Alan Evans - Thunder at Dawn

Bradley put the seaplane into the turn. The period of release and soaring elation had passed. The gut-tearing terror had not returned but neither was he uncaring. He was alert to danger and there were plenty of signs. The day was dying; the sun, wherever it was behind the masking cloud, dropping down into the sea. They had an hour of daylight at best and the cloud ceiling was lowering.

They were down to four hundred feet and cloud wisped around them when the coast loomed, darkening now, within two miles of them. Bradley turned and flew along it. It would not do to miss Malaguay because that was the only place on this coast where they might put down and it was now no better than ‘might’.

Visibility fell to barely a mile with the coast-line a black silhouette against the dirty grey of cloud. Rain was continuous now, thrumming on the fabric, sluicing over them in the open cockpits. Flying was a nightmare but Bradley was unruffled, totally absorbed, except for a nagging regret that he had not found the collier; he had failed Smith. And he owed Smith so much. He held the seaplane on its course, riding the weather, eyes straining against the gathering gloom, straining even more when his watch told him the headland of the bay should be coming up. It was dusk now and they were down to two hundred feet, the coast was right under them as creamy phosphorescence of breaking seas on a rocky shore and visibility was only hundreds of yards and closing in.

He sensed the loom of the headland before he saw it and was already pulling back on the control column as the black mass rushed at them out of the rain-filled dark. The engine roared under power as he set it climbing, the seaplane seeming to stand on its tail but still the mass towered above the spinning circle of the propeller, a pinnacle. He knew they could not crest it and threw the seaplane into a banking turn that dragged them away and around the pinnacle, so close that Smith could see the thrusting rocks and the wiry scrub that grew among them and a goat that rose from them and hurled itself, terrified, down the hill. The seaplane scaled past the pinnacle standing on one wing-tip, the pinnacle slipping away beneath the floats and more rocks below reaching for that dragging wing-tip. Then they had cleared the headland, were flying level and Bradley took them down through the cloud in a shallow dive.

They burst out of it; a thinning of the murk then it was ripped into flying ribbons and they thrust through them as if they were a curtain. Visibility was instant but only comparatively good. It was still good enough to show them the water very close under them and even as Bradley eased back the stick and levelled off he had to bank again to avoid Thunders bulk that was suddenly ahead of them in a strung necklace of lights blinking at them out of the dusk. They skimmed past down her starboard side and Smith saw Garrick clearly, standing on the wing of the bridge and looking down at them. They also passed through the smoke that trailed from Thunder’s funnels on the wind and Bradley saw the direction of that wind and swore.

It had swung through a quarter-circle and now it blew at an angle across the breakers. The shore came up as he climbed to gain height for the turn and he saw a little group of figures outside the box of the hangar and he thought: Welcoming committee. Richter would be there, and the mechanics. If they were unarmed he would be lucky to get off the beach alive, while if they were armed —

He made the turn, swept out around the curve of the bay and came in again from the sea. Smith turned his head for a second and Bradley glared grimly and mouthed against the bellow of the engine: “Hang on!” He saw Smith’s nod of comprehension, then he was taking her down, intent on landing out in the bay, carefully clear of the wrecking shore and the waiting Richter.

He took her down gently until he could see clear water below and ahead. This was not a hatching of lines on a crinkled surface far below but the surface of the bay, close under them, waves snapping like teeth. He held her off for a second, steadying her against the wildly quartering wind, picking his place and time. Then he eased her down so the floats kissed gently and the spray flew. They were almost down, the floats flicking through the snapping teeth and Smith started to exhale, ready to shout congratulations, because although he was no flyer he could recognise a near impossible feat superlatively accomplished. Then the wind gusted and blew them over, one wing slammed into water suddenly as substantial as concrete and the seaplane twisted and dived forward on its nose.

There was a ripping of fabric and the twanging of parting wire stays. Smith had crashed his head against the cockpit coaming. Through the whirling, blood-tinged kaleidoscope he was aware that the seaplane was tipping further nose down into the vertical and only the seat belt saved him. Saved him? The seaplane was sinking, jerking from side to side as the sea shook it but settling all the time. The belt would take him down with it. His vision cleared as realisation came and he clawed at the belt. He could see the waves breaking and sucking on the fragile hull and that Bradley was out, standing with one foot on what remained of the upper wingstrut above water. One hand lifted Smith off the cockpit coaming and the other tugged at the belt with practised fingers. The belt slipped away and Smith fell out of the cockpit as the seaplane rolled, sea-thrust, over on to its back. He fell on Bradley and they went down into the watery darkness together, the seaplane slamming down over them like a trap-door.

The fuselage forced Smith under but he kicked and turned, Bradley beside him but Bradley was not kicking, he lay sluggish and drifted. Smith grabbed him, kicked again as his lungs clamoured for air, clawed at the fuselage and dragged the pair of them to the surface. He managed to get his head out, paddling with his feet, fingertips of one hand clamped on the fuselage and the other around Bradley so the pilot’s face was lifted back, just clear of the water. The sea slapped over them and Smith coughed and spat it out, coughed and spat again. He could hear Bradley coughing but he still lay inert, a rapidly increasing weight as his clothes took on water, as were Smith’s. The weight was dragging him down. He clawed his way, inching desperately, further up the fuselage but it did no good. The seaplane was sinking. The sea washed the blood from Bradley’s face but it oozed again from a cut on the head. Smith thought it would be all up to Garrick. God help him. The dark was closing in.

He saw the light but felt rather than heard the beat of propellers as the picket-boat’s prow thrust up high above him then swung away as she turned. Her side came down towards him and he saw Buckley, Robinson, Exton and Lambert all kneeling there. As Exton and Lambert reached down to grasp the hand he lifted from the fuselage, Buckley plunged in beside him and lifted away Bradley’s weight. They hauled Smith out of the bay and he fell over the side to sprawl in the well like a stranded fish. Seconds later they brought Bradley in to join him, Buckley crawling in after, spitting and swearing. Somers spun the wheel and the picket-boat swung away, straightened out. Smith got his legs under him and stood up, holding on to the cabin’s coaming and peered back through the gathering darkness to where the seaplane lay. He was in time to see the tail slide down as the water rushed up inside the hull and the weight of the engine dragged the wreck to the bottom. It left a little vortex and a crowd of bubbles that held brief life and died. The sea closed over the place; it was as if the seaplane had never been.

He turned away. They had rushed Bradley into the cabin and he could see Buckley in there; still dripping wet but helping to wrap blankets around the limp body. Smith called, “How is he?” He was furious that his teeth chattered.