101 Nights

by Ray Ollis

  ‘Didn’t know Stirlings could get this high.’

  ‘Okay,’ snapped Hyde. ‘Less natter. Settle down.’

  The ‘wizard prang’ plus the light opposition was making them relax. To relax once over Germany might prove once too often.

  ‘There’s a combat!’, Yarpi shouted through the unwelcome news that armed their fears.

  It was the first they had seen tonight.

  ‘Keep on your toes, then.’

  A few more squirts of tracer gashed the sky. But opposition remained tentative and half-hearted. The arrogant bombers flew home almost unmolested.

  The weather held. At noon the Tannoy spoke again. Another battle order. Already the aircrews had been up for hours to call at Photographic Section and see the bombing photographs each plane had taken of the Karlsruhe raid. These five-inch-square contact prints showed seas of fire and hot chaos. From the time-on-target written on each frame it was possible to follow the whole course of the raid. In safety they relived the excitement of the night before.

  Bombing photographs were still the main topic of conversation while the aircrews waited in the big briefing room for the night’s orders. Spirits were high. Last night the squadron had flown without loss. And tonight’s petrol-load was eighteen-hundred so it was not to be a long trip. They waited eagerly to be airborne again; weather and morale were good.

  The Wing Commander, when he rose to speak, did not straightaway draw back the curtain and name the target.

  ‘Well, chaps,’ he started, ‘you’ll all like to hear Command’s comments on yesterday’s raid, I think. This morning’s photographs show that central Karlsruhe is more than half destroyed. And it’s still on fire. This is one of our most successful large-scale attacks. Shows what we can do when weather’s kind and we try. The oil stores we particularly wanted to get are completely destroyed—rather they will be by the time the fire has burnt itself out. Several other delectable targets have had it, too, including a rolling-stock works that had been marked down for future attack. All of which is splendid news.

  ‘But that’s not all. Most of you observed the lack of fighters last night. As a result of this our losses were kept down to five aircraft: less than two per cent of the force engaged. And what delights me is Command’s news that the credit for this is due entirely to us; to one-o-one, the XYZ squadron. It seems that Flight Lieutenant Holbrook-Hardwicke conceived the idea of telling his Specials to repeat over and over again the order ‘Fly north and await instructions’, and with twenty-odd voices all repeating the same order the Huns followed it almost to the letter. While we were down in Karlsruhe most of the Luftwaffe were well on their way to Denmark.’

  The Wingco pulled a tuft of hair down over his forehead. ‘Hitler’s positively livid!’ he mocked. The men were delighted. ‘And even that is not all,’ continued the Wingco. ‘These Hun fighters, when told to await instructions, really seemed prepared to wait. Figures received so far from MI5 show that at least sixty-seven of them were still awaiting instructions when they ran out of petrol anywhere between the Frisian Islands and Sweden. There they were obliged to forced-land and many of them got severely bent.’8

  The Wingco was extracting the most out of this victory. ‘Those poor German pilots. It’s inconvenient having a U-shaped Ju 88 in a field ten miles outside Wilhelmshaven when your aerodrome and your toothbrush are six hundred miles south in Stuttgart.’

  ‘Hitler’s night-fighter chief—a fellow called Hans Jeschonnek,9 whom I look upon as our opposite number—must be as miserable tonight as we are delighted. We must keep it that way. Keep jamming him on XYZ.’

  The men had become excited and noisy; the Wing Commander cut it short suddenly. ‘Settle down now, chaps, and listen. Tonight we’re going to do it again.’

  He drew aside the curtain. There was the target: eastern Ruhr. A sobering thought.

  ‘Here is your target. A factory block north of Remsheid which makes the very special carburettors for the He 113. This carburettor is trickier than most so if we succeed the He 113 will not fly in numbers for a year.10 Now, here are your tactics. We go in north and fly down past the Ruhr as though we were striking at Frankfurt. Then, dead east of Remsheid we cut back into the Ruhr, bomb, and fly straight through between Düsseldorf and Cologne. It’s a small target and a small force; just ourselves and our neighbours 460 and 100 Squadrons. That means seventy-odd aircraft on overlapping circuits so be careful on return.’11

  Once again it was a daylight take-off. With a long sea-leg to fly before they reached the Continent they would set course before dusk. Hyde hurried out to Q-Queenie to tell the ground staff the good news about last night. Too many flyers left the ground personnel to look after themselves and get on with their jobs, isolated from the work the squadron was doing. Hyde knew that good ground crews doing their work conscientiously often made the difference between getting home after a dicey do or failing to reach home at all. They were vital and they deserved every attention. Chiefy Mitchell and his boys fully shared the flyer’s delight at the German fighter fiasco. Hyde told the story well, and Johnnie added zest by breaking in at appropriate moments with fierce outbursts of German. Johnnie’s phrases were meaningless to the Englishmen, but he was so amused himself that at one point he actually doubled up.

  As he did so a heavy object fell from his battle-dress blouse.

  A practice bomb!

  The men stopped laughing and stared. ‘What’s this, Johnnie?’ asked Hyde.

  Johnnie coloured pathetically. His sensitive lips twisted, his eyes, which always seemed near to tears, grew moist and he looked pleadingly at his skipper.

  Hyde said, helpfully, ‘I know it’s a practice bomb, but why are you carrying it around? Especially on operations?’

  ‘I, I drop it out,’ Johnnie managed to say. ‘Over—the target.’

  ‘But how? And why?’

  ‘Down—the—flare-chute. I—want to feel—that I, personally, am—bombing—Germany.’

  He seemed suddenly to be quite overcome with emotion, for he half-shouted, half-sobbed: ‘I want to kill Nazis!’, then instantly turned away to hide his face.

  ‘Now come on, old chap,’ Hyde said, walking Johnnie away. ‘We can straighten this out without getting all upset. Anyone’d think we don’t like people who drop bombs on Germany.’12

  When Hyde came back to the group he announced: ‘Johnnie’s okay. I’ve said he can drop his bombs but that I mustn’t know about it. So nobody say a word and it’ll be all right.’

  Hyde looked around. ‘Where’s Joe?’

  ‘He walked away over there.’

  ‘Oh, hell! Not another one!’ Hyde strode off to where Joe could be seen on the other side of Q-Queenie.

  ‘Have you been sick again, Joe?’ Hyde asked sternly. He was exasperated with all this emotion and his voice sounded terse.

  ‘Just a little, Skip,’ said Joe. ‘It’s gone now.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to cut it out,’ snapped Hyde, and immediately realized how unreasonable his order was. ‘If it happens any more you must report sick,’ Hyde explained more kindly. ‘I don’t know whether I’m running B Flight or a female dramatic art school,’ he complained. ‘Great bloody show if Johnnie burst into tears and you were sick smack over the target.’

  From the mess windows as they chatted over cakes and afternoon tea, watching squadron officers saw only a dull, copy-book take-off by Q-Queenie; too many 460 and 100 Squadron aircraft nearby for any trick flying. Bound for the Ruhr and a hundred hazards, Hyde raised his hat to caution.

  From Ludford Magna north-east to the sea is only twenty miles. Including take-off and circuit on to track it is less than ten minutes flying time. Something happened, however, in those few minutes that Q-Queenie’s crew long remembered, some of them until the day they died.

  Magnetic saw it first: a field of ripening wheat, and growing amongst it a blaze of scarlet poppies.

  He pointed it out to Hyde and then to Vincent. They were still low enough to se
e the rows of wheat drawn like threads of straw across the field. The setting sun caught each poppy with a touch of blood-red fire, then a ripple of wind set the wheat-heads dancing, and the whole field became a sea of flashing scarlet sequins.

  ‘It’s like coarse-weave linen dyed in Ireland’s blood,’ said Hyde.

  ‘What is?’ asked Yarpi, who was staring straight at it.

  ‘It’s bloody bad farming an’ all,’ said Bill. Then, snapping them all back to reality; ‘I’ll give you the exact time we cross the coast-out, Nav.’ In an instant all were back at work. Beneath was restless sea and ahead lay the night.

  By the time they reached the Dutch coast they were at twenty thousand feet, and the temperature outside Q-Queenie was minus twenty-six degrees centigrade.

  ‘That coast must be five miles high’, thought Hyde, for up there in front of them were twinkling the million lights of Holland’s Blackpool.13 Hardly designed to attract visitors, these; unless the guns below hoped to win for ever the passing travellers.

  There! There was one crew for whom the lights of the fair proved too much temptation. Down they hurried unwillingly, down to the evening boulevards and the black night sea.

  ‘Special to crew. Not much fighter activity.’

  ‘They can’t still be flying north!’

  ‘After sixty-odd losses they’ll still be disorganised.’

  ‘Muck ’em about, Johnnie.’

  They were well into Germany when the rear gunner reported: ‘Predicted flak closing in behind. Prepare to dive starb’d.’

  He watched the regular bursts ranging closer then yelled, ‘Go!’

  Q-Queenie nosed sharply down, dropped her right wing and started to turn after it.

  Immediately she shuddered as the blast of three shells, heavy 5.6 flak, burst just above her.

  She was unharmed. Flak bursts upwards. The gunners below would have to find her again now.

  Hyde held his dive for a thousand feet. ‘Make ’em think they’ve got us and they’ll stop,’ he reasoned.

  Then Q-Queenie was back on course again. Vincent was busy collecting strings. Joe thought, ‘Thank God we’re not Yanks who have to fly formation and can’t take evasive action. That burst would’ve got us.’

  The sky over Munster was boiling. They took a bearing on it and checked their ground-speed. Bang on time—good. Some aircraft must be off track, though; else the Munster gunners would have nothing to shoot at. But for the most part the concentration looked tight. Bombers were actually visible all around them and Queenie bounced over many a slip-stream.

  The force flew on past the Ruhr. In Frankfurt the sirens sounded the alarm. In Remsheid they unwittingly signalled all-clear.

  Then the stream wheeled westward. Throttles rammed forward, noses dropped, airspeed indicators pointed towards 250. Surprise demanded speed and every aircraft was straining forward. The Remsheid sirens, recently so smug, changed their minds and tunes to quick alarm. Fighters circling over Frankfurt received frenzied orders to hurry to Remsheid.

  But the bombers had a fifty-mile start. Tactics had succeeded.

  ‘Nav to crew. Five minutes to TOT.’

  ‘I see it,’ said Bill. ‘Ten port, skip. Left a bit more. Left-left steady. Steadeee.’

  Bill set the wind on his bombsight and prayed that it was right. A perfect run could miss badly if the navigator’s target wind was incorrect. Bill prayed and stared ahead. ‘Oh, good shot!’

  The instant Bill had identified the factory the first bombs had landed. They were dead centre. Q-Queenie’s dive from the turn-in point, eighteen minutes behind, had brought them down to twelve thousand feet. From this height the target lay clear and vulnerable. Bombs were hitting. Bill was hard-pressed to keep his eye on the factory itself and not be distracted by the explosions. ‘Left-left. Left-left, too much; right a fraction. Steady, steady, steadee …’

  It always took an age over the target. If only time could keep pace with their racing hearts.

  ‘Steady, steady, steadee … bombs away.’ Q-Queenie jumped for joy as the heavy bombs flicked off.

  So intent had the men been on their bombing-run that they had not given more than a glance to the sky about them. This was the Ruhr. Naturally all hell would break loose.

  But now they turned to watch and what they saw made them think that they had blundered into a war of the stars. They sailed upon a sky of liquid lightning. Flashes and crashes surrounded them. They could smell flak in the smoke they flew through. Q-Queenie rocked and shuddered in the grips of blast and counter-blast from shells all around her.

  Pointless to try evasive action in this. Flak was everywhere. Straight and fast was the quickest way out. The war of the stars went on, intensified, filled all space. They seemed to be flying in the tail of a comet.

  This was the Ruhr. Naturally all hell would break loose.

  This was one of the reasons they had attacked from the east, the Remsheid side of the Ruhr. To fly through such frantic opposition to a target scatters the force and puts all but the bravest men off their aim. This way they bombed first. Now they flew without bombs, too. They were lighter, faster, less vulnerable. And besides, those bombers they could see crashing now, they had already bombed, they had finished the job

  It was reported that ‘Bomber’ Harris, Chief of Bomber Command, had said that ‘an aircrew had justified their training and the cost of their aircraft if they flew two successful missions and were lost on their third after they had bombed.’14

  Perhaps this attack from the long way round had turned one or two of these crews from a loss into a profit. A reassuring tick on the credit side, and all for the price of only seven telegrams. How reassuring for the wives and mothers who read them.

  At least they did not have to worry about fighters as long as this kept up. The fighters would wait above, wait to subdue with guns those bombers who survived this trial by fire.

  Q-Queenie, pushing home with growing confidence one instant, found herself hurtling down towards hated Germany the next. Three flak bursts, under her starboard tail, had flung her fins into the air.

  Hyde struggled with the controls that had been wrenched from his hands, straightening Queenie in her dive, then eased her out and back to level flight.

  ‘Anyone hurt?’ Hyde asked on intercom. ‘How are you, nav?’

  It was the answer to this question he had come to fear the most. ‘How are you, nav?’ he repeated.

  Silence.

  ‘Skipper to navigator. Are you okay?’

  Silence!

  ‘Engineer. See if the nav’s okay.’

  Magnetic, standing beside Hyde rubbing a bruised elbow, did not hear. Intercom was smashed. Hyde tore off his mask and shouted to Magnetic to check that the crew were unhurt.

  Magnetic shouted back; ‘Watch the starb’d outer. I think it’s been hit,’ unplugged his intercom and oxygen leads and walked aft.

  By the time Magnetic returned with the heartening news that nobody was hurt and nothing important seemed broken, it was quite obvious he was right about the starboard outer.

  ‘She’s very rough,’ he shouted, as Q-Queenie rattled at the uneven revolutions. ‘Should we feather?’

  To feather a propeller is to stop the motor driving it and turn the propeller-blades edge-on so they cause minimum wind-resistance. Engineers liked to do it because it saved the engine. Other aircrew did not like to do it because it lost them power and speed. No use saving an engine for the RAF if it never got back to England.15 Hyde was pondering the wisest move when Q-Queenie was hit again.

  Again the burst was to starboard and again they were flung into a headlong dive. This hit was less serious. Hyde quickly had Queenie under control, but by the time they were on an even keel the starboard outer had seized. That not only meant no power, it meant a devilish drag as well—seized blades could not be turned into wind. But at least another check revealed the crew unhurt.

  The murderous flak continued. It was mostly above them now. That was where they sh
ould be, too. Up there with the main force. Radar could isolate them alone below. Their dives had lost them five thousand feet and now, flying on three engines and with one dragging, they would be struggling to regain altitude.

  Then suddenly the flak stopped.

  Far below, a German voice had switched it off.

  That meant the fighters were ready.

  Q-Queenie’s plight was instantly serious. If they were attacked they would just fly on; a sitting shot. Hyde would not hear Joe’s evasive orders on a dead intercom.

  Every one of them knew this. Every man knew that any danger they may meet would find them dumb.

  Bill edged back in his bombing compartment; from here he could see the skipper.

  Hyde loosened his harness; might as well prepare for the quickest getaway possible.

  Magnetic pointed to a gauge that told that the starboard inner was overheating. That would leave them with only two.

  Vincent computed their next course and wrote it on a slip of paper to hand to the skipper.

  Krink was tinkering with the intercom and cursing the dark; maybe his compatriots were wise after all to fly in daylight; at least they could see to fix things.

  Johnnie was terrified, but grimly intent upon his sets; the Hun he was diverting now might be meant for Q-Queenie.

  Yarpi, too, was terrified. The only chance, he was thinking, was to bale out before they were shot from the sky.

  Joe was straining his excellent eyesight to its limit; if a fighter attacked now Q-Queenie would simply have to shoot it down before it shot Q-Queenie down. That was their only chance. That chance might have to be taken; the sky was full of combats.

  It would be another hour before they were out. A wordless hour. An infinitely worrying hour. A dreadfully dangerous hour. Every man knew that.

  Eight subconscious imps knew that too. Now was the time to work on these men. Now they are afraid! Bombard their minds with terror now and perhaps they will crack. Make their fear unbearable and perhaps they will never fly to worry us again. Nag their minds. Nag, nag, nag. Drive them mad. Destroy their courage. Worry, worry, worry … Snap their nerves. You were fools to think you could survive! It couldn’t happen to you? Give up! Crack!