Big Week

by James Holland

  Spaatz now had considerable air power under him. In many ways, the build-up of American air forces had been working up to this moment since the summer of 1942. The figures for Eighth Air Force alone were jaw-dropping: 132 airfields and enough supply and repair depots to cover an area of 9,700,000 square feet. There was housing for half a million personnel – equivalent to a city larger than pre-war Washington DC. Over a million man-months’ worth of labour had been involved, with the movement of 16,400,000 cubic yards of soil and the laying of 46 million square yards of concrete and 262,000,000 bricks. There were, on this Saturday, 19 February 1944, some 944 B-17s, 348 B-24s and 707 combat-ready fighters. Every air base had stores crammed with bombs and ammunition, and fuel depots filled with all the high-octane fuel they could possibly need. These were huge resources and ones that would have made Göring, Milch and everyone in the Luftwaffe weep with envy.

  Spaatz was confident everything was ready. He now needed to ensure that all the immense forces under his control pulled together, took the necessary risks they would undoubtedly have to take, and hammered the Luftwaffe hard. And he had to pray the weathermen were right.

  At Bomber Command Headquarters that Saturday afternoon, further weather reports had been arriving. A Mosquito had flown high over central Europe and at around 1 p.m. his report reached High Wycombe: 10/19 cloud over Leipzig, with predicted freezing cloud and the possibility of ice forming. A second reconnaissance Mosquito reported clear skies over Berlin but heavy cloud at Leipzig and strong winds. This was far from ideal but, with a take-off time pushed back to 11 p.m., it was hoped the situation would have improved. Spaatz’s headquarters had also by now confirmed the start of ARGUMENT and that they, too, would be targeting Leipzig the following day. For once, the Combined Bomber Offensive would be working properly in tandem.

  Pilots’ and navigators’ briefings were held at last at 5 p.m. At Graveley, Gordon Carter and his pilot, Julian Sale, attended along with those of sixteen other crews. At Ludford Magna, Rusty Waughman and his young navigator, Alec Cowan, were also attending theirs. All were carried out in strict secrecy: guards on the door, blacked-out windows, pilots and navigators unable to say a word at this stage to the rest of the crew. On large map boards, they were shown the route, which took them out over the North Sea then over the northern Dutch coast and towards Berlin, before turning south-east and then a final dog-leg south-west to the target. The return leg would take them almost due west, then north-west back over the North Sea. All aircraft would carry similar loads of one 2,000lb high-explosive bomb and 2 tons of incendiaries. The main briefing would be at 9.30 p.m., ninety minutes before take-off. For Waughman, Carter and the rest of the 823 heavy bomber crews who would be flying that night, the remaining hours until take-off were often hard to fill: crew supper, maybe some letter writing, and any other distraction. Waughman liked to read a book or a paper in the mess, or play cards and drink cups of tea or coffee. ‘It was a sort of steady permanent feeling,’ he said.3 ‘You knew you were going on an operation and you knew what operations could do. You couldn’t put it out of your mind, but you had to try to.’

  At US Strategic Air Force Headquarters, Spaatz’s plans for Operation ARGUMENT were already going slightly awry. The meteorologists at both Eighth and Ninth Air Forces HQs were not nearly as confident as those at USSTAF. Doolittle always naturally erred on the side of scepticism when it came to weather forecasting – he had been caught short too many times, so, although he was prepared to do as ordered, he couldn’t help listening to the advice his own meteorology team were giving him. The truth was, weather forecasting in early 1944 always involved a lot of guesswork. There were a large number of weather stations on the British Isles, but it was further west, out at sea, that they were really needed, and there they were far fewer. The weather was fickle and, certainly, the skies had been solid over England that Saturday.

  The second concern was over the air forces in Italy. As a courtesy to his old friend, Spaatz had also alerted Eaker that ARGUMENT was being launched and requested that Fifteenth Air Force bomb the aircraft assembly plants at Regensburg and Augsburg or the ball-bearing works at Stuttgart; for ARGUMENT to have the greatest effect, he wanted to smash the twelve key targets heavily and with multiple forces all at the same time. As a secondary target, he asked for the Fifteenth Air Force to carry out an area raid on Breslau. The aim was to overwhelm the German defences; enemy fighters could not be everywhere at all times and so Fifteenth Air Force had a vital role in both causing damage and drawing German fighters away from the bombers of the Eighth.

  This put Eaker in a difficult position. Strictly speaking, he only had administrative control over Major-General Nathan Twining’s Fifteenth Air Force, not operational authority. Second, US Strategic Air Forces had already been called upon to provide support for US Fifth Army’s operations at Anzio. Both Lieutenant-General Mark Clark, the Fifth Army commander, and Major-General John Cannon, commander of the Twelfth Tactical Air Force, had been given assurances that the Fifteenth would help on what was expected to be a critical day on the bridgehead around this coastal town south of Rome. What’s more, Eaker’s weathermen were also predicting heavy cloud and bad weather over much of Italy. As he pointed out, the Fifteenth lacked any H2X equipment and so would be unlikely to bomb the targets allocated to them accurately in any case.

  Spaatz understood the conundrum facing Eaker, but POINTBLANK –and now ARGUMENT – had to take precedence. OVERLORD trumped operations in Italy and right now POINTBLANK trumped OVERLORD. He felt they should all stop worrying about the weather. He and Anderson had accepted that extraordinary risks now needed to be taken. The stakes were simply too high. It was better, Spaatz fervently believed, that they lost more aircrews now but pressed home their assault on the Luftwaffe, rather than preserve lives now only for more to be lost in the long run.

  It was now late evening on the 19th and time was fast running out. Spaatz appealed to Portal, who in turn appealed to Churchill. The Prime Minister, however, insisted the operations at Anzio should take priority, so Portal’s hands were tied and, consequently, so too were Spaatz’s. Later that night, Doolittle sent up weather planes to gauge whether there was any sign of the improvement predicted by the met men at Spaatz’s HQ. They found none. The tension mounted. For the deep-penetration mission that was planned, crews would have to be up early to make the most of the winter daylight, and they would be taking off early, too, into potentially thick cloud that could easily then freeze on their aircraft as they struggled to climb up through 5,000 feet. Much now rested on the shoulders of Spaatz. Risks needed to be taken, but what if catastrophe awaited?

  11 p.m. Across Bomber Command’s airfields, crews were now being driven out to their waiting aircraft, looming monstrously against the night sky around the perimeters. Up at Leeming, the Canadians of 429 Squadron would be sending out sixteen Halifaxes, although Bill Byers and his crew were not among them. After flying to Berlin on the 14th, they had been given a week’s leave. At Graveley, Gordon Carter and his pilot, Julian Sale, were both about to undertake their fifty-first mission. Carter was just beginning to get to the end of his tether. Anyone serving in the war, whether a soldier, sailor or airman, had a bank of courage that would, eventually, run empty without very careful management. For some, the bank was larger than it was for others. In the RAF, men like Rusty Waughman’s first flight engineer were termed ‘Lacking Moral Fibre’ once their nerve went – a horrible label and one that brought barely imaginable shame on those who were categorized thus. Anyone considered LMF was stripped of rank and sacked immediately, as if they had a contagious disease, and were taken off the station without delay for fear of infecting morale.

  Some who had clearly run dry desperately tried to keep going. Friends would cover up for them as far as possible and more of them than might be imagined were able somehow to get through their tours. Others would become ‘flak-happy’ – a condition that usually brought about unpredictable behaviour and even rashness. Carter reckone
d he hadn’t quite reached the flak-happy stage, but knew he wasn’t far off. He had also found something of a soulmate in Julian Sale – a sign that both men were becoming more introverted and detached from others around them. They stuck together and even on crew leaves always spent their time together in London. ‘I doubt whether I can convey the special relationship which united Julian and me,’ Carter wrote.4 ‘We were determined to be A1 in all we did and worked as hard at it on the ground as in the air.’ Sale had also been shot down over France and escaped, and both were determined that, should it ever happen again, they would be better prepared. They went on long cross-country runs, practised breaking out of the airfield without being seen, and even made light and loose cloth packs containing civvy clothes they could change into if forced to go on the run. Carter also squeezed in a lightweight mackintosh behind his Mae West and parachute harness. This kind of escape and evasion kit could have got them shot if caught on the ground – British airmen in civilian clothing might well be assumed to be spies – but that was something both men were willing to risk.

  As they started up their engines at around 11.40 that night, the weather was once again rotten. They all knew the trip to Leipzig would be what they termed, with classic British understatement, ‘a shaky do’: a long flight along a route where the night-fighters were at their most concentrated. Their Halifax, TL-J, was painted matt black all over save for the RAF rondels and squadron markings. At 11.51 p.m. Sale hauled back on the control column and they were airborne and climbing slowly through the sleet and ice.

  Some 120 miles to the north, at RAF Leconfield in Yorkshire, just to the north of the old East Riding market town of Beverley, the Australians of 466 Squadron, part of RAF 4 Group, were also taking off. In Flight Sergeant Jack Scott’s crew the only Englishman was Flight Sergeant Ken Handley, the flight engineer and just twenty years old. Being the odd one out didn’t bother Handley much – like most crews, they had gelled quickly and he got along well with all of them. They were a new crew; this was only their second flight, having had their baptism of fire four nights earlier on a long mission to Berlin. There had been a lot of flak over the target, but they had successfully dropped their bombs then turned for home. The return leg had been far more eventful, with plenty of night-fighters around, but Scott had taken evasive action a few times and they had successfully made it back to Leconfield after seven hours and thirty minutes in the air. ‘Not so frightening as I had expected,’ Handley had written in his diary after that first trip.5 ‘A little fear at the bottom of it all. Tense last half hour when tank 4 iced up.’

  Now, at just ten minutes to midnight, they were taking off again for another brutally long trip, fighting their way up through thick cloud and eventually emerging high over the North Sea. Also now over the North Sea were the Lancasters of 101 Squadron. Rusty Waughman and his crew had taken off from Ludford Magna at 11.44 p.m. Above the water, the crews tested their guns, then almost the moment they crossed over the Frisian Islands and the Dutch coast the flak opened up and they began to be aware of night-fighters.

  From his Halifax, Gordon Carter looked down and saw the route ahead lit up by strings of flares fired by the Luftwaffe to illuminate the cloud below and so silhouette the bombers against it. Accompanying the bombers were RAF twin-engine Beaufighters whose task it was to hunt down the hunters. Carter never felt they made much difference and preferred to trust in Sale and his own navigational skills to get them out of trouble. Sitting at his plotting desk, he felt the Halifax being continually yawed from side to side and dipping downwards, then climbing; the trick was to avoid flying straight and level. Sale also took them higher – up to 23,000 feet, which was about as high as a Halifax could reach when fully laden. Onwards they droned, deeper into Germany and towards Leipzig.

  Jack Scott’s Australian crew were also pushing on towards the target. Sitting beside him was Ken Handley. After their last trip he had discovered their problem had not been icing but rather that he had forgotten to pump 230 gallons from tank 4 into tanks 1 and 3 after leaving the target. The ground crew had found a completely full tank the following morning, which meant they had made the entire trip to Berlin and back on just three tanks. No wonder they had landed with what seemed like no fuel at all. It was a mistake Handley would not make again.

  Now they faced the same worrying number of night-fighters that was troubling Gordon Carter and crew. Flak opened up the moment they crossed the Dutch coast and twice they were picked up by searchlights. Scott took quick evasive action and managed to get them clear, but other bombers were already starting to fall from the sky as night-fighters made no fewer than fifty separate attacks on the bomber stream. Down below, the German ground controllers had not been fooled by the diversionary raid on Kiel and had sent only part of their fighter force there, which was why so many night-fighters had been waiting for the bombers as they flew over the coast. The bomber stream would find itself under attack all the way to the target.

  Carter and his crew were still en route to Leipzig when, at 2.43 a.m., they were suddenly raked by cannon fire from a Ju88. It had stalked them from underneath using the Schräge Musik technique. The fuel-overload tank exploded, engulfing the plane in fire. They still had their bombs on board and there was absolutely no hope of the extinguishers being able to save them, so Sale at once ordered them to bail out. This was easier said than done in a burning bomber that was spiralling out of control. Carter was immediately pinned to the fuselage by the centrifugal forces, but managed to fight these, pull up the hatch and get out before the flames engulfed him. Relief coursed through him as he plunged down, then he pulled the ripcord and his parachute ballooned. His first thought was that now he would not face the ignominy of having to ask to be taken off ops and the shame that would have come with it. Bailing out of a burning wreck meant there would be no stigma of LMF for him.

  Any immediate thoughts of relief, however, were soon followed by the realization that he was drifting down from above most of the other bombers in the stream with the air around him about 50° below freezing and with no oxygen. It would be very easy for him to hit another aircraft or, even more probable, have his parachute blown in from the slipstream. And he had to worry about landing safely and whether he would then be able to avoid the Germans. It took him around twenty minutes to drift down, which gave him a lot of time to contemplate his future. By the time he finally passed through the thick layer of cloud he was only just conscious, but managed to summon the presence of mind to wrest his revolver from his pocket and throw it away. Now he could see the land rising towards him and saw he was over a wood with a path running through it. By tugging on the cords, he managed to land perfectly without so much as touching a single branch. Thick snow lay on the ground. Gathering his parachute, he hid it along with his Mae West and battledress in undergrowth and slipped into his civilian clothes, then he struck out along the path.

  At group and command headquarters, staff were receiving the latest reports on the weather situation from fifteen navigators in each group who had been selected to provide updates as the bomber stream progressed. On aircraft equipped with GEE, H2S and Oboe, they had been transmitting their reports, which also included estimations of wind speed, to Bomber Command Headquarters. These reports were then forwarded to the Central Forecast Office – CFO – at Dunstable, near High Wycombe, where they were examined and plotted by upper air forecasters. Their conclusions were relayed to Bomber Command HQ, who transmitted their updated reports back to the designated navigators’ crews, who then forwarded the information to the rest of the force.

  The reports showed winds significantly stronger than forecast. Rather than being pushed along by tail winds of 40 m.p.h., for which the force had been originally briefed, the winds were in fact as strong as 100 m.p.h. This was why Rusty Waughman and many others found themselves over the target far earlier than anticipated, and before the Pathfinders had been able to complete their marking, requiring the bombers to circle over Leipzig for around twenty minutes waiti
ng for the moment to carry out their bomb runs. When every moment of the mission was fraught with risk, spending an extra twenty minutes, especially when right in the jaws of the lion, was torturous for the crews. Four aircraft collided and were lost as they circled.

  Eventually, just before 4 a.m., white incendiaries from the Pathfinders began showering down from the sky. The targets were completely cloud-covered, but blind markers were dropped and then backed up by further ‘Wanganui’ – or Christmas tree – flares.fn1 Waughman and his crew then began their bomb run. Searchlights were now coning aircraft through the cloud and lighting up much of the sky over the city, while the flak was heavy and the bomber was being jolted and jerked all over the place. Down below the bright light of the flares mixed with the orange glow of explosions and flames beneath the cloud. At 4.08 a.m. they were over the target, flying at 23,000 feet and dropping their bombs on the markers.

  As Waughman turned homewards, Jack Scott and his crew began their run. They were at 22,000 feet and fortunately most of the flak seemed to be exploding below them. From his position in the cockpit Ken Handley was able to look out of the blister in the Perspex and see the marker flares clearly below. He also spotted puffs of black smoke around them where the gunners on the ground were trying to blast out the flares.