As the room emptied, the medical officer stood at the door doling out benzedrine ‘wakey-wakey’ pills to those who wanted them. The crews then headed to the mess for their pre-operational meal. Usually it was bacon and eggs, a treat in a land where rationing had made the mundane exotic. There were a few slack hours before the propellers started to turn. The crews were now sealed off from the world outside. Phone calls to wives or girlfriends were forbidden. Even for someone as practised as Guy Gibson, this was a time of intense anxiety. ‘Most people will agree with me when I say that the worst part of any bombing raid is the start,’ he wrote. ‘I hate the feeling of standing around in the crew rooms, waiting to get into the vans that will take you out to your aircraft. It’s a horrible business. Your stomach feels as though it wants to hit your backbone. You can’t stand still. You laugh at small jokes, loudly, stupidly. You smoke far too many cigarettes, usually only halfway through, then throw them away. Sometimes you feel sick and want to go to the lavatory. The smallest incidents annoy you and you flare up at the slightest provocation … all this because you’re frightened, scared stiff … I have always felt bad until the door of the aircraft clangs shut; until the wireless-op says “Intercom OK,” and the engines burst into life. Then it’s all right. Just another job.’11
About ninety minutes before take-off they went to the crew room to change. Bomber Command uniform was never standardized. You chose from a haphazard variety of kit, including your own civvies, the gear that made you comfortable. Dennis Steiner wore ‘thick woollen long johns and vest, thick knee-length stockings, shirt and electrically heated jacket. This had leads which went down inside your trouser legs to heated slippers. There were also heated gloves which clipped on to the sleeves of the jacket but I rarely wore those. On top of this went a rollneck pullover and a battledress uniform. I had sewn a fur collar on to the jacket. It didn’t do much for the warmth but was soft and comfortable. Flying boots were thick sheepskin and I wore three pairs of gloves, first silk, then chamois and finally woollen. I did have a pair of leather gauntlets but they were clumsy and after one was sucked out of [a] chute I never bothered to replace them.’12
They wore a whistle on their collars to summon help if they went down in the sea and dog tags stamped with their name and service number. The metal used was virtually indestructible and could withstand even the fiercest fire. Steiner also wore a silver medallion with an engraving of two bluebirds and the encouraging message je reviendrai, given to him by a girlfriend. Such talismans were central to individual survival routines. Panic could ensue if someone reached the aircraft to find he had left behind the lucky charm that he believed his life depended on. ‘Luck and a Lancaster were our daily bread,’ wrote Jack Yates. ‘We loved the one and couldn’t expect to live without a large slice of the other. We all carried a keepsake, a sign of our trust worn around the neck or pocketed next to the heart. It could be the ubiquitous rabbit’s foot or a rosary, letter, St Christopher, coin, photograph, playing card …’13
As a Lancaster skipper Jim Berry was occasionally irritated when he was given a strange aircraft and found its interior festooned with the jujus of the previous occupants. ‘Very often there would be rabbits’ feet and little things hanging up. I would never have them. I used to say take them down I don’t want them. [The crew] said, well they might be good luck. I would say, they might be good luck for somebody [else] but I don’t want them … it was quite grotesque sometimes, there were so many bits hanging about.’ Nonetheless, during the later part of his remarkable stint of sixty-four operations he kept a lucky farthing, given to him by his batwoman, in the finger of his flying glove.14
Swathed in multiple layers of clothing airmen waddled rather than walked. The bulk was necessary. It was cold up there, even with the electrically-heated linings that became standard issue by the middle of the war. The aircraft had some hot-air heating but it tended to be erratically distributed. According to Ralph Wood, a navigator, ‘a Hallybag was always a deep-freeze proposition, even at the best of times. There were supposed to be pipes giving off heat throughout the aircraft but this was a laugh.’15 In the Lancaster, however, the heating duct outlet was next to the wireless operator so he and the navigator tended to roast, while in the cockpit the pilot, engineer and bomb-aimer froze. Whatever the aircraft it was the gunners, stuck in the back, who felt the cold the most.
Finally, they struggled into Mae West lifejackets and parachute harnesses. They picked up their parachutes on the way out of the locker room together with a thermos flask of coffee, boiled sweets, chewing gum, and a bar of Fry’s Vanilla Chocolate Cream. They were also issued with escape kits in case they were brought down in enemy territory, containing maps of France and Germany printed on scarves and handkerchiefs, phrase sheets, local money and compasses concealed in pens and buttons. The kits contained passport photographs for use in forged documents. They were unlikely to have been very convincing. Base photographers tended to set their subjects in the same rigid pose, cutting them off at the neck to hide their tunics. As a last precaution they left behind anything that might identify their unit or its location. ‘We were required to empty our pockets and were given two numbered and differently coloured pouches for the contents,’ Ken Newman remembered. ‘The contents of one of these would be sent to our next of kin if we did not return but the contents of the others would not … some married aircrew had clandestine girlfriends and naturally did not want their photographs or letters to be sent to their wives.’16 The procedure inspired a poem by the RAF poet, John Pudney.
Empty your pockets, Tom, Dick and Harry
Strip your identity; leave it behind.
Lawyer, garage-hand, grocer, don’t tarry
With your own country, your own kind
Leave all your letters. Suburb and township,
Green fen and grocery, slip way and bay,
Hot spring and prairie, smoke-stack and coal tip,
Leave in our keeping while you’re away.
Tom, Dick and Harry, plain names and numbers,
Pilot, observer and gunner depart.
Their personal litter only encumbers
Somebody’s head, somebody’s heart.17
Then it was time to board the lorries that ferried them to the aircraft. At dispersal, the pilot and the flight engineer went over the aircraft with the groundcrew for a final check. There was a pause for a last cigarette, perhaps a piss against the tail wheel for good luck. The remaining minutes on the ground were solemn and unsettling. One summer night in 1943 Willie Lewis, a flight engineer who was to survive fifty-two operations, was waiting to board his bomber for his first trip to Germany. They were going to Essen. ‘The dispersal was far remote from the aerodrome,’ he wrote, ‘set with its back against a wood, in which the final rustlings of the birds could be heard as they settled themselves down to sleep. The leaves crackled in the quiet air and the darkness which was rapidly settling about them had a close warmth, earthy and comforting … the realization that there were simple creatures in the undergrowth and trees close at hand, going about their peaceful, age-enduring existence unaffected by, and unaware of war was strangely moving.’18 It was a relief to climb the ladder and struggle down the fuselage to their positions.
The ignition whined, the propeller blades made a few jerky revolutions then blurred into invisibility as the engines caught. One by one, the pilots edged the aircraft forward, anxious not to stray from the narrow tarmac strip that led to the runway and bog down in the soft ground. The night air throbbed with the confident roar of a hundred aero engines. The lead bomber swung into the runway and as the light on the controller’s van flashed green, rolled down the track. When it was only halfway into its run, the next was already on its way. Despite the immense force the Merlin and Hercules engines that powered the Lancasters and Halifaxes could generate, each take-off seemed a struggle. The bombers were often laden with well over their recommended all-up weight and they clambered rather than soared into the air. There was a last little r
itual. At the side of the runway, whatever the weather, a small knot of groundcrew and WAAFs waved farewell.
On occasions it was possible to enjoy the sensation of flight and, at the right time of the year, the beauty of the darkening sky. Taking off on a long trip to Milan in August 1943 Lewis and his crew climbed through a thick layer of cloud at 10,000 feet and set course towards the setting sun. As flight engineer, he sat up front with the pilot and could see everything. ‘The great sea of cloud underneath turned golden,’ he wrote. ‘Then it became a huge flood of scarlet which made way for crimson and mauve as the light faded, [then] funereal violet for the last few moments before darkness leapt upon the world. A pallid moon which had occupied one unobtrusive corner of the heavens simultaneously glowed with increased density until from a faded orb it became the dominating feature of the sky.’
The surrounding bombers were slowly swallowed by the dusk so that all that was left was the dim glow of their navigating lights. Aboard their Halifax, T-Tommy, Lewis and his mates sat in silence, listening to the rasp of their breath through their oxygen masks. As they flew south, the cloud disappeared and by the time they crossed the coast the weather was perfectly clear. They were now in enemy territory. The navigating lights were switched off.
‘The night sky was beautiful. The splendour of the full moon high above was reflected in a mist over the sea. [We] were suspended in a vast blue dome. The light was so bright that T-Tommy shone silver in it, the roundels on her wings standing out as clear as if it were day … ahead lay a completely empty sky.’ After twenty trips the crew were now accustomed to the rhythms of the journey. They had ‘fallen into the familiar routine. The powerful mechanism of the aircraft had overborne [our] individuality and welded [it] into the machine.’ Through their masks they breathed ‘the fresh tang from the oxygen tubes and the smells of rubber and oil. A constant flow of hot air gushed into the cockpit … warming the forward positions. Outside the barrier of glass in the cold crispness of the atmosphere the exhaust manifold shone against the outlines of the engines. The wingtips swayed gently up and down amongst the stars. The gun turrets turned slowly from side to side, and the face of the mid-upper gunner stared out grimly, his body hunched over his weapons.’19
Cy March, the ex-miner now serving as a rear gunner with 467 Squadron, admitted later that when staring out into darkness ‘as black as a sheep’s bum, I [experienced] something I daren’t tell anyone for years in case they thought I was bomb-happy. I could hear the most beautiful singing and music in my earphones … none of the crew said anything so I knew it was only me who could hear it. I heard this on many of our trips and could never explain it, but I wasn’t complaining for it was really beautiful, barmy or not.’20
Over the sea there was no more time for dreaming. The gunners fired a few bursts to test their guns. As sea gave way to land the navigator called out ‘enemy coast ahead’. Dennis Field had his ‘usual physical reaction’ when he heard the words and ‘after a bit of a struggle in the confined cockpit … managed to relieve myself into my can’ which an obliging member of the crew then emptied down a flare chute.21 Crossing the coast the crews got their first sight of the dangers that awaited them. The shores of the Low Countries and France were fringed with flak batteries and flak ships. Routes were chosen to avoid the main concentrations, but intelligence never kept pace completely with the enemy’s ever-shifting dispositions.
By now the Germans were watching, tracking the incoming fleet on their radar system. The crews began the simple but effective counter-measure, shovelling out bundles of Window, which created at least temporary confusion on German radar screens.
The defenders would know an attack was coming from the increased radio activity that preceded every big operation as wireless operators checked their equipment. The German radar early-warning system stretched in a thick band from Denmark down the North Sea coast before sweeping south to block an approach from the west across France. It was named after its creator, General Josef Kammhuber. The Kammhuber Line was made up of seventy-four ‘boxes’ each containing one Freya and two Würzburg radars. As the radar picked up the incoming aircraft the information was transmitted to a night-fighter control room where controllers directed the defensive battle. They followed the situation on a large screen, assisted by Luftwaffehelferinnen, the German equivalent of WAAFs, who shone narrow points of light on the screen depicting the positions of friendly and hostile aircraft.
Once the attack began, German night-fighters took off and circled a radio beacon to await orders. Their positions were picked up by radar and beamed on to the screen as a blue light. The incoming bombers were marked with a red light. The controller’s aim was to set the fighter on a course where he could see a bomber or track it down with the Lichtenstein short-range radar with which each aircraft was fitted. By the middle of 1943 Germany had about 400 night-fighters, armed with 20 mm or 30 mm cannon. Some were equipped with upward firing Schräge Musik cannons. These allowed the fighter to creep up on the bomber from below where it was invisible to the crew and fire a burst into its explosive-packed belly. Along the route the controllers sought to insert twin-engined fighters into the bomber stream.
As the bombers flowed onwards, the eyes of all the crews sifted the darkness for enemy aircraft. But on long trips, fatigue and boredom blunted concentration and attacks usually came without warning. Donald Falgate was peering out of the bomb-aimer’s nosecone on the approach to Magdeburg when he saw tracer floating towards him. ‘He was on to us before we saw him,’ he remembered. ‘He made the first attack from the rear and from above which was unusual. He’d obviously come on us quite by mistake. If it was a radar interception they usually picked you up from below.’ There was a brief first burst of fire and the fighter, a Ju 88, veered away. The pilot just had time to check that no one was hurt when the German came in for a second attempt. He was too near to focus his guns and the shots went harmlessly by. As he closed in from astern for a third attempt the rear gunner yelled a warning and the captain finally took evasive action. ‘[He] screamed out: “Corkscrew! Port! Go!”’
The corkscrew was the bombers’ only real defence against fighters. It was a testament to the strength and aerodynamic qualities of the heavies that they could be thrown about the sky with a violence that, if they were lucky, could shake off their smaller, nimbler pursuers long enough to escape into the darkness beyond the fighter’s limited onboard radar range. The manoeuvre required the pilot to shove the aircraft down into a diving turn until it was screaming through the air at 300 mph. Then he jerked it upwards to climb in the opposite direction. Done properly, it meant the fighter could not hold his quarry in his sights long enough to get in a good burst. It was enough to see off Falgate’s pursuer. ‘We managed to evade him and get into cloud … but it was a very scary time … It wasn’t until we got back to base that we found bullet holes in the fuselage and two huge holes in the mid-upper turret where the shells had gone through. The poor mid-upper gunner nearly froze to death.’22
Leutnant Norbert Pietrek who was based at Florennes in southern Belgium on one of the main routes to the Ruhr gave an account of a night action from the perspective of the hunter. On the evening of 16 April 1943, a warning came in that a double force of British bombers was in the air. They were heading for Mannheim and the Skoda armaments factory at Pilsen.
Pietrek and his Messerschmitt 110 were scrambled to patrol in a box codenamed ‘Tomcat’. Before he arrived he was told over the radio beacon by his controller that he had a Kurier for him, the Luftwaffe codeword for a heavy bomber. Turning on the course he was given he saw a ‘Lancaster, 200 metres to my right and somewhat higher … I therefore push the throttles through the gate to catch up with him and then, as I have learned during training, position myself exactly underneath it, adjust my speed to that of the bomber, pull up, and then fire a long burst through a wing between the engines and its fuel tanks.’ The move was thwarted when the Lancaster went into a steep dive. Pietrek gave chase. Before he could
open fire, however, the bomber flew into a hillside and exploded. It was the first aircraft he had destroyed and he enjoyed the experience. ‘Really,’ he recalled later, ‘it is quite a splendid matter to chase one big Viermot [four-engined bomber] into the ground without firing a single bullet.’
His blood up, he was eager to strike again. He headed back towards the beacon, cursing the RAF jamming that was blocking his link with the controller and spoiling his chances of further ‘trade’ that night. Then, while circling the beacon, he spotted what he described as a ‘barn door’, a large, easy target in the shape of what appeared to be a passing Stirling. He fired off a few rounds which passed in front of the bomber and alerted the crew to the attack. ‘A wild twisting and turning begins,’ he recalled later. ‘Much too close for comfort, green lines of tracer from the Tommy’s tail turret swish past me. We climb and turn, a steep spiral to the left, pull up, the same manoeuvre to the right, up again, and so it goes on and on. Never could I have imagined that one could carry out such wild manoeuvres with a giant [aircraft] like this …’
In the frantic exchange of fire Pietrek managed to hit the starboard outer engine. It appeared to ignite but the flames then died down only to flare and gutter again and again. Pietrek thought, ‘That pilot must be a madman! He still flies eastward despite one dead engine … and is obviously determined to press on and discard his load of bombs on a German city … ‘Well my dear boy, there is no way that you will pull that off!’
He continued the chase as the bomber sank ever lower. In the back of the Messerschmitt his wireless operator, Otto, slaved to fill the ammunition pans to keep his cannons firing. The stream of tracer from the bomber’s mid-upper gunner kept him at bay. Eventually, though, he was able to ‘creep up on him from beneath, pull up and level out swiftly and … fire a burst exactly over the top of the fuselage. A ball of fire and the turret has disappeared. That’s what you get when you cause me so much trouble!’
Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945 Page 72