Peter observed the Captain during the meal, saw him to eat almost nothing, drinking his soup but taking barely a mouthful from the other courses.
‘Bad luck, old fellow. Your tale is very nearly told.’
He said nothing aloud.
The port circulated and the formal toasts were made. The Captain sipped at a single glass.
The evening ended in the wardroom, none of those present choosing to go off the base – ashore – for their amusement.
“If you are off duty at the weekend it’s normal enough to go up to London or across to Brighton, Naseby. During the week we tend to drink little and sleep early. Our days are busy!”
Peter rose at six thirty, ordered out of bed by the servant he shared with Fraser.
“Fine and sunny morning, sir. Everything a pilot could ask for. Breakfast serving from fifteen minutes, sir.”
A hurried wash and shave and into his oldest working uniform, his shirt ironed but not starched at all, the collar almost soft from long usage. He shook his head – he would have been ordered off the bridge of HMS Calliope as a disgrace to the ship. Thinking on it, that was effectively what had happened to him, so he had nothing to worry about these days.
“Eggs and bacon, sir. Porridge first. Tea or coffee, sir?”
The wardroom steward was briskly efficient. Fraser grinned in sympathy, spooning in his porridge, well sprinkled with brown sugar.
“Eat up, Naseby. Can be a long time between meals on patrol. Always fuel up with a heavy breakfast. Stuff down all the toast you can manage afterwards with plenty of marmalade or jam. You need the sugar.”
Peter nodded – he could not be cheerful at the breakfast table.
Fraser finished first and stood from the table.
“See you in the classroom – the hut attached to the right hand hangar – in a quarter of an hour, old chap. Latrine call first – can always take a pee over the side of the cockpit, not so easy to manage anything else up in the air!”
Crude advice, but highly sensible, Peter realised. No heads in a blimp, in the nature of things.
The classroom was bare except for the cut-down fuselage of a BE2. The wings had been trimmed away and the tailplane removed. All that was left was a two-seater cockpit, arranged fore and aft, and an engine at the front with a huge, nine feet tall, propellor.
“There you have it, Naseby – your future domain. There are ten main cables and two anti-rolling straps, all ending at ETA patches to attach them to the balloon. You will observe that the fuselage swings under the envelope; in a high wind, that can be severe. Don’t, by the way, ask me what ETA stands for – I haven’t found anybody to tell me!”
Peter nodded, trying to take in the simple structure.
“Pilot to the rear, by the looks of it?”
“Gunner and radio op to the front – you can see the Lewis Gun mount. As soon as you are four hundred feet or so up and starting to level off, the operator will wind out the radio aerial – that reel to the side there. Can’t receive or transmit without the aerial. Just a long wire dangling behind you – don’t forget to wind it in again when coming down. You don’t want the wire tangling in the branches of a tree. It’s supposed to have happened once – much nastiness and broken necks for all involved!”
The point was taken.
“Right, from the front. Propellor, twin bladed wooden, nine feet diameter. To be changed on the newer, bigger ships on the drawing board. What to? As yet unknown. Engine – varies. Always in-line, never a rotary; could be a radial, but they are rare. Eighty hp Beardmore, this engine – one of the less common. None of them more than a hundred hp. That also to be changed if and when engines become available. There are too few for the needs of the RFC at the moment, let alone us!”
“Sounds rather small, Fraser. Just eighty hp.”
“Does all we need, in fact, Naseby. Most of the time we are pottering along at low revs, watching over ships that can hardly make eight knots – we have no use for speed. Couldn’t push a great round gasbag through the air at any rate of knots, whatever we tried. A big engine would just rip the nacelle free of the gasbag, I expect.”
“Nacelle?”
“That or gondola – term for the control cabin, whatever form it takes. Normally use gondola for the big cabins slung below dirigibles with their millions of cubic feet of lifting power. We are weight conscious, in the nature of things, old chap. Not down to the last pound – you can bring a packet of sandwiches along with you! Nothing a great deal heavier, though. Wouldn’t want to set a heavy Vickers in place of the Lewis, for example. Right, now. Controls. Sit in the rear cockpit, old chap, and look behind you. You have big fins on the rear of the bag, three of them. One vertically downward as a basic rudder. Two set horizontally on either side for upwards and downwards movement. That, fundamentally, is it. Throttle control and a yoke for the three fins. Give it a push – it’s set up for the same sort of pressure as the real thing.”
Peter did as he was told, hauled the yoke left and right, forwards and back.
“Rule is, always gentle and smooth, Naseby. Never jerk, never heave hard to full aport or astarboard or for a fast zoom or dive. Everything controlled and slow – unless you are in action and have to get on top of a sub quickly to drop a bomb down its throat. Been in that position once, myself. Missed by ten feet – and that is too far with the bombs we carry. Frightened Herman the German, I don’t doubt – but I didn’t sink the bastard!”
“Noted, Fraser. On top and very precise if we are to do any good at all.”
“Not quite, Naseby. Forcing him to submerge and stay down all day in case we were waiting overhead meant he sank nothing that day and his position was known to the sloops and destroyers from Dover. He can only make four knots underwater – can’t get very far. Driving them down protects the merchant ships, and that’s what we are there for.”
“Well said, Fraser!”
Captain Fitzjames’ grating voice came from behind them. How long he had been there, neither man knew. The conversation had been properly professional, so it hardly mattered that he had been listening.
“So then, simple enough as far as it goes. You must also make use of the ballonets, which takes some getting used to.”
Last thing was the dashboard which showed a clock, a simple speedometer and an altimeter which was little more than a mercury filled tube which responded to air pressure.
“Remember that the speedometer makes no allowance for wind. It does not give speed over the ground, or sea.”
They went into the hangar, stood beneath the SS blimp held there for work on its engine.
“Observe – the crab pot!”
A long tube, seemingly wickerwork, stretching from the insides of the blimp to the side of the cockpit, about a foot in diameter with a flared trumpet base.
“You can turn the crab pot – the head – directly into the wind flow, or sideways to it, or wholly away if you must. The tube – canvas lined, by the way – leads to a pair of ballonets, each of six thousand five hundred cubic feet capacity, full of air, obviously, and more or less under pressure depending on the angling of the crab pot. Not for lift – you use them to change the shape and attitude of the blimp, basically angling the nose up or down. Makes it easier to hold a given height or to climb or dive if you set them correctly – and that is a matter of by guess and by God – you have to get the feel of them for yourself. Different for each blimp – though they are identical, of course! For the first month, at least, you will be continually fiddling with the crab pot until suddenly you discover how it works and then it’s obvious – simple, can’t imagine what the problem was! That’s how it was for me, anyway.”