David Holman
Wings of Death
To my dear wife Kirstie and my beautiful daughters,
Victoria, Emily and Bethany- Anne.
For the things we have already achieved together
and for those that we are yet to achieve.
Chapter 1
Jack Hollingsworth crouched down beside the still figure lying on the concrete floor of the hangar and shone his torch into a blood stained face that he instantly recognised.
In a sudden state of shock, he moved the light onto his watch. Up to this unforeseen moment, the evening had started well for Jack, in what he thought would be another tedious evening of night duty.
Almost three hours ago, he had stopped reading and hastily rammed his copy of the Cumberland News under the reception desk. At Brinton Aviation Ltd this was almost what is known in the working world as knocking off time, and as a security guard, prepared himself for the onslaught of bodies that would hand in keys and grab for their cards to clock off from their shifts.
Then, the blast of the klaxon sounded, indicating the end of the shift, and he listened for the impending sound of the pounding feet and smell of cigarette smoke from the workforce that would soon pour through the double doors from the assembly and maintenance hangars, on their way out to transport buses, bicycles and for the management, the company cars in the car park.
Forty minutes later, he had seen the last of the day shift place their clock card into the machine and checked his watch. It was 6.00 pm. Hollingsworth knew by the empty key hooks on the wall, that a few people would still be in their offices. There was one particular hook that he could personally guarantee would not have the keys on it until usually around ten o’clock in the evening.
On some nights, he had not been collecting these keys until gone midnight, and there were even a few occasions when he had not received them at all. These keys belonged to the green room inside Hangar 2, and the current occupants of this room were the American officials assigned to a new reconnaissance drone project known as Python Hawk.
Hollingsworth didn’t really like Americans that much. He had every right to have this particular distaste for Britain’s friends across the pond, as his personal hatred was the very reason why for the last twenty-one years, he had been walking with a slight limp. A fateful night, which would forever be embedded in his memory.
In the spring of 1944, Hollingsworth, as an MP, had been on duty on an RAF station situated on the Suffolk and Essex border and a young American rear gunner, more commonly known as a Tail- End Charlie, had been part of a USAAF B-24 Liberator squadron returning with his crew from a short mission over Bremerhaven.
Following debriefing, the airman had dived onto his bunk in the tent to open his mail. He had opened the first letter with great excitement. It was from his sweetheart back in his home town of Kissimmee, a province near Miami in Florida, and the scent of Emmie-Lou Harris’ perfume was on the envelope. Hastily, he ripped open the back and extracted the folded letter. With a beaming smile on his face he read it, then with confusion, read it again, threw it down and wept. Airman Harry Pinner had been sent a Dear John.
Emmie-Lou, deciding that the pressure of him risking his life every night in a flying spam can, was too much for her to handle. She had now chosen to be the girl of Pinner’s arch rival Brad Grissom, who owned the local garage and therefore been exempt from call-up duty.
Pinner picked up the letter and pulled a Ronson flip lighter from his flying suit. Holding up the letter, he set it alight. Mesmerized by the curtain of flame as it moved across the paper from the corner, he allowed it to reach and burn his fingers. He then clenched his fist crunching up the remains of the letter, dousing the remaining flames to endure the final penance of pain for losing his girl to his high school nemesis. He opened his slightly scorched hand again, allowing the charred embers to cascade down to the tent floor, then he jumped down from his bunk, exited the tent and headed straight for the station’s mess bar.
Later that evening, Sergeant Jack Hollingsworth and his colleague Corporal Tony Savage, were having a friendly game of cards, when they received a call in the guardroom. The report from the mess was that a US airman had downed eight large bourbons, had an argument, then a fight with an RAF armourer, and after being told to leave and cool off by the bartender, had stolen a bicycle. The last sighting was of him riding out towards the stationary aircraft parked in the dispersal area.
Hollingsworth and Savage put on their red banded peaked caps, jumped into a jeep and headed out. As they approached the leviathan spectacle of stationary twin-engine bombers silhouetted in the moonlight, Savage pointed out to one of them that had its interior lights on. The rear crew entry door hung open, flapping gently in the slight breeze that blew across the airfield, and the stolen bicycle was propped up against the fuselage, just under the white star USAAF ensign. Inside the rear gun cupola, silent and still, sat Airman Harry Pinner, his arms resting on the breaches of two Browning machine guns.
Hollingsworth drove directly towards the aircraft in full view of the tail section and, like an escaping prisoner of war caught in the beam of a searchlight, the jeep’s headlights lit up the airman inside the small Perspex bubble.
Suddenly, the twin barrels of the Liberator’s machine guns spewed hot fire, hitting the front of the jeep, igniting both the grill and bonnet on impact. As the consistent barrage continued, the line of tracer fire begun to creep upwards, smashing through the Jeep’s windscreen, with broken glass flying in all directions.
Hollingsworth turned the jeep sharply to the left and slammed on the brake. Noticing that Savage had slumped forward, he turned to his colleague. Blood was pouring from a large wound at the side of Savage’s head. Hollingsworth knew instantly that his friend was dead. He rammed his foot on the brake pedal stopping the jeep and jumped out quickly, feeling a sudden sharp pain. He looked down and saw the gaping blood-filled hole in his trousers. A bullet from the Liberator’s rear guns had hit him below the knee. With the gunfire continuing, he clambered for cover, drawing his standard issue Webley .455 revolver from the holster on his hip. He crouched low behind another B-24 Liberator.
Pinner continued firing his machine guns, spraying the other parked aircraft with bullets. Some of these stray shots had shattered the windows of a parked US Army L-2 Grasshopper observation aircraft.
On the other side of the Grasshopper, Hollingsworth waited and checked that he was safe in his present position. Then abruptly, the firing ceased. There was a short interval, and then suddenly, a single shot rang out. He realised that the sound of the last shot was different from that of the .303 calibre Browning machine guns of the bomber, which he had endured for the last few minutes.
Cautiously, the MP took a peek to look at the rear of the Liberator, straining his eyes in the moonlight to detect any movement from inside the rear cupola. Squinting in the dark, he could just make out a figure slumped forward over the guns.
Later inspection would reveal that Pinner had taken his own life with just one bullet entering his skull from his personal Colt 45 pistol placed in his mouth, smearing the roof of the rear gun compartment with his blood and brain tissue.
Hollingsworth had then spent the next four weeks in hospital. The bullet that had hit him had shattered the lower part of his patella, leaving him to walk with a limp for the rest of his life.
Since then, there had been days, especially during the winter months, when the pain would be quite severe causing him great discomfort. He had also cursed the time spent in hospital, as this had prevented him from attending Savage’s funeral.