Maximum Effort

by Vincent Formosa

  “He got back okay if that’s what you’re worried about,” he told her, his tone light. Her hands froze and she became very still. He looked sideways at her. She was almost frozen, eyes wide. She had gone very pale. He leaned close to her shoulder and dropped his voice. “No need to worry now. He’s back.”

  She nodded woodenly.

  “Alex told me how much he dreaded daylight raids,” she whispered.

  Wilkinson let slip a snort of humour.

  “He’s not the only one,” said Wilkinson. “I hate daylight raids. Fighters, no night to hide in. Horrible.” He clapped his hands on his legs. “Well, I could sit here chatting all day but the war waits for no man. Besides, won’t you have some interrogation reports to collate soon?”

  He gave her an encouraging smile as he walked back to the hall.

  31 - Elan And Greek Myth

  The weather clamped down that night. The wind picked up, the clouds dropped and damp coated everything. Sentries huddled in their coats. Their noses dripped as the cold penetrated their bones while they waited for their stint to finish.

  The crews got back from their leave. Archer breezed into the Mess full of energy as ever with tales of London and female conquests. Carter looked at him askance, knowing full well he was seeing one of Georgette’s friends.

  He got the other half of the story a few days later when he saw Georgette. Archer had thrown over his girl the first day of his leave; just like that. He had walked into her flat and just finished her there and then and walked out the door leaving her high and dry. Georgette had spent hours on the telephone, listening to the tears and trying to piece her back together.

  It was a side to Archer no one saw at Amber Hill. Walsh had hinted at such a ruthless streak all that time ago in the pub in Lincoln. Carter had seen glimmers of it himself in the way Archer went through replacement crew members with seeming indifference. To everyone else, he was the life and soul of the party, the press on type that oozed dash and elan that personified bomber crews in the propaganda reels.

  The weather cleared slightly. In other words, the strong winds blew the clouds away but the cold and the damp persisted. Three crews were briefed for minelaying but they were scrubbed before they even took off.

  The squadron did nothing more than air tests and navigation exercises for the next few days. Even bombing practice was suspended when coastal fog covered the bombing ranges at Wainfleet. The tail end of winter was having a bite, to remind you it was still there. The temperature dropped and a strong wind blew in from the east, clamping everything down. Snow fell and blanketed the field in white.

  The quiet was broken one morning when the crews were called to the briefing room. Intrigued, confused, they shambled in. Obviously it was something important, all of the command staff were stood on the stage looking very serious. Group Captain Etheridge spoke first.

  “Gentlemen. Word has been received that Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau have put to sea.” The room mumbled in excitement. Etheridge continued. “Sightings put them in the channel, hugging the French coast heading past Dover.” The room rumbled again. Heading past Dover, they weren’t in the channel, they were almost through it; halfway home. “Aircraft are being made ready now. Your task is to knock them to blazes before they get back to Germany.”

  The CO glanced at the clock on the wall and nodded as Etheridge looked at him.

  “We’re going to drop sea mines off the Frisian coast on the route they’ll have to sail through.” One or two voices raised in protest and Church held up a hand for quiet. “I know, there are fighter fields just inland. If the Germans get one whiff of what we’re up to we’re in for it, so strict radio silence is to be observed. If they don’t know we’re coming, we’ll be fine.”

  For once, the natural order of the briefing was different. Linkletter came to the fore. He was more excited than usual, geed up by the suddenness of it all.

  “You know, the Germans have been jolly sneaky,” he said, diverging for once from his narrow field of expertise. “It’s the most perfect weather to do something like this.”

  His hands moved in animated fashion as he detailed the weather front over the coast of Europe. He warned of low cloud base, driving rain, strong winds and the possibility of icing with the kind of enthusiasm normal people reserved for wooing their beloved.

  They got changed and went out to the kites. The rain was almost horizontal and swirled around as the wind made its mind up which way to blow. They scurried aboard to get in from the cold and took off.

  Linkletter’s forecast was spot on. The weather was appalling. Turbulence threw them around and rain ran off the canopy in sheets. Jensen had his work cut out rubbing the perspex with a cloth as it misted up.

  Carter felt a certain amount of deja vu, mine laying in daylight off the Frisians again. Woods dug out his navigational log and dredged up the route from the last time. As the enemy ships would be coming up from the west, they would fly further east and then loop back to lay their mines in the channel before heading for home.

  Woods made careful note of the marks on his chart which showed where some flak ships had last been seen. In briefing, Kent could offer nothing new but Woods thought it unlikely they were still in the same place.

  Near the coast, he came up from his cubbyhole back in the fuselage and stood by Carters shoulder for a while, discussing their options. He went down to the nose but saw little to aid navigation. The water looked cold and uninviting. Wind whipped spray off the wave tops, driving it in flurries across the surface. They dropped down to five hundred feet but it was no better. Roiled air off the waves made it a bumpy ride and surface mist cut visibility almost to nothing.

  When the Frisians came into view, Woods came back up to the cockpit and looked around. The islands were low dark slithers of land that were barely above the water. Surf broke over rocks on the coastlines to make them visible. He looked at his chart, back out to starboard and then down at his chart again. He glanced to his left, about ten o’clock.

  “That’s it. Bang on.” He pointed in that direction. “See the gap between those two islands, skipper?” Carter nodded. “Head for them, take a line towards the shore of the one of the left.”

  Jensen was impressed. Hitting their landfall after two hours in lousy visibility with nothing but dead reckoning, very well done indeed. Carter turned on the indicated course and dropped down to two hundred feet.

  “Pilot to gunners, are we clear?”

  Todd and Murphy span their turrets left and right. Nothing was in view but the cloud base was so low, a Jerry fighter could come diving out of nowhere.

  “Good to go, boss,” said Murphy from the mid upper turret.

  “All clear,” said Todd, his tone clipped. Down in the nose, Woods got ready. As they made the final run, he opened the bomb doors and activated the bomb release panel.

  “Bomb doors open.”

  “One thirty, skipper,” Jensen said to remind Carter. He checked the IAS and edged the throttles back slightly while Carter flew the plane. The engine note changed as they slowed down.

  “One twenty,” he called. Carter nodded, his attention focused on keeping them out of the water. L-London was skittering around and he was working hard to keep them pointed in the right direction.

  “One gone.” L-London gave a slight jump as 2,000lbs of sea mine fell away from the bomb bay. Ten seconds and the next one went, then the third, the fourth and then the fifth. The Dutch coast got nearer. Carter banked to port in a climbing turn to put the enemy coast behind them. Jensen started getting nervous, this was the time he imagined the fighters would come screaming down on them from out of the clouds. Rain lashed them all the way home.

  They got back to Amber Hill damp and cold. Walsh arrived ten minutes after them. Carter and the rest of his crew waited as they taxied up to dispersal. Walsh gave him a relieved wave as they shut down. The ground crew shoved chocks in front of the main wheels as the big propellers span to a stop.

  A truck to
ok them to interrogation but there wasn’t much to tell. They hadn’t seen anything going out or back. Considering all the excitement it was all very boring. They hung around once they had been spoken to, waiting to see the rest of the boys come in.

  Everett showed up twenty minutes later. He’d gone further east than them and had some fun dodging a flight of 110’s out on the prowl. Salmon had gone back and forth for half an hour before getting a fix to drop his mines. Visibility off the Dutch coast was dreadful when he arrived and it had taken some effort to find their target area. It got worse on the way home and he had flown at two hundred feet all the way back to stay out of the clag.

  Walsh and Carter went for food after Everett hinted they might be going out again later in the day. No one got changed, it was cold and Carter couldn’t be bothered to put his uniform on. The prospect of going out again in these conditions filled him with dread.

  32 - Left Hand, Right Hand

  Taking advantage of the horrendous weather, the Germans had timed their breakout well. The conditions hampered the efforts to find and attack the Battleships as they swept up The Channel, past the Frisian Islands to reach friendly ports. It was frustrating for the bomber crews. Big juicy targets were at sea and the weather was conspiring to make them hard to find.

  News filtered through from some of the other squadrons. While 363 had been out laying mines, a lot of 5 Group had been sent to try and find the Battleships and bomb them. In the rotten weather, most of them had hared around like blind mice in the dark. Few aircraft found the ships. Those that did were mauled by flak and escorting fighters as they attacked piecemeal and paid the price. Suddenly laying mines didn’t sound so bad.

  There was a lot of grumbling about the navy. The Channel was supposed to be their backyard. Hadn’t a navy officer had even come to their briefing and told them they were expecting these Battleships to be moving soon? Quite how three German Battleships and their escorting Destroyers had managed to sneak through The Channel without getting spotted until they go to Dover was the big mystery. They avidly read the news headlines the next few days but there was scant detail.

  The escape of the Battleships caused a monumental stink in the press. Old Adolf had cocked a snook at England in their own playground and it smarted. Kent was pumped for information but he had nothing new to add. Intelligence had the ships in the German ports, tucked up for bed.

  Church and the flight commanders were whisked to Group for a conference. Everyone knew where there’d be going next. They’d missed them at Brest, they’d got through The Channel, it would be natural to go after them again.

  The next two nights were frustrating. 363 were briefed to go back out both nights. The first time to lay more mines off the Frisians, the second was a trip to Aachen. Both operations were scrubbed late. The crews had been driven out to the aircraft and had started up before they were cancelled. It was a lot of pissed off people that traipsed back to the crew room to get changed. The ground crews were just as unimpressed. Late scrubs caused a lot of extra work for them. The aircraft had to be debombed, guns had to be taken out of the turrets and ammunition shoved back into boxes.

  Amber Hill remained blanketed in white and the erks worked like mad to keep the aircraft operational. Working in the open, they froze as chilled hands fiddled with the engines. Even inside the fuselage, it was icy, the only difference was that you were out of the wind.

  On the 16th February, Carter was tasked to go gardening again off the Frisians. Three of them had been picked to go while the rest of the squadron stayed home, Carter didn’t know if he should feel special or note. They were briefed to take off at one hour intervals with Carter going second.

  Again they were scrubbed, but this time it was really late. They were taxying out to the runway when an Austin staff car came barreling along after them. Carter thought Todd was kidding when he told him they were being followed by a car flashing its lights. He hit the brakes and Kent went running round in front of them. He looked ridiculous standing there on the grass, giving a cut throat motion with his hand. It was an irritating twenty minutes to taxy back to dispersal and shut down.

  The Manchester that had taken off the hour before them was recalled by radio. Either they didn’t get the signal or the transmission was garbled. Whatever happened, they were never heard from again. A few days later a trawler picked up four bodies floating in the water.

  Air Vice Marshal Baldwin was sat in his office at Bomber Command HQ when a missive from the Air Ministry landed. He had been holding the reins for a little over a month since Pierse had been shuffled off to oblivion in the Far East. He eyed the directive on his desk with mixed feelings.

  In November 1941, the axe had been poised over Bomber Commands neck. All though the winter the men had slogged through rotten weather conditions to attack their targets in small numbers to conserve the bomber force. Now they were finally being given permission to take the other arm from behind their back. The new directive gave him carte blanche to attack the targets specified therein with everything he had with no more restrictions. That was pleasing but it was small consolation after the activity of the last few days.

  Questions had been asked in Parliament. Bomber Commands response, the lack of coordination with Coastal Command and other issues had been laid bare. Armchair generals who had never been closer to an aircraft than the pre-war pageants at Hendon picked over these questions like Hyenas ripping into an animal carcass.

  Acting on the intelligence information, Baldwin had placed a number of squadrons on two hour standby in case of a breakout. In line with his orders they had been loaded with armour piercing bombs. The only problem was you needed at least 7,000ft or more of altitude for them to penetrate armour. With heavy cloud and poor visibility down to 500ft there was little chance of that. Vital time had been lost while these aircraft had been reloaded with standard HE bombs.

  The fault of course lay with Coastal Command. He’d been assured of four or more hours notice of the ships sailing. Lack of reconnaissance had fouled up all the careful planning and turned it into a free for all while everyone ran around like headless chickens. His bombers had been sent out piecemeal and a good many of them had been hacked from the sky while they blundered about trying to find their targets. It was all rather embarrassing and in his view not a fair reflection on the service. When Bomber Command was already being scrutinised because of the Butt Report, it was the last thing he needed to deal with.

  Despite all this, it had appeared Portal had worked his magic once again. Baldwin had no idea how much Portal was responsible for the reprieve, nor did he care. The directive was proof that they were being given a second chance.

  L-London went north. Carter took them up the North Sea and then turned left when Woods had them west of Newcastle. At ten thousand feet they spotted the barrage balloons above the dockyards. The wide mouth of the Tyne was dead ahead. Two large breakwaters, one on the north bank, one on the south covered the approach to the river. On the northern headland was the remains of an old fortress. A long stretch of beach was visible north and south of the river. A few miles north off to the right was a white lighthouse on some rocks.

  He went between them, firing off the colours of the day as they flew over Whitley Bay and headed inland. He waited until Woods had them turn south before he shouted out a fighter attack and took L-London through a series of gut wrenching corkscrews.

  Vos hung on for grim death as his stomach lurched. He grunted as the big bomber bottomed out of its dive. He let his head rest on the little table as his weight trebled, quadrupled. He could hear his breath rasping through his nostrils as he sucked down oxygen. He went light in his seat as they went up again and Carter levelled off at the top of the climb.

  “That wasn’t too bad,” Carter said to himself. He handed over control to Jensen and watched as the younger man kept them on course, correcting for drift, barely moving the controls. Carter was impressed. Jensen was an instinctive pilot and he was not sure what much else he need
ed to learn. He leaned over and whispered in Jensen’s ear. Jensen nodded his eyes crinkling in good humour behind his flying goggles. Carter tightened his straps, kept his feet and hands clear of the controls and switched his intercom on.

  “Fighters! Fighters! Corkscrew port. GO!”

  Todd was soaked when his mug of tea went flying. His hands flailed but he lost his grip on his flask and its contents were sprayed over the inside of the turret. Woods banged his head on the corner of the navigation table as he was reaching for his log book and pencils. He rubbed his temple and turned the air blue as the engines howled at full throttle.

  Carter let them go through two more gyrations before giving Jensen the thumbs up and taking back control. Before anyone could gather their wits, he took L-London down in a steep dive. Leveling off at two thousand feet he let the bomber run, using the speed built up in the dive to fly along the valley, following the route of the South Tyne river. They flew the length of the valley to Barnard Castle and then Carter stood the Manchester on its starboard wingtip and headed south east towards Lincoln.

  “Bloody hell, skipper,” said Murphy, thumbing the mike. “You should be charging for this. It’s like being at a fairground.”

  Carter laughed like a drain.

  The big joke was when they got home. Just as they shut down, there was a tinkling sound from the port engine as the prop windmilled to a stop. It jerked to a sudden halt and there was a final crunch. Latimer felt it as much as heard it and he was scrambling up a ladder even before they got out.

  The exhausts pinged as they cooled. Latimer had a cowling off in double quick time and passed it down. The engine radiated heat as he shone a torch inside letting the light play up towards the front end of the block. Bits of metal came tumbling down onto the concrete from the reduction gear.

  After more days of late scrubs and confusion and with the weather worsening, Church called Group. Europe was blanketed in a cloud bank and the Battleships were back in their kennels so there was nothing doing. 363 was stood down and Church released the men for the day.