Edward Fido Savage

We were bombing oil fuel tanks at a place called Dølvika, quite close to Bergen [Norway]. We had a newcomer with us and as always happens with the newcomers, they never manage to keep up with the rest. And we were attacked by [Messerschmitt bf] Me 109s [German fighter aircraft] or at least the stragglers were. I looked around and I saw him with two 109s on his tail; and I turned back to see if I could give him a help, there were only two of them after all. We had a great thing over the 109s: they had to come all the way up from Stavanger, about 100 miles, so that their time in the Bergen area was quite short and all you had to do was to stay alive for 10 minutes and they had to go home. Anyway, before I could get there, he was shot down in flames; and in the meanwhile, two more 109s had turned up. And so there I was with four 109s to myself. We had one great thing. The aircraft we were flying could actually climb at a speed which was less than the Me 109 stalling speed. So if you climbed very slowly, they couldn’t sit on your tail; and I made my way out eventually into a cloud and waited 10 minutes; and they had to go home and that was that. [We] got a few bullet holes in the meanwhile, but otherwise, we were all right. I became squadron commander and what I liked to do was to take the squadron off at about 10:00 and we’d fly through the night and preferably in miserable weather. And then you’d break out of the weather just over Norway, go and do your stuff, and go back into the bad weather again and that never gave the 109s a chance to get at you. But if they did, they almost always got one, perhaps two of you. Malta was the key to the North African campaign. And 75 percent of everything that was sent to [German Field Marshal Erwin] Rommel [also known as the “Desert Fox”] went to the bottom of the Mediterranean. In the months before El Alamein [in northern Egypt], nothing got through to him at all. And the army beat him fair and square; he had enough people to fight the battle at El Alamein, but he had to use all his reserves. So what started as a reasonable retreat rapidly became a rout and that was entirely at the gift from the air force and the naval people operating out of Malta. The air force did wonderful reconnaissance and they were very reliable. So we knew where all the enemy ships were and they were attacked by day by submarines, and by night, by torpedo aircraft. About a month before the North African landings, Malta was down to one week supply. So they had to be supplied the whole time. And there were about eight or nine Malta convoys, all of them real scraps. And this one was called [Operation] Pedestal; and was the largest of all of them, and the enemy were determined that the convoy wouldn’t get through. We were determined that it had to get through. And it consisted so far as naval ships were concerned, the entire Home Fleet [Royal Navy fleet that operated in British territorial waters] and Force H [Royal Navy group patrolling the Mediterranean], which was almost as big as the Home Fleet, operating out of Gibraltar. We slipped through the Straits of Gibraltar at night without anyone seeing us; and I remember seeing there were 16 merchant ships, the ones that were quickly built by the Americans. They were all looking very nice and brand new paint anyway. And I wondered then as I saw them at dawn on the first day, how many would get through. Well, we were on our way and a French airliner going from Algiers [Algeria], I think, to Marseilles [France] was going to see the fleet. And the air patrol was told to shoot it down. And the pilot in charge said, no, I can’t do that, it’s got women and children onboard, I’m flying alongside and I can see them. And so he said, well, turn the man away, make him go back. But he wouldn’t do it and so he was again told, shoot the aircraft down. And he said, no, I can’t. I was flying at the time. I was the senior fighter pilot in the aircraft carrier on which I was flying and, of course, this business was direct disobedience of orders in the face of the enemy, subject to court martial and death by firing squad, I suppose. But there was a lot going on when I got back and the captain sent for me; and he said, well, Savage, what would you have done? And I said, I’d do exactly the same thing. And I thought, good heavens, what have I said? Here am I disobeying orders in the face of the enemy and I thought desperately of what I was going to say for the next question, which I knew would come, which was why. And just in time, I thought, oh well, it’s against international law. And he looked at me very hard for a bit, and he was a wonderful man, Marquette, and then he said, well, Savage, I understand your official reply, now tell me what the real one was. And I said, well, you know, I’ve got to live with myself, I’ve got a wife and family of my own, and every time I looked at them, I would see these women and children I had murdered. And he looked very hard at me for a bit and then he said, mmm, yes, I understand. And turned away in a hurry, smiling all over his face. [laughs]