“That’s not what Wing Commander Goodison thinks,” Harrington said, turning to the man who was seated next to Baird. “Over to you, Charles.”
Armstrong did not like Goodison, who had a prim, haughty manner about him. The comments the Wing Commander made now did nothing to change his opinion of the man.
“Contrary to what you may think, Armstrong,” Goodison said, placing emphasis on the “you”, “the squadron has a very good chance of survival indeed. A squadron of 12 Wellingtons has very good defensive firepower: 72 machine-guns, to be precise. More than a match for any attacking fighters.”
Armstrong was aware that each Wellington carried a pair of 0.303 machine-guns in the nose and tail turrets, and two more in beam positions in the fuselage. He also knew that the rifle-calibre guns were outranged by the cannon used by German fighters. And there was another deficiency. The Wellington was not fitted with self-sealing fuel tanks — in other words, tanks equipped with a rubberized lining that would close around any bullet hole and prevent fuel from escaping. He chose to make no comment about that.
“I am quite confident,” Goodison went on, “that the squadron will get through to the target, complete its mission and fight its way out if necessary, and as far as I am concerned the matter ends there. Of course,” he added, “no one is ordering you to fly on this mission, Armstrong. If you go, it will be strictly as a volunteer.”
Armstrong, with a supreme effort of willpower, forced his anger to remain below the surface. “I have never indicated that I was unwilling to go,” he said quietly. “It’s just that I don’t like going into a situation without knowing the odds.”
“That goes for me, too,” Baird said. Behind the desk, Harrington nodded approvingly. “Very well, gentlemen. That’s that, then. The raid is scheduled for tomorrow morning; the weather will have improved by then, or so I’m assured. Take-off will be at 08.00, briefing at six.”
“I thought for one dreadful moment that you were going to thump the Wingco,” Baird said to Armstrong a little later, as they walked away from the building.
“I felt like it,” his companion said grimly. “Pompous ass. One thing’s for certain — I’m not going to fly with the bastard tomorrow.”
As things turned out, that particular problem did not arise. When they turned up for the briefing the next day, Armstrong and Baird found that they had been assigned to different crews. Armstrong’s pilot, a flying officer, was a cheerful, ruddy-faced man with a New Zealand accent; his name was Pittaway and he had joined the RAF in 1937, having sidestepped all sorts of red tape in his own country after being rejected for pilot training in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. “Bloody old school tie rules the roost out there, I’ll tell you,” he confided. “Still, there are a lot of blokes like me who are mad keen to get into this war, and nothing’s going to stop ’em, even if they have to swim here.”
Pittaway’s personality was reflected in the mood of his crew. There were five of them: observer, wireless operator, bomb aimer, nose gunner and rear gunner. They greeted Armstrong affably, those who smoked standing clear of the Wellington to savour a final cigarette while Pittaway walked round the big aircraft, methodically carrying out his pre-flight checks. The ground crew stood off to one side, talking quietly, waiting.
Armstrong had never been so close to a Wellington before, and was impressed by the aircraft’s size. Its wings spanned nearly 90 feet from tip to tip and its fuselage was square and solid. Armstrong knew that the aircraft was extremely robust, thanks to its lattice-type construction: geodetic, they called it, or something like that. He had very briefly met the Wellington’s designer during his time at Farnborough; a somewhat eccentric professor-type called Wallis, who had also designed the R.100 airship.
Having satisfied himself that the control surfaces were all in one piece, Pittaway checked with the armourer that the bomb load was correctly stowed, with the fitter and rigger that the aircraft was technically sound, and then signed the technical log, the Form 700, formally accepting the charge of the bomber from the ground crew. If anything went wrong now it would be his fault, not theirs.
Minutes later, the aerodrome thundered with sound as 24 powerful Bristol Pegasus engines coughed into life, roared briefly as pilots carried out their engine checks — confirming what the ground crews had already done some time earlier — and then settled back to a steady mutter as the throttles were closed again. Every crew member was conscious that their aircraft was heavily laden with fuel and 4,000 pounds of bombs — eight 500-pounders — and that the take-off run would be a long one. Any sudden loss of power in either engine at the critical point when the bomber was becoming airborne would spell disaster.
Pittaway’s eyes were on the flying control caravan at the far end of the airfield. Suddenly, a white flare arced up from it. A few moments later Wing Commander Goodison’s aircraft began to move, waddling across the grass to the threshold of the airstrip. Two more followed it, then Pittaway signalled to his ground crew to pull away the chocks. They saluted to show that all was clear and the pilot opened the throttles. The Wellington vibrated and shuddered and then it too began to move, joining the queue.
Another flare went up from the caravan and Armstrong, watching through the perspex windscreen, saw Goodison’s aircraft begin to gather speed on the grass runway. Its tail came up and then it was airborne, in a shorter distance than Armstrong had expected, daylight showing between its undercarriage and the airfield boundary as it climbed away.
A few minutes later it was their own turn. Pittaway’s voice sounded over the intercom.
“Okay, everyone, here we go. Stand by for takeoff. Second pilot, you have the throttles.”
“I have the throttles,” confirmed Armstrong, who was sitting alongside Pittaway in the second pilot’s seat. The position would normally be occupied for take-off by the observer, who doubled up as second pilot when required. Armstrong placed his hand firmly on the throttle levers, leaving the pilot free to grasp the control wheel with both hands.
“Full power!” Pittaway ordered. The Wellington shuddered again as Armstrong carefully advanced the levers and the engines roared in response to his touch.
“Brakes off!”
Reluctantly, the laden aircraft began to move. Armstrong continued to hold the throttle levers firmly forward against the stops, concentrating on nothing else. Suddenly, he could see the runway ahead beyond the nose as the tail rose. For what seemed an age the bomber clung to the ground, the undercarriage rumbling, then it bounced two or three times and the rumbling ceased.
Pittaway applied the brakes to stop the wheels rotating and pulled up the undercarriage, letting the flying speed build up before entering a climbing turn, following the bombers that had already taken off. “All right,” he said to Armstrong, “you can relax. I’ve got her. Enjoy the ride.”
Armstrong relinquished his control of the throttles and sat back in his seat, looking out at the scenery as the Wellington climbed out over the Suffolk countryside that was so familiar to him. There was tranquillity there, and he felt reluctant to be leaving it; but strangely enough he felt no apprehension. He put that down to the fact that he had been to Wilhelmshaven before, and knew what to expect.
Over the coast, the Wellingtons formed up into three flights of four, then set course over the North Sea, levelling out at 13,000 feet. Ahead of them, the sky was almost cloudless.
*
It was completely cloudless over the island of Wangerooge, where the experimental Freya radar station kept watch up to a point 50 miles out over the North Sea. In recent weeks, a second, similar station had also been brought into service on Heligoland.
Seated before the flickering cathode ray tubes of the Wangerooge station, Feldwebel Walther Heide had not been on duty long enough to be bored. That would come later, when he had nothing to do but report the movements of occasional friendly aircraft such as the Heinkel He 115 and Dornier Do 18 seaplanes flying to and from their base at Norderney. It came as a considerable surp
rise, then, when both his screens — one registering range, the other azimuth — showed distinct traces. He stared at them for several seconds before he realized that the radar echoes were being returned to the station not by a single aircraft, but by several, flying in tight formation. What was more, Heide knew that this was not a Luftwaffe formation, returning from an armed reconnaissance over the North Sea; the Wangerooge and Heligoland stations were alerted to all such movements.
Heide pressed a buzzer at the side of his console and, after a short delay, an officer entered the room, a sheaf of papers in his hand and a look of annoyance on his face.
“Yes, Heide? What is it? Don’t you know I’m busy?”
“My apologies,” Heide said, “but I thought the Herr Leutnant should see this.”
Frowning, the lieutenant peered over the NCO’s shoulder and studied the traces for a while. “Well, Heide,” he said at length, “what do you make of it?” Heide took a deep breath.
“I think, Herr Leutnant, that we are picking up an incoming bomber formation. Not ours, for certain,” he added.
The officer frowned again. “The Tommies? In broad daylight and a cloudless sky? Even they wouldn’t be that stupid.” He looked at the display, which he could read as expertly as Heide. “Range 40 kilometres, altitude 4000 metres, bearing three-five zero … Looks as though they’re making for Heligoland, whoever they are.”
At that moment the Heligoland station came on the line, confirming that it was also tracking the incoming formation. The lieutenant shook his head, then reached for a telephone.
“We may be making fools of ourselves, Heide, but I’m not about to take any chances. Hello? Jever control, this is Freya. We are tracking what appears to be an incoming enemy formation, range now 30 kilometres, altitude 4000, bearing three five-five. Predicted target Heligoland. Hold on!”
The last instruction came in response to a cry from Heide. “Herr Leutnant, the formation is altering course! It is heading straight for the coast.”
“Jever, latest indications are that the predicted target may be Wilhelmshaven. Alert all squadrons. Repeat, alert all squadrons. Please acknowledge.” There was a pause, and then the lieutenant replaced the handset. “Well, Heide, we’ve done our bit. It’s up to them now. I just hope to God we’ve got it right, or there will be the devil to pay.”
The sentiment was echoed heartily by Leutnant Hans Lehmann as, a few minutes later, he tore his Emil off the ground at Jever, closely followed by Falcke, his wingman, and four other Messerschmitts of the standby flight. He knew that other pilots of the Gruppe who had not been on standby were being rounded up as quickly as possible, but it would be several minutes more before the whole group was airborne. In the meantime, his six aircraft would have to do what they could. As yet, Lehmann had no idea what they were heading into as he led his flight up to 19000 feet, his one thought to get above the enemy formation.
Unlike Lehmann, Armstrong had a very good idea what the Wellington squadron was heading into as it crept closer to Wilhelmshaven, having kept well clear of Heligoland to avoid the heavy anti-aircraft batteries that were known to be there. Around their aircraft, the other Wellingtons in the formation rose and fell gently on the turbulence. Armstrong glanced at Pittaway, who was chewing gum unconcernedly under his oxygen mask, and then looked ahead towards the enemy coast and the approaches to Wilhelmshaven. It was familiar territory.
They were over Wangerooge when the first fighters hit them.
They seemed to come from nowhere, flashing out of the southern sky, arrowing down hard and fast from above to hit the leading formation in a single, devastating pass. Armstrong counted four of them before losing sight of them as they vanished below; a few moments later the excited voice of the rear gunner reported that the Messerschmitts were climbing steeply astern and turning in.
“All right, gunners,” Pittaway said over the intercom. “No wild shooting. Let ’em come well within range.” He reached across and tapped Armstrong’s elbow. “Stand by to take over if I get hit,” he added quietly.
Armstrong raised a hand in acknowledgement. With a sick feeling, he was watching the Wellingtons ahead. One of them, the left-hand aircraft, was dropping slowly out of formation, both engines streaming white smoke. It went into a lazy spiral towards the sea. Armstrong did not see any parachutes.
“Fighters coming in astern!” The rear-gunner’s yell was followed almost immediately by the clatter of his machine-guns. Armstrong jumped as holes appeared in the bomber’s wing between the cockpit and the engine. He crouched in his seat and tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, feeling utterly vulnerable and helpless.
It was Lehmann who had attacked Pittaway’s Wellington, taking a couple of hits from the rear-gunner in the process. Satisfied that no serious damage had been done, he passed underneath the bomber at speed and then eased back the stick slightly, settling his gunsight squarely on the leading Wellington. Its bulk shuddered in front of him as he opened fire with cannon and machine-guns, raking it from wingtip to wingtip. Immediately, a sheet of white vapour streamed back, enveloping his fighter, its droplets rendering his windscreen opaque. Smelling high-octane fuel, he sheered off to one side hastily and dived away.
Behind him, his wingman, Falcke, also fired a burst into the stricken Wellington. The result was spectacular. The white vapour, pouring from the bomber’s holed fuel tanks, erupted into flame.
In the following wave, Armstrong and Pittaway witnessed the whole drama from their cockpit as Wing Commander Goodison’s Wellington — for such it was — fell out of formation, wrapped in flame. A few hundred feet lower down, it exploded. They felt the expanding shock-wave like a hammer blow. As Pittaway fought to steady the aircraft, one of the gunners reported that a third Wellington was going down in flames.
Three down out of twelve, Armstrong thought, and we haven’t even got as far as Wilhelmshaven. He wondered how Dickie Baird was coping. He was in the bomber on the extreme right of the second flight, and he could see that it was still intact.
Suddenly, there were Messerschmitts everywhere, boaring in from all sides. The noise was unbearable as every gunner opened fire, taking his brief chance to shoot at targets as they streaked past. Acrid fumes drifted through the fuselage. The bomb aimer, crouched in his nose position, reported that Wilhelmshaven was dead ahead, but that he could not see any ships in the anchorage.
“That’s torn it,” said Pittaway, talking to himself. At the briefing, they had been told that if they couldn’t find any warships to bomb, they were to bring their bombs back.
The Wellington bucked and jolted as the formation flew on through yellow-grey smoke of heavy anti-aircraft bursts. By some sort of miracle, none of the bombers was hit.
The formation flew on over Wilhelmshaven and then turned out towards the open sea again, still carrying its bombs. All of a sudden the flak died away. Then the fighters came in again.
Chapter Eight
“I see they’ve let you out, then.”
Armstrong looked up from his armchair in the Mess ante-room to see Pittaway looking down at him. The New Zealander gave a weary smile. “You look bloody awful,” he said.
Armstrong placed an experimental hand on the bandage that swathed his head and winced, eyeing Pittaway’s left arm, which was in a sling.
“Thanks. You don’t look all that hot yourself. I still can’t remember a damned thing after we jettisoned our bombs.”
“You flew us back,” Pittaway told him. “I wasn’t much use with a couple of bullets through this.” He pointed to his injured arm. “You also crashed,” he added reproachfully.
“Crash-landed,” Armstrong corrected him, “or so I’m told. Still, every landing you walk away from is a good one.”
“You didn’t walk away,” Pittaway objected. “You were bloody well carried. Out cold, you were. Anyway, what’s the damage?”
“Oh, just a cut on the dome and a bit of concussion,” Armstrong said. “I was lucky. We all were.”
“You can say that again,” said Pitta way, with considerable feeling. “What a God-almighty cock-up!”
Armstrong made no reply. He knew the story, even the bits his mind had blanked out, from conversations he had overheard, even though no one had been willing to come straight out and tell him. Three Wellingtons had come back out of the twelve; his had been the only one to make it back to base, the other two having landed at other airfields. Dickie Baird had been in one of the missing aircraft.
Pittaway looked at the clock on the ante-room wall. It was five past twelve. Outside, a thick fog lay over the aerodrome.
“Fancy a couple of beers and a spot of lunch?” he asked. Armstrong shook his head.
“No. Not here, anyway.” Pittaway nodded. He knew what the other was thinking. Things were depressing enough, without having to sit and stare at the empty spaces in the dining-room. It would be the same in the other messes too, he reflected, for the bulk of the Wellingtons’ crews had been made up of sergeants and aircraftmen.
“You reckon you can drive my jalopy?” The New Zealander’s question took Armstrong by surprise. “I suppose so,” he said dubiously, eyeing the fog outside. “Exactly what did you have in mind?”
“A bit of rape and pillage,” said Pittaway, “or alternatively, if your bonce isn’t up to that, a sandwich or two in Cambridge and some falling-down drunk. Nobody’s going to need us for anything, are they?”
Armstrong had to agree with him. “The doc said no alcohol, though.”
Pittaway snorted. “That’s what he said to me, too. Bugger it. Are we going to give it a try?”
“Why not? Booze is as good a pain-killer as any.” He levered himself painfully out of his chair, conscious that the bruises that covered a large area of his body hurt far more than his head did. The two officers collected their greatcoats, told the Mess receptionist of their intentions, and went out into the cold, damp fog, where Armstrong was introduced to Pittaway’s means of transport, a Morgan three-wheeler.
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