by Ray Ollis
Bright stars above. Thick cloud below. And all around more than two hundred aircraft. But nothing to be seen, not a damned thing. Were they on track? Q-Queenie still hit occasional slipstreams indicating they were in some sort of concentration.16 But the night that hid them from attack concealed their target too.
The met forecast had misplaced the area of good visibility. They should have bombed south-east of the Ruhr. Visibility over Coblenz was perfect. They could have bombed successfully there and been half-way home by now.
‘Five minutes to TOT,’ said Vincent. Time-on-target in five minutes and not a sign of action. Not a flare, not a few early bomb-flashes, not even any flak. Too often it was like this. War by guesswork.
‘H-Hour!’ announced Vincent at last. ‘The attack should open now.’
Ahead of Q-Queenie the leading bombers released their loads, bombing blind on ETA.17 A dull glow showed under a wide expanse of cloud, and instantly the night went wild with flak. Preferring not to shoot at first rather than betray their position, the Huns had nothing to lose now and opened fire. Q-Queenie lurched from the blast wave of a nearby flak burst.
Hyde dropped the nose a few degrees. A shallow dive through the target got clear of danger faster. The ASI showed 240 knots; with the following wind they would be tracking over the target with a groundspeed well over 300 mph.
‘Five, four, three, two, one, now!’ counted Vincent. Bill Graham pressed the tit. ‘Bombs away!’
Another thirty seconds Hyde held her, dead ahead, hurtling in that shallow dive. The sky around and behind them bubbling with molten shrapnel and dotted with burning aircraft.
Clear of the target Hyde turned north-west for home.
A loud, rapid order shouted in their earphones. ‘Corkscrew port, go!’
Hyde slammed the stick forward, jammed on left rudder and dropped the port wing. The Lancaster lurched downwards and Vincent’s instruments floated up off his desk as he scrambled to catch them.
‘Up!’ shouted the voice.
The men were anchored to their seats and the floating navigation instruments crashed to the floor as the heavy aircraft, mercifully free of her bomb load, strained out of her dive.
Tracer shells zipped under the starboard wing and a new vibration shook her as two machine-gun turrets returned fire at a rate of over a hundred bullets a second.
Cordite fumes filled the fuselage, penetrating into their oxygen masks.
‘Up starb’d!’ ordered the gunner.
Grinding around in tight turns trying to bring his own guns to bear, the fighter followed.
Q-Queenie’s antics made shooting difficult for fighter and bomber alike, but for just an instant the Hun was steady in Joe’s sights. Joe squeezed his buttons and the exchange was switched on again.
‘Dive starb’d!’
A sickening, empty lurch and again the Lancaster plunged down, chasing its wingtip. The firing stopped.
‘I think we’ve lost him, skip.’
The bomber eased back on course. Hyde checked on phones that everyone was unhurt. Men tested equipment for damage. Better find faults now rather than wait until they gave way.
Vincent crawled around rescuing equipment from the floor. To every navigation instrument—protractors, slides, computors18—was tied a piece of string. Vincent found his strings, lifted them all together and deposited his missing equipment on the plotting desk. That trick for finding things might save a minute.
A minute might save their lives.
Even now the aircraft was rocking again as more flak found them.
While they were over the target there had been a private little incident going on amidships. Johnnie Muller’s task over the target was by the photo-flash chute. A few thousand feet behind the bombs, the photo-flash is released. This is a flash bomb timed to burst in the sky an instant before the bomb load explodes. Its flash lasts only one-fiftieth of a second; its three million candle-power acts as the exposure for the open-shuttered camera waiting in the bomber above. Johnnie stood duty to see that this HE flash did not jam in the chute.
As he waited for the flash to fall Johnnie drew from inside his battle-dress blouse something about the shape and size of a good trout. He poised it behind the flash, nose downwards. The mechanism clicked, the flash fell away, and directly on its tail the German boy released his own private missile to fall on his native land.
It was a tiny bomb. An 11½ pound practice bomb, used by bomb aimers in training. A puny puff of smoke in the wake of more than four tons of high explosive already released by the bomb-aimer.
Johnnie returned to his radio pleased to have added his mite. This radio, he knew, was valuable. Valuable, yes; but passive. But he hated Nazis and he, personally, wished to wound them.
The Hun had the situation worked out by now. He knew where they had been and where they were going. Fighters mingled with the returning stream, slashing like hawks in a flock of pigeons. Once more Joe shouted evasive action and Queenie corkscrewed out of danger.
Later, Joe and Yarpi yelled simultaneously to ‘Corkscrew starb’d, go!’ as their four eyes and six guns turned together on a single foe. But not a shot was fired, neither in attack nor defence. In each clash the fighter was lost during the first evasive dive.
Some aircrew believed that few German fighters followed a bomber which took evasive action. Perhaps it was true. Why risk their German necks in what would probably be a futile chase after a gunner who has already shown he is wide awake and knows what he is doing?
The mediocre gunner with good eyes who kept alert was therefore a better defence than the crack shot who dozed. Joe always said he was ‘too bloody scared to fall asleep’, and his crew loved him for it.
Johnnie eased the tension. ‘Special to crew. Fighter activity has stopped.’ It was usually like that. Ordered into the air at the same time, the fighters were all forced to land at the same time for lack of fuel.
‘Skipper to gunners. Keep watching in case there’s a stray.’
Flak still sprayed occasional brilliance into the sky. For a few minutes it seemed more intense, forming a line of bursting stars running across their bows from left to right. Vincent spoke; ‘Crossing the coast out now.’
Now came the dull sea-leg home. Men were getting tired, and the relaxation made them realize it. Johnnie’s radio still scanned the crackling ether but Fritz was silent. The gun-turrets still swung left and right, sweeping the empty sky with gestures of extreme distrust at its quietness. The engines drummed softly, throttled back now as the aircraft, hurrying still, gained speed in a gentle dive. In watchful monotony, Q-Queenie was returning home.
Hyde broke the long silence. ‘Ten thousand feet. You can take off oxygen masks.’ What a joy to tear the restricting rubber from one’s face!
‘Skipper to engineer. How are fuel levels? I smell petrol.’
‘I smell it too. But the levels are okay. I’ve checked.’
No sooner had he spoken than the sky ahead was lit with a sickening orange flash. Its tailpiece blown off in a flurry of oval fins, an aircraft crashed, burning, into the sea.
‘Skipper to crew. Anyone see that? It looked like a Lanc.’
‘I thought so too. Have 4 Group got Lancasters?’
‘I think they’re all Halifaxes.’
‘Must be a one-o-one bod,’ said Hyde. ‘Either they were on fire or else at ‘oxygen-masks off’ some clot lit a cigarette.’ It was not idle chatter; the crew sniffed the petrol-laden air and reconfirmed their decision never to risk blowing up for a premature smoke.
‘English coast ahead.’
‘Looks damned misty.’
‘Met said there might be fog.’
‘Oh hell!’
‘Any word of a diversion, Krink?’
‘Something coming in now. Wait a sec.’
If Base were under fog they may be diverted to land elsewhere. It often meant acute discomfort; landing on some dreadful training field that lacked facilities, sleeping in make-shift accommodation, t
hen hanging around maybe for days of bad weather without a shave or a change of clothes.
‘Here it is,’ said Krink. ‘Diversion. But not for us: 4 Group. Some of them have to land at Ludford.’ Ludford Magna, perched on top of the Wolds, was the highest aerodrome in Group and was frequently the last ’drome to be closed for fog.
They found Base, called up for permission to land and were told to wait; Ludford was handling four times its usual number of aircraft. Q-Queenie circled for almost another hour before landing. They taxied to their pen and cut engines.19 The still silence seemed strange after ten hours and forty-two minutes of roaring vibration.
The waiting ground-crew jammed a ladder under the exit and, slowly and stiffly, one by one the crew climbed out. Hyde called to Chiefy Mitchell; ‘Give her a good check, Chiefy. I didn’t think we’d been hit but there’s a helluva stink of petrol.’
Somehow, suddenly, the men did not feel tired. At debriefing nobody is. There is the excitement of another trip finished safely. The reaction after hours of comparative silence. There is so much to remember and discuss.
‘Who blew up over the North Sea?’
‘Looked like a Lanc.’
‘We had six combats. Six!’
‘Anyone missing?’
‘The natives, my dear chap, were positively hostile.’
‘… a ginormous explosion.’
‘I believe Willard bought it.’
‘Six combats!’
‘Who got that Ju 88?’
‘… fantabulous …’
‘… coned over Bonn.’
‘Target was a shambles.’
‘Shhh!’
‘Who blew up over the North firkin Sea?’20
The men queued for coffee and biscuits and their tot of rum. They were excited and talkative; most of them were really only boys. The rum would make them talk even more. That was just what the intelligence officers wanted.
As each crew repeated their story the raid took shape in the intelligence reports. There was cloud. Opposition average. Crews bombed on ETA. Bombed area reasonably concentrated. Possibly successful. Photographic reconnaissance would decide.
Outside de-briefing they bumped into Chiefy Mitchell. ‘You didn’t think you’d been hit? Queenie’s got a hole in her so big that if she was round you’d think she was a doughnut.’
He turned wide eyes on Vincent. ‘’Ere! You the new nav? There’s a piece of flak the size of twenty Players hit back of you and shot out the top behind the skipper. If you was sittin’ in your chair it would’ve passed clean through your skull. You had a mite of fine fortune to miss that one.’
Vincent laughed hollowly and noticed he was the only one who did.
The crew-bus came and they climbed in. ‘Vincent,’ said Hyde. ‘I haven’t told you this before. You are my fourth navigator. The other three were all killed. You are the first one who ever had a shred of good luck.’21
Vincent felt a shiver run up his spine. ‘I though we ran close to some flak when I was groping around finding instruments after our first combat. It must’ve been then.’ He added brightly: ‘I had a reputation for very good luck on my last squadron.’
‘Fine,’ said Hyde. ‘Keep it up with one-o-one.’
— 3 —
Aircraftswoman Pearl Yewster (known naturally enough as Pearly Oyster) flitted about guarding the Nissen hut1 of B Flight officers’ quarters which contained her four sleeping charges. One of these charges was Flying Officer Kyrynkiwski, ‘that ever-so-friendly American gentleman’.
Krink liked Oyster. She was a batwoman worth her weight in strategically placed armour plate. But he was not altogether kind to Oyster. ‘Maybe Pearl Yewster,’ Krink had said the first time he saw her, ‘but I’ll bet Pearl doesn’t any more.’
Ac/w Yewster was old enough to be mother of them all. No real mother could have guarded and cared for her sons better than did Oyster. When the returning aircraft wakened her she had slipped from her bed into the pre-dawn cold to light the fire in their hut. She waited up to greet them and make sure they were safe. ‘Never any of my boys missing’, she would boast, as though her broody, earth-bound clucking and fussing had preserved her high-flying chicks from the Hun.
Soon she would wake them for lunch. Their morning tea and shaving water was heating over the fire in the centre of the darkened hut. It was dark because Oyster had left up the blackout screens to foil the sleep-distracting sunshine. The top of the stove glowed a heart-warming, fire-brick red.
Startled by a noise outside, Oyster rushed to investigate. She waved admonishingly and tried to shout a silent ‘Shush’ at three airmen walking noisily along the nearby road. ‘These poor exhausted boys are trying to sleep,’ she said. The airmen suggested another, and not altogether unpleasant, occupation for the ‘poor exhausted bastards’.
Bill Graham propped himself up on one elbow and scowled over the blankets at Sergeant Gotleib Heindrickson and Johnnie Muller who lay in the next two beds. ‘If thee don’t stop yabbering bludy German right soon,’ Bill threatened, ‘I’ll take fist and stop thee m’self.’ Bill often reverted to dialect when he was either excited or half-asleep.
‘Bravo, Bill,’ said Magnetic.
‘Oh, pipe down, the lot of you,’ complained Joe.
Vincent sat up and yawned. ‘What time is it?’
‘What a navigator!’ said Joe. ‘Gets a Longines Astro on issue and has to ask the time.’2 Joe disappeared completely under his blankets.
‘Half-past twelve,’ said Magnetic.
In the end bed, Vincent reached out and opened a window. ‘This place stinks. Eight men asleep and a fire burning, and not a window open.’
Magnetic touched a tentative toe from under the blankets and touched the stove. ‘Except that the fire is not only out but is as cold as a frog in a frozen pool; as cold as the tip of a polar bear’s tail.’
The blankets of Joe’s bed erupted into a heap on the floor. ‘Might as well go and eat,’ he said. ‘Can’t sleep in this freezing Babel.’ He ran a finger down the curved iron wall of the Nissen hut and watched the rivulet of water he caused dribble to the cement floor. ‘I’m so bloody cold,’ Joe told nobody in particular, ‘that if I was a passionate Eskimo and you a receptive Eskimiss I’d freeze your assets.’
He opened a window and stuck his head out. ‘Hey, cock-head!’ he called to a passing NCO. ‘Is the water hot?’
‘Not bloody likely!’
‘Oh, blast!’ said Joe. ‘I’ll shave after lunch.’
Magnetic and Vincent, in greatcoats and slippers and carrying towels and toilet-kits, walked out to the wash-shed. Cursing, Joe followed them.
By the time they returned only Yarpi was not out of bed. ‘That loafer will sleep through Domesday. Let’s toss him out.’ Four men took hold of Yarpi’s bed and hauled lustily. Yarpi fell heavily, dragging the bedclothes with him as he bumped on to the moist cement. The fall just managed to stir him. He blinked.
‘Oh hell! What a stink!’ cried Joe.
‘Unless tha change thy sheets for clean ones soon, lad, we’ll find thy stuck to ’em. Tha’s only got to take ’em ’cross t’t bedding store.’
‘Here’s your tea, sir,’ said Corporal Tommy Tucker, NCO i/c B Flight quarters. Apart from the boiler attendant (‘laziest sod unhung’), Tucker was the only male on domestic staff. He shook Squadron Leader Parke’s shoulder gently. ‘Tea, sir.’
‘Mm? Oh, thanks. Put it on the table.’
Tucker set down the heavy china cup and saucer. ‘And, sir,’ he arrested Hyde’s inclination to have another forty winks, ‘Wingco phoned, sir, and said conference thirteen-thirty.’
That woke Hyde properly. ‘Dicing again tonight?’
The batman expressed no surprise at the Flight Commander asking him if the squadron was operating. ‘Looks like it, sir. Petrol load’s announced.’
Hyde shuddered. ‘Tell me softly,’ he said.
‘Twenty-one fifty-four, sir.’ Hyde shuddered again.
The only in
dication of the target given to general ground staff was the petrol load. This information seemed to be instantly transmitted by the tanker drivers to the entire station: upwards of a thousand people. Hyde had once been told the petrol load by ‘Old Meg’, Ludford’s village post-mistress.
Hyde reached for his tea and mumbled, ‘Twenty-one fifty-bloody-four.’ Maximum load meant another long trip.
‘I’ve ironed your battle-dress, sir,’ said Tucker. ‘And here’s your clean shirt and socks.’
‘Oh, thanks.’ Hyde swung his feet out of bed.
‘Bring my shaving-water, then nip out smartly and start the car; key’s on the dressing-table. I want to dash up to flight office as soon as I’ve shaved and that engine takes the devil’s own time to warm up.’
The crews stood disconsolately outside the briefing room watching the cloud thicken.
‘Cloud base two hundred at most.’
‘And tops forty firkin farsand.’
Rain started to fall and a disgruntled murmur signalled general discontent. The black cloud base swept still lower and gusts of cutting wind made the coatless men stamp their feet and bury their hands deeper in their pockets. The briefing room door opened and the clustering flyers spilled inside. By the time the last men were in, the raindrops outside were large and cold and growing heavier.
‘If they told the dock workers to work in this they’d go on strike.’
‘If they told those loafers to work at all they’d strike.’3
‘And we’ve gotta fly through it.’
Momentarily, morale was low.
The roll was called. The map slid back. The measured, red cord miles spread east and east and east. Beyond Berlin and north to … ‘Stettin!’
Red-headed Section Officer Wendy Marlborough-Jones was briefing again. She looked almost fierce as she spread her map. As though she had been forced to do something that she knew full well was suicide.