse, the wind was very strong. The kittiwakes were swooping and banking hard to steer against it. If Leonardo da Vinci had been there, he might have written about that in his Codex on the Flight of Birds. The Old Lady was watching the birds too. She was probably thinking about flying the planes. And maybe about Amy Johnson.
Mum wasn’t watching the birds, because she was too busy stressing about the time and looking at her watch a lot.
Nowadays, planes have computers to work out all the navigational stuff, so it would be a lot easier to fly by dead reckoning. If Amy Johnson had had a computer – even one just the size of Dad’s laptop – or at least a working radio, she wouldn’t have been shot down.
Philly
Although I’ve only been here a few days, I’m detecting even more of a growing tension between Kendra and Dan. They try and hide it from me, but this sailing camp he’s trying to organise seems to be at the root of it. Although of course looking after Finn takes an awful lot of doing and must be a constant worry for them.
I can see how frustrating it must be, never being able to solve their son’s autism. We humans are programmed for problem-solving. Our brains are wired that way. There’s huge satisfaction to be gained from facing a challenge and resolving it, that’s why I love doing my daily crossword puzzles. Come to think of it, I suppose that’s why I always found my career in cryptography so fulfilling. But for Kendra and Dan, there is no resolution. They try everything, hoping for a breakthrough that never comes. And so I think they try to find other ways to be in control: tidying the house; serving up the perfect lunch; Kendra’s meticulously researched writing; Dan’s immaculately organised sailing camp.
I feel for them. They’ve both put their lives on hold, as Kendra said. I suppose her writing is a good solution, giving her an income as well as the flexibility to help with Finn, while Dan manages the money and the day-to-day care of his son. They’ve both sacrificed a lot though. I can see how much they love their son, how desperately they’re trying to help him navigate his way through a world that mustseem to him so confusing and chaotic. I notice the moments of fleeting suspension, just a heartbeat or two, when they would naturally reach out to touch their boy, to hug him or ruffle his hair or give him a pat on the back, and they have to hold back, folding their arms instead, suppressing the instinct. I see how he never touches anyone, and how he can’t bear to be touched. It must have been even harder for them when he was a baby – at least now he’s old enough to do most things for himself. But how must it feel to have every sense on high alert in every waking moment? To have no way of filtering the merciless bombardment of sights and sounds and smells the world throws at you? It must be unrelentingly exhausting for him. But it’s exhausting for his parents too. It shows in their faces in unguarded moments.
‘Did you sleep well?’ Kendra asks me at breakfast the next morning.
‘Insofar as it goes,’ I reply. ‘It’s one of the curses of old age, not sleeping through the night.’
